if this triggers you in anyway, please do not read. thank you.
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Mindy knocked on Tara’s door impatiently, cursing under her breath. The pair were already twenty minutes late to the movie they were supposed to see. That was like two whole trailers that Mindy was missing- and she refused to miss the rest.
“Tara. Open the fucking door. We’re late, get your ass moving!”.
No answer.
Which wasn’t completely strange, Tara had been a bit of a recluse since Sam disappeared a few weeks ago. Mindy had been showing up to the Carpenter house every day to drag Tara out and do something fun. Most times she was able to get the girl to smile.
Mindy still saw that empty, hollow sadness in Tara’s eyes. But there was nothing she could do unless she could move heaven and earth to get Sam back. Movies and walks it was until she could get Tara to consistently smile again.
She knocked again, but no answer. Jiggling the doorknob, she realized it was locked. Sighing, she snaked her hand into her pockets, fishing out the key she had made for Tara’s door. The girl was clever, but no match for Mindy.
As she unlocked it, she quickly realized that something was very wrong. The curtains were closed, and Tara’s room was a mess. Her journals were ripped open, loose pages all over the floor. The bed wasn’t made and clothing was strewn across it. And in the corner of the room was Tara, a knife in her hand, poised over a bare wrist.
“Tara!”
Mindy descended across the floor and fell to her knees, ripping the knife out of Tara’s hand, and throwing it across the floor. It clattered against the ground; the noise mixing with Mindy’s panic and Tara’s wheezy breaths.
She grabbed Tara’s wrist, checking it over. Once satisfied that nothing was wrong, she started yelling.
“What the fuck is wrong with you? What the fuck Tara! A knife? Suicide? Are you fucking kidding me?” she shouted, not caring if the house shook with her anger. It wouldn’t be the first rageful person to stalk the halls of the Carpenter house. And it probably wouldn’t be the last.
Tara bared her teeth, wheezing as she shouted back. “I can’t do this anymore!”
“What? You can’t do what? Live? Jesus Christ Tara, don’t be fucking stupid. You can do this. Your sister may be gone but that doesn’t mean you have to!” Mindy retorted back incredulously.
“Amber said that if someone left her like that, she would kill herself. So why the fuck does it matter? People who love you don’t leave you like that. It’s clear how Sam feels about it,” Tara hissed, trying to snatch her arm from Mindy’s grip.
Not letting go of Tara’s arm, Mindy gritted her teeth, taking a deep breath. “Okay, but Amber fucking Freeman isn’t the one to decide shit for you. For God's sake Tara, think! Is ending your life before knowing what could happen really what you want to do?”
“You don’t understand! She was my life, my blood, my reason to breathe! I can’t breathe Mindy, I can’t fucking breathe anymore!” the girl gasped, her eyes glassy.
Mindy loosened her grip a bit, frowning. This was uncharted waters. She thought that Tara was being overdramatic, but this- this was different. She loved her brother dearly, but she would cope without him here. This didn’t feel like the relationship she had with her brother. The way Tara wheezed and looked unsteady unnerved her. She wasn’t prepared for this.
But it was going to happen anyway.
Tara yanked her arm from Mindy, continuing with her train of thought. “Every morning I wake up, and for the first five seconds, I forget all of it happened. The fighting, the scars, the screaming, her departure- I forget it all. But then I open my eyes and it’s the same hell every day. Every. Fucking. Day. You don’t know what that’s like, having the person who knows you the best gone. Sam fucking left me, and I’m just supposed to live on and be okay? I can’t do that. I can’t be okay. She is my reason to keep going. Without her I have none,”.
Mindy blinked. “Not even for your friends?” she whispered, suddenly aware of the dire situation that she was facing.
The shorter girl shook her head sadly, letting tears spill down her face. “I love you guys. But I love Sam more.”
With that, Mindy noticed Tara’s free hand unclenched, an empty pill bottle rolling out of it.
“Tara,” she paused, time slowing down around her. She noticed that the loose journal pages were Sam’s old drawings and notes. The clothing across the bed was clothing that Tara had stolen from her big sister. The curtains were drawn and there was a envelope stuck to one of them. “How many did you take?”.
The girl just looked at Mindy miserably, her eyes unfocused. How long have they looked like that? Has Tara been wheezing the whole time? Was Tara always that pale?
when you have a fight with your parents, you go completely hysterical and then they yell at you for being hysterical and you’re hysterical even more and then you cry and everything is your fault and suddenly you’re not even worthy of someone’s love and also you’re causing a scene and you should be sorry
then you try your best to forgive or just be normal around them
but then you have another fight in front of your aunt who is actually your favourite person and she doesn’t do anything and you feel so helpless and sick to stomach, but you realize you don’t need to talk, because you’ll only make things worse and they yell at you, they yell at you really loud and you want to cry and lock yourself in your room and they say so many things that aren’t even true and all in front of your aunt, she reads the room, leaves and your parents totally lash out, so at the end you’re just a lame excuse of a daughter, you should feel sorry, everyone hates you and you don’t deserve to go to your dream school based on how dramatic you are
It’s something everyone in school knows. The King can’t kiss to save his life. He’s motionless, emotionless. It’s like kissing a brick wall.
And yes, he makes up for it in other ways, ways that let all the girls he’s with get past the weird kissing thing. Nancy’s not big on PDA anyway, so minimum kissing is fine with her.
The rumors spread, though. Girls talk to their friends about how they try to “teach” him to kiss, giving him gentle instructions murmured against his lips, to no avail. The movements are flat, jerky, like he’s being puppeted around on marionette strings.
He just can’t do it.
Robin teases him about it exactly once, early on in their Scoops Ahoy careers. But she sees how sad it makes him, sees how he twists the strand of hair by his ear around and around his finger (a nervous habit of his that she learns about much later), and resolves to never talk about it again. If only to get him to stop looking like she dropkicked his puppy into an active volcano.
When Steve starts dating Eddie, they don’t kiss much. Eddie’s not experienced, and he’s also not stupid. He heard the rumors in high school. The last thing he wants is for Steve to be forced into doing something he doesn’t want to do. And it’s really okay. Steve’s good with his hands (like, obscenely good), and he treats Eddie like a person, not a prize or a target. Bar’s low, but Steve’s still hurtling over it.
So it’s about half a month into their relationship when they kiss for the first time.
Eddie graduates, and Steve just gets so excited he yanks Eddie down an empty corridor in the school, picks him up by the waist and spins him around like a Disney princess.
And then he kisses him.
Eddie’s long hair is falling like a curtain around their faces, blocking out the whole world until it’s just them. Steve’s lips are warm, slotted perfectly against Eddie’s own, and his hands are braced around Eddie’s waist. Eddie feels his diploma fall from his hands, and he weaves his hand into Steve’s hair and tilts his head up, kissing him deeper.
Steve breaks away just then. Eddie chases Steve’s mouth with his own on instinct.
“Sorry,” Steve says breathlessly.
“What the hell are you sorry for?” Eddie demands in a harsh whisper. “I thought you were bad at kissing!”
“I am!” Steve says. “I got excited, sorry. I won’t do it again.”
“Why not?” Eddie says indignantly. “That was by far the best kiss I have ever had. Did you not like it?”
Steve looks like he’s running on autopilot. “No, it was amazing, I just… everyone says I’m bad at kissing. I didn’t want to make you kiss me.”
Eddie drags him close, slams him against the wall like he did in the boathouse, except this time with significantly more horny undertones. “You should keep that reputation.” Eddie says in a low tone. “I think no one else, but me, gets to know how good of a kisser you are.”
“Works for me,” Steve says, breath ghosting over Eddie’s lips, and that’s all the invitation Eddie needs to dive back in.
They end up scarring Robin when she comes looking for them, but that’s alright.
Leo getting hit with a truth curse but instead of forcing him to admit to super sad or worrying things it’s things like “it was me who broke the remote” “I saw Mikey prank Donnie and helped hide it because it’s way funnier if he didn’t know who it was” “I rip my clothes to look more like Raph’s because he’s really cool” “my stripes aren’t even red they’re pink!”
It’s really not that hard to understand how Destiel is canon despite not having Dean verbally textually concretely saying “I love you” back, which is what most people who only consume media on a surface level understand.
You have a jigsaw puzzle. Let’s say there’s 327 pieces. One by one you put it together with some bright spots where you get a bunch of them in a row and some more complicated spots where it took you longer than you wanted and the picture made it difficult to match up the pieces.
After awhile, you get 326 of them in, even tho your dog almost ate the 326th piece and it’s a little chewed up but whatever. It’s passable.
But, you realize you can’t find that 327th piece. It’s somewhere — it’s gotta be somewhere. You can see the hole where it belongs. You see it’s shape in it’s empty space, you see how many curves it has and how many sticky-out bits it has to connect perfectly with the rest of the puzzle.
However that final piece is still missing.
You look up and down, come up with theories about where it could possibly be (did the dog eat it? Did the manufacturers just screw up and there was a glitch in processing? Was it your own fault you lost it and it’s somewhere super obvious?).
But despite you being unable to find it, you’ve stared at that empty space for so long it’s almost like it is already filled because the shape is so clearly outlined. It’s the final piece and even if it’s not there, the rest of the picture is, and, the empty space is so well defined that there is no QUESTION that’s where the missing piece should go.
So Destiel is canon because the rest of the puzzle was filled in through years and years of subtext, text, basic narrative structure, romantic tropes, queer coding, etc etc.
The one piece that’s still missing is Dean saying three words but you don’t know where that piece is, aka, we don’t know why he wasn’t allowed to say it back. But we know that’s what has to be said. There won’t be a refusal of reciprocation because if that was the case we would have gotten it when the show was airing because there’s no harm from executives perspectives in denying queer feelings. They’d probably prefer it.
Dean’s missing words is the one single puzzle piece that’s missing right now. And we are all still searching for it but that doesn’t mean that it’s clearly defined space isn’t already there outlining exactly what could only fit right. There.
[ID. A digital painting of the Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared protagonists falling into a convoluted spiral. In the center are the antagonists, intruding upon the scene. The canvas is crowded with images of the Teachers and the house. End ID.]
astarion, the man who was dying and offered eternal life, but had no idea that it meant becoming a slave to a sadistic master.
astarion, the man who had his freedom and bodily autonomy ripped away from him.
astarion, the man who was forced to befriend, seduce and sleep with people to lure them back to his master, resulting in severe sexual trauma and the struggle to form any sort of intimate relationship.
astarion, the man who was horribly punished whenever he refused his master’s orders (one punishment being sealed away in a dusty tomb, starving, for an entire year. he scratched his hands raw trying to carve his way out).
astarion, the man who was forced to eat rats.
astarion, the man who hasn’t even been able to see his own face since he turned.
astarion, the man who had his body mutilated as cazador carved scars onto his back, which he later found out was to bind him to a ritual.
astarion, the man who is so severely traumatised that he admitted he doesn’t know how to say “no” or ask for help (and he feels guilty when he does).
astarion, the man who waited two centuries to be helped and freed from torture, but no one came.
astarion, the man who was always treated like a monster when all he wanted was to be treated like a person.
astarion, the man who came up to you in the middle of the night just to thank you for defending him and allowing him to make his own decisions.
astarion, the man who said that no one ever looked out for him or showed him kindness, and that you’re the only one. “other people don’t have a heart like you. you’re you. no one is like that.”
astarion, the man who broke the cycle of power and terror that started centuries ago thanks to the love, care and compassion that you showed him when no one else did.
astarion, the man who confessed that he loves you and feels safe with you; something he has never felt with anyone before.
When they said “blend in with the crowd,” they didn’t mean that. | From this scene in Winter Soldier because I saw it again and had to recreate it with these two