#mostly he deeply needs somebody to talk to about his ACTUAL mother and his complex feelings about her being back

[pre-successful]

Jody forcibly mothering Dean because he so clearly needs it 🥺

#supernatural lb #I mean what he needs is a therapist but that’s a whole nother thing #mostly he deeply needs somebody to talk to about his ACTUAL mother and his complex feelings about her being back #ugh it’s all a lot #I would die for Jody

[writers-worst-nightmare]

Till new flowers bloom (Lance x reader):

Ask: Hey! :D Just saw that your requests are open, so I thought I could tell you one of my favorite fanfic ideas: How about a Lance (from VLD) x Reader fanfic in which he and the reader eventually start dating post-canon. Everything is absolutely perfect, but he’s a unsure about saying the words ‘I love you’ for the first time. Not because he’s unsure about his feelings, but because he doesn’t want to lose another person that he loves. But, with the help of his friends, he eventually finds the courage, arranges an amazing date, and tells the reader how much they mean to him, and promises to protect them with anything he can.

A/N: this was fun to do! I love the idea of a sensitive Lance (almost as much as a sensitive Keith)

Warning(s): the fluff to angst might kill some readers

Pairing(s): Lance x reader

Word Count: 2,579

Request are always open!

Lance and you had been together since the eighth grade in middle school. You guys fit perfectly together, you where more in the calm side of things while Lance was always up and about. You still remember the day that he said he loved you…it was very…well…Lance to say the least…

***

“Y/NNNNNNNNN!!!!!” Lance yelled, phone gripped tightly in his hands, you perked up and cocked your left brow slightly upwards. The brown-haired male rarely talked to you, but you didn’t take it as a offense. You didn’t talk unless it was required to by a teacher or you where in trouble for something you didn’t do (that happened more often then you would think, the shy and quiet kids always get blamed for the things the loud kids do. Always.

“What?” You inquired, leaning back in your chair as Lance propped his phone up on your water bottle and gave you a sly smirk. Your eyes clouded with even more confusion as Lance went on tiktok and started to playing Electric Love.

”Do you know this trend?” Lance asked, you shook your head ‘no’ before lightly humming to yourself.

”No, but the song sounds nice,” you commented slowly. Picking out your words as carefully as a old lady picking out beautiful blooming flowers for her husbands funeral.

“I know it does…” Lance smoothed talked, doing the classic bisexual finger guns as you. You giggled at the boys attempt to get your attention. But just as the song picked up to the chorus Lance pulled you in by the collar of your shirt and kissed you roughly. You tensed up, muscles bunching up in the toughness that held in the kiss. But, soon, you found it to be comforting and relaxed slightly. Lance pulled away from you and smiled brightly.

”I am guessing this means that you like me?” You giggled, staring at Lance as he curled into you and hide his face in the crook of your neck. You felt your body temperature go up slightly as you hugged Lance back and laid your chin on his back.

***

It was short and sweet, anything that somebody could dream of in Middle School. The tiktok bad blown up to massive number and got both you and Lance a following (your followers demanding more Lance x you content, and you happily gave them it). The relationship through half of high school and training pilot school was so sweet. Even when Voltron was formed you guys stuck together likes two peas and a pod.

But one thing differed

One thing stuck out to you

It was always the same thing…

You would sat the words ‘I love you’ and wait for a response

But it never happened. He never responded with ‘I love you too’ or anything. He would just seem happy that you said you loved him and carried on with the day as if nothing happened. The crew started to pick up on slight hints but nobody got it! They would just say that Lance was being nice and shy but you knew the Cuban boy more then anybody. If you had to describe him personality wise ‘shy’ and ‘quiet’ are some words that too wouldn’t use. Lance's personality is very complex, as he has shown several different, often conflicting sides throughout the course of your relationship with him (even in the classmate side of things way back when). He can be very egotistical, cocky, confrontational, and arrogant at times. At other times, he is friendly, kind, reflective, and shows great intelligence. He is usually the first to make light of a delicate situation, either by joking around or flirting. Lance is noted for his poor-timed or vulgar humor at times, noted by him ripping a fart as a joke. Lance's friendly and outgoing personality allows him to connect with mostly everyone (maybe not as much with Keith) despite their many differences. Around girls, however, Lance tends to focus on flirting, sometimes neglecting his teammates. Lance is brave, adventurous, friendly, and free-spirited, often howling like a wild man during his fights and adventures, showcasing his unrestrained love for what he does. However the moments he is able to let go of those feelings are the times he is able to do the most for his team. He can be quite sensitive, reflective, and distant at times when his teammates are not around or when his guard is lowered. Lance is shown to be quite homesick, deeply missing the Earth and desiring to return to his family, reminiscing on the beach near his home, splashing in puddles, and experiencing rainfall. This is one of the few times he appears sad and he is unwilling to let his friends witness it.

He is often impulsive, not very in control of his emotions and often loses the gravity of the team's mission to dreams of glory, praise, and being the center of attention. Lance reacts angrily when Keith doesn't prioritize the shows Voltron is putting on to gain support, and he is easily the most enthusiastic of the Paladins about performing in front of a crowd. Lance tends to get caught up in the way that he sees the world rather than the way things actually are. Because of this, he is noted to be the least perceptive of his team. Lance was the only one fooled by Pidge's disguise as a boy. He also sees many of Keith's comments as insulting or aggressive when Keith does not appear to mean them that way because Lance believes Keith is his rival, and the "rivalry" between them is entirely Lance's own creation. Lance is insecure about his own abilities and placement on the team, and so often acts as though he has something to prove. Lance admits that he doesn't see himself as one of Voltron's best warriors and suggests that he may not be the best choice for a Paladin of Voltron. Contrastingly, Lance often shows a high degree of situational awareness and tactical skill while on missions, as shown when he corrected Keith's errors twice to protect the Balmera from harm from Keith's reckless attacks. When meeting the Blade of Marmora for the first time, Lance pointed out to Shiro that Keith would become angry and attack someone if taken on the mission. While this was most likely said because of his rivalry with Keith, Lance was correct in his assessment of Keith's character, as Keith's antagonistic nature created tension with the Blade when they discovered the knife in his possession.

Following Shiro's disappearance after the temporary defeat of Zarkon, Lance matured rapidly. He became far more serious in his missions and coordinating battles with his allies. During this time, he also lost much of his animosity towards Keith. Although initially desiring to be leader himself, Lance accepted the Black Lion's choice of Keith as Paladin. He becomes a much more supportive member of the team and steps up to take more of a tactical advisor's role, not sugar-coating his criticism of Keith's leadership tactics but supporting him to move forward all the same. Lance's acceptance by the Red Lion as its new pilot echoes King Alfor: acting as a right hand, trusting the Black Paladin to be a better leader than himself in battle, giving assistance when needed, and supporting his friends.

So he would often be the side character that got only a small amount of screen time and often bullies by other characters and the fandom. Although you loved him and all of his moments. Whether he is sad, cocky, sensitive, or doesn’t say the three words ‘I love you’ back whenever you say it.

It was the complete opposite for you

If someone where to describe you they would say that you where sometimes flirty but not as level headed as Lance. You used to be shy but you think that phase has left your body now (as least you hope with dating the one and only Lance McClain). Usually you flirted a lot with Pidge friendship wise and Pidge would always joke about killing Lance and getting together with you. You woud laugh and laugh as Lance fears for his own life in the corner. But other then the teasing with your best friend Pidge a lot of people labeled you as kind and understanding. You where the one to talk Keith out of leaving the moment he knew who is Mother is. Instead he stayed for a little longer. And when Keith left you defended him with your life. Sometimes arguments would burst out in Shiro saying that you cared more about Keith then you any other teammates. And maybe he was right, but you admired Keith in some way. He was the person that did what you didn’t want to do. The one thing that every half-breed thought of doing but never did in the end. When the days where off and you could relax a playful pillow fight would often kick off or you could be seen watching some anime (usually the gore stuff but sometimes you couldn’t help but watch Ouran High School Host Club souly based on the fact that Haruhi was there and it is Haruhi).

Maybe you where the toxic one in the relationship, maybe you needed to fix something and do something right.

“Y/n?” Pidge asked, snapping you out of your daydream and into reality. Sighing heavily you let down your guard and turned back on your mic to reach out to your non-binary teammate.

“Yes Pidge?” You called through the mic of your helmet. The slight grief that you felt for Lance handing thickly in your throat. You might have gotten use to if. Used to the feeling that Lance was never going to say ‘I love you’ in your relationship but it still felt worse then getting knocked down by Zarkon when you had a tom of weapons and he had none.

“Something happened to Lance I need you to—“ Pidge was cut off by the sound of you racing to get the rest of your uniform on. You where at the spaceship of backup was needed, although they rarely ever needed you. So you just wore your helmet (you thought it looked pretty cool). You pulled the purple uniform over your head and rushed into your lion.

“OPEN UP PURPLE!!” You called, clearly in a hurry. You grabbed your purple taser that Shiro had given everyone at the start of the mission and went in the mouth of Purple.

You where the purple Paladin, usually the person who has the purple Paladin is connected to royalty somehow. Everyone wanted to talk about it but you always ignored them when it came up in discussion.

The truth is that you are Zarkon’s child, being raised on the planets and then brought down to Earth when a war happened. You where raised by a old lady who found you left alone in the cold and brought you in. She fed you and kept you safe although she didn’t know what you truly where (she just guessed you where a human like everyone else on Earth). You covered up the marks on your face unlike Keith. You didn’t want to leave yet. You couldn’t leave…if you left then what would Lance do? No, you won’t be like Keith and leave your friends and boyfriend to rot in the spaceship while war goes plundering on like a lighting storm all around you. You may be Zarkon’s kid but you weren’t like him at all. You weren’t like Keith. You were y/n. And if you had to die to prove it, then so be it. Purple halted in front of Red. Your eyes widened as you saw Lance, he looks beaten up to the point of near death. Your breath hitched in your throat as you jumped out of your seat, making sure to grab the first-aid kit and then bang on Purple’s door to open faster.

“LANCE!!!” You screeched when Purple finally opened the door to let you out. Blue was beat up badly also, parts of Blue’s body was falling off and their usually clear crystal blue eyes where now dusty and clouded with thought. You found a gap in Blue and rushed in to save Lance’s life. “LANCE!!!” You exclaimed, going to Lance’s side and shaking him rapidly. Thick tears starting to prick at the corners of your eyes.

“HAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHA SJSNEURKNR AHAHHAHAHA!!!!” Keith howled in laughter. You whipped your head around and stared at the black-haired male. You fumbled with your pocket and pulled out the taser. Soon Lance joined in on the laughing as well. Both of them howling like maned wolves on a full moon.

“What are you two laughing at?!” You huffed, arms crossed and staring at the two boys. Soon the rest of the Paladin‘s arrived. All of them laughing together.

“Come in love…let’s get away from them…” Lance suggested, standing up on his own and taking you away. You didn’t have time to notice it before but now you looked around where you stood and there was a bunch of blooming flowers around the place. A small park where some kids sat at the dark navy blue coated bench and watched in awe at the lions and the two of you like you where some superhero’s flying through the sky.

“Where are we going?” You asked, leaning against Lance’s arm and intertwining fingers with him.

“You will see.” Lance chuckled, you rolled your eyes and started following Lance. Totally embraced in the fact that he was still alive. His scent smelled like the fresh clean breeze and coconut mixed together in the most perfect way.

Soon, the two of you went to a small opening in the park, kids where gathered around and staring at you with excitement filling their eyes. “Y/n! Can you read me a story?” One of the kids begged, the kids had curly blonde hair and round blue eyes. You nodded your head and sat down to pick up the book. You opened your mouth to start resting it to the blonde-haired girl before Lance coughed. You turned around and couldn’t believe the sight in front of your eyes. It was Lance on one knee, a dark purple case in his hands and a warm smile on his face. You looked for any sign of joking or a prank but all you could see was admirable and love for you in his tired dark blue eyes.

“I know this is kind of out of plan, but you know what? I am like that…so…” Lance trailed off, looking into your eyes. You stared at each other in silence before Lance spoke again. “I love you…and I am sorry that I hadn’t said it to you in all these years of us being together…but I hope I will make it up you…so y/n, will you make me the luckiest man on Earth and take this ring…?” Lance asked, pulling out the ring from the box. The ring had a small diamond but in it was a lavender flower inside. On the inner ring it had the lyrics for Electric Love in Lance’s handwriting.

“I guess McClain isn’t that bad of a last name…” You teased. Lance laughed softly before he took the ring into his hands and slipped it on your ring finger as a final say that you two where going to get married soon.

#voltron #vld #lance mcclain #voltron defender of the universe #voltron fanfic #voltron lance #voltron legendary disaster #lance x reader #writing inspiration #writing #fanfiction #writeblr #reference #answered asks #How did I write two thousand words in less then a hour #Idk #I had to do this TWICE because the font messed up #So I chose to be lazy instead #I might edit this later if I feel up to it

[mauserfrau]

Mau's Very Silly Headcanon Post

Since I have two pieces of fiction going live this weekend and they’re both going to be late due to butting into each other XD.

I did another one here and there’s going to be some overlap, but less bodily function stuff in this one (mostly spit) (also some vague references to medical trauma).

A lot of this is small potatoes because I didn’t want to spoil anything.  How Phaseleech actually works ends up being a plot point in what I have pending, so I actually can’t just come out and say what’s going on.  That said, I’m sure there are people here who want to know what’s on my mind, but who don’t want to sit through 50K words with half a dozen squick warnings.

That said: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mauser_Frau

Questions welcome, about this, anything else I think about Borderlands, what exactly is in Chapter 13 of Satellite, if it’s true the one flashback actually happened to Mom... 

Both

-Look, the only thing I did that’s appreciably off-canon is let them have emotions.  Maybe I drove into left field with what those emotions were, but that’s really all anybody’s got to do to fix this situation.  Go with the deity of your choice.  

-If I was headed for a Gearbox ending, it would be for the scrapped one, not the one we got.  See this and this other thing.

>>>I would still have written the twins as having something resembling a meaningful relationship regardless of whether that turned out romantic or not.  As things went and are, them as a couple was something I knew how to write and my mom shipped them (no, I’m not kidding).  

-I’m not going for a canon ending.  Mercy, did I find a thread I could snap and take the whole sweater out.  

-Both had blue siren markings when they were born; Troy’s turned red after they were separated.

--Which was a complicated mess-- they were upside-down verses each other and had several secondary adhesions, the most notable of which was Tyreen’s face to Troy’s thigh.

---Leda never 100% recovered from the emotional or physical trauma, but she put on a brave face for the last sevenish years of her life.  

---Troy’s tissue loss was severe and left him with a notable pit in his upper right side.

---Tyreen also has heavy scarring running from her right armpit to her right hip.  It’s not as complex, but it is very visible.  Missing a fair amount of intestine compared to the average human, but this has apparently never bothered her beyond the fact that visiting the toilet when you don’t eat is not fun.

-Semi-identical twins. Have 82.5% of their genes in common.  LSS, neither one is a parasite.  They’re two sperm plus one egg and they didn’t divide right.

--Ms. Phaseleech* didn’t know any better.  #oops  

--If you get them relaxed enough, they will indeed curl up together in their “fish” position.

-Tyreen is the one who would wail first if separated from her brother when they were very small, but they don’t like being apart even as adults.  

-Both very well-read, used to recite The Odyssey to congregants instead of scripture (‘cause they didn’t have any scripture). 

-Good to excellent hunters. Depends what they’re hunting and if they’re together.  Prefer to go barefoot if there’s no one else around.

-The circumstances surrounding Leda’s death are appreciably worse than fanon baseline to the point I don’t think I ought to leave them lying around in a Tumblr post.  

-Both have wavy hair if they don’t iron the daylights out of it.

-Prefer to be on the road and around people, even if a fair amount of those people are going to end up dinner.

-Get weirdly soft-hearted around kids, especially little boys with a similar complexion to their own.

-Do they have any concept that they’re horrible people? Yes, but it’s very academic and not something that motivates them.  You’d be way more likely to hear them frame themselves as hedonists, which also explains their worldview to a certain extent.  

~*~

Troy

-Skinnier than most other Troys.  You could put him in a room with every fandom Troy and sort them by muscle mass, you’d find him at the bottom end, partying like this was an accomplishment.  

-Has an X-linked connective tissue disorder which is more extensive than he lets on.  He really should not do about 90% of the stunts he does because of the vascular involvement.

-Made a categorical decision to treat the associated pain with a lot of cannabis and massage.  Has a distinct resin and honey body butter smell because of this.

--Also, if you get him off-hours, there’s going to be a fair amount of “but why are we here, man?” discussion.

-Has a kink in his upper back.  His spine tilts to his right.  Not super noticeable, but if you were on massage duty, you’d realize something felt out of place.  

-Used to get catastrophic nosebleeds, though these have lessened in frequency and severity over the years.  

-After a certain point, has a permanent latching socket port installed on his right side, allowing him to switch arms out as he likes.

--Because he has a selection of eccentric ones.  What? It’s a challenge to learn to use non-human aspects like claws or feathers or forty joints in a tentacle.  

--Still flounces around without one if nobody of consequence is watching and generally won’t sleep with one in.

-The insides of his ear gauges are messy and don’t even get him started on changing the jewelry on any, erm, other piercings he might have.  (Nipples and one off-center PA.  That was QUITE enough after what it took for his tattoos to cooperate.) 

-Will frame any illness or off-day as a migraine, which he does get.

-Had really bad teeth before his mouth mods.  After that, has none of his natural teeth remaining.  Primarily uses his exceptional bite radius to annoy others, show off, eat sandwiches in a disturbing fashion and do unspeakable things in bed.  They’re for show.  They’re not functional in any serious way.  

-Doesn’t have great control of said mouth mods in the heat of passion or if you get him laughing hard enough.  Hope you like spit!

-Still has rather heinous-looking feet, but he’s concerned about losing his calluses if he has them fixed.  You’d be more likely to see him open on an operating table than barefoot in public.  

-Always wants to be the little spoon.  You’re a tink? You’re a third his size? So what.  He wants to be the little spoon.  Just give in.

-Genuinely likes tea, especially flower-based tea.  Favorite foods include grits, polenta, tamales, campfire beefy rice, beef and broccoli layered onto somebody else’s leftover noodles, beef curry, beef sandwiches soaked in jus, steak tips on day-old fries and look just give him a sloppy plate of starch and dead cow if you need him to shut up.  

-Drinks vodka so cold and over-filtered it tastes like water, then follows it up with extra greasy, burnt-to-hell texas toast while talking about his mother.

-Lactose intolerant.  Please do not feed the rat child pizza. Or chipped beef on toast.  No, not even if he begs.  

~*~

Tyreen

-Abnormally acute senses, especially hearing/smell and including a form of intuition which targets where things she can leech exist nearby.  She’s only aware of any of this in the context of it being different from how Troy’s senses work.  She knows where to get food.  Don’t most people?

-Doesn’t perceive herself as 100% human.  The Leech is part of her and she likes herself.  Mama said she was perfect.  The details are whatever.  You got a problem here? Well, that’s easy to fix… 

-Would have been sorted as a tomboy growing up, but had no companions to do so.  As is, prefers the company of masculine individuals, loves showing people up in a boyish fashion and is absolutely going to tune you out if you start talking to her about the topic.  

-Reeks.  You might smell something “off” with her around in a meeting room, but get her sweaty or worked up and forget it.  It’s not even a human smell.  Petrichor and spray paint, menstrual blood and chlorine, dead leaves and solvent.  It’s chemical, it’s uncannily biological.  It’s really not OK.  She can’t smell it and Troy’s used to it.  

-Doesn’t shave.  Has fluffy armpits that don’t match her dye job and a rather spectacular bush that extends onto her upper thighs.  Does pluck here brows and the witch hairs on her chin, but otherwise, you know what, nah.

-Heavily tattooed, but this is limited to her torso.  The viewing of said tattoos, as well as her scars, is a ritual in her particular CoV.  

--Not that she cares about being naked.  A body is a body.  You people are so uptight.  

-Will reflexively guard her lower stomach before anything else and sometimes in error.  Do not call her on this.  You will piss her off.  

-Has an eye-shaped siren marking, but it’s on her left shoulder blade and she tends to forget it’s there.  More aware of the “pointer mark” underneath her navel.

-Poor tolerance for any drugs.

-Can only ingest salt, sucrose and 80 proof or better clear alcohol without retching.

--Which is to say she doesn’t eat “people food”.  

--Fatty or high-fiber foods tend to make her ill faster.  She could possibly keep tofu or chicken breast down for an hour or more, but it’s still not going to end well.  

--Can and does eat cinder toffee because it’s one of the few things she can chew and digest.  Konpeito is nice too, but sometimes the dye upsets her stomach.  

--Milk, maybe.  Human works better.

-Enjoys swimming or long baths.

-Ambidextrous.  Was either born that way or picked up doing certain things left-handed because that’s what her brother had to work with and she had to show him how to do stuff somehow.

-Good with a forearm-mounted crossbow.  Either hand is fine.

-Used to drool precipitously when she leeched something “good”.  Mostly has a handle on this by the time the CoV gets to be a thing.  Mostly.  

-Deeply immature love language which might include her actually asking to play with her prospective partner and a good bit of bullying.

-SHE IS NOT SHY ABOUT HER NEEDS AND KINKS.  THE HELL WITH YOU.  YOU’RE MAKING SOMETHING OUT OF NOTHING.  HOW DARE YOU.  DO YOU WANT TO BE SKAG BAIT ON THE NEXT LIVESCREAM.  UGH. #nottsundereatall

~*~

* The Leech IDed herself as, erm, herself in some stuff I’m not sure I’ll ever post but ANYWAY.

#borderlands 3 #headcanon post #calypso twins #troy calypso #tyreen calypso

[stusbunker]

Dr. Emery Simmons-Winchester

Hey guys! An ask post got me thinking about my girl Emery from my Sam series For Better or Worst.

So I decided to fill out the questions about her, in case you’re interested since a lot of her background has been kept as only small glimpses due to the plot so far. Here are those questions from the ASK POST. (Since I know no one would actually send me asks, especially about OCs.)

Basics:

1. What is their gender?

Female

2. What is their sexuality?

Heterosexual

3. What is the meaning behind their name? Do they have any nicknames?

Meaning: Derived from Emmerich, which can mean brave and powerful. Also a hard, dark substance (i.e. emery boards)

Sam calls her ‘Em’ and ‘Baby’

Georgie used to call her Mama E

4. Do they have any siblings? How many? Are they older or younger?  Which sibling are they the closest with?

She has an older half brother that she isn’t close with, but that’s just because he lived across the country from her and her son.

5. What’s their relationship with their parents like? What about other relatives?

Emery loved her parents to the ends of the earth. Though her dad wasn’t always around, his parents helped raise her. She was by her mother’s side when she died from cancer.

6. What would they give their life for?

Georgie. And redemption. Though there are others that she cares for and her dedication to them will be tested deeply soon.

7. Are they in a romantic relationship? With who? How did they meet?

Is an arranged marriage romantic? I guess it depends on who you ask. She is currently married to Sam Winchester. They met via some shady dealings from one Naomi, Angel of the Lord.

8. What do they believe will happen to them after they die? Does this belief scare them?

Can I laugh at how deep we are getting in the “Basics” section of this?! Like, damn and then the next question is like a Teen Bop quiz.

Emery believes in Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory. She grew as a psychic, knowing the world as it exists on the show. She still believes the angels are on humanity’s side and are her path to forgiveness, if not salvation.

9. What is their favorite color? Favorite animal?

Emery likes rich earth tones with some gold in for accents. She looks good in just about anything though.

10. What are some of their talents/skills?

She is a medieval history professor, and an outstanding lecturer. She reads people really well, even after losing her psychic powers. She has a decent singing voice. Is an amazing mom. And when she makes up her mind to do something, she follows through. Very hard to change her mind or challenge her moral compass.

11. If they could make a mark on history, what would they like it to be?

Just that the world was better, in any small way, from her influence.

12. How old are they? When is their birthday?

She is 39, born January 16, 1981.

13. What do they do for fun?

Read. Play with her dog Bandit. Go for walks. Listen to music. She used to mess with people who didn’t know she was psychic, but nothing malicious just little things that would stump strangers. She also used to play video games with Georgie.

14. What is their favorite food? How often do they get to eat it?

Potatoes in all of their glorious forms. She also love Cajun cuisine. She isn’t much of a cook, because she never had time to go all out. But french fries are easy enough to come by!

15. What was something their parents taught them?

That no matter who you are, you have a place in this world and a job to do.

Family always comes first.

16. Are they religious?

Yes, but most of the strict devotion rose from the death of her son.

17. Where were they born?

Gary, Indiana

18. What languages can they speak? Where did they learn these languages?

Different dialects of American English. She can read Old English and Middle English from her years of study.

Latin, from high school and some college.

19. What is their occupation?

Currently a professor, formerly a part-time psychic.

20. Do they have any titles? How did they earn them?

She has a PHD in History and a Masters in Education. Dr. Simmons-Winchester if you’d like. ;)

Personality:

21. What is their favorite thing about their personality?

She appreciates her own snark, when it comes out.

22. What is their least favorite thing about their personality?

Her psychic upbringing game her a lot of empathy for others. She hates how weak that makes her seem.

23. Do they get lonely easily?

No, she keeps too busy to feel lonely. Her son was always enough for her... until she found Sam.

24. Do you know their MBTI type?

No because those tests are way too fucking long.

25. What is their biggest flaw?

Self-assigned guilt.

26. Are they aware of their flaws?

Not all of them, who is?

27. What is their biggest strength?

Her dedication.

28. Are they aware of their strengths?

Yes, she isn’t one to sell herself short.

29. How would they describe their own personality?

She would say she is smart, kind and generally tough.

30. When frightened, will they resort to “fight” or “flight”?

She isn’t one for physical violence, but she will stand up vocally. She has had to defend herself physically in the past and that cost her her son.

31. Does this character ever put somebody else’s needs before their own? Who do they do this for? How often do they do this?

Constantly, in the past it was mostly her son, but now also her husband.

32. What is their self esteem like?

Good. She owns her strengths and is aware of her shortcomings. Though she is slightly shaken from a recent rejection, but she knows better than to get too attached when there are other factors in play.

33. What is their biggest fear? How would they react to having to face it?

Failure to protect her son. She would go to the ends of possibility to save him.

34. How easily do they trust others with their secrets? With their lives?

It took almost five months of an arranged marriage for her to tell Sam about her son, his death and her side of their deal with Heaven. Though she trusts Sam, she didn’t reveal much about her past.

We’re going to have to wait and see if she can trust Sam or Cas with her life.

35. What is the easiest way to annoy them?

Talk cruelly about other people on end. Chew with your mouth open.

36. What is their sense of humor like? Give an example of a joke they would find humorous.

She has a pretty decent sense of humor. Not too dark, but definitely has a sarcastic streak. I think she would love memes, especially living with a preteen gamer, she would have seen her share. But she’s still a dorky mom, so she only shares the obvious ones with her TAs.

37. How easy is it for them to say “I love you”? Do they say it without meaning it?

Fairly easy, especially with family. Never.

38. What do others admire most about their personality?

Her strength of character and her determination to DO GOOD.

39. What does their happily ever after look like?

She hasn’t really thought about it beyond the task at hand. Keeping up her charade with Sam in order to save Georgie’s soul and Dean. They have quiet the dream life from the outside: great jobs, nice house in a good neighborhood. But none of that can last, not for them. Right?

40. Who do they trust most? Is that trust mutual?

Her mother, but she passed about two years ago. Yes.

Physical Profile:

41. What does their laugh sound like? Do they snort when they laugh? How often do they laugh?

Her voice is smoky, much like her faceclaim Rashida Jones. Her laugh can get breathy or silent if it is a really deep one. She laughs in little spells, but nothing like she used to.

42. What is their favorite thing about their physical appearance?

Her sparkling hazel eyes.

43. What is their least favorite thing about their physical appearance?

She thinks she has a big nose. But her complex is so good, she doesn’t dwell.

44. Do they have any scars? If so, what are the stories behind those scars?

Yes, she had a total hysterectomy after her mother died so she has laparoscopic scaring. She also has stretch marks from pregnancy. The biggest scars are on her left upper arm, where her son scratched her when he first shifted into a werewolf.

45. How would they describe their own appearance?

Just a 30-someting mixed girl rocking what she’s got.

46. How easily can they express emotions? How easily can they hide emotions?

She is tempered first and foremost. Being vulnerable is not something she does regularly, but she doesn’t hide the big things. They’re too much for a reason.

47.    What’s their pain tolerance like? 

She is a women of color and a single mother, her pain tolerance is insanely high because people don’t listen anyway. (yes, that’s shade)

48. Do they have any tattoos? What are the stories behind those tattoos?

She doesn’t. (Desperately trying to remember if she does now... oops?)

49. Do they have any piercings?

Just a single on both ears.

51. What is their height? Weight?

5′4″ 130lbs ish

52. What is their body type? Are they muscular, chubby, skinny, etc?

She thin, not overly fit.

53. What is their hair color? Eye color? Skin tone?

Dark brown/ Hazel/ Dark Beige

55. What is their alcohol tolerance like? What kind of drunk are they? How bad are their hangovers?

She has a fairly low tolerance for alcohol, but that’s generally because she doesn’t drink often. When she gets wine drunk she gets affectionate. The few times she has been hungover have been exhausting because she doesn’t give her self time to recover.

56. What do they smell like? Why do they smell like this? (Is it the things they’re around or a perfume they wear?)

Her natural scent is warm spices, with almost a vanilla finish. She has a jasmine perfume that makes her slightly more feminine and floral.

57. How do they feel about sex? Are they a virgin?

She hasn’t had an active sex life until she married Sam. Before that it had been a few years. No, she isn’t a virgin and this is a dumb question because it is an outdated misogynistic construct.

58. What is their most noticeable physical attribute?

Her big, bright, multicolored eyes. Then her smile.

59. What does their resting face look like? Do they have RBF?

Not exactly resting, but you get the point. Yes.

60. Describe the way they sleep.

She sleeps curled on her side, in the middle of the bed. If Sam’s already up, she is stealing his pillow to cuddle. If Sam is sleeping elsewhere, she stays to her side.

Environment:

61. Which season is their favorite season?

Summer, though she was born in the winter, she prefers it if she can function outside or at least read by the lake.

62. Have they ever been betrayed? How did it affect their ability to trust others?

Okay, yes, everyone has been betrayed. She is currently dealing with the ramifications of an unjust deal with Heaven. It’s not easy for her.

63. What is always guaranteed to make them smile?

Her dog Bandit.

64. Do they get cold easily? Do they get overheated easily?

Yes, she is a slight woman, she gets cold easily.

65. What’s their immune system like? Do they get sick often? How do they react to getting sick?

She has a solid immune system, even when she gets sick she powers through. Bad mental health days knock her down a few pegs though.

66. Where do they live? Do they like it there?

Currently living in Denver, CO with Sam and Bandit. She lived in Chicago with her son and dog previously.

67. Is their bedroom messy? What about their bathroom? Kitchen? Living room?

No, she keeps her bedroom clean because she shares it (for the most part) now. The bathroom and kitchen are always spotless. The living room is a little cluttered, but that’s generally Bandit’s toys and research she leaves out when she’s not grading in the dining room.

68. How did their environment growing up affect their personality?

She was surrounded by love. Her mom was a waitress at a diner and her paternal granddad and big mama helped raised her. She knew she had to work hard for anything to come to her and she also was psychic so she was able to sense how her family was “odd” or “wrong” depending on whose thoughts she heard. She grew up learning to respect people and kill them with kindness, or wit if she had to.

69. How did the people in their environment growing up affect their personality?

See above.

70. How do they feel about animals? Do they have any pets?

She loves animals, but is very much a dog person. Yes, Bandit, the best boy ever.

71. How are they with children? Do they have any? Do they want any?

She is amazing with kids, especially one on one. She has a son George, who would have been 13 last spring. She is unable to have more.

72.   Would they rather have stability or comfort? 

Stability. Knowing what to expect is its own level of comfort.

73. Do they prefer the indoors or outdoors?

She is generally indoors, but generally all of her active free time is spent outside.

74. What weather is their favorite? Do they like storms?

To be in, sunny and clear. She likes storms from the safety of inside and thunder more than the lightning.

75. If given a blank piece of paper, a pencil, and nothing to do, what would happen?

She would probably doodle old geometric patterns found on ancient manuscripts as a border. Possibly make a list of things that need doing or write the same word over and over again in different fonts.

76. How organized are they?

Fairly, not obsessively so.

77. What is their most prized possession?

Her PhD.

78. Who do they consider to be their best friend?

She was close with a few colleagues at her last job, a small college just outside of Chicago. But her mother was her best friend so it is hard to put that title on someone else since she lost her.

79. What is their economic situation? 

Currently upper-middle class. Previously working class struggling with medical bills.

80. Are they a morning person or a night owl?

She is not a morning person, but doesn’t stay up too late unless she has too.

Miscellaneous:

81. Are they bothered by the sight of blood?

No. Unless someone is severely hurt.

82. What is their handwriting like?

Not too neat, but generally a combination of print and cursive.

83. Can they swim? How well? Do they like to swim?

Yes, well enough to not die, she doesn’t know all the strokes or anything. Sure, but not as much as she likes sunbathing.

84. Which deadly sin do they represent best?

Oh, this is a tough one! I am going to say Envy, because though she had a great family growing up, she was still very much aware of what other people had. And their problems always seemed so frivolous.

85. Do they believe in ghosts?

Yes, she was a psychic, she spoken to spirits before.

86. How do they celebrate holidays? How do they celebrate birthdays?

She has her great-grandmother’s china that she keeps for the big holidays, Christmas, Easter, etc. She would host the cousins and aunties with her grandma and once her mom got too sick, it was harder to get everyone together. She and George would go to her Aunt Janice’s house when they could for Sunday dinner, but traffic in and out of the city was a pain during the school year.

87. What is something they regret?

Killing her son in self-defense.

88. Do they have an accent?

Not usually, she was in an academic setting for so long she doesn’t let it slip out often.

89. What is their D&D alignment?

Neutral Good, laws and those who enforce them should evolve quicker than they do.

90. Are they right or left handed?

Right.

92. Describe them as a John Mulaney gif.

93. What’s the most iconic line of dialogue they’ve ever said?

She groaned, grabbing his face in both her hands. “Fine! Asshole. But you better make it worth it.”

She was pointing a finger at his agreeing puppy dog face now.

#for better or worst feels #emery simmons-winchester #stu's ocs

[hufflepirate]

Why I Cried About the New Dixie Chicks Song

Ok, alright, so I’m having Extremely An Emotion about the return of the Dixie Chicks, and I know a lot of folks on here are either too young to remember the blacklisting or weren’t in the country scene at the time, so here’s the whole story the way it felt to a 12-year-old girl who loved them.

You should love and support them!! This story is why!! The vague recaps of the situation in articles about the new release don’t cut it!

*********

So. Let’s start at the beginning (for me). It’s 1998. I’m 8 years old. My parents aren’t really into Christian radio, but we’re also Good Southern Baptists, so obviously the only radio we really listen to is classic rock/oldies and especially country. You can’t trust those pop music stars these days. Or, God forbid, rappers. They don’t make music the way they used to. (Yeah. I know. But I’m just telling it like it was.)

I hear “There’s Your Trouble.” The singer’s boyfriend is constantly comparing her to his ex and she is Calling Him Out and I have never thought about such a thing before because I am 8, but I am deeply certain that any woman deserves to be loved by somebody who sees her for her. This is important to me. I don’t understand why.

It’s still 1998. I have recently moved west and I am still only learning to process the new geography. I am a child. I do not yet feel the full impact of “Wide Open Spaces” the way I will come to as an adult. And yet... already the idea that part of freedom is having “room to make a big mistake” matters to me. Instinctively, I know that one day, this will be a thing I need, even if I don’t right now. I am right.

We don’t get the album. That’s fine. They’re on the radio a lot. They top the charts multiple times. They win grammys. They sell more cds than all other country groups combined. They are, if you read writeups of them, “not yet political,” but there’s something about the idea that a girl can not only want but need space and independence, need it as a necessary part of growing up, that is setting the stage for what they will become, at least from the perspective of someone who grew up hearing ‘feminist’ used as a dirty word for women who have been brainwashed by... someone?? into having a victim complex. (Again... just telling it like it was.)

The next year, I am 9. They drop Fly. I am never the same.

The first single to hit the radio is “Ready to Run.” It is bouncy and happy. The singer is not getting married, because she does not want to get married. She knows what she wants and she won’t be pinned down by expectations. I am Living, and the feelings I did not yet have about “Wide Open Spaces” are Here In Full because it is hard to imagine being a grownup for the first time, but it is easy to imagine taking off to be yourself instead of doing what everyone else wants and it makes me feel alive.

“Cowboy Take Me Away” is deeply romantic and makes my little 9-year-old heart swell with feeling. It will be years before I realize that is because she is living her life and talking about what she wants and he is just... there. She is doing what she wants and he holds her when they sleep and smiles at her in the daytime and that is all we know. It is the peak of romance, and I, too, want to walk and not run, skip and not fall. I too want to grow something wild and unruly and that thing I want to grow is me.

My parents buy the album.

“Goodbye Earl” is released as a single and starts getting played on the radio. I grab the CD out of the basket we keep them in and it lives in my CD player until my mother begins to worry about the degree to which I am obsessed with this song about murder. I do not have the words to explain that the appeal is not the murder, it is the solidarity. I am being bullied very hard in school. I have only one friend, and she is often mean to me. It will be many years before I understand the true extent of the truth they are dropping in this song, but the details are chilling and honest and disturbing and when Maryanne flies in from Atlanta on a red-eye midnight flight, I feel something I cannot put into words.

It has been 21 years and I still do not have the words to explain “Goodbye Earl.”

Trigger warnings for domestic abuse and I guess also for poisoning domestic abusers and like, murder is bad or whatever.

The album is a masterpiece. It is an experience. I am 9 years old and I do not want to fall in love, because I am 9 years old, and I am learning right now that if a boy falls in love with me when I clearly do not want to date him, that is his own damned problem, and I am singing at the top of my lungs to tell the world that I don’t want to fall in love but if I do, then screw them, I will drag everyone else down with me.

There are limits to how many vids I can drop in here, so I was just gonna drop in the ones that were important to “Hey, you should love them!!” but I can’t resist dropping this one in. This one was never a single but also like... y’all. Do you know how many times in my life I needed songs that told me it was ok to not be in love/pursuing love/dating people? And I’m not even aro/ace? Anyway, this one sounds so sad but feels so good. An indulgent vid choice, but this is my post, so??

Also the album had some bops. These will probably not convince you to like them if you don’t like the country sound/genre, because the Dixie Chicks sound was always very country, but I dug the sound of 90s country then and I dig it now, so here you go.

Some Days You Gotta Dance

Sin Wagon (Fun fact about this one, which is like........ aggressively country I can’t even. It was not a single but it did get enough radio play to chart anyway.)

And then. The end. (For then.)

It’s 2002. They drop a new album in August. I am 12 and their cover of Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide” has me all up in my feels on the radio. In December, they drop “Travelin’ Soldier,” a cover of a shmaltzy song about an 18-year-old soldier who dies in Vietnam after writing letters back and forth with a high school aged waitress who loves him. It’s sad. It features a couple young enough to be relatable to a 12-year-old. I am not so foolish, at 12, that I don’t realize even though they say Vietnam, I’m supposed to be thinking about the fact that we’re at war in Afghanistan and they’re talking in the news about how we might go to war with Iraq and Congress had passed a resolution saying we could.

Here’s the thing that sometimes gets lost in things about what happened next. This song was popular. It’s anti-war, but it’s not particularly toothy. The actual text of the song is just that a young soldier goes to war, a girl he met right before he left gets his letters and is faithfully his girlfriend because... soldiers?? and then he dies and she’s sad. It’s not supportive of war, but you have to be pretty far out there not to agree with a premise like “We should be sad when soldiers die,” or “There is/should be someone who cares about every individual soldier even if other people just see them as one of a list of names/a statistic.” The song charted. The album sold well and won awards. And I missed all of it, because it takes a while for things to trickle down to a 12-year-old whose friends, at that point, listen almost exclusively to showtunes.

On March 10, lead singer Natalie Maines told a London audience, “Just so you know, we’re on the good side with y’all. We do not want this war, this violence. And we’re ashamed the President of the United States is from Texas.”

Country music listeners lost their shit. Some people didn’t, of course, but a lot of people did. They called radio stations. They dramatically and publicly destroyed or threw away their CDs. People in the industry got involved, many of them in abusive ways, but I didn’t know much about that. All I knew was that one day they were ubiquitous, and the next, they were completely banned from the radio.

My local country station, or at least, the one my family listened to, was owned by Cumulus Media, who instituted a 30-day ban on the group’s music at all of their country stations (though not their general top-40 ones, apparently? I did a google this morning.) Other large media corporations mostly let their individual stations decide, though Cox Media also did a general ban. Lots of stations banned them individually, some for much longer than 30 days.

My parents didn’t make me stop listening to my beloved Fly. But the clampdown was, at least where I lived, intense and immediate. It felt like all of a sudden, they were gone. Dead in the water.

It fundamentally did not make sense to me. My parents shrugged it off with a similar attitude to President Bush, whose response had been, “The Dixie Chicks are free to speak their mind. They can say what they want to say,” but also, “They shouldn’t have their feelings hurt just because some people don’t want to buy their records when they speak out.” This was all, to me, baffling. Sure, people could decide they didn’t want to listen to them anymore, but why did they get to decide for everyone else that we couldn’t? Why did they get to ban their music?

I was 12, soon to be 13, and this whole thing was, to me, the antithesis of what freedom of speech was meant to be. I believed in freedom of speech. I believed it applied to everyone. I believed that even though, in my confused, hurting, terrified, post-9/11 12-year-old mind, I liked the President and thought we should go to war, no one should be stopped from saying we shouldn’t. I believed freedom of speech was a moral imperative, a principle for interacting with other people and respecting them even if you disagreed. I believed it meant protecting people you disagreed with, because otherwise who would protect you when the disagreeing one was you?

It was utterly baffling to me that one comment - one comment that she apologized for, because she said she’d phrased it too harshly - could so utterly shut me off from something I loved. I assumed, when she apologized, that even though she said she still didn’t believe in the war, that things would soon go back to normal. They didn’t. I turned 13 a few months later, and the Dixie Chicks were still not on the radio in my town.

By the time they put out their next album in 2006, I was running with a crowd that listened to CCM and classic rock and never country, and when I listened to country at home, the radio still wasn’t playing them, not necessarily formally, but certainly in practice. I heard that Natalie Maines had come out and said she wasn’t sorry about what she said, after all, and I didn’t like that she’d said she didn’t think the President deserved her respect, but I didn’t even realize she’d said it in the context of new music.

The 2006 album, Taking the Long Way, was a commercial success. Their song about the event “Not Ready To Be Nice” also did very well....... but not on country radio. I was still listening to country radio at the time, not exclusively, but enough that when I looked up songs that had topped the charts, I recognized more of them than I didn’t, by title alone.

I never heard the Dixie Chicks’s new album on the radio.

Here’s what my local station didn’t play. What they were too scared to play, maybe, or maybe what they didn’t want me to hear:

So, yeah.

That happened.

Badass.

But it happened without me, because the radio station was instead still playing “Honky Tonk Badonkadonk,” a song about women’s butts that a bunch of men wrote in a club in an hour while, presumably, staring at women’s butts. A song that sparked slogans on t-shirts in a little t-shirt shop my friends and I visited that year on a school trip. A song the middle-aged man who worked there (and with whom we were alone) referenced when he leered aggressively at my 16-year-old friend and made suggestive comments to our whole group (4 teenage girls) that made us run out of the building and race back toward the fast food places nearby where we hoped to find some of our teachers.

Country music was never the same for me after the Dixie Chick blacklisting. I knew it didn’t believe in freedom, even as it bandied the word about aggressively. I knew that it relied on everybody saying the same things and believing the same things, and it didn’t have room for me not to agree, and that was not then and is not now any kind of freedom. As the years went on, there were more and more Honky Tonk Badonkadonks, and I was less and less willing to give men a pass for being sexist and disgusting and entitled.

I miss country music, in the sense that I miss the Dixie Chicks, and I miss women like Jo Dee Messina and Sara Evans who were singing similar stuff at the time and might still be but aren’t on the radio because they’re over 40 and not also white men. I miss the way county music women made me feel in the 90s. I miss women who called out the men who’d done them wrong, who stated their own value and self-sufficiency, who sang about independence and made me believe in it. But more than anything, I miss believing in them. Some of that is of course still happening. But as much as I love Carrie Underwood and Miranda Lambert and Kacey Musgraves, I can’t ever get back there. Not really.

The thing is, I believed the Dixie Chicks when they told me I could have the space to make mistakes. I believed them that women could and would stick together. I believed them that I could be single and happy about it, that I could say no to men I didn’t love, even if they loved me, that if I wanted to fall in love, I could find somebody who would love me without ever tying my wings. And I believed I could be and do those things and still fit into the culture of country music.

I still believe the rest of it. But I’ll probably never believe that last part again.

Anyway tl;dr you should love them because they tried to be themselves and tell the truth and because they tried to buck the system, and you should love them because they never backed down, even when the system pushed back so hard that, from where I sat as an impressionable preteen, dependent on my parents and the radio, it completely destroyed them.

#dixie chicks #long post #music #country music #holy SHIT long post #but hopefully worth it?? #if you're like ok wow so they got blacklisted in the 2000s and haven't put out music in 14 years that's wild #this is hopefully helpful #but also it helped me process my Many Feelings over which I Did Cry this morning so #worth it regardless

[desotosykes]

The Comedown || Delia

Summary: DeSoto finds his way to Celia’s flat after leaving Roscoe at the hospital.

Trigger Warnings: This is mainly hurt/comfort? Good things, not bad things. Mentions of revenge, minor talk of past trauma, tending to minor wounds.

Timestamp: September 10, 2019

@amoderngorgon

DESOTO:

Leaving Roscoe at the hospital was the right choice. Des repeated that to himself as he ditched the van that had no doubt been stolen and made his way to Celia’s apartment. Rita was there to make sure that he got through surgery okay and would no doubt at least call once she got some news. It was DeSoto’s job to make sure this didn’t happen again.

Which meant getting in contact with the right people and making sure the perimeter was okay. 

First thing, however, was making sure Celia was okay. The attack was meant for him in a way. At the very least it was because of him. His inability to do what was required of him. He wouldn’t put it past the idiots to try and do something to his girl. 

Knocking on her door, he barely waited for her to pull the door open before barging in. The minute his eyes landed on her, he searched for marks or bruises or anything that would mean she was anything other than okay. When he was sure that nothing had happened to her, he pulled her into his arms and pressed his lips to hers in a rough kiss.

CELIA:

Celia had been finishing up baking a fresh batch of cookies. Mostly because she’d been craving it, but also because she was considering bringing DeSoto some. It was a good excuse to go see him again, even though they’d just seen each other the other day. She couldn’t really help herself. She wanted to spend more time with him.

She had pulled the last tray out of her oven, setting it down on her countertop when she heard a knock on the door. Tossing the oven mitts aside, Celia started for the door, opening it wide and blinking in surprise at the sight of DeSoto.

“De-” she started, and then startled as he pushed right in, looking for something...or checking her for something. Her eyebrows furrowed slightly. “What’s going on?” She questioned, even as he drew her into his arms and kissed her. Her knees went a little weak, and she wrapped her arms around DeSoto, leaning into the kiss. He’d explain, she was sure. But she wouldn’t complain about being held in his arms until he did.

DESOTO:

He kissed her deeply, biting at her lips and gripping her hips tightly. He needed it. Needed her. Now that the adrenaline was wearing off, he could feel the fatigue and fear trying to creep in. Somehow he needed to combat it. To focus on something else entirely so that he didn’t have to deal with any of it. Celia was a welcome distraction. Would she let him lose himself in her? A part of him didn’t think so. She’d want answers and he couldn’t exactly blame her.

Eventually he pulled away from her, his breath coming in short pants as he ran his hands all over her. He needed to make sure. Needed hard evidence that she was fine. When she didn’t wince, he pulled away from her and shook his head. His head was a whirlwind of emotion. He wanted to sleep, he wanted to cry, he wanted to kill. He couldn’t do any of those things, however. Not right now at least.

Turning away from Celia, he raked a hand through his hair roughly and tugged at the locks. He hated this. Hated all of it. Why couldn’t they have just left them alone? Why did they have to come now? “You have to-- Yous hafta stay with me. It ain’t safe anymore. Yous ain’t safe. Shoulda fuckin’ known better. They’s gonna try and hurt yous t’get to me. M’a idiot. Fuckin’-- Fuckin’...” he trailed off as his throat constricted with tears of all things. 

Fuck he was stupid.

CELIA:

The way he kissed her was with a sort of desperation or something that she hadn’t ever really experienced. It was overwhelming, and a little concerning. Celia opened her mouth to say something and then closed it again, still looking befuddled as he ran his hands all over her body somehow. As if he was expecting that she might be hurt or something.

DeSoto started drawing away from her, and her eyebrows furrowed again. “Are you alright?” She tried again, hoping that maybe now that he’d confirmed she wasn’t hurt she could get him to say...something. Anything. Explain why he’d come so abruptly. Celia would never turn down a visit from him, of course, but he just seemed so...thrown.

“What?” Celia repeated again, staring at him like he might have grown a second head. “DeSoto...who? No one’s going to hurt me.” She definitely had an advantage over any attacker that might come at her anyway. She stepped forward again, wrapping her arms around DeSoto again. “You’re no idiot, but you’re not making a lot of sense here. Hey.” She pressed a soft kiss to his lips. “It’s okay. Why don’t you come sit down with me and we can talk.”

DESOTO:

He was shaking as her arms wound around him once more. Everything was falling apart. All of it. And there wasn’t anything DeSoto could do to change it. It was all out of his hands. Tonight served as a reminder that he’d never be his own person. He’d never be free of his father and his life in New York. And because of it he was going to lose Roscoe and probably Celia. They’d do whatever they had to to ensure DeSoto did exactly what he was supposed to do. And when it was all over? They’d take care of him. 

It was all too much for him to deal with.

The adrenaline was finally gone and DeSoto felt himself breaking down as he buried himself in Celia. He felt weak, broken, helpless. He’d never felt that way. Not since his father had broken his arm because he’d stood up to the man for beating Roscoe. Everything he did from that moment onward was to get rid of that feeling. How fitting it was his father that brought that feeling back so intensely. 

His traitorous tears soaked through the fabric of Celia’s shirt as his chest heaved. It was near impossible to catch his breath as the feeling took over him so totally. He felt stupid, which only added fuel to the moisture leaking from his eyes. 

CELIA:

Celia was a little thrown to see him so upset. She could actually feel him trembling against her. She wasn’t sure what she should do. She’d never seen DeSoto like this. What she could do at least was to hold him, try to support him the same way that he’d supported her when she’d told him about what had happened to her. What else could be done when he didn’t explain?

She could feel the wetness of tears against her shirt, and her heart sunk a little more. DeSoto always appeared so strong to her. So untouchable somehow in her mind. He gave off the energy of the toughest person, but even the strongest needed to let something go. And honestly she was relieved that he felt he could come to her.

“It’s going to be okay. Des...it’s going to be alright.” She reached up with one hand and started rubbing gentle circles in his back, much like her mother used to do when she was a child and woke up from a nightmare. It had always soothed her, and maybe she could try and soothe him a little with it too. “Go ahead and cry all you need.” She pressed a soft kiss to the top of his head. “Are you hurt? I don’t know what’s going on but I...I have a first aid kit. And then, when I’m sure you’re unharmed or patched up, you and I will curl up in my bed together. Alright?”

DESOTO:

He wasn’t sure how long he stood there leaning against Celia. Too long his mind supplied him in form of answer. Eventually the tears stopped and his body quit shaking but Des still stood there, breathing deeply in an attempt to collect himself. He’d been put through too much in one night. Forced to deal with too many emotions. DeSoto was a simple man. Only dealt with anger and annoyance or happiness. He didn’t get complex and yet he had been forced to today. 

Finally pulling away from her, he scrubbed a hand down his face and winced. Okay. Apparently he had gotten hurt. It hadn’t occurred to him that he had there had been so much adrenaline in his system. 

“I can’t sleep. Too much t’do.” He explained as he ran a hand through his hair. He felt calmer now, less frantic. It allowed him to focus on what he needed to do, what phone calls he needed to make. “Where’s the first aid? Think it’s only a few cuts. It ain’t that bad. Not compared t’—.”

CELIA: 

"I didn't say you had to sleep," Celia replied, though that wasn't all that important. The important thing was that she take care of her guy. He was shaken up, and she had to find a way to put him more at ease. At least to some degree.

She leaned in to kiss his cheek. "I'll get it. Don't worry. You come sit on the couch." If he was cut up then she'd rather be bleed on the couch. Even though the idea of him having any cuts or injuries upset her. She didn't even really want to let go of him, but somebody had to get the first aid kit.

"Sit." She ordered, finally regretfully drawing away from him to go to her bathroom, rummaging in her cabinet under the sink before she pulled the whole thing out, quickly heading back over to DeSoto. She glanced him up and down. "Okay, strip. Let me see where you've been hurt."

DESOTO:

DeSoto nodded at the command, moving to the couch only a moment later. His body shifted to autopilot then, focusing on the familiar routine of getting patched up. How many times had he found himself in Tony’s office cut and bruised to hell? How many broken bones had he endured throughout his life? The answer was too many to count. But the routine was always the same. Sit. Strip. Don’t move. Don’t wince. It’ll only hurt for a minute. 

Before Celia had even stepped back into the room, DeSoto had his shirt off and thrown to the side. If he’d been in his right mind he would have worried what she thought. Aside from the ornate tattoo across his chest there was a litany of scars, both new and old. Bruises had started to form from the events of the night. He knew the worst would be on his back from where he’d been kicked and then held down. 

“S’been worse,” he muttered, not looking up at Celia. He didn’t want to see the look of abject horror on her face. She’d seen him naked but that had been different. He wasn’t battered and broken on her couch needing patching up. “I can get it.”

CELIA:

Celia considered herself lucky now that she was a scientist in origin. She could push back a little of the emotion to focus on the rational, reasonable conclusion. It was upsetting, obviously, to see her boyfriend in pain like he was. She wanted to spare him any more of it if she could.

She made her way over to the couch, sitting down next to him as her eyes carefully scanned his body, searching for the worst hurts that he'd received here. It made her a little sick, though Celia could push past that to focus on what needed to be done. Namely patch up her guy.

"No. Let me," Celia insisted, opening up her kit and considering his injuries carefully. "This seems bad enough to me, and I don't think I'd feel right if I didn't try to do something to help you." She reached for some of the gauze there and disinfectant, figuring that would be the part to start with. Clean up some of those wounds.

"Be honest with me Des. Which one is the worst?" Celia was determined to fix him up. And then...well. She didn't know, but she wanted to find every last person who'd hurt her guy and turn them to stone. Something she never would have considered using offensively. But it hurt to see DeSoto like this.

DESOTO:

Celia didn’t flinch when she saw him and— well, it was a start, honestly. Didn’t bother him nearly as badly as it thought it might. Instead he watched her as she pulled out gauze and disinfectant wipes. If he thought hard enough he could picture Tony there and scolding him for getting into another fight. DeSoto would wince and Tony would tell him not to be a baby. He’d be fine. Everything would be fine. 

Her voice brought him back to himself yet again and he looked at her in confusion for a moment before shrugging. “Dunno,” he said plainly, looking at her with a frown. And it wasn’t exactly a lie. His whole body was sore but there was still too much adrenaline or shock or something in his system that was blocking those pain receptors. It’d be hell in the morning but he couldn’t seem to think or care about it in the moment. 

“Should probably shower first. S’how it usually works.” He spoke slowly, going back to being a teen and hopping up on Tony’s table. He’d always made him get cleaned up first. Or washed off the areas himself. Griped about having cuts get infected because they weren’t clean… Or maybe that’s what the disinfectant was for. “M’sorry yous got involved with this. M’gonna make sure they pay and that yous safe.”

CELIA:

It made her stomach churn to see just how dazed and out of focus her boyfriend was. For a moment she felt a horrible wash of anger seep into her, imagining how she would find the people who’d hurt him and turn them to stone. But just as quickly as she felt it, she had to let it go. DeSoto needed her, and he needed her to be level headed.

“I’m going to choose not to think too hard about how often this happens for you to have a usual...but the disinfectant here is to make sure no germs get into any cuts. I’m not sure a shower is necessary.” And she wanted to make sure he didn’t fall over and hurt himself on the way to it. Celia was capable of many things, but she was fairly sure she wouldn’t be able to support all his weight for very long.

Celia studied him for another moment before she reached for the wipes, leaning forward to gently wipe around what looked to be the worst cuts. “It might sting a bit, but it should soon stop and just help you recover.” She narrated what she was doing, because if she didn’t she might start to think hard about what had happened to him and...it made her unhappy.

“Don’t be. I’d much rather you came to me when you were hurt than have to deal with it yourself.” Honestly Celia was glad that he felt he could come to her. Even if it hurt to see him like this. She leaned in to kiss his cheek. “Put some of these on the other cuts here. I’m going to get some ice for your...well for the eye and your back. Okay?”

DESOTO:

It was easy for DeSoto to fade away as Celia worked over the cuts that had been inflicted. The disinfectant stung but not enough to bring him out of the darkness that threatened to consume him. It was different from whatever happened at the warehouse. There was no rage, no demon waiting to be released. It was just a strange, relaxing floating feeling that he wanted to continue to sink into. If he could just stay there, tethered by Celia’s soft voice, he’d be okay...

His eyes slipped closed as his fingers twisted into fists on the couch cushions. As much as he wanted to slip into that darkness, he knew he had to stay present. Disappearing wouldn’t help him or Roscoe. Not now that the family was actively coming for them. The message had been more than clear. They were waiting for a dead body. If he didn’t deliver that what happened tonight would pale in comparison. They wouldn’t toy with them. One would be taken care of and then the other. 

There was a slight pressure on his cheek and Des opened his eyes to see Celia pull away from him. She was… abnormally calm.  Either she was in shock and going through the motions just as he or she was an absolute goddess at compartmentalizing. Regardless he nodded and took the disinfectant from her and looked down at his chest in an attempt to figure out what had already been done. Not seeing anything he moved to his arms and hands, wincing only slightly as he cleaned them enough for bandages. 

“Yous ain’t gotta,” he insisted as he heard her rummaging around in the kitchen. “It’ll go away in a few weeks. Always does.”

CELIA:

Celia returned relatively quickly, frozen peas and another thing of frozen mixed veggies with her. She sat down next to him again, gently placing one bag of frozen food against his bruised back. The other she offered up to him. “This one should be for your eye,” she suggested, glancing his body over to check and see if she had missed any more of his injuries.

“I don’t have much else I can do for you DeSoto. Just...let me take care of you.” Celia couldn’t imagine doing anything else really, at this point. He was hurt, and she wanted to make sure he was okay. She leaned in to press a soft kiss to the corner of his mouth. “Anyway, icing this may only soothe it a little.”

She felt altogether unhelpful. But at least this way she could pretend that she was doing something to at least make things a little better. “Do you want to stay here or come to bed with me?”

DESOTO:

He winced as the bag of frozen food was pressed against his back. The cold seeped into him quickly, working to soothe the tension in his back. He’d be sore as fuck in the morning but— he’d deal with that when he got there. And maybe Celia was right. Maybe the cold would soothe his muscles and the pain wouldn’t be too annoying in the morning. 

The other bag sat in his hand as he all but slumped over. His forearms rested on his knees as he tried to fight back fatigue and worry and the ever present need to move. There was still so much that needed to be done. Things that needed to be cleaned up, people that needed to be contacted, messages that needed to be sent. Nothing, arguably, that could be done while he sat on Celia’s couch. But her touch was soothing in a way that he didn’t understand and the urge to stay with her even stronger than the pull to keep moving.

“Bed,” he said after a long moment, gaze still focused on a spot in front of him before he turned to look at Celia. Perhaps he needed to rest. To get rid of the exhaustion that demanded he succumb to it. He watched her for a moment before moving to rub his thumb against her cheek. “Sleep sounds good.” He gave himself a small nod before leaning in to press his lips to hers.

CELIA:

Sleep did sound good. And hopefully it would be something that would help him recover faster. She didn’t enjoy seeing him in pain. And maybe now that his bruises had sort of been helped in some way, she’d be able to get him into her bed. All she had to do was make herself support him for the stretch of hallway. She could do that.

Celia returned the kiss softly, stroking her thumbs over his cheeks before she reluctantly drew away and got to her feet. “Okay then. Come on.” She reached for his hand, helping him to his feet with her. “We’ll curl up in my bed and I will not let you out of it until you’ve had a full night’s sleep.”

She knew she didn’t have any real control over this, but that much she would make sure of. He needed rest. She led the way over to her bedroom, turning toward him as soon as they were in. “Do you need anything else before bed. Some water maybe?”

DESOTO:

It was easy for DeSoto to follow Celia into her bedroom. He was still mainly on autopilot, following after her as if he was a five year old being ushered into his bedroom by Tony after he’d re-set one of his broken bones. Things were easier that way after he blacked out. He didn’t have to think. Only had to go through the motions of everything. 

The minute he stepped into the room, however, his brows furrowed together. There was so much yellow. The walls, her bed, her blankets. It was bright and welcoming but so much. His rooms had always been… well sort of plain. White walls with dark wood furniture. His bed had just had your typical masculine sheets and comforters. The only decoration he’d ever invested in were his collections of weapons and his clothes. All of which littered every corner of his room. This was almost jarring.

It didn’t stop him from stripping down the rest of the way; leaving him clad in nothing but his boxers as he looked over at her. “Nah. Just wanna sleep,” he al but slurred out as he looked at the bed longer. At least it looked comfortable. Maybe even more comfortable than the beds at The Tipton. Been awhile since he’d slept on something truly comfortable. He waited only a few seconds more before he crawled into the bed, a low hiss of pain leaving him as his back muscles flexed as he situated himself.

Instinctively he held the covers up for Celia, curling as best he could around her once she’d settled next to him.

CELIA:

Celia nodded, moving forward and tugged off her own clothes, leaving bra and underwear on and then debated over going to her closet and putting on her usual night shirt. But then she decided she didn’t want to keep DeSoto waiting there for very long and opted to just slide in next to him, her arms cautiously wrapping around him.

She didn’t want to touch anything that really hurt for him, but she also couldn’t help but want to hold him, to reassure herself that he was perfectly fine. He would recover from these injuries. Celia leaned in to kiss him softly, settling against her pillows. “Goodnight DeSoto,” she murmured, gently running a hand through his hair to soothe him and maybe herself a little at the same time. 

She watched his chest rise and fall with every breath, and she was sure she’d be up a while still just to be sure. But at least DeSoto was safe and in her bed.

#&&celia&& #&&delia&& #OTP: mine #otp: i want you #&&new york meets swynlake&&