#same position as the Sisters of Purgatory

[dragonomatopoeia]

Air's Bizarre Christmas Rom-Com Reclist

I am a fan of Romance Media, but even more importantly, a fan of mediocre art. As such, I have watched a lot of christmas romcoms. I have in fact watched Too Many christmas romcoms. While freelancing between jobs, I would put them on in the background as mindless noise to keep me company while writing copy.

This means that I am uniquely positioned to create a rec list of christmas rom-coms that meet a very specific set of criteria:

Is the movie interesting enough to make me actually Watch it instead of half-listening to it in the background?

Are elements of the plot bizarre enough to make me yell "WHAT" at the screen?

Would I rewatch the movie in the company of friends?

Any movie that fulfills all three of these criteria is eligible to join those privileged few, the elite ranks of My Christmas Rom-Com Rec List

A Chance for Christmas (2021)

Synopsis: "Influencer Christina Chance gets the opportunity of a lifetime: a lucrative sponsorship from the brand of her dreams. However, she soon discovers she's stuck in a time warp where the same Christmas Eve repeats itself over and over again." Commentary: This is a Tubi original, and it lives up to all the mess that status bestows. That established, my favorite parts of this movie are that the main character and love interest have the same kind of obsessive, perfection-driven marketing brain poison that lead them to try to min-max a time loop and learn zero lessons for the vast majority of the movie. There's a kind of frenetic, self-absorbed energy to each of the characters that's fascinating to watch. At one point the main character attacks a man dressed like Santa in an act of misdirected rage, and the love interest holds her concerned family back while yelling "SHE NEEDS THIS LET HER GO SHE NEEDS THIS". Also, the kids are actual characters with inner lives instead of props! There are structural issues with the movie, and in my perfect world, the protagonist would quit her influencer job, but overall, I enjoyed it.

A Christmas Movie Christmas (2019)

Synopsis: "A Christmas movie fanatic and her cynical sister wake up to find they are now the stars of a Christmas movie." Commentary: I have a soft place in my heart for scripts written by actors who have been trapped in this Christmas purgatory for years. There's a certain sensitivity to The Way Words Work that is nonexistent in most of these films. Especially since this industry relies on Never Retaking Any Line Read Ever because these movies are basically made on an assembly line. That is to say, this movie is a love letter and a list of grievances wrapped together in a metatextual bow. All of its jabs at the genre feel like they come from a place of familiarity rather than scorn, and the actors are obviously having fun. Line deliveries and elements of blocking feel like they have actual character work put into them, and one of the love interests feels like a Christmas Homunculi with no understanding that a world other than snowglobes and sugar cookies exists. But on purpose this time! If he encountered a turtle flipped on its back, he'd start feeding it christmas cookies, and the movie is Very Aware of This. It's fun.

Baby It's Cold Inside (2021)

Synopsis: "When a travel agent up for a promotion is directed to forget her tropical vacation and instead visit the world-famous Ice Hotel, she discovers that her sacrifices are more than compensated." Commentary: I'll be honest. This one is mostly here because the editing choices made me feel like I was losing my mind. I ended up dragging my roommate down to the living room at multiple points so that they could witness the same thing I was seeing. The jarring cuts, dropped story beats, and lines that lead nowhere make for an unforgettable viewing experience... except for the part where I have forgotten literally every other element of the movie. Except for the inexplicably evil love rival who becomes niceys at the end. I like her. Girlboss. This isn't even the only Hallmark movie that was set at and filmed at Hôtel de Glace in 2021. Truly the most Hallmark movie on this list.

Christmas Perfection (2018)

Synopsis: "Darcy's been striving for the perfect Christmas since childhood; thanks to a magical figurine her dream finally comes true." Commentary: I have already written up my thoughts on Christmas Perfection in EXTENSIVE detail here. Needless to say, I watch it every year. What a fascinating text. What an odd timeloop. It should have been gay.

Snowmance (2017)

Synopsis: "Each year Sarah builds her "Snow Beau" snowman with her best friend Nick. After another breakup, she begins to wonder if she'll ever find her own true love. A little Christmas magic brings her Snow Beau to life." Commentary: I cannot believe the snowman actually came to life. The snowman came to life and he's not even the primary love interest. Nick sucks in a normal possessive childhood friend love interest way, fuck Nick, everyone hates Nick, sure, but THE SNOWMAN CAME TO LIFE? THE SNOWMAN CAME TO LIFE AND HE TRIES TO SELL THE PROTAGONIST'S HOUSE!!!!! SHE LIVES THERE!!!!! This movie made me scream out loud multiple times. It is not good. Please watch it.

Timeless Love (2019)

Synopsis: "Megan wakes up from a coma in a hospital. The husband and 2 kids she just dreamed about aren't real. At her first job interview, she meets Thomas from her dream - or was it a vision years into the future?" Commentary: Listen to me. Listen. The establishing scenes of this movie are played completely straight. For the first chunk of the movie, it feels like this is going to be a dramatic, serious movie in a way that Hallmark Christmas Romcoms fundamentally are not, which makes it EVEN WEIRDER when it suddenly pivots into your classic nonsense. It entrances me. Who let this happen? Why is the medical professional who is assigned to help Megan with the trauma of losing her coma-construct family and recover from being in a literal coma cartoonishly evil? Why was the information Megan obtained from the coma dream accurate to real life? Why is she suddenly okay with losing her coma children as soon as she found the real-world version of her coma-husband? What a fascinating text. I have no clue what to do with it. But maybe you do. I'm folding it into your hands. Whatever happens next is your decision

#rec list #christmas #christmas ment #i didn't put the netflix movies on here everyone knows about those and they're trying too hard to be weird #where's the naive camp i ask you

[jones-friend]

Lol. Lmao.

I started watching One Tree Hill bc what I saw through my now estranged sister was absurd, and bc of the John Oliver clip where a dog high on marijuana eats Dan Scott’s replacement heart. I first watched all the finales back to back to back then decided to give the whole thing a run through.

In one tree hill a number of souls are shackled within the purgatory of Tree Hill, a place that causes characters to stagnate professionally and emotionally while giving illusions of growth through platitudes and unearned emotional moments. You cannot escape Tree Hill. Death isn’t even enough to escape Tree Hill. You can fall onto the pitcher plant but you cannot climb out. You are one with Tree Hill.

This is a show with no less than three serial killer arcs, a show so hungry for drama it consumes every teen drama concept before the second season leaving it nowhere to go, a show with two near fatal bridge accidents, with real ghosts that help and haunt, where teenagers and small children talk like aged adults, where we get to see the progression of culture and technology from early 00’s flip phones to early 10’s smartphones and social media, and teenagers promising rebellion instead become the forces they were so much so against in early seasons as cycles are broken yet perpetuate. This is a show where a teenager can afford an apartment by working part time at a mall food court. Its also got an incredible reinforcement of heteronormative ideals.

In this show, Ball is Life.

The biggest issue with One Tree Hill working is there needs to be a source of drama caused by the main cast. The way this works out in writing is characters often backtrack their growth to cause more drama again.

I do have a few positives. After S4 there is a time skip of 4 years. I think this actually gives good weight to S4’s finale, letting it keep that weight. And they give new struggles to the cast that don’t trivialize their previous successes while giving us something to root for. The friendship between Nathan and Lucas has genuinely compelling moments as they learn about themselves and each other.

Dan Scott is also a source of great enjoyment for me. He makes the show work. You have plotlines like “Lucas and Brooke are having relationship issues”, “Nathan wants to play basketball more”, and “Dan uses a school shooting to kill his brother Keith bc Dan was convinced he was drugged and left to burn in his dealership when really it was-“ and its just absurd every time.

I will do a character rundown of the main 5 peeps:

Lucas is the original protagonist of the show. He is half brother to Nathan and the “underdog” of S1 where he plays the river court compared to Nathan playing varsity bball. He’s described to be the more emotionally driven one between Nathan and Lucas but as the show goes on he just becomes the dumber of the two. When it comes to relationships he can’t make up his mind and goes with whatever the girl he’s with wants. This leads him to cheat multiple times and as his gf gets mad at him he squints off into the middle distance like there’s something going on but we all know there’s nothing going on behind those eyes. After the timeskip he continues dwelling on the past writing a book that is both super successful and terrible at the same time and the show just kinda makes him a washed up writer before giving him and Peyton a fairy tale ending and saying goodbye S6.

Nathan Scott is the “rich boy” bball player who starts the show as an asshole until the show decides he isnt. Nathan is the only good person in One Tree Hill. He’s the only one who’s level and tries to make reasonable choices without flying off the handle. He does have a few hilarious moments with how seriously high school bball is taken where a mafia is pressuring him to shave points off games bc they bet a lot of money on him. The biggest letdown with Nathan is he continues to beat himself up over the unrestrained anxieties of his wife-

Haley is the worst character in the show. She accuses Nathan of cheating at least 5 times in the show despite nothing indicating that, the most egregious of which is when she snoops and finds Nathan’s valentines day gifts for her and accuses them of being for someone else. This is second to a rando accusing Nathan of sleeping with her after he becomes famous and after a few days she decides to believe the rando over her husband of 4-5 years. She just lets her anxieties get the better of her and it makes her mean to Nathan for 75% of their screentime.

Brooke! One of my least favorite characters of s1-4 and one of the stronger of 5-9. Brooke starts as a party girl who just kinda starts shit for the sake of starting shit. When the show needs drama they turn to her for it most times and it makes her later high school bits feel less genuine. After the timeskip shes in charge of a multi million dollar clothing company (if you’re noticing a trend the timeskip changes characters from relatable high schoolers to wildly successful in their field). She matures out of that shit starter mentality and slides into Lucas’s spot as protagonist (a loose term with so many characters). Her and Nathan undergo the most growth. I also did appreciate and resonate with her graduation arc in that she didn’t really feel the same drive as her classmates.

Shit with Peyton is wild. She has 3 sudden family member reveals: one is Laura Palmer who dies almost immediately, one is serial killer arc #1, and the last is one of the show’s rare black characters who’s a marine thats very quickly sent out to war (Bush era politics). She is a musician, artist, she dates the lead singer from Fallout Boy somewhat seriously (that’s canon, its not the lead singer as a character, in universe he’s also the lead singer of Fallout Boy. He comes by in a limo and goes on tours). Her and Lucas are supposed to be the will they won’t they but with three female leads and two male leads Brooke kind of gets left behind S4 in a smaller capacity. In the timeskip she goes on to become a producer instead of a musician which always felt odd, then after her and Lucas depart they beach ball her label around without knowing what to do with it. Also casting has an issue where they hire sameface women and Peyton was the only one I could reliably identify.

If youre interested in watching One Tree Hill it depends how much time youre willing to sink into it. S1-8 are 22ish episodes long each and each episode is 42mins. I don’t think every episode is worthwhile unless you come at it with the analytical mind of having watched good prestige TV so you can pick apart characters more than the show wants you to.

For those just looking for a casual good time watch S1E1 then watch all the finales back to back to back. Its wild, so much happens you just have to adjust for. Its actually great.

If you REALLY wanna get your hands dirty the entire show is a nostalgia trip into the 00’s complete with famous bands of the time, tech, and norms. This is good and bad as you’ll watch them try to handle a bisexual character in the early 00’s. Also watching Dan Scott dunk on literal high schoolers never gets old.

I DON’T WANNA BE ANYTHING OTHER THAN WHAT I’VE BEEN TRYIN BE LATELY

#One tree hill

[allnightlongzine]

Finding Love in Mall Goth Purgatory

"I will ride for My Chemical Romance to the grave, because, from 2002 to 2012, they rode for both you and me."

Horror Movie Marathon | September 26, 2018 | talkhouse.com

On October 16, 2005, my sister and I put on our eyeliner, slid into our mall-goth armor, and drove an hour north to Hartford, Connecticut to see My Chemical Romance for what would be our first time of many. It was still a year before their magnum opus, The Black Parade, was to be released. When the lights came down and the show began, a spotlight emerged at the center of the stage, illuminating only a microphone stand ornamented with a bouquet of dead roses. Gerard Way, the band’s flamboyantly morbid ringleader, stepped out of the stage’s dark abyss looking like a corpse priest, adorned in heavy white makeup and full-on church robes. The band opened with “Interlude,” going right into “Thank You For The Venom.” If you’re an MCR fan, you know how fucking sick of an opener this is. My life changed forever after this concert.

Do you have any idea how satisfying it feels to look a DIY-hipster-judge in the eyes and tell them, in all honesty, that in 2018 your favorite band is still My Chemical Romance? You can learn a lot about someone by their reaction to such an admission. Perhaps such a statement makes me an obnoxious judge in my own right, but the truth is, I will ride for MCR to the grave, because, from 2002 to 2012, they rode for both you and me.

MCR, in all their macabre glory, were unwaveringly dedicated to an ethos of inclusivity and honesty, love and compassion, death and rebirth—the kind of virtuosity that was frowned upon in the popular music of 2005, yet now celebrated in 2018. They flew their freak flag high and encouraged others to do the same, all at a time when that breed of non-judgmental sincerity was viewed as sin by every taste-making music critic in an Animal Collective t-shirt. Now, in 2018, I find myself a 26-year-old musician who has been deeply influenced by their music and message, getting into one intoxicated conversation after another, hoping to spread the gothic gospel of MCR to the remaining non-believers.

When MCR played live, their dedication to the audience was palpable. Like an explosion of wicked cats jumping out of a witch’s cauldron, each band member would erupt with raw energy to give an over-the-top performance of catchy goth punk songs. I believe one of the reasons MCR has retained such a loyal and dedicated fan base is because their wildly emotional performances never felt like a façade; they were keenly aware that it was a privilege to be on stage, and this cognizance of respect manifested itself through the messages of love encoded in their songs and live performances.

This respect for their audience was also evident in Way’s interviews and onstage monologues regarding mental health, accepting other people for who they are, and the hypocrisies of masculinity. Throughout the press surrounding both their major label debut Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge and The Black Parade, Way candidly discussed his struggles with depression and addiction, and his hope that their music could help save other people’s lives as it did his. MCR were always vocal that they wanted their music to save people, which admittedly sounds cheesy at first, but it’s a pretty admirable statement when you know that the majority of the band’s fan base were depressed kids experiencing the world from suburban mall goth purgatory.  

The band has earned such respect from their diehard fans that even they don’t want a reunion, unless the band feels that it’s right. As seen in the article recently published by Noisey about MCR’s still very active fan base, some even go so far to say that the band reuniting would be antithetical to their message of death and rebirth, and the positivity of change therein. Literally, how many international superstar bands have fans that are this aware and respectful of the complex relationship band members can have to their music and the message it projects? Most fans of world famous rock bands will sound off in the YouTube comments section with blustery statements of aggravation and entitlement, demanding a reunion show or a new album. But MCR fans? They prefer the band stay broken up because they want to respect the band as much as the band respected them.

Very few of MCR’s peers from the mid-‘00s gave or earned the kind of respect from their fans that MCR did. Rather, many bands that tried to align with MCR’s message and image were essentially selling counterfeit emotion in the form of trendy Hot Topic t-shirt designs, insincere stage antics, and utterly benign, and frequently misogynistic, pop music. In 2018, it is sheer fact that many of those bands were full of shit and exploited the vulnerability that their scene implied to enact gross and predatory behavior.

This is one reason why taste-making machines like Pitchfork and BrooklynVegan were justified in ignoring and condescending the mid-’00s emo cesspool as it germinated throughout malls and low-capacity venues across the country. However, that’s not to say the overly-abstracted, pseudo-intellectual ramblings of mid-’00s Pitchfork hype bands weren’t totally absurd and problematic in their own right. Both music scenes postured a kind of moral code through songs, images, and fashion that signified a certain perspective towards culture and its problems at the moment. But, the reality is that bands from both scenes hardly ever posited their morals or virtues unless the sign of the times directly requested it from them.

This was not the case for MCR. They were just a band of five dudes from New Jersey, but they vehemently promoted equal rights on- and off-stage. Their pop-gothic world of vampires and ghosts, octave slides, and tri-tonal harmony always served a greater message at hand. Their comic book and horror movie-influenced narratives always represented a power in owning the trauma of the past and moving forward towards hope. In being themselves and helping others be themselves, MCR transcended both the hip arena of art-rock coolness and the sewage of Warped Tour residue, flying high in the black sky as one of the greatest rock bands of our time.

Now, it’s 2018. The lot of mid-‘00s hipsters and scenesters has mostly evaporated and come back as other representations. Most of the members of MCR are parents and focus on their own projects: Gerard Way is about to launch a Netflix show based on his comic book series The Umbrella Academy; Mikey Way has been performing as a voice actor; Frank Iero has a punk band that records and tours; and Ray Toro is helping other musicians shred to hell and back as a producer and engineer in his New Jersey studio.

For me, and many fans like me, I am no longer just a fawning teen, but a 26-year-old musician. I use the passion, conviction, and love I learned from MCR as fuel for my own project, Horror Movie Marathon. Very few of the people I collaborate with or know are big fans of My Chemical Romance. Sometimes, people will tell me one of my songs reminds them of this pop group or that folk artist, which is usually very accurate—I essentially make pop-folk music. My admission of MCR’s influence on my music will either be met with a resounding “Hell yeah, ‘Helena’ is tight,” or a recoil and a facial expression that says, “I wish I didn’t just give you the honor of comparing your music to Jon Brion.”

I can’t hide my love for the band, and why would I? Their songs meditate on the horrific beauty of tragedy, and in the tradition of true tragic storytelling, there’s always a viscerally moving message gleaming through the metaphoric language. MCR worked their asses off to make those messages as potent as possible; it was an energy you could hear in their songs and see in their live performances. Through all the morbid metaphors, spooky stories, and dazzling stylizations was an indestructible foundation of love and gratitude for the life-saving spirit of music. Even though the externalities of my music don’t resemble MCR’s very much, their message of love and respect will forever influence the core of what I create.

#personal #2000s #talkhouse #outside

[memoryaway]

⸻ i saw AARON AZEEM coming through the trees. the 39 year old was fleeing from NEW YORK when they came across novac, and have sought salvation within the motel of purgatory. AARON has been in town for THREE MONTHS and has been assigned as MOTEL STAFF to keep society running smoothly. no matter what, they will find something to fight for. ⸻

playlist.

general.

FULL NAME: haroun ali azeem; he started using the anglicized version of his name, aaron, when he went to college; only his family and a handful of people closest to him call him haroun AGE: 39 DATE OF BIRTH:  january 8th, 1983 PLACE OF BIRTH: albany, new york GENDER: cis man PRONOUNS: he him SEXUALITY: gay OCCUPATION IN NOVAC: motel staff EDUCATION LEVEL: masters degree FAMILY: status unknown; two younger sisters, one younger brother FACECLAIM: riz ahmed

personality.

POSITIVE TRAITS:  dedicated, hard-working, caring, resourceful NEGATIVE TRAITS: self-destructive, pessimistic, jealous, escapist

backstory.

a classic rags to riches story; aaron comes from an immigrant, working class family so his rough childhood is what made him this determined work hard and keep improving his life; he's the first in his family to do everything, first to finish school, first to go to college, first to get a corporate job, first to buy an apartment. his parents are over the moon whenever aaron shares another success with them and they are always immensely proud of him. what they fail—or refuse—to notice is how overworked aaron is. his mountain of professional success comes at a price of his health and sanity. it starts early, at university; aaron feels the compulsion to be the best at everything he touches which results in constant late nights and early mornings, more caffeine than sleep and barely any life outside of studying and working. there is a month of respite after graduation, a month spent backpacking around europe, but after that it’s back to work and back to university. after graduating from his master’s program, he takes up a job at one of the big banks in the city, a position he practically tricked a friend of his into recommending him for.

a couple years pass and aaron grows frustrated with the job, especially after a co-worker of his gets promoted to a position he was gunning for. it’s nothing a quick job hunt can’t fix, though, he figures. he puts feelers out, updates the shit out of his resume and a few months later he switches companies and the change of scenery seems to help.

but the story repeats itself here as well; another year passes and aaron starts feeling the effects of working too much, his health suffers, his relationships are strained and he experiences burnout to the point of being unable to get himself out of bed. to combat it, he takes some time off to regenerate. when this doesn’t help, he figures he ought to start looking for a new job, a change. before he gets to do that, he gets promoted and becomes a head of his own department—he can't say no to that, can he? aaron throws himself back to work and it's much of the same; he's tired, overworked but it gets him the praise and recognition he's always after. not to mention how padded his wallet's become.

but all of that loses meaning with the outbreak. in an instant, the entire world starts crumbling around them and everything he's been struggling with loses any significance. the new world is difficult to readjust to but, surprisingly enough, aaron takes to it way better than he or anyone around him expected. his dedication to succeed turns into dedication to survive but he doesn't feel the same kind of pressure. paradoxically, it turns into an easier life—there's less things to focus on. find food, shelter, make sure you're fit and safe, that's it. he can do that.

because aaron isn't even home when the outbreak starts developing—he's on the other side of the country with no way of getting back—he's separated from his family. he hasn't heard anything from them and when he did manage to get back home, he found it empty. at this point, he's made peace with having lost them, as painful as that reality is.

aaron always travels in pack & if he chooses to settle somewhere, it's small communities and groups welcoming enough to take him and his companions in. that's how he lands himself in novac, with a few other people looking for a place to stay and feel safe in.

he immediately feels at home—there's community and safety in the numbers and it's been a while since aaron's felt this comfortable. it's odd how good he's doing when it feels like the world is ending but he tries not to think about it too much and just tries to enjoy his time instead.

#aaron — intro. #tldr man prone to mental breakdowns actually feels ok for once #if there are typos no there aren't<3 #lastintro

[dexr-jan9am1]

Demon Slayer!MC part 3

(You are going to be portrayed as one of the butterfly sisters here. your speed matches shinobus but the way you act doesn't since you believe that what kanae wants is for you all to move on from her death even though it stills leaves a mark.)

A/N-> I forgot to mention this but mc is from the taisho era just lik in the anime and manga but the brothers and purgatory hall boys don't know this yet only the royals. (i know it sounds confusing but i will try my best to make it understandable in the series)

Italic = thinking

**whispering/muttering**

*actions*

part 1 // part 2

Diavolo , Barbatos , Lucifer , Mammon , Leviathan , Satan , Asmodeus , Beelzebub , Belphegor , Luke , Simeon , Solomon

First person POV

After a short walk to the supposed destination, HOL, it looked nothing like the houses/minkas you were used to seeing back in the human world suddenly Mammon came to a stop

"**ugh I don't believe this, all this rotten luck and now I have to take care of this pesky human to top it all off if it wasn't because of that rotten bastard I would've never have to take care of a human, does he really think scaring me would do the trick**" "is something wrong? you have suddenly come to a halt" "GAH! Don't scare me like that human! anyways this is the house of lamentation its one of the dorms here at RAD and its not just any dorm, its a dorm reserved for only the members of the student council. the others would take any chance they get to insult me callin' me scum and saying that I'm a money grabber and stuff but I'm an officer of the student council, same as the elite of the elite, the top of the RAD social pyramid in other words I'm a big shot" "But from afar you don't look like one that would hold such a high position? just from the way you immediately obeyed Lucifer when he threatened you after you tried to go against his orders as if you are a slave cowering down in fear when your master orders you to do something you're against with but you can't do anything about it or am I wrong?" "how dare you insult the great Mammon like that?! *huffs* come on lets get this over with human" both of you walk inside, from your perspective it looked quite fancy just like you expected it to look like as this dormitory was reserved for members of the student council. "come on human I'll bring ya to your room" "...*has been staring at the bulletin board for some time*" "oi what're you doin just standing there with your jaw open*looks at the side to see the bulletin board* oh you're just looking at the job-listing poster, you know you can also look at it in your DDD right? just go to ':D jobs' " "..." "now listen carefully I'm gonna give you a piece of advice, if you wanna survive even a day here in the Devildom you BETTER listen carefully to what I'm boutta say, if it ever looks like a demon is gonna attack you run away..... Either that or die." "You don't have to worry about me I'm capable of handling that type of situation with or withou-" "How about this I vote for YOU to die, Mammon" "D'ah!....Levi! listen up human this is Leviathan or Levi for short, he is the Avatar of Envy and third oldest of us brothers...... now let's just move on-" "Mammon give me back my money, then go crawl in a hole and die" "It seems like those two have quite a complicated relationship" "I told you already I don't have the money with me right now, I just need a little more time" "A little more time? You've been telling me that for the last 200 years! you're a lowlife and a waste of space" "Hey, come on! that's way worse then what you usually call me!" "Whatever..... just give me my money back, I need to use it to buy Blu-Ray box set of Journey to the Devildom: The tale of a little she-devil and her reluctant companion! The official round of copies includes tickets to a special live event as a bonus" "I have no idea what you're talking bout but like I said I don't have any money with me right now!" "Oh? so you're actually a low-life, Mammon?" "Hey, don't call me a low-life.....remember that advice I gave you? well you're bout to witness it for real so...... time for you to die! it's either you or me and it ain't gonna be me so bye! *runs away*" "..." "..." "when he said you all would call him such names I didn't understand why but now I do" "I'm glad we both can agree in that but did you realize what he did? he used you as a sacrifice" "I'm well aware of what he just did and how he used me as bait *sighs* I can't believe he will be my assigned caretaker throughout this program *lightly frowns*" "LOL but anyways are you free right now? you gotta be, you know what never mind just follow me.."

Second person POV

you followed right behind him as he led you to a room, upon entering, you were amazed by this sight in front of you, the room is decorated in a blueish-green hue with a large fish tank upfront, there was a SMACK of jellyfish floating close to the tub filled with with pillows and blankets but one pillow stood out from the rest, it had the body of a girl imprinted on it...

"Who's that?" "EH?! you don't know?! that's Ruri-chan!" "Ruri-chan? "she's the main character of the anime 'The magical Ruri-Hana: Demon Girl' she's so cute! you should know who she is!" "anime? I'm pretty sure I have heard of such term but although I never indulged myself in such activities" " *sweat drops*not even manga?" "I have heard of it and have heard quite the number of manga's back in the human world and I must say, I do enjoy the different genres of manga" "so you know what manga is but YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT ANIME IS?!" "I told you that I have heard of anime but chose not to indulge myself in it"

You walked around the room and suddenly stopped in front of a shelf that contained books of different volumes you took one out of its place, you read the title 'Tales of the seven lords', you were certain that you have heard of it before so you opened the book and read a little bit of the story until you were sure that this was the one.

"This series.....I have seen these before..." "You know TSL?!" "TSL? are you talking about the tales of the seven lords? if you are talking about such a stupendous series then yes I have read almost all of the volumes" "almost? you must've finished it by now and might be waiting for volume 9's release" "I still didn't finish it because my profession refrains me from doing so as I am really busy during long hours of the day" "well not anymore! now that you're here you have all the time in the world to finish the current volumes and I will make sure you get to know the joy of watching anime!" "I see.." "alright enough talking about all this, this isn't the reason why I bought you here" "It isn't?" "Nope, I wanted you to follow me because I wanted to tell you something that you probably know is true: Mammon is a complete and utter scumbag. it's very important for you to understand this so I'm gonna repeat myself one more time, Mammon is a Hopeless. Worthless. Scumbag" "I can already see in the way he acted earlier when I first saw him he stopped me from doing further damage on the others, I actually thought he would be like those knight in shining armors everyone would here about from certain fairytales but now with how he just ran to get away from paying his debt and using the one person he was entrusted to protect as bait, he is the perfect image to represent a wimp" "LOL" "but I can't help but wonder....how did you two become like this? you both are brothers right? why are you both bickering around like children and you're talking bad about him too?" "Well... it's a long story so you better get yourself ready to hear it, Once, a long time ago, Mammon won a prize in a convenience store promotional campaign. If you bought something then they will let you reach into a box and pull out a piece of paper that told you what you won. And the prize Mammon won is a Seraphina figurine, something I would've died to have. But despite the fact that Mammon had no interest in it all, he refused to give it to me. Why? you may ask? Because I wanted it........thats right, thats the only reason. I wanted it and he said no just to torment me. I mean, how awful is that?! So, I got to thinking...........Mammon's gonna end up treating Seraphina like some random piece of junk. That much is a given. I can maybe handle it if he at least leaves her in her original packaging, but what if he actually takes her out of the box?! He might just do it! And if he does, he'll get dust on her, won't he?! I decided I had to save Seraphina, so I snuck into Mammon's room in the middle of the night. And what do you think I saw there?! You're not gonna believe it. He didn't open the box......No, it's way worse than that. He hadn't even taken it out of the convenience store bag, which he tossed on the floor of his room. THE FLOOR! He actually left SERAPHINA on the FLOOR! The Queen of High Elves Herself! Sure, she seems cold and prideful at first, but once you get to know her, you'd find out she really wants affection, she just doesn't know how to admit it, it's sooooooooooooo cute! Yet Mammon just threw her on the floor! And I don't think he'd cleaned his room in three months. It was covered in junk. empty ramen cups, used tissues. stuff was strewn everywhere . And there......"

Timeskip cuz author-san is lazy af

"quite the adventure you had,but was it really neccesary to also kick him? I mean, you only went in there to grab the figurine not to cause harm to Mammon" "But he deserves it! he's a scumbag you know" "alright then, have it your way" "But you've seen how fast he is yourself right? but not as fast as Lucifer or Beel. But if, let's say a human made a pact with Mammon and bound him to there service...." "If you're trying to imply that I should do this 'pact' thing with Mammon then you can use it to your advantage then I won't" "Why not?!" "I don't even know what a pact is....." "A pact is kinda like an agreement when the demon will lend their strength to a human in exchange for their soul, the demon will also be bound to serve their said master" "So you want me to make a pact with Mammon to have him at my every beck and call? Is this your way of trying to get what you want from him? through me?" "That's right! and I don't think it would be that bad for you, to have someone serve you, It's gonna be a win-win for us both!" "I will see what I can do but I don't think he will agree that easily so you better have a plan set so you we can finish this up" "you're right and I do have a plan it's simple, If you go up to him and ask him to form a pact with you he won't do it so we gotta do some form of negotiation with him and we will have to find something to give him that will draw into making a pact, something.... he can't deny" "Mammons the Avatar of greed right? so we need something to activate his greed something that is worth a lot..." "ooh I know! his 'precious' credit card Goldie! he got it confiscated by Lucifer weeks ago cuz he was spending too much grimm, I bet he would do anything to get it back but..." "But?" "Lucifer hid it somewhere and no one knows where he hid it" "If the card is all we're missing then leave it to me, I might be able the location of the card out of him then we can move on with our plan" "Great! now we can focus on the important stuff" **I hope nothing bad will come out of this.....**

A/N: Hey guys! I'm sorry for keeping you guys waiting with part 3 it's just i've been caught up with a lot of things in my personal life rn so i wasn't able to do part three for a long time. But it is finally here! i hope you enjoy this and i have been getting into the twisted wonderland fandom lately so i might start posting content relating to twst.

#obey me shall we date #demon slayer #sorry for the wait

[cartchytuns]

hello, PLEASE elaborate on your oc story

JAJDJSHDBD well when you look at purgatory. they burn away everything attached to the soul right. that’s the story they give you in catholic school. the soul can emerge clean.

but let’s say. instead of burning. all that extra stuff was recycled. turned into energy instead. all the memories and emotions that a soul discards in purgatory are turned into energy that sustains the afterlife.

but running purgatory also costs energy. so if you have a LOT of fuckin baggage. they might want you to sort some of that out first. otherwise it’s like putting a fork in a blender it’s not gonna go

but now. if i may posit again. what if the bureaucracy of god-like beings running this whole operation. weren’t organized very well. like, there’s a hard-working lower class of grim reapers who gather up the souls of the dead and get them through purgatory, and there’s the supervisors who delegate what reapers work in what area and make sure all the energy is going where it needs to go, etc etc. it’s a flawed system and the supervisors are lazy and the reapers are overworked.

so if some energy. leaks out. and hits the world of the living. it doesn’t get treated like a major issue by the supervisors. because they don’t think it’s a problem! so what if a few souls end up a little funny because they’re getting polluted by wayward soul energy? there’s billions of souls out there, and the reapers can sort out whatever damage there is. it’s their job to prepare souls for purgatory, after all.

so let’s say you’re a soul. something weird has happened. you and your twin sister have ended up in the afterlife with no memory of your past life, and the reapers running the place have no idea what’s wrong with you. they have some idea about what works for cases like yours though, so they set you up with a little plot of land somewhere in their corner of the afterlife and let you do some good old fashioned farming… but instead of seeds, you’re planting bits of yourself and seeing what grows. what scraps of memory are left on you, little bits clinging to your soul that you can tend to and allow to flourish. small happy memories that bring you comfort. once they grow, you can go back to the reapers and show it off, talk about it, get their input. get little rewards for a job well done. basically you’re in afterlife inpatient care until you’re ready to move on.

but something’s weird. sometimes, when the two of you sleep, you find yourselves in a dark forest, full of terrible things that hurt to see and that do not want you there, with a strange guide as your only ally. you and your twin both come to remember every experience you farm up, but you never see one another despite both experiencing the exact same events. one of the reapers has mysteriously disappeared, and the loss has destabilized the community.

this is my emotional support rpgmaker game that i will never make but i have a dedicated lore bible for and love very much. i left a lot of things out for simplicity’s sake but yeah that’s my oc story!

#thank u for asking ahdhdhd i think about this whole thing every night before bed

[xtrablak674]

If We Share a Relation We're Related

My moms was hard-core in her thoughts about family, and this was her position, I am not sure if her philosophies would have changed if she was still with us, but these values are at the core of who I am and how I teach her grandchildren.

She didn't believe in pre-fixes my brothers were my brothers, full stop. Not half, not step, not foster, they were my brothers. #period Expanding on these positions if my siblings had other siblings by their other parent she would look out for all of the children. Meaning if she got something for one child she would get for them for all.

My late youngest brother has six children, those kids have an older sister that wasn't his, but when I visited with the children I would see seven children. Following my moms philosophies, if I got something for the six than I got the same for the seventh child. How crazy would I look treating one child different because the law doesn't clearly define our relationship? As far as I am concerned she is my niece and I treat her as such.

The father of my former favorite nephew was mad at me because this nephew wanted to come visit with me for a week and wanted to bring his brother along with him. Per my previous statements I was totally down for all this, as far as I was concerned the more nephews the more fun!

My former sibling attempted to forbid me from this action, like I am not a grown ass adult who pays for all of my own bill. Last I checked, I never came out of his nut sack so he had no sway over what I do or whom I invite to my home.

Anyhow this was a point of animosity and he was particularly pissed when I shared photos of the children's trip. "That other boy ain't no kin to me, I don't want to see photos of him." Well I made it clear he will either see photos of everyone or no photos at all, because I wasn't cherry-picking photos based on his distorted perceptions of who is and isn't family.

It was sad to me because this wasn't how we were raised, I wonder who had distorted his ideas of family and it was curious that I the pariah of the family had a better understanding of what family was and wasn't. If we share a relation than you're related to me. So my nephew's sister and brother were my niece and nephew and they could call me Uncle Trevor just like he does. Even though his younger sibling only visited with me for that one week they still call me Uncle Trevor and feel comfortable enough to be asking me to borrow money, which I constantly deny.

This all takes me to the conversation with the niece who will probably send me to my grave, the Florida-based one with the dead-weight boyfriend of nearly a decade. She's telling me how she's caring for her beau's daughter who stays with them every other weekend. She's talked about how the child has malnutrition, cavities and is addicted to coffee.

From my perspective all I see is red-flags, the trifling father of this child has never made my niece an honest woman, but expects her to care for his child emotionally and provide for her as if she was her own. I called bullshit and told her as much. I told her this child is clearly under some kind of ACS and once this neglect is discovered all the courts will care about is pointing fingers at the adults around the child. If she has no clear relation to the child it would be best for her to defer all decisions to the father and stay in her childless lane.

She went on to tell me she feels like a camp counselor to the child and that her roll has never been clearly defined for herself or the child. All of this is extremely problematic to me. I told her she is a parental figure, because if the child is ten and she's been with her dad eight years, she is all the child has known outside of her moms. I told her she has done herself a disservice to allow herself to be put in this undefined relationship purgatory.

One of the first thing I do with any kids I am interacting with is be clear about what our relationship is and what will and will not be tolerated within that relationship. I told her this is a theme of her life, continuing to exist within mediocre or sub-standard situations because they are familiar or comfortable. She is clearly a maternal or aunt-figure to this child and the dad is a fool for not making this clearer to both of them.

Both child and father share a relation her which by my definition makes them family no matter how blended. Its only through clarifying these relationships and acknowledging their existence can we grow and understand the importance of those in our life.

[Photos by Brown Estate]

#journal entry #family #family relationships #relations #family connections #more than family #defining relationships #making family #created families #blended family #black families

[thessaliaxiv]

FFXIV Thinkythoughts

This entry touches upon some very big spoilers of 6.0. Please do not venture forth unless you've seen through the game that far, you only get to come to know these things once. ;)

So, I'm playing through the Elpis portion on an alt once more, and I'm paying a lot of attention to the dialogue, as I tend to do when I missed something on my first play-through. It is terribly difficult for me to notice every hint provided unless hit by a clue-by-four, or reviewing things already seen with the added perspective of knowing what happens later.

I have a lot of brain rot regarding Elpis and its inhabitants, constant questions that sit in the back of my mind that I enjoy contemplating one topic at a time as the whim occurs to do so. One such topic has to do with Hermes and Meteion. Specifically, I wonder about Hermes feeling defective because he has reservations about reducing a failed experiment to its aetheric components, and Meteion turning emo in response to the report her sisters bring regarding other worlds they have come across.

Hermes talks about rage and anger in the failed designs, and I'm reminded about Elidibus back in 5.3 speaking of his fellow Amaurotines, regarding their plans to create Zodiark to forestall the final days, and how they cried out with those self-same emotions. Also too, how interesting that Hermes feels himself alone in his doubt and dislike for his task, when many of his brethren are shown manifesting those same unbridled negative emotions into sudden, terrible creatures that turned on them, to their doom. I'd had the thought for the longest time that Hermes never really spoke about his self-doubt, his sense of other-ness, with anyone else, and he might have been surprised to learn that others of his kin held the same emotions therein, perhaps not to his scale but still. He considered it a deep defect and that he needed to keep this secret.

Another topic not directly related to the above, has to do with Meteion. She's depicted as being influenced greatly by Hermes' emotions. She tries to encourage him to feel better about his lot in life, but is easily saddened by his depression and angst. She's shown as being quite concerned and beside herself when he's informed about his new position in the Convocation, and by the creature he's to unmake due to its intolerable aggression to the other species being observed in Elpis. The creator of that particular creature offers to do the deed, but Hermes feels responsible for performing the act that will effectively kill this failed prototypical being himself. It is then that she shows him the elpis flower, and how the WoL, too, has the ability to turn the flower dark colors due to negative emotions.

It's just interesting to see how these initial thoughts of "other" manifests into all that comes after. And his flawed thinking that happiness is something that those in his company have, and feels so strongly that he should have this too that he creates his entelechies to try to find it far outside his experience and location. The news that all the varied Meteia could not find this emotion serves only to solidify his perception that his negativity is his own personal flaw. I can see why, in his final moments of existence before Asahi drags him into the mire, he did not resist or fight, perhaps thinking that it would be his duty to cease to exist, the perceived flawed creature that he was. His own personal purgatory. His own personal hell.

It'll be interesting to see if we see him in 7.0 with the others, and what comes of that. His story doesn't feel quite finished yet.

#ffxiv spoilers #ffxiv 6.0 spoilers

[despair-ninja-everything-agency]

Remembering the DRK 30-50 quests makes me wonder what if Fray, or rather the concept of Esteem, exist for Sayo/Yasu in Umineko?

I mean, if we're talking about his edginess, Kanon already fits the bill (JP Fray is more of a Big Sad tho instead of edgy, so I guess it's her Clairvaux side instead for this version?). But if we're talking about self-care, that's a different story.

As much as I hope it helps her to have someone like Fray/Esteem, I could see how that would backfire instead. Maybe the early years before her promise with Battler was a thing, it would help. But after that? And after the whole gender dysphoria and the revelation of her birth's circumstance? I can imagine her self-hatred runs too deep it would ended up with her having more internal conflict (and this is assuming her Kanon and Beatrice personality don't exist). Sure, Fray can say "It's alright, they still love you for who you are, see?", but I doubt Sayo would have an easy time believeing that. Probably thinking it's more like she's lying to herself with that self-reassurance.

#Sayo Yasuda #Yasuda Sayo #Fray Myste #Fray Esteem #Fray (FFXIV) #Umineko #Umineko no Naku Koro Ni #Umineko When They Cry #When Seagulls Cry #Final Fantasy #FFXIV #Final Fantasy XIV #DN's bs #DN bs #in the DRK rewrite fic I'm working rn there's a line where Beato went ''if only you're a thing for me back then'' at Fray #also I'm planning to make Fray more of a Meta entity after he went poof in lvl 50 DRK quest #like ok his time of existing in the physical plane was finished but Cole went ''Hey do you think you can stay a bit longer?'' #I would say his status is more like Umineko's Furniture afterwards #same position as the Sisters of Purgatory

[citrinecanary]

it’s that special time for a rant in the tags. (12/21/21)

#so for those who saw my dramatic ass posts yesterday… on Sunday I went to my bf’s house so we could see Spider-Man together #I got there around noon and his sister was at her gf’s house until around 4. #when she got back we hung out for a little bit and made/decorated gingerbread men for like 30 min #and then she went up to her room and I didn’t see her again. #yesterday (Monday morning) I get a text from my bf telling me that his sister tested positive. #she is double vaxxed with Pfizer and so am I but my last dose was 8 months ago. #I am supposed to go home to my extremely immunocompromised mother and over-65 father on Thursday which is the same day I was supposed to - #- get my booster #but now I’m either not going home for Christmas; killing my parents; or by some miracle testing negative #I can’t even test until Thursday because you’re not supposed to test until 3-7 days after exposure #his parents are testing today (god I hope they’re rapid tests) so if they test negative that might give me some peace of mind #but now I’m just sitting here in my job where nothing is going on (and I’m not required to isolate bc I’m fully vaxxed) and doomscrolling #I can’t fucking stop #and I can’t fucking do anything about any of this #I hate this I hate this I hate this I hate this. I’m in fucking purgatory until Thursday just waiting for symptoms to show up #today is day 2 since exposure so it’s the first day that symptoms could appear #right now I have this feeling in my chest that’s like 1% of a cough but I think it’s an anxiety symptom not a COVID one #I had this exact symptom months before I got the vaccine when I was really anxious about COVID #my bf has no symptoms yet and he got vaxxed a year ago… he’s looking to get tested but of course everyone is testing right now #bc of holidays and travel #so… I’m getting tested on Thursday and if it’s negative I’m going home. #I don’t even know what’s gonna happen if I’m positive… I’m trying not to picture myself alone in my apartment on Christmas but here we are #:( #please send all of the positive vibes for negative tests.

[mymostimaginaryfriend]

your posts & tags on thony/arman are killing me, man. the way that he keeps making a point of SEEING her and recognizing her because he knows how invisibilizing this kind of life is and he knows how poorly his own parents were treated and he wants to be an answer for that somehow. even when it's a stupid choice! even when he has other things to think about! the spirals of loyalty/obligation/connection here!!!

Oh my god hi, YES! I am right there with you. 

I love how clearly both of their motivations have been set up to coincide with each other. In one corner we have Thony: full of drive and determination and heart, loving mother and sister, skilled doctor, willing to sacrifice everything for her son, who through necessity and design is living a life of invisibility.  Her son’s life literally depends on her not being noticed/deported, but that same invisibility has left her easy to ignore, belittle and discard by the very people she needs help from the most.

And in the other we have Arman, the violent mob lieutenant, who at first seems like the second to last person (other than ICE) that Thony would like to be perceived by AND YET!  Arman — as someone who wanted nothing more than for his overworked, underappreciated mother to be happy, who has pursued his station in life as a means to protect those he loves in ways his family was and wasn’t protected — is THE only person who makes the deliberate choice to SEE Thony and has the power and importantly the desire to help her.

Even though Thony has the love and support of her family, she desperately needs actual actionable assistance and has been stuck in a purgatory where she’s been struggling and sacrificing unnoticed.  Arman notices. By the end of the first episode he has seen her dignity, her competence, her bravery, the lengths she’ll go to and the love she has for her son. He recognizes in Thony the chance to figuratively repay the sacrifices of his own mom, and help someone in ways no one ever helped her. 

And Thony, a strong and capable woman who was used to “commanding respect” but has been continually dismissed or demeaned in America, suddenly has someone in a position of power that sees her as a PERSON.  It’s not just about what she can do for him. He wouldn’t have raced back to the warehouse to save her if all he valued were her cleaning skills.   

And what kills me is that because Arman sees her so clearly, he wants HER to see HIM. I never expected this archetype of character to be so actively vulnerable/open like this. The show didn’t need to show Thony this side of Arman, they could have just shown the viewers.  BUT THEY DID.  And like you said, it has created all these threads of connection between them that are weaving into something stronger, like obligation and loyalty.  Add onto that them physically saving each other’s lives, and the accountability they have to one another?  

Because what might have started as a vague idea of offered assistance from Arman, has been increasingly cemented into something much more binding by Thony repeatedly holding him accountable. I love this about her so much. If she has to risk her life for Arman, by god he’s going to have to back up his words with actions.  Again and again, she is forcing him to make a conscious choice of whether he will honor his promises to her, even when it’s not convenient, even if it’s detrimental to himself. Yes, there’s a complicated power imbalance here, but when you look at everything going on underneath there’s a clear attempt at evening out the scales.  Arman may have turned her world upside down but she’s already such a disruptive, transformative force in his.  In seeing her, and allowing her to see him, whether he realizes it or not there’s already been a transfer of power.

“When you’re in, you’re in.  Do you understand?” Do YOU, Arman? Because I think you’re about to!

This connection between them is only going to get more complicated and tested and intertwined and I cannot wait.  Thanks so much for the message!

#the cleaning lady #thony x arman #tcl asks #tcl meta #asks & replies #txt post #bananaleaves #speaking of spirals lmao #have this dissertation on my unexpected feelings for this ship!!

[lady-of-the-lotus]

Xuexiao Goes to the DMV

Xue Yang and Xiao Xingchen go to the DMV (aka Where Hope Goes To Die) and share a kiss.

That’s it. That’s the fic.

Xuexiao - T (just for some cursing) - Read on AO3!

*

“If you hear about someone going berserk in a DMV on the news, that’ll be me,” the mechanical text-to-speech voice reads aloud, and Xiao Xingchen turns to Xue Yang questioningly.

Xue Yang reaches over and turns the volume down on Xingchen’s phone. “Meant to send that to A-Qing.”

“Are we going to be escorted out? Again?”

Xue Yang grins and looks around the room. They’ve already been at the DMV for over an hour. Dozens of people are draped limply over the hard orange seats, eyes glazed, going down for the third time in a sea of government bureaucracy.

“Ticket 4352, now being served at window thirty-three,” announces the robotic voice over the loudspeaker.

“It would take an alien invasion to wake these people up,” Xue Yang says as a man in overalls shuffles past. “You should see these people. This must be what a lobotomy post-op recovery room looks like.”

“Mmhmm.”

“Like the world’s most incompetent deli, filled with zombie customers waiting to eat the brains of whatever the opposite of employee of the month is. Well, ‘brains.’ They work at the DMV, after all.”

Xiao Xingchen adjusts his sunglasses. “Let's not be mean.”

“And we can all hear you,” adds a woman on his left. “Not that it made much sense.”

Xue Yang makes a face at her and turns back to Xingchen. “If they make me come back a third time, I’m going to go postal. You know, going postal should be called ‘going DMV.’ It’s catchier, for one thing, and I’ve never so much as stepped foot in a post office—”

“I’m keeping you far away from post offices. Those poor people have suffered enough.”

“How so?”

“Well, there must be a reason they go postal, right?”

Xue Yang rolls his eyes. “If the post office has the same taste in music as the DMV, I don’t blame them. Who picked this station? If it’s not Justin Bieber it’s whoever inflicted ‘Kiss Me Through the Phone’ on the world. I’d like to do something to them through the phone, and it won’t be a kiss, I can tell you that much.”

Xiao Xingchen takes a Snickers bar out of the fanny pack Xue Yang has vainly begged him not to wear. “According to the television commercials, this will improve your mood.”

“My mood?” Xue Yang takes a bite. “If I have to hear ‘Baby’ one more time—”

“Ticket 9753, now being served at window fourteen.”

“ ‘Served.’ Ha. As if.”

Xiao Xingchen feels around for another Snickers bar but comes up empty. He should have planned this better. He’d sensed Xue Yang’s mood coming on last night as Xue Yang went through his documents. He’d been cheerful enough until he found his birth certificate in the bundle of papers he’d been given after leaving his last group home.

Then he’d grown strangely quiet, and wandered aimlessly around their apartment for an hour, carrying his phone around with him and switching between a half-dozen different YouTube videos before deciding to bake brownies at 1am and burning them when he got distracted playing video games. He wasn’t paying much attention to the video game, either, going by his cursing as he got repeatedly blown up by what Xingchen suspects was a twelve-year old somewhere in Japan, and eventually gave that up to go take apart their toaster in the interest of “fixing” it.

Now he sits beside Xingchen, jiggling his leg. Xiao Xingchen wants to ask him about his birth certificate, but he hadn't dared to last night, and doesn’t dare now.

“Ticket 9755, now being served at Window 26.”

“Weren’t you 9754?” he asks Xue Yang.

“Oh, crap—” Xue Yang jumps to his feet and rushes to Window 26, brushing past a mohawked man holding a ticket marked 9755. “I’m 9754.”

The woman behind the glass may as well have been carved from wood. “You missed your number.”

“There was no announcement!”

“Or your number isn’t working. It’s not showing up on my computer.”

“What the hell does that mean? I’m on the screen! Look!” Xue Yang jabs a finger at the screen above the booth. At the bottom of the list it reads Ticket 9754 – Window 26. “9754! Window 26! All you need to do is take my picture—”

“Get back in line. Get a new ticket. Window 13.”

“Get back in line?” He looks over at the line for Window 13. It wraps around the entire room. “I already have a number! I’m on the screen!”

“Back. In. Line.”

“Just take the damn photo—”

Xingchen lays a hand on his arm. “Thank you, ma’am. We’ll get back in line.”

“Like hell we will! I’ve been here since 5 o’clock—I made an appointment! I even brought my own pen! You ever watch Monsters Inc.? You know Roz? Are you her evil older sister? Because you look exactly like—”

“Back of the line.”

“Younger sister, then. Happy?”

The woman doesn’t bother shrugging. “You’re blocking traffic.”

Xingchen begins to move, heading in the wrong direction. Xue Yang has no choice but to follow or else let him walk into a column plastered with posters emblazoned with, Make your visit easy - download the forms at dmv.gov! , Streamline your visit - make an appointment online today!, and We’re here to help!

“Let’s just go home,” says Xue Yang. “The gray, water stained walls are starting to close in. At any second I expect a giant ball to roll towards us. Well, wrong movie—whatever. I’m sick of this place. It’s cursed.”

“We’re just going to have to come back, and you’ll have wasted the hour we already spent here.”

Xue Yang groans and gets in line behind a woman with three small screaming children. “This whole thing is stupid. We can barely afford rent, let alone a car."

"We will, one day. Besides, it's good to have a license."

"We’ll just take trains and buses everywhere, or you can learn to drive. We'll fudge the vision test."

Xingchen laughs. Xue Yang relaxes slightly at the sound. After a moment, Xingchen slips his hand in his. He’s not one for public displays of affection, but there’s an edge in Xue Yang’s voice that has nothing to do with his return to Window 13.

Xue Yang’s hand tightens in his, and Xingchen rubs it reassuringly with his thumb.

“You again?” says the woman at Window 13 when they finally make it there, twenty minutes later.

“That power-mad dictator at Window 26 wouldn’t take my picture.”

The woman tilts her head at Xue Yang. “She wouldn’t?”

Xue Yang tilts his head back at her, as if to say, I know! Who wouldn’t want to photograph me ?

She smiles, a synthetic smile that reminds Xue Yang of his friend Lan Xichen’s dimpled little fiance. “Strange.”

“ ‘Strange’? I knew she could have just done it had she wanted to—”

The woman blinks at him, her smile growing faker by the minute. “I’m sure what she told you was accurate.”

“Sure, and there is no war in Ba-Sing-Se—”

Xiao Xingchen squeezes his hand, and Xue Yang stops talking and passes her his form. She stamps it a second time and hands him another ticket.

He and Xingchen return to the waiting area. Xue Yang puts his boots up on the seat next to him, resting his head on Xingchen’s shoulder.

“Describe the room to me again,” Xingchen says, trying to distract him from his brooding and, with any luck, keep him from taking out his Swiss army knife and carving his initials into the seat and get them kicked out again. Xue Yang has a talent for describing things, and Xingchen has been trying to encourage him to start writing.

Xue Yang begins to play with his long sleek ponytail. “Purgatory’s antechamber. Humanity’s lost-and-found. A void where time has no meaning. Pit of despair and industrial cleaner.”

Xingchen chuckles, making sure it’s loud enough for Xue Yang to hear.

“If their posters were honest, they’d all be in Comic Sans font, with things like, Where hope goes to die; This is your home now; Nothing escapes our pull, not even time; Human sacrifices while you wait—”

“Human sacrifices?”

"Yeah, I think so."

A crackle of static over the speaker as a new song comes on. “You know you love me, I know you care...Just shout whenever and I'll be there….”

Xue Yang starts up violently, but Xiao Xingchen gently pulls him back down beside him. “Some kind of cannibal conspiracy?” he asks, hoping Xue Yang’s knife has remained in his pocket and is not seconds away from being embedded in a blaring loudspeaker.

Xue Yang settles back against his shoulder. “I’m positive Overalls Guy never returned from Window 17. He’s probably in the office barbecue pit.”

“This must go all the way to the top. Shift supervisor too, I’d guess.”

“Baby, baby, baby oh….Like baby, baby, baby no….”

Xue Yang stops playing with his hair and starts picking at his black nail polish. He’s feeling a bit better, Xingchen’s shoulder warm and solid. “I swear that Roz lady put a curse on me. They all probably dance in a circle around a stack of burning Social Security cards every night, chanting.” He squirms, suddenly bored. “You got any more food? I’m starving.”

Xingchen rummages in his fanny pack. “Just a burned brownie.”

“I swear I set a timer!"

The timer had gone off while Xingchen was in the shower last night. Xue Yang had simply ignored it, too absorbed in trying to virtually blow up his twelve-year-old nemesis. He tends to ignore timers while cooking, usually followed by a mad rush to the kitchen to salvage dinner. “You know dinner is ready when the smoke detector goes off,” he likes to say.

Xue Yang sniffs the crumpled foil surrounding the charred black brownie chunk. “Is this the same foil I wrapped your tuna sandwich in yesterday?”

“We only have one earth!”

“Xingchen, I swear—” Xue Yang stops, rolling his eyes fondly. He’s never met anyone who can be so annoying and endearing at the same time.

Xingchen takes the brownie back. “I'll eat it. I like the burned bits.”

"It's all burned bits."

"Exactly. Perfect."

“She knows she's got me dazing, 'cause she was so amazin'....And now my heart is breakin', but I just keep on sayin'....”

“Who wrote this? I swear I won’t hurt them. I just want their address.”

Xingchen knows he shouldn’t laugh at that, but he can’t help it.

They sit there for another half hour, talking. Xue Yang has succeeded in denuding the nails of his left hand when his number is finally called. He gets his photo taken by a man with glazed eyes and no chin, and is shuffled off to the next waiting area.

“They refused to show me my photo,” he says as they settle back down. “I swear the camera stole my soul and is using it to power the fluorescent lights. I feel at peace now. Kind of floating.” He discovers a piece of gum in his jeans pocket and begins to loudly blow bubbles, making full eye contact with the annoyed Bluetooth Guy and irritated Woman With Facial Tattoo Of Bugs Bunny. “I am one with the DMV demigods, part of something larger than myself.”

“Like joining the army.”

“Or drowning in the ocean.” He lays down with his head in Xingchen’s lap, boots on the edge of Bluetooth Guy’s seat. “Why does your fanny pack smell like patchouli? Have you been burning weird hippie incense again? You promised you’d stop after you set fire to your curtains.”

Xingchen would rather Xue Yang didn’t semi-cuddle him in public, but Xue Yang’s energy is calmer when he’s touching Xingchen, and he lets him stay. “It’s that new candle you bought me, remember?”

“Right. Bought you.”

“What do you—”

“I thought it was peppermint.”

Xingchen bites his lip. Xue Yang is…well, he can read well enough to pass a driving test, but his education was…slipshod at best. Next on Xingchen’s list is encouraging Xue Yang to get his GED.

“You smell like a music festival,” says Xue Yang. “I must have grabbed the wrong one in the store. I sniffed all of them. My picture is probably hanging beside the register of every Bath & Body Works in town: ‘Beware the Candle Perv’—”

“At least someone was willing to take your picture.”

Xue Yang laughs. Xingchen rests a hand on his chest, heedless of the people around them. He likes how Xue Yang feels when he laughs, his whole body shaking, making no attempt to hide his feelings. Xue Yang makes him laugh so often, it’s a special joy for him to return the favor.

They’ve been there almost two and a half hours when Xue Yang’s number is finally called. As if the DMV curse is kicking in again, the loudspeakers creep up another few decibels.

“Like baby, baby, baby no, like baby, baby, baby oh, thought you'd always be mine, mine….”

“Xue Yang—” Xingchen starts before Xue Yang can say anything.

“I know, I know. This is penance for my putting that egg in Song Lan’s shoe last week. The DMV knows all. The DMV was here before us, and will be here after we are gone. The DMV—”

“—The DMV will make us wait in line again, if we don’t hurry.”

Together they go to Window 10, where a drab little man sifts through Xue Yang’s documents. “Fifties, balding, completely dead inside,” Xue Yang whispers to Xingchen.

“I’m thirty-nine,” says the man in a monotone, not looking up, “and you’re missing a birth certificate. And what’s this stain on your Social Security card?”

“Definitely not blood.”

The man stares at him with eyes that, had his life force not already been sucked out of Xue Yang by an afternoon at the DMV, would have done the job. “Current passport, or birth certificate.”

Xue Yang hesitates, then slips a folded piece of pink paper under the glass partition.

The man unfolds it with the sterling speed of a drugged snail and spreads it over the counter. He lines up Xue Yang’s Social Security card, bank statement, and birth certificate, and examines them line by line as if he’s a Bletchley Circle analyst and Xue Yang’s documents are intercepted enemy transmissions.

He looks up at Xue Yang. “Is this a valid birth certificate? There are no parent names listed, and the date of birth has an asterisk—”

“I know what it has!”

“What’s your date of birth?” The man slowly pushes his chair back. “I’m going to have to get a supervisor—”

Xue Yang slams the counter. Xingchen lays a hand on his arm. It’s a miracle Xue Yang’s knife isn’t out. “Don’t you fucking dare! This is what they do when—just Google it, okay? I don’t know what day I was born, they just put whatever date they thought was accurate—”

Xingchen swallows hard.

He had known Xue Yang had grown up in foster care, but had assumed he had been given up by his parents as a child when they could no longer take care of him.

Not—not abandoned as an infant—

“And change the fucking station!” Xue Yang adds. “If I have to hear that stupid fucking song one more time I will go fucking berserk —”

The man’s dead-eyed stare intensifies. “Sign here,” he says after a moment, pushing a slip of paper at Xue Yang.

“You want my love, you want my heart….And we will never, ever, ever be apart…”

“That wasn’t so bad, was it?” Xingchen asks as they step outside. The words sound hollow, and he wishes he had simply remained silent.

Xue Yang takes a deep breath. It’s almost cool out, a welcome change from the week’s heat. “Well, we escaped. Now we just have to get help for the others. Or do we abandon them to their fates? I vote we abandon them. You should have seen some of the looks I got. It’s like they never saw someone threaten a DMV employee before, something I’m willing to bet happens a dozen times an hour.”

Xingchen takes his arm as he begins to walk. It’s easier than using his stick in the crowded city. “Xue Yang…”

Xue Yang’s muscles tense beneath his arm. “What?”

“Nothing.” He bites his lip. He’ll have Xue Yang feeling better soon enough. “What street are we on? Turn in on 33rd.”

“What’s on 33rd?”

“Just let me know when we’re there. 33rd and 7th.”

“The train’s on 36th.”

“But the restaurant’s on 33rd.”

“The what?”

Xingchen wants to smile, but is afraid Xue Yang might take it the wrong way after what happened at the DMV. For someone who does his best to project an I-don’t-care attitude, Xue Yang is surprisingly sensitive.

“What’s today’s date?” He already knows the date, of course. It’s been on his mind for weeks now.

Xue Yang’s arm grows even stiffer. “Is this a ‘you-don’t-know-when-your-birthday-is-so-every-day-is-your-birthday’ thing? Because—”

“Not at all… Remember the day we met? You made fun of my shirt—”

Xue Yang frowns at this sudden change of subject, but goes along with it. Better than talking about that damn birth certificate. “It was white, and ruffled. You looked like an escapee from a high school production of Hamlet. What was I supposed to do?”

“You crashed a motorcycle not three feet from me. An unregistered motorcycle with stolen plates.”

"I bought you coffee to make up for it, didn’t I?”

“You had them put four sugars in my cappuccino. It was undrinkable.”

“One was a Splenda, and anyway I took you to dinner to make up for the coffee, didn’t I?”

“Pizza at one of those dollar-a-slice places you have to stand at a counter to eat. I paid for it.”

“And I paid for your kombucha, whatever the heck that is.”

“And I paid for the band-aids we had to go buy after you cut yourself after playing catch with your knife.”

“You were distracting me!”

“I was quietly eating my pizza.”

“The light reflecting off your shirt ruffles got in my eyes.”

“Four dollars for the band-aids. You insisted on Hello Kitty.”

“Spongebob was also on the table." He wrinkles his nose. "I've got about three-fifty in my pocket, if you want it. But what’s your point, exactly?'

Xingchen smiles. He enjoys winding up Xue Yang, and it’s by far the most effective way to distract him when he’s in a dark mood. “Just that you better not put extra sugar in the fondue.”

“The what?”

“A-Qing read me the dessert menu. Chocolate fondue with bananas, blueberries, pineapple, and cherries. Strawberries, too, I think, and marshmallows, maybe even non-charred brownies—”

Xue Yang stops walking. “Xingchen—”

Xingchen lets go of Xue Yang’s arm, takes his hand instead. Kisses him soundly, right there on Sixth Avenue.

“Forget your birthday," he says. "We have a new date to celebrate every year." He gives Xue Yang's hand a little squeeze and kisses him again. “Happy anniversary, Xue Yang.”

*

Liked it? AO3 👉👈

Ruffle shirt reference

Obviously, Xue Yang was simply distracted by how pretty Xingchen was.

#xue yang #xiao xingchen #xuexiao #mdzsnet #I finally write something not cursed that I can put in the tag! #uttterly plotless fluff #cql #the untamed #untameddaily

[zmediaoutlet]

in support of Texas relief, @padxleckiss donated $50, and requested always-a-girl!Deanna/Sam, lingerie, comeplay. Thank you for donating!

to get your own personalized fic, please see this post. (no longer taking prompts)

(read on AO3)

In the week after they get back from St. Louis, dealing with James and the witches and the familiars and everything that got dragged up along with them, Deanna throws herself into the bunker. Sam thought she was nesting before; turns out he didn't really know what that looked like, from his sister.

There's cleaning. There's rearranging. She turns the kitchen upside down and finds another farmer's market over in Smith Center that even in late February Kansas weather has produce that she fairly squeals over, when she's dumping her egg-crate of loot out onto the island. "How are you getting tomatoes this time of year?" Sam asks, and she makes a raspberry noise and says, "What? Greenhouses, or something, Sammy, don't bitch when I'm bringing home gold." While Sam's still digging out in the library, still trying to make sense of the diamond-mine of lore and records and history that they've fallen face-first into, Deanna makes mysterious trips to Wichita, to Topeka, to department stores, to—who knows where else, because Sam isn't invited, because he, apparently, "doesn't know how to shop." Sam didn't know Deanna did, considering that their whole lives she's lived on thrift-store finds and leftovers same as him, but apparently his sister has yet more depths Sam didn't realize he wasn't privy to until they were suddenly revealed.

She comes home late after another trip—swinging past Kevin on the houseboat, but clearly an excuse from the shopping bag swinging on the end of her finger—and Sam's tired from a long day sitting in the library and trying to manage this nagging cough without worrying about it, but she bounces up the steps and there's a shine to her that hasn't been there since—since Sam doesn't remember, how long—and he smiles at her, despite everything. "Good drive?" he says.

"Update, Kevin has advanced in his diet enough to alternate between hot dogs and Hot Pockets," Deanna says, and wraps an arm over his chest from behind and kisses his cheek, easily affectionate like they also haven't been in too long. He swallows, tasting iron, and catches her wrist to keep her there. She hmms, reading his laptop over his shoulder like she always does. Her hair swings down, too, falling over her shoulder, smelling like road and like the faintest trace of her crappy strawberry conditioner. More absently: "Not even the good kind. He's getting, like, off-brand meatball and four cheese."

"Did you cook?" Sam says, and she goes pff against his cheek—tickles, and he flinches away, grinning despite himself—and she says, standing, "I am not Kevin's mommy, Sam, what do you take me for?" When he cranes his head back to give her a face she presses her lips together, rolling her eyes, and says, "I mean, yes, I made lasagna, okay? Kid can't live on weird mystery meat alone. It's got tomato sauce, that counts as a vegetable." She snorts then, tugging her wrist out of his loose grip, and Sam flattens his hand against his chest instead, wanting her back already. "You shoulda heard the noise he made when he got the first bite, too. If he never lost his virginity before, that thing blasted his cherry."

"Dee," Sam groans—Kevin's been through shit but he's still a kid, as far as Sam's concerned—and she says ha, unrepentant.

"You eaten?" she says. Bag on the other table, the one she's staked out as hers, which he isn't allowed to spread 'moldy records' on, apparently. She squats at the brand new mini-fridge, rummaging, though when Sam's silent she gives him a sidelong look. "Samwise? Dinner? Supper?"

"That would make you Frodo," he says, and she rolls her eyes again, coming up with two beers. She cracks them on the edge of the fridge—there's already a scraped-spot coming up—and comes up to him holding his just out of reach, her eyebrows high. Sam sighs. "Yes. Like, two hours ago. The mothering routine is weird, you know."

"Oh, something about us is weird, huh?" Deanna says, smile pulling at her mouth, and when she holds out the beer for him to take she keeps her fingers on the bottle and pulls herself in when he takes it, sliding inside the v of his legs, pressing her thigh against his. He tips his head back and she leans in, making a fake sweet moue of concern. "Tell me about it, baby."

"Dude," he says, protesting only vaguely, and she grins outright, pushing his shoulder and turning away.

"Yeah, whatever," she says. She scoops her bag off the other table and half-salutes with her beer. "I've got a date with the shower room and some new sheets. You going to come to bed tonight, or is this whole lore fetish permanent?"

Asked casual, her eyes on her shopping bag as she presumably admires whatever purchases. Sam swallows down a cough. "Give me a few hours," he says.

Deanna glances at him, not smiling at all for a moment, before that little exasperated dimple peeks up in her cheek. "Fe-tish," she coos, half-singing, and he rolls his eyes for her to see so she'll grin, brief, before she disappears again, her boots clomping loud down the concrete hall, so he still knows where she is even if he can't see her. Sam holds the beer in both hands, running his thumb along the edge of the label, listening. The bunker feels different, when she's in it. The world feels different, when she's in it.

It's been… how has it been. Complicated. That's the best way, maybe, to describe it in brief and still be truthful. His sister is one of the most complicated people on the planet, though she'd protest that description. Sam's personal opinion is that she's one of the most complicated people in history, and considering their relative position in history it's probably not a stretch to figure that, on an objective scale, she's at least ranked.

The last eight months or so—that was complicated, too, although in some ways it was very, very simple. Sam had been with another woman for almost a year and Deanna had been with another man and regardless of extenuating circumstances—death, or presumed death, or loneliness so complete that it gave Sam nightmares, even now, these bleak dreams of an empty world where he calls out and his voice doesn't echo, a deaf-and-mute misery where all he sees is absence—that was it, pretty much. Since then, they've forgiven each other. They broke off other concerns and when Sam walked back into that cabin in Whitefish Deanna was standing at the window with her arms wrapped over her stomach, looking out at something Sam couldn't see. She cut her eyes over when Sam closed the door and Sam shrugged and her lips folded between her teeth and, for a second Sam's always going to remember, she closed her eyes very tight, the faint crow's feet beside them going white with tension. Then she went to the cupboard and got down two cans of chili, and Sam found the can opener, and she uncapped the beers. They ate silently, watching a rerun of a wrestling match with six inches of space between them on the couch, but they were together, and that was more, almost, that night, than Sam could handle. It wasn't until the ridiculous adventure with Charlie—until after—when he woke up in the middle of the night already reaching for his gun with her hand small on his wrist and red-and-white makeup still smeared at her temples, her hair still caught up in the ridiculous Viking braids Charlie had given her—with her leaning in, in the too-big t-shirt she'd stolen from him to sleep in when she first came back from Purgatory and, he quickly realized, nothing else—when she said, soft in the dark, Sammy, asking—and he touched the bare shine of her knee gleaming in the moonlight and saw how her eyes closed again, very tight again, and he sat up and put his thumb to the clenched tense skin beside her eye and put his lips to her cheekbone, on the opposite side, and felt all the way through his body the breath she let out, like a tension she'd held close for a year or more was unraveling, all at once.

His sister. He knows what that means, about them. It's worse, of course, because she's his sister who raised him, who taught him how to shoot and bandaged his skinned knees and who beat the shit out of the first girl who ever stood him up for a school dance, when he was fourteen, and Sam had tried to intervene but Deanna had whirled on him, furious, and said no one gets to treat you like that, you get me? No one. Sam remembered that moment on the Greyhound, pressing his forehead against the window and watching the pale grey Arizona desert go past in the moonlight, California beckoning and Deanna's face, turned away while Dad shouted, pinned miserably behind his eyes. His sister, rowdy and caring and bullish and sweet. The town whore, boys had claimed when Sam was a teenager, and he'd gotten in his own fights, for that, fights that had led to Deanna pressing wadded TP against his lip and holding frozen peas against his eye, shaking her head, saying, Sammy, I know I taught you to box better than this. You fixing matches and making bank on the side, or what? His sister, who stood smirking in his kitchen in Palo Alto, her eyes not cutting to the girl at Sam's side even once—who said to him, voice sore, we made a good team, back there—who said to him, when Sam was out of his skin with worry after moving matter with his mind when the vision of her dead had filled it, nothing bad's gonna happen to you, not as long as I'm around, and smiled at him with her eyes clear, like it was nothing but true—who wept, cracked-open miserable, when she was sure that their dad had sold his soul for her—when she said to Sam that she wasn't worth it, and she didn't know why he had—that she was sorry, that she'd lost their father for both of them—his sister, who he folded into his chest, cupping his hand around the wavy-thick weight of her hair, noticing in a way for the first time how small she was, compared to him, and how she quivered, shaking in agony, caught against him, and how when he tipped her chin up on that mountain pull-out in the late afternoon sunshine the tears gleamed on her cheeks and her face was wrecked, her eyes red and her nose shined with snot and her mouth screwed up, bitten red and chapped, but full when Sam dipped and kissed her—plush, and startled-open, when Sam kissed her—giving, and tasting of salt, and desperate, and furious, and yielding, and precious-sweet, delicate, shocked, when Sam kissed her. She blinked, when he pulled away, stunned silent. Her eyelashes clumped and dark, and her eyeliner smeary, and her mouth red, red, red. Sam touched her lower lip with his thumb and she took in a huge deep breath that stuttered on its way in, staring at him big-eyed, and then she gripped his hair in both fists and tugged him back down and kissed him again, vicious, and that—well, that was it. His sister, and him. All the years between then and now, and that's still what it boils down to. Sam and Deanna. No matter what, the and is still the most important word.

He comes to bed. Midnight. A little after. They have separate rooms but Deanna's is nicer, despite the guns racked on the walls, and the weird obsidian axe that Sam doesn't ask about in pride of place, above the headboard. She's made the room her own—girly, sort of, despite the weaponry, although Sam doesn't describe it that way out loud—a new-built rack of her FBI-pretext suits and her few dresses on the other side of the wardrobe, and a throw blanket and fluffy pillow she has completely failed to explain or acknowledge on the uncomfortable loveseat, and candles on the shelf above the bed that she clearly had burning for a while before she went to sleep, because the room smells faintly of orange blossom when Sam's pulling off his boots, leaving his jeans on the chair in the corner. When he slides into bed behind her into the apparently-new sheets she makes a faint questioning sound, her head turning. He shushes her very quietly, sliding his hand over the wide curve of her hip, over the blanket. The memory foam sinks beneath him, too soft, but the bed already smells like her and so it's comfortable, anyway. He presses his lips against her bare neck, the soft baby-hairs there silky, her hair pulled messily up for bedtime as always, and she sighs, in her sleep, and curls in closer to her pillow. Sam smiles at the back of her head, wishing—well, whatever he wishes doesn't matter. He tucks in, knees pulling up into the curve of her knees so that he'll fit in the bed, and closes his eyes, and figures that, whatever he dreams, at least when he wakes up he'll be here, in what passes for home, with his sister.

*

As a matter of course Sam wakes up first. Unless there's a job-related deadline or nightmares dragging her awake, Deanna would happily sleep straight through the morning, and with no check-out times nagging at them in the bunker she's often wandered out into the library wrapped in one of those too-big robes at ten a.m., her hair wrecked and her slept-in makeup smudged and her mouth surly, demanding to know if Sam's made coffee. He has always made coffee.

This morning, though. Sam's alarm goes off at seven as usual, and he groans and smacks his phone, as usual, barely awake but knowing that he doesn't want to hear Deanna's bitching if it wakes her up, too—but there's no too-warm plush weight plastered up against him, and no murmured threats of shooting the phone if he doesn't change his alarm sound, and when he drags his hand through his hair and sits up and his brain actually comes online—the bed's empty, and the room's quiet, and he sits there blinking, surprised, not really knowing what to make of it.

Smell of coffee, when he opens the door, and bacon-smell snaking underneath it. When he gets to the kitchen, still trying to rub the sleep out of his eyes, Deanna's in her sleep-shirt (still Sam's, the shoulders way too big and the v-neck gaping), and tugged-on shorts, and bare feet, and her hair in a honey-brown messy pile on top of her head, and she's in a whirl of breakfast, pancakes on the griddle and a pan of bacon going and something being whisked with extreme prejudice in one of the big steel bowls, more suited to feeding thirty than just the two of them. She jerks when she notices him, like she's been caught at something, but then her eyes go to his hair and she starts to smile, wide mouth pulling into what Sam thinks of as her Joker grin. "Don't start," he says, and she says, too innocent, "Start what? I think it's very brave that you're joining a Flock of Seagulls cover band," and he drops his head back and sighs and ignores her snort-laugh, but he also drags his hands through his hair a little more strenuously while she says, "Whatever, Pigpen, take a seat. Grub's up in five."

He gets coffee, first. Strong, but good—like, really, really good, for some reason that he doesn't quite get—it's the same machine, same crappy tub of pre-ground stuff they get from the little market in town—but then Deanna's always been better at this kind of thing than she let on, and he savors the first few sips, breathing caffeine. She ignores him, moving confidently around—the whisking it turns out was eggs, which she pours onto the griddle too and starts working like she's a line cook—and he watches her, content for a second to let that be the only thing he's thinking about. She was a line cook, once, he remembers. When he was in high school, and she'd quit school by then, and the credit cards hadn't come through. She got a job for a few weeks at that diner, in Joplin. "What was that place you worked?" Sam says, while she's flipping pancakes. She frowns at him over her shoulder. "They gave me free grilled cheese for dinner, that month."

The frown clears. "The Show Me Diner," she says, turning back to the griddle. "Manager always joked I should show him my tits." Sam pauses, cup halfway to his mouth. He never heard that part. Deanna laughs, scraping at the griddle with the metal spatula. "Man, that kitchen was gross. Great fries, though."

"The grilled cheese was good," Sam says, after a second, and she says, "Damn right it was, I was the one making it," and then she's ducking under the island and grabbing plates, and then in the next second there's breakfast—fresh and hot and delivered with a fork clattering down into his eggs and his sister plopping down on the other side of the table, tucking her foot under her other knee and gesturing with the other fork: "Eat, drink, be merry. Happy birthday, Sammy."

Sam frowns. "Uh," he says, and makes a show of looking at his watch. "Unless I slept way too late—"

She rolls her eyes, cramming pancake into her mouth. "Shut up," she advises, garbled, and he wrinkles his nose at the chewing but looks down at his plate. It does look good. Bacon's burned, exactly the way they both like it. He picks up a piece, lets it shatter on his tongue, but he gives her a look, too, and she rolls her eyes again—a little too obvious, playacted, which makes him pay more attention—and makes a show of swallowing. "I know, duh. But, hell. I wasn't here for the last one. And, you know, I didn't really get a chance to make it up to you. Before."

She cuts another bite of pancake, studiously piling it and syrup and egg and bacon-shards into one monstrous bite, while Sam's processing that. "We didn't do anything for yours, either," Sam says, after a few seconds. Jesus, his birthday? He was in Kermit, then, only barely coming to terms with how he was going to have a hole in his chest for the rest of his life. On Deanna's birthday—god, that was only last month—they were moving into the bunker, he thinks, and they were okay but that hole in his chest somehow still smarted, and Sam doesn't even remember if they did the bare minimum of pizza and beer.

"We can do a Seagal marathon sometime," she says, shrugging one shoulder, and smiling at her plate when he groans. "I'm taking the opportunity, dude. We've got a house, we've got steady cash, the world isn't currently ending, so. I'm in charge. Birthday queen. You've gotta do what I say."

"How is this my birthday, again?" Sam says, and she says, "Shut up," lightly, and then taps his plate with her fork and says, "Eat up, beanpole," and so he shuts up, and eats. Why not. It's good. Of course it is; she made it.

There isn't, it turns out, all that much of a plan. He washes their plates but then she shoos him out of the kitchen again, tells him to run a marathon or bench press a car or something, and so he goes for a jog, as ordered. Not much of one—full stomach, and the cough, which forces him to stop and lean against a fence-post and spit, laced with red. He licks his lips, swallows, and keeps running, and when he's back Deanna's still in her pjs, doing something in the library, and she gives him unimpressed eyebrows and says, "You look like you reek, Lance. Shower time." So, fine, shower time.

When he's done, he finds clothes in his room laid out for him. Basically pajamas: soft loungey sweatpants in a dark grey that are clearly brand new, and a thin soft black shirt to go with them. "Merry un-birthday," he hears, and when he turns Deanna's leaning in his doorway, clearly enjoying him in his towel. "You like?"

"Uh, I guess," Sam says, fingering the material. Their birthday presents to each other are usually along the line of a six-pack or embarrassing porn or, memorably, twenty-nine boxes of Ho-Hos when he turned twenty-nine. Three guesses who ate more of them. He picks up the sweatpants, giving her a quizzical look, but she only lifts one shoulder and raises her eyebrows, waiting, and he huffs and then, fine, drops the towel. It is sort of—something—how immediately her eyes drop to his dick, and he bites back a smile and tugs on the sweatpants with a minimum of show. They are soft, thin but warm in the bunker's cool air, and the shirt stretches only a little over his shoulders. He pushes the sleeves up to his elbows and turns, modeling. "You like?" he repeats.

"You'd still get thrown out of bed for eating crackers," Deanna says, eyes tracing his body. "But you'll do."

He comes to her, sliding a hand over her waist, and she doesn't move except to tip her head back, eyes steady on his. Watchful and more still, now, like she wasn't before Purgatory. The kiss is unhurried. He parts her lips with gentle pressure and she sighs, letting him in, her head tilting back. Her mouth, perfect. He slips his hand down to her hip, squeezing the wide curve of it through the t-shirt and the ancient denim cut-offs, and she unfolds her arms and wraps a hand around his wrist, stopping him from going further. When he pulls back her cheeks are a little flushed but she blinks at him, shakes her head. "Not yet," she says, and he frowns, confused. Like they haven't messed around in the middle of the day before? She bites her bottom lip, attempting to look coy. "I mean. There's… stuff to do, first."

Sam narrows his eyes and she switches from attempted coy to attempted innocence. "Dee," he says, and her eyes go round, guileless as a cartoon princess. He drags his thumb over the soft of her belly, his hand still trapped by her light grip but enough room for him to find the waistband of the shorts through the t-shirt, rub there. Her eyelashes flicker, but she remains steadfast. "Stuff to do," he says, finally. "Like what?"

"Oh," she says, waving her other hand. "You know. Important stuff."

Okay, so she's clearly got some plan. He glances down at himself, dressed for… nothing, as far as he can tell. If it's going to be an elaborate and terrible roleplay fantasy, as least she isn't making him be a cop or a doctor or something. "And what am I supposed to do?" he asks, conceding. "While you do important stuff."

She starts to grin but bites it back, in that way where her dimple peeks out. "I think you should hang out in the library," she says, half serious.

"The library," Sam says.

Deanna nods, the dimple deepening. "For like… an hour, probably." She tips her head, eyes cutting to the side. "Um, maybe longer. But I'm sure there's a book in there that'll entertain you, gigantic nerd that you are."

"Thoughtful," Sam says, and her grin blooms wide, her eyes crinkling in that way they do when she's really happy, and it catches in Sam's chest, like it always does. He dips and kisses her again, quick, just because he needs to, and she puts a hand to his jaw and lifts into it, eager, before she dips away, licks her lips, lifts a finger. Sam sighs. "An hour."

"Ish," she corrects, but she slides a hand down his chest to his stomach, presses in. "It'll be worth the wait," she says, warm and promising, in that way she has where she can flip from just the biggest dork in the world to the sexiest woman he's ever known, even in ratty pajamas and still all mussed from sleep, and he doesn't need more than just—her, just her, ever, and she should know that, but—he nods, and her eyes drop to his mouth and she looks tempted, but then she nods too, and disappears down the hall, bare feet noiseless on the concrete, and he closes his eyes and tells the warm wanting feeling in his gut that it has to wait, unfortunately, and he goes to the library, and he finds a book.

He doesn't actually know how long passes. He stands over the archiving work that he still needs to do but—god, he's not going to be able to concentrate on that, with this tugging in his belly that says he's got something better coming down the pipe. He goes over to one of the alcoves, instead, picks one of the leather armchairs, picks a book off the shelf. History—the Spanish incursion into Tenochtitlan—and it's dry and old-fashioned and he scans page after page, half-focused, barely taking in details about the supernatural elements of Aztec ritual when he's thinking about…

It took him until he left to realize that he judged all women against his sister. His first official college hookup, after a freshman mixer, was a perfectly nice girl whose name he can't quite remember, but he remembers to this day how he thought: shorter than Deanna. Blonder than Deanna. No freckles, not like Deanna. When she tugged him into her dorm room, both of them more than tipsy on jello shots and cheap beer, she tugged off her tank top and dragged his hands up to her breasts and he'd thought, in a way he didn't examine at all until much later, that they were bigger than Deanna's, and her ass filling his hands was—was probably smaller, although Sam didn't have the evidence then to know it, and when he rolled off of her afterward she curled up against his arm and promptly fell asleep and he looked at her muzzily confused and thought, distantly, that Deanna didn't do that, with guys, that the few times she'd brought someone home to their motel room when she thought Sam was either out or sleeping she'd fucked the guy and gotten whatever satisfaction she got and then showed him the door, and they were done, except for how sometimes Sam would squint carefully through shut eyes at how she stood with her back to the door for a few minutes, her eyes closed and her head tipped back and her body barely hidden in a big t-shirt or a towel, and he didn't know what she was thinking, then. She certainly didn't just roll over and drool on the guy's shoulder, until he had to awkwardly extricate himself, and fret over leaving a number, and then ultimately decide to just go. Bethany, Sam remembers, suddenly. It was Bethany, who was not Deanna.

He's stretched out in the chair, book open but mostly-abandoned on the arm of it, staring unseeing out at the library. Deanna, five foot seven in her bare feet, her lips a plush pretty curve and her tits a good handful and her ass, god, her ass, that she fretted over when they were younger and made him say that it wasn't fat—but it is, god, this fat perfect swell, impossibly hot along with her wide hips and her thighs gorgeous below and her body just—made for his, he thinks, sometimes. Even if of course that's impossible because they shouldn't be—it shouldn't be how it is, between them. Impossible or not, though—

"Ahem," he hears. He looks up.

Deanna's standing there, one hand on his research table, the other holding closed her grey dead man's robe. Sam blinks, taking her in. Her hair's up but she's clearly taken some time to style it—not quite the FBI-agent bun she's perfected, but looser, and the layers near her face tucked faux-messily behind her ears. Make-up, her eyes framed with liner and thickly sooty, but nothing on to hide the freckles, and her lips shining like they're freshly licked with that clearish-pink gloss she likes. Nothing too odd, or different. She takes another step, that clicks, and he glances down to find that she's wearing heels—not ones he recognizes, very high and impractical and shiny black, not her usual at all—and above the heels—

"I'm in charge, remember?" Deanna says, dragging his eyes back up to her face. "You've got to do what I say." He nods, feeling his face already getting hot, and he sits forward but she holds up a hand. "Stay sitting," she says, firm, "and don't touch, okay, not until you're told," and with that, she unclasps her other hand from the front of the robe, and lets it slide off her shoulders, and Sam takes in a breath and doesn't know if he ever lets it out.

The heels are the least of it. It's hard to take in all at once. His eyes leap from detail to detail. Deep maroon, in the silky material of the bustier, the bra-cups curved in and arrowing down to satiny buttons that close it at the front. It covers her ribs, surprisingly modest. Modest, too, the matching maroon panties done in a full cut, except that they're also sheer lace, and he can see the shadow of her trimmed hair through them, barely visible through the pattern. What's making his mouth dry, though, beyond the fact of her presented like this, is: a wide black garter belt, sitting high on her hips, leaving just an inch or two of bare white belly below the bustier—the arch of it high enough that the soft dimple of her navel's visible, above the waist of the panties—thick ribbons, for the garter, that curve sweet over her hips and down her pale thighs—and half-sheer thigh-high stockings, black lace thick at the tops, going all the way down her long legs to the heels, shining in the puddle of the discarded robe.

One heel turns in, her knee bending a little. Sam's dick pulses, caught in the sweatpants. This isn't—she doesn't bother, never has, and he never even thought to ask—in his life, he wouldn't have asked—

"Surprise," she says, spreading her hands to the side like a dancer, and Sam says, "Holy shit, Deanna."

Her tongue flicks to wet the center of her top lip. Nervous, almost, but what in god's name would she have to be nervous about? "Figured I could dress up," she says, shrugging—god, the way that makes her tits move—"and you know, it's your birthday, or uh—your unbirthday, right? So—"

"Are you sure I can't get up?" Sam interrupts. She blinks at him. "I really want to get up."

"So—" she says, fingers curling, and Sam says, "God, come here," with his voice rough in this way he didn't intend it to be, but she blinks again and then smiles, slow, her tongue pressing against the back of her teeth, and she steps forward, hips swaying, coming close enough to touch. He starts to reach but she puts her fingers to his collarbone and stops him, pressing him to the back of the armchair, and then she stands between his spread knees, leaning over him a little, so he can smell—the chemical peach of her bodywash, and the faint vanilla of the lotion she prefers, and beneath that—christ—he can smell her, her body clearly ready from whatever she was thinking as she put all this on, and he has to grip the arms of the chair very tightly not to get his hand on her pussy and find out just how ready she is.

Deanna trails a finger down his sternum, looking down at him with her lower lip caught in her teeth. "Didn't think this was going to be this much of a hit," she says, quiet, and Sam huffs. He's still looking all over. God. Her soft belly, lightly dented by the garter belt. The way the buttons of the bustier strain over her tits. "Hey, Sammy? Tell me something." He makes some sound. The stockings, christ, the stockings—that's doing something to him he didn't even know—"If you could do anything right now what would you do?"

His brain doesn't engage with the answer; it comes straight from his balls. "I'd eat your pussy," he says, and Deanna's hand spreads on his chest like a star, her chest heaving under the breath she takes. "Can I?" he says, belatedly, looking up finally at her face, because he wants to suddenly very badly, can practically taste the wet split of her, and she's pink over her cheekbones and ears, her lips wet and flushed, already, but she says: "No," and climbs into the armchair with him, instead, straddling him, her ass settling down on his knees, her hands in his hair, pulling his head back, making him keep eye contact. She dips her head, lips brushing his, and he opens his mouth for her but she doesn't quite kiss him. A tendril of hair swings forward, brushing his cheek, and she follows it, her lips faintly wet and a little sticky from the gloss, trailing over his cheekbone, breathing warmly damp against his ear. Her thighs clench around his and his hands flex, on the chair-arms, and his dick—god, he hasn't hardened up like this with no contact at all in years, didn't even know he could, but any second now it feels like he's going to start leaking, ruin the new pajama pants she gave him.

"If I asked you to hold on," she says, low and private against his ear—like anyone else could hear, like they're in a strip club and she's offering a private show. "You think you could? Hold on, not go until I said?"

"What, because I'm on such a hair trigger the rest of the time?" he says, attempting lightness, but honestly—christ, it feels like that could be a danger, right now, with her in his lap like this, with her smell, with her fingers dragging out of his hair and down his chest again, trailing down his abs through the sleep shirt. "God, Dee—you're so—" He's interrupted, when her fingers brush against the shape of his dick, through the sweatpants. She leans back, looking between them, her lips barely parted and her eyes dark. His dick flexes, against her hand, and her eyes flick up to meet his. "I can hold on," he promises, recklessly, and she flattens her palm and presses him thick against his own thigh where he's caught awkward in the soft material, but her chest heaves again on a deep breath, clearly as turned on as he is, and he says, then, "Kiss me," and she leans down immediately and does.

No touching rules or no, he's not going to just sit here, inert. He lifts up into the kiss right away, knocking her mouth open and licking inside, and she grips his hair again, fucks her tongue against his, squirms. "Scoot forward—come here—" she mumbles against him, half-coherent, and he hikes his hips forward between her legs so he's right on the edge of the seat and that, fuck, that tucks his hips warm between her thighs where he belongs, and his dick swells up against her pussy, the heat of it intense even through the layers of sweatpants and lace.

She doesn't tease, not exactly. She grinds down against him but then slips her hand right back to his dick, cupping the bulge of it firmly through the soft cotton and then sliding her hand inside. God—soft, warm. She rubs her thumb at the base, scratching her nail through his pubes, and then says, "Get it out," and he lifts, squirms, drags the waistband of the new pants down below the urgent heave of himself. Christ, he's hard. She presses right up close against him, thighs closing around his hips and his dick crammed tight up between his stomach and the scratchy lace of her panties, and she fists him capably, knowing, her cheek pressed against his and looking down between them, her breath heaving. She presses his cockhead up against herself, smearing it in the window of bare skin between the waist of the panties and the line of the garter belt—the sensitive ridge catching against her navel—and rubs her thumb hard under the crown—and fuck, fuck. Sam's balls ache. "Jeez," she says, low but light. "Happy to see me, huh? Wish I could suck it but I think I'd tear my tights if I went on my knees."

Sam groans. "You could try," he says, and she snorts, smears her lips against his jaw, kisses him brief and hot. She's as turned on as he is, which isn't helping him cool down at all. "Fuck, Dee. Let me—can I—"

"You can touch my ass," she offers, and he grabs her there immediately, squeezing, tugging her in so the spine of his dick crushes in against her pussy, grinding where her clit's got to be swelling, all trapped in the lace. She hitches air, back arching, and presses his dick firmer there with the hand caught between them, riding the pole of him. It feels outstanding but he's half-distracted because her ass, her ass. Fat and hot and so soft, denting under how hard he's gripping her. He slides his thumbs under the garter straps, tugging, and then sliding down, daring, finding the clips where they attach to the stockings. She squeezes his dick and he pulls, there, slipping his fingers under where the top of the stocking rides high and sweet and tight, and groans again, and says thoughtless Deanna, and she lifts her head up, looks down at him, eyes bright and her face flushed and her lips wet and her expression half-thoughtful, half-delighted. "Sammy," she says, and he squeezes the fat sweet swell where her ass rises up out of her thighs, the garters slipping silky against his palms. "That doing it for you? My stockings?"

He can hardly say, just lifts up and kisses under her jaw, sliding down to suckle at her throat—pulling—but she finds his hands, arrests them. He wants to knock them away but his brain's not completely offline yet and he stills, lets her pull his wrists away—lets her stand, fuck, up, wriggling backwards off his lap and getting her heels on the floor again, standing. "Hm, let's see," she says, low, and turns around, and that's when he gets to know that the stockings ride just a little higher in the back, the straps pulling with how the belt's fastened high at her waist, and they've got a thick seam that arrows down the line of her legs, ending in a little triangle of lace at the heel, just barely visible above the patent leather. The panties are practically sheer in the back—the lace finer, showing the crack of her ass—and the bustier dents in at the sides of her waist, making the tiniest roll there between the edge of it and the top of the garter that makes him want to fucking bite her, there, feel the soft flesh, taste her salt.

She's kicked the fallen robe out of the way and found the research table, her table, the one that's clear of books and mess. She bites her lip like a coquette and beckons, and he's up in a second, crowding in close, hands on the table on either side of her hips because she said, she said—

"If you want," she says, looking up at him, flushed, "you can eat me out, now."

He goes to his knees so fast it hurts and his mouth's between her thighs in the same second. He opens wide, breathes hot, sucks through the lace—her taste, right there, the fabric soaked at the little knot of the seams coming together—and she groans, bracing her heels on the floor, her ass barely perched on the edge of the table. He knows her cunt in every single way but like this it feels new, wrapped and pretty and served up for him, and he takes it slower, savoring. Drags his teeth over the unfamiliar scratch of the lace, kisses the pale-plump inside of her thigh above the edge of the stocking and suckles there, pulling tighter and tighter until she's squirming and gripping his hair and saying Sam breathless, and then switching to the other side and doing the same. Fuck, her smell. Salt-ocean, the queer unmistakable tang of pussy. He sucks at her clit through the fabric, not hard but in slow pulsing drags of his mouth that work her plump lips even fatter with hot blood, and her hips lift against him, a low pleased noise making his dick pulse. "Take them off," she says, somewhere, and he lifts up and kisses the little half-moon of skin above the waistband, fucks his tongue into her belly-button, and when he tugs—he pulls—dragging the panties down under the constriction of the belt and its straps—and he doesn't know how to get them out without ruining her whole costume—but christ, these are his present, aren't they?—and so he pulls harder, tears, and she gasps up above, "Holy shit, you lunatic," but then the lace is in two pieces and her thighs are pulling wide and he gets to dip his head and lick wide up the whole glossy slit of her, burying his nose in the slick-wet gingery patch of her hair, getting the salt without any stupid fabric in between. She grabs his head, pulling him closer, and he hooks his fingers into the straps of the garter belt and works, deep sloppy licks that smear slick all over, her clit swollen and aching just like he likes it. He spreads her wide with the edge of his thumbs, not touching, and licks the entrance to her vagina without dipping inside in the way he knows drives her absolutely nuts—and, yes, her thighs close around his shoulders and she arches with this surprised stupid sound that makes him grin against her cunt and she says, "Fuck, fine, fuck, get up here, come here—" and he stands slow, kissing her belly and her sternum and breathing against trapped satin swell of her breasts before she grabs his face and kisses him, eating her own taste out of his mouth.

"If you don't get your dick in me," she says, panting, "in about two seconds—" and so he grabs her ass and tips her backwards on the table and feeds his dick inside, pressing in bare, the scraps of lace tickling a little at his skin but the overwhelming feeling just the, fuck, the tight slippery grip of her, the close-grasping heat, the way she arches and makes this little hurt sound when he gets deep because he's thick, and he didn't even finger her to warn her, but she's so sloppy-wet he's not sure it makes much of a difference. He tips his hips in and presses his pelvis against her clit and leans in deep and kisses her, just staying still for a minute, feeling—christ. All of her. She slides a hand down between them and feels where he's splitting her wide, and he rocks back a little so she can hold his dick and then feel it slot right back in where it belongs. Fuck. "Fuck," she says, breathless, her hand flattened between their hips, and then Sam realizes she's massaging her mound with heavy, slow pressure. "Come on," she says, low and tight against his cheek, and he grips her hips and works her with a deep rocking, hardly pulling out, just grinding up and up and up inside while she works herself from the outside, and it's no surprise at all when she comes, fast, rippling inside and clenching so hard that he can barely move for fear of getting pushed entirely out. He drops his forehead to her collarbone, pushing deep, letting her clench and pulse. His dick feels so fat and swollen he could imagine all the blood in his body's there. It certainly doesn't feel like he's brain's involved.

Deanna sighs, after a second. "Holy crap," she says, like relief. "Mm. Lift up, 'kay?" He lifts up, keeping his hips right in place—his back cracking as he stands all the way straight—and she's flushed and pleased, spread out below him. "Shirt off?" she says, and so he strips it off, tossing it to the other end of the table. She reaches out and trails cold fingertips over his pecs, his abs, licking her lips. "Hm," she says, and smiles at him, wide and unexpected. She kicks her heels off, each one clattering to the floor, and lifts her legs against his sides, the stockings slick and smooth against his skin. He grabs her thighs immediately, savoring the long clench of muscle under the satin. She unbuttons the top two tiny buttons on the bustier—the top three—her tits spilling a little, the creamy swell of them loosened, and when she arches he can see the dark shadow of areola, peeking from below the maroon cups. She laughs a little at whatever his expression is, and then reaches down and grasps his hips, the sweatpants still barely caught around his ass. "Okay, birthday boy. Your turn. You can do whatever you want, but—" and her nails dig in, making his ass clench. "You make sure you come inside."

"Jesus christ, Dee," Sam groans, and she grins, eyebrows popping high like she's made a joke she's letting him in on, but it's not a joke, christ, it's not at all, and he hooks his fingers into the garter again and jolts his dick inside, deep as he can where he knows it knocks her cervix, and her eyes fly wide and she grasps his biceps instead, thighs clamping around his waist in shock, and that's—yeah, yeah, that's what he wants, and so he nails her again, and then one more time to make her gasp in a deep choked way and say shocked oh, that's—oh, and then he leans down and mouths her tit away from the soft cup of the loosened bustier and slip a sweet dark nipple into his mouth and then he just—fucks her, gripping her thighs and suckling her tit and slotting in and in and in to the perfect wet of her, making her gasp, making her clench and cry out, her heels dragging against his ass in harsh drags, scratching because of the lace, the seams of these perfect fucking stockings, pulling at him. She's soaked, her pubes a sticky mess when he drags his thumb over her clit, and he drags that wet up over her quivering belly to the garter belt, smearing there, rolling his dick in these demanding dragging slides that are making Dee arch her back, lift up one elbow, her other arm hooked around the back of his neck, her hips working back against his, her lips wet and helpless against his temple as he works her, her pussy grasping and clenching and knocked-open for him. He pulls out just because he can—feels the load of wet that spills out with him—looks down between them, at her tits spilling flushed out of her lingerie and her garter twisting and her stockings, fuck, still neat and tight in place even with her all red-sloppy and fucked-open between them—and when he pushes back in, her pussy parting immediately and welcoming, tight, perfect—she groans in this deep shocked way that connects directly to his nuts, a molten tight thing taking over where his brain ought to be, and he hooks a hand into the split of the bustier and grips a thigh tight against his side and fucks her hard, fast, his orgasm screaming up his back. If he weren't feeling so insane he'd wait for her, make sure she came again good, but it's—this is for him, she said, she wanted this, she wanted him to have her wrapped up like a present, to use like she told him to use her—and he dips down and finds her nipple again and bites there, sinking his teeth into the swell of her tit, and she squirms and clenches and says hot and quick, "Sammy, Sammy—harder—" and he unloads inside, just like she asked him to, his wad pulsing out of him hard enough that his thighs shudder, struggling to keep him up. He slams a hand on the table by her head and she flinches and moans at the same time, feeling it maybe—his dick twitching and pulsing so urgent that surely, she can feel it, even if she's so wet she can't tell her slick from his load—and he lifts off her tit with his jaw loose and his mind strange as an animal fresh off a kill, and she clutches her legs around his hips to keep him tight inside and grabs his head in both hands and presses her mouth open against his. Not kissing. Just their lips brushing, and their air shared and hot, and her forehead tipped against his, bone to bone.

His dick throbs, satisfied. His balls clutch, unload another wet pulse. He slides his hands down her sides, catching on the bustier, and then up again to frame her tits in the soft cups. The left one's out, the bitemarks obvious. He tugs down the little maroon-silk shield on the right and finds that breast full and pale, faintest freckles dusting the top, and kisses it softly, tender. Licks over the half-swollen bud of the nipple and feels it tighten, and suckles it gently when it does. Deanna's fingers comb through his hair, her chest rising against his mouth, and below her pussy clenches around his still-hard dick, needing. Wanting him.

He lifts his head and she's watching him, very close. Her eyeliner's smeared with the sweat of their fucking, the lip gloss long-gone. He fucks his dick in and out, carefully, and watches her eyelashes waver, and then slides out all the way and feeds three fingers in right after, squishing in on the mess he left, his thumb riding over her clit. Deanna's hand flashes down, fingers covering his thumb, and he lets her take over, watching not her hand but her face as he helps her chase it. She's close, has to be with how swollen and hot she is around his fingers. He kisses the pale inside curve of her tit where the bustier buttons are split wide, and the sweet peek of her belly, and then crouches and spreads his mouth wide on the thin skin of her hip, where the garter strap's still hanging on, fucking his fingers in again and again in steady pulses while Deanna arches and tightens and clutches around him and then ripples so hard he can't move, for a second. He looks up and she's silent, her mouth split and dark on a heaved breath, her head tipped back. He rubs his thumb over her wet fingers and she shudders, and he's pushed out of her pussy that way, the muscle clenching deep. His fingers are smeared white. She grabs his hand, quick, and pulls, and he stands up between her legs again and his dick presses against her pussy and he watches while she wraps her lips around his fingers and sucks, her eyes closing in concentration, her tongue slick against his knuckles, getting every last drop of come, until he's clean. He tugs his fingers out and she blinks at him, looking almost dazed, and he holds her eyes while he slots inside again and scoops out another gob of come—christ, it's slipping down against her thigh, staining her stocking—and he collects that too, and presents it to her, and she takes his wrist in both hands and sucks it all in, taking it, wanting all of him.

It's—quiet, after. Sam's tugged his sweatpants up. They're folded into the armchair but she's in his lap, this time, tucked in with her head on his shoulder, her legs slung over the arm. Deanna's torn panties are discarded on the floor and he keeps looking at them. "Do my hair?" she murmurs, finally, and he shifts them a little so he can reach and then does, searching careful for the bobby pins and pulling them out one at a time, setting them on the side table with little clicks, mussing her hair to looseness as he goes. Long time, since she asked for this. Not since… god, it was when Sam's mind was still trapped behind a wall, and he'd had a few bad flashes of memories he didn't understand. When they'd screwed madly, after that terrible job with the mannequins, and she'd held him inside in the same desperate, needing way, and she'd…

Her hair falls to mid-back, when all the pins are out. He combs his fingers through it, thick and soft. "Thanks," he says, quiet.

"Thank you," she says back, snuggling her head against his chest. "Now I'm not gonna stab myself in the middle of the night. Hallelujah."

Quiet, dumb. He sweeps her hair over her shoulder and runs a finger down her spine instead, finding the edge of the bustier and rubbing there in a soothing, repetitive line. "Dee," he says, asking, and she sighs, and doesn't say anything.

That time, that last time, when she'd been so desperate and clinging, when she'd wanted him inside. Held her hand against herself when he pulled out and felt the load he'd left, and of course it couldn't do anything, she'd been on birth control since she was fifteen, but it had made something go queerly hot in his gut to see it. Like some instinct she was operating on, trying to absorb him every way she could. Greedy, his sister. At least she used to be. He wonders if that's true, now, and doesn't know if he can ask. She's nesting, she's content, but between them—things are good, but…

Sam kisses the top of her head and she makes a small content noise, turning her face against his throat, her lips soft. He runs a hand over her knee, the stockings slick, and finds the lacy top, plucking lightly where it bites into her skin. He pulls at the garter strap and she smiles against his skin. "Never thought you'd be such a horndog about this," Deanna says, and it's sleepy-smug enough that he pinches her, on the soft plumpness of her thigh, barely hard enough that she'll feel it. She completely ignores that and crosses one knee over the other, bumping her leg up into his palm. "Should I get more? Pantyhose under the FBI suit?"

"I thought you said pantyhose was the patriarchy trying to suffocate women to death, or something," Sam says, and Deanna leans back so he can see her face, grinning, and says, "Yeah, but if it gets your dick that crazy then I'll deal with suffocation, doofus."

Honest, and nothing but content. Sam slides his hand over her belly where the garter's still digging in and slips two fingers between the clutch of her thighs where her pubes are still damp, incredibly hot, and she blinks at him surprised and then her smile changes, her thighs pulling open just like that. Easy for him, just like always. Sam puts aside any other worries and nods, thoughtful. "I guess I wouldn't mind seeing you use a garter belt to strangle a vamp," he says, and she barks out a quick delighted ha! and then lifts her mouth to his, opens her body to his, and he takes what's on offer instead of wondering about what's not.

#ffcc #wincest #girl!dean #lingerie #my writing #sam going nuts for deanna's pussy is even more boneheaded than him going nuts for dean's ass #which is saying something

[thatiranianphantom]

I ask this out of pure curiosity (knowing I can look it up) however there is something special about descriptions through a fans eyes. I’ve been seeing all your posts about Wynona Earp for ages and still have no idea what the show is.

As a fan, and me as a total newbie what would be your best description of the show? I’m always looking for new things to watch and seeing the love for it on my dash made me want to know more.

Ooooh I love this question, and I LOVE talking about Wynonna Earp. Also glad to see the WE spam hasn’t turned anyone off of it!

So the Wikipedia version is that Wynonna Earp is a show about the descendants of Wyatt Earp, dealing with a curse on the family originating with him. When the curse’s heir (the oldest living member of the family) turns 27, their role is activated. Think of it as being kind of Buffy-like. Their job is to kill all 77 of Wyatt Earp’s resurrected kills (they’re called Revenants in the show) with a specific gun called Peacemaker. If they kill all 77 the curse ends, but nobody has managed to do that. 

Enter Wynonna, played by the AMAZING Melanie Scrofano (who I highly recommend following on Twitter). When the show starts, she’s just coming back to her hometown of Purgatory on her 27th birthday. The show is about her fighting the curse with her younger sister, Waverly, the town Sheriff Nicole Haught, and Doc Holliday. 

So on the tin, Wynonna Earp is not a show I would like, but you watch it and fall in love with it. This IS a supernatural show but it is done in a way that’s not too scifi-like?

At its core, the show is about family, both found and blood, and about legacy. Those are central themes of the show. Wynonna loves her sister more than anyone else in her life, and their relationship is just beautiful. Also, the show makes it clear that Wynonna didn’t choose to be the heir, it was literally a curse on her. She says more than once that she feels cheated because she’s never been given a choice in her life. Wynonna herself is just amazing. She’s VERY snarky and guarded, due to a very rough life, and, you know, the whole curse thing. But she and people around her are written and portrayed so sensitively and so beautifully, you just need things to work out for her. 

The show has EXCELLENT LGBTQIA+ representation. There are at least 3 LGBT members of the mains, and they are treated just the same as a straight couple would be. The show is incepted and produced by a woman, and is an incredibly feminist show. It’s dark, it’s funny, it’s silly, it’s cheesy and it’s absolutely a ride. There are moments where it is so dumb but also moments where you can see how much love went into this show. 

And on that note! The show is Riverdale’s polar opposite in terms of fandom. Generally speaking, the fandom is very positive (if small). The actors and writers just adore this show, their characters, and each other. They are all very interactive with fans, but unlike Riverdale, it’s in such a positive way. The show is basically a love letter to the fans, and the cast is also like a big family. 

(also in the latest season they were allowed to say fuck and it was BEAUTIFUL)

I can’t recommend checking the show out highly enough, and if this hasn’t convinced you, might I introduce you to this dialogue from the second episode. 

Deputy Marshall Dolls: Alright, let’s go. Don’t blow it. 

Wynonna: I never blow jobs without a please first. 

#answered #Wynonna Earp #oh please watch this show #I love it so much #thestaredown #I also love this question #We should start a trend #Ask a fan of a show to describe it #Someone who loves the thing will always describe it better