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exeggcute · 1 year

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the great reddit API meltdown of '23, or: this was always bound to happen

there's a lot of press about what's going on with reddit right now (app shutdowns, subreddit blackouts, the CEO continually putting his foot in his mouth), but I haven't seen as much stuff talking about how reddit got into this situation to begin with. so as a certified non-expert and Context Enjoyer I thought it might be helpful to lay things out as I understand them—a high-level view, surveying the whole landscape—in the wonderful world of startups, IPOs, and extremely angry users.

disclaimer that I am not a founder or VC (lmao), have yet to work at a company with a successful IPO, and am not a reddit employee or third-party reddit developer or even a subreddit moderator. I do work at a startup, know my way around an API or two, and have spent twelve regrettable years on reddit itself. which is to say that I make no promises of infallibility, but I hope you'll at least find all this interesting.

profit now or profit later

before you can really get into reddit as reddit, it helps to know a bit about startups (of which reddit is one). and before I launch into that, let me share my Three Types Of Websites framework, which is basically just a mental model about financial incentives that's helped me contextualize some of this stuff.

(1) website/software that does not exist to make money: relatively rare, for a variety of reasons, among them that it costs money to build and maintain a website in the first place. wikipedia is the evergreen example, although even wikipedia's been subject to criticism for how the wikimedia foundation pays out its employees and all that fun nonprofit stuff. what's important here is that even when making money is not the goal, money itself is still a factor, whether it's solicited via donations or it's just one guy paying out of pocket to host a hobby site. but websites in this category do, generally, offer free, no-strings-attached experiences to their users.

(I do want push back against the retrospective nostalgia of "everything on the internet used to be this way" because I don't think that was ever really true—look at AOL, the dotcom boom, the rise of banner ads. I distinctly remember that neopets had multiple corporate sponsors, including a cookie crisp-themed flash game. yahoo bought geocities for $3.6 billion; money's always been trading hands, obvious or not. it's indisputable that the internet is simply different now than it was ten or twenty years ago, and that monetization models themselves have largely changed as well (I have thoughts about this as it relates to web 1.0 vs web 2.0 and their associated costs/scale/etc.), but I think the only time people weren't trying to squeeze the internet for all the dimes it can offer was when the internet was first conceived as a tool for national defense.)

(2) website/software that exists to make money now: the type that requires the least explanation. mostly non-startup apps and services, including any random ecommerce storefront, mobile apps that cost three bucks to download, an MMO with a recurring subscription, or even a news website that runs banner ads and/or offers paid subscriptions. in most (but not all) cases, the "make money now" part is obvious, so these things don't feel free to us as users, even to the extent that they might have watered-down free versions or limited access free trials. no one's shocked when WoW offers another paid expansion packs because WoW's been around for two decades and has explicitly been trying to make money that whole time.

(3) website/software that exists to make money later: this is the fun one, and more common than you'd think. "make money later" is more or less the entire startup business model—I'll get into that in the next section—and is deployed with the expectation that you will make money at some point, but not always by means as obvious as "selling WoW expansions for forty bucks a pop."

companies in this category tend to have two closely entwined characteristics: they prioritize growth above all else, regardless of whether this growth is profitable in any way (now, or sometimes, ever), and they do this by offering users really cool and awesome shit at little to no cost (or, if not for free, then at least at a significant loss to the company).

so from a user perspective, these things either seem free or far cheaper than their competitors. but of course websites and software and apps and [blank]-as-a-service tools cost money to build and maintain, and that money has to come from somewhere, and the people supplying that money, generally, expect to get it back...

just not immediately.

startups, VCs, IPOs, and you

here's the extremely condensed "did NOT go to harvard business school" version of how a startup works:

(1) you have a cool idea.

(2) you convince some venture capitalists (also known as VCs) that your idea is cool. if they see the potential in what you're pitching, they'll give you money in exchange for partial ownership of your company—which means that if/when the company starts trading its stock publicly, these investors will own X numbers of shares that they can sell at any time. in other words, you get free money now (and you'll likely seek multiple "rounds" of investors over the years to sustain your company), but with the explicit expectations that these investors will get their payoff later, assuming you don't crash and burn before that happens.

during this phase, you want to do anything in your power to make your company appealing to investors so you can attract more of them and raise funds as needed. because you are definitely not bringing in the necessary revenue to offset operating costs by yourself.

it's also worth nothing that this is less about projecting the long-term profitability of your company than it's about its perceived profitability—i.e., VCs want to put their money behind a company that other people will also have confidence in, because that's what makes stock valuable, and VCs are in it for stock prices.

(3) there are two non-exclusive win conditions for your startup: you can get acquired, and you can have an IPO (also referred to as "going public"). these are often called "exit scenarios" and they benefit VCs and founders, as well as some employees. it's also possible for a company to get acquired, possibly even more than once, and then later go public.

acquisition: sell the whole damn thing to someone else. there are a million ways this can happen, some better than others, but in many cases this means anyone with ownership of the company (which includes both investors and employees who hold stock options) get their stock bought out by the acquiring company and end up with cash in hand. in varying amounts, of course. sometimes the founders walk away, sometimes the employees get laid off, but not always.

IPO: short for "initial public offering," this is when the company starts trading its stocks publicly, which means anyone who wants to can start buying that company's stock, which really means that VCs (and employees with stock options) can turn that hypothetical money into real money by selling their company stock to interested buyers.

drawing from that, companies don't go for an IPO until they think their stock will actually be worth something (or else what's the point?)—specifically, worth more than the amount of money that investors poured into it. The Powers That Be will speculate about a company's IPO potential way ahead of time, which is where you'll hear stuff about companies who have an estimated IPO evaluation of (to pull a completely random example) $10B. actually I lied, that was not a random example, that was reddit's valuation back in 2021 lol. but a valuation is basically just "how much will people be interested in our stock?"

as such, in the time leading up to an IPO, it's really really important to do everything you can to make your company seem like a good investment (which is how you get stock prices up), usually by making the company's numbers look good. but! if you plan on cashing out, the long-term effects of your decisions aren't top of mind here. remember, the industry lingo is "exit scenario."

if all of this seems like a good short-term strategy for companies and their VCs, but an unsustainable model for anyone who's buying those stocks during the IPO, that's because it often is.

also worth noting that it's possible for a company to be technically unprofitable as a business (meaning their costs outstrip their revenue) and still trade enormously well on the stock market; uber is the perennial example of this. to the people who make money solely off of buying and selling stock, it literally does not matter that the actual rideshare model isn't netting any income—people think the stock is valuable, so it's valuable.

this is also why, for example, elon musk is richer than god: if he were only the CEO of tesla, the money he'd make from selling mediocre cars would be (comparatively, lol) minimal. but he's also one of tesla's angel investors, which means he holds a shitload of tesla stock, and tesla's stock has performed well since their IPO a decade ago (despite recent dips)—even if tesla itself has never been a huge moneymaker, public faith in the company's eventual success has kept them trading at high levels. granted, this also means most of musk's wealth is hypothetical and not liquid; if TSLA dropped to nothing, so would the value of all the stock he holds (and his net work with it).

what's an API, anyway?

to move in an entirely different direction: we can't get into reddit's API debacle without understanding what an API itself is.

an API (short for "application programming interface," not that it really matters) is a series of code instructions that independent developers can use to plug their shit into someone else's shit. like a series of tin cans on strings between two kids' treehouses, but for sending and receiving data.

APIs work by yoinking data directly from a company's servers instead of displaying anything visually to users. so I could use reddit's API to build my own app that takes the day's top r/AITA post and transcribes it into pig latin: my app is a bunch of lines of code, and some of those lines of code fetch data from reddit (and then transcribe that data into pig latin), and then my app displays the content to anyone who wants to see it, not reddit itself. as far as reddit is concerned, no additional human beings laid eyeballs on that r/AITA post, and reddit never had a chance to serve ads alongside the pig-latinized content in my app. (put a pin in this part—it'll be relevant later.)

but at its core, an API is really a type of protocol, which encompasses a broad category of formats and business models and so on. some APIs are completely free to use, like how anyone can build a discord bot (but you still have to host it yourself). some companies offer free APIs to third-party developers can build their own plugins, and then the company and the third-party dev split the profit on those plugins. some APIs have a free tier for hobbyists and a paid tier for big professional projects (like every weather API ever, lol). some APIs are strictly paid services because the API itself is the company's core offering.

reddit's financial foundations

okay thanks for sticking with me. I promise we're almost ready to be almost ready to talk about the current backlash.

reddit has always been a startup's startup from day one: its founders created the site after attending a startup incubator (which is basically a summer camp run by VCs) with the successful goal of creating a financially successful site. backed by that delicious y combinator money, reddit got acquired by conde nast only a year or two after its creation, which netted its founders a couple million each. this was back in like, 2006 by the way. in the time since that acquisition, reddit's gone through a bunch of additional funding rounds, including from big-name investors like a16z, peter thiel (yes, that guy), sam altman (yes, also that guy), sequoia, fidelity, and tencent. crunchbase says that they've raised a total of $1.3B in investor backing.

in all this time, reddit has never been a public company, or, strictly speaking, profitable.

APIs and third-party apps

reddit has offered free API access for basically as long as it's had a public API—remember, as a "make money later" company, their primary goal is growth, which means attracting as many users as possible to the platform. so letting anyone build an app or widget is (or really, was) in line with that goal.

as such, third-party reddit apps have been around forever. by third-party apps, I mean apps that use the reddit API to display actual reddit content in an unofficial wrapper. iirc reddit didn't even have an official mobile app until semi-recently, so many of these third-party mobile apps in particular just sprung up to meet an unmet need, and they've kept a small but dedicated userbase ever since. some people also prefer the user experience of the unofficial apps, especially since they offer extra settings to customize what you're seeing and few to no ads (and any ads these apps do display are to the benefit of the third-party developers, not reddit itself.)

(let me add this preemptively: one solution I've seen proposed to the paid API backlash is that reddit should have third-party developers display reddit's ads in those third-party apps, but this isn't really possible or advisable due to boring adtech reasons I won't inflict on you here. source: just trust me bro)

in addition to mobile apps, there are also third-party tools that don’t replace the Official Reddit Viewing Experience but do offer auxiliary features like being able to mass-delete your post history, tools that make the site more accessible to people who use screen readers, and tools that help moderators of subreddits moderate more easily. not to mention a small army of reddit bots like u/AutoWikibot or u/RemindMebot (and then the bots that tally the number of people who reply to bot comments with “good bot” or “bad bot).

the number of people who use third-party apps is relatively small, but they arguably comprise some of reddit’s most dedicated users, which means that third-party apps are important to the people who keep reddit running and the people who supply reddit with high-quality content.

unpaid moderators and user-generated content

so reddit is sort of two things: reddit is a platform, but it’s also a community.

the platform is all the unsexy (or, if you like python, sexy) stuff under the hood that actually makes the damn thing work. this is what the company spends money building and maintaining and "owns." the community is all the stuff that happens on the platform: posts, people, petty squabbles. so the platform is where the content lives, but ultimately the content is the reason people use reddit—no one’s like “yeah, I spend time on here because the backend framework really impressed me."

and all of this content is supplied by users, which is not unique among social media platforms, but the content is also managed by users, which is. paid employees do not govern subreddits; unpaid volunteers do. and moderation is the only thing that keeps reddit even remotely tolerable—without someone to remove spam, ban annoying users, and (god willing) enforce rules against abuse and hate speech, a subreddit loses its appeal and therefore its users. not dissimilar to the situation we’re seeing play out at twitter, except at twitter it was the loss of paid moderators; reddit is arguably in a more precarious position because they could lose this unpaid labor at any moment, and as an already-unprofitable company they absolutely cannot afford to implement paid labor as a substitute.

oh yeah? spell "IPO" backwards

so here we are, June 2023, and reddit is licking its lips in anticipation of a long-fabled IPO. which means it’s time to start fluffing themselves up for investors by cutting costs (yay, layoffs!) and seeking new avenues of profit, however small.

this brings us to the current controversy: reddit announced a new API pricing plan that more or less prevents anyone from using it for free.

from reddit's perspective, the ostensible benefits of charging for API access are twofold: first, there's direct profit to be made off of the developers who (may or may not) pay several thousand dollars a month to use it, and second, cutting off unsanctioned third-party mobile apps (possibly) funnels those apps' users back into the official reddit mobile app. and since users on third-party apps reap the benefit of reddit's site architecture (and hosting, and development, and all the other expenses the site itself incurs) without “earning” money for reddit by generating ad impressions, there’s a financial incentive at work here: even if only a small percentage of people use third-party apps, getting them to use the official app instead translates to increased ad revenue, however marginal.

(also worth mentioning that chatGPT and other LLMs were trained via tools that used reddit's API to scrape post and content data, and now that openAI is reaping the profits of that training without giving reddit any kickbacks, reddit probably wants to prevent repeats of this from happening in the future. if you want to train the next LLM, it's gonna cost you.)

of course, these changes only benefit reddit if they actually increase the company’s revenue and perceived value/growth—which is hard to do when your users (who are also the people who supply the content for other users to engage with, who are also the people who moderate your communities and make them fun to participate in) get really fucking pissed and threaten to walk.

pricing shenanigans

under the new API pricing plan, third-party developers are suddenly facing steep costs to maintain the apps and tools they’ve built.

most paid APIs are priced by volume: basically, the more data you send and receive, the more money it costs. so if your third-party app has a lot of users, you’ll have to make more API requests to fetch content for those users, and your app becomes more expensive to maintain. (this isn’t an issue if the tool you’re building also turns a profit, but most third-party reddit apps make little, if any, money.)

which is why, even though third-party apps capture a relatively small portion of reddit’s users, the developer of a popular third-party app called apollo recently learned that it would cost them about $20 million a year to keep the app running. and apollo actually offers some paid features (for extra in-app features independent of what reddit offers), but nowhere near enough to break even on those API costs.

so apollo, any many apps like it, were suddenly unable to keep their doors open under the new API pricing model and announced that they'd be forced to shut down.

backlash, blackout

plenty has been said already about the current subreddit blackouts—in like, official news outlets and everything—so this might be the least interesting section of my whole post lol. the short version is that enough redditors got pissed enough that they collectively decided to take subreddits “offline” in protest, either by making them read-only or making them completely inaccessible. their goal was to send a message, and that message was "if you piss us off and we bail, here's what reddit's gonna be like: a ghost town."

but, you may ask, if third-party apps only captured a small number of users in the first place, how was the backlash strong enough to result in a near-sitewide blackout? well, two reasons:

first and foremost, since moderators in particular are fond of third-party tools, and since moderators wield outsized power (as both the people who keep your site more or less civil, and as the people who can take a subreddit offline if they feel like it), it’s in your best interests to keep them happy. especially since they don’t get paid to do this job in the first place, won’t keep doing it if it gets too hard, and essentially have nothing to lose by stepping down.

then, to a lesser extent, the non-moderator users on third-party apps tend to be Power Users who’ve been on reddit since its inception, and as such likely supply a disproportionate amount of the high-quality content for other users to see (and for ads to be served alongside). if you drive away those users, you’re effectively kneecapping your overall site traffic (which is bad for Growth) and reducing the number/value of any ad impressions you can serve (which is bad for revenue).

also a secret third reason, which is that even people who use the official apps have no stake in a potential IPO, can smell the general unfairness of this whole situation, and would enjoy the schadenfreude of investors getting fucked over. not to mention that reddit’s current CEO has made a complete ass of himself and now everyone hates him and wants to see him suffer personally.

(granted, it seems like reddit may acquiesce slightly and grant free API access to a select set of moderation/accessibility tools, but at this point it comes across as an empty gesture.)

"later" is now "now"

TL;DR: this whole thing is a combination of many factors, specifically reddit being intensely user-driven and self-governed, but also a high-traffic site that costs a lot of money to run (why they willingly decided to start hosting video a few years back is beyond me...), while also being angled as a public stock market offering in the very near future. to some extent I understand why reddit’s CEO doubled down on the changes—he wants to look strong for investors—but he’s also made a fool of himself and cast a shadow of uncertainty onto reddit’s future, not to mention the PR nightmare surrounding all of this. and since arguably the most important thing in an IPO is how much faith people have in your company, I honestly think reddit would’ve fared better if they hadn’t gone nuclear with the API changes in the first place.

that said, I also think it’s a mistake to assume that reddit care (or needs to care) about its users in any meaningful way, or at least not as more than means to an end. if reddit shuts down in three years, but all of the people sitting on stock options right now cashed out at $120/share and escaped unscathed... that’s a success story! you got your money! VCs want to recoup their investment—they don’t care about longevity (at least not after they’re gone), user experience, or even sustained profit. those were never the forces driving them, because these were never the ultimate metrics of their success.

and to be clear: this isn’t unique to reddit. this is how pretty much all startups operate.

I talked about the difference between “make money now” companies and “make money later” companies, and what we’re experiencing is the painful transition from “later” to “now.” as users, this change is almost invisible until it’s already happened—it’s like a rug we didn’t even know existed gets pulled out from under us.

the pre-IPO honeymoon phase is awesome as a user, because companies have no expectation of profit, only growth. if you can rely on VC money to stay afloat, your only concern is building a user base, not squeezing a profit out of them. and to do that, you offer cool shit at a loss: everything’s chocolate and flowers and quarterly reports about the number of signups you’re getting!

...until you reach a critical mass of users, VCs want to cash in, and to prepare for that IPO leadership starts thinking of ways to make the website (appear) profitable and implements a bunch of shit that makes users go “wait, what?”

I also touched on this earlier, but I want to reiterate a bit here: I think the myth of the benign non-monetized internet of yore is exactly that—a myth. what has changed are the specific market factors behind these websites, and their scale, and the means by which they attempt to monetize their services and/or make their services look attractive to investors, and so from a user perspective things feel worse because the specific ways we’re getting squeezed have evolved. maybe they are even worse, at least in the ways that matter. but I’m also increasingly less surprised when this occurs, because making money is and has always been the goal for all of these ventures, regardless of how they try to do so.

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opencommunion · 4 days

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"The story of 'John Doe 1' of the Democratic Republic of the Congo is tucked in a lawsuit filed five years ago against several U.S. tech companies, including Tesla, the world’s largest electric vehicle producer. In a country where the earth hides its treasures beneath its surface, those who chip away at its bounty pay an unfair price. As a pre-teen, his family could no longer afford to pay his $6 monthly school fee, leaving him with one option: a life working underground in a tunnel, digging for cobalt rocks. But soon after he began working for roughly two U.S. dollars per day, the child was buried alive under the rubble of a collapsed mine tunnel. His body was never recovered.

The nation, fractured by war, disease, and famine, has seen more than 6 million people die since the mid-1990s, making the conflict the deadliest since World War II. But, in recent years, the death and destruction have been aided by the growing number of electric vehicles humming down American streets. In 2022, the U.S., the world’s third-largest importer of cobalt, spent nearly $525 million on the mineral, much of which came from the Congo.

As America’s dependence on the Congo has grown, Black-led labor and environmental organizers here in the U.S. have worked to build a transnational solidarity movement. Activists also say that the inequities faced in the Congo relate to those that Black Americans experience. And thanks in part to social media, the desire to better understand what’s happening in the Congo has grown in the past 10 years. In some ways, the Black Lives Matter movement first took root in the Congo after the uprising in Ferguson in 2014, advocates say. And since the murder of George Floyd and the outrage over the Gaza war, there has been an uptick in Congolese and Black American groups working on solidarity campaigns.

Throughout it all, the inequities faced by Congolese people and Black Americans show how the supply chain highlights similar patterns of exploitation and disenfranchisement. ... While the American South has picked up about two-thirds of the electric vehicle production jobs, Black workers there are more likely to work in non-unionized warehouses, receiving less pay and protections. The White House has also failed to share data that definitively proves whether Black workers are receiving these jobs, rather than them just being placed near Black communities. 'Automakers are moving their EV manufacturing and operations to the South in hopes of exploiting low labor costs and making higher profits,' explained Yterenickia Bell, an at-large council member in Clarkston, Georgia, last year. While Georgia has been targeted for investment by the Biden administration, workers are 'refusing to stand idly by and let them repeat a cycle that harms Black communities and working families.'

... Of the 255,000 Congolese mining for cobalt, 40,000 are children. They are not only exposed to physical threats but environmental ones. Cobalt mining pollutes critical water sources, plus the air and land. It is linked to respiratory illnesses, food insecurity, and violence. Still, in March, a U.S. court ruled on the case, finding that American companies could not be held liable for child labor in the Congo, even as they helped intensify the prevalence. ... Recently, the push for mining in the Congo has reached new heights because of a rift in China-U.S. relations regarding EV production. Earlier this month, the Biden administration issued a 100% tariff on Chinese-produced EVs to deter their purchase in the U.S. Currently, China owns about 80% of the legal mines in the Congo, but tens of thousands of Congolese work in 'artisanal' mines outside these facilities, where there are no rules or regulations, and where the U.S. gets much of its cobalt imports. 'Cobalt mining is the slave farm perfected,' wrote Siddharth Kara last year in the award-winning investigative book Cobalt Red: How The Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives. 'It is a system of absolute exploitation for absolute profit.' While it is the world’s richest country in terms of wealth from natural resources, Congo is among the poorest in terms of life outcomes. Of the 201 countries recognized by the World Bank Group, it has the 191st lowest life expectancy."

#antiblackness #colonialism #imperialism #turtle island #congo #library

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probablyasocialecologist · 9 months

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In 2012, Dutch teenager Boyan Slat presented a TED Talk on his concept for cleaning up the ocean with simple mechanisms to sweep up all the trash. While scientists and plastics experts cautioned that his ideas were ineffective, Slat’s non-profit the Ocean Cleanup, founded the year after his talk went viral, has gained millions of followers and big-name backers, including Salesforce, Maersk, KIA, and PayPal’s Peter Thiel. But the venture had one major problem: its first two designs didn’t work, despite the group burning through tens of millions of dollars over the course of a decade. The Ocean Cleanup has since pivoted to work with upstream river “interceptors” that are much more efficient at capturing garbage, but its website still prominently features its latest ocean debris “solution”—essentially a trawl fishing net dragged between two boats that has, to date, collected a comparatively miniscule amount of trash. Tech projects like these are more of a curse than a blessing. Even if the Ocean Cleanup one day somehow beats the insurmountable odds and removes all surface-level traces of plastic marine pollution, it’d still be missing the vast majority of waste that sinks to the bottom of the ocean floor, or breaks up into tiny microplastics. While companies like these bring increased attention to the plastics crisis, they’re ultimately flashy gimmicks that lull our public consciousness into thinking a clever gadget can solve a collective-action problem. These projects also allow consumer brands—like Coca-Cola, an official “Global Implementation Partner” of Slat’s group—to greenwash their continued massive plastic production, while lobbying behind-the-scenes against regulations that would actually help the world break its plastic addiction. “We now know that we can’t start to reduce plastic pollution without a reduction of production,” environmental scientists Imari Walker-Franklin and Jenna Jambeck write in the introduction to their forthcoming study, Plastics. To meaningfully address this crisis and others like it, we need to look upstream, invest in reuse infrastructure, and mandate biodegradable packaging and high material recyclability. At a minimum, we need to start making producers bear the cost for the collection and disposal of their poorly designed goods.

#big tech #silicon valley #plastic #plastic pollution #Ocean Cleanup #Boyan Slat #waste

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postitforward · 1 year

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🌄 It’s another Monday morning, and we are getting there! Slowly, but surely, we are not only making our way through winter, we have made it through the longest days (and for that, I think we ought to offer ourselves a little congrats, no matter how quietly). That in itself can only be a good thing for our collective wellbeing, and as those brighter months are only ever getting closer. Though it may not always feel like it, and throw into that life’s many other stresses and pressures, it can feel like an awful lot. An awful lot of awful, in fact.

But do not fear! Because we have a little something that can make a big big change. Just ten minutes of meditation can help to balance things out and quiet it down in the chaos and noise of each day. So for this Mindful Monday, we have just that! This morning it’s time for Inner Peace Meditation to help you relax when things get a little bit stressful. It calms your mind and relaxes your body. 🧘

However, if we’re going to meditate, we are going to need a guide. This week, introducing your host is Elisa Solinas, from HealHaus! She is a certified meditation guide and yoga teacher, and integrates modern and ancient teachings into classes. She is a trauma-informed practitioner, and prioritizes embodiment and self-empowerment 🦾 She first gravitated to the wellness space to find healing from ancestral trauma, deal with grief, and mend a physical injury. And now, with more than 13 years experience, she has worked and lived in London, Berlin and the Middle East, and worked across creative and international news and non-profit for companies like TED Talks, Al Jazeera English, NBC, Vimeo, Gizmodo, and now CNN digital. 💫

We’d love it if you could join us for just ten minutes of quiet breathing here on Tumblr Live. And you never know what big little differences this time might make…

🧘 WATCH: Inner Peace Meditation with Elisa from HealHaus, 10AM EST 🧘

#holidayblueswithtumblr

#mindful monday #healhaus #tumblr live

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palmofafreezinghand · 2 months

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Carlisle joins a "J. Platt Fan Club" group on Facebook. on ao3 here.

201—

In his nearly four hundred years Carlisle had seen countless radical earth-altering changes; social media had proved to be the most irksome.

He had once dismissed the new applications as a fad, nothing to worry about; until he went ’mildly-viral’ as Alice put it. An emergency room patient had posted a candid, unauthorized, photo of him on an application called Twitter with the caption “my doctor is hotter than my fever.” It was quickly, miraculously, not at all the result of a bribe, deleted from the internet, only after ten thousand people had “liked” the post.

The incident forced him to move, take a year off from medicine, and have a lengthy conversation with a man and leader he once called a friend. When he did return to the human world it was with precautions, accepting a night shift position that was largely surgical. It was difficult for patients to reveal a centuries-old secret if they were under anesthesia. Every contract he signed included a contingency his photo would not appear on the online staff directory or in any promotional material. For extra precaution he held fake indiscrete social media accounts, using them to track past coworkers and any time non-consensual photos of a “hot” medical professional trended, which was shockingly often.

One random afternoon of monitoring “Facebook” a group popped up under a tab called “Groups You Might Be Interested In,” ‘J. Platt Fan Club.’ He joined the group in an instant.

The group was full of various paintings by J. Platt. Many members posted their — often incorrect and unintelligent — interpretations, others posted photos of their own homes showing how they styled framed prints.

He stopped scrolling after twenty minutes, looked up, and snapped a photo of the painting hanging above his desk. A landscape of a small hunting lodge in Northern Wisconsin set in late Spring.

He posted the photo with the caption, “I have many Platt’s works hanging around my home but this one is my favorite.”

It was risky, someone was bound to realize he was the only one in the group who had ever posted an original, the only one who could afford an original. Yet, he felt the need to brag, especially to the random posters who claimed they were “J. Platt’s biggest fan.”

Before he closed the tab a comment popped up, it was one of the self-proclaimed ‘biggest fans,’ an older man named Chester Allen.

“I haven’t seen this one before are you sure it’s a J. Platt?”

‘Biggest fan.’ Sure.

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It had been three weeks since he first discovered the online fan club when Esme peeked over his shoulder. She slinked an arm around his neck, resting her chin on top of his head.

“What is this?” She asked, looking at the comment section he had pulled up. His most recent post of three Platt paintings hanging in their hallway had garnered quite a lot of attention, as had most of his posts over the past three weeks highlighting his collection of one specific artist.

“I’ve joined a fan club,” he smiled, tilting his head to look up at her.

“Oh?” She asked, her eyes landing on his face and then immediately scanning down to his tee-shirt. “What is that?”

He laughed, breaking the embrace to show her his shirt. She scrunched her nose. “You do not like my attire?” He asked, wrapping an arm around her waist.

“I do not think it is inconspicuous,” she said in feigned disdain, allowing him to gently pull her to sit in the chair with him, well more on his lap.

“Why ever not? J. Platt is a quite renowned artist,” he smiled, squeezing her side. “Ask the fan club I joined,” he said, closing out of the comment section and pointing to the group title.

“You started a fan club?”

“No, I joined a fan club, and then I bought their graphic tee shirt. I can purchase you one as well if you wish.”

“Wait, an unauthorized group is selling these ugly shirts and profiting from it?”

“I don’t know how much they’re profiting, it was an inexpensive garment.”

“Who owns this group?” She asked, squinting at the screen.

“Es, you are not sending them a cease and desist. They adore you. Look,” he said scrolling to the recent posts. “There’s your work in someone’s nursery,” he tapped on the screen. Her expression softened slightly.

“That wallpaper does coordinate well.”

He smiled to himself and scrolled on, quickly passing his own post.

“Was that our bedroom?”

“No.”

“Carlisle William Cullen.”

“Yes, it was, but I removed the identifying objects before I took the photo.”

“That bedroom has been in Architect Digest.”

“No one reads that,” he grinned. His joke earned him a slight smile that was quickly covered when she remembered she was trying to be irritated at him.

She gently took the mouse from him and started to scroll. She clicked the comments of one of his posts.

“A print?” She scoffed.

“Your originals are valued higher than most of these people’s houses.”

She shrugged and continued scrolling, he rested his chin on her shoulder as she read. “This man says he’s my biggest fan,” she said, elbowing him slightly. His proclivity to jealousy was her favorite button to push.

“Chester,” he said under his breath.

“He’s quite handsome. Don’t you think?”

“He’s sixty-seven, balding, lives in Illinois, and cheated on his past two wives.”

She turned, eyebrows raised. “How do you know that?”

“I’m guessing,” he lied.

“You are ridiculous,” she shook her head fondly. “Is Dr. Jones on this website?”

“Hush,” he said, tightening his arms around her waist. His tone, which she perceived as jealous but was absolutely not, caused her glee. She pressed a kiss to his temple through her laughter.

Eventually, she turned her attention back to the computer screen, reading various posts for a good ten minutes. He was content to sit there, watching her face as she read the hundreds of compliments. Her slight smile turned to scorn as she read through one of Chester’s comments.

“They think I’m a man?” She gasped.

“Oh yes, there are a few who point out ‘J’ could be disguising a woman’s name, but the popular belief is J. Platt is a man.”

She was already off his lap, and walking towards the door.

“Was that not your intention in picking that pseudonym?” He called as she walked down the hall.

“It was, but I thought people nowadays would catch on.”

He smiled to himself and closed the tab, switching over to his email inbox.

“I do want one of those shirts,” Esme said quietly, popping her head back into the doorway.

“Of course, love,” he smiled, knowing hers was sitting in his closet already. “I love you,” he called when he heard her studio door open.

“Not as much as Chester!” She laughed from across the house.

#carlisle cullen #esme cullen #my stories

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phoenixyfriend · 10 months

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Ko-fi prompt from Klara:

can you please explain like I'm, not five, but, like, ten or twelve, if/why/why-not/how a Business that went from being owned by the founder/founder's heirs/a worker's collective, to being shareholder-owned, can go BACK to its original state?

That one is actually a pretty easy answer, it's just... not easy to implement.

Easier said than done and all that.

ONE: What does shareholder-owned mean?

The majority of the company is parsed out into shares, which are owned by people who do not work for the company. This is not the only way that a company can be owned by other people, but it's a common one. So what are shares?

Companies generally start out privately-owned. Whether this is by the found, by a wealthy investor, or by the bank, there is a specific person that you can point at and go "that person owns it." Sometimes, it's multiple people, split up in specific ways (e.g. started by a team of two that each owns 50% of the company by contract), but it's private.

At a certain point, the company may choose to go public. This means that they have assigned a value to the company, split that value up into a set of shares, and declared that those shares are worth a certain percentage of the company. If you own enough shares, you can direct the company's actions.

Let's say a company goes public with a net worth of $1million. They have split that $1mill into 100,000 shares worth $10 each (this one-share value is called the Initial Public Offering, or the IPO).

If a person buys 1,000 shares, they now "own" 1% of the company. With every share a person owns, they can vote once in shareholder elections for how and where the company goes. (This isn't getting into stuff like preferred stock, which is non-voting in exchange for things like higher dividends.)

If they buy 51,000 shares for a total of $510,000, they own 51% of the company, and now have what is called a controlling interest. This means that the person with those 51,000 shares can more or less unilaterally assign people to the board of directors, and so on.

At the initial public offering, a company will not necessarily put up all their stock for sale. When Apple first went public in 1980, they sold 8% of their stock, most of which went into paying off debs. The other 92% stayed with the then-current owners of the company. These days, most of Apple is owned by institutional investors, which means it's owned by other companies that invest on behalf of people.

So, a shareholder-owned company is owned by people who purchased part of the company, and the company used that money to fund its own growth, whether by paying off debts, buying a new factory, hiring more workers, and so on.

TWO: How do companies purchase back their own stock?

...with difficulty.

When a company has grown its wealth enough to purchase its own stock and start re-consolidating ownership, it's called a stock buyback. It happens with some regularity.

After a company has spent the money earned from the initial sales, that's it. They don't earn more money as shares go up in value, none of that actually goes to them, just to whoever is selling.

So there's this thing called 'dividends.' This is where a company pays out a portion of its profits to shareholders quarterly. Walmart currently pays its investors $0.57 per share, per quarter. For someone with 100,000 shares, that's $228,000/year.

(That's not actually that much for someone who owns over $15mill worth of stock, but it's something. It's not where the actual worth of the share is stored, but that's a whole other mess.)

For legal reasons, a company must act in the best interests of the shareholders. So if the shareholders believe that they will be best served by being paid out the profits as dividends, they will ask for those profits in dividends. If they decide they are best served by the purchase of a new factory, then that's what the money gets put towards. If they want to make the corporation bigger by buying a smaller company, then that's what they do.

Stock buybacks are done for a few reasons, like forcing the price per share to go up by creating scarcity (which is good for anyone looking to resell their stock at a profit), or making it so that dividends per share end up higher by lowering the number of shares to divide profits amongst.

Fun fact, one of the big things the covid-19 stimulus package had rules about was stock buybacks because large companies had previously used taxpayer money to bail out their own debts from the act of buybacks, and the government anticipated that stimulus money for covid-19 relief, meant to ensure employees stayed afloat, would be used on stock buybacks and shareholder dividends unless actively banned.

Did you know buybacks were illegal until the Reagan era?

THREE: So... where does that leave us?

Well... basically, the founder, heirs, or workers need to build up all the capital necessary to purchase at least 51% of the shares.

Which is a lot of money.

It can be done, but it's not easy to stuff that genie back in the bottle. A company that's already focused on ensuring dividends and capital gain are aimed at the shareholders is one that's not going to be paying their employees enough to build up those funds, you know?

It's not feasible unless the founder/heirs have stayed wealthy enough in their own right to buy it all back, or if the stock price plunges so low that the employees can purchase it all at rock bottom prices and then build it back from the ground up.

(Prompt me on ko-fi!)

#economics #stock market #capitalism #phoenix talks #ko fi #ko fi prompts #economics prompts #buybacks #stock buybacks

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sagaduwyrm · 10 months

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Here I am With All My Flaws (Seeking Form and Shelter)

Dick Grayson had half an hour left on his patrol before he could go home and go to sleep. Then Dante Nightingale and his siblings happened. And oh fuck, why is he so pretty. OR Dante Phantom has two deaged siblings to hide and Gotham is somehow the best option. The cute vigilante was a surprise though. The accidental murder is pretty par for the course.

Side Note: Does anyone know what the ship name for Dick/Dan is?

In his long years as a vigilante, Nightwing had learned one thing very well: Gotham did not know the meaning of the phrase “A quiet night.” In Gotham, a quiet easy night was the calm before the storm, the eerie stillness that preceded death and destruction.

Which was why he was pleasantly surprised to find his shift almost over and nothing worse than a few muggings and one stick-up to show for it.

Then again, this was the plan. Red Robin and Spoiler had the cult case, Robin was with Black Bat tracking down Dr. Freeze, Batman was out of town, and the Birds of Prey were working their way through a new crime family. Red Hood rarely discussed his plans with the other bats, but as far as Nightwing knew, Crime Alley was all normal operations at the moment, with only a minor intrusion by the Falcones for Hood’s men to deal with.

That left Nightwing with the simplest job of them all: petty crime. All he had to do was patrol the streets and make sure that the more minor criminals knew that even with all the wackos and bigshots running around, the bats still had more than enough hands to keep an eye on them too. A quiet, easy job, at least by bat standards. Just another half an hour, then Signal would take over for him and he could head back to the manor, get a quick shower in, snag some of Alfred’s cooking, and crash for the next eight hours.

A harsh crash echoed through the alleys beneath him, like flesh striking brick. Nightwing winced in sympathy and quickly tracked the sound to a nearby crevice.

A man was climbing his way back up to his feet, apparently the one to meet the wall with his backside. He looked skinny as a rake with ragged clothes and the symbol for one of the local gangs sewn onto his shoulder. He was laughing, short asthmatic huffs that were the hallmark of any Gothamite who’d had a too-close encounter with the Joker’s laughing gas and hadn't gotten proper treatment.

“A meta, huh? That won’t save you. We own these streets boy. We’ll own you too.”

Nightwing froze where he was crouching. He had already planned to wait until he understood what was going on, always a good practice when organized crime was involved, but with a meta in the mix, this could get bad. Even numbers on whether it’d be the meta or his opponents in trouble.

Dick turned sharp eyes on the other man in the alley. He was caught half in shadow, with broad shoulders and a sharp, strong jawline, messy hair tied back but swaying gently, flickering like fire. In any other circumstances, Nightwing might have tried to flirt with him. He’d always been a sucker for the sort that looked like they could break him in half.

"Stay. The Fuck. Away. From. Them," the taller man snarled.

Fuck, even his voice was sexy. It was deep and rich, with an eerie undertone like a roaring fire, marking another box in the meta-or-inhuman checklist.

The goon was still giggling. “Ooh, big scary man with a big scary voice. Not going to save you. Hand over the brats or watch them die, fuckhead. We’ll even—” he cut himself off with a sharp cackle. “We’ll even give you a cut of the profits, how about that?”

Every piece of electronics within ten yards shrieked and began throwing up sparks. Nightwing swore and jumped to dodge a falling air conditioning unit, thankful for the layers of magical and non-magical protection on his own electronic gear. He swiftly kicked the now-on-fire unit onto cement, pulling out the pellets of fire extinguisher foam from his utility belt.

When he looked back down into the alley, the meta had the fool by the throat, dangling him a foot above the ground where he thrashed frantically. The meta's eyes were glowing the color of congealed blood.

“You think you can sell my siblings? In this city? ” The man had a very sharp set of fangs, Dick noted, ones that didn’t seem to exist entirely in the physical plane. Mainly, there were too many of them and they were too long to fit in his mouth. Nightwing was sure they hadn’t been there twenty seconds ago. “Try it,” the meta snarled. “If the bats don’t get you, the Red Hood will. If he doesn’t get you, I will.”

The goon had frozen sometime during his speech but was now struggling fiercely, with an almost insane desperation in his eyes. He thrashed and yanked, while the man watched with disgusted derision, apparently unimpressed with the previously willful man’s terror. Nightwing snorted a little under his breath and went to make his way down and break things up before they could go too far. He needed to arrest the perp and interrogate him about his gang’s business. Just because this man could clearly protect himself and his family didn’t mean everyone in Gotham could.

The scrawny man got his foot up and kicked at the other’s torso. The man didn’t flinch, but his fingers did clench around the criminal’s neck in surprise. The meta had claws , Nightwing suddenly realized. Sharp ones.

They went straight through the goon's neck, severing arteries that started spraying blood like a fire hydrant. The idiot was dead before he hit the ground.

The two of them, the vigilante and the murderer, stared at the body in mute shock for a long moment.

Finally, Nightwing dug some words out of the hole in his chest. “Did you just kill him on accident ?” His words held more than a tinge of disbelief. Even in Gotham, or especially in Gotham, murder tended to hold a bit more intentionality behind it.

The man looked up at him, no surprise visible at the vigilante’s presence, but plenty of other emotions crowding his face. Annoyance and exasperation, startlement, bad-tempered fury, and intense stress competed for room in his body language.

“If I meant to kill him,” he spoke slowly, in the same way that the build-up before a volcanic eruption was slow. “He’d be a bloody smear on the wall. I don’t do overkill. Why the fuck—”

he cut himself off with a growl, seeming to struggle for words. “That amount of pressure wouldn’t put a scratch on my siblings. I didn’t expect—” he gestured towards the body, flicking the blood off his claws with a sharp movement— “ that .”

Nightwing gave a hum, carefully cleaning up his body language so the other man wouldn’t be able to read the shock and wariness in it. If the meta’s siblings were similarly endowed and he wasn’t used to interacting with normal humans, that would make accidentally tearing a man’s throat out plausible. It didn’t make it okay though, and the way the man used the phrase ‘bloody smear on the wall’ had Nightwing's hackles up. His hand inched towards the button on his belt that would call for backup.

The meta’s head jerked to the side and his eyes, still steadily glowing red, widened, causing Nightwing to jump. A door set into the apartment building across the alley opened with a rusty creak where the man was looking. Two children levered their heads out the door, peering down the alley with sharp, clever eyes that looked just like the meta’s. They couldn’t have been older than five or six.

Their eyes widened with delight when they caught sight of what must have been their older brother.

“Tay!” they shrieked. They hurtled down the alleyway, leaping at their brother from a distance that made Nightwings breath catch. The man spun in place to catch them, kicking the corpse behind a nearby pile of trash in the same movement.

“Tay! The food started boiling over and I know you said not to touch it but I did because it looked really bad and Danny said I should’ve just turned the stove off but I know you stir it whenever—”

The boy shoved his sister’s face to the side, cutting her off. “I told her she should have just turned it off but she tried to stir it and it splashed on her and she iced it! The whole thing! And I couldn’t get it to melt!”

The meta’s harsh expression melted into exasperated fondness, and he slipped his grasp down to the kids’ ankles, throwing them over his shoulder’s to their delighted shrieks. His claws didn’t pierce their skin.

It was a little easier to understand why he was so ready to murder with the kids right there. They were tiny .

Dick took a deep breath, fighting to get his body to relax into something less battle-ready. He felt his shoulders tense back up though as all three meta’s swung glowing gazes up to his perch.

Blood red, lazarus green, and cyan blue. All mildly alarming colors to see in glowing eyes. Dick was unsure whether it helped or not that, now that he could see the man’s full face, his sharp glare was uncomfortably attractive.

“Tay,” the girl leaned in to whisper in her brother’s ear. Of course, it was a five-year-old’s idea of a whisper, so Nightwing could still hear it. “We aren’t supposed to let the bats know. They’ll make us leave .” She looked very solemnly at his brother after disclosing this information.

Nightwing cleared his throat, determinedly not thinking about the goon who just lost his throat or about the beautifully soft expression the meta graced his sister with. “You really should leave. Gotham isn’t a safe place for any kid, but especially not metas.”

“We aren’t—” the girl’s face scrunched up and her brother slapped her hand over his mouth, before burying his face in their eldest brother’s back.

The man looked back at Nightwing, a hint of a snarl on his face. “You think we’d be here if we had any other options? This city is the only one that will hide us.”

Nightwing’s gaze sharpened. “Hide you from what?”

The man scoffed. “None of your business, Knight of Gotham.”

Nightwing examined him carefully. He was inclined to believe that anyone who so clearly cared about his little sibling couldn’t be all bad. Not to mention, Gotham had all sorts of weird energy fields going on and a strong hostility toward outsiders. The city truly might have been their best chance at hiding from whoever it was whose memory had the younger siblings curling up into themselves and the elder brother broadening his stance as if in preparation for a fight.

Still, Nightwing didn’t like the idea of someone with the man’s power sticking around in Gotham with no one keeping an eye on him, both for his sake and others. Luckily, he had an idea.

“Look. There is a reason we keep metas out of this city. But,” he painted a winning smile on his face and raised a hand to forestall any protests. “We aren’t going to kick you out if Gotham is really your best option.” Well, he said we, but really he was making the decisions here. Batman would just have to deal.

The man’s eyes narrowed. “What are you suggesting?”

“Red Hood’s territory is barely five minutes from here.” Nightwing paused, thinking of his younger brother with pride. “And he would fistfight God to protect his people.”

The siblings winced and the younger boy, now on the ground, peaked around his brother to talk with Nightwing. “We don’t want to intru—” he paused, struggling to pronounce a word for a moment, “ intrude in his ter-ri-tor-y.” The boy beamed after getting the full, clearly practiced, phrase out.

Nightwing cocked his head. That wasn’t a no, just a concern. “It’ll be fine,” he said cheerfully. “Look, I’ll call him right now, and we can get you moved over to somewhere I won’t have to constantly check to see if you’ve been kidnapped from by tonight.” Tonight being in twelve hours or so, because somehow it was nearly dawn, and Dick really wanted to be in bed right now but he wasn’t just going to leave this obnoxiously gorgeous man and his siblings. Who knows what trouble they would find? It took a special kind of bad luck to accidentally kill a gang member .

He pulled his phone out of his belt and pulled up Jason’s contact. Hood would be happy to shelter the family, even if he would probably be a bit twitchy about having metas with unknown capabilities in Gotham. Still, better to have them where they could keep an eye on them and hopefully get the chance to earn their trust.

“Hey, Hood?”

“What do you want, Dickhead?” Jason grumbled back at him. He sounded grumpier than normal, and Dick made a mental note to try to figure out if he’d been injured recently.

“I have a family of metas here that need to stay in Gotham, but they’ve already gotten in fights with one gang. Mind if they move into your territory?” Dick purposely used the same word the boy had earlier so they knew he was checking on their concerns.

“How many?”

“Three!” Dick turned to the kids. “Can you tell Hood how old you are so he knows who to expect?” “I’m Danny and that’s Ellie. We’re five.” The child tilted his head as if in confusion. “I think.”

Dick blinked in mild alarm at that. Lots of kids didn’t know how old they were, but something about how Danny phrased that made his inner detective concerned. He looked at their older brother.

The man grunted. “Dante. I’m twenty-three. Probably.” Something amused sparked in Dante’s eyes at the bewildered look Nightwing gave him, and he drawled out, “Murphy’s Law.”

This did not assuage Dick’s concern or really explain anything.

Jason stayed silent for a moment, before sighing. “Fine. I’ve got an apartment they can stay at. I’ll text you the address and we can talk rent later.”

“Thanks, Hood!” Nightwing bounced cheerily on his toes, mindful of the kid’s wide eyes on him. He was probably not setting the best example standing on a rusty railing, but the theatrics tended to help keep civilians, especially kids, calm.

Hood spoke again, “You’re responsible for getting them moved in and checking on them until they get used to my men, Dick.”

“Sure.” Dick smiled at the thought. It would give him an excuse to do something he was going to do anyway. He didn’t plan to let go of the many concerning things the family had mentioned. It had absolutely nothing to do with his teeny tiny crush on the beautiful meta who moved like a predatory jungle cat and loved his siblings so much he practically glowed with it.

“Talk to you later Hood!”

“Yeah, yeah, fuck off asshole.” As he hung up Dick thought that that had gone better than many of his previous conversations with his little brother.

Crimson eyes were still straight on him, and something about the set of Dante’s shoulders screamed caution. “This is freely given?”

Dick blinked. “What?”

“Your aid,” Dante clarified. “It’s freely given. No strings attached?”

That was the sort of language magic-users tended to use. Dick considered his words carefully. “You are in Gotham. Everything in Gotham is mine and my family’s to protect. If the best way to protect you is for you to stay in Gotham,” an honestly insane idea, but they knew their situation best. “I will help you stay in Gotham safely. So yes. My aid is freely given.”

The meta(?) hummed. “Danny, Ellie, go grab our go bags.” The kids nodded and ran back into the building.

Dick’s heartstrings tugged at the idea that everything they needed could be grabbed so quickly, but his gaze was dragged back to the eldest meta.

Something was different about him. Something in the air, the weight and mass of it pressing on Nightwing's shoulders. Something in his shadow, too dark and too deep. Something in the glow of his eyes…

Nightwing had never seen that shade of red before, he realized suddenly. He was almost certain it wasn’t supposed to exist.

“If you cause my siblings any harm,” Dante looked him straight in the eyes and Dick felt oddly frozen despite all his experience that said he should be able to handle this. “I will peel the flesh from your bones and use your entrails to hang your body from the rafters of your family home.” Dick blinked, finally unfrozen, and smiled brilliantly, the way that made seasoned Gotham rogues take a step back. “Understood.” Dante looked at him with something like respect. “I’ll go make sure they haven’t caused any explosions. We’ll be ready in ten."

He swept out, and Dick let himself collapse against a wall.

He really needed to get himself under control. Being attracted to people who could (and would) kill you wasn’t a good thing for a vigilante, even if Batman made it seem normal.

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cricketcat9 · 2 years

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Happy Birthday to Malala!

Happy 25th birthday to Malala! The Pakistani girls' education activist, who survived an assassination attempt by the Taliban ten years ago, became the youngest Nobel Peace Prize laureate in history at the age of 17. In 2020, Malala graduated from Oxford University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics. Today, she continues her work of breaking down barriers to education for girls around the world through her non-profit organization, the Malala Fund.

#happy birthday malala

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bigmouthlass · 1 month

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Title: A Strange Detour

Series: Holler Me Home, part 1

Author: BJ

Fandom: Supernatural

Rating: Explicit

Pairing: Dean Winchester/You, Dean Winchester/Reader

Synopsis: 'You' are an Omega fresh off a daring rescue of Alpha!Dean. Fate wouldn't be so cruel as to bring on a heat when you're seeing him home-- oh wait.

Tags: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, ABO, Omegaverse, Alpha Dean Winchester, Omega You, Omega Reader, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Knotting, Dubious Consent,

AN: If I've misused any of the ABO tropes, I apologize. There's a lot about ABO dynamics that bother me, I tried to play with it a little so it doesn't come off quite so . . . squicky. There is content referencing sexual abuse of minors but it's offstage, non-explicit, and not meant to be in any way titillating. All recognizable intellectual properties are owned by their respective creators and holders of any copyrights or trademarks. This is a not-for-profit work of fan art and protected by Fair Use.

---

The first flush hits as you climb through the door and lock it behind you. "Oh shit!"

The body stretched out on your bed murbles something.

"Never mind, go back to sleep."

An affirmative grunt is the only response, and you shut yourself in the RV's tiny bathroom. Pinching in your back dispenses with the notion that you can get by using regular drugstore suppressants; the damn things don't work when the show's already on the road. Instead you reach for the neutralizer and smear it over your scent points. Not much you can do about your privates, except stick a thick pad there and hope for the best. Cussing, you eat some aspirin with a cup of coffee, get in your captain's chair, and hit the backroads.

Your guest wakes up about the time you pass the state line. Tall, very handsome, stiff with the aftermath of an ass-whuppin’, the bruise on his cheekbone turning a nice shade of plum and lilac. "Morning sunshine. There's coffee in the cupboard over the stove. Make yourself useful."

Dean Winchester grunts something obscene but he goes to do as he's told. "What's with the cigarettes? Thought you quit."

"I did," you confirm, crushing your cigarette out and lighting another. "I've been up for thirty-six hours since I got the SOS from Garth to come save your dumb ass. Cigarettes keep me awake. Next step up is speed and that shit makes me sick." And the smoke should cover any scent that gets past the neutralizer.

"Alright you've made your point. Open a window or something."

"Can't. We'll lose the air conditioning."

"Don't care. Those things reek."

Conceding his point, you get him to open the windows. Whether or not that improves the air quality is debatable. Downwind of Gary stinks of burned oils and bad decisions. On top of that it's one of those overcast days where the world feels like a steam room on half power. Dean's flannel and your jean jacket get tossed up into the upper front bunk within minutes. Lord have mercy but why did he have to pick today of all days to wear a tank top? In his mid-thirties, Dean looks his age, and his age looks pretty damn good.

Of course short sleep is only part of the story. Thanks to the scrambling your hormones got from ten years of experimental suppressants, your heats are hard and painful. You scrap the plan to escort Dean back to Kansas yourself and make a new plan to hit up a fixer you know who lives in Illinois. Izzy’s got a bunch of beaters with clean titles and he owes you a big one.

Dean's not in a much better mood than you are. With how often he gets kidnapped and thrashed you'd think he'd be used to the process, but no. The ride turns into one giant bitchfest, Dean ignoring your growls to shut the fuck up as he complains about everything-- how much his back hurts, how he mashed his fingers in the cupboard door, how the radio isn't picking up anything but bad country western and whiny preachers. Battling the backroads of Indiana in a C-class RV in ninety degree weather and no air conditioning, with a bad heat coming on and the world's biggest fussy baby whining in your ear, is going in the books as one of your special Hells. You wish Sam was here. Nobody's better at Dean-wrangling than he is. You should be so lucky; Sam's holed up at the Winchesters' super secret hideout, fresh off surgery to repair a torn tendon in his knee.

A stop for gas and some fried chicken helps. "I'm sorry," you apologize, swallowing a big hunk of drumstick. "I don't think I've eaten since lunch yesterday and I'm a total bitch when I'm hungry."

"'M sorry too," Dean says around a mouthful of coleslaw. "I try to be nice to people who save my ass."

"Dude," you say, "saving your ass is not only a service to humanity, it's my distinct pleasure." Your reward is a blinding grin and an eyebrow waggle, and you try not to blush. The man is hot as a lit match and if things were different-- well, you'd have to take a number, people a lot cuter'n you have drawn blood for the pleasure of his company.

Your pussy clenches and a brutal cramp seizes your innards. Fresh slick oozes, the sensation making you cringe. You seize on Dean's casual, "So what's the plan?" like a drowning woman grabbing for a life ring. "Well my nearest fixer lives outside a little town name of Union Hill. He can hook you up with transportation and gas money." And you can park the RV in the middle of nowhere and howl out your heat in peace.

"You don't want to come back and visit?" Dean asks. If you didn't know better you'd think he looks a little . . . hurt. "Sam would love to see you. He told me to say thank you for that print you sent."

"Everybody should have a Van Gogh in their first house," you say, smiling. "It's like a national law." Your smile breaks on a massive yawn.

"Hey-- go get some sleep," Dean says. "I've got a CDL, I can drive this tin can."

"Watch it Winchester, this is my home you're talking about," you grouch. A power nap sounds nice right now, if for no other reason than it's a excuse to put some space between you and Dean. Far as he knows you're a Beta, and you intend to keep it that way. "You know how to get to Kankakee from here?"

Dean gives you a look.

"Sorry, my bad. Wake me when we hit the city."

"Yes ma'am," Dean says.

"Salute me when you say that."

Without looking back as he settles into your captain's chair, Dean flips you off. "Hey," he asks as he fires up the engine, "you know of a good barbecue joint around where we're going?"

"There's a truck stop on 57, maybe two or three exits south. They've got a pit out back. Why?"

Dean makes that dunno shrug sound. "I could seriously go for some ribs.”

---

You're deep under, dreaming of plush lips and -- of all things -- chocolate fudge and cheesecake when the RV lurches.

"Sorry," Dean calls back as you climb out of bed. "We're making a pit stop. I gotta find a pharmacy."

The RV lurches again, damn near throwing you off your feet. The coffeepot crashes to the floor. "Fuck-- Dean!"

"Sorry," he says, unconvincingly. Someone outside blares a horn and Dean hollers something you're sure he didn't learn in church. You peer out through the curtains and see a Walgreens. Dean wheels into a bank of parking spaces and cuts the engine.

"Wait a-- Dean! chill!" Too late, he's out the door and jogging across the parking lot. You stare at the remains of your coffee maker, source of the bitter fuel of life. How Sam has not strangled Dean in his sleep, you have no idea.

Well as long as you're here-- grimacing through the intensifying cramps you pick up a new coffeemaker and stock up on protein drinks and bottled water. Omegas can, and have, died of thirst or hunger while deep in heat. As you leave the store you see a Confinement Notice posted on the wall. Shit. You forgot, Illinois is a Confinement state-- unless you get your horny ass inside the cops can pick you up and stash you in a closet next to the drunk tank until your heat runs its course. For Your Own Safety, For Their Own Safety. It's tempting to rip the damn thing off the wall and burn it.

Dean's in the bathroom when you get back, grunting something about an upset stomach. Whatever, Dean locked in the bathroom means less chance you'll do something dumb. Maybe, just maybe, you can get out of this with your dignity intact.

If you can fight through the haze drifting across your brain. Thick killer fog, smothering logic and reason, turning off anything but a fierce longing for bare skin, lips, hands, knot. Your skin is burning, clothes are starting to chafe. You’re running out of time.

When you get to Izzy’s hideout -- a cozy basement cave on an abandoned farm with a yard full of rustbucket cars, the house and barn lost to a fire years ago -- you're in a state. Febrile, trembling, every erogenous zone on your body aching. You have to take a minute to get your knees under you when you climb out of the RV. Jesus, you've never had a heat hit this fast.

"No." With shaking fingers you touch the note caught in the storm cellar door, staring wide-eyed and disbelieving at heavy duty padlocks. "No no no no no no, Jesus fuck no--" you dash back into the RV and pound on the bathroom door. "Dean get out here! My fixer's gone, you gotta see if you can get one of his beaters running--"

"I can't." Dean's voice is even hoarser and deeper than usual.

"What? Why the hell not? Your legs broke?"

A choke of laughter. "If only."

"Dean this isn't funny," a crinkle of plastic gets your attention and you pick a shopping bag up off the floor. The receipt is inside and as you read the brand names your insides collapse into a void. Neutralizer and suppressants, Alpha formula. Oh Jesus died in vain and legally changed his middle name to Fucking, Dean is in rut.

"Why didn't you tell me?!?" you shrill. "Dipshit, it's really not a good idea to be riding around in a mobile home full of fucking guns when you've got a rut coming--"

"I didn't know!" Dean roars and you flinch. "My rut's not due for another three fucking weeks! Maybe one of those assholes dosed me. Maybe those painkillers you gave me did something-- I don't know." Dean goes on, oblivious to your silence. "Fucking thing comes every thirty-three days, has ever since I was fifteen. I could set my watch to it. I wake up this morning, I feel fine, three hours later I start getting the shakes. I thought if I loaded up on suppressants I could hold it off until I got home but the fucking things aren't working!"

"How bad is it?" you ask.

"I could pole-vault over myself right now," Dean says. "Look I know you're probably exhausted but you gotta get me back to the bunker--"

"Dean you see the bag hung over the towel bar on the door?"

A pause. "Yeah?"

"Open it up and look inside." The bag, an old army medic first aid kit, is where you keep the stuff from the drug trial-- copies of questionnaires, doctor's exam notes, charts of the side effects, the empty glass vials with their color-coded labels. You listen as Dean opens it up and rifles through the contents, and cringe when the anvil drops and he starts snapping out swears. "What the fuck?!? Omega?"

The contempt in the word gets you mad again. "Because it wasn't your business and my heats aren't regular. I wouldn't have shut us up in a box together if I thought I wasn't safe!" Your uterus clenches into a hard fist and your knees buckle, your palms smacking on the kitchen counter.

"Oh fuck. Do not tell me you're going into heat."

You cough out a laugh. "You tell me. Alpha."

Dean sniffs. "Oh Jesus Christ. How-- oh God you smell good. How did I never notice?"

"The shit I was on worked." There had been side effects of course-- your hair falling out all over, a uterus full of fibroids and scar tissue, the increased cancer risk, irregular and painful heats . . .

Not fun. But a breeding Omega is a liability as a Hunter, and you need Hunting more than you need a mate and pups. However vehemently your body disagrees right now.

"I knew you were something," Dean says, surprising you.

"Oh fuck off Winchester, I'm not one of those slobbering Betas you pick up in bars who want a walk on the wild side with a real-life Alpha. Did any of them ask you for a bite?"

"You're a vicious bitch when you're in heat, you know that?"

Your reply is lost in a high squeak of pain. The latch on the bathroom door rattles and you lock it from the outside-- you'd installed the bolt years ago. Just in case. Dean throws it a shoulder. Panicking, you shriek, "Dean stop!"

He slumps against the back wall. He takes a deep sniff, like a little kid smelling a flower. You can't help it, you pull a deep breath and moan as Dean's scent hits your brain, filling your senses with fudge and leather.

It takes every bit of your disappearing willpower to stagger to your bed.

---

The next hours are pure misery. Wave after wave of need racks your body, your cunt clenching around nothing, every fiber of your being desperate for a knot, for seed. The tiny little space left where you live is just as desperate, cracking you with a whip of you are not your biology, you are not some hole for an Alpha to hump their come into, you are not some fucking brood mare, you are not, you are not, you are not--

Again and again you cry out as the words fail you. Your own hands and the toys in the nightstand drawer work overtime, wringing climaxes out of your body to the point of pain. They just make it worse. Your body doesn't want to come, it wants Alpha. Surrounding you, holding you down, pulling you close, knotting, biting, marking, mating-- just in time you sink your fangs into your pillow and howl.

When the first wave recedes it's dark outside. Your body feels like a clenched fist and you hiss in pain as you unwrap yourself from your pillows and pull yourself straight. It's agony but you know from bitter experience that you have to use these lucid periods productively. Your knotting toy lays at the foot of the bed, sticky and stinking. Tears of frustrated rage in your eyes, you pick it up and hurl it overhand, hard enough to dent the wall.

"Jesus!" Dean snaps from the bathroom.

"Sorry. Are you okay?"

"Well," Dean says as you lurch to the kitchen table and crack a bottle of protein drink, "I've got a hard-on that won't die and a really embarrassing mess to clean up--"

"Dude!"

"You asked, genius. And I am starving. I could eat a dead skunk if you put some onions on it first."

"There's a box of ration bars under the sink and the clear water tank is full. Just in case," you add, "there's a pistol and a silver knife in the toilet tank and some holy water in the medicine cabinet." You do what you can to clean off some of the sweat and slick, the cool water soothing on your skin.

The next wave hits and you're on the floor dragging the washcloth back and forth through your pussy, spread out on your front with your ass in the air. Dean's crouched down on the bathroom floor. You can see his face pressed against the little slats in the door, hear the hissing of breath through his nose. Gobbling up your scent like a kid with a sackful of Halloween candy. Shuddering, disgusted with yourself, disgusted with him, you crawl back into your bed for round two.

---

"You gotta let me outta here," Dean says, several hours later.

"You can't leave," you tell him tiredly. "Illinois has Confinement laws." You getting caught with an RV full of unregistered firearms, pipe bombs, drugs of all functions, magic supplies both holy and otherwise, and maybe one or two satchel charges is one thing. Dean getting picked up? The FBI would put him under the jail.

You hear Dean sit on the toilet lid. "Shit."

"Yeah. Don't suppose there's anybody you can call--"

"Phone's on the table. Besides," he adds, "everyone I can think to call is-- they shouldn't be coming here."

You hear the unspoken point. Garth's a Beta but there's a full moon coming and he won't risk being caught away from home. Sam is out of commission and an Alpha besides. Castiel is . . . well, he is what he is, but he's in the wind. "Shit.”

"I just said that."

"Hoho, very funny. Ha ha, it is to laugh."

Dean snorts. “Look, ‘Mega--”

“Don’t call me that! Don’t you ever call me that!!!” you yell.

“Okay okay okay-- just listen. Is it really so awful?”

"Do I have to dignify that with an answer?" you snap back. "This shit fucking hurts, you dick."

"That's not what I meant," Dean says. "I mean-- the thought of me. Is that really so awful?"

Oh God, what a question. "Have you looked at yourself in the mirror lately? I'd have to fight for you with anyone with eyesight and a libido that works."

Dean doesn't say anything for a moment. "So. Any Alpha that's good-looking?"

"Fuck you," you spit. "You have any idea how fucking demeaning this shit is? I'm going on about my day and all of a sudden I wanna drop my drawers for any twitching dick that walks by? When I was in school I had fucking Betas grabbing me in the halls. 'Present for me Omega.'" Your voice almost breaks. The memory of your first heat is one you don’t want back. "One of them was my fucking history teacher. Said it was his duty as an Alpha."

A bitter sound that might've started as a laugh comes from the bathroom. "Librarian," he says. "Dragged me into the science wing supply closet. Said her husband went noseblind and she was dying for a knot."

"Jesus." Would they? Of course they would. Young, attractive, bad reputation, mostly on his own-- to a certain kind of scum Dean would've been catnip. "How old were you?"

"Seventeen." Dean pulls a breath. "There were some others at that school. I got passed around like a fucking trophy." Or a whore, you think but don't say. "I never said nothing to anybody but I kept getting these looks from some of the seniors. Big bad Alpha, even the teachers want a piece. I tried-- I swear, I tried to stop. One of them, she taught one of Sammy's classes-- he started taking high school English when he was in sixth grade. She told me if I didn't fuck her she'd call the cops and get Sammy taken away."

You touch the surface of the locked door. The one threat Dean would never, ever take as anything but serious, the one thing that would scoop his guts out and make him nice and tame. "They can go straight to Hell," you say. Your tongue hits your fangs, fully descended. As if you could go back in time and rip the bitches to pieces for daring to lay a hand on your-- on him. "Every last motherfucking one of them."

Silence, no engine noises, no crunch of tires in the distance. Just insect wings and an owl hooting in the trees. Just you two and the angels right now, and you hope to God they're not paying attention.

"You're the first person that didn't instantly make a joke about it," Dean says finally.

"I make jokes about funny shit. That shit ain't funny."

"Yeah." You hear something light, leaflike-- Dean flipping a page. "Did someone hurt you? Is that why you signed up for this?"

"Omegas get hassled. It comes with the territory," you dodge the question. "I volunteered because--" you think a minute. "I went into heat once when I was tracking a tseste. Damn near died. OTC meds weren't strong enough, so I started doing some digging. Pfizer’s been working to develop heavy-duty suppressants for a while now. High dose hormone regulators. I sighed up for a clinical trial. Stuff works great-- no scent, no mating drive. The drug part of the study ended about a year ago. I just have to go to the doctor twice a year for follow-ups."

Dean snaps his fingers. "That's why you didn't take that case in Buffalo. That ghost ship."

"Yeah. I was parked outside Sault Ste Marie scaring the mosquitoes." Ashamed, you add, "I really am sorry about that, I heard you and Sam damn near drowned."

"Wasn't your fault." That leafy sound again. Of course Dean's read through everything in the bag. Nothing else to do in there but play with himself, you think and wish you hadn’t. Those big hands and nimble fingers, strong enough to bend iron, gentle enough to suture a wound or wipe a tear. "Did the jerks from the drug company tell you how bad the side effects could get?"

"They had to," you reply. "This isn't a super secret project to neuter all the Omegas in the world. Pfizer gets a suppressant formula that actually works, they'll be the richest bastards since the Pharaohs. I'd sell my soul not to have to deal with," your lip curls in revulsion as you take yourself in, soaked in sweat and slick and ready to throw yourself at any swelling knot, "this."

"Please tell me that’s a figure of speech."

You roll your eyes. "Even I'm not that desperate. It's not you, Dean. If it were just us--" why in God's name are you saying these things?

"It is just us," Dean points out. "Nothing here but you and me."

"You, me, and a mating instinct that still gets people off the hook for murder in 36 states." The words flow, like blood from a deep cut. "I took a shitload of drugs that killed my uterus and will probably give me cancer because that's better than pumping out pups by the boatload until my body gives up and dies. And don't tell me it doesn't have to be that way. It might not be legal to throw out job applications from Omegas but it still fucking happens. You know what I wanted to do before I had my first heat? I wanted to go to West Point. Be the first woman on the Joint Chiefs. But nope, the Corps loves Alphas but Omegas are too much fucking hassle--"

"You're not hearing me," Dean interrupts your tirade.

"And you aren't hearing me. I can't afford to forget I'm a fucking sow. It's gonna get me killed one of these days. You got the same classes I did Winchester, you know the life expectancy of Omegas tops out at fifty-five. Fifty for male Omegas."

"And thirty-five for female Alphas. That's not the point."

You gulp. Dean in rut and out of patience was not something you ever wanted to see. You clutch your midsection, another wave of heat stirring, sucking at you, pulling you under.

"I wanted you the minute I looked at you," Dean says, making your eyes pop wide. "I didn't make a move because I thought you couldn't stand Alphas. Remember that night, when Sammy and me met you?"

You nod. "The harpy nest."

"We had to pull you off that frat boy Alpha when he grabbed your ass." Shit. You remember the incident, sort of, you were pretty drunk at the time. You'd forgotten about the part where Dean had to drag you kicking and screaming off the premises while Sam talked the bouncer out of calling the cops.

Dean's voice goes even rougher, lower. It feels like he's speaking right to that surging, stinging want spreading through you. Your hind brain plucks the same old song on your nerves, mate-knot-breed, mate-knot-breed, the same old breedslut’s waltz. The animal inside wants to dance, and relishes the thought of taking Alpha’s lead. "If I wanted to knot you 'til you bleed I would. I can break through this damn door in a New York minute and you know it. And for the record," you shudder, "I can feel exactly how much you're hurting right now and you have no idea what it's like having to feel my mate in pain and just stand here with my dick in my hand."

The sensation of total stop gets underlined by another murderous cramp. Curled with pain, you shout, "MATE?!? ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS?!?!?"

"It's the only way this makes sense," Dean says. "You said you've never had your heat take you this fast. I've never been more than a couple days off-schedule. Either we've been hit with a curse and fuck I hope not or we're a match and our cycles are synching up."

"You don't honestly believe in that true mates crap," you say, digging your nails into your sides hard enough to break skin.

"I've seen it. There were these two guys. Hunters. We ran into them on a case. I saw the claiming bites. Sam asked them when they got together and Jose said they met on the streets. When they scented each other, they knew. Jose said it was like somebody distilled happiness. You know what you smell like to me right now?" Dean takes a long sniff. "Grape popsicles.” Another sniff. You can picture him scenting, head back, lips parted, skin flushed and shadowed with beard, a Renaissance angel in bluejeans, those eyes looking at you, wanting you. “Barbecue, with brown sugar and lots of pepper.”

You aren't aware of scenting and the words just sort of come out. "Mackinac Island fudge.” One hand slides down and between “My mom's old motorcycle jacket."

Faintly, you hear the clink of a belt buckle. "Cinnamon."

Your fingers glide over slicked flesh. "Cedar shavings."

A soft groan, a breathless voice. "Irish whiskey."

Both hands, seeking, circling, inside. "Toasting marshmallows."

You can hear the rhythmic sliding of skin against skin. A soft plosive sound, Dean spitting into his hand. "Hot engines."

Your body clenches at your fingers, the bands of muscle meant to lock behind Alpha's knot flexing and fluttering. "Gunpowder."

Dean's panting as he sinks to his knees. "Peanut butter--" he moans your name.

Climax breaks over you and you curl your fingers into a bony knot, your other hand rolling your clit like a marble in oil. "Baked apples," you cry out as Dean gasps from the other side of the locked door. Scent and seed and slick and tears. You crawl away from the bathroom crying out in pain as the heat rips and drags you under.

---

Never ask if things can get worse. God takes it as a personal challenge.

You didn't even make it into the bed. Instead of climbing up onto the sheets you’d curled up into a tight ball on the floor, and there you remain. You'd assumed the scent of an Alpha in rut made heat as bad as it could possibly get. Misss-stake. The paradigm has shifted, your instincts have seized on the idea (the truth, a little part of you cries) and that's not just an Alpha in the other room (mine!), it's Dean. You can't pretend the Alpha, the man, you're scenting is just some knot that happens to look like your friend (mate). Dean's hands on your blazing skin, Dean's mouth kissing yours, Dean's knot locked in your cunt, Dean's seed pumping into your body. Oh the things he could do to you, body and spirit so much stronger than he lets on.

Your scents have intensified to the point where you can taste them on the air, bite them off and chew them. A filmstrip voice from fifth grade sex ed class drones in your memory-- 'like their animal counterparts with similar mating cycles, Alphas and Omegas in season produce pheromones to indicate their status to potential mates. In the correct conditions, pheromones can be detectable up to a mile away. An unmated Alpha or Omega's pheromone production will increase the longer a breeding cycle continues without a successful mating.' The sound of hateful sniggering, always in your ears. Breeder, cum sink, momslut, Omega.

The sense of Dean's presence drags across your senses like fish hooks over your skin, and cruelest of all it's not demanding, it's begging, pleading. Alpha feels your agony and longs to take the pain away. Faintly you can hear Dean's voice, thick with his own need. He keeps asking you to answer him, laugh at this, say something at that, breathe like a train engine, anything to help you emerge from the Hell of your own body.

And something just . . . gives. Breaking strain, tipping point, limit reached and breached. "Dean!" you cry, sobbing so hard you can't breathe. "Help me! Dean, please--"

A crack like a gunshot, and the bathroom door splinters into matchsticks. You turn your head and there he is, barechested, jeans hanging open, his cock jutting up and out, the knot at the base dark and pulsing. You look for Dean and instead it's all Alpha and your heart crumbles to ash. Weeping, you do what's expected; head down, spread your knees as wide apart as they'll go, press your chest down into the floor, arch your back to flare up your rear. A proper presenting, showing Alpha you're ready for breeding. Like a stinking beast and worth half as much.

"Please," you cry into the floor. If dignity is cheap why does it hurt so much to lose? "Please, it hurts, it hurts so bad."

"I know baby, it's okay, I got you," instead of spreading you wider or grabbing you by the nape Dean takes your shoulders and pulls you gently upright and against his chest, the heat of his skin matching the heat under yours, "c'mere, it's gonna be okay, shh," softness pressing to your face, your head, your mouth, "can you stand? c'mon, put your feet down--" he pulls one of your limp arms over his shoulders and stands, drag-marching you the last step to your bed. By the time he's got you laid down he's shuddering almost as hard as you are.

You whine when Dean pulls away, gasping out pleas, grabbing his hand and interlacing your fingers. Whatever he was going to do gets abandoned and Dean drags himself overtop you, jeans boots and all. You wind yourself around him, soaking up the feel and the smell and the everything the way cracked skin soaks up lotion-- pain and relief all at once. His cock drags across your belly, leaving a hot trail. A hand gropes your cunt and you let out a high whistling gasp. "Hang on baby," Dean says. He tries a smile. "Left my lube in my other pants."

You smack him somewhere meaty. Dean grunts but his attention doesn't waver. Two fingers slip inside and wiggle while Dean murmurs how tight, how wet and warm, how good it's gonna feel, how good he's going to make you feel. The tip of his cock brushes you and before you can freeze he rolls his hips and oh.

There's no resistance at all. He just glides, fitting up into your body like a key in a lock. Every single muscle in your body pulls tight tight tight and you scream, Dean half-sobbing a curse against your lips. The spasm lets go just as you feel yourself starting to pass out and clarity returns to the feel of your Alpha painting your face with kisses, your bare skull held gently between his hands. Blood and sensation surges back and you moan as Dean puts an arm around your back and thrusts.

He's big inside you, and the way he's got you tipped makes every movement light sparks along your nerves. Gentleness goes by the boards as your body clutches at him, as your claws cut furrows in his back and your heels dig into his butt. The rest of reality doesn't exist, all that matters is Dean in your arms, Alpha's knot swelling, starting to catch.

The world goes upsie-daisy as Dean grabs tight and rolls the whole works over. "Wanna see," he pants, holding your hips until you get your balance. "My knot-- oh my God you're beautiful, you're so goddamn beautiful."

You don’t have words, just touch, your hand pulling Dean up for a kiss. Your bodies find their stride and you’re rocking hard together, moaning against each other’s lips. Hours on the edge has you in a place beyond, need and pain and bliss all smashed and melted together. You’re desperate for the end, you want this to never end.

“NO!” you scream in denial when Dean’s knot pops and your cunt locks him in place. His back arches as he comes and the pain in your body drains away as his cock pumps you full of seed. You start to cry, your own peak denied, release out of your reach--

Beneath you, Dean sprawls, crying out at each pulse of his cock. His hands clamp on your hips hard enough you can feel him clutching bone. Unconsciously you follow his unspoken lead, rotating your body around Alpha’s knot, making every millimeter of him stroke and drag. Jaw clenched as your pussy pulls at his overstimulated cock, Dean strokes your clit, his touch light as bird wings and intense as fireworks. His eyes lock with yours and what’s left of the world fades to nothing. All that’s real is this, Alpha and Omega, you and Dean.

Everything in you stops and flashbulbs pop behind your eyes as you finally come, crying out Alpha’s name, and the last thing you hear is Dean shouting as another load of his seed bursts into your womb. Your body folds over and everything goes black.

---

Just before dawn, when the terminator passes and everything is shades of blue, you open your eyes, flat on your back. On his side, curled up next to you, Dean sleeps. One of his arms lays across your belly.

Well. You lie still, utter peace rubbed up against utter shock. 24 hours ago you were giving your wounded friend two Oxycontin with a bourbon chaser and worrying about gas money. You take a whiff, noting the change in your mingled scents. Lord it's weird, relaxing and tensing up all at once.

Dean mumbles a little and you shut your eyes, going boneless. You don't want to see his face when he opens his eyes and realized he's not in bed with a gorgeous, well-fucked, ready-for-more Beta. He'd said he wanted you and he wasn't lying -- you give yourself at least that much credit -- but an Alpha in rut would find an Omega in heat attractive no matter what.

Dean takes a deep sniff at your neck. Is he purring? Moaning? Whatever it is, it's going right to that worried place, soothing it away. "Hey," he says, so softly. "You awake?"

"Mmm," you grumble, turning on your side and into Dean's arms. Dean doesn't turn away, doesn't grope you, doesn't mutter obscenities as he rolls you over to present. You can feel him moving around you, making his body into a safe little harbor, and you can almost believe there's nothing else in the world he'd rather be or do.

For all that he's a Hunter and one of the strongest personalities you know, for all that you'd never doubt for a minute that Dean's an Alpha, the thought of Dean being Alpha as you understand Alphas doesn't click. Alphas don't get all soft and googoo face when they're holding someone else's pup. Alphas don't turn down sex from cooperative partners even when said partner is a little short of legal or too drunk to tapdance. Unmated adult Alphas don't exist cooperatively for years on end even when they're related. Sam behaves more Alpha than Dean does and Sam's a sweetheart most of the time.

Another wave of heat swells in you but there’s no pain, just want. You nuzzle your way up Dean’s throat and meet him for a kiss.

Both of you pull away with a disgusted noise. “Ew. Dragon breath,” you say.

“Yours is worse,” Dean, no gentleman, tells you. “Least I don’t taste like an ashtray.”

“Hold your breath,” you order, reaching down and feeling him rise to attention.

Pouting-- he’s actually pouting-- Dean pushes your hand away. “Sorry baby,” he says, kissing your forehead, “but I gotta piss like a racehorse.”

“Charming. Make it fast.” You make a face as you roll out of bed. At least these aren’t the good sheets. An Alpha in rut leaves behind one fuck of a wet spot.

Dean picks up a piece of wrecked door. “Holy shit.”

“You’re paying my deductible,” you tell him, reaching around the doorframe and snatching your toothbrush.

Ten minutes later and you’ve got minty fresh breath, a protein drink in your system, and your butt squeaking a brisk one-two beat on the kitchen counter as Dean fucks you to within an inch of your life.

---

“Well this is awkward,” you say.

Dean pants out a laugh. “Ya think?”

You try to shift yourself off Dean’s knot and hiss in pain. “Um . . .” you give him a pained grin, “I like Captain Solo where he is?”

That gets you a glare. “Seriously?”

“Sorry. Pop out on three-- one, two--”

“No no no no no, you’ll tear.” Over your protests, Dean picks you up off the counter, careful of your knotted together bodies. He sits on the dining table, draping you over his lap and making your mewl as his cock shifts around inside you. Dean sighs as you get your knees on either side of his hips. “That’s better.”

“You didn’t have to do that.”

“Why the hell not? I’m not going to just rip out of you. What kind of an asshole do you think I am?”

“An Alpha. And you’re not an asshole you’re a dipshit. There’s a difference.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I.” You can’t help it, your lip curls in a snarl. “Not much I could do to stop you.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“Oh am I offending you now?”

That’s worth a glare. “Yeah, kinda, it pisses me off that you think you gotta prove something to me.”

“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?” you ask, confused.

“I mean--” Dean cuts himself off, thinking, holding you still when you try that swivel trick around his knot. “Stop that.”

“Whyyyy?”

“Because I’m trying to have an adult conversation--”

“Whyyyy?”

“Because you’re starting to remind me of Sam when he was ten and it’s annoying--”

“WHYYYY?”

“Because I really do not want to be thinking of my brother right now--”

“WHYYYY?!?”

Dean’s fighting a grin and losing. “Animaniacs references will not save you--”

“WHYYYY?!?!?”

“Knock it off!”

You suck in a breath for the whine to end all whines, only to breathe crosswise into coughing as Dean starts tickling you. Swearing through your giggles, you attack his ribs.

Somewhere in there tickling’s led to stroking, caressing, kisses, soft bites. Gently you drag your lips across Dean’s collarbones, down to mouth a nipple, up to nibble over his tattoo. Just touching him feels good.

His mouth slips down the side of your neck and pauses on the mating gland. You stiffen. Hurt shines in Dean’s eyes, before he covers it in irritation. “Jeez-zus Christ I’m--”

Making a decision, you touch his lips and shush him up. “Look. When this is over we’ll talk. For real talk, I promise. Until then, can we table the deep soul-bearing heart-to-heart shit?”

“You’re regretting this already?” Dean asks, the hurt shining through more strongly.

“God no.” Pounding the point home with a kiss. “I just don’t want you to. If you’re right, about us I mean.” You stare into his eyes, nearly lost in shining green, one of your hands over his beating heart. “I don’t wanna fuck this up.”

Dean takes your face between his hands and kisses you, deep and sweet. You barely notice when his knot collapses and he slips out, leaving a mess of mingled come all over you both.

---

It’s getting hot, sweat making your bodies slide deliciously as you gently, softly, agonizingly move against Alpha. His cock fills you beautifully, the fat head rubbing against a spot inside that brings tears to your eyes. Slow, stoking the heat burning through your body.

Dean lifts your leg a little higher, goes a little deeper. “Hold your leg like that,” he whispers. His newly freed hand goes to your belly and presses down against the shallow curve of tummy fat. “Feel that?”

You can. Your insides fluttering as Dean pushes against them. From inside. Makes every movement more there, more immediate. Head, ridge, shaft, knot-- you moan when Dean starts gently rubbing your clit, making him answer in kind when your cunt spasms around him.

It lasts, Dean makes it last, until you can’t anymore and he flips you to your back and fucks his knot into you. You cry out as your body takes another load of seed and you lie there, bodies heaving for air, the two of you glued together with the heat.

---

“You’re a genius,” you tell Dean.

“I know, I know,” he smiles, almost too beautiful to look at in the rich sunset light. Your nose can still pick up his scent, mixed with green leaves and burning citronella. The two of you sit on your old air mattress, sharing some dried fruit and venison jerky, passing a jug of water. In the west the sun vanishes in a riot of rose and orange and purple. High up on the roof of your little home on wheels, it really does feel like a tiny slice of Heaven.

“I still do this, whenever I hit a hunt away from the cities,” you tell Dean. “Especially out in the desert country, like Lake Taos? I always freeze my ass off in the morning but the sky’s just . . .”

“Yeah,” Dean chuckles. “We were on our way across Nevada once and we got caught between towns. Dad had to stop and get a little sleep. So Sammy and me lay on the windshield and watched the stars. I was dozing and Sammy woke me up when he saw a whole buncha shootin’ stars-- we must’ve caught the tail end of a meteor shower.”

Dean’s gaze has gone inward, his voice rough and loose with that bit of Texas that comes out sometimes. When Dean reminisces, it’s usually centered on Sam, or him and Sam as a unit, the Winchester Boys, Butch and Sundance, Martin and Lewis, Heckle and Jeckle. Truly impactful memories aren’t something either of them talk about much. You know why. The truth of who people are is a treasure and it’s shockingly easy to steal. This is a gift you’re being given, and you give back silence and space.

“Sammy started poundin’ on the windshield to get Dad to wake up. I thought sure he was gonna rip me a new one for not keeping him quiet. But instead he got out of the car and climbed up on the hood with us. He put his arm around each of us and we all just watched the stars.

“We woke up at dawn half-frostbit and with this Highway Patrol cop writing a ticket for-- shit, I don’t even remember. Sammy talked him out of it by telling him about falling stars.” You can tell Dean’s disappointed in his story. The most important things are the hardest to say. “Anyway. It’s nice to be under an open sky sometimes.”

“Yeah.” Camping out with your dad, learning how to fish and build a fire and find cattails and aim a rifle. And then your body turned traitor, to you and your dad both.

“You know what?” Dean says, as though he knows the channel of your thoughts and wants to divert it, “I’m hungry.”

“You can have the rest of the jerky, man, I’m cool.”

“Nuh-uh.” He kisses you, pushes you back on the mattress. “I need something . . .” he kisses over your heart, “nice . . .” trails kisses down to your bellybutton, “sweet . . .” licks down to the patchy stubble, you haven’t shaved in a while, “mmm, juicy . . .”

“Oh real subtle Winchester,” you groan as he parts your legs and settles his head between them, “honestly that’s just--”

---

Later, under the light of the moon and stars you ride Dean’s supine body, pleasure and joy and the sense of height making you feel like you’re flying, or falling, or perfectly suspended in the moment God made the light. Nothing connecting you to the world of blood and pain except Dean, and since he’s flying with you that’s okay. His knot lodging firm in your body pulls you back, and for the first time the thought of being locked together seems . . . right, needed even. You don’t need a knot to be locked together and coming back to Earth with Dean is a Heaven in itself.

---

“Gonna rain today,” you say as Dean hands you a bottle of water.

“Yeah,” he agrees. He points to a scar on his leg. “Broken tibia. Aches a little when it rains.”

“Mmm. Prosit,” you clunk your bottles together. As you reach to drop yours in the wastepaper basket, Dean takes your arm and starts gently nibbling at your wrist, where all the lines and blood tangle together. Tingles and sparks fly along your nerves.

A phone rings and you both jump halfway to the moon. Dean picks up his latest burner and groans. “Sam.”

From the volume and Dean’s wince, Sam is not using his six-inch voice. “Calm down man, I’m fine, I’m just laying low.”

“Oh is that what the kids’re callin’ it?” you whisper.

Dean waves you off. “I don’t know, maybe a couple more days? We’ve got some weather moving in.”

Irritated at getting the brushoff you go for the soft underbelly. Well, the not-so-soft part of it anyway. Dean coughs out a “Shit!” as you sluck up his cock, feeling it jump to life in your mouth.

Through the phone’s ear speaker you can hear Sam yelling. Dean glares down into your wide and totally not innocent eyes, as you let your lips stretch obscenely up his shaft, lash at the head with your tongue. “I don’t know! Somewhere in Illinois? We had to pull over-- yes, we, as in I am not alone, as in she might be coming down for a visit--” a choked moan pops out of him as you swallow him down, down, so far down your lips can kiss his knot. You hope he appreciates this, it took a lot of popsicles for you to get this trick right.

“No! Shit Sammy-- whatever-- which one of us is acting like he’s twelve?” A surprised laugh makes you choke and you pull away from Dean, coughing like you’re gonna hack up a lung. “I’m fine, Sam. You shouldn’t even be walking. How the hell you gonna work the double-clutch on that old truck with no left leg?”

“Sam wants to come here?!?” you scream-whisper.

“--you don’t even know how to ride the damn thing,” Dean continues. “No. I am fine, there’s nothing but trees for miles-- hey! I didn’t say anything when you wanted to take a detour to see the Impressionists--”

Your patience dies and you snatch the phone out of Dean’s hand. “Sam,” you cut him off. As the oldest of five girls, you know how to give orders to baby sibs. “Dean is fine. He will be home in a few days. If there’s a hunt we will deal with it then. Unless the house is burning down, chill. You got it?” You don’t even wait for Sam’s response, flipping the phone over, picking out the battery, and throwing the whole mess into the nightstand drawer.

Dean stares at you, mouth hanging open, dick visibly throbbing. The reality of what you just did hits you and you hide your face in your hands “Oh Christ. Sam’s gonna fucking kill me isn’t he?”

Clicking his mouth closed, Dean orders, “Put some clothes on.”

Your heart breaks. “What? Why? I’m not safe to drive yet.” Goddamn it, you’ve got maybe five seconds before you start bawling like a fucking crybaby.

Ignoring you, Dean goes upfront. Your fingers numb, you reach for your keys. Jesus-- your heart’s not breaking, it’s ripping itself to pieces like a dry piston engine. Any second now it’ll crack your chest open in a shower of blood and bone.

Dean snatches your wrist, yanking you away from the keyhook. “What are you doing?” he demands.

“You want to leave, I’ll--”

“We’re not leaving. Put this on.”

Present for me Omega, whispers out of a memory and you shudder as you drape the green on black plaid fabric over your shoulders and do up the buttons. The shirt fits you like a tent and smells like Dean, leather and chocolate and all things safe and good.

“Now that you’re wearing something,” he says, in a voice like velvet and whiskey, “I’m going to rip it off of you, and fuck your brains out.”

Your voice is very small. “Oh.”

---

Cool humidity soothes the inferno under your skin, as rain patters on the RV like pebbles on a tin can. Dean has you sprawled wide over the bed, with your knotting toy in one hand and a pocket massager in the other.

“I think I like this,” Dean says to himself, tickling your clit with the vibrator and making you squeak. “Your pussy’s still hungry.” You know it is, you can feel yourself pulsing around the knotting toy. Dean can see the flexing, smell your scent and your slick. “Doesn’t wanna let go. You wanna play with your titties for me?” His gaze goes unfocused as you caress yourself, thumbs flicking at your nipples. It’s just debauched, the picture you imagine you make, shamelessly naked and lounging on a stack of pillows being pleasured by your Alpha.

Or teased. Dean puts the vibrator aside and slowly drives Doctor Knotts into and out of your cunt, just enough to be nowhere near enough. A breeze from the window brings out goosebumps and pulls your nipples to attention. Indecent, slutty, perverted, degenerate-- under Dean’s gaze the shame under those thoughts disappears. You feel alive. You feel like a fucking goddess.

From the tangle of hair at his groin Dean’s cock rises, ready for duty. An idea percolates to the surface of your lust-fried mind. When you explain it to Dean, he just smiles, sticks his bare feet into his boots, carries you out into the rain, and takes you against the side of the RV. His skin is warm and his mouth tastes like rainwater. You run your tongue up the big tendon in the side of his neck and you feel Dean freeze when your mouth touches the pheromone gland, the mating gland.

You don’t, but oh God you want to. Instead you hold him tight as you come and let the rain handle your tears. Dean’s big hand cups the nape of your neck and he holds you back just as tight. His face is wet too, from the rain.

---

Dean’s on the back end of his rut, you can tell because his coloring is getting back to normal and his knot doesn’t take long to unlock. As though you needed more proof-- you think your heat is passing too. Needs matching one another, the way a mated pairs’ should.

So when Dean reaches, you come to him and meet his kiss. And you’re the one that turns over. You shiver as he takes his place behind, kissing up your spine, lingering on the scar of a ghoul bite he and Sam had cleaned and dressed together. You turn your head and find his seeking lips, trying not to feel your heartrate double and memories stirring like angry spirits.

Dean doesn’t bark it like a trainer correcting a dog. Heel, sit, speak, take it like a bitch. It’s soft, like he cares. Because he does. Dean Winchester is a man you trust, and you’re so tired of never trusting. “Present for me.”

You shift your knees apart and spread open your well-fucked Omega pussy. Dean’s breathing is ragged, like he just took a punch in the gut. You cry out as he touches you, finding heat, slick, slippery as warm oil.

“Is all this for me?” he asks, and you can just imagine-- slick pooling in his palm, trickling down his wrist.

“Yes,” you moan, “for God’s sake don’t tease--" you look up and see your own reflection, in the mirror hung on the inside of the closet. The door must’ve come off the latch again. Sitting on his knees behind you is Dean, your Alpha, studying you with an expression so nakedly vulnerable you almost look away.

“Tell me,” he asks. Pleads. He glances up and sees the mirror, sees you watching. With that vulnerable look, Dean says, “Tell me what you need.”

It’s like you’ve been waiting to give the answer your whole life. “You. Please, Dean, you. Please.”

Lining himself up, Dean presses into you. Dying coals of heat flare and you moan in relief and joy. One of his hands curls around yours while the other helps you sit up against his chest. In the mirror-- holy fuck there you are, bracketed by Dean, supplicant and lover and protector all in one. “You,” you whisper. “Need you. Always need you.” Dean hides his face behind your shoulder and moans.

Dean brings this to the best conclusion there could be, worshipping your body with his, tenderly, gently. So much of him is hard, strength called on too early and too often and pounded into iron by years of loss and impossible choices, but his hands on you are careful, gentle, reverential. Those hands have taken on Gods and won, and they touch you like something delicate and beautiful. “Got one more for me?” Dean asks, the flirty teasing threadbare as you tremble through another orgasm.

“I-- I don’t--”

“Come on, you can do it, I believe in you.” Dean does this weird grippy thing, something that makes your clit feel like it’s got roots all the way to your knees. Every clench and flutter of you cunt muscles makes your clit twitch in Dean’s grip, making you gasp. Bliss so intense it hurts. “There it is,” Dean says as you pitch forward. You lace your fingers through the top of his hand as he braces himself; he grips back and drives into you, broken voices matching as you fall over the edge together.

---

The next day is all tension and awkward silence. You’re both sore from using muscles that don’t get used much. Normal you stands on reserve, truly engages with few, shows weakness to almost no one. For Christ’s sake you begged--

It’s an awkward crew that sets sail, the hot sun turning the moisture left from the rain into wring-out-your-clothes humidity. Dean spends most of his time in the passenger seat focused on his phone. He doesn’t try to engage in conversation beyond the strictly necessary. You don’t know if that’s a relief or just something else to piss you off. Christ, he’s not even coming near you. Pretty big turnaround from not being able to keep his hands off you for two days.

It’s that last thought that makes you clench your teeth and try to think rationally. God damn it, this’d be a lot more straightforward if it wasn’t for your fucking hormones. It adds a layer of mistrust to every intuition you normally rely on. Any judgement call is potentially tainted.

And how much right do you have to crash-land in his life anyway? Being a mated pair goes deeper than any legal or spiritual bond, it’s a physical thing. If you take that step it’ll severely curtail your freedom of motion. His too. And there’s the whole serial philanderer thing-- you know you’re monogamous and a bad experience has taught you that you can’t be in a relationship with someone who isn’t. And what about a family? Just seeing the way Dean comes alive around kids tells you he was born to be a father, and no matter how much you-- you can’t do that for him. You don’t even want kids. And there’s Sam. Where Dean is concerned, Sam is like the earth, no way around him.

Muscle memory has you reaching for your coffee cup and your hand touches Dean’s. Instead of snapping it back, you make yourself squeeze his fingers. Not much. An unscheduled bit of human contact. The strength of Dean’s return grip surprises you. You don’t want him to let go. When he does he gets up and goes in the back, avoiding you--

Dean’s leaving you your space, you realize. But you don’t want a space that doesn’t have him in it.

With that, you make a few decisions and take a turn. “You hungry?”

“Yeah,” Dean calls.

“There’s one of those Mongolian barbecue places up ahead. Wanna go and give the grillers a workout?”

---

“Six months.”

Dean’s chopsticks, heavy with beef and onion, pause on the way to his mouth. His already full mouth. Not that you’re being dainty; heats always leave you starving. He asks with his eyes.

You are not a coward. You refuse to behave like one. “If you’re willing,” please God let him be willing, “I want to give this a try.”

“What this?” Dean grunts around a swallow.

“This. Us.” Just like that Dean’s poker face slams into place. You’ve gotten so used to his unguarded, trusting affect it hurts to see his defenses go up like that.

You’re not gonna, so he doesn’t get to either. “Don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“That’s your Cop face.” You flash yours right back at him. “Don’t do that. If we never talk straight again we have to do it now.”

Dean purses his lips and looks away. “What’s there to talk about--”

“Don’t. You. Fucking dare. Try to brush this off.”

“Look, we’re cool, okay? You don’t have to spare my feelings.”

“Huh?”

“You’re gonna make me say it,” Dean says after heaving a sigh.

“Negative copy on that Midnight Rider, say again?” You smile as you say it, it tickles you that Dean picked the Alman Brothers Band, it suits.

“I had sex with a woman when she couldn’t say no. The law calls that rape.”

You can feel the smile fall off your face. “Dean no, don’t even think that.”

“Why not?” he asks bitterly.

“Be-cause I was fucking begging?”

“You weren’t in your right mind. When I saw you on the floor-- God, I’ve never seen a woman cry like that. But I didn’t care.” His great green eyes burn with horrified shame. “I wanted you so bad, I didn’t care.” That’s the other part of Dean’s personality, the part that exists in a perpetual state of Fail. That part is incapable of internalizing any kind of praise, nitpicks every decision for flaws, and eagerly agrees with anything negative anybody says about him. Of course he’s taken your ambivalence to mean you hate him. For Dean, there’s no other conclusion possible.

That ends. Right now. You slip your fingers into his hand, pull it across the table to hold it in both of yours. It’s his gun hand, you can feel the hard spots. “Look at me, Winchester.” When you have his attention, you say, “I just had two days of the best sex of my entire life,” not a lie, that’s not even debatable, “with a man who made it his mission to not hurt me, not degrade me, made sure I enjoyed every damn minute, and was never anything but exactly who I needed. No matter where we go from here, I’ll always love you for that. And grateful. God, you have no idea how grateful. You took care of me,” you’re starting to get misty, the depth of that gratitude shocks you. You lift his hand and kiss the back. “Thank you.”

Dean clears his throat. “I don’t want to be one of those Alphas that made you treat any Alpha like the enemy,” he says.

“That would be most of them,” you say. He deserves a better answer than that, though. “My dad always wanted a son, but all Mom could ever give him were girls. I was the oldest, so after Mom had the twins I guess he decided God made me a tomboy for a reason.”

“Oh God he didn’t--”

“No,” you cut that thought right off. “My parents are Betas. So are my sisters. When I Presented, dad just refused to believe it. Said God wouldn’t do something so heartless, make his tough little girl into a breeder. He kept on saying that right up until my first day of eighth grade.”

“Your first heat.”

“Yep. It was . . .” fuck, two decades later and certain things -- girlish cackles of laughter, the smell of floor polish, pressure on a certain spot on your back -- still send you into an irrational panic. “I wasn’t prepared. The story came with me when I got into high school. Small town, the really humiliating crap never dies.

“But anyway. Dad stopped acting like dad after that. A couple weeks later I asked him about going to deer camp-- it was supposed to be my first year there. He beat the shit out of me.”

“Jesus!”

You wave that aside. “Not the first time, dad had a heavy hand with us kids. But he kept calling me things. That’s the first time I ever heard most of the bad names Omegas get called. From my fucking father. Who I worshipped. You get it?”

“Yeah,” Dean says. “Absolutely.”

“So when the inevitable started happening--”

“You said your history teacher?”

You nod. “And my sister’s softball coach. And my first boyfriend.” You shudder. “And my cousin. His wife told me that’s what Omegas are for and the sooner I got that the better. Doesn’t help that the law agrees, pretty much.

“I met Peg when she was pretensing as an agent for the DNR.” Dean nods, he knows the story of how Peg Dmitriev popped your hunting cherry. “She came and got me the night I graduated. Dad was prepping his big throwing me out of the house speech when Peg pulled up, told dad to go fuck himself, sat me in her car with a bottle of vodka, and next thing I know it’s tomorrow and we’re halfway to Atlanta.

“Anyway,” you pull yourself back to Now, Dean’s hand warm in yours. “Me being an Omega’s been nothing but a source of pain and bullshit, all my life. Until two days ago.”

“Then why didn’t you ask me to claim you? Because--” Dean hesitates, then plunges on ahead, “I mean, it hurt to hold back from doing that.”

“Because I didn’t want to do anything permanent. I still don’t.” Dean flinches, as though you’d slapped him. You hurry to explain yourself, ease the hurt. “I-I mean, I’m a bitch to live with, I drink too much, I’m a loudmouth schnook, I can’t cook for shit--”

“Untrue,” Dean cuts in. “Your campfire stew is awesome.”

“I can’t give you pups,” you tie the whole thing off with one big one.

“I know,” Dean says. At your look he clarifies, “It was on the paperwork in your bag.”

You nod. “It’s not just-- the lab guys aren’t totally sure what the hormone blockers did to my eggs. If kids are something you’re gonna want, they can’t come from me.”

“You’re talking like kids are even an option.”

You think a moment. “Did you ever hit a point, where one day you wonder if maybe you’re not gonna die young’n’pretty? One of the reasons I agreed to do the study was I thought for sure I wasn’t gonna live ten more years.”

You’re not sure if that thought has occurred to Dean. The Winchesters’ relationship to mortality is . . . complicated. How many times they’ve for-real died is a topic of debate in some dark and smoky bars. Some even say the stories are all bull, that old man John was just dinky-dau and his boys aren’t any better. You’re not one of them. You’ve met Castiel.

“Yeah,” Dean admits. He looks like he wants to say more, but doesn’t. “I can live with kids being off the table, but-- look. Every time I’ve tried for anything good, someone gets hurt. I damn near got Ben and Lisa killed.”

“I’m not a civilian Dean. I’ve been Hunting solo for almost twelve years now. Still here, still sane, still a better shot than you.”

“With a rifle, anyway.”

“Whatever. The point is, you don’t have to stash me in a safehouse in Assfuck, Kansas and hope I remember not to wash the graffiti off the walls.”

“Well what about me?” Dean asked. “I kind of like having a permanent address. I’m not going to throw a ruck in your RV and just hit the road.”

“I wouldn’t ask you to,” you say, bringing up the biggest thing of big things. “For one thing, I’m not going to ask you to pick between me and your brother.”

“What?”

“Sam comes first, I get that.” You’ve been around them long enough to know that’s true. The Winchesters are a package deal. Anybody with eyes can see it, and anybody who challenges it loses. For Christ’s sake, the Devil bet the farm that he could break that, and lost. “That’s the other reason I don’t want to bond right now. If Sam can’t stand having me around--”

“What do you mean? Sam loves having you around.”

“I did just tell him to fuck off.”

“He deserved it. Cockblocker. Look,” he says, turning his hand over so he can hold yours, “if it were up to me, we’d be mated already.” Dean’s doing that thing he does, when there’s no bullshit nowhere. Focused, direct. Part of you wants to run, but another part just wants to wrap yourself up in it, soak it in, exist within that intensity. “But I totally get why you want to take it slow.”

“Yeah. But,” you put the words together, “I don’t want to stand in front of St. Peter yanking claws outta my ass and admit that I left a chance at being happy with you on the table.” You’re not ready to say the words yet, but neither is he and you can live with that for now.

Dean lifts his beer. “Six months.”

You lift your glass of pop. “Six months.”

Clink.

---

One Year Later

“You’re Red’s kid aren’t’cha?”

You nod at the bartender as you pull an ashtray close. Because if there was ever a day you needed a cigarette--

The bartender passes you a pack if matches. “Just get back from the wedding?”

You nod. “Stuck around long enough to get told we weren’t needed for pictures.”

She pulls a bottle of Scotch off the wall and pours. “On the house. You guys look like you could use it.”

“Oh bless you,” Dean sighs.

“No problem. Been listening to Red’s bullshit for years.” You notice a slight flaring of her nostrils and your hand meets Dean’s halfway. You have to remind yourself to take it easy; you’re both off the market. Sam on the other hand . . . the bartender sidles over to get a better sniff at Sam’s Alpha scent, eucalyptus and ice tea and fog, fresh cut green apples. Cool scents, total contrast to his brother’s warm ones.

The original plan -- you and Dean get drunk as skunks and Sam stays sober enough to pour you two back in your motel room bed around 0230 -- gets tossed in the wastepaper basket. “C’mon Dean, we gotta go do the thing.”

“Right, the thing.” You finish your drinks and leave Sam and the bartender to their dance of mutual interest. “Ten says we don’t see him again until Tuesday,” Dean says as he slides behind the Impala’s steering wheel.

“Sucker’s bet,” you reply. Spending as much time in the bunker as you do, you know Sam’s due for a rut. The Omega bartender’s about to have an interesting weekend. “Anyone watching?” At Dean’s negative you get in the back and change out of your for-nice dress. It feels like taking pressure off an infected wound.

“You okay?” Dean asks as you climb into the front seat.

You check the urge to cover with a token I’m Fine-- you and Dean sailed past that a while ago. “It’s nothing I haven’t heard from him before. I’m sorry you and Sam had to hear it.” Your father’s got some fucked-up ideas, but the notion that you’re playing breedslut to a pair of siblings-- that’s low even for him.

“Like we were going to let you deal with this shit alone,” Dean snorts. “Besides, it’s not the first time somebody got the wrong idea about me’n’Sam.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope. There was this guy once-- he offered us a grand if we let him film us double-teaming his wife. Two grand if he could put the camera on a tripod and join in.”

“Shit dude. Did he even know you’re brothers?”

Dean shoots you a grin. “Twenty-five hundred. Each.”

“Oof.”

At your direction Dean swings by the party store up the road for a couple six-packs, to the Guiseppe’s for a pizza, and to the park by the lake full of old-fashioned playground equipment rusting away next to the newer, safer, less fun plastic crap. After polishing off the pizza you stretch out next to Dean on Baby’s front end, the windshield hard against your back. The sun going down over the water makes the place pretty as a postcard. You wonder a moment if the view is as nice from the VFW reception hall, as your sister and brand new brother in law take their first dance.

“I think,” Dean says, pulling you from your thoughts, “I owe you an apology.”

“What for? You didn’t treat anybody like a red-headed stepchild.”

“For ever saying anything about how hostile you are to Alphas. Because that--” he tics his head at the road back to town, “explains a lot.”

“You didn’t know.” People you’d gone to school with sniggering behind their hands, gossip exchanged just loud enough for you to hear every word. Your dad, a five-foot-six human bull, regaling Dean and Sam with humiliating stories about your early heats. Your cousin’s angling for God knows, constantly bumping into the guys as they stuck with you like white on rice. Bless them.

Worst of all, your baby sister glowing in white, her eyes fixed on your feet, asking you to please leave. A promise to call later, that she’ll never keep. Rosie never could lie for shit.

Unconsciously your hand goes up, touching the scimitar-shaped bits of raised scar tissue bracketing the mating gland. Dean’s hand slips under yours, gently stroking over his mark. A light touch, like a warm hug or a quick kiss. If he rubs a little harder, you know, it turns your blood to fire, makes you wet, makes you hungry. You remember vividly, you and the guys damn near dying from an ambush of vampires, Dean tossing his car keys to Sam and taking you on the ground outside. He’d begged for your bite first, and your ears had rung with his howl as your fangs tore into his skin.

“I love my sisters,” you say, “but if they’re going to keep being dad’s partisans, I can’t be around them.”

“Yeah, I can see that.” Leaving hadn’t been a hard choice. The three of you stunk up the place, literally, and your sisters’ protests that you should just give dad a chance, he wasn’t cruel just old-fashioned, et cetera et cetera et cetera . . . it was bullshit when you left home and it’s bullshit now.

You look at Dean, remembering another sunset. A year’s put one or two more lines around his eyes; other than that, he’s still almost too beautiful to look at. Moved by a wave of tenderness, you pull him close and kiss him, soft and slow.

Later you lie next to him in your motel room bed as he drifts off, lazy in the afterglow. Life isn’t perfect, but with your mate it’s a helluva lot more fun. Unconsciously Dean shifts towards you, his mouth curved in a slight smile.

For your entire life you’ve been coached to feel worthless, a hole for an Alpha’s pleasure and a sack for an Alpha’s pups. You’ve done terrible things to yourself, living your life otherwise. But then Dean fell into your bed and you took a chance that’s paid off every day since. Every smile that’s just for you, every weapon tossed into your waiting hand, every stitch in a bleeding wound, every gripe about how the fuck do you even do that when you take some rifle practice-- you can’t be worthless and have someone like Dean Winchester feel that way about you. And if your kinfolk won’t see that, it’s not your duty to feel bad about it.

With that logical leap, it feels like something broken inside you sets back together. Dean wakes up when he feels you crying. “Hurgh?” he grunts.

You wipe your face as both your phones chime. “Sam,” you say, scanning the text. “Looks like he and the bartender are staying in.”

“That’s my boy,” Dean grins. “What’s wrong?”

“Permission to get girly?”

“Go for it babe.”

“Just realized mating with you’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me. That’s all.”

Dean mulls that over a minute. “I feel exactly the same way,” he tells you quietly. “I love you.”

You laugh as Dean kisses you. “We gotta knock this shit off. We’re supposed to be the badasses here.”

“I won’t tell if you won’t,” Dean promises. “Any plans for tomorrow?”

“Not really. You?”

“Well,” he grins, that impish smile that makes him look fourteen and up to no good, “I did kind of want to see that equipment shed--"

You groan. “Shouldn’t have told you that story.”

“Nope, probably not. And isn’t the World’s Largest Pie Pan around here somewhere?”

Only Dean. “Four-five hour drive. Then I say we swing by the Thrifty Acres, pick up a couple of bathing suits, and hit the beach.”

“I love it when a plan comes together.”

---

AN2: "Jesus died in vain and legally changed his middle name to Fucking."

-The Angry Video Game Nerd

The World's Largest Pie Pan is in Traverse City, Michigan.

Feedback and constructive criticism welcome. Subscriptions to Author yearned for with deep and desperate longing:

[email protected]

#supernatural #fanfiction #ao3 #dean winchester #reader character #ABH format #ABO #alpha/beta/omega dynamics #omegaverse #alpha dean winchester #omega you #omega reader

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gen-is-gone · 2 years

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having some Weird Thoughts currently about tumblr's place in the modern internet ecosystem, vis a vis twitter melting down, macebook/feta losing its shit, and a bunch of folks joining up here either for the first time in years or the first time at all.

namely, I really do believe that automattic/tumblr's current leadership is very very slowly and very very carefully implementing a bunch of changes in preparation to bring back adult content in its entirety, as part of a larger scheme to try to monetize without resorting to data scraping (which is basically impossible to do here the way it is on other sites anyway). it certainly seems like that's what they're doing, between post+, the tip jar, community labels, and the ability to make posts non-rebloggable. obviously these features have plenty of use outside of adult content (except maybe post+, which makes literally no sense outside of sex work), but what they seem to be doing is building up a logistical means by which to allow adult content, and allow it to be monetizable.

and like, no, I don't think tumblr the company is Our Best Friend; yes it is a company that needs to profit under capitalism to survive, but so is everything, and there is genuinely something funny and weird (in a very stupid, ironic way) about tumblr as a social media site operating in the 2020s. It just legitimately doesn't have the capacity to scrape data and sell targeted ads the way the giants of the modern internet do, both because it is a product of an earlier age when that wasn't yet a standard profit mechanism, and also just 'cause like. tumblr's fucking code is shit. I'm sure it's a lot better than it was circa 2012, but jokes about tumblr's legendary goof goof dildo spaghetti code used to be really common, and anyone who's been here longer than a couple months either remembers or at least has heard of just how weird and fucked up and bad the site's basic functionality used to be. Legitimately, the reason why tumblr feels so nice rn compared to the heyday is as much because it's just so genuinely more functional than it was ten years ago as it is because there's so comparatively few people.

but point being: if tumblr under yahoo had been handled with any semblance of basic competence, they might've seen which way the wind was blowing w/r/t targeted ads and data sales and we might have an entirely different, much worse hellsite than we actually have. or it probably would've died because yahoo would've actually fully ran it into the ground, more likely. but also it probably wouldn't have worked because the assumption of anonymity is so much more baked into the incredibly weird, broken, decade and half's worth of layered bullshit code that even if anyone previously could've realized that the smartest way to make money would be to scrape and sell data, they'd never have been able to implement it.

and so we have the tumblr of today: weird, unmarketable, ungovernable, proudly cringe, and deeply resistant to the mainstream. so not actually that much different to tumblr circa 2012, if a lot smaller and more battle-hardened.

but like. by the standards of what's available on the modern internet, tumblr is honestly one of the best, most versatile spaces still standing with any amount of a userbase? straight up, the dominance of twitter and instagram has made a lot of people really oddly perplexed by the concept of being able to write detailed essays in the body of a post, let alone the idea of dozens of images per post, or audio like, at all. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of things about tumblr that I wish were different or better that just aren't compatible with how tumblr is set up at a base level as an LJ user every day I miss threaded comments and LJ-style cuts I LAMENT them I tell you, but of the options out there, tumblr is fucking wild in what it can offer. but I don't just mean for artists and fandom and weird little gremlins like those of us who've been here this whole time, I mean like. fuck. like.

watching the White House's twitter account try to lay out complex policy initiatives in 280-characters is fucking painful sometimes, and yet we've all gotten used to it in the past decade plus. leaving aside the fact that it's bonkers and deeply unsettling and generally bad that world leaders are beholden to usamerican for-profit corporations to communicate in general, of all of the socmed sites out there, it's kind of insane that twitter is the one that got big in the official political scene. (don't get me wrong: twitter is genuinely quite useful for disseminating quick bursts of information in crisis, and it's been fucking brilliant for coordinating in both natural disasters and evolving political/social disruption. but it's terrible at detailed, nuanced information sharing)

I don't know where I'm going with all of this necessarily, and I think twitter eating shit and going down in flames is pretty terrible for global democracy even as it is also on a surface level funny as shit. I don't want tumblr to replace twitter, or facebook, or insta, or tiktok, in being the place where everyone lives online. I want tumblr to stay as the little gremlin art ho fandom clown car, and lbr, it probably will. It'll probably never be what twitter is, for better or for worse. who knows if it'll ever be what it was in 2012 again. I like the ecosystem the way it is these days, with way fewer users, most of whom have been around the block more times than we can count, and are too jaded to start shit anymore. but tumblr needs money to survive, and as much as we're all enjoying posting cringe, tumblr's twitter is pulling off a masterwork balancing act luring twitter users over here, and it's working.

tumblr needs to do what it can to survive. we still don't know if all of this effort staff has been putting in these past ~10 months or so will be enough; the writing has been on the wall for years now that if tumblr doesn't find a way to financially justify itself, it won't survive another sale. automattic took a maybe unprecedented (and extremely positive, imo) risk this past year, and has been trusting current staff to listen to user input and implement positive changes, including finding ways to monetize without invading users' privacy, which who knows if the site even has the capability of doing anyway, even now. if we are all very lucky, and are willing to pitch in and treat this place like our community, we might even collectively succeed, and prove to the wider internet that it is possible to run a popular, high-traffic website without compromising user security. if tumblr is doing what I think they're doing, and very carefully building up a secure, socially, financially, and legally defensible way to support adult content on a site with american servers and a place on the app store in the 2020s, then we're off to the races and who knows where we'll go. if twitter does actually implode beyond salvaging, a huge chunk of the world will feel its loss, and many people, including all the normies and politicians and your mom, could very well cast their gaze to the website people wrote off as in its death throes four years ago. they probably won't, but as I was just vividly reminded earlier today, the White House did, in fact, have a tumblr once upon a time. who knows what the future holds.

but John Green deserves an apology, you weeaboo shits.

#tumblr #twitter #important blue checkmark #tumblr crabs #twitpocalypse #our cyberpunk future #megan whines into the empty abyss of cyberspace

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sethshead · 7 months

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From the Kivunim Institute: Good and Evil: A True Story You likely don’t know the name Dr. Shoshan Haran. I met Shoshan, a world-renowned plant seed developer, while doing research for what became Let There Be Water: Israel's Solution for a Water-Starved World. Shoshan helped me to understand how Israeli non-GMO plant breeders had developed drought-resistant crops and plants that thrive on otherwise unusable brackish water. But at the top of her career, Shoshan had an epiphany: Instead of using her extraordinary abilities to help farmers in rich countries get ever-better seeds, she would devote the rest of her life to helping poor farmers in Africa. “No one,” she told me, “was developing specific seeds for places like Ethiopia.” Farmers there had to make do with generic seeds for their crops. An urbanite like me didn't know this, but seeds can be developed for particular places, with changes made for local climate, water sources, soil type and pests. Shoshan started a not-for-profit called Fair Planet with the intention of developing seeds for those poor African farmers as precise as the ones she had been helping to create for American and European farmers. The project succeeded beyond anyone’s expectations. In the first season using Shoshan’s tomato seeds created for central Ethiopia, farmers there saw a 500 percent increase in yield. Not only did this help to address issues of hunger and nutrition for those farmers and their families, but household income rose helping to lift communities out of abject poverty. In the ten or so years since, approximately one million farmers in several African countries have been using seeds developed by Fair Planet. In other words, Shoshan Haran is a hero, a person who has made the world so much better for her having lived. Now for the hard part. On October 7, Shoshan and her family were together in her home on Kibbutz Be’eri, a successful communal farm established by her father and the place where she was born. In all, there were ten family members gathered – Shoshan, her husband, her sister and brother-in-law, her daughter and son-in-law and their two children, her husband’s sister and the sister’s husband. They were all taken captive by the Hamas terrorists who invaded the kibbutz. In recent days, the remains of Shoshan’s husband and brother-in-law have been identified. As best as is known, Shoshan and the other seven family members – three generations – are hostages in Gaza, but no one knows for sure. It is easy to recognize this as evil harming far more than Shoshan and her family. Those many African farmers, and many others, are also harmed by the Hamas assault. It would also be reasonable to say that there are two competing ideologies at work here: One by incrementally helping others in peaceful ways and the second using horrifying and indiscriminate violence to achieve its goals. For me, I have been depressed, enraged, struggling to make sense of the terror attack, but now that I have learned one of the captives is someone I know and have hosted in my home, it is also personal. I hope the governments of Africa will join in with others to try to get Shoshan and her family freed from captivity, assuming they are still alive. Perhaps you, too, can try to publicize this story, sharing it with others. Every one of those being held deserves to be released, but showing how terrible it is to have a person like Shoshan in captivity perhaps helps to transform a general act of criminality and evil into something concrete and harder to ignore. Over time, many more stories of October 7 victims will be learned. Just knowing Shoshan’s story offers clarity that so much more than the lives of the victims and the captives are affected. Seth Siegel

h/t Shoshana Hantman

None of this matters to the left. They'll accuse Shoshan of promoting genocide by replacing traditional crops with higher-yield GMOs. There is nothing we can do anymore to convince the left that we are anything other than ogres poisoning the global well and using the blood of children for our bread.

We must keep our own ethics to heal the world, but not expect to win any hearts or minds. We must do what we must to protect ourselves, and let the public opinion of those who would destroy us be damned.

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drifting-pieces-blog-blog · 3 months

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Breaking down the comics: Soldiers (Punisher Annual #2: Knight Fall)

You guys. YOU GUYS.

I am so excited to bring you this next one for SO MANY REASONS.

The first reason is that this is the FIRST Moon Knight comic I ever read.

And this comic os pure WTFer set off an obsession that has directed the course of my life for over ten years now.

Marc Spector: Moon Knight

Punisher Annual #2: Knight Fall. 1989

Written by: Mike Baron

Art by: Bill Reinhold

Gerbil: Tom DeFalco

(Tom is the editor in chief for Marvel at the time)

We got ourselves a Punisher Annual with a Moon Knight guest appearance!

Now I’ve talked about guest appearances again and again and again. It usually means that the guest star is going to show up HUGE on the cover with some dramatic depiction in an attempt to lure in more new readers to the title comic.

But look at this comic cover. This isn’t Moon Knight showing up to save the day or in a little blurb bubble or box. He’s battling Frank! This looks more like a cross-over style comic! Those always depict the main character FIGHTING the other guest star! And damn if this cover isn’t amazing. Look at those two locked in close quarter combat! And that dagger! This might be a Punisher comic, but Moon Knight isn’t about to roll over!

Now, as we all have come to expect, when you have a crossover for the first time, the two characters always spend the first couple pages fighting in some misunderstanding before they make up and team together to fight the real bad guys. But Punisher takes no quarter and Moon Knight is grumpy at best.

Alright, so we open up on a Long Island Petshop where a Mr. Morton is purchasing Gerbils for their kids.

For those that do not know, a Gerbil is about the size of a large mouse with a long tufted tail and kangaroo like hind feet. They're fast, bite hard, and are fun. (I used to own them as a kid for many years and loved them).

They actually aren’t that well known, even though you can always find them in pet shops next to the hamsters. I wonder why they chose gerbil over say, mice or rats or hamsters. I get the feeling there was some inside joke among the writers here.

…..Oh.

Snake guy. Got it.

MARC.

Marc… “That man just ate a gerbil! Why does it set off all my emergency alarm bells?”

Marc…

So... After that... Marc calls up Frenchie on his radio and tells him that he's tailing a car and gives him details on the vehicle.

"Oui, Marc, what's up?"

"I'm not sure... Maybe nothing."

MARC SPECTOR. You just watched a man eat a gerbil in a pet shop....WHOLE. What do you mean 'Nothing'?!

He tails the car to an old run down mansion .

"That's the old Borgwardt estate--It's been taken over by something called Save Our Society... Time to head home."

Frenchie confirms the car info with Marc. It is registered to the SOS non-profit agency that is privately funded by physicians.

"Sort of an east coast version of the Betty Ford Clinic. Why would a man eat a gerbil?"

Marc… You have fought werewolves. You fought a literal rat king. We’ve seen you fight ghosts and get your ass handed to you by a snake.

AND WHAT ARE YOU WEARING!? Does Steven know you’re wearing his clothes?

He asks Frenchie to dig into the petstore's files and get him a credit card for the guy that ate the gerbil and an address.

Meanwhile, we meander on over to the star of our show:

"Punisher's War Journal-- I've been on the trail of Ralph Newton, a junkie who makes a living ripping off old ladies' social security checks. Two weeks ago he pushed a seventy year old woman down a flight of stairs and she died. Newton seemed to have disappeared, butt now I have a lead--This shooting gallery in the Bronx."

For those of you unaware of the Punisher, here's a brief howdy-do for you!

The Punisher, AKA, Frank Castle. Originally a VietNam vet who came back with a little PTSD. His family (wife and child) were murdered by the mafia and Frank decided he'd had enough of evil in the world. He makes it his life's work to hunt down and kill anyone that makes it a living to hurt people.

Historically, the other heroes (ESPECIALLY DareDevil and Captain America) despise Frank and often rally the other heroes to try to hunt him down and stop him from continuing his war on crime.

He got his start in a Spider-Man comic of all places and branched out from there.

Frank is a pretty gruff and serious man and depending on who is writing him and what series you are reading, he can be pretty violent.

War Journal was a very popular series where he drives around in his Battle Van and writes about his missions. It works nicely because Frank isn’t much of a social man. So if you rely on the story conversations, like in all the other comics, you aren’t going to get much. But having him writing things down in his journal you get a beautiful narration that reads like a Noir film and you also get a fantastic way to get to know Frank and how he thinks. I appreciate it.

Often when Frank meets up with other heroes, there is a fight with them telling him he's wrong for killing and them eventually trying to stop him.

Now, we know he's going to meet up with Marc in this. And I am so excited for you guys to see this epic encounter.

So we see Frank in his usual attire walk up to a safe house and knock on the door.

He gets the guy to open the door posing as a seller.

Yeah. By now, everyone knows what it means when they see that skull design.

"Junkies. I swear they don't feel pain. You've got to break something before they stop coming at you."

Frank shoots all but one. He tells the remaining guy he's looking for Newton.

Lucky for the junkie he says he last saw Newton going into a rehab clinic saying he was going to get straight.

So Frank heads up to the clinic. It's a Save Our Society clinic.

"The place reeks of sweat and stale cigarettes, ashtrays filled to overflowing."

Man that's good Noir.

Frank walks up to the main desk (in his street clothes, which just means he put on a turtle neck and a coat).

"Department of social services. I'm here to verify our use of federal funds."

"I'm sorry, sir. There must be some mistake. This clinic is privately funded --we receive no federal funds."

"*SIGH* Sounds like another department screw-up. Could I speak to your director?"

(What works about this is that no one actually knows what Frank Castle looks like! He doesn’t need a disguise. Everyone knows him by what he wears. They see the giant skull and the guns. It WORKS. And Frank is surprisingly good at acting. He knows the system.)

He's told that the director isn't in. She's Leona Hiss. (Hiss? Really? We're going there?)

Frank heads to get info from Microchip. Hey! Microchip! I missed him!

Microchip was Frank's old tech guy. He was the man in the van that would give Frank info and hack into things for him.

I'd say they were good friends...But Frank doesn't have friends. I'd give you spoilers on what eventually happens to Microchip but... It's kinda a BIG spoiler and maybe someone here wants to head on over into Punisher land. So I'll leave it at that. (I came to Moon Knight from Punisher land. It was all thanks to this crossover comic… so I guess their ploy really does work sometimes.)

Anyways... Microchip looks up this Leona Hiss person.

A widow of an anesthesiologist who started the clinics to help drug addicts. He goes on and on and tells Frank it "Smells like a smoke screen. All her life, the lady shuns publicity. Now all of a sudden she's a big philanthropist?"

Man, look at that light and shadow in the first panel. This art team is amazing.

Frank sets up position on a roof across from the clinic.

"Clock Street's eerily alive at two A.M. I see a knife fight, several drug deals...Lights are burning in the clinic but no one's entered or left. There are guards on the roof. Better move.

I take position a block away, behind the clinic. I can easily make my way back over the rooftops--Nobody's watching back here. Overhead, a faint Whoosh. Some kind of high-tech chopper."

Oh boy. Oh boy. Oh boy.

(This art. This art is SLAYING.)

Oh man. Look at this meet up. Frank and his shotgun, Moon Knight facing him down.

They know who each other are! Every time Moon Knight meets up with someone he has to introduce himself! No one knows who he is! But Frank knows him. And Moon Knight doesn’t call him Frank. He knows who he is dealing with.

Oh man, that cover called for such an epic showdown. Both ex-marines. Both know how to handle themselves.

Uh.

“I presume we’re both interested in Save Our Society.”

“Right this afternoon I saw a man eat a gerbil. He came from here.”

“What’s his name?”

"Helmut Snead. He used a solen credit card. Six feet, brown eyes, scar above his left eye."

"Ralph Newton--A Junkie Murderer. What's he doing on Long Island?"

"I don't know--But he didn't look like a junkie. I want to know how he got out of the South Bronx and into a fancy clinic."

"How would you take this guy out?"

WHAT IS HAPPENING.

This is incredible. You have no idea.

Frank doesn't have friends. Frank doesn't do team-ups. Frank is brutal and tells it like it is.

And this isn't Frank being the victim to a new writer making nice in someone else's ball park. This is a PUNISHER comic. Moon Knight is the visitor.

And on that note... MARC doesn't have friends. MARC doesn't play well with others. We literally just came off of him being a part of the West Coast Avengers and leaving because he doesn't team well!

And here these two are, meeting for the first time and being BFF.

In fact, the fact that they already know who one another is despite never meeting means that they have heard others talk about them. And when people talk about the Punisher or Moon Knight, they generally don't have good things to say!

So these two heard "Yeah he's a brutal lunatic" they went "I gotta meet this chap."

I can't stress enough how amazing this is.

Frank is even asking Moon Knight to show how he'd take down a guy. He wants to see how Moon Knight works. And Moon Knight is letting Frank go first.

THIS in itself is amazing. Why? Because we have two highly skilled specialists from a high combat militarized zone that were both known for ambush settings and traps.

They know everything about this building isn't reading right, they have seen some guards and they don't know what's going on inside. So they are essentially walking into an unknown through a closed space doorway into a stairwell with numerous blind spots and possibilities for traps/ambushes.

If it were anyone else, Marc would go first to clear the way and possibly take that first hit because he knows he can take it.

BUT. If you REALLY look at it, Frank is older than Marc. Frank went to 'Nam. Frank has been at this longer and has turned New York into his own personal jungle.

He offers Frank the lead out of respect AND because he knows and Frank knows that if anything is out of the ordinary, Frank will spot it FIRST and deal with it.

This is grade A military tactics and my lord it’s beautiful.

And you know what?

Frank’s history is that he was team leader. And when Marc gives him lead, Frank takes it and Marc RESPECTS him. They are both used to working in this sort of setting.

And when you think about it, Marc was NEVER the leader. He followed other people. Bushman was his leader. Marc joined other groups and let other people tell him what to do. If he didn’t like it, he went off and joined a new group.

So when Frank says “Hold it….!” he is treading Marc like an officer under him and he has now automatically accepted Marc as following him and thus putting him under his protection. This is beautiful. I could wax on about this all day you guys.

Uh… Back to the comic. So… Frank spots a Black Mamba that’s sluggish from being in a cold setting.

Marc makes light chatter (he’s kinda of a goof and light chatter is what he does.) Frank quiets him. He knows there’s trouble ahead.

In the next room, we find a junky going through withdrawal and begging the doc to hurry up.

The 'doctor' injects him with something just as Frank and Marc bust in.

"Hello, Ralph. I didn't know you had a license to practice medicine... And only last week you were a lousy junkie..."

"Punisher!"

"Drop the needle."

"I don't think so.... SSSST!"

And the 'Doctor' suddenly has a snake tongue and snake eyes.

This bodes well.

Frank opens fire on his target and it hardly phases him.

"What have we stumbled into? They move slowly but they don't feel any pain." Moon Knight calls out while pummeling one of the snake guys.

"It's the cold. [....] Reptiles. The colder it gets, the slower they move. You saw Ralph eat a gerbil--Snakes eat gerbils. This place looks like a herpetology lab."

Very astute Frank.

They manage to take down all the snake guys and Moon Knight asks if he recognizes any of them.

Frank recognizes a couple of them as crackheads and various junkies.

They find Ralph to be a card carrier for S.O.S.

"Last week he's a junkie with an armful of holes and this week he's front man for a fancy long island cure club."

"I think we know where to go next. Why don't you come with me in the chopper?"

"Thanks, I will."

(WHY ARE THEY SO POLITE TO ONE ANOTHER. IT'S SO OVER THE TOP.)

So... Frank takes a ride in Marc's chopper.

"Nice set-up. How do you keep the engines so quiet?"

"It's a new kind of fiberglass packing."

And they arrive back at the mansion.

"Come on in--I've got a war room. We'll do a little digging."

"This place is a little ostentatious, don't you think?"

"There are so many private choppers flying in and out of the neighborhood nobody notices mine--Especially at night. The surrounding mansions and trees also cover our entrances and exits from the concealed hangar."

I don't think that's what he meant by ostentatious, Marc.

Inside, Frank, Marc, and Frenchie stand around a table with some maps.

Marc tells Frank about the Borwardt estate he initially tracked snake man to earlier.

"I ran a check on cult leaders and you'll never guess who was released from a federal prison last month--Viper."

Frenchie tells Frank who Viper is.

"She used to head up zat facist group Hydra, zen she went solo. She was busted in connection with the so-called snake riot in washington last year...[....] A mass hallucination where people believed they turned into snakes. I also learned that Viper was recently sprung from prison by a Dr. Tyrone."

We head on over to SOS where we see a green lady, "Madam Viper".

She is in a room of snake men who are 'newly converted'.

They say they are hungry and Viper tells them that they have "a rabbit, five hamsters and a gerbil. We'll have to make another run to the pet store soon."

She has a bit of a thing for hitting people with a whip and demanding that they all call her 'Madame Viper'.

She is then informed that the other clinic was hit and that Newton is dead.

She sends the new snake men out to the yard for guard duty. She's pretty sure SHIELD is out to get her. Which makes sense since she worked for Hydra.

Unfortunately for her, it's far from shield.

Overhead, we find the Moon Copter flying by and Moon Knight drops in with his cape and Frank drops in on a glider.

The guards immediately open fire on them and Frank returns fire.

FRANK. DO NOT ENCOURAGE HIM.

….I don’t know if I should count this as a window dive or not. It’s tempting. I’m not going to count it. He decides to abstain from window entrance for once.

Unfortunately for Frank, he runs in without checking around and Marc isn't there to watch his six.

Madam Viper jumps him and injects him with a serum.

Now... Unfortunately for her... Frank has never responded well to drugs of any sort. He's got a history of this not going well for people that try to drug Frank Castle.

He doesn't go down.

In fact, it actually makes him go a little berserk. A berserk Frank Castle is NEVER something anyone wants to face.

He’s doing fine.

She makes a run for it.

Elsewhere, Moon Knight is fighting his own snake man army.

"Lets of gunfire and then it stopped! The time to start worrying about Punisher is when the gunfire stops.

Viper injects one of her larger helpers turning him into a very large and strong snake man.

Moon Knight faces off with the big snake guy. His usual methods of just 'hit it as hard as I can' doesn't work. They don't feel pain thanks to the drugs.

He's wearing a heat pack to keep him moving so Moon Knight decides to take this outside and....WINDOW! WE GOT A WINDOW!

I mean… This one was legit. And he was exiting with a good reason… But I’m still counting it.

Heat pack removed and out in the cold air, the lizard guy goes down easy.

Moon Knight goes to find the Punisher now.

He finds a room full of bodies and Frank in the middle having a lovely hallucination time.

In the window outside, Marc watches a rocket thing take off with Viper escaping in it to fight another day.

Marc manages to distract frank with his crescent darts, moving them around and letting the light reflect off of them in a hypnotic way. This lets him get close enough to take away Frank's gun.

At this point, Frank calms down and the adrenalin that was coursing through his system and probably helping to stave off the toxic affects of the drugs wears off.

Frank goes into convulsions and Moon Knight moves to get him out of there. Not to mention the cops are starting to show up and they need to leave.

The cops have never been fans of Punisher (Despite what the right wing wants you to think when they put punisher logos on their giant trucks) and Frank has never liked the cops. Time to leave!

Marc takes Frank back to his mansion and puts him to bed.

I kid you not.

This... This is a thing that happens a lot. He did the same thing to Jack Russel. Just... Take the drugged up guy home and let him sleep it off in his big bed in the mansion.

Frank has a rough night, hallucinating and putting up a big of a fight but he sleeps it off.

The next day, he wakes up feeling a bit better.

And it ends here. Frank heading off to his next mission and Marc casual as hell as he watches his new buddy leave.

Again I’m going to say it. WHAT.

You don’t understand just HOW bizarre this issue was. ON BOTH SIDES. Frank was so…NICE… Marc was so amendable! They acted like long lost friends! WHAT WAS WITH THE CONSTANT REFERENCES TO GERBILS?! Why does Marc keep putting drugged up men in his bed? Why was he wearing Steven’s clothes? I have so many questions.

And from this casual weird encounter… An obsession was born.

ALRIGHT. Let’s talk about why this works. (This is gonna get long. You can stop here if you don't want to hear me ramble and are just here for the comics).

In the Marvel universe (616), we have a lot of veterans of different wars.

WWII has Captain America, Bucky, and Nick Fury

Vietnam has Frank Castle.

Wolverine....a lot of wars. All the wars. Every war.

Apparently Charles Xavier was in the Korean war (I didn't know that)

Ben Grimm was in the Marines before his space accident (Awww. Another thing for him to bond with Marc over.)

Then of course you have Carol Danvers who worked for the CIA in the cold war.

Rhodes (War Machine) who was in Afghanistan and Vietnam.

There are a LOT of veterans of different wars and different time periods (Marvel time is a soup).

The initial problem was which war. And this is where we are going to once more step onto the Drifting Pieces History soap box.

We all know the saying “There’s no good war”. But that’s not right. Not according to politics and public opinion.

To be a veteran of WWII was a noble and good thing. You fought a clear cut enemy, (nothing worse than a Nazi) liberated suppressed people, and most important, you came home a winner.

What’s that? There was another war? In Korea? Never heard of that one. We totally didn’t go to Korea and fail miserably and we certainly aren’t going to talk about what happened over there.

Oh look, Vietnam! The first publicly broadcasted war. Not like “The Whole World is Watching”. Oh no, the average citizen is suddenly getting their first look at what happens in war. Oh no, it’s not as nice and pretty as it’s supposed to be. No one talked about the atrocities that were committed by the good guys in WWII! And the Korean War certainly didn’t happen.

This was the first war where American soldiers came home and were shunned. They were booed. They lost their jobs, lost their homes, and lost their families. Disgraced and forgotten by their country and their people.

So we have nice shiny Captain America. A literal representation of the good of America and ideal soldier, punching Nazi and saving people in WWII.

Then we have Frank Castle, a dirty soldier from Vietnam. I’m sure people screamed “Baby killer” at him fresh off the plane. What’s that? Frank served THREE tours in Vietnam?! He was the sole survivor of a huge ambush? He was awarded the Medal of Honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Navy Cross, Silver and Bronze stars, and four Purple Hearts? That don’t mean shit to the average citizen that only cares about two things: 1. We lost. 2. We shouldn’t have been there in the first place.

So he comes home, one of the best Marines in the business, and he’s got nothing.

He gets married to a sweetheart, has two kids (a little girl and boy), and settles in living an ideal life. A quiet life. Too quiet. Frank’s got a little PTSD going on and he was very good at what he did. He didn’t want to leave. He was good over there. He was respected. He was needed.

But he’s doing the best he can. Until that’s taken away from him in an event he’d seen over and over again in war. Blazing gun fire and his family is gone.

He gets revenge. But there’s a problem. He isn’t seen as a loving family man that takes down the people that murdered his kids and wife. He’s seen as a violent ex-soldier from Vietnam that’s gone crazy and is shooting up the place.

They say that for Frank, “the war never ended. It just changed missions.”

And all these other Heroes that are also veterans? They came from good wars. Captain America spouts speeches of being a Good Soldier at Frank. He doesn’t know what it’s like to question if the bad guy really is the bad guy.

If Frank hadn’t of been such a family man, he would have made an amazing mercenary. The best there was.

But then you have Marc Spector. He went to war to escape trauma. He was good. He was VERY good at what he did. And dollars to donuts, he heard about another Marine that was also very good named Francis Castiglione.

But Marc could only be good so long as it wasn’t obvious that his mental illness was a thing. Even if he lied signing up for the military, when he took the jobs working for SHIELD and the CIA, they HAD to know about his history in the mental hospital. But the second he starts to dissociate in public, he’s kicked out. Can’t have a mentally ill person hanging out around all those weapons, right? I’m sure that’s what they told themselves as they kicked him to the curb.

Marc could have gone home here. He’d have been a disgraced hero, sitting on the side of the road on a Veteran hat asking for change. But Marc was still running. He didn’t have a childhood sweetheart waiting for him. He had trauma.

So Marc carries on the mission and he’s GOOD. And he’s a follower. He likes being told what to do. It prevents him from thinking and taking responsibility. If people get hurt, it isn’t his fault.

Now Frank is very thorough. There’s a chance that the first time he hears about a new Superhero showing up in Manhattan he immediately looks into it. He’s got access to SHIELD info. He finds out who Marc Spector is and he sees another soldier that was let down by his country. Another soldier that was looking to make a wrong right despite how the war went.

And Marc? Frank’s a hero. He’s tough. He does what needs to be done to keep people safe. Frank’s a leader and he takes care of his soldiers.

They look at one another and see soldiers struggling to find their place here in the normal life again because they never HAD normal lives to begin with.

Moon Knight is the only one who can probably understand where Frank is coming from and not judge him.

Much later on in the comics, when Moon Knight is desperately trying to fit in with the Avengers and be a better hero, we see him come up against Frank again. Frank understands what Moon Knight is trying to do and he asks him if he really thinks it’s going to work.

And despite how everything else was going in that particular run (a lot. A lot was going), it was a very real moment. Frank saw through him. I’ll get more into it later when we eventually get there. But man… These two together both make me so happy and also break my heart.

ANYWAY. Uh… Long extended explanation over! I love this issue with my whole everything.

This writer? This artist? Why couldn’t THEY have been the ones to take over the Marc Spector run? They get it! Look how pretty they make him! Look at all that cape action!

They even get the dichotomy of Marc in this time. We may not have STEVEN, but did you see the way Marc was dressed in the mansion? How very Steven -esque. Even the way he treats Frank at the end there.

UGH I could go on about this all day. I’m going to stop here before I write a dissertation. I HAVE FEELINGS ABOUT THIS OKAY.

#Moon Knight #Moon Knight comics #Analyzing the comics #Marc Spector #Jake Lockley #Steven Grant #Frank Castle #The Punisher #They deserve to be friends #These two disasters #Why was there so much Gerbil in this #I love this issue #I could wax poetry about it all day #Two reviews in one day? Spoiling you

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