#time to dive back into post production at school

[jmflowers]

Week of shoots

“Day 5” I managed to sleep on and off until about 2pm, so I felt much better heading into night two of the shoot. I had to pick people up downtown again, which was an hour drive from my place in Saturday traffic, so I left at about 3pm. Managed to get everyone to location for the 5pm call time.

Almost immediately, I was sent off on driving duties to pick up a few things, and then to grab one of the actors from a train station. By the time I was back, most of the set was dressed and lighting was nearly done, so shooting started shortly after.

The first half of the night felt painful, though. Imagine that phrase “too many cooks in the kitchen” but it’s a film set and they’re directors. No one had a clear vision and it just made for confusion, which had all of the actors antsy - especially the child actor whose first ever night shoot this was. We were aiming for lunch at 11pm, but at about 10:45pm they sent the actors back to holding to warm up and the creative team all stepped outside to argue “in private”. The rest of us who were not vital unless they were rolling slipped downstairs to holding and just hung out for the longest lunch I’ve ever been part of on a set - it was after midnight before we jumped back in. And, of course, the child actor had fallen asleep in the car during that time and we had to wake her back up.

So, there was the production at like 1am - all of us standing around in an abandoned convenience store, eating expired junk food and breathing in a ton of dust, watching as an 8 year old was being coaxed awake for a scene as she cried, “I don’t want to be here, I just want to go home.” And then her mom found packs of slime on the shelf, offered her one, and kiddo woke right back up to kill every. single. take. During a fight sequence, might I add. We had to wrap her by 4am, so her death scene coverage was shot and she was out of there by 3:45am.

Crazy.

There wasn’t much to do technically between takes and the DP only needed a spotter for camera movements a couple of times (one of which included me shoved back beside a bookcase, trying to hide from being in the shot when she whipped around), so I spent most of the time catering to the actors. It was cold in the building, since the heat wasn’t on, so I took their coats every time we were about to roll and then slipped them back on them each time we cut and reset to a new shot. Thank goodness I still had my set blankets in my car from my own shoots earlier in the week, as one of them ended up being best for wrapping up our child actor like a burrito without needing to care about if it was getting fake blood on it. One of the actors ended up hugging me goodbye before she left and they both thanked me profusely for taking care of them, which felt good. I think that’s the part of set I enjoy the most - just being able to help people. There’s such a humanness to watching someone perform at the top of their abilities in a setting like that and then to see them turn around and find comfort in a jacket or a bottle of water or a joke. It’s fun to be part of that, whether it’s with actors or creators.

We wrapped officially at about 5am and headed out shortly after putting everything away that we’d made a mess of. Said goodbyes to everyone - including the audio recordist that I’d worked with on another shoot last spring. I had to drive 4 people home, so we headed back into the city and I got everyone to their doorsteps before heading back to my own city. Pulled into my drive shortly before 7am and promptly showered off a lot of dirt before crashing into bed.

Day 6 was all about sleeping, for the most part, and just getting myself back off the nocturnal schedule. Slept until about 4:30pm, ate, went for a walk, watched a livestream concert, and was back in bed by about 10pm (trying to convince myself that I didn’t need to stay up all night again). Back to regular life and 8am classes the morning after, because that’s the way it goes.

All in all, I had a blast. It feels like hanging with friends when it’s a small crew and a lower budget. We talk about life and make jokes and mix up weird food concoctions in the middle of the night (like an oat milk and expired Kit Kat “hot chocolate” I tried to make in the microwave to warm up…). Mostly it’s all about eating Welch’s fruit snacks and making a movie. Can’t wait to see the finished product.

#film and television production life #and that’s a wrap on the week #time to dive back into post production at school #first night the joke was that I was there to supply pockets and rides #because of my PA cargo pants #second night the joke was that I was vying for MVPA status

[uncouth-the-fifth]

one of these nights - Dean Winchester/Reader

read it on ao3. masterlist.

Pairing: Dean Winchester/Reader (vaguely post-s3) with some Sam Winchester & Reader.

Tags/Warnings: friends-to-lovers, Fluff then Angst then Smut, Sex on/in the Impala, implied/technical cheating, drinking, Reader is a Hunter.

Words: 20k.

Notes: a lovely little commission for the lovely lacilou on tumblr. this was my first shot at writing a dean-insert (as a hardcore samgirl), which was an absolute blast!! hope u enjoy!!

Ask to be added to my taglists for future posts!

All your life, you’d never been keen on cliques. But there’s a certain magic in rolling up to a small-town Massachusett dive with yours.

It’s a little funny, calling Sam and Dean your clique. You know that, yet it’s true. You breeze inside the bar like the most popular kids in school, slow-mo strutting down the hall in the movies. Even with them behind you, you can picture it in your head on film: Dean’s jacket swinging with his saunter, Sam’s hair falling in his face, your jewelry swishing at your neckline. Tonight is already a movie. The thud of your boots together makes this pleasant rhythm, parting the Friday night crowd around the three of you, and you lead the boys to the counter with a sense that today has been perfect. The hunt you’d just spent three weeks on had been tied up with the prettiest, cleanest bow. No casualties. No scrapes that couldn’t be fixed with some whiskey and a bandage. Dean is snickering at his joke, and you and Sam are pretending it’s not as funny as it actually is. Things are perfect-perfect.

Even with your two gigantoids as buffers, the bar you’d picked to commemorate a hunt well done is packed to the brim. You gather around the only empty stool at the bar to get the bartender’s attention, and as you wait, you manage to worm your wallet free from your pockets with only a little elbowing. After so long the boys have zero mind for personal space. It’s kind of cute.

“I’ll cover the tab tonight, boys. Call it an early Halloween present,” you beam, and over your shoulder Dean whistles.

“Damn,” he says, “you really are in a good mood.”

You turn your grin on Dean, wiggling your wallet at him so the coins inside rattle like a tambourine. “We’re celebrating! And you wanna know how I know?”

Another group of people squeezes through the crowd behind you, bumping Dean even further into your personal bubble. He tries to be subtle about it, gliding in like an air-hockey puck, but you can tell that he lets the momentum carry him a little further than it needs to. If you brought it up he’d just explain it away as a product of how damn loud it is in here, _____, you can’t fault a guy for having shit hearing! But you know it’s on purpose. Tonight is good for so many reasons, but the first is Dean being relaxed enough to do that. To walk that line with you.

“How do you know?” He asks below the roaring bar chatter. Dean does have shit hearing, since he’s spent so many years behind a pistol, so he tips his face toward your cheek to make out your voice. A wave of gasoline and aftershave floods your senses.

You share a conspiratory look with him, side-eyeing Sam and hiding your smirk behind your hand. “‘Kid told me he plans to have two beers instead of one.”

Dean lights up, because while teasing Sam is fun, it’s ten times funnier when you both gang up on him. “Two? Break out the balloons,” he snickers, and drops a hand on your back to lean past you. There, he drawls at his brother, “You sure you can handle partying with the big kids, Sam? Me and _____ are kind of professional post-hunt drinkers…”

You pump your fist in solidarity because, hell yeah, what a healthy coping mechanism. Over a decade of training has made you a master of the Winchester sense of humor, so just this kills Sam a little—he’s in a ridiculously good mood too, and you can tell because he’s being even more of a tight-ass than usual.

“Cut that ‘kid’ shit out and maybe I’ll throw in some jäger,” Sam grumbles. Or, he tries to, but he’s still smiling to himself.

Again, you share a look with Dean that goes over Sam’s head (metaphorically, of course). Two beers and some jäger in him could end in only one way: you and Dean dragging over two hundred pounds of giggly man-boy the three blocks to your motel. Dean makes a face like that’s the last way he wants to end tonight, but you know from experience that being carried home piss-drunk is way more fun than it sounds. For you, at least.

Last time, you’d been laughing too hard for either brother to keep you on your feet. It was great. Whenever you complained about something, one of your best friends in the whole world appeared to magic the problem away. You were laughing too hard to walk? Dean scooped you up and carried you all the way to the Impala. Your heels were murdering your ankles? Sam wiggled them off you, trailing behind you and Dean with them slung over his shoulder. You fell asleep to the soft jostle of Dean’s walk and the low timbre of his voice humming Folsom Prison Blues. Sometimes you still caught yourself singing it when you got ready for bed.

“Hold on—that table’s opening up. I’m gonna steal it for us,” Sam notices. He slaps Dean on the shoulder as he goes, “Order for me.” Realizing the troublemaker he’d just handed that responsibility to, Sam wheels back, and asks you instead. “Actually, _____, can you—?”

You raise a hand before he can finish. “The cheapest pale ale they have, I know. Now, go, before we’re forced to sit on the pavement outside all night.”

Sam gives you this trusting nod that’s just golden, because the second he’s gone you twist to Dean, your partner in crime, and squint in thought. “...So. You think he’ll hate the peach daiquiris or the malibu cocktails more?”

The smile that hasn’t left Dean’s face once since you walked in only grows. You feel the hand on your back loop around to your waist, squeezing you against his warm side in appraisal. “God,” he sighs, wistful, “you’re my brand of evil genius, you know that?”

You sputter out a laugh instead of something clever, because, well. When Sam is in a good mood, he digs his heels in and sasses back to everything you say. When Dean is in a good mood, he squeezes the bare skin where your jeans meet your shirt, carries you home, and gazes at you with big glittery eyes and rumbles, I hear the train a-comin', it's rolling 'round the bend…

Apparently, you do about the same thing on your good days too. Gliding into him with that same air-hockey puck subtlety, you squeeze him around the back, asking in your sweetest voice, “Can you go see how many songs are in the jukebox’s play queue for me? I wanna dance to—”

“I know what song you want to dance to,” Dean smugly finishes your thought, so certain of your preferences that your heart does a little jig. “You know what d—?”

“—yeah, I know what drink you want,” you finish for him, just like he had for you.

Dean’s face glitters with open fondness for just an instant, then disappears into the constant flux of people, leaving you to suck down the gasoline-aftershave-leather fog that follows him. You can still feel the friendly pinch he’d given your waist by the time your drinks arrive, the ache of it fading into your skin. The leftover adrenaline from your accomplished hunt was still pounding through your system, so the haze of Dean's affection layered on top has you skipping back to your table.

You can taste it mingling with the cigar smoke in the air—something’s different with Dean tonight. Him and you. Sam had noticed, too, because after he accepts his peach daiquiri with an unphased huff, he waits to speak until he’s safely hidden behind his laptop’s screen.

“That was a lot of touching up there,” he says, as if he’s talking about the weather.

You take the same tone, shrugging like he’s pointed out it’s gonna rain later. “S’ been a good week, Sammy.”

Any attempt to come across as tame is useless. You’re an open book. A part of you wishes you were less obvious, but Dean’s pinch still tingles in your side and the left side of your body is alive with phantom leather jacket sensations. Shit.

“Your hands are shaking.” His brows bounce once at you over the article he’s reading.

You have nothing smart to say at this, and instead choose to scoop up your own daiquiri and clink it against his. Distraction tactic. Sam cheerses with you, but doesn’t drink from his glass, clunking it down next to him and simmering with you in your crush-pumped silence. He gets this particular look on his face when it comes to you and Dean. It’s squinty, knowing, and not an inch different from when he was a little kid. You remember the cool girlfriend that your own older brother had had in high school, and what your relationship with her had looked like. She was awesome, and every day you prayed she never left. Sam has always had that same quiet hope in his eyes—please stick around forever and take care of my dumbass brother. I’ll pay you.

Many, many times, too many times to count, the swirling threads of your feelings and Dean’s had crossed, but not once had they ever knotted together permanently. He would swing into your life and then swing out. You would live in his for a little while, threads looping and weaving, but nothing ever came of it. Putting it into terms more complicated than that usually made your chest ache like a rail spike had been driven through it. Tonight is one of those nights where the ache feels good, where loving Dean is a special secret you can whisper behind your hand to anyone you want.

Words swim in your head. There is no easy way to explain to Dean’s kid brother that Dean is the best man in this room and this world, that he bleeds goodness like other men bleed mud, that he’s the best thing that ever happened to you. Sam would probably roll his eyes. You are rolling your eyes at yourself. But on the up-and-down rollercoaster of your relationship, these last few months have been the strongest climb to the top yet. Maybe that means you’re going to hit a big drop. You’re a hopeful person, though, so you can’t help but read Dean’s eyes in the rearview mirror differently. This is it. He’s not looking at the lonely girls by the bar or the pretty ones on the dancefloor. His eyes are on you.

Blinking yourself out of your head, you putter out the lamest version of your buzzing thoughts.

“I get the feeling tonight’s different,” you say, talking into your glass and avoiding Sam’s laser-focused gaze. On instinct, you stare at the vague clump in the crowd where Dean should be. “All these months of…” you gesture broadly, “I think… something could happen.”

Sam pulls a face. “Ew.”

You kick him under the table. “Shut up,” you laugh, “I’m being serious, dude. Dean—”

…appears right beside you. In your mind’s eye, he emerges from the crowd bleeding with easy cheer, glistening gold at the edges in the bar light. “You rang?” he says. “Got your song going for you. Should be the next one.”

Dean slinks out of his jacket like a tomcat, all casual slyness, and hip-checks you when he slides into your half of the booth. It’s practical—he would have to squeeze, sitting by Sam. With you, Dean has all the room in the world to manspread his thigh against yours and toss his arm over the back of the seat behind you. The flesh of his arm never actually makes contact with the back of your neck, but it could. He survived off those little almosts.

Just as the three of you get settled into conversation, the last song dies out, swaying into the first bluesy chords of One of These Nights by the Eagles. The second that first brassy note plucks off the lead guitar, a match sparks in your chest. Dean spins to catch your eye, gleaming with excitement. The old urge to get up and conquer the dancefloor becomes irresistible. You can still feel your last case in your weary bones a bit, but there’s a certain grime to hunting that can only be scrubbed off by a good time. Dean knows this, too, so you’re led by the wrist out of the booth before the lyrics even start. He steals a sip of peach daiquiri and then you’re off for the open space between the tables. You’re laughing so hard your cheeks ache.

You’re chased by Sam’s playful shout. “Don’t have too much fun out there!”

The race to the lyrics is literal. You know there’s only a few seconds of interlude before they start, and Dean, after decades of being your one and only dance partner, knows precisely when they kick in. One of you decides that you must be in the middle of the sparse crowd the second Don Henley starts singing, and the other accepts this without question. You end up laughing, scrambling, and shoving a couple of people to get there, but god—the supporting piano lands and the bass struts and the lead guitar just stings. Like always. You break through into a clearing at the heart of the bar’s dancefloor, and for a second all you can see is Dean. He skids to a stop in his boots and laughs his ass off the whole time, stumbling inwards and making a mad dash to get your hands in his. His grin shines and his eyes crinkle with glee. The fire and anguish from your earlier hunt is gone. Now it’s just him, as you’ve always remembered him.

“One of these nights…” you laugh to each other. With your hands scooped in his, Dean starts funnily salsaing you back and forth with him to the beat, which instantly splits your sides. You’re laughing too hard to sing with him, “One of these crazy old nights…”

Through giggles, you dryly comment, “Excellent starting move.”

“Why thank you,” Dean replies.

You shift his salsa dancing around in a circle, then follow the spin all the way out, wing-span wide and only one hand tethered to Dean’s. With the ease of practice, he whirls you back in. Each move is unrehearsed and mostly random, but you and Dean have listened to this song in particular at least a hundred times, and danced to it just as much. Some beats of it you can’t help repeating from other nights spent dancing in bars. For example:

You’re wrapped in one of his arms, hand still held, while Dean’s other seamlessly lands on your waist on time with the next line. “We’re gonna find out, pretty mama,” he drawls with purpose, leaning in close enough to make your neck tickle, “what turns onnn your lights…”

He does this every time. Every time, it makes your chest tight with this shivery warmth you just can’t shake.

Dean used to be pretty shit at dancing, but after a hundred bars with a hundred names you’ve forgotten, it’s the one piece of him that you’ve pried loose from John’s influence. Sam isn’t looking and nobody knows who the two of you are. For once, Dean lets loose. He slides his hands down your arms and hooks your fingers in his, calloused and thick, rocking you back and forth with the rhythm. You think to yourself that Dean would make a great musician. He keeps time with ease, falling into a relaxed four-step (you’re pretty sure that’s what it’s called) and losing himself in the words. The swinging openness of it makes him look just gorgeous. Dean’s cheeks are rosy with exertion, the hollow of his throat shines with sweat, and he never looks away from you even once.

Every other day of hunting season, Dean… compartmentalizes. He takes the fever the two of you feel now and packs it down where nobody can find it. You see those feelings shake loose from their reigns every once in a while, but there’s only one time he ever relinquishes his control over them out in the open: here, cupping your lower back and crooning lyrics.

“...been searchin’ for the daughter of the devil himself,” he murmurs, throwing you a playful eye-roll at the symbolism you’re both tired of living. “I’ve been searchin’ for an angel in white…”

You drop a wrist over Dean’s shoulder and he rocks in close, tilting back and forth on his feet. Together, you mumble along with Don Henley and sway in a cozy circle. You take the rare opportunity to relish how he feels pressed against you. Saying anything will spoil the magic, so you just let it wash over you, purposefully coasting away from the few rational thoughts your brain is producing.

It’s unfair that he feels the way he does—and you know Dean does, he’s told you and you’ve told him and it’s all been laid out before—and still strings you along like this. You know. You should be pissed at him every time you think about it. But it’s Dean, and having a piece of him you don’t see is better than having none of him at all.

“...One of these nightssss…”

The Eagles eventually seep into another band’s song, which you assume is your signal to quit. Your vision loses its luster and the glittering lights of the world dim back to normal. Dean will have his one lucky dance with you, then, since you’re a bunch of old people, you’ll retire to your table and shoot the breeze until someone calls it a night. That’s how this always goes.

You pull your cheek from where you’d laid it against his shirt. It takes you a bit to put your thoughts into words, so you’re slow to assume, “Wanna get back to our drinks?”

When you meet eyes, Dean’s are soft, and he smiles with this quiet pleasure roving all over his face. Dimly, you register that Burnin’ For You by Blue Oyster Cult is chiming through the bar now, but. He runs his hands down your arms—sort of planting you in place, like he wants to keep you here with him. Your whole body zings with millions of little electric pulses that pump into your head like a fog too thick to see through. More than anything, you want to stay too.

Around you, the dancefloor is alive with people. But Dean has a habit of making you feel cinematic, so you can almost see how the extras fizz into the background as the camera settles on you and him alone. The bar lights hang overhead, hazy and warm. Your soundtrack is lively and familiar. The moment hangs… neither of you wants to give it up.

“Yeah. Why don’t we, uh,” he clears his throat, “grab a few sips and then head back here, huh?”

Suspended in place by the pound of your own heart, you slide your palms off his chest and put on your slyest grin. “Dancing is way more fun when you’re tipsy.”

Dean slips on a smile of his own, then turns to lead the way out of the crowd. For just an instant you feel like you can’t get your feet off the floor, and you watch him go, head spinning. Deep down, you worried that you might’ve been pushing your enthusiasm to its limit thinking tonight was the night. For the last decade of your life, you’d been waiting on Dean. But something really is different now, because, true to his word, Dean snags a few sips of his drink with you and then you’re back out on the dance floor.

The next few songs fly by. Everything is Dean. The heavy thump of boots on the worn-smooth floor, the growing buzz of alcohol in your system. You’re at the center of his stage, and he doesn’t even try to hide it. If anybody but you came up and waved a hand in his face, you doubted Dean would even notice. You talk about your favorite albums and he laughs at every joke you make, giving you that big-eyed, pirate-smile Dean Winchester look that melts your insides. His eyes are on you.

You swim your way through Double Vision by Foreigner, you on lead air-guitar and Dean supporting with some seriously impressive air-drums. Neither of you consider yourselves professional singers or anything, but there’s a moment in the chorus underneath all the noise where you swear you and Dean harmonize. All the rowdy guitar and drum-playing smooths into The Police’s Roxanne. Your face is immediately sizzling hot the second you hear the starting chords, since every time, without fail, Dean pulls out all the stops to dramatically croon the song to you. The last time it’d come on the radio, he’d chased you all over Bobby’s house, serenading you with a beer bottle microphone. He does it this time too. When you laugh and squirm away, he finds your wrists and guides you back into him, palms everywhere, making kissy faces and everything.

You suppress the urge to seek revenge and huff, “You don’t even know what this song is about, do you?”

Dean snorts, but his eye contact with you is purposeful. “Course’ I do. S’ about a guy who’s so into his girl that he doesn’t want to share her with anybody else.”

Instead of having an apt response for that, you internally shrivel up into a ball and lose any fire left in you. Dean, satisfied he’s shut you up, noses your ear and sings, “...Wouldn’t talk down to ya… I have t’ tell ya just how I feel, I won’t share you with another boy…”

The mushy impression he’s doing of Sting fails pretty quickly, so Dean softens into his own voice. For the millionth time tonight, you’ve found yourself with your arms around his neck and his face hovering around yours. If you mention it, Dean will drop everything and run. You know that. So you don’t sing that particular song with him. Allowing him to sing it to you is much sweeter, anyway, and the slower the music gets the closer you’re allowed to be.

And boy, every guy in the room must be aiming to get a slow dance with his girl, because soon the steady flow of rock n’ roll on the jukebox drizzles into Elvis and The Temptations. You joke about this to Dean, giving him a small out. Just in case.

“You hate mushy music,” you tell him, even if you both know that’s not exactly true.

Dean’s warm palms coast over your waist and you draw your nails across the flannel on his back, soaking each other up. A memory pierces your train of thought in a hot flash. You’d seen Dean dance with other girls like this, hands all over, seeking. But tonight they rest on your hips or hook through your belt loops without intention. Dean’s just here, and he wants you here too. For now, you’re his first choice for who he’s spending his time with tonight.

He doesn’t take the out you gave him.

“S’ not all bad,” Dean shrugs under your hands. “...I like this song.”

It’s Elvis’s Love Me, which effectively scrubs the dancefloor of any non-couples. Besides you and Dean, that is. This fact hangs in the air, supercharged, but neither of you mentions it. Dean draws you into him and you slide eagerly into his hold, your head under his chin. A few other pairs skip out onto the floor and take up space beside you. Soon, the molecule of space left between you and Dean disappears. You’re pretty sure if a few atoms went missing from the universe something crazy would happen, like a nuclear explosion, and that’s exactly what occurs in your belly. Dean sways with you like he’s in love with you, like it’s a secret everyone can see. If anyone in the bar glanced over at the two of you now, you know exactly what they’d think.

The best part of this was that Dean doesn’t end it after two dances, three dances, or four. You go all night like that, shittily waltzing to love songs and grooving along to faster ones. He had an opportunity to escape every time you took a trip to throw back your drinks. But if it crosses Dean’s mind at all, he never, ever takes it. One of you starts talking then neither of you can stop. Almost three hours later, you’re halfway through Just What I Needed and a street racing story that never fails to blow Dean’s mind, when your hundredth round of drinks runs dry. Since you’re both past tipsy now, it’s unanimously decided that there’s more work to be done.

“S’ a good night,” Dean tells you, beaming, “we can do another round, right?”

“Hell yeah,” you shrug, and raise your empty glass, “Here’s to alcohol poisoning, baby.”

“Yeah,” Dean echoes, almost slurring. “Baby.”

You take his empty glass, too, and Dean tips back toward your table to bother his brother. Both times you glance back Dean is following you with his eyes. It’s like hearing scratching in your attic and walking through cold spots for months, then suddenly seeing a full apparition right in your living room. Bobby claimed Dean had perfected the art of admiring you from afar, but you’d always figured he was exaggerating. Instead of chasing the ghost of one of his big-eyed stares, you actually see it first-hand—the big-eyed stare. Dean blinks prettily at you over his shoulder, then sways back toward Sam, unembarrassed and flushed a happy drinker’s red. In the flesh. Wow.

You’re so distracted you almost skip into two patrons, so you start watching where you’re going and add a few more drinks to your tab. While you’re waiting on them, you rock on your heels, brimming with buzzing energy. Years and years of buildup and something might finally happen. The prospect is so sweet that you giddily dance in place, bobbing to your own content music. The bartender gives you a funny, amused look and so do the people you squeeze past to reach him, but you ignore them all, scooping up your drinks and floating back to the table. Your grin is so bright that it makes your cheeks ache.

“Alright, gentlemen, I crossed two deserts to get these drinks, so you better—”

It’s just Sam at your table, looking sheepish.

You squint at him. Sheepish. Why is he sheepish? You set down your glass and Sam’s, then awkwardly release Dean’s beer from where it’d been trapped between your elbow and your ribs. The corner where Sam has shoved all your empty drinks has since expanded—there are at least five more new drinks there, completely outside the realm of anything you know Sam or Dean would order.

You stand. “Damn. Who ordered these?”

Sam stiffly brushed the hair from his face. “Um… a table in the corner sent em’ over. As a gift.”

“Free drinks? Really? That rocks,” you brighten.

Sam was avoiding the eyes of someone at said table, so you turn to intercept the stares and instantly feel the cloud nine you’re floating on drop out from under you.

“...Dean’s over there thanking them,” he clarified.

It’s a big group of women. Your reasonable-self could follow the logic: Dean and Sam were pretty, the women had noticed they were pretty, and then bought them drinks for being pretty. Your reasonable self would pull up a chair and toast to those women. The Winchester spell made everyone want to give them stuff for just being gorgeous and alive, and though you weren’t a Winchester, you reaped the rewards just as often. Sam’s puppy look paid the rent, and more than once Dean’s dazzling smile had won your way into concerts and r-rated movies. You should’ve been stoked.

If you were completely sober you’d probably put together that it was a bachelorette party, but all you see is your Dean, center stage among them and putting on a show. Even drunk he does a convincing performance of a “modeling agent” passing out his card. Cards. To all of them. The booth of girls giggle and lean closer, all swaying in the direction of Dean’s sly grin like snakes to a snake-charmer. A swath of mothy bitterness starts to eat holes into your stomach.

“I’m sorry,” Sam mourns. He says it with so much genuine remorse that you realize how crushed you must look—and wow, isn’t that an embarrassing cherry to top this sundae off. They’re just girls. It’s just talking. Still, Sam tells you, “I tried to stop him.”

“So have I,” you answer, bitterly.

The hours of dancing suddenly burn in your legs. You steady a hand on the table to slide into your seat, but there are so many glasses that it feels too full to occupy, and Sam noisily scuffling them out of your way doesn’t help your raw ears. Resigned, you shove into your side of the booth and tell yourself that you’re overreacting. Thanking people (a group of women) for sending over free drinks (because Dean’s too pretty for his own good) is perfectly normal (to non-jealous people, at least). Because you’re not at all a resentful person, you slide over the closest glass and choke it down.

Sam raises both brows. “Maybe you should slow down a bit. Unless you want one of us to carry you home—?”

You pull your glare away from the other side of the bar and focus it on the table, answering Sam’s question for him.

“Right,” he realizes, “I can go and—”

You’re already shaking your head. “Don’t. Let’s see how long it takes ‘im.”

As it turns out, drunk Dean is an incredibly social butterfly. For the first ten minutes he’s engrossed in his conversation, you aimlessly stir your drink and dodge Sam’s glances. Fifteen and you’re glued to your seat. Twenty and Dean still isn’t back, a handful of songs you know he’d kill to dance to coming and going. Past that you’re spaced out too far to care, and have failed to not let your mood be killed. The neon electricity that’d been pumping through your system all night is cold and lifeless. On top of that, you’re furious with yourself for staking all your hopes and feelings on a premise so stupid, for trusting Dean. Again. You know you’re drunker than you want to admit, but this nasty swirling bitterness burning in your stomach isn’t alcohol. You sigh into your half-finished drink. This was exactly what happened last time.

Since you’re already feeling sorry for yourself, you punish your naivety by stealing glances at Dean’s table. In the half an hour he’s been gone, he’s taken a seat at their booth, cozied up to the woman closest to him, and captivated each of them with a story. You can tell which one from across the bar. With five sets of happy eyes feasting on him, he puts on his best smolder and gestures suavely with his hands—recounting the time he heroically pulled some civilians from a burning building last year. You know he doesn’t tell them it was for a hunt. You wonder if he mentions you being there at all, or leaves out the part about you hauling him from the fire in the end.

Against your better judgment, you lift your eyes from the hole you’d bored into the table and stare at Dean’s profile until your vision blurs. Please, please just look at me again, you pray with all the faith you have left.

…It looks like you’ve misplaced it. Dean stays at their table for another insufferable ten minutes. After all, pushing you away has always come easier to him than dancing.

Ready for Love by Bad Company plays next. Your mind apparently has a bone to pick with you too, because just hearing the song drops you back into the motel room you and Dean had shared in Tulsa years ago. Jim—your father—had passed that summer, speared by the same thing you’d been hunting. Sam was at school. It’d just been Dean and whatever feeble parts of you that’d survived losing your dad. For weeks, you tortured yourself chasing his killer and tortured Dean as stress relief. You were truly rotten to him then. He should’ve left you in Tulsa, but he’d kept you standing and fed til’ the hunt was long over. He endured every fight you picked and every apathetic apology. Nothing could kill his instinct to nurture, not even your grief, and you came out of the ordeal with Dean’s warm hand brushing your hair from your face. You loved Sam, but you missed the days when he was at school sometimes. Only then could Dean open his stitches and let his inner sweetness bleed out. The night you killed the thing that’d taken your dad from you, Dean had carried you home, washed the blood from your hair, and sang that song until you were safe and half-asleep in his arms.

You’re strong, he’d told you. Stronger than me. Stronger than your dad. You’ll get through this, easy.

Paul Rodgers starts to sing. The woman closest to Dean snuggles in to ask him a question, brushing her nails down the back of his neck. He tilts his head toward hers to listen, and whatever she says makes him turn the blatant flirtiness in his grin to 100%. Her shiny dark hair rolls down her back in perfect spirals, and the swish of it around her neck as she stands from her chair, blushing giddily, brands behind your eyes. Dean stands too.

Your stomach drops. She wiggles her fingers for him to take, and Dean, the lottery winner, follows her onto the dancefloor.

That’s about when you should force yourself to stop watching. But you’ve never had the keenest sense of self-preservation, so you keep stealing glances until your stomach is in knots—until this very lucky girl wraps her arms around Dean’s neck and summons enough liquid courage to kiss him.

Dean kisses back.

You sit there until your throat burns with stifled tears. It doesn’t take long for you to notice Sam looking at you, and when you do your whole body instantly flares with dark embarrassment that writhes up your legs like snakes. You barely have to guess what he’ll do next. He stews on the pitiful sight of you alone on the other side of the bench for another beat, then shoves himself to his feet and slams his laptop shut—and it’s nice, having somebody go through all these motions of defending you, but you don’t need it from Sam. You don’t need it from anybody.

“Don’t,” you warn him. “Don’t. ‘Only make it worse.”

“I know what he’s doing,” Sam starts, lip curled in disbelief. He’s disappointed in his brother. “Dean’s—testing you. Seeing if you’ll stick around. But you’ve more than proved you will, even when he pulls this shit, so I don’t see why you’ve gotta—”

“He’s drunk and stupid,” you cut him off. “We both are. I’m gonna let it go, n’ so are you.”

Sam stills, one unsatisfied hand on the tabletop. “...If I just talk to him—”

“Fucking don’t,” you tell him, and wow, you’re a mean drunk all of a sudden, huh? Pressing your fingertips against your eyelids does nothing to make the world stop tilting. Wilting, you pull your hands from your face and try not to burst into tears. “Sorry. Sorry. M’ not upset with you. M’ not upset with anybody.” Pathetically, you beg, “C’n we just go home?”

Sam gives you an uneasy nod. “Sure thing. I’ll grab Dean and pay our tab.”

Well, shit. Miserable as you are, you did promise to pay for drinks. A night of fun celebratory drinks, to be exact, which had gone completely sideways instead. Great. Sam hastily packs up his bag like he can escape before you remember, but you send him off with a wad of your own bills so he doesn’t go broke feeling bad for you.

Since waiting for him and Dean out on the curb sounds stupid, you choke out, “Bathroom,” and go hide there to dust off your pride.

God, does a thin, shitty motel mattress sound gorgeous right now. On shaking fawn legs, you bruise your way out of the booth and through the crowd, silently hoping that a loose elbow from a rowdy passerby knocks you out cold. Unfortunately, you barrel into the women’s restroom still conscious. It’s mostly empty too, so you’re free to meet your reflection without courage.

When Dean had given his yes for your second dance, you’d imagined this moment. After dancing the night away, you’d complain about your aching heels and Dean would scoop you up, all gentleman-like. He’d joke and hum all the way home—and what a funny word that was, since the only thing in your life permanent enough to call home was him. You’d kiss him goodnight and Dean’s gaze would follow you all the way to the bathroom. And there, once the door was shut and you were alone, the magic of the night would glow in your reflection. You’d sink into your happy, exhausted feet. The heat of his fingertips would be all over your waist and neck and chin. Best of all, when you’d slink into bed and pull the covers up to your face, Dean’s stomach would slot against your back and he’d spill it all to you in a whisper. I couldn’t take my eyes off you tonight, he’d say. I never could, sweetheart. Didn’t want to.

But the truth was that Dean could take his eyes off you so damn easily. These days it felt like you lost his attention the second you got it. Again and again you gave him these chances, and every time he wasted them. Tonight you had sworn something was going to be different, felt it ringing in your soul like a promise, and the second your back is turned he’s found a better dance partner. Was this a sign? Now, you glared at the mirror you’d chosen, feeling the familiar needles of self-loathing start to creep between your ribs. When was it going to happen? When were things going to change? Every time you’d hit this point in the past, Dean had cut those threads before they could tie. I’m not good for you, he’d say. He’d remind you of what had happened to Jess, which had always scared you straight—but that fear came with a finish line. Hunting wasn’t the end of the road for you. With you and Dean, there’d always been a vague idea of something “after,” something over the horizon too far away to see.

You’d held fast to that “after” for so long. Even on the third, fourth, or fiftieth round of Dean’s eyes landing on someone else, you took in a breath and reassured yourself of that “after.” After everything was over and there were no worlds left to save, Dean would look at you and never stop looking.

But this was the hundredth time you’d saved the world. The road to that horizon was endless, and you’d waited so, so fucking long.

Staring at your puffy eyes and spinning reflection in the low flickering light, a dull realization started to connect inside you. You couldn’t care anymore. You were so tired of waiting. One of these days, Dean was going to glance away and never look back. Maybe…

Maybe it would be better for you to pull away first.

The bathroom door banged inwards, startling you into a moment of sobriety. You were whirling around and palming the pistol handle in your waistband before you could think, only to relax. It was just Dean. In the women’s restroom. Fucking hell.

“Dean! What the hell are you—?”

“M’ savin’ our party,” Dean clarifies, and woah, he cannot hold his liquor like he used to. Without a hint of shyness, he saunters into your bubble and dares—fucking dares—to power on his doe-eyes. “Why’d’ya wanna go?” He pouts. Sam must’ve told him. “S’ not even midnight yet.”

“Jesus, you’re lucky s’ just me in here. Could’ve scared the pants off some poor girl,” you curse.

Everything after that is a tightrope act to keep hold of your restraint. Taking his elbow, you pluck the beer out of his hand and toss it into the nearest bin. Dean, of course, squawks in protest, but doesn’t fight when you push him into the narrow hall outside.

“Why on earth did you just stroll in? Just wait for me next time!”

“Maybe you were the girl whose pants I scared off,” Dean chuckles, sounding dizzy. He’s not steady enough to stand in place for too long.

Any other night you’d happily let him lean on you, but just seeing him makes your chest feel split open. The second he’s propped against one wall of the little hall, you’re on the other side, twisting around him and making a beeline for the exit. But Dean is still the guy you were on the dancefloor with an hour ago, so you’re not a step away before two big arms catch you around the middle. Giggling, Dean lassos you back in, and all at once he’s draped across your back with his cheek smushed into yours from behind. The happy little snickers seeping out of him rumble warmly through your back. You’re cozily squeezed around the middle with all the love in the world, and the worst part is that you revel in it. Dean sways a bit with you in his arms, big warm hands folding across your belly, and every stupid cell in your body melts into the contact. He’s only ever like this when he’s drunk.

“If you even get scared,” he hums into your ear, amused. “You’re s’ tough I dunno if you even can. And y’know what? I think…” he turns his lips into your cheek, his stubble rubbing the skin there just right, “I think you’re tough enough to get back out there with me n’ show em’ how it’s done.”

You should resist. You honestly should. But you’re drunk and hollowed out and lonely, so you compromise with yourself and stand dead still. You don’t touch him or lean into it. Yet you don’t squirm away, either.

At your silence, Dean wuffs out a breath down your neck and pouts into your shoulder. “C’monnn,” he urges, “dance with me more. Party! We’re celebratin’. N’ you’re such a great dancer, I wanna take you out there n’ brag ‘bout you. Everybody was lookin’ at us before. You and me. Didja notice that?”

“I did,” you swallow. “But I think m’ all partied out. I just wanna go home, kay? Sam’s out there waiting for us…”

Dean hears this and shifts his face into your neck, pretending to search for a comfortable place to rest his cheek when really he’s just nuzzling. “Boring. What? Pretty princess too tuckered out?” Dean teases. “I’ll tell the kid t’ walk back without us, he’ll be fine. C’mon. I’ll even say please.”

You remain silent. Anxious, Dean fills it. “Just a lil’ while longer, _____. Y’know I can only flirt with you when m’ like this.”

The ache in your chest hits a searing point, and the breath you’re holding breaks. He always, always has to hide.

You squirm out of Dean’s bubble. He makes a gentle attempt at fishing you back in, whining in the back of his throat, but you rip your hand free and peel around the corner before he can react. The mental picture of Dean left hurt and confused in your wake is satisfying, but you know it’s not a faithful image. Instead, he and his words chase you all the way to the curb outside. C’mon! Don’t be lame, ______! The yelling is embarrassing, but what really stings is how he does this in front of everyone. Sam. The bachelorette party, who make your skin crawl with mixed stares of jealousy and sympathy. The woman he kissed. And worst of all, everyone else in the bar, who only recognize you from the hours of slow-dancing you’d done with Dean.

You burst out into the chilly amber night, scrambling for any sense of backbone. A hot flash of unwelcome tears locks your throat shut. Like the unshakable hunter you’re supposed to be, you grit your teeth despite them and ignore Dean’s shouts.

“Sweetheart, c’mon,” he calls. The hurt in his voice surprises you. Dean’s voice is thready with genuine, mounting panic, flooding your brainpan with oily pleasure. Good. “Didn’t want this t’ go this way. We wer’ havin’ fun, weren’t we? M’ sorry. Come back inside. Whatever I did—”

You feel your resolve snap next, splitting apart like a guitar string under scissors.

Then you’re whirling toward him at collision speed, a mangled mess of snarling teeth and tear-caked cheeks. Yelling feels fucking great. You bare your fists, flying at him in a rage.

“Come on come on come on—you know what you did! You know! You have to know!”

Dean skids to a stop. By the street lamp light, he’s still golden as ever, looking soft and beaten. His expression crumples. His visible pain feels good for one glorious breath, then it all shatters as you realize what taboo you’ve brushed up against—and why. Over a few girls. Over a little talking. Some dancing. A silly tipsy kiss. You know everything gets heavier when you’re drunk, but god, this burden weighs more than the fucking sky sometimes. You’re so tired of carrying it. You want an out.

He drags a calloused hand down his face. “...I was just messing around, talking to them… dancing with her. Needlin’ you.”

“Well,” your breath rattles unprettily between words. “I’m needled. Are you fucking happy? Are you? Does it—does it—” you have to talk through harsh, sudden sobs, “—do you like playing with my feelings? Hanging that bone over my head, over and over and over again, just to rip it away?”

You don’t get to see how your desperation lands on Dean, since it’s then that Sam comes between you. “It’s okay,” he soothes, “you’re okay—just—” and lays your jacket over your back.

Then, Sam gets his hands on your arms to steer you the opposite way. You thrash away from him and his brother, furious. But you’re coherent enough to know that this is a bad time to wield the contempt you’ve kept stored. Roiling with fresh horror, you stifle your sobs into your sleeve and dart fast out of the parking lot, toward your motel.

“That didn’t involve you, Sam,” Dean barks over your shoulder, but it comes out more feeble than he intends. Your words were so much so suddenly that it sounds like he’s been shocked sober. Hoarsely, Dean pleads, “_____, wait. Hold on a second. Think about this—!”

…And you’re thrown back in. Supercharged with all the ferocity of a whirlwind, you twist around again. Sam’s already intercepting you, hands up and calm, but after years and years of second chances, you’re sick of waiting for something that’s never going to happen. You love Dean. It aches in your chest and bleeds out your ears, chewing away at your survival instincts.

You’d been right. Something was going to change tonight.

“You have no fucking idea how much I’ve thought about it,” you snarl. “Every day I think about it! Every night! So, no, I’m done thinking and—an’ watching and—”

The tank of crazed energy you’re running on immediately saps. Your voice cuts off with it, so you’re forced to gasp for breath and broil in your bone-deep exhaustion. Though this isn’t the first time the boys have seen you this hurt, they stand frozen on coltish legs, wide-eyed. Your effect on them lands hard: Sam’s mouth is drawn into a firm guilty line, and Dean, who usually fills whole continents with his authority, shrinks miserably into his jacket until his hands are lost in the sleeves. Finally, he takes me seriously.

You give Sam a look. Shell-shocked and unsure, Sam shuffles aside to face his back to you both.

With no one between you, it’s clear in Dean’s eyes that there’s another element to this for him. He’d known this was coming. Having his brother as a barrier was just one more way Dean had softened the blow. Between the awful, sinking guilt seeping out of him at the seams, there was resignation too. On one of those slow nights in your motel in Tulsa, he’d told you himself.

Everyone leaves, Dean had shrugged. Sam. My dad. Some day, you’ll leave too. And I won’t even blame you.

Back then, you’d laid your cheek against Dean’s sweat-tacky arm, the two of you trying to stay cool on a boiling Oklahoma night. You’d wondered to yourself how anyone could do that to the man you loved. Dean’s instinct was to give, to point both fans in that boiling room at you instead of him. How could anyone look at all the things he’d sacrificed and not give the same in return?

Well, you’d smiled at him, I’m not moving an inch, cowboy. You’re stuck with me.

Now, after years and years of sacrificing to no end, you knew that Dean’s prediction had come true. He had been waiting for the other boot to drop for so long that he’d already decided what it would sound like. A part of you wanted to cling to him and the promise you’d made him until your nails bled. But that dead limb was the one that’d been killing you, and tonight was the final proof you needed to amputate it.

You had to leave.

“I love you so much, Dean,” you hiccuped. “But I can’t wait for you anymore.”

You knew you were breaking a promise, no matter how good your intentions were. For that, you weren’t going to allow yourself an easy exit. Instead of whipping around and running for it like you wanted to, you let the slow, ugly acceptance in Dean’s silhouette brand your memory.

Statue-still, all Dean could manage was a tight nod.

He just stared and stared at you, gutted and appalled. You waited for him to say something, to fight this even a little, to make any of this easier on you both. Hating him wouldn’t be so impossible if he screamed you off the street or started throwing your stuff in the gutter. Instead Dean just hung there, frozen in that heart-stopping moment where the blade sinks in to the hilt.

Wielding that knife, you turned on your heel and left.

_

By the time you’ve frozen your ass off getting to your motel room, you’ve lost much of your steam. All the anger has washed out of you in one surging flush of misery. You get to the door almost gagging on your own tears, and pathetically slump down on the curb when you realize Sam has your room key.

Sam, who’s two blocks back helping Dean get home.

The cement stings your legs through your jeans. Betrayal throbs through your whole body, and unable to go anywhere, its barbs turn inward. You try to scrape up any backbone leftover from your tantrum, which is about as easy as splitting atoms. Since that didn’t work, you try to fold in on yourself for some warmth instead, and shiver stupidly on the sidewalk. A pair of late-night road-trippers give you sad stares as they pass. The soft heat of their room as they shuffle inside gushes out onto the stoop, calling your name.

Suddenly, the seething need to be as far from here as possible disappears. You want Sam to get back with Dean. You wish this night could’ve gone any other way, so the three of you could fumble into your room and straight into warm, cozy beds, too lazy to change into pajamas or to kiss goodnight like usual. Sam would check the salt lines and Dean would shuck off his jacket. With the last of your strength, you’d stretch a hand out from under your comforter and Sam would do the same to squeeze yours over the beds’ gap. Goodnight, Sam. G’night. Dean, close enough to kiss in your bed, would tilt you toward him by a gentle hand on your shoulder. He’d smush a kiss into your temple. Night, he’d hum. Together you’d snuggle down into your blankets and crash, content. If this was any other night. Maybe it still could be. Maybe you’d been overthinking this.

You’d had so much to drink. It was you who’d created these imaginary stakes for Dean to follow, and you who wigged out, blew up on him, snarling in his face and breaking a promise in the same breath. No matter how much you wanted it, you had no claim on him. If Dean wanted to dance with more than one person on a night meant to be fun for him… If he… wanted to kiss someone else…

Two tall shadows appear at the end of the parking lot. It’s too late to stand up and look put together, so you pull your knees to your chest and make an attempt at silencing your sobs. You press your lips together, watching Sam help a sniffling Dean across the lot and toward your room. Dean doesn’t say a word. He doesn’t tell you he’s sorry, he doesn’t pick you up off the pavement, and he doesn’t tell you that he loves you even though you both know it. It makes all of your lashing anger bubble up to the surface again, and you sit with it until long after the boys are inside.

These feelings feel petulant at first, then simmer into righteous ones. The hunt had robbed you of so much—your parents, your normalcy, your childhood, and more than once, the love of your life. There was no reason it had to take Dean from you this way, too. Those sticky-sweet nights in boiling Tulsa could be every night for you and him.

You could still taste him, and the syrup of old blues songs on his lip. You’d told him back then, you’re stuck with me, cowboy, and Dean had believed you, really believed you, because he’d rolled sideways in your bed and touched his fingers to your chin. Just the rough tips of them, burning hot. There’d been this irresistible magic in his eyes, like he was learning it was possible to break his own rules as long as he kept them later. His breath was sweet with ice cream when he kissed you. Just one kiss had him shakily sighing through his nose, and with his same trembling hand, he’d cupped your face—in the weird sort of way Dean did affection, the slope of his palm around your jaw and his thumb turning up your chin. It’d felt so special, like a promise to hold out. You’d savored each one with your nails tickling the nape of his neck, your dose of love potion refilled. The two of you had passed out curled nose to nose, Dean’s grin hidden in your pillow.

You could be living every night like you’d lived that one. But there was one barrier in the middle of that road: Dean. I’m not good for you, he’d say, even if you’d never had enough of him to tell.

After years and years of holding out and dosing on your love potion, it occurred to you, pathetically curled up outside a random motel room, that Dean would never be with you. Even if the monsters had been hunted and the world had been saved, he just didn’t have it in him to believe in something so good. Deep down, you’d known this. You were a naive optimist hoping for a different future, but the truth was that Dean hated himself too much to see that future too.

Slowly, you unfurled your hands on your knees, staring at them without taking anything in. All you could feel was the uncomfortable, surging ache in your chest, which choked your throat shut and burned stinging tears around the curves of your nose. The last few hours felt weirdly layered in your memory, like film cells from different strips laid over each other. This had been going on for so long that it’d officially crossed into deja vu. Years and years of moments just like these pressed upon you in the ringing silence of the parking lot. But you could only hold up the sky for so long, and tonight your grip had finally slipped. You were sure of it: if these circular, pathetic dives for an answer were the only thing in your future, it’d kill you. It had been killing you.

What else could you do but leave?

The question itself felt rash, but you were struggling to breathe past your tears and you wanted out—away from the constant want, away from Dean. He could bang whatever girls he stumbled upon, so why couldn’t you do whatever the hell you wanted, too? What the fuck was stopping you? Freedom—from years and years and years of that ugly stirring weight you’d once loved—was only a bus ride and one boosted car away. It’d be easy.

The door creaked open behind you. You held your breath at the sound of footsteps, praying it wasn’t who you wanted to see.

“Come on inside. Don’t like you being out here by yourself,” Sam called.

The breath you let go of didn’t make you any more relieved. It hadn’t felt good to yell at him, either. You opened your mouth to respond, but a thought slammed on top of you with all the malice of a blow to the head. The next words out of your mouth could be some of the last you ever speak to him for a long time. Instead, you scuffed your running tears on your sleeve one last time, then hauled yourself onto your feet.

The plan was to dart past him fast enough to avoid the look you were sure Sam was giving you, but it fell on the whole lot bright as stadium lights. You made the stupid mistake of catching eyes with him, and the intensity there was enough to root you to the spot. You froze. Sam’s face was solemn, but when he finally got a good look at you it shifted into calm, haunted understanding, since you weren’t the only one who’d cried on a curb like this. He knew exactly what leaving looked like.

After a pregnant pause, Sam stole a glance into the safe darkness of your motel room. Whatever he saw inside bolstered his nerve, and before you could argue he’d swiped his coat and stepped out into the cold with you. Here we go, you braced yourself.

“...I need to punch something,” you confessed, just to have something to say.

Sam stopped awkwardly hovering around the sidewalk to spread his arms wide, and how he had the energy to smile, you had no clue. “I’m open,” he offered, only half-joking.

You sputtered out a laugh. It trailed off where you couldn’t follow it, and unfortunately, neither could he, leaving you both shivering side-by-side in silence. You started to stutter out something intelligent, but the open sympathy in his eyes took all the nuance out of you. Renewed tears squeezed down your face. Instantly, he was there, a big warm hand coming down to rub your shivering back.

“I know you already know this, but it’s worth saying,” Sam murmured. “Everybody leaves him. It’s all he’s used to.” (...I know, you breathed between sobs). ��Dean doesn’t… hang these other girls in front of you because he’s, y’know. Trying to play with your feelings. He’s scared. It’s wrong, but it’s his messed-up way of testing if you’ll stick around.”

You want to listen. Sam’s tone makes this all sound reasonable and easy, but that bitter crawling thing eating away at your conscience reminds you, Of course it’s his brother out here trying to fix this. Of course he can’t pick up his own mess.

“It sucks. Trust me, I’ve taken a good chunk of it myself,” Sam chuckled, but his heart wasn’t really in it. “I dunno what it is that makes em’ think he deserves it, but… he’s so used to everyone leaving that he rushes to push em’ away first.”

Swallowing around the bitter taste in your mouth, you tell him, “Well. I think it worked.”

That weighs on Sam for longer than you expect, strangling the lot with a heavy silence. Compelled to fill it, you wrap your arms around yourself and spit out your confession.

“I-I think I,” you managed. “I think I gotta go, Sammy.”

As soon as you say it, the reality of your decision hits you. This isn’t a light move to make. Leaving wouldn’t just shred things between you and Dean, but your friendship with Sam, too—it would mean turning all of your memories with them into kindling. In all your time on the Winchester family road trip, you’d seen all sorts of people take up the space in the back of the Impala. Psychics. Some angels and some demons. Good, good friends. Alive or dead, they all got off at their own stop eventually. You’d been riding in the backseat for so long, not once had you thought there’d be a stop for you, too. But here it was; Dean had hit the breaks himself, and Sam was readying himself to open the door for you.

You thought of the girl you’d been when you’d first met them. She’d still had room in her for friendship bracelets and brown sugar, for mystery novels that never ended, always chasing the next adventure. At the end of all this, that’s what Dean was: your next grand adventure.

Being hunter-born had put you in the strange middle-ground between sheltered and grotesquely exposed; you’d seen how purple and putrid a corpse could get before you were fifteen, but were more than acquaintances with a sum total of five people at the same age. Dean was your worldly opposite. He’d find the towns you landed in like you were his homing beacon, fresh out of the thick of it with a fantastical story to match. He’d hang half-out of your bedroom window, fierce-eyed, and singing, and you’d roll right out of the monotony of your life and into the magic of his. You’d mention him to friends in high school like a made-up boyfriend—Dean lives out of town, but he swears he’s gonna visit next month—because even you weren’t sure he was real. He was this untethered cowboy you’d somehow lassoed in, swinging into your life with all the colors and life of the wild west. Not so much a knight in shining armor, but. Dean, your Dean.

You would miss that. You would always miss him.

Sam tamped down his panic. “Are—are you sure?” He turned you by your shoulder to look at him, and Jesus, those kicked-puppy eyes should be considered a weapon of war. “You don’t wanna talk to Dean about this…?”

You were already shaking your head. “For the hundredth time?”

Sam pressed his lips together. You knew he thought this was a cowardly, drunken decision, but in the middle of it all, you felt like you’d earned the right to be cowardly and stupid. The last decade of your life had been wasted being reasonable. When Dean kicked you out of your motel room to share it with a stranger, you found another place to crash without complaint. When he’d told you he loved you, you gave him the space he asked for, neither of you sure how to handle something so big so young. You waited. When you sat him down and spilled your guts about the future you wanted him in, you’d respected his answer. I’m not good for you had translated to I’m not ready yet. You waited. When Dean was ready for other girls, though, Julie, Ava, Cassie—you started to press back. Since then, your feelings had become the ugly “it” that lingered in every room you shared with Dean. Every argument you’d ever had orbited around it somehow, along with every relationship. Spats turned into arguments, and arguments became second chances and third chances. It really had been the hundredth time Dean had played with you like this.

And even if he’d had nothing to do with it, it was killing you anyway. Being around him, good or bad, had sapped your adventurer’s spirit.

Sam goes still, conflicted. “This is your life. You know that I of all people understand that. But… but just… please. Please just give it one more shot. A month. Or a few weeks, if you need it. Please.”

“You think I’m overreacting,” you assumed, swallowing against the drying film of alcohol on your teeth.

“No, no, I think you’re drunk,” Sam answered, instead, and as blunt as it was it still came out soft. “And tired. But you’re not overreacting, ______. Dean’s done this and worse a dozen times before,” he sighed. Realizing that wasn’t exactly convincing, Sam scrambled for a foothold. “...He really does love you. Just needs to see reason.”

Reason, he says, like that had anything to do with this. Sam starts to clam up, desperate to glue the situation back together.

You feel the need to explain, “...Me leavin’ would have nothing to do with you. You know that, right?”

“I know,” Sam said, thickly. “But I’m pretty sure it’d break my heart if you did, so I can’t imagine what it’d do to him.”

At that, you couldn’t resist the magnetic pull of the door to your motel room. It waited over your shoulder with all the gravity of a neutron star, dragging you to face it and wonder at the man on the other side. Knowing Dean, he might’ve managed to kick off his shoes before crashing into bed. Knowing the love of your life, he’d probably roll onto his back and sink like a rock, the hard lines of his face softened by sleep. His was probably puffy from crying. After long nights out, there’d be times when he’d accidentally wake you up by slipping under the covers. Dean would curse and hush apologies, clumsily pawing in next to you, but the intrusion was always welcome. You remembered him always having to pat around for your face in the dark, just so he knew where to place his goodnight kiss. Sometimes he’d miss on purpose and playfully pinch your cheek or lay a gross, sloppy kiss on your eye, which never failed to make you squirm away giggling. Good night, pretty girl. What would it do to him, to watch you go?

Your chest flared with ugly guilt. You weren’t sure. But you knew what would happen if you stayed, and Dean, in the long run, would be proud of you for looking out for yourself for once. He’d always said you put yourself last too often.

You imagined him asleep on the other side of that door, muffling his tears into his pillow, and the last of your hope and optimism just shatters. Swallowing your own cowardice, you steel yourself. “I’m sorry,” you tell Sam.

Sam laid a hand on your back. “Look at me a minute.”

Somehow, you did. Seeing Sam’s devastation hurts even more than you thought it would, but nothing compares to knowing that you’ll be leaving him behind. “C’mon,” he steps off the curb and toward the street, trying and failing to smile. “Let’s walk to the gas station or somethin’.”

You shook your head, heaving for breath, and confessed: “I really gotta go, Sammy. At least for a little while.”

Sam set his jaw. He teetered back toward you, thinking fast, and padded down his pockets for his wallet. “Okay. Okay. I know. But, but make a deal with me—let’s take a walk, get you sober. Then when you have some food in your system, you’ll tell me if—i-if this is still what you want. Kay?”

“Sam,” you grimaced.

“Please,” he begged, full-voiced, then snapped his mouth shut. When Sam was sure he could keep his feelings in check, he held up his wallet. “My treat. C’mon.”

Without hesitating, Sam started walking backward to the nearest corner store. Just the thought of eating made you nauseous, but not only did Sam have the keys to your room, but he’d also taken his stubbornness with him on this walk too. Thawing yourself off the stoop, you took one last look at your door and started after Sam. You knew that he was going to use this time to rally, to convince you, and that it would definitely work—so you steeled yourself. Sam couldn’t win. You had to leave.

It was just one dance. One kiss. You knew that. But you were stupid, drunk, in love, and weighed down by years of Dean’s reminder: I’m not good for you.

You hate that he’d been right.

_

Dean woke up sometime after dawn, but his body was so thoroughly glued to the mattress that he didn’t physically move for at least another hour. Even his routine where am I panic set in later than usual, and Dean was sluggish to answer it:

He was in a motel. That rarely changed. This time it was in… Springfield? Right? Yeah—they’d had fun little town postcards at the front desk, Dean remembered. _____ had studied them while Sam had got them the room, making that funny little hum sound she did when she thought something was quaint. It’d taken Sam only a minute to get their key, and Dean managed to fill that whole minute with nothing but spiraling. She loves kitschy crap like that. Maybe I should swipe one for her. Start a collection or something, make all this back-and-forth driving fun for her. She’s been so patient with us lately, deserves somethin’ to perk her up. Would she like it? Or was that too weird?

Dean groaned at himself—not only was he dealing with a hangover for the record books, but a heavy dose of embarrassment too. God. That woman. Nobody twisted him up like she could.

He kicked at the blankets, wiggling backward onto her side of the bed where the sheets were nice and cold. Usually the two of them cooked under the covers together, but she must’ve been hanging off the other end of the bed to leave so much cool space between them. He reached around with a foot. Nothing.

Huh. He hoped the gut rush of shittiness seeing her side empty was from whatever he’d been drinking last night, not something serious he was forgetting. Since getting up was so, so much uglier than being smushed comfortably in bed, Dean closed his eyes and thought. Counted back. The three of you had just wrapped up for a hunt… gone out for drinks to celebrate… and past that things start to fuzz. There might’a been a screaming match. Dean really wants to lean toward no, but he distinctly remembers being inside while Sam comforted you outside and sort of hating that. It was definitely Dean’s fault. But still, he remembered bitterly stuffing his face in his pillow hearing the soft lilt of your voice through the door—he should’ve been the one to fix things.

He would. Today. Dean laid in bed for a little while longer, but the guilt clawing around in his gut was making it impossible to do anything but overthink. How’d he fuck things over this time, huh? As sucky as it was, his best shot was to get the story from Sam, then figure out where to go from there. With how patient you’d been with him when he’d snapped his collarbone in Illinois, Dean was willing to grovel for forgiveness. This wasn’t the first time he’d hurt your feelings being coarse, but… c’mon. This was you. The only person who knew Dean better was Sam, and his forgiveness was the price of family. Yours was untethered, free, and lovingly given, so Dean tried to cool his mounting panic. You’d talk it out. You’d forgive him, because Dean was stupid lucky to have such a fucking saint in his life.

You loved him, Dean reminded himself, and forced himself to sit up.

The second he’s up and looking at everything, he’s pinched by this sense of wrongness. His duffle’s where he left it at the foot of the bed, the salt lines are clean and uninterrupted, but it’s like everything’s been moved an inch to the left. The pinch turns into a pang. Dean trudges out of bed, suspended in the limbo between his bedside and the open bathroom door. Something is wrong.

Some of your things have been moved, Dean rationalizes. You must be out grabbing breakfast. On stiff legs, Dean moves into the bathroom because, obviously, that’s where your shit would be if he’s not seeing it. Ignoring the bile that rises in him the second he’s moving, Dean purposefully avoids the mirror and hangs in the doorway. All three of you occupied the motels you lived in like you were ready to bolt any second, so there isn’t exactly any toiletries to take note of or clothes to notice… Until Dean circles back to his duffle at the foot of the bed. There’s a set of clothes thrown on top that he hasn’t seen since high school—some ratty sweats, holey winter socks, and two or three tees and shirts lost to time. It takes him an embarrassing amount of time to realize that they used to belong to him, and just as long to connect them back to you.

These, Dean realized, were your most prized war trophies. Over the years you’d borrowed so many clothes from them that you’d probably modeled the entire Winchester closet. At first just the sleep shirts, but that graduated into tees for casual days and layers to add in wintertime.

By junior year, the half you’d pilfered from Sam was all too big to wear practically. That left Dean’s half, which you essentially lived in. A few of his shirts in particular had become main stays, so Dean had neglected to ask for them back and you’d comfortably forgotten to return them. You had a thing about wearing them around his flings, too, which Dean figured was your cute girl-way of reminding them who’d still be there when they were gone. True to form, they’d always left and you’d always stayed. Dean liked things that way, too.

A real pang of panic rang in his chest. Were you so pissed at him that you’d returned everything you’d borrowed? Or was this something worse?

His panic finds its legs. Not only had your pilfered clothes been returned, but Dean couldn’t find your travel bag. If his duffle is thrown at the end of the bed, and Sam’s is zipped up on the table, then yours had to be in the Impala. It had to be. He picks through the backseat and then graduates to tearing apart the trunk, both of which are void of your things. Your phone isn’t plugged into the wall. Your shoes aren’t by the door. Even the pistol you’d duck-taped under the coffee table was gone, along with the knife behind the headboard. Dean still can’t find your bag. Maybe it’s out in the open and I missed it, he tells himself, but the bathroom and the dressers and under the beds and the front lobby carry no sign of your stuff. Of you ever being there.

His last resort is that you have to be with Sam, who usually goes for a run this early—Sam, who walks in alone, twenty minutes into Dean’s full-body meltdown.

He should assume that you left. Logically, that is what missing keys, phones, toothbrushes and wallets mean, but this is Dean Winchester.

Instead, he assumes: “______’s been taken.”

Right away, Sam deflates. Which is impressive, since he walked in looking pretty wilted already. There are dark smears of purple under his eyes, which are puffy from crying. But that’s not exactly the reaction you want from your brother when you share this kind of thing with him, so the lack of response just spurs Dean into tearing their room apart even more, stone-faced.

“...Dean,” Sam manages.

Dean starts ripping the drawers out of the dresser, like finding one of your socks will be proof that you’re still here.

“She was fucking taken, Sam,” his throat feels tight. “I woke up and all of her shit was packed up and gone—somebody good had to do this, s’mbody who knows what the hell they’re doing, cause’ they knew to make it look like she’d left on her own. May—maybe she went out by herself after we went to sleep? N’ that’s how they took er’?”

His hands are shaking, fighting to get the next drawer off its track. Looking at Sam will just make him fucking implode, so he ignores him, shredding through the room inch by inch. The wheel on the dresser’s track snaps so hard that Sam flinches where Dean can’t see. Somehow, the urge to find expands into something an inch more logical, and he rolls seamlessly into escape mode, tossing his duffle on his bed and shoving the returned clothes inside. In a never-slowing storm, Dean flies around the room and hunts down what isn’t already ready to go in their bags. The adrenaline was starting to cut into his nausea, and the two mixed uncomfortably inside him, each knowing in their own way that something was terribly wrong.

After a long silence, Sam collapses onto the end of his bed and confesses in a small voice, “She left a couple’a hours ago, Dean. On her own.”

“She wouldn’t do that,” Dean snorted.

Something patted Dean’s shoulder, and it was a miracle that anything in his bubble didn’t immediately dissolve into molten lava; reining himself in, he turned. Sam was holding a letter.

He shrugged, swallowing thickly. “She said she, uh, needed some time. Not forever, just… time. Wrote you this.”

Dean hung in place. Too quickly, he recovered, and managed the gentleness to take the letter from Sam instead of yanking it away. There was no envelope. Just your tri-fold notebook paper and the bubbly curve of your handwriting on both sides. In the clean white space at the top of the page, you’d written Dean’s name. If he flipped it over and opened it, there would be more bubbly letters strung together in words. Words Dean didn’t have the strength for, right now.

It was easier, much easier, to succumb to the sudden slosh of sickness in him and follow his hangover into the bathroom.

After he empties his stomach and Sam gets some water into him, the crazed packing continues. Your letter goes straight into Dean’s duffle, unread, because Sam asks him what he’s doing, and Dean curtly interrupts him, “What else? We’re gonna go find her.”

Sam avoids his eyes. “Maybe we shouldn’t.”

Reasonably, Dean knew that Sam had helped you. He’d felt it, seeing him walk in late, seeing him pass off the letter. But it only starts to press on him now, with the alcohol sickness becoming a different kind of sickness within him, the full weight of what exactly Sam has done.

“You fucking didn’t,” Dean snarls. “Tell me you didn’t.”

There’s a flicker of rebellion on Sam’s face, but he subdues it for Dean’s sake. He shrugs, “...She wanted to leave.”

The nearest lamp on the bedside table shatters against the wall with a fierce pop. Dean’s close to tears, he’s so upset, sucking down anguished breaths. This is his worst nightmare. It roars off him all at once, and Sam, the nearest target, takes the brunt of it.

“How could you do this to me? How could you do that to her? She—she can’t survive on her own—!” he lies to himself, “—she needs us—and-and I need her! Why would you just let her walk away? What the fuck, Sam?”

“What was I supposed to do? Handcuff her to the radiator?!” Sam snaps, spreading his arms wide, “It’s her life!”

“With us!” Dean roars. His throat grates with acid and tears.

“With whoever the hell she wants! You should’ve—” Sam argues. He realizes how fruitless all the yelling is, especially with tears smeared in the creases of Dean’s face. “...I can’t speak for her. Read the damn letter.”

“No,” Dean grates. He gets his duffle over his shoulder, his whole body coiling with betrayal. “Get your shit and get in the fucking car. We’re finding her. Where’d you drop her off?”

Of course, Sam refuses to answer. He gives Dean this quiet, desperate look neither of them is good at processing. Dean’s not exactly in the mood to process much of anything, nevermind this, nevermind the mountain of shit he’s messed up between last night and today.

He snarls. “Where, Sam?”

Sam still doesn’t answer. His stubbornness forces an old ugliness out of Dean that he’ll regret later, but, what’s one more thing for the pile, right?

“What?” Dean whips on his brother. “You give that little of a shit about her? You pick up brunch and a smoothie after you left her to fuckin’ rot?” Baring his teeth, he spits, “She’s not running off to Stanford, kid. This is different and you know it.”

The blow lands so hard that Sam bristles, but if you left a couple of hours ago, then he’s had plenty of time to brace himself for the grave Dean had planned to dig himself. After a long, treacherous silence, Sam finds an answer:

“Train station,” Sam’s lip curls. “But she made sure I drove off before I could see if she even walked in. She’s just like you n’ me, so she’s probably two states over by now—”

Dean slams the front door before he can finish.

-

It takes Dean four miserable hours to chase the specific bus you’d taken over the border to Connecticut, two days to pinpoint the lousy 83’ Mercury Capri you’d bought, in cash, from a dentist in New Hartford, and another to find it trunk-first in the Connecticut river, stripped entirely of your things. Sam fights him all the way to Brooklyn, which turns out to be a last-ditch distraction tactic. Dean had figured you’d head somewhere busy to shake them, but instead, you’d turned West, to Tulsa.

At the end of the week he finds you waitressing in a little dive just outside town. It’s a long chase, by their standards. As anguished as Dean felt, he couldn’t help nursing a warped sense of pride: his girl was good. Lesser hunters would’ve never caught up with you.

The Impala coasted along the buckling sidewalk framing the lot and stilled, idling on anxious wheels. Dean left sometime after Sam fell asleep. A whole week of non-stop pursuit had almost burned the spirit out of him. Sam’s moral needling never stopped, not until the silence burning up between them was as light as a slab of concrete. Twice now Dean was tempted to cut and leave without him, but the dark swimming part of Dean’s mind knew he deserved the constant backlash. She doesn’t want to see you, Sam had spit once, she needs time.

But the thing was that you’d never needed time before. The only time you’d needed in the past was the minutes it took for you to say, you’ve hurt my feelings, Dean, and the time it took for him to drop into your lap and bemoan his apologies until you were in stitches. He’d clutch your pantleg in his fists and fake-sob, Oh, baby, I’ll never forgive myself fer hurtin’ you! There was a familiar dance to it. At first, you’d stifle your smile and shove at him, all tough n’ girly-like. Dean would hunt down your nearest ticklish spot until your anger was a funny thing you’d both forgotten about, then sink into an apology he really meant. It worked every time and you knew it worked every time, but. Dean would drop his head into your lap and the first thing he’d feel was your hand on his back, keeping him there.

You’d never needed time before. You’d never needed space, because Dean was your space, with no room for anyone else to squirm in between.

It’s been days, man, Sam had said, endlessly. Just read her letter. Just read it.

He’d tried. More than once, he’d steeled himself enough to find it at the bottom of his bag and open it up, but beyond those steps was a whole new hell. He gets three words in and is immediately split open like a deer carcass in the sun. I’m sorry, Dean. Just that is enough to make him carefully re-fold the letter back on its seams.

There, in the parking lot of your bar in Tulsa, Dean finally finds the endurance to shovel past that first line. Originally, his plan isn’t really a plan at all—he’ll swing inside, convince you to come home, get some dinner in you and give “making things right” his best shot. But those are just ideas with no ground to stand on beyond what Sam has told him. And what Sam has told him sounds like, l-like horseshit, something Dean would hunt one of your shitty ex-boyfriends down for. To him, it sounds like something irreparable. That feeling is starting to find its roots.

By the flaxen street light, he spreads the thin notebook paper out on his thigh, careful not to smudge the hurried pen with his fingers. He reads it once and only once, unable to stomach any more.

The Impala pulls out of the lot and slinks back to their motel.

-

The next day, Dean loads his brother into the Impala, picks a direction, and drives.

His instincts settle back onto their monotonous track, and within a week he and Sam are cutting down vamps in Montana. Only once does Sam ask about what happened, and Dean only shuts him down once for the two of them to return to the Winchester default: not talking about it. Sam clearly wants to, squirming with unspoken questions when they find your spare boots kicked under Baby’s front seat or dodge hunters who’d ask around for you. Dean feels like ripping out his own entrails every time Sam itches to bring you up, but draws blood from his lip instead. When Sam’s out of resolve and Dean’s alone, he presses his face into the shirts you’d borrowed, soaked all the way through with your perfume, choking down tears that don’t do nothin’ for nobody. Especially Dean, who hasn’t cried in front of anyone but you since he was nine.

It’s like he’s lost a limb, left only with the phantom grasping feel of it. Dean definitely copes like a man who’s lost a leg. Sam leaves the issue alone, for the most part, trying to trick himself into being content with you being where you want to be. Meanwhile, Dean’s flask graduates from his duffle to his jacket. Hunting stops being a distraction and gradually opens up into a dangerous sinkhole.

The following weeks reek with deja vu. Silences stretched, gaps in their routine yawned wider, every inch of their never-ending road trip scrubbed raw with impressions of you. Dean must’ve checked the rear-view a thousand times, running on that same old instinct to steal looks at you in the backseat. The whole universe had been kicked off its axis by the aftermath, causing a run of bad luck worthy of a horror movie. Dean’s gun started jamming inexplicably; they’re caught by cops in Indiana and have to circle back two weeks later for the car, which is stripped of everything they’ve got; he almost loses Sam getting their arsenal back from an evidence lockup in Fort Wayne. Scrubbing his brother’s caked blood out of the steering wheel one afternoon, Dean knows that it’s more than luck he’s lost.

When you were stressed or feeling stuck, you’d lay out all their weapons on the bedspread—reminding Dean not to plop his ass down without looking first—and clean them each meticulously. The way you did it sort of reminded him of sewing. You’d count under your breath, so versed in the steps you’d created that you didn’t even have to watch your hands. Sometimes this ritual collided with the nights you polished up your poker skills together, and if Dean listened between hands, there was your counting. Four. Take off the slide. Five. Scrub the frame. If Dean’s pistol landed in the pile, you’d forget you were winning altogether and sink into deeper focus, pretty brows furrowed and your lips in a soft line. Dean’s gun never jammed if you’d been the one to clean it.

You were stealthier, more unassuming, with the kind of easy smile that policemen looking for fugitives glossed over. The cops in Indiana would’ve glossed over you, too. You were the third support beam that kept them sturdy—with you at Dean’s six, he and Sam would’ve smuggled back the arsenal with no problem. And even if there’d been trouble… well. This was you. Lose-a-car-in-the-river-on-purpose you, who Dean could always rely on to back his play.

When Sam has to drive him home from the bar one night, Dean slurs, Everythin’. Everythin’ goes to shit without ‘er.

Those thoughts crept up on him again and again, preying on him in low moments. He buried them under everything close enough to grab, keep the salt lines clean, call Jody, fix the car, but everything thrown on top of his memories of you swayed and shuddered, demanding to be dug up. Dean knew that he’d betrayed you. Already that was unforgivable, but by hurting you he’d broken a blood oath as old as your friendship. At fifteen Dean had sworn to protect you, only to turn around now and wound you so viciously that you couldn’t even bring yourself to say goodbye to him. Not in person. Not in the letter.

It was the one detail his heart couldn’t stop fixating on, no matter how deep Dean buried you. He knew you better than anyone, and you never said goodbye unless things were truly over.

He’d heard you sob it into Sam’s shoulder before he left for school. When the hellhounds came for him in New Harmony, you’d resisted, clutching Dean’s jacket in both hands and weeping instead, “I’ll see you.”

You’d never said goodbye to him.

This turns into a notion, then a stupid idea, then a plan that Dean rolls around in the bottom of his glass, considering. He could get that goodbye from you. He could knock on your window like he’d done when you were kids, say his piece, and then let the grass eat his boots as he waits for you to truly finish this.

He could get that goodbye from you. It’d kill him, but Dean wasn’t sure he could go on without it.

-

Five minutes into his drive to DeLancey’s Pub and Bar, the slimy dive you waitressed in around the dicier ends of Tulsa, Dean realizes that he’s not even sure if you’re working tonight.

The drive was long—long enough to swerve Dean’s confidence in every single direction possible, until the revving toughness he’d gathered had swan-dived into gut-clenching fear. Two hours ago he’d been combing through articles for a case. Something had compelled him into the car, something bone-deep and inescapable, and if Dean was being truthful with himself it had everything to do with the strange adrenaline he got just being in the same state as you. Twice, he swore he’d seen your face among the officers at the station and blending into the diner crowd at breakfast. He knew that you were a whole town away and intent on not seeing him, but. Dean could sense the divide between you like the childhood home he’d never known. It was a distance he could close and map in his sleep, and after another night jolting out of a nightmare and into a bed empty of you, Dean was exhausted. He missed you so much he was sick, choking back mouthfuls of guilt just thinking of you. He missed you so much that the drive to you could’ve been measured in inches, and the walk to the Impala was even smaller, calling to him.

Waking up, he’d sensed it. Tonight was gonna be different.

Things had started off strong. The second Dean had turned the key and pointed the Impala toward Tulsa, his hands on the wheel were sure as all hell. I’m gonna tell her all my cruddy fuckin’ feelings and get all this cruddy fuckin’ honesty out of the way, then either we make up or she gives me the boot. Simple as that. Nothin’ to it. That was as far as his planning went, since that’s as far as Dean could handle thinking into your future. By the time Dean was off the highway his plan had started eating itself, circling constantly back to your letter to him. But he was already halfway there, then over halfway, and giving up became an increasingly spineless option.

Along the way, I’m gonna give it to her straight, slowly, bloodily evolved into, I’m bringing her the fuck home.

Dean’s propelled himself forward so hard just to get here, so the Impala’s still rolling into park when he clambers out and onto the gravel. His heart is pounding like thunder in his ears but it’s nothing compares to the screaming silence that stands between where the Impala’s sitting and where you must be. DeLancey’s is the only kind of place Dean could picture you working; somewhere low and unglamorous, like any other bar you and Dean had skulked around in your twenties. You lived for skeevy places like this, the shabbier the better, and privately Dean had always thought you were too pretty to exist in places like those. But he’d seen you under neon beer lights so often that you’d sort of claimed it for yourself, this strange brand of cigar-smoke beauty that made Dean’s ears warm.

He thinks of that image and can’t help but need himself to be there, to be with you like he always has, and that’s what gets him across the gravel and through the door.

Either this is a hunter’s bar or the place is packed full of demons, because the second Dean bangs inside, making a few heads jerk up with the noise of it, those heads immediately swivel to whisper to each other. What’s that Winchester boy doing here? Anyone who knows you knows there’s only one answer. The bartender looks up from the drink he was making. The host awkwardly shrinks behind her podium, freezing like everyone else in the room. For just an instant he has the whole saloon itching toward their pistols, and Dean lives off the warped satisfaction he gets from that until the kitchen door swings open for a huge tray of drinks.

Hefting it over one shoulder, you slip easily out from behind the bar and pass the drinks over to a table of hunters. There’s a resonating shock that sizzles through Dean’s system, seeing you. It’s the strange pleasure of confirmation, of knowing that you’re real, that you’re someone he can lay eyes on instead of a slow-fading memory. In your element, you’re… Dean swallows. You’re still you. One of the hunters says something to you, and you snap back in a way that has them all roaring with laughter. All doubt left Dean’s body, and standing there, he’s winded by the single-minded purpose that got him there in the first place. He’s getting you home.

At full tilt, Dean bee-lines for you.

The harsh sound of boot steps makes you glance up, and with it the chatter of the hunters dies away. Your expression doesn’t shift from your usual calm, arrow-eyed look, empty of anger or loneliness or happiness. Just calm, like you knew he’d find you, you’re just surprised it took him this long. You take a cool step away from the table to stand at your full height, and an old shivery warmth flutters down his spine. Yeah. There was his girl, tough as a fuckin’ tank.

“Dean,” you murmured, a greeting.

He wants to murmur your name with the same sweetness. He wants to scoop his arm around your waist like he used to and shove his face in your neck like he used to, spilling his guts in ways he’d only spilled to you. He wants to do this the easy way, but that’s not exactly his default.

Dean swings in, snapping, “Get outside. I’m telling you something whether you like it or not, n’ don’t think I won’t drag you if I have to.”

Your brows fly up your forehead. “Wow.”

Right along with you, the hunters with the front-row seats to the scene Dean’s making bristle in tandem. Some of the guys at the bar twist around on their stools to throw Dean barbed looks, and really, he shouldn’t have underestimated your ability to assemble so many minions like this, since he and Sam had been your minions from day one. The guy closest to Dean makes a big show of scraping his chair back and growling, which Dean pities him for. Get in line, pal.

“That’s my friend you’re talkin’ to, chisel chest. If you know what’s good for you, I’d get the fuck outta’ here,” says Asshole #1 of 4, and the threat hasn’t even landed before you’re neatly cutting through him, “—mind your damn business, Tommy, he has just as much a right to be here as anyone else.”

At your request the other hunters simmer down, and, ignoring Dean, you scoop up your empty tray and deliver it to the bar. All the energy he’d rationed in the car starts to seep out of him, since. Well. Still, after all this time, you didn’t hesitate to bare your teeth for him. With the wind successfully taken out of Dean’s sails, he tries not to twitch in place as you round’ the bar, brush past him and gesture for him to follow you out a side exit.

Your silence terrifies the hell out of him, so adding the hanging quiet of the parking lot to the equation makes Dean’s nerves crawl. He hadn’t realized how loud it’d been in there until you were isolated outside, the rowdy Friday night chatter softened behind the door. Swaying next to you on legs he’s forgotten how to use, a dart of something mean and cold hits Dean in the chest. On the other side of the door, where the lights are dim but warm and the air sings with the tang of alcohol, Don Henley floats into the first lyrics of One of These Nights.

Even now, your magic sways over him. Across from him on the gravel, you stuff your hands under your arms and huff a strand of hair out of your face, glowing gold by the creamy moonlight. If this was any other night of the year that the two of you had fallen out of a bar together, Dean would ask you to dance with him right here by the dumpsters. You’d say yes. He knew you would’ve said yes, then.

“You worried me sick,” is the first thing Dean manages to say. “Wakin’ up, finding you gone—I thought someone had fuckin’ took you, y’know that?”

This is apparently the wrong thing to say, because the coolness in your expression coasts straight into bitterness. Regardless, Dean rolls right past it and right into nervous, emotional ranting.

“I know what I did. I know I don’t deserve shit for it,” he chokes out, “but you could’ve at least said goodbye t’ me! I deserved to know you’d be safe! If you couldn’t… If I was hurtin’ you too much, and if I wasn’t listenin’, you had every right to get the fuck out of there and make your own life somewhere else. But after—after bein’ with me for so, so damn long, so long I don’t even remember how we met, you couldn’t even say goodbye? Nothing? I just have to live with the fact that I don’t even ‘member the last time we fuckin’ talked to each other? Don’t even get to see my best fuckin’ friend one last time?”

“No,” you scowled. “No, you fuckin’ don’t. Because we’ve never been just friends, Dean, and even if you knew that you still played with my feelings. Why the hell would I even want to look at you again? Why do you deserve that?”

Dean flinched. He sputtered on his answer, of course, because he’d never been able to keep his head straight around you. Not now, not ever. “...I guess I don’t. But, um… I know this doesn’t mean much anymore, but…” He closed his hand into a fist, like it was possible to draw in raw courage from the air. “You’re right. We’ve never really been… just plain friends, and—”

“We’ve said I love you,” you scoffed, “We’ve kissed! We’ve spent four whole years on the road together, with nobody but each other, and even years after that you still can’t even admit it to my face! Can’t even say it!”

Dean’s hands are shaking, and in a rush he says, “Yeah? And you wanna know why? Cause’ the second I do, the second it’s out of my mouth, you’re dead. You hear me? A target drops on your back so fast it’ll make your head spin.”

Honest to God, you start laughing, the scary hunter’s laugh that only bled out of you in the thick of a chase. “I’m already dead!” You budge him with your fists, almost pushing him back a foot, “We’re both already dead! None of that bullshit matters! Wouldn’t you rather we use the fucking time we’ve got instead of sitting around with our thumbs up our asses? Dean, come on!”

“Of course I do!” He roars. You’re close enough to grab, so he does, ripping you toward him by the wrists, “That’s all I’ve wanted!” He sucks down the cool night air and the little breaths puffing out of you, panting, “You’re all I’ve fucking wanted. Since the last time we were here. Since way before then. But the minute—the second they know that, Hell or—o-or whoever’s after us now, they’re gonna take advantage of that.”

The look on your face is frozen still with mute shock. Choking down another dose of guilt, Dean drops your wrists and suppresses the urge to pull you back in, to squeeze you against him, to kiss you stupid like he’d done years ago.

“Don’t think for one second that I don’t want you,” Dean rasped. “But I’d rather have you livin’ than be with you dead, you get me?”

You closed your eyes. Tears squeezed down your face, rolling around the curve of your cheeks. You grit, “I’m sick of having this argument, Dean.”

Then, the pull to reach out for you grew too great, and Dean couldn’t help but cup one side of your neck. He swallowed, thickly. “I know, baby girl.”

Starved for contact, you dug your nails into the material of his sleeve and did your best to speak. “If I go back with you,” you rattled out. “If I go back w’ you, sittin’ with this is gonna kill me. Can’t wait anymore. Can’t sit in the damn car while you run off with other people. I have t’ go. I love you, but I gotta go.”

Dean was sick of having this argument too. After years and years of it weighing on the two of you like a black hole, of this same old story returning every so often to throw a fresh gap between you both, Dean had hit his limit. There wasn’t a thing he wouldn’t do to keep you living and happy. But this pressure on his heart was heavier than the damn sky, and now more than ever he wanted to let it go. Find another way. Choose you.

He overspills.

“I love you too,” Dean gushed, and from there, poured the rest of his heart out onto the wet asphalt. “Love you so much it makes me damn sick. Makes me all stupid and mushy on the inside, which is probably half the reason I’ve made it this far. Having you gone has just made it worse—the road’s too quiet and the backseat’s always cold, like everything else’s sick too. S’ made me realize that I—I-I can’t do this without you. Everythin’. Livin’ like this. I tried for your sake, I honestly did, but god, baby, I need you home. I need you to come home.”

“Dean—”

“Let me finish!” Dean barked, and the sloping misery on your face paused. “I know why you left. Shit, I’d leave too if the one person I… if that one person kept treating me the way I was treatin’ you. Fuck, _____, if this was some other guy? Doing this to you? I’d kill him. Acid bath, hit him with my car, something. I’d kill him. And I’d—”

Dean stops himself, realizing the spiral he’s throwing himself down. “You’re everything t’ me,” he gasped. “So get in the damn car and just come home.”

In the thousand-foot-drop-silence that follows, the only sound capable of puncturing the space between the two of you is, as always, One of These Nights. Inside DeLancey’s, there are a few couples swinging along to the beat, but all of the real fever is out here, thundering in Dean’s chest. There’s only one time he ever relinquishes his control over his feelings out in the open: here, as the Eagles sing your signature song. Dean’s eyes are only on you.

“C’mon, _____,” he pleads, one last time. Again, he’s compelled by something beyond himself, and with nothing left to lose he starts to sing, smiling without feeling. “Oooh,” Dean croons, “loneliness will blind you, in between th’ wrong and th’ right…”

Here it is. You drag in a breath with all the weight of the world on it, and Dean knows what will follow. The goodbye.

Despite yourself, an amused little smile presses through the seams of your composure. You sober yourself. “... Things are gonna have to change, Dean.”

He’s not sure what that means. But it sounds good, and there’s still an optimist swirling around in him somewhere. “Yeah. Of-of course, anything. We can talk about it more, but… I’m willing to put you before anything. I should’ve put you before anything, before.”

You nod. “...Okay. Lemme go tell the other girls on shift.”

That’s good. That’s good, Dean realizes, and without meaning to he beams, blinking hard. You’re coming back with him. That’s what that means, right? Relief rushes through him so fast that he almost faints. Not so prepared to trust it, Dean’s eyes roam across your face for hesitation or displeasure or anger—and some of it’s there. There are still things to fix, still changes to be made, but. On top of all that is beautiful, sweet-tasting relief that Dean feels like collapsing under. You’re coming home.

“Just like that?” Dean asks, and he really shouldn’t be grinning, not until he’s sure and you’ve said it, but he can’t help it.

The tears still beading in your eyes slip into the pressed line of your lips, where a guarded smile is growing. You start nodding and then you don’t stop nodding, sobbing in earnest, and since it hasn’t screwed him over yet Dean follows his instinct to scoop you into a deep hug. You’re a little chilly and you smell a bit like pub food, making Dean’s heart squeeze with nostalgia. God, he fucking missed his girl. You grope around his back for something to cling to and fist both hands in his jacket til’ your fingers ache, and Dean explodes with gratefulness so pure he sways in place with you, squeezing you tight around the shoulders. You’re here and you’re alive and you don’t fucking hate him. Dean would take that and this stilted happiness over anything.

“This is all I wanted, D,” you hiccup. “You never say it, n’ I-I just need to hear it, okay? I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I did this to us.”

“You ain’t got nothin’ to apologize for,” Dean soothes, but you interrupt him.

“I was too much of an idiot to say goodbye,” you shook your head, smooshing your face into his jacket. “Too scared,” you confessed, and your voice was even scratchy from crying. “I didn’t want it to be over for real. Didn’t wanna close that door forever.”

Dean sloped his palm down your hair, your back, your arm, soaking you in every way he could. “M’ glad you didn’t. I’m sorry I pushed you to any of this, darlin’. I’m sorry too.”

You peel yourself off him just far enough to flash him a wolfish, tear-streaked grin. “Oh, I know you are. Are you ready to be makin’ it up to me for the rest of your life, Winchester?”

Dean makes the mistake of indulging your taunts with a chuckle, which puts this light in your eyes that he never wants to let go of. You swish in real close to his face, threatening with a big, 1000-watt smile, “Pucker up, cowboy, because you’ve got a lot of ass-kissing to do.”

“Yeah,” Dean agreed, wetting his lips. His belly warmed at the nickname. “So come here, ass.”

It’s not often that Dean has the pleasure of making you so flustered your face steams. He never gets to see it this close, either, so he leans further in to put it all to memory, which just makes your cheeks hotter. Your eyes dart across his face, wild and nervous. Dean’s smile sinks into a nasty smirk because, there you are, tough as nails and melting into your shoes at the thought of kissing him. It’s a lucky thing you’re so distracted. Maybe if you weren’t you’d notice how Dean’s hands are trembling, how his mouth’s watering. His whole nervous system flips when you reign him in by a fist in his collar, and he’s pretty sure his soul levitates out of his body when you kiss him.

One kiss turns into two, then three. Your lips are smooth with vanilla chapstick, and it only takes a minute for it to be all over Dean’s face—his mouth most of all, but the corners of his lips and his chin, too. You’ve always been the sweet one, but something about finally being subject to it melts the iron ball of anxiety in his gut. He kisses back like it’s his damn job, pouring his confession, his apologies into you, cupping your face, dimpling your cheeks with his thumbs. You’re softer than he remembers, and the fact that he could be forgetting anything at all about the last night you spent in Tulsa together makes him starved to remember this.

By some twist of fate, Bad Company’s Ready For Love plays next on the cue inside. With you cozy in his arms, his body works on muscle memory, and soon you’re swaying back and forth as you kiss, dipping in close for sweet pecks of each other.

“I love you,” he thinks he hears you say.

Playfully, Dean budges your nose with his and sing-songs, “Can’t hear you!”

“I said,” you took in a big breath, “I LOVE YOU TOO, asshole.”

Dean dissolves into chuckles, which are happily interrupted by more insistent kisses. You’re almost ten whole feet from where you started, and scooping up your hand, Dean starts the trek backward to where the Impala is parked. It’s your home as much as it’s his, so you barely need him to take the lead to find it among the other cars.

“Hm,” you say, “Maybe the girls will just figure out for themselves why I’m gone, yeah?”

“They’ll survive without you,” Dean shrugs. “You got other people who need you.”

“Need me,” you say, just rolling the unfamiliar words around in your mouth. Dean feels another pang of guilt; he could’ve sworn he’d told you that more, could’ve sworn he showed his love to you every day. Another thing to change.

“Yeah, need you,” Dean mutters, and he doesn’t mean to expose the desire rolling around in his belly, but there it is. He wants to take it back as soon as it leaves his mouth, but the second you get a taste of it, you’re hooked. A beat later he’s being pushed up against the driver’s door of the car and kissed stupid, warm and wet and so much of what he remembers. Fantasizes about.

In the next kiss a gentle hand grabs at the clasp to his belt buckle. Instantly, Dean pulls back to speak.

“Sweet pea,” he manages, trying so hard to be reasonable and good and everything that you deserve. You laugh at the nickname, which eases his mind a bit. “...You sure you don’t wanna wait? I think I got other things to prove t’ you, first.”

You draw him into a deep, lingering siren’s kiss that leaves his knees threatening to lock and his common sense threatening to bend.

“Can’t wait any longer,” your eyes burn like cigarettes, all heat. Quietly, you ask him, “Prove to me I’m your favorite. That m’ the only girl you’re looking at.”

There’s the underlying desperation to your voice that goes beyond just wanting to have sex with him. This is confirmation of something to you, something you need to hear, to feel. So Dean guides you into the backseat and proves it to you.

This is not at all where he expected this night to go, and he’s grateful that he’d lost the opportunity to overthink himself into his grave. There’s no room for Dean to worry if he was really good enough for you, if he deserved this, because these things are proven to him too. You slot so perfectly into his lap that he knows the moment you’re out of it he’ll be battered with homesickness. For long breaths there’s no kissing at all, just Dean nuzzling his face into your neck and committing each second to memory. When you do kiss him it’s like nothing he’s ever felt before, this grand, surging happiness that ripples through him head-to-toe. Each kiss has a new kind of gentleness, and before either one of you starts to strip Dean knows that you want more than what he’s about to give you—you want him, and that feeling is an old comfort.

Knowing your famous attitude, Dean would’ve bet money on you taking control, but for whatever reason you step back and let him make the first move. Again, it tells him that this is his chance to tell you something, to make it clear that he wants you and he’s going to show it. So he does. Your fingers in his hair are all the invitation he needs.

Dean scrapes his palms up your back as you kiss, soaking up every naked inch of skin he’s allowed. You’re making all these soft little noises that make the pressure in his jeans unbearable, so with the next drag of his hands he’s intent on seeing what you’ll feel like naked in his lap. When your uniform is nothing but a memory and your throat’s slick with hickeys, you try out a new way of teasing him, murmuring in that caramel voice how long you’ve wanted to feel him inside you. After that he doesn’t even care about being fully naked—but you clearly do. He puts your roaming hands on his belt. I want you to do this part, I want it to be you who opens me up. You kiss him so intensely that Dean doesn’t even remember when or how his belt comes off. Or his shirt, or his jeans, or his boots, gulping down your love potion by the gallon.

All he knows is pretty girl, his pretty girl, and swaths of hot sweat-tacky skin on top of him. You hesitate to close that final gap between you once the condom’s on, so Dean whispers whiskey-warm assurances in your ear as he cups the curve of your ass and slides you onto him. The moan that presses out of you pours right into your next kiss, then the next, and the next. It takes everything in him to start slow; Dean gives you two deep, fulfilling grinds across his lap. The rippling squeeze of you around him is too good to be real. You press your lips into his, then his nosebridge, his forehead, urging him on, and that’s all Dean needs to let go. He cups the dip of your back, shoves his face in your neck and just loses it.

Dean rocks you across his lap at a vicious, pounding tempo, giving you his all. The whole time his head bumps against the height of the seat, craning to watch the perfect little shifts in your expression. You’ve got your eyes squeezed shut and your lips parted. His lap is slick with you, making the grind, the chase, the rush to the finish come faster and faster. He could’ve gotten off on the sounds you were making alone. They turn into full-on squeals when Dean slides his fingers between your legs, and a flush of I love you I love you I love you bursts out of him when the hot silk wrapped around him clamps even tighter. You cum almost sobbing his name, and Dean coos you through it, his thighs cramping with effort. But it’s all worth it—you’ve always been worth it.

He finishes with your hands combing through his sweat-damp hair, echoing back to him the three words he’d been chanting the entire time.

-

It’s a few hours before dawn when you land in Sam and Dean’s motel a town over. Dean had wanted to get back earlier, intent on having you back as soon as possible, but it’d taken a bit to pack your stuff into the Impala and drive home. You’d commented on being hungry on the way back too, which ended with Dean pouring an entire gas station’s worth of snacks into your lap at three in the morning.

By then it’d gotten too cold out to be comfortable, so it was tempting to succumb to sleep in front of the Impala’s heaters. But robbing yourself of any time with Dean wasn’t an option, so you pushed through, feet aching after an eight-hour shift and body glowing with Dean’s affection. You nibbled on twinkies in the passenger’s seat, happy that he was happy. He kept the radio off to hear you, but hummed when the conversation peacefully faded. I can hear the train a’ comin’, it’s rollin’ round the bend…

Sam was waiting for you on the stoop outside the room when you pulled up, and did an impressively poor job at containing himself. He’d gotten his arms around you before your door was fully shut, and when you were back on your feet his brother took up your other side. Together, you herded each other into the cozy darkness of the motel. Someone said something about unpacking your things; but all three of you were tired, so that thought was saved for tomorrow.

Dean tossed his jacket on the back of a chair. Sam rearranged the salt lines on the window sills with a careful hand. You fumbled into the first pajamas you could find (aka, the hoodies in Dean’s duffle that rightfully belonged to you), and crash straight into bed, too lazy to kiss goodnight like usual. When the lights were off and the boys were down too, you stretched a hand out from under your comforter and reached across the bed’s gap.

“Goodnight, Sam,” you told him, wiggling your fingers.

His whole hand engulfed yours in a warm, I missed you squeeze, and then he was rolling onto his stomach and sinking like a rock into sleep.

When you twisted onto your other side, Dean was already there, propped up on an elbow. His broad hand on your shoulder smoothed across your belly to pull you into him. Once you were close enough to kiss, he disregarded your cheek and your forehead entirely, dipping in for a real kiss that tingled all the way down to your toes.

“G’night,” Dean whispered.

Welling with too much emotion to put into words, you willed it all into a simple and loving, “Goodnight, cowboy.”

Together, you snuggled down into your blankets and crashed, content.

-

tags: @samssluttybangs @cookiemumster1 @cevans-winchester @leigh70 @seraphimluxe @emily-roberts @emme-looou @aloneatpeace @williamstop @ornella0910 @chaoticshepardplaid @dakota-dream @lcvecstiel @goghkiss

#dean winchester x you #dean winchester imagine #dean winchester x y/n #dean winchester x reader #dean winchester #user uncouth #uncouthspn #supernatural #spn #Spotify

[agrosehamada]

I'm taking a moment to appreciate how healing AG-blr has been for me :) Growing up I was absolutely obsessed with AG, but I didn't really have any friends who were into AG, and my siblings didn't want to play with dolls, so I was kind of left in my own little hyperfixation bubble all alone. I mean my mom liked AG but that wasn't the same as having someone to play with. Yes I hosted multiple AG themed birthday parties and even put on a backyard productions of both the Molly and Felicity plays but no one... Really got it?

I remember the last AG birthday I had, having my brother tell me that my friends were all talking about how they were "too old" for AG when I was out of the room, and I think that was the beginning of the end for me because not too long after that I put my AG dolls in a cedar chest with all their things and closed it up.

I was still kind of interested in AG in highschool. I remember visiting the AG Store when the one in my state opened. And I remember desperately wanting a special doll I could make a wardrobe for and take everywhere with me. I had a little success with a few handmade dolls but nothing that really stuck, and my sewing skills were not up to par with what I wanted to make so I kind of gave up on that too.

Then the end of highschool happened, and I kind of went into survival mode. My mom's health got really bad. I had to start working and taking evening college classes on top of regular highschool and helping out more at home. Which kind of put my mental health in a crisis mode which kind of broke in my first year of college. Which finallygot me the help that I needed. But then I got kicked out for being queer and I was REALLY in survival mode, although I was lucky enough to have first a friend's family and then one of my siblings take me in through the end of college.

I remember getting mildly interested in AG again once I was working my first full time job and living with my first non-family roommates. I was (and still am) really into Big Hero 6 at the time, and when Luciana came out with her little robotics lab I ended up ordering her. Then I bought a secondhand Nellie, one of my grail dolls from childhood I never got to have. So that opened the door.

But then I remember being on Tumblr and finding some AG blogs and being like, "Hey! There's other adults who like AG and create their own characters?" And I really wanted to be a part of that. But I wasn't sure what kind of character I'd want to make. And then I remembered an old BH6 fanbaby I'd made in college and was like, "There's no way AG has a pink hair option." (I didn't really know about doll customizing back then so I didn't know wig swaps were a thing.) And then I checked the CYO generator and guess what was an option? XD

I was not in the best financial state, so it took a few months for me to be able to afford Rose, and then another anxious month of waiting for Rose to get here, in the meantime trying to plan out her wardrobe in the style of the og historical girls. And I made a placeholder blog for once she finally got here.

I finally came home to her delivery sometime in the early am after an event--if you go waaay back to the very beginning of this blog you can find a video of me very emotionally opening Rose's box for the first time XD Love at first sight for sure, I was happy to have my little girl home, and I had no clue how she'd change my life.

From there snowballed my deep dive into doll clothes making--I planned to buy Rose's clothes originally, but I couldn't find a school uniform I liked, and there was a very specific anime winter coat I wanted to make. I'd been making cosplays for a few years but then, so my sewing skills were finally up to the task. And then I just kept getting more cute outfit ideas and so... I just kept making them XD

And then I started posting pictures of the outfits on this blog. And adding new dolls to the family and posting about them too. And I am so honored you guys were so excited about my posts and brought me into the community! I saw your posts and got the inspiration to start taking Rose out places to get pictures, and she quickly became my emotional support doll, going everywhere with me and helping me through some of my worst mental health times. And I've been fortunate enough to actually get to meet some of you in person, and talk with so many of you online! And I even managed to rope my best friend into AG with your support XD It's really been such an amazing community, and I finally have friends who get my love of AG, and I finally have that special doll I take everywhere with me :)

So--thank you, AG-blr ^^ You're all amazing, and I look forward to many more adventures with you :)

#american girl doll #agblr #dashi gets personal #long post

[sotwk]

Hello! I'm not sure if my question will meet the criteria you posted regarding asks/headcannons/fanfics (itz my first time hehe), but I gotta ask 😅: If Thranduil, his wife, and the 5 brothers had lived in the modern times, what would their lives be like (ex. jobs, lifestyles, modern interests, etc.)? Basically a modern au of sorts...? I understand if you do not answer my question if it really didn't meet the criteria, but if you do answer, thanks in advance!

MODERN AU: THE ROYAL FAMILY OF MIRKWOOD

The House of Thranduil

Modern AU set in the United States (this writer is American and doesn't want to embarrass herself speaking of other countries, lol)

Fair Warning: This entire family is ridiculously accomplished in this AU, but this is clearly fictional so just ride along the fantasy with me!

Apologies for the length and infodump style--my mind really ran off with this concept!

Thranduil, The Patriarch

Businessman/CEO and 4th generation landowner.

Land ownership currently includes 1 million acres of timberland around the West Coast.

Business holdings include logging, saw mills, wineries, and forest-product manufacturing companies that employs thousands of employees.

Attended Wharton School to study business but dropped out in his third year when his father passed; (reluctantly) took over the company at 21 years old to prevent it from being seized by his father's scheming partners.

Met and fell in love with Maereth, a classmate at Wharton, but she was already in a relationship with someone else.

Continued to pursue her over the course of 10 years until they finally wed right before he turned 30.

His family home is a 2,000-acre ranch in Northwest Oregon, but he travels constantly all over the country.

During the economic downturn, saved the business and his people's livelihood by selling off a third of the family's acreage.

Refuses opportunities to expand in favor of maintaining fair wages for his employees and ethical and environmentally sound practices.

Personal hobbies include breeding and racing horses, outdoor activities, wine-collecting, and travel.

Despite rubbing elbows with powerful, rich businessmen like himself, he despises that crowd and spends only as much time with them as necessary for business.

His closest friends are the folks in his small hometown and the employees who work alongside him.

Maereth, The Matriarch

Born to a lower-middle class family from Scranton, Pennsylvania. Father was a construction laborer and mother was a part-time receptionist.

The middle child and only daughter; has 3 brothers.

Only one in her family to attend and finish college.

Practically engaged to her boyfriend at the time she met Thranduil.

Despite her rejecting Thranduil's advances and professions of love because of her existing relationship, she felt attracted to him and could not bring herself to forget him. They maintained a friendship after Thranduil dropped out of Wharton and moved back West.

Once her relationship with her boyfriend ended, Thranduil resumed courting her, but she rejected his marriage proposal out of a desire to pursue a career on her own.

Started her own company and ran it for several years before selling it at a large profit. Used the money to pay off her family's loans and help her parents retire.

Was finally won over by Thranduil's persistence and obvious devotion, and agreed to marry him.

Gave birth to their five sons over the course of a single decade.

Raised her children as a stay-at-home mom until they all reached their teens.

Currently sits on the board of the family's corporation and serves as the Chief HR Officer.

Chairs the family's private foundation that gives millions to charitable causes annually.

Is a talented crafter, craftsman, and builder, more so than her husband and most of her sons (except for Mirion), with enough skill to complete simple remodels on her own. She is the ultimate DIYer who dives eagerly into manual labor, which is one of the things Thranduil admires most in her.

Is also a successful gardener, able to keep flourishing backyard gardens that bear flowers, fruits, and vegetables of different kinds.

Spends most of her free time on endless home improvement projects or traveling as needed to visit her sons.

Mirion, eldest son - The Heir

The dutiful son who accepted his role as the eventual heir to the company. Started shadowing his father as a teen.

Married to his high school sweetheart, with whom he has two children (so far the only grandchildren of Thranduil and Maereth).

Lettered in 3 high school sports: baseball, football, and track, but discontinued sports in college to focus on academics.

Holds a degree in materials engineering from Carnegie Mellon University.

Upon marrying, settled his family at a ranch house in Oregon to stay close to his parents and majority of their holdings.

Started his own construction company that eventually became a part of the family conglomerate.

Was a stay-at-home dad for several years to allow his physician wife to return to her small town practice.

Attends many high-profile social engagements on behalf of his parents.

The ultimate dad: very involved in his kids' lives and is beloved by their friends; their home is a popular hangout for the neighborhood kids.

Constantly hit on by single moms and dads; unfortunately for them, he is singularly obsessed with his wife.

Had a very brief stint as a commercial model during his college years, and agents often suggest he return to it--but he has zero interest.

Very down-to-earth and a homebody outside of work. Leans towards introversion.

Favorite past times: DIY projects around his house, fixing up old cars, riding his horses, playing with his dogs, and having neighbors over for big backyard BBQs.

The closest thing the family has to a cowboy. The only one of his brothers to reside in a rural area and the only one besides their parents to own and keep horses.

Turhir, second-born son - The Soldier

Knew early on that he wanted to travel the world and serve his country as a soldier in the armed forces.

Enlisted in the US Navy straight out high school and became a SEAL.

Joined DEVGRU (Seal Team Six) where he became the officer of an assault squadron.

Has been in back-to-back tours of duty since his first deployment at age 19.

Has a running count of 10 combat tours, which would have been more if not for an entire year sidelined while he recovered from a serious spine injury that almost left him paralyzed.

Is quietly the most decorated Navy SEAL in history, with commendations that include two Silver Stars, three Bronze Stars, five Purple Hearts, the Navy Cross, and the highest honor: the Medal of Honor.

The perpetual nomad/couch surfer and the only brother not to own his own residence.

Was cheated on by his girlfriend while he was away on deployment. Never recovered from the heartbreak and has had no serious relationships since.

Favorite past times: Training for triathlons (running, swimming and biking), spending time with his brothers, reading novels.

Has competed in the Ironman World Championship and Badwater Ultramarathon.

Consumes paperback novels like water; buys them from used book stores and then donates to libraries afterward.

Frequently does hands-on volunteer work for charities like Habitat for Humanity and local food banks.

Suffers from PTSD and depression, which he manages with medication and regular therapy.

Absolutely detests social media and refuses to engage in any of it.

Avoids press attention like a plague. Does not attend big social functions with his family unless begged to by his mother.

Stays so far away from the limelight, the press/media sometimes forgets he is part of Thranduil's famous family.

Arvellas, middle-born son - The Genius

A bonafide genius with an IQ of 165, tested when he was only 12 years old; was subsequently accepted into Mensa.

Although he was a clearly gifted child, his mother declined to accelerate his education or place him in a different school from his brothers. She believed it was more important for him to enjoy as normal a childhood as possible.

Started college at Stanford University at the fairly typical age of 17, but completed his premed degree within two years and was a Doctor of Medicine by 26.

Not a practicing physician since he has instead devoted himself to a career in medical research, specifically in developing targeted treatments for aggressive cancers.

In addition to his MD, he holds graduate degrees in biochemistry and biophysics.

Has more trophies and accolades than all his brothers combined, all of them for intellectual achievements in various fields.

Holds over a dozen patents for different scientific devices, processes, and formulas.

A polyglot who speaks 8 foreign languages conversationally, including Spanish, Mandarin, German, Italian, French, Arabic, Hindi, and Japanese. Once he has gained fluency in one language, he immediately starts studying another.

Also speaks at least a couple of constructed languages from sci-fi/fantasy worlds.

On a dare from his younger brothers, took and aced the LSATs and was accepted to several Ivy League law schools, though he never attended.

Stays in athletic shape through biking, swimming, and playing tennis.

Reads (and collects) comics and graphic novels as often as he reads scientific journals.

Goes to at least one comic con a year as his schedule allows.

Wears a coat and tie even more frequently than his father does.

Has been with the same romantic partner for the last 5 years, but has shown no signs of getting married.

Gelir, fourth-born son - The Adventurer

A wildlife biologist and rehabilitation specialist with degrees in zoology and veterinary medicine.

Specialty is working with and rehabilitating wild mammals. His favorite animal is the wolverine, which was the first truly wild creature he had rescued and nursed back to health early in his career.

Prefers to do contract work with non-profit organizations, which enables him to continue travelling due to a a less-restrictive schedule.

Also does a lot of short-lived gig work on the side that allows him to engage in his hobbies while earning. Examples are working as a safari guide, a park ranger, or climbing instructor.

An avid (almost obsessive) outdoor adventurer who avoids spending time in cities as much as possible, and likes to explore new remote locations through camping and hiking.

A skilled climber with experience in nearly all types, including free soloing, mountaineering, and ice climbing.

A licensed scuba diver and skilled surfer and rafter. Swims like a fish.

Licensed to pilot private planes, drive motorcycles, and drive boats.

Most widely traveled member of his family, having been to every continent in the world, including Antarctica.

Only one in his family who can speak an African language (Swahili), which he likes to crow to Arvellas about.

Has made a conscious decision to keep/owns no pets, due to his frequent travels making him unable to properly care for one.

The eternal bachelor whose interest rarely goes beyond a few dates; has never been in a serious relationship and understands his restless wandering would make him a terrible boyfriend.

Was previously reluctant to put himself and his work in front of a camera, but realized (through his brother Legolas) that he can make a good amount of money by creating and posting videos on social media--money that would fund his travels and exploits.

Has been approached by major producers to host his own adventure show series, but prefers to work with independent filmmakers on legitimate documentaries.

Legolas, youngest son - The Celebrity

Professional footballer. Star striker of the US Men's National Soccer Team and the Seattle Sounders FC.

Career achievements include an Olympic bronze medal, an MLS (Major League Soccer) Cup, and a FIFA World Cup (a US first!).

The most independently wealthy of all the brothers due to multi- million dollar endorsements that include Adidas and Pepsi.

Has his own staff that includes a personal assistant, a publicist/social media manager, a private chef, and very hardworking sports agent.

A social media star with a following of 50 million in Instagram and still climbing, making him by far the most famous one in his family.

Is occasionally able to convince Gelir to do adventure/extreme sports-related videos with him, which always go viral. While Legolas does it for the fun and bonding experience, Gelir agrees to do it mostly for the money. On rarer occasions, he is able to convince Mirion to participate as well, when it has a fundraising aspect.

Diagnosed with both dyslexia and ADHD, which he manages with medication.

Aside from playing soccer and other traditional team sports, his hobbies include extreme/adventure sports such as skiing, snowboarding, windsurfing, mountain biking, skydiving, and paragliding.

Also a talented sketch and comic artist who occasionally shares his works online.

His favorite charitable activity is visiting children's hospitals, (including making sizeable donations), and has been requested several times by the Make-A-Wish Foundation.

Constantly being romantically linked to celebrities, less than half of which are actually true.

Receives a lot of attention from women and is frequently pursued by them. In all the "noise" on top of being in the public eye, he finds it challenging to find partners to genuinely fall in love with.

Tends to struggle with periods of loneliness, during which he seeks refuge in his family.

For more Thranduil/Mirkwood headcanons: SotWK HC Masterlist

Tolkien Headcanon tag list: @laneynoir @auttumnsayshi @achromaticerebus @tamryniel @friendofthefellowshipsnerdblog @blueberryrock @aduialel @glassgulls @ladyweaslette @klytemnestra13 @creativity-of-death @heilith @fizzyxcustard @absentmindeduniverse @lathalea @tamurilofrivendell @jordie-your-local-halfling @ladyk8tie @scyllas-revenge @asianbutnotjapanese @conversacomsmaug @lemonivall @ratsys @a-world-of-whimsy-5 @entishramblings @stormchaser819 @freshalmondpandadonut @beekieboo

Interested in SotWK content?

Introduction to SotWK

My Headcanon Masterlist 

My Fanfiction Masterlist

#sotwk headcanon #thranduil #thranduil headcanon #legolas #mirkwood #mirkwood elves #the elvenking #lord of the rings #tolkien #tolkien headcanons #tolkien elves #sotwk ocs #thranduilion #mirion thranduilion #turhir thranduilion #gelir thranduilion #arvellas thranduilion #lotr modern au #lee pace #jennifer connelly #henry cavill #sam heughan #rupert friend #sam claflin #orlando bloom

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

Killing America - Man of Steele Productions

Full film: Twitter, Substack and Rumble.

https://twitter.com/Hebro_Steele/status/1761471883349004483

For the last several months, I've been working on a 38 minute documentary, "Killing America: Can America's Schools be Saved?" I'm proud to release the trailer today and it is below.

What happened in southern Israel on October 7th shook the world in many ways. Most of us never imagined that the ripple effects would reach our public high schools in America, but they did and what they revealed was a shockingly strong current of antisemitism among teachers, students, and staff.

This comes after years of anti-white and anti-Asian hate. Where was this tribal hatred coming from, especially after 60 years of diversity efforts that promised us unity? That is why I decided to do a deep dive investigation in the Bay Area schools and Killing America is the result.

In the comment section, I will post updates re screenings, locations, and ticket sales.

https://twitter.com/Hebro_Steele/status/1776396571699294718

After enduring a week of unwarranted takedowns of the Killing America trailer on @Youtube and @Vimeo as well as receiving a baseless cease and desist letter that seeks to prevent my documentary from being shown in its original form, I’ve decided to release the full (38 min) version of Killing America on this platform.

Let’s be clear, @TheMAChronicle claims that this is a copyright issue, but it is not. Our work is fully protected by the Fair Use doctrine, which allows us to use even copyrighted footage under certain guidelines. (See explanation in comments section.)

These left-wing activists cannot stand dissent or opposition to the ideological order they seek to impose in our schools as well as our larger society. What you are witnessing here is the weaponization of the copyright law in these ugly culture wars to prevent my film from being shown in its full form. This is nothing less than suppression of free speech, which includes artistic expression and free thought.

The "crime" that Killing America commits is telling the truth during these ideological times. Watch the film and you’ll see why extremist ideologues are doing everything in their power to censor the film and why I decided not to play their game and go straight to you, The People.

Lastly, I have made the point to release this film as widely as possible for free because I want the word out. We've been too far timid and we've allowed ourselves to be intimidated for too long, so please share this film widely.

At the same time, people have asked if they can donate small fee for watching the film or make a contribution to cover the cost that I personally incurred during the making of the film as well as legal fees (lawyer consults). I truly appreciate this because this film was a labor of love for me, a continuation of my family’s legacy of civil rights activism that dates back to 1942: https://donate.stripe.com/cN24ja95E06SgLe5kk

==

Teachers who behave like activists need to be fired and decredentialed.

#Eli Steele #Killing America #ethnic studies #ideological corruption #corruption of education #antisemitism #equity #diversity #inclusion #diversity equity and inclusion #pro palestine #palestine #pro hamas #hamas supporters #israel #islamic terrorism #islam #religion is a mental illness

[kisilinramblings]

Jubilation part 1 : A New Dawn

As promised, I’m digging into Jubilation. Why that episode particularly? Because the episode is themed around dreams. The episode has a whole is offering us a unique chance to dive into the main heroes’ subconscious and psych, more so than usual. Let’s go!

The episode starts where we see Marinette jogging as the sun rises. When the episode started, I first notice how unusual it was for us to see Marinette do that. Normally, for an episode opening scene that starts with Marinette, we either see her doing Ladybug stuff, being at school, or running late. She is normally either working on projects, hanging with friends or family, or daydreaming one way or another about Adrien. That was the old normal. 

Here, the first shot tell us it’s a new day. We have emerge from the night where began the first three episodes of the season. Now, it is new day, a new beginning. Marinette is alone but keeping herself active. She also wakes up herself early. She is changing her habits.

We are also seeing the Alliance add. Another new product that will play an important role during the upcoming season. Gabriel too has now new plans.

The add also enacts a discussion between Tikki and Marinette, explaining that the Adrien we see is actually a 3D model of him and informing the audience that his life has changed as well. And we will only get a glimpse later on how he is actually faring. For now, the episode focuses on Marinette.

Speaking on which, when Tikki comments Marinette is still love with the real Adrien, Marinette affirms she has moved on. Her motive?

“As long as I am Ladybug, I refuse to be in love with Adrien or anyone else. I’ve lost possession of the Miraculouses because of love. Thanks, but no thanks”. 

That’s the English dub line, but let me inform you that the Fr Dub goes with “I’ve lost the Miraculous I was in charge of”. Putting a bit more emphasis on how the Miraculous were her responsability and she failed to protect them. 

Also, we are not even 1 minute in that we are reminded of one dream Marinette has cut out on of her dream from her life. Remember how was Marinette during Stormy Weather back in S1?

“I’ll invite him out for a fruit smoothie at the end of the photoshoot. Then, we’ll get married. Live happily ever after in a beautiful house. Have 2 kids... No, three! And a dog! Maybe a cat? Nah, forget the cat. A hamster! I love hamsters!”

She was more... alive and optimist. She could allow herself to daydream and get ahead of herself. Now? We are facing a more down-to-earth and scarred Marinette who focuses on the present. And she also has become more pessimist on some level, but more on that in the next part. 

Just like at the end of Truth, where Marinette mourned the fact she could not be in a romantic relationship because of Shadow Moth. Now, she has shut the door tighter than ever. She won’t just not be in a romantic relationship. She will refuse to be in love. The stakes are too high and the situation is dire. She cannot afford another slip. Love is a luxury and a leasure she cannot have anymore. In a way, she is trying to prevent another mistake, but at the same time, it feels like she is also punishing herself.

All right, that’s for this post. Next part will focus on Marinette and Socqueline’s discussion. Stay tuned!

#miraculous ladybug #ml season 5 #ml s5 spoilers #ml spoilers #jubilation #ml s5ep4 #ml analysis

[herrmannhalsteadproduction]

Honesty. Horrible, Horrible Honesty. (Chapter Five)

Summary: This is Part Eighteen of my series A Herrmann/Halstead Production. It is an AU where Christopher Herrmann's mom had an affair with Pat Halstead resulting in a baby. The series follows this OC character (Rebecca "Bex" Herrmann) as she grows up and gets to know her brothers and the various Chicago teams. It is very much an AU, just to underscore that. It doesn't follow the same timeline and characters will follow different paths.

Click here for the Series Rundown where you can find the links to read all of the previous installments (which I highly recommend you do so that this one makes sense.)

Rating: Teen and Up

Relationships: Christopher Herrmann & Original Female Character, Jay Halstead & Original Female Character, Will Halstead & Original Female Character, Jay Halstead & Will Halstead, pre-Greg 'Mouse' Gerwitz/Original Female Character, Will Halstead/Connor Rhodes, Assorted OC Couples

Warnings: Referenced Domestic Violence and Threatening Behaviour (these are warning tags for a brief scenes with Ty), Emotional Hurt/Comfort, A Brief Scene of Violence, Mild Injury, Swearing, Characters Working Through Trauma, Repairing Relationships, Fluff, I Swear There are Funny Bits Along with the Emotional Bits

A/N: Chapter Five was getting too long so I had to split it into two! The second part will be posted as Chapter Six later today or tomorrow. Lots of intense stuff in that one! Stay tuned!

Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Will

Unsurprisingly, Bex was still asleep when Will woke up bright and early the next day. He’d checked in on her to make sure she was still alive, but other than that he decided to leave her be.

Sleep was the best medicine for her right now.

Emery had texted him to say one of her friends she’d stayed with was dropping her back at the house after her therapy appointment so it wasn’t like Bex would be alone for long.

He had just enough time to make a very necessary stop before work.

*** Chris

It was going to be one of those mornings.

“Lee Henry, help Max with his backpack, please,” Chris called out, trying to get a handle on the morning chaos. “Annabelle, put the sword down.”

Cindy had some kind of a bug and he’d told her to stay in bed while he got the kids ready for school. He had a feeling he’d be crawling in there with her once he got them out the door.

“The bus is gonna be here in five minutes, Luke,” he said, throwing his hands up. “Where are your pants?”

They made it to the stop with seconds to spare. “Love you and you and you and you. Be good.” Always had to tack that last bit on for Annabelle.

Chris enjoyed the few moments of peace the world gave him on the walk back from the bus stop only to find a grim-faced Will waiting on his door step.

“I need to talk to you,” he said. “About Bex.” Will sighed. “And Jay.”

Definitely one of those mornings. “Come on in,” Chris said to Will, opening the front door. “I’ll put the coffee on.”

Will followed and took the seat Chris cleared for him at the kitchen table. “Sorry for barging in like this—”

“Hey, no, you’re family,” Chris said, waving away the apology. “That means you’re welcome here any time. For anything.”

He puttered around with the coffee machine, expecting Will to dive into whatever it was he needed to talk about and turning around when he didn’t—and found the man sitting there with a stunned, but pleased little smile.

Chris clearly needed to invite Will over on his own more often.

“Oh, Will!” Cindy smiled at him as she came into the kitchen. “I didn’t hear you come in. It’s so nice to see you, hun.” She gave him a hug before heading over to the toaster.

“Are you sure you’re okay to be up, Cind?” Chris really hadn’t liked how she’d been looking this morning. “I could have brought you stuff.”

“You’re not feeling well?” Will sat up, alarmed. “I can get out of your hair—but what are your symptoms? Can I help?”

Cindy shook her head with a quiet laugh. “Hush, you two, I’m fine,” she said. “I had a bit of an upset stomach this morning, but I’m feeling much better now,” she explained to Will. “Nothing a bit of toast won’t finish settling.”

She did have more colour in her cheeks. Chris was still glad he was home for the morning so he could keep an eye on her just in case. But in the meantime… “Will was about to tell me what’s been going on with Bex and Jay,” he told her as he poured out the coffees and handed one over to Will.

Cindy’s eyes widened. “Oh, finally!”

Will choked on his sip. “Wait, you know?”

“All we know is that something’s going on,” Chris said, plopping down into his own chair. “They’ve both been acting weird and Bex is avoiding us which means there’s something she doesn’t want to talk about. I’ve been trying to wait her out—”

“And he’s been mostly patient about it too.” Cindy ran an affectionate hand over his head as she came to join them at the table with her toast.

“I’m trying!” Chris exclaimed. “I know they’re both adults and will come for advice in their own time if they need it. I get it. But they’re taking their sweet time working it out on their own.”

“Yeah, that’s because they’re not,” Will said. “It’s a mess. They’re a mess.”

“Uh-oh.” Both Cindy and Chris frowned before Chris leaned in. “Start at the beginning.”

Will groaned. “Okay.” And then he dove in—starting with the pact between Will and Bex to ask out Will and Connor which was actually kind of disgustingly cute, but things took a sharp turn after that.

With Jay letting his hurt and fear offer advice.

And Mouse taking said advice.

And Bex spiralling and drinking.

And a whole history he knew nothing about with some asshole named AJ?

Plus a bet that apparently everyone they knew had been involved in which actually surprised him the least out of everything Will had told them, but that, judging by her face, Cindy would be giving folks an earful about.

“I’ve been trying to give her space,” Will said, staring down into his coffee. “But I’m worried. Really worried. It’s like, she thinks if she says she’s fine often enough, that’ll make it magically true, but she keeps moving further and further away from fine.”

He sat back in his chair, rubbing a hand over his eyes. “She’ll probably be pissed I talked to you guys—”

“If she is, she’ll get over it,” Chris said. “Helping her through this is more important. Have you talked to Jay much?”

Will shook his head. “Between Bex and work, I’ve had my hands full,” he said. “Plus, he seemed like he needed time for things to sink in a bit more. Talking to him any earlier wouldn’t have done much.”

“It’s not all on you anymore, okay?” Chris reached over to grasp Will’s shoulder. “I’m glad you came to us so we can help. Bex is working a shift at Molly’s tonight. I’ll try and get a feel for where she’s at and talk to her when we close or I’ll kidnap her tomorrow or something.”

Will stared at him and then snorted.

“What?”

“Sorry,” Will shook his head, chucking. “Sorry, it’s just—sometimes you and Bex are ridiculously alike.”

“I’m gonna take that as a compliment,” Chris decided. Better that than to ask for examples he might not want to hear. “I’ll try to grab Jay for lunch today too and see what I can get out of him.”

Will relaxed, still looking exhausted, but not quite like he was carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. Or, you know, the emotional weight of a huge fight between his siblings.

Not on his own anyway. Not anymore.

“We’ll get them sorted,” Chris assured him. “Don’t worry.”

“Now, do you have time for some breakfast?” Cindy asked. “Christopher makes a fairly delicious egg sandwich.”

“Fairly delicious, she says.” Chris clutched a hand to his heart. “Like it’s not a masterpiece. A taste explosion, Will, I’m telling you.”

Will laughed. “I could spare the time for a taste explosion,” he said. “Thanks.”

They got him fed and poured him another two cups of coffee before seeing him on his way. Kid was going to buzz his way through his shift, but at least Chris was more certain he’d make it through his shift now.

As soon as they had the house to themselves, Chris turned to Cindy. “Who the hell is AJ?”

“I have no idea,” she exclaimed, picking up her phone. “Bex has never said a word…what was his last name again?”

Chris wracked his brain. “M-something. Ma—Meh—no, Michaels. AJ A-hole Michaels.”

Cindy shot him a look as she typed. “I’ll just search for the full name then, shall I?”

“Oh, you are feeling better,” he laughed, crowding in beside her to look at the screen. “Did you find him?”

“Yes,” she said with a frown. “Not sure why Bex is following him on Instagram given everything Will said, but this is him. Oh. He’s quite handsome, isn’t he? Hm.”

“Lemme see that.” Chris took the phone and scrolled through a few photos of what was admittedly an attractive guy. Didn’t make his face any less punchable. “Eh. She can do better.”

“Obviously.” Cindy snatched her phone back. “And she will once Mouse gets his head on straight. Right now though, we focus on her and Jay.”

“Yes, okay, I’m going to call Jay and see if he’s free,” Chris said, hunting around for his own phone.

“And I’m going to call Trudy about this bet.” Cindy opened up her contacts with a determined glint in her eye.

Looked like one of those mornings was turning into one of those days…for everyone.

***

Bex

Sun.

No.

No, thank you.

Ugh.

This was why Bex didn’t drink whisky.

Or drink for two nights in a row.

Or drink this much. Full stop.

She lay on her stomach and tried to decide if she was going to puke.

Fifteen minutes later, things were holding steady enough that she fumbled around a hand on her side table until she found her phone.

Squinting through the bright light of the screen, she checked her messages.

Will was gone to work. He wanted to talk later.

Pass.

Emery was getting a ride home from therapy from Kira.

Good.

The pottery place stuff was ready for pick-up.

Crap.

She should probably go get that. Figuring out how to get it to everyone without accidentally running into Jay or Mouse could come later.

And lastly, a long message from Patti saying she knew Beau was drunk when he made the offer, but that it was a serious one.

The offer…

Was Patti trying to wingman for Beau? That was…weird…but sweet…

Oh, WAIT. The tour offer. Right.

That conversation was coming back to her now.

Patti went on to reiterate it in her message that coming on tour with them at any time over the next few months was an open offer if she wanted a change of scenery.

Bex sighed.

And found herself actually seriously considering it.

Getting away from…everything sounded pretty good right about now.

The apartment door opened and closed, but no one called out and Bex really hoped it wasn’t a murderer because she was easy pickings at the moment.

Maybe she could play dead until they went away—she probably looked the part well enough.

Her bedroom door opened and then she heard a very familiar sigh.

“Hey, Emery,” she croaked out as her friend crawled into bed beside her.

“Hey.” Emery snuggled in with a groan. “You’ve got the right idea staying in bed.”

Bex hummed and reached out to pat at her head. “Rough time at therapy?”

“Yeah.” Emery sighed again. “I know it’s helping,” she said. “It’s just…a lot to talk about—rehashing everything and trying to process it. Twists my brain.”

“Proud of you though,” Bex whispered.

“Me too.”

They snoozed together for awhile longer before finally hauling themselves out of bed and making food.

“Oh, hey,” Emery said around a mouthful of toast. “I saw your lil’ show with Beau.”

“You and way too many other people.” Bex rolled her eyes. “I should never have let Elle put that on Instagram. I know people liked it, but it’s feeling a little too public today.”

“Feel any better after singing it out?” Emery raised an eyebrow at her and Bex shrugged.

“I think it got some of the angst out,” she said. “Still plenty to go around though.” A piece of paper on the table caught her eye. “And now I have a bunch of creepers to go through and block.” She waved the list at Emery. “Connor made a list while he and Will watched.”

“Aw,” Emery cooed. “That’s so sweet! Will got a good one there.”

“Acknowledging the creepy behaviour of other dudes is a pretty low bar to clear,” Bex said as she grabbed her phone. “But yes, we’re keeping Connor for sure.”

She set the list down and opened up Instagram. “Okay, let’s see what we’ve got here.”

Bex entertained Emery for the next few minutes as they went through the list and read some of the comments that had been left on her profile—ranging from kind of cringey, but funny to some that were seriously yikes.

“This is actually a very polite request for me to record myself singing ‘nekkid’, but they used the wrong ‘your’ so I will respectfully decline,” Bex said as she proceeded to block sexmangod5820983.

“Let me see one,” Emery said, making grabby hands at the phone. Bex handed it plus the list over and let her go to town.

“Ooh, okay, this guy made a ton of comments,” she said, scrolling through Bex’s pictures. “You should only sing sad songs. Your pain is so beautiful. I’d love to see you cry. Oh, Jesus—I’m reporting this one. He’s creepy. Goodbye, yeschef.”

Emery finished off the list with increasing disgust. “Why are people like this?” she asked, moving to hand Bex’s phone back to her before pausing.

She looked down at the screen and then stared at Bex. “Rebecca Marie Herrmann,” she said slowly.

Uh oh.

“Why the fuck are you following AJ?”

“What?” Bex tried to snatch her phone back, but Emery held it out of reach. “I’m not! Em, what are you talking about?”

“You are.” Emery showed her the screen, displaying a post from AJ right at the top.

What the hell?

“I don’t know how that happened? I swear, I—” Bits of the previous night started coming back to her. A message from AJ. Deleting it. Looking at his profile. Swiping away…

“Shit,” Bex said. “I must have accidentally hit follow.”

“Explain!” Emery demanded, shaking the phone at her and Bex groaned before dutifully relaying everything that happened when she got home last night and how she may have accidentally followed AJ back.

“Bex.” Emery shook her head when the story was done. “I know things are rough right now, but I have to say this. We are not doing AJ again—no, let me finish. You need to block his profile for your own good, okay? He’s too much of a shithead to let anywhere near your life anymore.”

“I have no intention of having anything to do with him ever again,” Bex said, finally getting a hold of her phone again. “There. Blocked, see?” She showed the screen to Emery who nodded firmly. “Last night was a moment of weakness, but I’m good now. No more AJ. Ever again.”

“Yeah, I’m gonna need a pinky promise on that.” Emery held a hand out and Bex rolled her eyes, but followed through on the pinky shake.

“For the record, I would like a little more faith that I wouldn’t go down that road again,” she said.

“Listen,” Emery said, taking a sip of her tea. “We all have our kryptonite and AJ was yours for a long time so I’m just trying to look out for you.”

Bex understood that. She really did. But she’d managed to ignore his message last night and following him back was genuinely an accident. She felt like she could honestly say AJ wasn’t her kryptonite anymore.

…someone was filling that position these days.

And that was enough thinking about that!

“So what are your plans for the day?” she asked Emery.

“I was going to head into the office this afternoon if you don’t mind taking me?”

“Of course not,” Bex said. “I’ve got to go and pick up the pottery store stuff anyway. What time are you going to be done though because I work at Molly’s later.”

“Ben said he could pick me up,” Emery said before chewing on her lip pensively. “I hate relying on everyone to take me places. I feel like I should be able to go by myself at this point, but the thought of being by myself on the bus or in a parking lot—I still see him sometimes and I know—”

“Emery, stop,” Bex said, shaking her head. “We all understand, okay? And everyone wants you to feel safe. It’s only been a few weeks. I think it’s totally normal to be feeling this way and I’m happy to give you a ride forever if it helps you.” She smiled at her and raised her hand. “Pinky promise.”

Emery stared at her hand for a moment before twining her pinky with Bex’s for the shake. “Thanks.”

“That’s what friends are forrrrr,” Bex sang at her dramatically which didn’t help her head, but was worth it to make Emery laugh.

They took turns with the shower and managed to get ready in time to deliver Emery at work in time and then Bex swung around to the pottery place to pick up their box of incredibly ugly stoneware.

Then she sat in her car outside of the precinct and tried to decide what to do.

Going in was not an option.

She pulled out her phone.

BEX: Are you busy?

KIM: I’ve got a minute. What’s up?

BEX: I’m outside. Would you mind coming out to meet me BUT DON’T TELL ANYONE.

KIM: omw

Kim appeared a few minutes later and spotted Bex, hurrying down the sidewalk to meet her.

“Hey,” she said, a concerned frown flitting across her face. “You okay?”

“If I say I can’t face seeing Jay or Mouse right now, would you accept that without any further questions?” Bex asked hopefully.

Kim studied her seriously for a moment before nodding. “What do you need?”

“I’ve got the stuff from the pottery place in here,” she said, lifting the box in her arms. “I took out my stuff and Will and Connor’s and I was hoping you could hand out everyone else’s? I figured Julie could take Shay and Sylvie’s…”

“Absolutely,” Kim said. “That’s no problem. Except—no, don’t worry about it.”

“Okay, you can’t say that and not think I won’t worry about it for the rest of the day,” Bex said. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m not sure if anything’s wrong,” Kim said. “But Mouse called in sick today.”

That felt like something to worry about.

“I’m sure he’s fine,” Kim hurried to say. “I can take his and give it to him when he’s back at work which will probably be tomorrow so let’s not stress about it.”

Bex tried to push back all of the worst-case scenarios crowding her mind and opened the box while Kim held it. “I’ll take his,” she said. “I’ll give it to him later.”

“Are you sure?” Kim caught her eye. “I know it can be tough when you’re in a situation like this to see someone before you’re ready. I don’t mind taking care of it.”

She considered it—thought about how much easier it would be—but it didn’t feel right. She tried not to examine too hard whether it was because she wanted to take it as a sign that they’d work their shit out eventually or because she just wanted to keep a piece of him close.

UGH. This was just sad.

Bex cursed herself.

And she cursed her frickin’ kryptonite.

Thanking Kim for helping her out, she hopped back in her car and headed home. The shower hadn’t cut it. She needed a long soak and another nap if she was going to kick the last dregs of her hangover before her shift at Molly’s.

One step in front of the other.

With snacks.

She could do this.

***

Kim

She wanted to wrap Bex up in a gigantic hug and tell her it would all be okay, but she also knew how unhelpful that would be at the moment.

Kim had experienced enough of her own ups and downs with Adam to know what that heartbreak was like. Time was the only thing that would help Bex get through this.

And chocolate.

Maybe she’d pick her up some of her favourites.

She headed back inside the precinct only to be stopped immediately by Sergeant Platt.

“Hold on, Burgess,” she said, leaning against her desk. “What have you got there?”

Kim bit back a sigh. “You really don’t want to know.” Please let it go, she silently pleaded, but—

“No dice, come here and let me see,” Platt demanded, waving her over.

Trudging over to her doom, Kim set the desk down on the counter and let Platt open the top of the box. She peered inside.

And blinked.

“Well, Burgess, for once you were correct,” she said, closing the box back up. “Please remove this from my workspace and never let it darken my doorstep again.”

Kim did not have to be told twice. She swung the box back into her arms and hustled up the steps to Intelligence.

“Presents,” she declared as she set the box down on her desk. Adam and Kevin came over immediately and cheered when they saw what was inside, carefully taking their own items out.

Kim grabbed her phone and texted Julie to let her know she had her stuff, plus Shay’s and—

“Uh, I can take Sylvie’s to her,” Kevin said quietly.

She paused in her typing to give him a little side-eye. “Is that so?”

“Don’t make it a thing,” he said, with the tiniest little headshake. “Breakfast at the diner on me and I’ll tell you everything if you can be chill about this right now.”

Kim pretended to consider that for a moment before nodding at the box. “Deal.”

He discreetly removed Sylvie’s box from the mug and went back to his desk.

Interesting. Very interesting.

“Where did this stuff come from?” Jay asked, coming over as she finished her text to Julie.

“Oh, uh, Bex dropped it off,” Kim said. She didn’t want to get herself caught up in a lie when they hadn’t worked out a story yet.

“Bex is here?” His head whipped toward the stairs and Kim caught his arm gently.

“Was,” she said. “She had to go so I said I’d take it up.”

His face fell and Kim wanted to say something—ask him what was going on, if he wanted to talk, if he was okay, anything—but it smoothed out just as quickly and he took his own item before heading back to his desk.

It had to be something to do with Mouse and Bex falling through and Mouse calling in sick today and who knew what else, but the middle of their office wasn’t exactly the best place to start a conversation about it.

Maybe she could catch him in the locker room later.

“What the hell is that?” Al was standing beside Adam’s desk, squinting down at his mug.

“I made it,” Adam said, proud smile spreading across his face.

“I can see that,” Al said, raising an eyebrow at him. “You know that thing is about five HR violations in one?”

“They’re lilacs, Olinsky,” Adam snapped.

“Keep telling yourself that, kid.”

Click here to read Chapter Six. Click here to read Chapter Seven. Click here to read Chapter Eight. Click here to read Chapter Nine. Click here to read Chapter Ten. Click here to read Chapter Eleven.

Click here to read Honesty. Horrible, Horrible Honesty on ao3:

And here is the tag list (let me know if you wish to be added or removed):

@sorry-i-spaced, @iunnowatuwant, @thegirlwhowishedeveryonelived, @ivyalmighty, @thewannabewriter, @lexhalstead3, @multifandomgrl08, @foxes-and-cats, @sensitivemallysix, @thebewingedjewelcat

#A Herrmann/Halstead Production #one chicago #chicago fire #chicago pd #chicago med #jay halstead #will halstead #christopher herrmann #oc character #rebecca 'bex' herrmann #a herrmann/halstead production #alternate universe #not canon #not beta read #angst #emotional hurt/comfort #working through emotional trauma #repairing relationships #fluff #family feels

[mcbitchtits]

okay my weekend got shuffled around and i saw dial of destiny today rather than friday.

completely unspoilery point of doubly-pedantic nerd criticism: hey marching navy bugler in the back ARE YOU AWARE that you are out of step. okay thanks for your time.

now spoilers

this has been bothering me for a hot sec

is it a German thing the way they pronounce it? A British thing? is it a Roman-Latin vs Catholic-Latin situation? I mean, Wikipedia here has it the way I’ve always said it, so what is behind their choice to Not Pronounce It This Way in the movie?

also related to the pre-adventure plot, i was sitting there in the middle of it thinking, like, when the nazis were in disarray and lacking supplies and their empire was falling apart, would anyone have even noticed a jacket with a bullet-hole in it? (i realize this is just a plot moment, ignore that for a second.) and then like ten minutes later i realized i was probably just thinking about the Confederates rather than the Nazis, but ehhhhhhhhhhh tomayto tomahto

also i think it’s very funny that the plot is just like “where did voller get the anitkyhera? who fucking cares. PLOT TIME”

also-also: i know it’s for Plot Reasons but i really wish they said “antikythera mechanism” more than they said “archimedes’ dial”. bah. fie on you

i’m still, every time, in awe of the wacko billing. who’s in this movie? HARRISON FORD and PHOEBE WALLER-BRIDGE and ANTONIO BANDERAS and TWELVE OTHER NAMES and also mads mikkelsen. i’m sorry. your villain gets last billing? i know why, it’s hollywood nonsense, but like. COME ON. maybe he deserves a few more minutes of screentime also?

i think i posted this in one of my last few shotgun-blast-commentary posts, about all the marion pics being from 1936. i noticed today, waaaaaay in the blurry background, at the end of the movie, there’s one from Crystal Skull. (and I had to go look it up and I realized it was not an Indy & Marion photo as I thought but rather one of the stills of Mutt and Marion. which. PUT THAT UP FRONT AT THE BEGINNING!!!!)

okay. do you see my four exclamation points there? so the subtitles, and forgive me that these are in spanish, but

they do that twice. my freshman high school english teacher is out there somewhere having a conniption fit

i think it’s interesting how much time the score spends with helena’s theme. there are at least a few spots where we should have been hearing the raiders march, and instead we get her theme. and it’s not like mutt’s theme where they harmonize and interplay. i don’t think we ever get it. which is... such a fascinating and, IMO, weird choice.

one of my friends who i saw it with, and i may have already mentioned this also, came out of the movie and was like “not to be an asshole, but it doesn’t make sense that the boat had 100 centurions. the centurions were the military leaders. they would definitionally have one centurion” and i’m just like. this is why we’re friends, and also, i’m so glad you are also a pedantic historian about indiana jones movies because that is Exactly How It Should Be.

speaking of which, every single time we get to Greece i’m just like I AM PRETTY SURE THEY DIDN’T SEW GARMENTS THAT WAY? YES THIS IS A PRODUCTION DESIGN CHOICE BUT ALSO IT IS BOTHERING ME. are there any extant garments like that? i feel like everything i have ever read is chitons and himations and peplos and. you know. mostly big, seamless, rectangles?

in related notes and deep dives into the world of production design vs. historic elements, the graphikos feels like it’s supposed to be like the phaistos disk? perhaps. i like it better than the “dial” design, for whatever that’s worth

and also re: my previous criticisms on the script being poor, “it’s not in a language, it’s in a code.” OH I’M SORRY. I FORGOT THAT CODE RESULTED IN NON-LINGUISTIC OUTPUT this is nonsense and i might hate this line more than any other for sheer stupidity? this being polybius i assume you’d still have to, you know. know how to read ancient greek.

now we’re off to the next part of our journey, If The Script Is Like This Then Surely I’m Overthinking It:

This is about Kythira, as in, the island opposite Antikythira, but also, in light of choosing to Do The Last Crusade Thing Again And Then Failing To Give The Indy-Helena Relationship A Solid Landing i am SO MAD i gotta go scream into a pillow or something brb

On the other hand, in regards to Overthinking The Writing And I Think They Did Mean It On Purpose: Basil naming his daughter Helena. I’m assuming he was obsessed with the Antikythera before all of that, although we never see any indication other than perhaps it catching his ear when he’s tied up on the train. But. Anyway. Helena. now i have to go Lie Down About It

(side note: do we think Indy is the only one who calls her “Wombat”? she does say, in the bar, “it’s been a long time since i’ve heard that”. were, like, he and Basil hanging out being archaeologist buddies and Helena thought he was super cool and wanted to be like him and found out he was named after his dog? like. aside from the “we are just writing in a new, younger Indy character”, that’s kind of just such a sweet little moment to ponder.)

fascinatingly, in every single showing i’ve been to so far, Helena gets the biggest laughs (or all of them). mostly the “I’m a... fan” moment, and then today she got a rip roaring response from knocking indy out. which i appreciate. but also it is interesting to note indy doesn’t really seem to get the laughs in his own goddamn farewell flick.

OKAY ENDING ON A POSITIVE NOTE i noticed something today which i had not caught yet which is, at the end, when marion shows up and indy goes into the kitchen to talk to her— when she opens the fridge to put the food in there, he slyly slips the magnet off of her photo that he put on there at the beginning. that is an indy moment. that made me laugh. sweet and silly.

#dial of destiny #indiana jones

[transcend-and-evolve-with-renzo]

The Fantastic Music of Slum Village

In this blog, I will be discussing three albums created by the legendary hip-hop group known as Slum Village. These albums are titled Fan-Tas-Tic, Vol. 1, Fantastic, Vol. 2, and Fantastic, Vol. 2.10. I will discuss the differences between each of these three projects and discuss the history behind them. Let's dive right in!

To start things off, allow me to introduce the original members of Slum Village. Taking a look at the picture posted above, original members of the group, from left to right, consisted of T3, Baatin, and J Dilla. The three met in high school back in the 90s and began making music for fun. It's at this point that I would highly encourage people to read Dan Charnas's book titled "Dilla Time" (https://a.co/d/5UVnlxa). It gives amazing insight into the life of J Dilla and his relationship with his family, friends, the music community at the time, and music history as a whole. It's an amazing read.

J Dilla was the heart and soul of the group. He was a musical genius and mastermind who would create the most amazing beats/compositions out of seemingly thin air. His signature drum sound provided an unforgettable rhythm for the entire group to vibe to and share with the world at large. According to Dan Charnas, J Dilla practically invented a new way to feel time by creating, what Dan calls, "Dilla Time". This is a great quick video which shows the idea behind this term that Charnas coined: https://youtube.com/shorts/j2VFEHLkZQI?feature=share . J Dilla wasn't the only person behind the defining sound of Slum Village though. T3 and Baatin provided something to the group that is so meaningful that I hear and feel something new each and every time I listen to any Slum Village song or project. J Dilla was more of a producer for Slum Village, though he would rap on tracks from time to time. T3 and Baatin were the group's main rappers. Kind of like the members of another legendary hip-hop group called A Tribe Called Quest. A Tribe Called Quest originally consisted of four members: Jarobi White, Q Tip, Phife Dawg, and Ali Shaheed Muhammad. After releasing their first project titled "People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm", Jarobi decided to leave the group to pursue a culinary career, which he went on to flawlessly exceed in and eventually came back to the group for their 2016 release of their sixth and final album titled "We Got it From Here... Thank You 4 Your Service". Starting with their second release titled "The Low End Theory" and through their fifth release titled "The Love Movement", the group consisted of the three members who weren't Jarobi. Q Tip and Phife Dawg served as the group's main MCs (Masters of Ceremonies/Master Coordinator's) while Ali Shaheed Muhammad served as the group's DJ and producer. This is how Slum Village was similar to A Tribe Called Quest, though Q Tip was a huge source of production material for ATCQ, but would always credit the group for the production work and never just himself. Back to Slum Village. T3 and Baatin were the main MCs, and to my ears, T3 seemed to always be a more "proper" rapper. I mean this in the sense of he would rap to the flow of the beat and not include any unique characteristics that would distinguish him from other rappers. That's not saying he's not a good rapper! In fact, T3 is an amazing rapper and one can definitely pick his voice and rapping style out of a sea of rappers. Baatin on the other hand was noticeably different. He rapped sometimes in front of or even behind the beat. He would occasionally slurp while rapping, and he would occasionally throw in occult/esoteric bars into his raps. Baatin rhyming about occult/esoteric topics inspired T3 to rap about that stuff as well. Baatin's way of rhyming was akin to Ol' Dirty Bastard's rhyming style from the Wu Tang Clan, a pioneering, historical hip-hop group from the 90s. Ol' Dirty was known as "The Drunken Master" amongst his fans and fellow group members. And this was due to his unique rhyming style which literally sounded as if he was drunk while rapping but had mastered his craft so well that even while drunk, he would include the most witty, elegant, and intricate bars. Baatin may not have been drunk while rapping, but his rhyming style was as free flowing and unique as the way J Dilla's beats and drums felt. The way the group members flowed with each other's energies is a true spectacle to hear. Who else could have done it like that with the equipment they had and the environment they were in at that specific point in time?

Let's get into the group's first unofficial official project titled "Fan-Tas-Tic, Vol. 1".

#hiphop #hip hop #music #art #artists #slum village #j dilla #hip hop music #hip hop beats

[happykawaiidreamsshop]

10 Kawaii Desk Accessories To Get You Organized

🌸📚 Get Ready for a Stylish and Organized Back to School! 📚🌸

Hello kawaii dreamers ! As the back-to-school season approaches, it's time to add a touch of kawaii charm to your study space. 🌟🖊️ If you're looking for adorable yet functional desk accessories, look no further! We've curated a fantastic list of "10 Kawaii Desk Accessories To Get You Organized" that will not only make your workspace cozy and efficient oasis  but also help you stay on top of your game!

If your are ready to give your desk a makeover that's as practical as it is cute or just want to be inspired 🎒🌈 Click the link below to dive into the world of kawaii desk organization and start this back-to-school season in style! Let's make studying a bit more enjoyable and productive 🌸📚 ✨💕

[Read the full post here]

#kawaii aesthetic #kawaii blog #kawaii finds #kawaii accessories #desk accessories #kawaii decor #back to school #desk organization #kawaii life #kawaii lifestyle #kawaii stationery #kawaii shop #kawaii stuff #cute aesthetic #office space #office decor

[creativecuteness]

Introducing The Whitechapel Adventures Remaster Collection

Four years ago I started my fanfiction escapades on fanfiction.net by posting the first entry of Whitechapel Adventures titled Dawn of the Bloodsuckers. This mbav fanfic was the first I ever wrote on word doc and the first I ever posted. The memoir styled story follows my ten-year-old OC as she and her friends move to the sleepy town of Whitechapel with special guest star Mabel Pines from Gravity Falls. Meeting and befriending the main cast, this story served as a sneak peek into the crazy daydreams I created during my childhood days while also creating a starting point for the fanfic cannon I would expand upon in my many multi fandom stories.

But in that time, the first four stories have become outdated. I really didn't know what I was doing or even how to properly format, paragraph, or even convey more emotion for my characters. And as a result, the stories have an awkward feel to them not to mention the multiple spelling mistakes and missing words. (I was really bad at spell checking at that time.) Now I could go back and rewrite and update the original stories, but I don't want to overwrite them, not only are the original finished product near and dear to my heart but also because they were written during my early years of fanfic writing so while they're rough around the edges I think it's important to showcase that all writers have their working things out phase which is what inspired me to remaster these four stories and compile them into a long form collection.

Plus, now that the entire movie and first season had their uncensored scenes uncovered it's time to go back and put these scenes in their rightful place in my stories.

So how will this be handled simple, the collection includes (In chronological order) Whitechapel Adventures Origins, Dawn of the Bloodsuckers, Night of the Undead Critters, and Feels Like School Sprit. (I'm debating whether or not I should also include Blood Drive as well but I'm leaning towards no because number 1 it's the most recent one next to A Life-sized Issue and number 2 there's not much I can think of that should be remastered or changed. Let me know what you think.

The stories will be posted on Ao3, Fanfiction.net, and Tumblr with me adding my own developer's commentary and deep dive as to why I added certain things and what influenced either these changes or add on's. With that said Whitechapel Adventures Origins is already under revision and will be finished sometime this year. Shouldn't take too long since its five chapters and I was already getting the hang of writing at the time.

But once the story is remastered, I will post each chapter once or twice a week maybe. I have yet to create an upload schedule, but I promise you I will keep you updated with snippets and comparisons as I write. With that said I hope you're as excited as I am and tell me what story you're most excited for it might give me more motivation to get them out faster.

Stay tuned for updates.

#mbav stuff #mbav #my babysitters a vampire #my babysitter's a vampire #fanfiction #mbav fanfic #ao3 #fanfics #fanfic #fandom #I told you I'd remaster my fics once the uncensored cut of the movie came out #i am so excited #ethan morgan #rory keaner #mabel pines #dakota natalie #erica jones #benny weir #sarah fox #I also might make fanart of my characters and scene recreations #maybe I'm not the greatest at art #get hyped fam #fanfic remastering #fanfic collection #Just one giant fic that holds four stories #five if I decide to include blood drive #not sure if I will #this took forever to write out #follow for updates #I really hope you guys like them

[adiabolikpastel]

Life Updates w/ Mun Yu~

Just a note: I started writing this in March... So, yeah that is how crazy things have been for me.

I thought I would take a moment to do a good- ol'fashioned Blog Update. Since the new year started - and my resolution to post more isn't going too well - I thought it might be nice to just clear the air.

Brush off the non-productiveness of the past, and look forward! With that in mind, let's dive in! Everything will be under the cut - if updates aren't your thing, no biggie. Thanks for the support, and I'll post more content soon!

●・○・●・○・● | ●・○・●・○・● | ●・○・●・○・●

Mun Yu Updates

So, what's been up with me? What's the happs? Well - after four LONG years I am finally getting my Bachelor's Degree. For those that might be new - I am an older college student, having wasted my first chance of going.

Originally, it was only to go back to finish my AAS in Early Childhood Education. Once that was done, however, I found the job market to be less than ideal. That being the case, I transferred to another college and began working towards a BA in Human Resource management. And now - as I stand but 3 more weeks away from completing that degree...

I have been asked by the college to continue my education - and will be starting the next chapter of this crazy journey. Starting next August - I will be working towards getting my MLD (Master's in Leadership Development) & MBA (Master's in Business Administration). I cannot properly express how crazy the idea of that is to me - I was never great in school and now all this... I feel so blessed to have this experience.

That has been my major focus - and it's literally a full-time job. On top of my actual full-time job. I also got married last October, to my best friend of 12 years. As we both enter into our thirties - we are looking to bring in another member of the family soon enough. Not just yet - but soon.

●・○・●・○・●

Blog Now - What's Happening?

You know I wish there was more to post about. Truly I do. This blog is going to be 7 years old - and while it's come a long way, there isn't much to say right now.

I do have the L.E.M. art project continuing, we are officially on the last two boys. L.E.M. was such a huge accomplishment for me as a creator - even if it does exist outside of either canon. I enjoy going back and looking it over; just to see how far the blog has come.

TORMENTED REVERIE

Story-wise; super slowly I am working on publishing Yuuki's official story. My plan is to do each boy's route - complete with C.G.s (the first of which are done). Which will cover the month Yuuki was in the mansion before choosing Kanato.

After those routes are done, I want to make an overarching timeline post about where her story goes from there - then an epilogue just before Another Daydream. Those will also hopefully have art - which would be nice.

Yuki on the other hand - doesn't really have routes with the other boys. So I am wondering what the best way to tell his story is. I could just do it in sections and then break it into parts. I have seen OC blogs in the past do like diary/journal entries - which could be good for him honestly. Something like he was asked by Reinhart to keep a journal?

Yuki's storyline is one that I feel I have an idea of what I want, but I don't play with nearly enough like the others. So, that is definitely something I would love to work on in the new year. If you all are ever curious about him or the story - I am open for ask, they help me develop the story so much.

TORMENTED REVERIE: ANOTHER DAYDREAM

So, listen... these children got a lot of attention years ago. I don't feel so bad that they are getting ignored right now because of that. That being the case - I do have small things in the works for them. Nothing that is being developed at the moment though. My age old project Yukio in Wonderland is still something I want done, but I need a new artist for (and cant afford right now anyway). I do plan to work on getting sprites made for their older looks, mostly Yukio and Kanaye - Rini is set with what she has.

There is no official name for it - BUT - there is a sequel in the works for this time line. It follows Kanaye and Isabella (owned by @pureblood-prey) and their family / reign after taking over as King and Queen. With children of their own too - it's such a fun story that Mel and I have built over the years. Like I said though, no official name or release do that - but if you have any questions feel free to ask~!

EXCRUCIATING DUPLICITY

Ohh... this universe. I feel like it has so much going on, yet nothing all at the same time. There are a lot of OCs here, and I am trying to make them all cohesive with one another - the biggest part of that is that most of them have little to do with one another, which is kind of nice.

Skye's story is something I want to explore more. He has become such a presence on this blog - which I never thought possible. So thank you everyone for being so supportive of his chaotic a$$. I certainly never originally thought of his as Karlheniz partner - but I love where that plot is going.

Roselyn will probably never have a proper story, mostly because she is more of a background character. While she is there any around - having her own plot going on, it's not the focus, and we'll probably only see it in small doses. But you all ready know, if you want more Burai x Rose or just Rose content, all you gotta do is ask

Sweet baby Calli~ I know I have bit off so much with her story. Not only does she have two boys, which causes her story line to split - her family is super important to the natural order of the universe. It will probably be years upon years before I can properly give this story anything that it deserves. For now at least, Calli's story is the "Main Story" of the universe - where all others revolve around and have influences from or to the events in her plot.

●・○・●・○・●

And... really that is all I have right now. Seriously, I started this in March and nothing really changed since I started till now when I am finally publishing it.

Once summer rolls around, and I am not weighted down with school work, I will 100% be able to focus more on the blog and releasing content. Thank you for your continual patients and support - truly it means the world.

For making it this far I will share a little inspiration board for the twins! I am so happy that you guys are excited for them. I swear I will answer the ask in my box today from my sweet anons. Thank you all again, we'll chat soon!

#mun post #blog update #thank you for all the support #summer goals #ask box open

[chucklesim]

Okay I've been working on the game but I don't have much I can physically show, so I'll explain my thought process about creating it so I have something to post and y'all know I'm still alive and working.

I learned how to make dating sims in renpy about 6 years ago to make a dating sim that consisted of random people I knew just for funsies, and so all the time I'll like something and be like "man I could totally make a visual novel of this!!". I never actually acted on it until I was nearing 20 shots of Fireball and two bottles of Molson (gotta rep the Canadian brands!!) deep in the middle of May, pulled out my notebook at the shitty dive bar and started scribbling away. For some reason coding HITS when you're drunk so I've told myself if I'm not gonna be able to kick my drinking habit I'm gonna be productive with it at the least, and have been working on it whenever I drink. The code isn't really the neatest because of it, but that's why I'm just working on it alone. It's a free fan passion project, if I'm the only one who can decipher and edit my messy coding that's okay. If suddenly it seems like y'all suddenly wanna mod it to add your own endings I'll assess the damage and move from there.

In terms of release, I should have specified that the full game will not be released in September. At the very least a basic Ted and Schlatt ending will be finished, I'm hoping Charlie too but it might be difficult since I'm gonna do a similar thing to unlocking Ren in boyfriend to death with him if all goes well. I'm working two jobs (I'm a social media manager which is funny because I can't be fucked (I can say that because this is a free fan game hahaha) to use my skills on my own accounts because I don't wanna just keep doing my job on my own time, and I work helping lead developments in Canadian Indigenous education at my local museum with a government grant) and I'm also going back to school in September (English Language and Literature, minor in German, don't speak to me in German I am a disgrace to the language so far) so I can't spend all the time I want to spend working on Chucklesim.

The plan is to get something playable out in September, then I'll crank out some updates through the year. As an English student who's naturally insane at reading I hardly have any homework that takes me forever, so I'd hopefully have time to have something out during my off days for exams in December and April.

In terms of dating routes, that's a no. I doubt Schlatt would be okay with that, and even if everyone was completely fine with it, Ted and Charlie have partners and I'd feel so disrespectful and weird if I made a dating sim for someone else's partner, regardless if they're famous or not.

I'm really happy to be working on this and I hope you all enjoy it. If you have any questions, any suggestions, wanna stay updated, please check out the link to the Google form here so I can have all that information easily accessible in one place. I want this to be our game, not just mine. My ask box is always open as well, even if you're just goofing off.

Keep chuckling, perhaps even allow yourself to chortle a little, and have a good day!

Love, Alyssia/ilovlys - Chuckle Sim's favourite (only) dev

#chuckle sandwich podcast #chuckle sandwich #chuckle sim

[accio-productivity]

Hi, my school had been going on and now finally, my summer break has started (apologies for no post). I did not want that horrible schedule again when school reopens so, like every other person I searched for tips on time management, but this time I thought to take a deep dive into the topic for this blog and here comes

#time management

Now let us understand time management by questioning!

WHAT exactly is time management?

 Many people tend to think that it is just about managing time with popular methods like Pomodoro (which it is). It is the art of scheduling and coordinating tasks, so that, productivity is maximised and we can complete tonne tasks in limited time.

 We all have different priorities, workloads and focus periods. Time management is managing workload by prioritising tasks within one's capacity. Yes, it is about maximising productivity but, it is more about making the schedule easy to follow.

WHY is time management important?

Have you ever felt overwhelmed by the work you have to do? If yes, then time management is for you!

HOW to manage time? / Tips for time management

Here are multiple tips for different categories of people!

For people with a low attention span

Have you ruined your attention span by scrolling or are you someone thinking last time I could easily sit for 2hrs and now I can't even study for 20mins?

Then, the Pomodoro method is the best for you. Some of you might be offended by the Pomodoro method but the truth is, it is best for people with low attention span.

It is focusing for 25 min with 5 min break. But I would not recommend you to take that 5min break because chances are that you will scroll for the next 2hrs.

Instead of the actual Pomodoro technique, try the edited one.

Check how long can you study for. For e.g., you can study for 30min and after 30 min either you go on your phone or start daydreaming. Now you know your focus period so you have to study in these small batches and after 30min instead of a phone break go and do something else like you can clean your space, make coffee/get a snack for the next session or just listen to 2-3 fav songs.

Let us say you took this kind of break of 10min, then go back for further sessions until your task is completed or you have completed at least 2hr of focus time. Now you can take any kind of break you want but have some control over your nerves. Also, after a week increase your focus time by 10min and slowly you will be able to focus for longer periods.

For people with decent/good focus time

Are you someone who can focus for a decent time but want to have a smooth long study session? Then, you should practice the flowtime technique. 

It is studying until you complete a task. For e.g., you have many things to do, out of which you chose to read a chapter or complete a lecture. Then you start and work until the work is completed or you are mentally exhausted, at the same time satisfied for progress.

HOW TO SCHEDULE TIME

So, you know what kind of person you are and now the main problem comes. You have made your to-do list. You know how you are going to study but you don't have the time. We have school, tuition and many other responsibilities, that the day ends and we are not able to do anything.

Here are Tips to schedule your day,

Edit your to-do list. More specifically, you know your attention span, and the time you have for studies and thus you should make the task list accordingly. Why do you have to make a list imagining the best-case scenario? Instead, determine the number of things you can complete in a day and then edit your to-do by prioritising the important tasks.

Bring the time out. This tip is very essential because here you have to make study time during the busy day. Do you have a gap between school and tuition or between any evening classes and dinner? If yes then use this time effectively. If the time is around 2hrs relax for an hour but then study in the next. There are many such gaps you may find in your day. Whether you study in them or not utilize them.

Next, if are you a morning/night person then you can get a longer session here. If you say you are somewhere in the morning-night person then test your current mood of morning/night. Also, try multiple routines and then stick to the most convenient one.

EXCEPTIONS

Some of you with good attention spans might want to practise flowtime but the problem is that the gaps which are there during the day are so small to practice flowtime. For e.g., you got a 30min time to study and you have to read a lesson and then break the task, in this case, decide the subtopic of the lesson you will be reading.

Thank you so much for reading, I hope you found it helpful.

P.S. I made an Instagram account, Follow me - https://www.instagram.com/accio_productivity/?next=%2F

#time management #study tips #studygram #student #study blog #studyblr

[gameminds]

Tooth Gone

I got my tooth extracted. hooray

lol but seriously. I already feel substantially better psychologically just to have it out and not have to worry about it, and it hurts less than it has when it was at its worst already anyway. I'm glad I was at least able to be on top of my shit for long enough and consistently enough that I was able to get that done.

I'm still a little short on the financial side, and unfortunately I still haven't been able to monetize streaming or writing in any way yet. But really, I'm still in a very happy hobby space with both of those, and I've been very successful with school and work in the mean time. Partially because I sold a house last year, I'm essentially getting exactly zero dollars back on my tax return. So it may be another few weeks of grinding pretty hard until the end of the semester in the first week or so of May.

This summer, I'm going to be taking 4 full credit classes, so my school schedule is going to ramp up pretty dramatically. But I'm in a place where my productivity level and focus level is at all time highs, and I'm feeling more comfortable and fulfilled than I maybe ever have. Unfortunately again, I will probably have to reduce my content output a little. But basically no one is consuming it right now anyway XD

If you've stopped by the blog or my stream, I'd love to hear from you! I've been really interested to get feedback and hear from people who share interests with me, and I'm eager to build a bigger community of people that I feel like a part of. If you read my stories and you enjoy them, please please please share them, comment on my posts about them, send me a message, anything at all to let me know you're out there! Helping me share my stories with new people is the most important way you can help me meet more writers and content creators, share queer, progressive content you enjoy with people you love, and grow my channel so that I can keep adding more stories to the portfolio! Letting me know what you like and don't like, what you want to see more of, what keeps you coming back, and how I can help you see yourself in my stories is the most important way you can let me know that you appreciate the effort I put into crafting stories that speak to people, and help me get better and better all the time!

Anyway today I'm feeling very grateful after having several very bad weeks full of a lot of pain, stress, and depression. For anyone out there who reads this blog, reads my stories, watches the stream, hangs out with me on twitter-- thank you for spending some of your time with me and my weird thoughts!

the patreon can be found through my linktree if you want to support or check out my stories-- everything on patreon except the story outlines is available TOTALLY FREE. any amount you want to contribute goes directly to supporting me as a writer and content creator.

I've been posting stories sort of scattershot between a bunch of different profiles, but this week I'm going to migrate all of them over so that they're linked on both the patreon page and my writing blog, AB sci-fi. All of the stories will also be migrated to Google Docs in the process. I may even do some updates and edits 😉

Hope all is well with all of you! Enjoy the stories!

Catch you next time-

-AB

[cyarsk5230]

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ENTERTAINMENT

IT’S LIT: Celebrating Travis Scott’s 33rd Birthday With All Of His Top 10 Billboard 100 Hits

Written byDavonta Herring

Published onApril 30, 2024

Source: Christopher Polk / Getty

One of the biggest artists and popular culture figures of this generation turned 33 today. Click inside to celebrate his legacy with a gallery of all of his Top 10 hits!

Jacques Bermon Webster II was born in Houston, Texas. Webster lived with his grandmother in South Park, Houston from ages one through six. He then moved to Missouri City to live with his parents. Due to the fact that Webster’s father is a soul musician and his grandfather was a jazz composer, music was already embedded in him. While attending Elkins High School, which he graduated from at 17, he participated in musical theater. During his second year at the University of Texas at San Antonio, Webster dropped out to fully pursue his music career.

One he left college, Scott moved to New York City. He slept on his friend’s floor and spent most of his time at Just Blaze’s studio. Unfortunately for him, progress didn’t come fast enough. He moved to Los Angeles after only living in NYC for four months. After falling on tough times in LA, Scott moved back to Houston but was eventually kicked out of his parent’s home. When he moved back to Los Angeles, he began to sleep on the couch of a friend who studied at University of Southern California. Around the time, Grand Hustle Records rapper and owner T.I. heard one of Scott’s productions. One of T.I.’s representatives invited Scott to a studio for a meeting. During the meeting, T.I. rapped over one of Scott’s productions, laying the groundwork for Scott to sign with Grand Hustle.

After several delays, Scott’s first solo full-length project, Owl Pharoah was released on May 21st, 2013. The following year, he released Days Before Rodeo, his second mixtape and the prelude to his debut studio album Rodeo. The highly-anticipated album was released on September 4th, 2015. It debuted at number three on the US Billboard 200 chart and catapulted him to a household name. Since then, Travis has released three more solo albums (Birds in the Trap Sing McKnight, Astroworld, Utopia) with all three reaching number one of the US Billboard 200, a collaborative album (Huncho Jack, Jack Huncho) with Quavo and a compilation album (Jackboys) with the rappers signed to Scott’s Cactus Jack imprint.

Cactus Jack Records, which was founded in 2017, is just another venture Travis has dived into. He started the annual music festival Astroworld in 2018. Over the years, Scott has collaborated with countless clothing and sneaker brands including Been Trill, Diamond Supply Co., A Bathing Ape, Nike, Helmut Lang and Jordan, just to name a few. The ‘Pick Up The Phone’ artist has teamed up with the likes of Fortnite, McDonald’s and even PlayStation to promote special merchandise, meals and so many other things. He made his theatrical in the 2021 film Gully. Later in the year, he signed a movie production deal with A24.

Travis Scott has left an undeniable mark on this generation. Although he is involved in so many things, the world initially came to love him based on his music prowess. To celebrate his legacy and his birthday, check out our gallery of all of his Top 10 Billboard Hot 100 hits. HAPPY 33RD TRAVIS!

1. Drake ft. Quavo & Travis Scott – Portland

Source:Drake

2. Stargazing

Source:Travis Scott

3. Sicko Mode ft. Drake

Source:Travis Scott

4. Lil Wayne ft. Travis Scott – Let It Fly

Source:Lil Wayne

5. Kodak Black ft. Travis Scott & Offset – ZEZE

Source:Kodak Black

6. Post Malone ft. Ozzy Osbourne & Travis Scott – Take What You Want

Source:Post Malone

7. Highest In The Room

Source:Travis Scott

8. Travis Scott & Kid Cudi – The Scotts

Source:Travis Scott

9. Franchise ft. Young Thug & M.I.A.

Source:Travis Scott

10. Drake ft. Travis Scott – Fair Trade

Source:Drake

11. Drake ft. Travis Scott – Pussy & Millions

Source:Drake

12. Travis Scott, Bad Bunny, The Weeknd – K-POP

Source:Travis Scott

13. Travis Scott ft. Drake – MELTDOWN

Source:Travis Scott

14. Travis Scott ft. Playboi Carti – FE!N

Source:Travis Scott

15. 21 Savage, Travis Scott, Metro Boomin – née-nah

Source:21 Savage

16. Future, Metro Boomin, Travis Scott, Playboi Carti – Type Shit

Source:Future

17. Future, Metro Boomin, Travis Scott – Cinderella

Source:Future

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