#dean/eliot answers

[demons-and-demigods]

Greetings, my darlings!

You can call me Eliot or Dean ^-^

I made this side blog to post about my spn/pjo crossover au!

This pinned post is gonna be two-fold: basic info abt the au (which I've named the Demons and Demigods Verse) and some basic info abt me!

Behind the Screen:

As I mentioned, you guys can call me Eliot or Dean! My pronouns are they/he and im nonbinary (transmasc) pan ace!

This is a side blog!!!!!!!!!!!! My main is @invalid-author , and I have a couple other side blogs as well. @water-you-doing-bro is my pjo side blog, @pretty-boy-baby-girl is my criminal minds side blog, and @demons-i-get is my spn side blog!

I'd like to keep this blog for just my au, so if you want to talk with me about spn or pjo not related to this au or anything else, please feel free to hop over to the corresponding side blog or my main!!!!!!

I'll come back and edit this if I remember anything else I want to add!!

And now,

Demons and Demigods Background!

Some warnings/preface before I get into the actual au: I have a potty mouth and therefore so do the characters. I love using the fuck word.

As the blog title states, I do put the characters through The Horrors arguably worse than canon. So. Please keep that in mind, also I am a big fan of dark!percy and making demigods a little eldritched (mostly percy tho) so expect a lot of morally gray (at the very least) actions on Percy's part and violence and gore more spn canon level than pjo canon level

Also, I do fuck around with timelines as I wish even if it doesn't make much sense bc I am the god of this world and Chuck's got nothing on me 😈

I make a number of changes to how spn s1 plays out and also smush the entirety of spn seasons 1 , 2, and most of 3 into the ~8-10 months during which hoo takes place. Like I said, I fuck severely with the timelines.

This au starts in the time between tlo and tlh where Percy has just gone missing, and picks up right after the pilot for spn

I haven't made it that far yet, but this au will be Destiel bc I'm down bad <3

Anyway,

Sally is Mary's younger sister. They were always close growing up, and both decided to quit hunting.

Percy is six years younger than Sam! (Sam is 22 in the pilot, and Percy is 16 when he goes missing.)

Percy disappears and Annabeth tells Sally that he's missing right after Jess dies. Oops. (Yes, I know the timelines don't match up but I don't care <3)

Everything else I'll get too into, so I'll post the rest of the set up separately!

I have some scenes fully written for this au and a lot of hand-wavey transition shit written down, too.

I'll work on getting what I've got so far posted over the next couple of days!

As I get stuff posted, I'll tag all fully written scenes with #dndv scenes and anything involving world-building or any kind of lore will be tagged with #dndv lore ! If I get any asks abt the au, they'll be tagged #dndv asks alongside #dean/eliot answers . All posts about the au involving plot or storyline at all will be tagged with #dndv and #demons and demigods verse . Anything like progress updates as I'm working on the next part will be tagged with #dndv behind the scenes

I'll include those tags in this post for ease of use, and if I decide to use other specific tags, I'll add them here as well!

[cpmhew]

1x02 // 1x05 // 1x05

Quentin & pointlessness

[shallowseeker]

Dean is a lot of things, but super transparent and open isn't one of them. You're contributing to a trendy rewrite of Dean and influencing fandom in ways that just don't reflect what we see on screen.

I get where you’re coming from—Dean isn’t always the most emotionally transparent guy on the surface, and his wariness is definitely a big part of his character. That said, I personally think Dean’s performance of toughness/gruffness pulls the wool over some viewers’ eyes. Dean’s time in Hell, in particular, made him more protective of his vulnerabilities, adding to the tougher exterior he develops over time. It’s not that I don’t think Dean isn't guarded; he absolutely is. But I think he’s far more open than some parts of fandom paint him, and even more open than he sometimes portrays himself. Dean chooses to be selective about who he shows his vulnerabilities to, which is a consistent part of his character.

It's also important to acknowledge those times he’s been open only to get shut down (ahem, especially in Season 7, by Sam, Bobby, and Eliot Ness). I think his close family members are terrified that his grief will lead to his death during a hunt, so they balk at it, encouraging him to lock his emotions down tight.

///

Of note, I think Mary struggles with a similar issue. She says, “I know I can be cold,” yet she’s often incredibly honest about her actual emotions. In fact, Mary is one of the first characters to answer honestly when people ask if she’s okay: “No.” (Dean will in fact mirror her example in 13x06). I even think her “I love you” during her would-be death scene with Billie in 12x09 inspires moments like Cas’s “I love you—I love all of you” during the fight with Ramiel in 12x12.

Like Dean, Mary downplays her own emotional intelligence and her own keenness to both read and reach out to others. All in all, I think these two are far more emotionally generous and intuitive than they give themselves credit for, even if they struggle to acknowledge or articulate it when they get too overwhelmed.

As for what we see on screen... For the record, I like to think that I do a decent job of referencing specific moments in the script or episode when I talk about Dean's emotions or openness. Even if you don't interpret things as I do, I hope you can see my perspective.

/// Just as a point of contrast, I don’t think Sam is as emotionally intuitive as he’s often credited to be, and I think sometimes even Dean gives Sam too much credit. We see this particularly in Don’t You Forget About Me, where Dean instinctively builds rapport with Jody, empathizing with her and even pitching in to help with the dishes as they commiserate over their girls’ behavioral problems. Interestingly, this rears its head again in Ladies Drink Free, with Sam's intellectualizing of emotions being a point of contention.

Dean’s ability to both read people and connect emotionally often goes underappreciated, even by himself.

///

Bonus: I actually think Cas is also far more emotionally intuitive than he gives himself credit for, even with the billions of years of suppress-or-die under his belt. Cas often deploys a distinctly reciprocal style of communication, revealing a personal failing or emotion to encourage others to open up about their own failings. We see it with the original "I'm not a hammer / I have doubts" scene with Dean, we see it in a big way with Jack in Tombstone, and interestingly, we even see it with the news anchor here.

[platonic-soulmates-gencest]

So, I had this poll done over a month ago but got sidetracked by other projects. But now I am finally back to writing that s1!Dean meeting s11!Sam so here's a small excerpt. (I am having some trouble figuring out the details of this fic because it's kind of a case fic and I had to figure out the monster of the week and stuff. It might take some time until I am done with it.)

A few hours away from Bobby’s, Dean found the strength to ask about Sam’s previous time-travelling experiences. Sam had promised he would tell him after all.

“Right.” Sam smiled. “So, I am going to start with the simple ones.”

“There’s simple ones?”

Sam chuckled and started on a long explanation about a pagan God named Chronos and how future Dean ended up in 1944.

“I met Eliot Ness?” Dean gasped. “Holy shit.”

“It’s not even the weirdest thing you’ve done.” Sam chuckled, the fondness had taken over his features. 

“What else have I done?”

“Not saying.”

“You are loving this, aren’t you?” Dean raised a brow. 

“Maybe.”

Dean found himself smiling. He had missed this. This Sam didn’t look like he was mourning a dead girlfriend anymore and he wasn’t pushing Dean away because he was an ‘old enough to take care of himself’ teenager. This was Sam at twelve, all big smiles and puppy eyes and wonder for his big brother.

“There’s another method but it won’t be available for a couple more years.” Sam continued. “The method already exists but only a select set of individuals have access to it and those people are extinct. The only reason we witnessed it in the future is because one of them traveled from 1958 to our time.”

“God, you are being so cryptic.” Dean rolled his eyes. “A select set of individuals. Someone. Can you not be more specific?”

“I am trying to avoid spoilers.” Sam chuckled. “The important thing is that it’s neither of those things. Neither is a possibility in 2006.”

“So what else can it be?”

“There’s another creature that first appeared in front of us in 2008.” Sam snorted. “That one, I am not completely disregarding as a possibility but I honestly doubt it. They have their hands full lately.”

Dean frowned. Sam didn’t make sense. He must have been trying real hard to phrase that in a way Dean wouldn’t get.

“Shouldn’t I be aware of what it is in case it caused the time travel?” 

“If it is that creature, then Dean — my Dean — will do something about it. Let’s say that we have one of those creatures on our side.”

Dean was getting a headache.

“The most likely scenario, if it isn’t one of those creatures, is another pagan god that controls time. In which case, going to Bobby for answers is the quickest way to find out.”

“Right, about that, you probably don’t know because you were at Stanford at the time but Bobby threatened to shoot Dad last time we were there and—”

“It will be fine.” Sam put a comforting hand on his shoulder. “Trust me.”

And Dean kinda melted at the touch because Sam hadn’t tried to reassure him like this since they were kids.

[impala-dreamer]

Excuse me...

Have I acquired your attention? Good. Ok -

So, I don't know how many of you remember my Tell Me About drabbles, or who would care anymore, but...

Let's bring them back!

Now, you may say, "but, Beka- you never answered my original one... did you keep them all?" Yes. Yes I did. And.... Some of them got full fics that are on my Patreon and will someday appear here lol So, yeah, I may answer one from 2 years ago, but new ones are so much more fun, aren't they? Also, there's new characters to choose from! "Like who? and what? and how? and huh?" Well, keep on reading and all will be revealed!

So, you may know I've been working like 5608308 hours a week now that I have a new WFH job, which is great, but I'm burning out fast and I need some writing back in my life.

Send me an ASK that starts with "Tell Me About... " and then fill in the rest with whatever prompt you'd like. It can be angst, smut, fluff, crack, hardcore porn, a mix of all. You can also choose a character from the list below and I shall do an ___ x Reader. or a ship, if you'd prefer. or a mix. it's all good! Keep the prompt short and open. Ie: do not write me a fic and ask me to write you a fic of the fic. so.. more like..

"Tell Me About... Jensen and me in a submarine with cheese wiz and a porn mag"

But not that, bc why. I may just do that one on my own bc Why. Anyway- Send it in. And if it sparks a drabble, I shall give it to you. (please do not send gifs with it. they clog things up) You may also get a full fic if you're lucky ;)

Characters and Ships I will write with:

Jensen Ackles / Dean Winchester, Soldier Boy, Tom Hanniger

Misha Collins / Castiel

Jeffrey Dean Morgan / John Winchester, Negan

TWD- Rick Grimes, Daryl

Chris Evans / Steve Rogers

Sebastian Stan / Bucky, Sebastian Stan, Sebastian Stan

Joe Goldberg - YOU (tv)

The Magicians- Quentin, Eliot, Penny, The whole gang. All of them.

Criminal Minds - Spencer Reid, Aaron Hotchner

SHIPS: Cockles/Destiel, StuckyxReader (who am I?), Queliot

I can't remember who I write for omg. just ask... you know what I'm into.

If you're unsure of a character or just wanna ask - send me a DM. I'm always around :)

LET'S DO THIS!

[thevioletcaptain]

🌵🤠🙄

Crouched down behind the bar at the back of the room, Dean pushes bottles around until he finds the little box of cactus-shaped cocktail sticks left over from Jack’s “Green Stuff” themed birthday party (Dean’s given up on questioning the kid’s requests) and holds them up triumphantly.

“Got ‘em!”

Sam peers around the back of his recliner and narrows his eyes as Dean makes his way back to the couch and plonks back into his seat, shaking a few out into his hand and sticking them into several cubes of cheese and deli meats on the platter he’d set up earlier.

“What are those, pickles?”

“They’re cactuses, man. They’re thematically relevant to the movie. Y’know, cowboys, deserts, cactuses.”

“Oh my god, I told you we are not watching it again,” Sam groans.

“Well, it’s what’s playing in the Deanplex tonight, and there’s only one screen, so—”

“The Deanplex? Really?”

“You kept whining about me calling it the Dean Cave,” Dean reminds him. “Reap what you sow.”

“Dean. I’m serious. No more Tombstone.”

“It’s a classic!”

“So is Citizen Kane, but we don’t need to watch it six times a year!”

Dean makes a face. Slaps Sam’s hand away when he tries to take one of the cubes of colby jack before he’s had a chance to stick a cactus in it.

“Okay, one? Citizen Kane is boring as fuck and you know it.”

“Not the point,” Sam huffs.

“And B? What are you talking about, six times? Who’s watched it six times?”

Sam stares, then raises his hand to count them off on his fingers.

“We watched it on your birthday,” he starts, raising his index finger.

Dean rolls his eyes.

“Yeah, ‘cause it’s one of my favorite movies. Choosing the movie is a time-honored birthday tradition.”

“So then why did we have to watch it on my birthday?”

“Hey, that’s on you, man. Not my fault you struck out on your date and came home when me and Cas had already hit play.”

“I didn’t strike out, Eileen had to—”

“And anyway, that’s only two times, so—”

Sam raises his second and third finger and cuts him off.

“We watched it again on Valentine’s Day.”

“Again, when you were supposed to be out! I don’t see why I have to suffer just because you can’t seem to manage to get a date with Eileen to continue past 7pm.”

Sam ignores the dig and lifts his fourth finger.

“We watched it on Jack’s birthday.”

“His choice, and as we’ve established: it’s birthday tradition,” Dean reminds him, and shrugs. “Kid inherited my good taste genes, I guess.”

“That’s not — that doesn’t make sense on literally any level.”

“Says you.”

“You’re not even his father!”

“How dare you say that about my son,” Dean says in exaggerated horror, and Sam grits his teeth, visibly making the decision not to push that particular argument, even as Dean can tell how infuriated he is.

He lifts his thumb.

“And then we watched it again two weeks ago, and— fine, yeah, that one I’ll give you, ‘cause it was like. The anniversary of that time we had the hunt in Tombstone when Cas just came back from the dead, so. Fine. But dude. Two weeks ago. It’s only July and we’ve already watched it five times this year. We are not watching it for a sixth.”

“It’s National Day of the Cowboy, Sam! How are we not gonna watch the best cowboy movie of all time on the Day of the Cowboy?”

“You’re still arguing about this?”

Cas’ voice floats over from the doorway, and Dean looks over to see him wearing the denim Western shirt Dean bought him for the occasion. The pearl snaps glint, silvery in the light from the TV screen where Tombstone is loaded and ready to play.

“Yeah, ‘cause Sam’s being unreasonable.”

“I’m not—”

“You realize I left to drop Jack off with his friends almost an hour ago,” Cas points out.

“Remind me again what he’s doing with his friends,” Dean says, and looks at Sam to see his reaction when Cas answers.

“They’re celebrating National Day of the Cowboy by watching the Dollars trilogy in Eliot’s backyard.”

“Sounds like Jack and his friends are getting into the sprit of the holiday,” Dean says pointedly.

“It’s not a holiday!”

“They’ve set up a projector to show the films on the side of the barn,” Cas goes on.

“Okay, so hey— a compromise,” Sam offers. “Why don’t we just watch the Dollars trilogy?”

“…oh, did you think we were only watching Tombstone tonight?” Dean asks, bemused. “Dude, that’s just the appetizer. We’ve got a whole damn buffet to get through.”

“I hate you so much,” Sam tells him, but he’s already given up. He snatches up several pieces of cheese and slouches back in his chair. “Start the damn movie.”

“Hey, man,” Dean says, and settles into the couch, spreading his arm for Cas to settle against before he kicks his cowboy-booted heels up onto the edge of the coffee table and hits play. “You’re the one who keeps crashing date night.”

[written for this prompt game] [find me on ao3 as imogenbynight 💚]

[magikborn]

"I swear to all the Gods, including Julia, if you don't get me drunk right fucking now, I might actually kill Eliot, and that would undo everything we've done in the last like, year and a half," [Margo to Penny!]

"WHAT HAS MARSHMALLOW DONE NOW?" Penny knew the answer. Since Ryan showed up, the guy had been loosing it. "I swear to god if he gets nerd boy upset again." It was bad enough the dude looked similar to Quentin, but the guy had a wolf following him. "If he gets burned by the beastie boy, I'm not getting the Dean." He had to admit, Q was annoying. Still, he was their friend. Ryan being in the mix just complicated everything.

[hekate1308]

There Was Winter's Cold A Destiel Advent Calendar December 7

Masterpost

Now that Cas was all clean and fed (and had magic powers), Dean didn’t really know what to do. It was too early to go to sleep, and he didn’t want him out of his sight jus yet – what if he started water bending or whatever he should call it again? Granted, he was pretty sure his face had told Cas all he needed to know about that, but still…

He decided the best thing for them to would be to watch a movie, only he had not considered certain things, for example –

“But how do the pictures move?”

“It’s technology, man” he tried to explain once more. “I get that it’s confusing an all, but it’s just how it is. You know how – you know how humans can’t breathe under water and stuff? Well, this is… this is sort of the same, a thing we all accept and it’s part of our lives.”

It didn’t really work as a metaphor, but he would take what he could get.

And at least Castiel looked at him and nodded as if it made sense, so why not…

Dean had no idea what to settle on, but The Untouchables was running, and Cas seemed intrigued, and he would find any excuse to watch Sean Connery, the worst Irish accent in movie history be damned.

And it really was fascinating to behold Castiel – whether or not he was a creature, and now that Dean had seen what he got up to, it seemed like he very much was, which was still something he had to work through, but still – because he clearly had indeed never watched TV before. He had some trouble in the beginning – it was sort of like in Galaxy Quest, dean had to explain to him that yes, these were actors and not real people (and left out the part where this had actually sort of happened because the thought it would not help at the moment) but once he did get it, he was riveted.

And why shouldn’t it be? It was one of Dean’s favourite movie for a reason. Yes, that might have to do with his huge crush on Eliot Ness in that movie, which had taught him quite a bit about himself when he was a teenager, but still…

Cas quickly began to take this all as a lesson in humanity, which made Dean glad he hadn’t picked something like a war movie.

“But why would AL Capone choose to break the law?”

“that’s what some people do. Not good at following rules, that sort of thing.” He winced when he remembered how many “rules” he had broken to get where he was, but why, he had been a kid trying to make the best out of a bad situation, not that this would have helped him any if he’d gotten arrested, but hey –

“I just don’t see the reason for it.”

“Money mostly, or maybe the thrill and some people  are just assholes.”

Castiel actually contemplated that answer before replying, “I think being human is more complicated than being a water sprite.”

He could say that again. Dean still hadn’t gotten the hang of it, and it had been decades, so he certainly had no right to tell Cas what to do, but he really did need his help…

“Yeah, that’s how it is. You get used to it.”

“I might not have to, if my father decides my punishment is over.”

Right. Dean tended to forget that Cas did have a home to return to, if he wanted. And of course he wanted to – he had to want it, wouldn’t he? Why ever not? It was a special thing, a permanent home. He’d only learned that rather late for a human, but still…

“Cas, do you have any idea how long that might be?”

But he shook his head. “No, an uncle of mine was banished or three hundred years once…”

Dean was rather glad he wasn’t drinking anything at the moment. “Three hundred years, hm? What – how long do you guys live?”

“My grandmother is still alive, and she just celebrated her ninth hundred birthday.”

Dean decided to concentrate back on the movie.

It was a stupid thing to ask Cas if he could deal with the bed, but Decan couldn’t help it – normally, things must be.. rather wet for him, mustn’t they? But hey, whatever Cas wanted… he might do something with the hose, if…

He really was going insane, or at  least that was what Sammy would probably tell him.

“Yes, thank you Dean: Everything is very satisfactory.” They stared at open another again.

“Glad to hear it” he told him and then watched him disappear into his guest room.

Well, he would say one thing, he was certainly not going to get bored anytime soon, not if things continued in this way.

[lochnesswriter]

Hello! Character ask game: 3, 21, 22 for Eliot, 21 and 22 for Quinn, please?

Hope you are having a great evening and wishing you your favourite weather to be in (or look at from inside!) <3 <3

Okay, let's see

3. Least favorite canon thing about this character?

I don't mind that Eliot’s a shameless flirt, but there are a few moments where I just sit and think, "buddy, you're not actually a preteen boy, get it together." There's probably things I like less lol, but it has been a while since I did a thorough rewatch and I tend to skip to my favorite episodes anyway😁

21, If you're a fic writer and have written for this character, what's your favorite thing to do when you're writing for this character? What's something you don't like?

For Eliot, I love putting him in the same room as any small child, even if I haven't done it much yet. And one day I will get around to writing him doing that delightful Critiquing Thugs thing he does.

But annoyingly I don't like writing him fight, because I'm not good at action, I can't visualize, so it's tricky. And of course the first real fanfic series I ever posted was him and Dean Winchester meeting up all the time, doing actiony things I don't know how to write😅

For Quinn, I've only written him in spanking fics so far, and I love that he tends to be just consistently squirmy as a Dom in a way I really didn't expect. More generally, I like that he's perpetually amused by everything.

What don't I like writing about him? Um. It can be tricky with so little source material, even though that's half the fun.

22, If you're a fic reader, what's something you like in fics when it comes to this character? Something you don't like?

For Eliot, again, show me the man with a small child and I am here for it. Or give me a crossover, or even keep it in the Leverage verse, and have other badasses react to his name with shock and awe. My favorite thing in the show is watching him fight, but alas, I can't picture it myself, so not super helpful in fics.

I don't particularly like shipping him with everyone who comes along. And I don't mind the ot3 but I'm very happy without it too.

For Quinn, show me that cheerful violence. That he's unapologetically still into the world Eliot left with guilt and shame dragging him down. Quinn just casually suggesting murder as the answer to any problem delights me lol

Ah, what don't I like? I don’t like Quinn in unrequited love with Eliot. Put them together, absolutely. Make Eliot less invested? Hell no. Give me hitter boyfriends for life.

Thanks for the ask! And the snow is quite pretty, even if it was annoying uncovering my car lol 💜💜💜

[clarajohnson]

the magicians s1e6

i was in some dungeon you hobbit-loving freak

when alice isn't wearing glasses i want to put the glasses back on her

"yeah... as a kid..." this fucking baby man

if julia wicker told me she wasn't done with me like that i would do horrible things with very little prompting

kady's invented family is so cute sorry about your real life kady

"i'm not a virgin" "huh! life is full of surprises"

you just fucking know eliot had those stupid masks hanging in his room

the trials "will pass or fail you as the dean created them to" so did dean fogg invent the trials? are they really all playing by the rules of a like, maybe decade-old deanship? lol

penny x asshole at the horny chupacabras table

as a girl of hannah experience everything about hannah's character make me incredibly sad

super interesting that q's thought to get around the test is to see if penny could read alice's mind. and that penny's is to astral project to get the answers. idk i feel like magic schools in fiction are always encouraging cheating so it's not an unexpected plot point but it IS surprising to me that q goes for it so quickly

q sitting weird in his chair is such a fork found in kitchen situation

"the angriest bitch from the safe house" !!!!!!!

god i love julia's anger. it's so righteous, everything is so personal. she's so fucking cool and smart.

marina in her fuckass bondage gear again... call me you sick freak

margo can quote long fillory passages, comfortably enough to end them with a dirty joke, and i just think that's neat. in a few seasons when she's the one who loves fillory for what it is and not what it represented we should look back on this moment!

"that is not tonally consistent with the books"

i fucking LOVE eliot and margo's decadent little tea table these bitches have an incredible sense of occasion

margo wanting to get her catherine the great on >>>>>>>>>>>> CHARACTER OF ALL TIME

wait duh i am the stupidest bitch julia's going through trials too

kady palming penny in the nose only makes me like their relationship more

we'll get him............... sonnn

junior cowboy camp mention !!!!!!!!

"brakebills is teaching you to be arch and ironic about magic" for fucking sure

I JUST HAVE TO SAY IT AGAIN WHAT HAPPENS TO HANNAH IS SO FUCKING BAD MAN

the fucking needle drops again oh my god

was the nudity necessary? no. but if i ran a magic grad program i think i would also try to pair these weirdos up, and as a viewer, i appreciate seeing hot people, so. ALSO q/alice and penny/kady don't have the same paint marks so i feel like this was just an excuse for erotic body painting.

oh brakebills south i'm so not ready for this. mayakovsky bad. "vix" BADDDD.

[demons-and-demigods]

Demons and Demigods: Chapter Three: Fuck John Winchester, All the Homies Hate John Winchester (feat. Bamf Sally Jackson)

Hiya, babes! Here we are, finally, time for Sally to kill the fuck out of John Winchester, Paul to simp like hell for his badass wife, and for Thalia Missing Percy Hours and also wanting to be just like Sally when she grows up. Hope you like it fully written up <3

Ao3

~ ~ ~

Paul sat at the dining table, half-heartedly grading papers. When Percy had first gone missing, he had taken some time off, but as time stretched on and still there was no news, he went back to work. Goode had been more than willing to give him whatever time he needed, but to be honest, he could use the distraction. 

Paul took a moment to watch Sally as she moved about the kitchen, stress cleaning after her latest bout of stress baking (Paul was happy to eat any and all blue-dyed treats his wife made, but he wished the current hoard of blue desserts wasn’t because she was so worried about Percy). She finished wiping down the counters and began to fill the sink to start on the dishes while the blue chocolate chip cookies cooled. 

(They were Percy’s favorite, and Paul’s chest twinged at the reminder that he wasn’t here to help Sally make them, and then give Paul a heart attack by reaching in to pull the tray out of the oven with his bare hands even though Paul had watched him do it countless times and be perfectly fine each time because, as Percy loved to jokingly remind him, “I'm mostly fireproof, Paul, I’ve had lava thrown at me and caused a volcanic eruption. The oven hardly even registers as warm.”) 

Paul turned back to the essays he was supposed to be grading and tried to focus on the one he was currently reading. He made it through two more papers analyzing the themes of “The Yellow Wallpaper” before his attention was pulled from a (so far lackluster) third by a furious knocking on the front door. 

Sally met his wide-eyed gaze with her own and dried her hands on her apron before hurrying to the door. Paul stood to follow her, heart in his throat, unable to fully bury the desperate hope that it was Percy waiting on the other side. He’d hardly made it around the table when Sally opened the door and a tall, terrifying man barged inside their apartment, shoving Sally back.

Paul took an involuntary step back, eyes flicking to the knife block on the counter to gauge the distance in case he needed to grab a weapon. Sally, however, didn’t even flinch, just steadied herself, crossed her arms, and stared the guy down. (Gods, Paul loved that woman. She was so badass.) 

“John,” she said coldly, and realization crashed over Paul in an instant. John. Sam and Dean’s asshole father. Paul inched closer to the knife block; he had a feeling this wasn’t going to end peacefully. 

John Winchester cut a truly intimidating figure, well-honed strength evident in the harsh lines of his body, violence barely contained in his tightly curled fists and rage burning in his dark eyes. 

“Who the fuck do you think you are?” he growled, voice low and menacing. “Trying to turn my own sons against me? You have no right !” his voice rose steadily until he was yelling in Sally’s face, spittle flying. Paul grimaced in disgust and carefully wrapped his hand around the handle of the chef’s knife to pull it from the block. 

Sally (bless that woman) merely raised an eyebrow and reached up to casually wipe away some saliva that had landed on her cheek. “Your sons?” she said with a derisive scoff. “Please. You didn’t raise those boys, Dean raised himself and Sam. You neglected those boys, and you abused Dean.” Sally’s tone was sharp and cruel, unfazed in the face of a man nearly twice her size. “Mary may have been your wife, but she was my sister!” She stepped forward and jabbed a finger into John’s chest. “I have every fucking right,” she hissed. 

John’s face twisted into an enraged snarl as he grabbed Sally’s wrist and wrenched it away from his chest. He twisted her arm and shoved her into the wall, his other forearm pressing against her throat. “I raised my boys right! I made them strong and self-sufficient! And I never did anything to Dean that he didn’t deserve. I taught him obedience—” 

Paul’s vision went red. How fucking dare he—  

But before Paul had managed to do more than yank the knife free and lunge around the table, Sally had pulled some ninja, Black Widow, bullshit move and was now on John’s shoulders, choking him out with her thighs. 

(Holy shit. Paul couldn’t help but wonder if Sally would do that to him if he asked really nicely . . .) 

“I don’t know how Mary ever loved you,” Sally hissed, pulling a silver blade from . . . somewhere? Where was she hiding that? (Holy fuck, Paul was so lucky.) “She would hate you for what you’ve done, for raising her boys to be hunters. She didn’t want that life for them. Oh yeah,” she said, smiling ruefully when John’s attempts to pry her legs from around his throat froze momentarily. “Mary and I came from a long line of hunters, we were raised not so different from how you raised Sam and Dean. But it’s a shitty way to live, and you’ve condemned her children to the life she married you to get free of. She would fucking hate you, John.” 

John roared and finally managed to yank Sally off his shoulders, throwing her to the ground. She wheezed, the wind temporarily knocked from her lungs, as her knife skittered across the floor and out of reach. “You don’t know anything,” he snarled, lunging after Sally as she scrambled back to her feet. 

Paul threw himself forward, planting himself between them, and brandished his chef’s knife in John’s face. “Back off, John,” Paul said sternly, sounding much steadier than he felt, thank the gods. “You may not have done right by them, but Dean and Sam love you. They’re upset right now, and understandably so, but give them space and some time for everyone to cool off and they’ll reach out to you when they’re ready to talk about it. With time, I’m sure the three of you can work this out and move past it.” 

John glared at him. “You stay out of this,” he said harshly, unperturbed by the knife in his face, and shoved Paul aside. The knife clattered out of his hand and Paul landed on his ass with an oof, his head cracking against the floor and making his vision go a little fuzzy. Well, shit. 

John took a heavy swing at Sally, who was back on her feet now, and Paul watched through vaguely blurry vision as she ducked under his fist and then managed to land a roundhouse kick to his head, sending him staggering into the wall. 

“I don’t want to fight you, John,” Sally said, voice cold. “But I’m not going to stand here and let you attack me and my husband in my home. So you can either calm down and walk out my front door under your own power, or I will put you down, drag you out, and leave your ass on the street. It’s up to you.” 

Now, Paul was a little fuzzy on what exactly happened next, to be honest, because it all happened rather fast (and he might have a mild concussion), but he’s pretty sure it went something like this: John, further enraged by Sally telling him to get the fuck out of her house and subsequent insinuation that she was fully capable of beating his ass, said something truly heinous to her (that Paul is actually very glad he can’t particularly remember aside from the fact that it pissed him off) and drew what looked like a fucking machete (???) from where it was hidden somewhere under his coat. Then there was a lot of flashing metal and shouting, a few small spurts of blood that had Paul’s heart in his throat, and then John was on his knees, gagging as he clutched desperately at his neck. 

Sally stood in front of him with the machete in hand, blood dripping off the blade, her face contorted in a mixture of mild horror and disgust. John continued to choke, punctuated by the occasional gurgle, before his hands dropped from his slit throat and he fell forward onto his face in a grotesque, growing puddle of his own blood. 

“Well,” Sally said blithely, one hand on her cocked hip. “That complicates some things.” 

Paul must have made some vague noise, because Sally turned to him, face full of concern. She dropped the knife and hurried over to his side, checking him over as she helped him sit up. 

“Are you okay?” she asked gently, and Paul had to take a moment to just marvel at this gorgeous, badass woman in front of him. 

How the hell did I get this lucky, he thought, and Sally giggled. Oh. He must have said that out loud. Whoops. 

“I’m okay,” he said. “Maybe a little bruised, but I’m fine. What about you? Are you hurt? Did he get you with that knife?” Paul asked, suddenly remembering the small splatters of blood from throughout the fight, and he grabbed her shoulders, scanning her for signs of injury. He couldn’t tell if any of the blood was hers or if it was all John’s. 

Sally smiled softly at him and gently reached up to grab his hands, settling them in her lap as she gave them a comforting squeeze. “I’m fine,” she said. “Maybe a little bruised,” she said lightly, parroting his words from earlier, “But I’m fine.” 

Paul let out a breath and slumped back against the wall. His gaze drifted to the body in their entryway, the blood still pooling and no doubt staining their rug beyond saving. Paul wondered idly if they’d be able to clean the wood beneath or if they’d have to replace it and hope nobody asked too many questions. (Somewhere, he thought he should probably be more freaked out and upset that there was a dead body in his hallway and that he’d just watched his wife brutally murder a man, but whatever. It’d probably hit him later, right now he was a little more preoccupied with what they were gonna do about it.) 

Sally must have noticed his shifted attention and looked over her shoulder with a sigh. 

“I’m not upset that he’s dead, and I’m not sorry for killing him,” she said bluntly. “He was a fucking bastard, a shitty ass father, and I never liked him anyway, to be honest; I don’t think he treated Mary all that well.” she sighed again. “But you’re right, Sam and Dean do still love him. I don’t know if they’ll ever forgive me for this, but I have to tell them, they deserve to know that he’s dead, and they deserve to know the truth about how it happened,” she sniffled. “I don’t want to lose them again, not when I just got them back, not with Percy gone, too, but I can’t lie to them . . .” she dropped her head to stare at their hands, still intwined in her lap, before looking back up at him with teary eyes. “Lie to me and tell me it’ll all be okay.” 

Paul pulled her into his chest and wrapped his arms around her, tucking her head under his chin as she began to sob into his shoulder. “It’s gonna be okay,” he said softly. “It’s all gonna be alright.” 

— 

After Sally had calmed down some, the two of them just sat there for a little longer, taking comfort in each other’s arms. Eventually, they stood and Sally fetched an old blanket from the closet. Together, they rolled John’s body onto the blanket and moved it out of the way so they could mop up the blood. 

They worked in silence. Paul rolled up the long, narrow rug to be disposed of and Sally got to work on the floor underneath it. Paul was amazed at how thoroughly she managed to clean the wood; he could hardly tell that it had been bloodstained just minutes before. Paul collected the kitchen knife, Sally’s silver dagger, and the still blood-covered machete. He dropped the kitchen knife in the sink to be washed later (doing the dishes was pretty low on their list of priorities at the moment), set Sally’s dagger on the table for her to grab and resheath when she was done, and then stared at the machete. What the hell was he supposed to do with a fucking machete? 

After a moment, he shrugged to himself and went to rinse the blood off it in the sink, then very carefully dried it off and set it beside the dagger on the table so Sally could decide what to do with it later. 

Finally, they’d cleaned up everything else and Sally and Paul were left standing side by side, staring down at the dead body wrapped in a ratty old blanket in their living room. 

Paul broke the silence. 

“So . . . what are we going to do about him, exactly?” he asked apprehensively. 

Sally sighed and crossed her arms. “Last time I killed somebody, there wasn’t all this mess to take care of. I just sold his petrified corpse to a museum and called it a day.” 

Paul turned to his wife with an awed expression and hearts in his eyes. “Sally Jackson-Blofis, have I ever told you how much I love you?” he said, semi-dreamily. 

Sally laughed and gave him a peck on the cheek. “You have, but I wouldn’t mind hearing it again.” 

“I love you so much. You are the most amazing, caring, badass woman I have ever met. I wake up every morning and thank all the powers that be that I was lucky enough to catch your eye.” 

Sally looked up at him with a soft smile for a moment before her eyes widened almost comically and she snapped her fingers. “Oh! I know! I’ll Iris Message Thalia! I think she and the Hunters should be nearby.” 

Paul watched, rather confused, as Sally spun on her heel and dashed into the kitchen. 

Sally turned on the kitchen sink and grabbed a prism off the windowsill. She carefully angled the prism until a rainbow appeared in the mist from the faucet, then she plucked a gold coin from a small pile tucked behind the utensil crock. 

She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, closing her fist around the coin and holding it to her chest. “Oh, Iris, Goddess of the Rainbow, please accept this offering and show me Thalia Grace with the Hunters of Artemis.” She tossed the coin into the rainbow and it disappeared. 

Now, Paul knew what an Iris Message was, of course, he’d sort of seen one before, but he’d never watched someone make a call, just the random misty rainbow that his eyes skipped over until he heard a voice and saw someone else looking at and talking to it. Trying to focus on an Iris Message usually left him with a headache, though, so he usually ignored them once he realized that’s what was going on. 

Now, however, he was curious, and squinted determinedly at the little rainbow wavering in the air. He was going to see this one, headache or no. 

Then, he blinked, and there was a face in the rainbow, which still startled him, despite knowing it was coming. The girl had jet black hair and eyes that reminded him of concentrated lightning, a silver circlet glittering on her forehead. She looked tired and stressed, with slumped shoulders and dark circles under her eyes. In the background, he could see a couple other young girls wrestling playfully with each other and—was that a wolf? 

“Hey, Sally,” Thalia Grace, daughter of Zeus and Lieutenant of Artemis, said with a weary smile. “Do you have news on Percy?” 

“Hello, Thalia, dear, and no, unfortunately.” Sally greeted her with an equally tired smile. “But three new demigods were brought to Camp, one with amnesia and the other two with false memories of him having been with them for months. They received a quest and Annabeth believes that the boy with no memory might know something about Percy if and when he regains his memories. I’m calling because I have a favor to ask.” 

“Anything, Sally, you know that.” Thalia’s brow furrowed. Paul reached up to massage his temples, forcing himself to focus on the magic call despite the pain blooming in his head. 

“Well, I can tell you more about it later, but this is rather time-sensitive, so if you wouldn’t mind saving any questions until after this is taken care of, I would appreciate it. I just killed my nephews’ shitty, abusive father and was hoping you and the other Hunters would be willing to help me get rid of the body,” Sally said bluntly. 

Thalia blinked. She blinked again. She opened her mouth and then closed it. She stared at Sally silently for a long moment, then she barked out a laugh and doubled over. 

“Holy fuck,” she gasped, fighting to get herself under control again. “Yeah, yeah, of course, Sally. Fuck. Have I ever told you that you’re the coolest fucking person ever?” 

She wiped tears of mirth from her eyes as she straightened and turned to call over her shoulder. “Hey! Pack it up, people, we’re moving!” She looked back at Sally. “The others will get set up somewhere near Camp and I’ll come to you. It looks like you’re in your apartment, right? I’ll help you get the body out of the building without drawing too much attention, then we’ll drive out and meet up with the rest of the Hunters. We’ll have a bonfire and you can tell us all about it.” 

Sally grinned. “Thank you, Thalia. We’ll see you soon.” 

Sally waved away the message with a heavy sigh as Thalia started barking orders and slumped against the counter. 

Paul was immediately slammed with the mother of all headaches; pressure built behind his eyes as they started to burn. He blinked a few times and tried to push through the pain to go to Sally’s side, only to stumble and barely manage to catch himself on the table with a grunt. 

Sally whirled around and hurried to his side, settling a hand between his shoulder blades comfortingly. “Are you alright, dear?” she asked. 

Paul took a moment to breathe through the pain and very carefully nodded his head. “I’m fine, Sally, just forced myself to focus on the Message and now I’ve got a headache,” he said slowly. He could practically hear her rolling her eyes at him. 

“You silly, stubborn man,” she said lightly. “Now come on, let’s get you lying down and I’ll bring you some water and a couple aspirin.” 

She helped him stumble to their bedroom and kissed his forehead soothingly after she bundled him under the covers. She fussed with the pillows behind him for a moment before disappearing into the master bath. She returned with a glass of water, a damp washcloth, and the pills for him to take. 

He drank dutifully and then pulled Sally down for a kiss. “I love you,” he mumbled against her lips. He felt her smile and his own lips twitched upwards in response. “Now shoo,” he said, squinting his eyes open and waving her toward the door. “I’ll be fine, and I know you want to take care of a few more things before Thalia gets here.” 

Paul savored the soft smile she gave him as she leaned down to kiss his forehead one more time before laying the cool washcloth across his brow. 

“I love you, too,” she said, and then she was gone, and Paul closed his eyes, letting himself fully settle into the bed in hopes that he’d be able to drift off and sleep away the worst of his headache. 

~ ~ ~ 

Thalia bounded up the stairs, taking them two at a time. (The elevator was too slow, and she needed to feel like she was doing something, else her mind would get the better of her and her thoughts would start to spiral down pathways she’d rather not explore.) When she’d seen Sally in that Iris Message, she had let herself dare to hope that Percy had been found. She and the Hunters had been scouring the country for any sign of him and the longer they went without finding anything, the more Thalia began to fear that they’d never find him, that she’d never see him again. 

She couldn’t lose Percy; she couldn’t lose her brother. Not again. Not like this. Every time she closed her eyes recently, she saw Beryl sneering at her, telling her that her little brother was gone, dragging her from the park kicking and screaming. She saw little Jason, with his shaggy blonde hair and big blue eyes, imagined him sitting alone somewhere in the woods, cold and scared and crying in the dark, calling for her, begging her to find him and bring him home, only she never came. 

She knew, logically, that Jason had been a helpless toddler when he ‘went missing’, and Percy was sixteen and more than capable of taking care of himself. Percy had literally fought a war and survived a prophecy that everyone thought was going to kill him; she knew that he could handle himself, knew that he was one of the most powerful demigods alive and one of the strongest people she’d ever met. 

But her heart, it seemed, just could not get the memo. Sometimes, in her dreams, she saw Percy in Jason’s place, so much smaller than he’d ever seemed to her and more terrified than she’d ever seen him. He would reach for her, his frame thin and gaunt in a way that was painfully familiar, his little hands shaking, his bright eyes filled with tears and her name on the tip of his tongue. Then, a huge beast would reach out of the shadows and steal Percy away, Percy’s screams and the monster’s cruel, booming laughter echoing in her ears when she jolted awake. 

Annabeth was falling apart, working herself to the bone and pushing her body to the limit trying to find something, anything to tell her where Percy might be, that he was still out there somewhere. Thalia couldn’t do anything but watch as her best friend slowly killed herself, could only whisper empty assurances when Annabeth called her crying in the middle of the night. 

Thalia wanted to scream and rage at the world, wanted to break down Olympus’s doors and force the gods to fix this shit. She wanted to find the Fates and rip them apart. How dare they, how fucking dare they let this happen, orchestrate this clusterfuck, do nothing but sit there and fucking watch. Percy and Annabeth had already been through so much, sacrificed so much, for the gods and the Fates and the whole gods damned world, they had more than earned their happy ending, deserved so much better than the shit hands life and destiny had dealt them. 

(Sometimes, Thalia thought back to the Great Prophecy she had left for Percy to shoulder. Olympus to preserve or raze. Sometimes she wished she’d taken on the prophecy herself, when the fury overwhelmed her better judgement and she wanted nothing more than to burn that damn place to the ground. Sometimes she thought about tearing the throne room apart and using the gods’ seats of power as kindling. Sometimes her power built and built and built within her, crackled and groaned just beneath the surface, fighting to claw its way free of the confines of her flesh, until she barely felt human anymore, until she became the savage incoming storm, the pressure that made your ears pop, the winds that tore trees from their roots, the clouds that blacked out the sun and the rain that threatened to flood. Until she was the roar of thunder that deafened you and the crack of lightning that blinded you.) 

(Sometimes, that scared her.) 

She shook her head, trying to clear it. It did nothing to think about all that now, Sally needed her help. (To get rid of the body of a man she’d killed because he was an abusive shitstain to her family apparently and just when Thalia had thought that woman couldn’t get any cooler. She hoped she could be even half as badass as Sally Jackson someday.) She had to focus on the here and now, stop letting her mind drag her back into the past. There was nothing she could do about the ‘then’, but she could do something in the ‘now’. 

She blinked and realized she was standing in front of Sally’s door, painted a soft cerulean blue. (It used to be baby-shit-brown, but one day Percy dragged Thalia to the building’s super, and she’d used the Mist to convince him to let Percy and Sally paint their door. They’d then dragged Thalia to the store with them to help them pick out a color and roped her into painting it with them, too.) (That had been a fun day. She and Percy had written curse words in both English and Ancient Greek all over the door in sharpie before covering it up with the fresh paint. Sally had even added a few, as well as some strange symbols Thalia didn’t recognize. She still had no idea what those had been, but Sally had seemed to relax when she was done, so Thalia just shrugged and let it be.) 

She knocked. A moment later, Sally opened the door and pulled her into a hug. 

“Thank you for coming, sweetheart. How have you been holding up?” Sally asked as she guided Thalia inside. 

“Of course, Sally, you know I, and the rest of the Hunters, love you and we’re more than happy to help anytime,” Thalia said. “And, y’know, I’ve been hanging in there, doing everything I can to try and find Percy.” Her gaze dropped from Sally’s to the floor. “I miss him. I’m-I’m so scared that we’ll never find him,” she said softly, almost afraid that saying the words out loud would make them come true. 

Sally made a quiet noise of distress and tugged Thalia into another hug, holding her tight. Thalia buried her face in Sally’s shoulder and held on tight, soaking in the comfort and trying to regain control of her breathing before she started crying. 

“I’m scared too,” Sally murmured. “But we can’t give up hope. Percy is strong and he’ll find his way back to us, we just need to have faith in that, have faith in him.” 

Thalia nodded and took a deep, shaky breath. Sally was right. They couldn’t lose hope. She knew that Percy was still out there somewhere, no doubt fighting like hell to get back to them, and they would fight just as hard to find him. If Thalia believed in nothing else, she believed in Percy. She had faith that his love and loyalty to them would bring him home. 

After a moment, she pulled back and forced a smile onto her face, though she knew it didn’t quite reach her eyes. “So,” she said. “There’s a body to get rid of?” 

Sally nodded grimly and glanced over her shoulder into the living room, where Thalia spotted a body-sized bundle of old blanket on the floor with suspicious red stains next to a rolled-up, blood-soaked rug. 

Thalia let out a low whistle and studied the large, no doubt heavy, lump. “Is Paul around?” she asked. “We may need his help carrying that thing.” 

Sally shook her head. “He’s resting. Stubborn man fought to focus on our IM and gave himself a migraine.” 

“Yeah, that’d do it.” Thalia rolled her eyes fondly. She didn’t know Paul as well as she knew Sally, but she knew the man was good for her and Percy, had believed them from the moment they told him about the Greek world and had since done his best to learn about it and see what he could manage through the Mist. Thalia knew that with practice and time, some non-clear-sighted mortals could learn to see through the Mist when they knew to look for it, but it did generally lead to headaches and bouts of dizziness and weakness. 

She walked over and dropped down, trying experimentally to lift the body. Definitely unwieldy and heavy, but not as heavy as she’d thought. If not for needing to manipulate the Mist to keep Sally from getting the police called on her, Thalia probably could have managed to carry it on her own. 

As it was, she hefted the blanket-wrapped corpse over her shoulder and, with a grunt and some effort, stood from her crouch. She staggered back a step before adjusting to the new weight, widening her stance and compensating for the added weight on her left by leaning to the right. 

Sally started and hurried over, her hands fluttering anxiously about. Thalia grinned at her. 

“Okay, I’ll need at least one hand to work the Mist, but if you hold him steady for me when that happens, I can manage like this until we get to the car.” 

“Of course. Now, the stairs will take longer, but the elevator will mean a higher chance of running into people.” Sally gave her a questioning look as she bent to grab the rug and tuck it under her arm, clearly leaving the decision up to Thalia. 

She nodded and gestured for Sally to get the door. “Let’s take the stairs. I can only convince the Mist to do so much, so we should probably avoid being seen as much as possible just to be safe.” 

Sally checked to make sure the hall was clear before ushering Thalia out. Carefully, with Sally keeping watch for any potential ‘witnesses’, they made their way down to the parking garage without incident. They ran into their first (and thankfully only) obstacle as Sally popped the trunk of Paul’s Prius and Thalia unceremoniously heaved the body off her shoulder and dropped it in the trunk. 

Behind them, someone gasped, followed by a thud. Thalia whirled around to find a little old lady getting groceries out of her car. She’d dropped the bag of fresh veggies she’d been unloading and stared at them with wide, horrified eyes, one wrinkled hand pressed to her chest. 

“Oh, Mrs. Thatcher! Let me help you with those,” Sally said like nothing was wrong and hurried over to start gathering the vegetables that had rolled away. Thalia tried her best to smile innocently as she shifted to try and block the old woman’s view into the trunk. 

“Sally, dear,” Mrs. Thatcher said, voice weak and trembling. “Who is that-that delinquent? Are you safe? Do you need me to call the police?” The lady had to be going slightly senile or something, because she clearly meant to whisper so Thalia wouldn’t hear her and instead, she damn near shouted. 

Thalia frowned. Fucking rude. Sure, she had just dumped a suspiciously body-shaped bundle in the trunk of Sally’s car, but there’s no way she looked like a danger to Sally—oh . Wait. Mrs. Thatcher had to be at least ninety and, with the cross necklace and modest dress she wore, probably an old-school conservative Christian. And here Thalia was with her whole ‘fuck society’ punk aesthetic including multiple facial piercings and copious other pieces of jewelry. The old hag probably thought she was an evil satanist or gang member or something. She rolled her eyes. 

Sally’s smile turned forced, the corners of her eyes tight. “That won’t be necessary, Mary Anne,” Sally said, voice sharp and deceptively sweet. “This is my niece. She’s helping me get rid of some old rugs since Paul is feeling under the weather.” 

Thalia forced a smile back onto her face, then snapped her fingers. “Yep, just helping my Aunt Sally move some old rugs, that’s all,” she said, reaching out with her senses to coerce the Mist to reframe the woman’s memory and change her sight. “The grocery bag was heavier than you thought and just slipped out of your hand. Sally and I helped you pick up the spill and then we all went our merry ways.” 

Mary Anne’s eyes glazed over as she nodded slowly. In a daze, the woman took her recollected bag of groceries from Sally and walked mechanically to the elevator. Thalia and Sally watched silently as she waited for the car and then disappeared inside. 

Thalia let out a breath of relief and crossed her arms. That was close. And rude. What the fuck, lady. Thalia did not feel bad about basically mind-controlling her. A hand rested on her bicep and Thalia felt a pang of fear shoot through her. Sally had never seen her, or anyone else as far as she knew, manipulate the Mist like that, manipulate a whole-ass person like that. Realistically, Thalia knew that Sally had literally asked her to do that, but knowing in theory what it would entail and actually seeing it in action were two different things. What if Sally was mad at her? Oh gods, what if Sally was disappointed in her? Oh gods, oh fuck, is this what having an actual mom felt like? Oh gods, Thalia didn’t want Sally to be upset with her, she might die. 

“Are you alright, dear?” Sally asked, and Thalia’s spiraling thoughts came to a screeching halt. 

“What?” she said eloquently. Sally snorted. 

“Mary Anne Thatcher is a batty old bitch, and what she said was entirely uncalled for,” she said sternly and shook her head. “She is terribly superficial, not to mention racist. Every time she sees me and Percy together, she makes some remark about how it was so kind of me to adopt a kid like him.” she rolled her eyes. “And really, he’s just tan. Although, Poseidon did always take on a Pacific Islander-esque form when we were together, so there could be a bit of influence in his complexion there, I suppose,” she mused, then shrugged and smiled at Thalia. “Honestly, that woman is lucky I don’t want violence in or around my home if it can be helped, otherwise I wouldn’t give a damn if she was a hundred and two, I’d still kick her ass.” 

Holy shit, Sally was so fucking cool. 

“Sally,” Thalia said seriously. “You are my favorite person ever.” 

Sally laughed and pulled Thalia in for a hug. “You’re one of my favorite people, too, Thalia.” 

— 

They didn’t talk much on the drive to Long Island; Thalia got the feeling that Sally didn’t want to tell the story more than once tonight. Instead, they spent most of it singing along to the radio blasting punk rock, classic rock, and nineties alt. By the time they neared Camp, they were both red-faced and laughing at each other’s made-up lyrics and nonsense noises in place of lines they didn’t know or couldn’t understand. 

(Thalia had been half convinced that Sally would have to pull over from how hard she’d been laughing in response to Thalia confidently yell-singing nonsense when Loser by Beck had come on.) 

Finally, Sally pulled off the road onto a little, winding trail that Thalia hadn’t even known was there when they were maybe a half mile from Camp. It led to a little gravel square and a small, overgrown patch of land that probably used to be a campsite. 

Sally parked and turned to Thalia with a smile. “Well then, shall we go find the rest of the Hunters?” 

Thalia grinned. “Let’s go get this party started.”

[kitkatt0430]

Breanna helping Emma find her confidence enough to explain her research to a big name rich dude.

The security/janitor/grounds keeper alliance continues.

Eliot - Butterfly, this is caterpillar. Come in??

Oh gosh I just love how Eliot's contacts with the groups the Professor is the biggest asshole to helps take the Professor down. Don't look down on these people, they do important work.

Honestly I do want them to take down the Dean too.

Breanna - This is gonna feel a little weird but this is how my people taught me to show affection. *shoves Emma down an elevator shaft while harnessed up*

Emma lands on the elevator, climbs in, and proves she really did write the paper. Not the evil Professor. And it's remembering Breanna's pep talk that gets her through.

Nash - Professor, I remember from when I took your class that you'd lie when you didn't know the answer.

The Dean immediately jumps on board with Emma. And it looks like evil Professor is about to lose his tenure and his job. Also Harry can do things the legal way now.

Okay, so now they're officially saying Floyd is head of security. ^_^

Aww, Floyd is giving Eliot a badge for building security. He's figured out Eliot doesn't really work there, but he likes Eliot still anyway.

[grandhotelabyss]

Rearranging my bookshelves at the moment in chronological order. One thing I noticed is that after Austen... English literature kinda fizzled out. At least until the early 1890s when a whole pile of writers emerge all at once (Wilde, Yeats, Shaw, Stevenson, Conrad, Doyle, Hardy, H. G. Welles, and more; and almost immediately they're followed by a tidal wave of modernists). Whereas for seventy years, aside from the three big poets you're covering plus Alice In Wonderland, it's just Dickens, Eliot, and the Brontes!

Now, admittedly the 'just' is doing some heavy lifting — but so are those novelists, in carrying Shakespeare's language over a seventy-ish year period! And in terms of variety, they feel like both a less *diverse* ('sprawling 18C three-deckers' describes accurately, if dismissively, most of those novels) and, more controversially, a less *fruitful* crop than the bursting quarter-century from Blake's first illuminated manuscripts to Austen's death.

Now you did discuss the 'cultural studies' aspect of the Victorian era, which was very enlightening — but at the same time, Russian, French, and American literature each undergo what are almost certainly their greatest periods! Which makes sense to me considering the *imaginative* ferment I'd expect to be cause by the political and industrial revolutions of the entire period... like, those three countries didn't reduce to cultural studies!

So, three questions: 1) Who am I missing over that stretch from Austen's death to, let's say, Dorian Gray? 2) Do you think this reading is correct, or am I weighting things wrongly, either being too dismissive of the writers named, or giving too much credit to the writers at either end of the century? 3) What, if you can answer something so broad, was different in France, America and Russia?

(Sorry to set you a three-part essay question on a Wednesday night lmao, really I'm just fishing for any interesting thoughts you might have)

If I were to dispute your claim, I would do so in two ways: 1. I'd say that Dickens is so enormous, so much the iconic and canonical English novelist, the one who stands next to Shakespeare, that he carries the whole period; and 2. I'd say (and have already said in The Invisible College) that the Victorian Sage writers like Carlyle, Ruskin, and Arnold have the weight and intensity of the prior Romantic poets and subsequent modernists.

If someone else were to dispute your claim, someone else might say that there are a lot of great novelists in the mid-Victorian period, like Trollope, Thackeray, Mrs. Gaskell, and Wilkie Collins. Someone else might say this, but I could never get interested in those writers, and I doubt anyone thinks they're the equal of Balzac, Melville, or Tolstoy—or of Dickens. On the other hand, we now take the Brontës far more seriously than people once did—I would put them essentially on the same level as Austen and Dickens—so fashions in these things are always changing.

So I essentially agree with you that, except for the writers you name, especially Dickens and Eliot, it's a fairly flat period. I suspect the reasons are the ones the modernists would have offered, despite their sometimes exaggerated animus against the Victorians: the sentimentalism, the censoriousness, the middle-class piety, the imperial self-regard, the padded serials, and all the rest of it.

I've quoted on here before Seamus Deane's slightly offensive view of the matter in his Celtic Revivals, coming from Marxist postcolonial theory (and as I've also said before, this is particularly unfair to George Eliot, who, I must emphasize, translated Spinoza):

It is, I believe, easier to understand Joyce’s achievement in this respect by looking to the Continental tradition of the novel. There the theme of intellectual vocation was much more deeply rooted and was treated with a subtlety quite foreign to the evangelical, female puritan spirit which so dominated the sentimental English novel. Perhaps Middlemarch more than any other single work shows how the innate provincialism of the English novel deprived it of a consciousness of itself as a part of a greater European culture. This is something conspicuously present in the French and, even more, in the Russian novel of the nineteenth century. One could not imagine Crime and Punishment or Le Rouge et le Noir without the idea of Europe, especially Christian Europe, as a living force in them, in their traditions, and in the minds of their creators. But Emma and Great Expectations and Middlemarch survive happily, and more modestly, apart from that idea. Not until an American, Henry James, arrived on the scene was the novel in English Europeanized, and the Irishman Joyce countered this achievement by anglicizing the European novel.

So that "puritan" and "provincial" spirit explains the disparity between the English on the one hand and the Russians and French on the other, who were simply writing in different social circumstances for an audience presumed to contain fewer young ladies in need of moral protection. One might add the English empirical bias against big ideas, which authors as different as Blake and Eliot would so strongly protest.

In Love and Death in the American Novel, Leslie Fiedler says the European novelists held together an audience that consisted of common readers, mostly female, on the one hand, and highbrow intellectuals, mostly male, on the other. The Anglo novelist, by contrast, somehow let this audience fragment early on and had to address either one set of readers or the other.

The American case is particularly instructive: Hawthorne and Melville were neglected in their time, relegated to the margin by popular novels written in "the evangelical, female puritan spirit," of which Uncle Tom's Cabin is the most famous—but we just don't read these books! We read The Scarlet Letter and Moby-Dick instead of The Lamplighter or The Wide, Wide World. It's as if the English Victorian canon had been reduced to Sartor Resartus and Wuthering Heights. This causes the historicist critic to despair, and obviously a certain type of feminist critic too, who especially resents Hawthorne's line about "the damned mob of scribbling women," but what we can we do? We're interested in what we're interested in. And as I said in one of the IC episodes, it's not as if the great female writers of the 20th century wanted to follow in Stowe's footsteps either, since the puritan and provincial spirit was a much a prison for female authors in the 19th century as it was their place (their only permissible place) of articulation.

[eliotqueliot]

Writing patterns

Tagged by @unlifeira, Thank you!!

Rules: list the first line of your last 10 posted fics and see if there’s a pattern! (((Revision: OR FEEL FREE TO CHOOSE WHATEVER NUMBER YOU LIKE OR HAVE!!!)))

I'm going to go by the first line of the most recent chapter posted to each of the ten fic. Also, this is the order in which AO3 is giving them to me as to having been updated, but the update might have been a piece of art. I'm still giving the first line of the most recent fic chapter, though. Finally: for clarity, because some of these are fic in verse, I'm interpreting "first line" as "first sentence."

When El proposed, they / both thought of coronation / similarities.

2. Quentin spoke to him.

3. After more than a year working on the Mosaic, Eliot and Quentin need to get away from the puzzle from time to time.

4. Eliot strode up the hall, knocking on doors, sharp raps that hurt his knuckles. “Wakey, wakey!”

5. It was a moment he wouldn’t even remember.

6. The dean’s visit shook Quentin.

7. By the time Eliot finished his shower, got his makeup and hair in order, and made his way downstairs, Q was gone.

8. Eliot—hadn't been able to bear it one more day.

9. Each night I dream of that puzzle—

fruits of the orchard, often our child—

but always that puzzle with you on it.

10. Eliot handed Quentin a brandy.

Okay, the patterns I'm seeing are that in most of these, the first line shows in some way the importance of Quentin and Eliot to each other. Sometimes it's just a physical action, but more often some emotional context is included. But what you're not seeing out of context, is that even in those that aren't obvious--I'm looking especially hard at you, 4 and 6--the situation referenced is absolutely one that has all the significance in the world to Eliot and Quentin getting to be together. I guess that makes sense, because that's the crux of what impels me to write fic in the first place. Also, it looks like I kept my sentences reasonably straightforward and clear, which I'm pleased to see. Making my writing less confusing and more easy to understand is something I've been working on as much as possible, and the first line is probably the most important in this case!

If I tagged you, I'd love to hear your answers, but ABSOLUTELY no pressure, and also feel free to make up your own rules! Tagging @magicians4time, @lizardkingeliot, @violetsarepurple-fuckyou, @cyprianlatewood, @tbraves24, @itsminimes, and anyone else who might want to play!

[shallowseeker]

Jack + Bambi

After meeting the Lebanon trio (Max Stacy, Eliot), Jack wants to know why they call him Bambi, so he watches Bambi.

Dean fully expects the mom getting shot to devastate him, but Jack's main takeaway/fascination?

Twitterpated.

(It contributes to Jack's ongoing, mid-season 14 obsession with LOVE.) Jack wonders aloud if he can still fall in love, now that he feels "different." (Now that he's mostly all-angel.)

Anyway, Dean starts to really regret watching it with him because THIS SOUL TALK stuff is uncomfortable and horrible and awkward AND scary.

Friend Owl: Yes. Nearly everybody gets twitterpated in the springtime. For example: you're walking along, minding your own business. You're looking neither to the left, nor to the right, when all of a sudden, you run smack into a pretty face. You begin to get weak in the knees. Your head’s in a whirl. And then you feel light as a feather. And before you know it, you’re walking on air. And then you know what? You’re knocked for a loop, and you completely lose your head. And that ain't all. It could happen to anyone, so you'd better be careful. It could happen to you... or you, or even... yes, it could even happen to you! 

To assuage his worry about "losing" his human side, Jack starts asking questions about Cas, the only good "all-angel" he knows.

"Has it happened to Cas?" "What?" "Twitterpated."

Jack looks terrified as he awaits Dean's answer.

[postmodernmulticoloredcloak]

Heyo!

How do you think Castiel and Dean would react to meeting Steve and Bucky and vice versa? Who would get along with who? Who relates to who better? For the purposes of the ask please pretend neithers gayness has been REDACTED

Oooh hello there! What an interesting question! For the sake of this answer, I will put Steve and Bucky into a universe that's closer to the spn universe than the mcu universe, because putting Dean and Sam in a universe with aliens and stuff feels too much (I also don't care about the mcu universe as a whole). So Steve and Bucky's story is kinda the same but just without the whole non-earth side of the mcu lol.

Sooo... Dean would WORSHIP Captain America and the Howling Commandoes! American heroes that fought against the nazis? I also imagine that when Dean grew up - the 80s - a lot of, you know, 80s-style badly made animated series, campy action movies, figurines and toys about the Howling Commandoes would ba made, and those would be totally up Dean's alley (not Sam, who would tease Dean for being so obsessed with something that Sam would see as cringey lol).

I'm not saying that Captain America would be Dean's first crush, but like. Super strong warrior type with blue eyes? I mean.

I also assume that pop culture between 1945 and when Steve was found and came back would totally hide/erase any hints of queerness that sources about Steve and Bucky's lives might suggest, but Dean is a smart bean and would se the subtext and the unspoken eroticism of the whole devotion between brothers in arms. So he wouldn't be exactly surprised when Steve's queerness would come to light...

Cas would be jealous. Trying to hide it but not succeeding much. He would warm up to Steve eventually, I guess, but it would take him a moment :p

On the other side, I think that Steve and Bucky would warm up to Dean faster than to Cas (who is kind of an acquired taste... well, he doesn't wear his heart on his sleeve like Dean does, and it takes time to get to know the real him). Dean would be familiar with 30s-40s pop culture and army culture due to his crush special interest in the era, so Steve and Bucky would find him funny and likeable albeit a little starstruck/with rose-tinted glasses about those times he's learnt so much about through cinema and tv (see Dean meeting Eliot Ness), but Dean would be so earnest about it that they would just find it adorable. (For the sake of this argument I'm assuming they meet in circumstances where they'd be able to genuinely connect and not be hindered by emotional baggage.)

If they really got to bond and open up with each other, then Cas and Bucky would relate so much to each other. Both brainwashed and manipulated and used by the villains, both broken through the brainwashing thanks to their love for an American boy with a giant heart and little sense of self-preservation and determination to sell... Of course this would happen only after they'd see the other as worthy of trusting with their emotional vulnerability.

Basically if the circumstances of their encounter allow for really getting to know each other and opening up to one another, they would all adore each other, in slightly different ways depending on the way each would connect to another.

Technically Sam would have potential to connect to Steve and Bucky too, but if both couples are open about their being a couple, then Sam would simply be the straight brother of one of the guys lol. Then again, if Sam hangs out with them also with Eileen, then Steve and Bucky would adore Eileen (who doesn't) so Sam would get a chance to hang out with the group too. But I think that Steve and Bucky would vibe more with the queer dudes, it feels more realistic lol.

You all are welcome to share your thoughts on the matter!!