babysoftboyking · 6 months ago
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debating on whether or not to write another grieving mpreg!sam fic where he finds out he’s pregnant the day after deans death
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juniperhillpatient · 1 year ago
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How’s it going @juniperhillpatient ?
So I watched the two most recent scream movies for the first time this weak. Starting on Friday night and finishing on Saturday morning. They were entertaining, see I’ve only ever watched the original first one years ago but the connections between the films were interesting.
To get to the question, I recall that one of your Azutara AU ideas is a Scream fic ( along with the IT Au). In it I think one of your post in the past stated that Azula would be (slightly) based on Sam? If so, would that then make Ozai Billy Loomis? If so, I’ve got to say depicting Ozai as a deranged murder would be oddly appropriate. What with the emotional and physical abuse of both his spouse and his kids, along with the attempted genocide and all.
Oh! I also greatly enjoyed todays (well yesterdays) chapter in Happenstance. I’ve got to say though, I’m with Azula, Katara not turning in Hama is a very… injudicious decision. What happens when Hama decides to no longer go after corrupt officials like she did in chapter (one of whom has a family!) and she decides to go after innocent people (as she did in canon). What if Hama decides to escalate from just hostage taking? What if lives of innocents, of children even are lost her quest? That’s starts of with noble intentions, but become corrupted. Becoming in reality just hate of Fire Nations under the façade of environmentalism? Are Katara/Yue/Jet prepared for that possibility?
Or would Jet, Katara, and Yue not care cause those innocent people are Fire Nation? Naw just using rhetoric for Katara and Yue. They obviously would care. But Jet? Him I’m not 100% sure about.
It would have been better to get rid of threat (Hama) earlier on by turning her over. Than again, some police can be corrupt (though I use the world loosely) so maybe they were also right not to turn her over?
It’s a bit of a head scratcher, ain’t it. Which is awesome by the way. It’s fun reading these little moral quandaries and philosophical question in a sitcom fic. Questions like, is it okay to harm others we deem immoral to bring about ends that we believe to be an objective good? Can intrinsic good come from an extrinsic evil? Essentially, does the ends justify the means? And how far is too far? Happenstance is great in that and In all ways! Especially horror, romance (it’s Azutara so that’s a given 😉) and comedy.
Thank you for indulging my ramblings. I hope everything is well on your end. I recall a post from earlier speaking about your cat preventing you from cashing a check at your bank. Your bank decided to come to you right? To give a house call as it were? It’s the polite thing to do after all.
745 voice of the people
Hello! It could be going better. I am suffering because I’ve been sick on & off for like a fucking month & it’s starting to feel like God hates me 🥲 However, it could also be going worse. My mommy gave me money for groceries even though I told her not to because she is the best & she knows how much work I’ve missed due to illness so I have lots of good food & also hot chocolate with marshmallows 💜🙏
Anyway I am sure you didn’t expect that TMI when you asked how it’s going but I’m a dramatic rambly bitch 😌 I hope you are doing good yourself 💜
I am so happy you watched the new Scream movies 🍿 Most iconic series of all time honestly. Yes, Ozai would be a version of Billy Loomis in this AU! However, keep in mind this is all just ideas & not a real project in the works just yet 😉
Anyway I don’t have too too much to add to your analysis on the moral dilemma from last week’s Happenstance because I want to purposefully leave it open. I like posing these quandaries without creating a firm resolution just like there wouldn’t necessarily be in real life sometimes! Of course - Hama may just show up again. We will see!
I will say - Katara & Yue would definitely feel guilty if someone innocent got hurt because of their choice not to turn Hama in. Also, even though Jet hates the Fire Nation, he is dating Zuko & friends with several Fire Nation characters by now including pretty much best friends with Azula. So…. Could he really justify it if innocent Fire Nation civilians got hurt at this stage of the story? Tricky. Unlike Katara & Yue I don’t think he’d have much trouble justifying it if someone like Ichiro or Daisuke got hurt. While the girls would feel guilt over anyone being harmed, I think Jet would have a more pragmatic attitude if the people getting hurt were doing a lot of harm. The only reason he stood up to Hama in the end was that she hinted at plans to “subdue” Katara & Yue if they didn’t go along with her ideas. So, he was probably the least opposed to kidnap of the three. But I don’t think any of them would be okay with it if Hama hurt innocent people down the line - which is not out of the realm of possibility if it served a cause she cared about.
Anyway- I said I wouldn’t add & then I did! I love rambling about my story too much 😁
I seriously love your analysis & thoughts on this head scratcher! Thank you SO much for sharing 💜💜💜
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wormstacheangel · 3 years ago
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Bec and Ali Creators Week: Day 4 - baby!jack au where Dean fell into the portal with Lucifer and Cas lives
It’s been almost a month since Dean disappeared into the portal with Lucifer.
Sam has been off researching all things otherworldly while Mary does nothing but hunt. She never calls back but sends an ‘I’m okay’ text whenever she remembers.
Cas, on the other hand, has been on the run with baby Jack the whole time. He thought they could have lived in peace in the lake house, but since the portal opened, it’s been a calling card for every supernatural creature around them. Including angels and Cas couldn’t risk anybody hurting Jack.
“You can’t do this on your own!” Sam yelled at Cas through the phone. “Just tell me where you are, and I-!”
“No! Sam.” Cas sighed as he looked over at the motel bed to see Jack’s little hands grasping at air as he fidgets and laughs. “I can’t risk what happened before, happen again. Jack he-when he is upset it could be catastrophic.”
“I won’t hurt him.”
Sam promised. But he has promised this before, and the only reason Sam is alive is that Cas begged Jack not to hurt him. Jack was as powerful as anybody feared, but he is still so gentle. His powers only appearing when there was a threat nearby. Now Sam was a threat.
“I can’t be sure he won’t hurt you, Sam, and I just can’t risk you.” You are all I have.
The days were never lonely with Jack. Cas has dealt with true loneliness before to know the difference. But they weren’t any easier.
“Please, Jack. Please stop crying.” Cas would bounce Jack in his arms, unable to understand what was wrong. Jack doesn’t get sick like a regular baby. He doesn’t sleep or eat like one either, so those books were utterly useless. They only helped remind him repeatedly about keeping to a schedule, and right now, Jack should be tired.
Cas sang to him, hoping whoever banged the motel door won’t come back yelling about shutting the baby up. Jack has cried for two hours now. Not stopping. And while Cas did not sleep, he felt exhausted.
“Show me what’s wrong, Jack. Please. I want to help you.”
Dean would know what to do. He would know how to hold Jack and bounce his arms to an exact beat that made all babies feel comfortable. Dean was amazing with kids. Amazing with everybody.
“You would have loved him.” Cas bent his head over to press a kiss to Jack’s soft bald head. He took a big calming breath of baby before continuing to bounce the baby in his arms. This time Cas sang a familiar song, one may be inappropriate for Jack but comforting nonetheless. “And if you say to me tomorrow. Oh, what fun it all would be. Then what's to stop us, pretty baby. But what is and what should never be.”
“I actually didn’t understand the lyrics and had to look them up.” Cas talked as he looked ahead at the ugly wallpapered room. “Dean knows them, though. Sometimes he mumbles it, and he gets embarrassed when he messes up, but he knows it. He just gets excited.”
Cas stops talking when he realizes the crying has finally turned into easy breathing. Jack was finally asleep.
The relief didn’t last long. Cas was lying in bed, eyes shut with Jack sleeping on his chest when he felt something off with the air around them. It tasted too electrifying and heavy to feel like a storm.
They have been found again.
Cas is quick to pack up, cradling a once again crying baby to his chest. It would be faster if he had both his arms to pack up their mess, but he left some things behind as he drove off. Leaving another motel for the road again.
Driving the Impala to the next motel took a three-day drive. Jack was patient enough, blabbering alongside the music, but even they needed to stop to get some fresh air every once in a while.
In the motel, Cas once again had to watch the video on how to bathe a baby because he always assumes he will do it wrong. He made a checklist out loud, asking Jack what else they may need besides food and diapers. He promised to head straight to the store in the morning to buy him new clothes since the baby quickly outgrows every new outfit Cas could manage to get him.
As the day was winding down, Cas called Claire to check up on her. She worries about him but won’t admit it out loud, so Cas keeps the conversation focus on her. She asks about Jack but more to be polite. She is scared that the baby may end up being the thing that would kill him, but Cas saw a future where Claire was happy and safe, so all this trouble would be worth it.
Though he saw a future with Dean too, but every day, it felt like that vision was wrong. Maybe that vision was long gone now. All possibilities to it were now shattered.
Cas turned to the bed when he heard the start of cries. Jack was waking up.
“Hey.” Cas crawled into bed beside him. “Oh, don’t cry, Jack.”
He presses a kiss to his son’s head, feeling warmth run through him. “I love you so much. You know that?” Cas lifts Jack up and holds him to his chest again. Letting Jack settle down for a second before Cas continued. “I know we are dealing with a lot right now, but having you, Jack, still makes me feel happy. I just wish I could give you the life you deserve.”
Cas sighed as his hand gently pats at Jack’s back.
“I just wish I could give everyone I love the life they deserve.”
They settle in the motel for a week before they had to move on. Motel. Impala. Motel. Impala. That was their life.
“I’m so tired,” Cas whispered to himself in the mirror, splashing water on his face as he hears Jack continue to cry in the room over. Of course, Cas would start crying himself because Jack has been crying with no rhyme or reason. Not one that Cas could find.
They haven’t stopped driving for a week. They rested in the car, and it was only a short time before they were found again. Cas finally lost whoever was after them after killing three demons in the gas station, but he was nicked a few times. Grace seeping out of him for a few seconds before he healed himself.
Jack could heal him, sure, but every time he used his powers, they had a new group coming after them. So no powers for right now. While Cas was desperate to feel better, he was also desperate to stay put for a while and not drive.
“Jack, baby, please don’t cry anymore.” Cas crawled back into bed, tears forming around his eyes. “Please stop crying. I’ll do anything you want.”
Jack’s little lungs gave it everything they got in the sudden yell, and Cas hid his face in Jack’s little body as he cried alongside his baby.
“I’m sorry.” He whispered. “Dean would have known what to do. He would have taken so much better care of you.”
Jack’s little cries stung again and again. Feeling hopeless and frustrated, Cas only kissed him. He was trying to quiet his cries while also fighting his own.
“Please, baby, don’t cry.” Cas cradled Jack to his chest and kissed his little head as Jack’s tiny fist hit him. “I never knew how much it would hurt to see a child cry. I never thought I would know this heartache.”
Cas started to sing. "You are my sunshine. My only sunshine.”
The voice filled with more gravel as he fought his own sob.
Cas fell asleep for the first time since having Jack. He dreamt of the happy vision, of Dean, of the happy family he longed for. All the things that were looking impossible today.
Cas wakes up to a flash of light.
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zmediaoutlet · 3 years ago
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in support of Texas relief, @padaleckimeon donated $100 and requested Dean Jr. meeting Sam and Dean in heaven. Thank you for donating!
to get your own personalized fic, please see this post. (no longer taking prompts) 
(read on AO3)
When Dad dies, Dean takes a week off. It wasn’t sudden, or a surprise. Dad had been sick for a while, his body starting to fail him. At first Dean had been scared, and then he’d been angry. He was only twenty-four when Dad got the diagnosis and it wasn’t—fair, in some stupid but essential way. He’d barely graduated from college and, yeah, Dad was kind of old, older than a lot of his friends’ parents, but—he thought, somehow, that him dying just wasn't… applicable. Dad was just—there, always. Solid, supportive, kind of boring maybe but also stronger than anyone Dean had ever known, or would ever know, and it wasn’t right that he could just be sitting in his apartment midway through a novel and get a call and kind of sigh, because he was in a good part in the book, and then to sit up straight with his hair standing on end to hear Dad say, quiet, I'm sorry, buddy. We need to talk about something. That’s what he said, first. That he was sorry.
There were treatments, but not many. Dean had flown out and gone to a few of the appointments with the oncologist and Dad had been quiet, listening to the options. He’d researched a lot of this on his own, because Dean had done the same thing, and they’d both been nodding along during the options. Injections, radiation. Chemo. Dad had asked, polite, what the life expectancy was for each option, and Dean had watched the side of his face and not the doctor, and when the answer was given Dad had closed his eyes briefly, and then looked away from both Dean and the doctor, out the window at the snowy day, and Dean had known, then.
Dad made it past Dean’s twenty-fifth birthday. He had a party with his friends, at his girlfriend’s apartment, and they tried to keep his spirits up but it was a pretty shitty party, all told. The next day, his actual birthday, he flew back out to Dad’s house and he was in good spirits—had a mini-cake, even, with a single candle that he made Dean blow out—but he was thin, and his hair was growing back in snow-white and tender-soft, and when Dad fell asleep in front of the crappy old cowboy movie that Dean had picked just because he knew Dad for some reason liked it, Dean went out onto the porch into the nearly-springtime air and he cried, pissed at himself. Pissed at everything. Then just—unbearably sad, because he liked his current girlfriend but he didn’t think he was going to marry her, and that meant that whatever girl he did marry would be one his dad would never meet—if he had kids, they’d never know how his dad concentrated like a motherfucker on crossword puzzles and obsessed over documentaries and knew every single piece of the inside of that behemoth car in the garage and was just the smartest kindest most stubborn person. Just—the best person. They’d listen to Dean’s stories maybe but they wouldn’t know, because Dad would never meet them, and that was just—unbearable, that night. In the morning, Dad made oatmeal and Dean added a bunch of sugar because Dad’s oatmeal was inedible otherwise, and Dad smiled kind of rueful like he always did when Dean did that, and then Dad said, I’m sorry, again, kind of quiet, and Dean reached out and held his hand—thin, and the bones feeling frail—and he said don’t be sorry, Dad, and four months later, Dad was dead.
Dad was always pretty up-front with him about most everything, especially after he and Mom split up. When he was twelve, Dad explained the supernatural very carefully, telling him that he was safe but that other people might not be, and why. When he was thirteen, Dad told Dean that Hell and Heaven were both real and that there was, definitely, confirmed, a God, and maybe it wasn’t the same God that other people knew but that Dad said he was kind, in his own way. The person in charge of Hell, Dad said, was maybe less so, but she wouldn’t hurt Dean, ever. Dad said he knew that for fact, and he said it so certainly, looking Dean in the eye, that Dean believed him. When Dean turned eighteen, a few months from graduating high school, Dad took him to a tattoo parlor and said for maybe the first time in Dean’s life that something was non-negotiable, and Dean hadn’t cared because what other kid in the senior year was going to walk at graduation with a kickass demonic tattoo?
There were other things, though, that they didn’t talk about. Dad said one day a lot when Dean was little but then, when he was older and it was clear that one day would be never, he just said—I can’t, buddy. I wish I could.
After the week off, rattling around the old house, and the cremation with no service that Dad had insisted on, Dean drives out to the lawyer in Sioux Falls. She’s nice. Respectful but not cloying. The Samuel Winchester Estate that Dean is the sole beneficiary of is—a lot of money. A lot more money than he knew Dad had, or that he could have ever earned. Dad has assigned some of the money to go to charities, and to some people Dean doesn’t know—the lawyer doesn’t say who in the specific, but says they’re kids of some of Dad’s old friends. Dean didn’t know Dad had many friends, much less ones who’d get trust funds in inheritance. Aside from the stock options and the accounts and all the money left over, Dean inherits a list of assets. The house, of course. The Chevy in the garage, with the stipulation that he can never sell it. A safety deposit box, from which the lawyer has already retrieved the contents.
She leaves him alone, to go through the box. Neatly organized, like everything else in Dad’s life. File-folders of pictures, printed out all old-fashioned. Some of Dean when he was a baby. Some of when Dad and Mom were still together, leaning against each other, Dean hugged between them. Some—much older, creased and faded, stored in little plastic sleeves so they can't degrade. He recognizes a few from the framed copies Dad always had in the house. Some he hasn't seen. Most of them—almost all of them—are of his Uncle Dean, who died before he was born, and he looks especially at one that just—hits him in the gut, in this awful way where he has to sit there looking at the soothing taupe paint of the conference room wall before he can look at it again. Uncle Dean's facing the camera, sort of, although he's laughing about something and not really looking into the lens, and there's Dad, laughing too. He looks… young. Younger than Dean is now. He flips the picture over. Dad's handwriting, careful: 2006, Bobby's house. Almost fifty years ago. An entire life he didn't know. He thinks again of his imaginary future kids. These lives they have, grandfather to father to son, that overlap like a venn diagram but—not enough. Not close to enough.
*
What's a life? How to summarize, from beginning to faded end, in a way that would make sense to anyone but who it happened to?
Dad left letters, explaining, but he's gone and the context is missing. There are so many questions Dean wants to ask but he can't, of course, anymore. The first letter is attached to the key to the bunker, where he would never take Dean when he was alive, and on winter break from med school Dean flies from Boston to Kansas and rents a car and drives alone through the snowfields.
Dark, inside. He throws the big switch and the lights crackle, hum on, almost reluctant. He has no idea how it's getting power. Dust, but not as much as there could be. A library, a kitchen. Archives upon archives. Dad had explained, but what little he'd said both in life and in the letters didn't come close. It was home, he wrote, for over a decade. The only one we had with four walls, for our whole lives, although we didn't think of it that way. I didn't, at least. Dean doesn't know what that means but he looks into the bedrooms and sees… emptiness, plain bunks and old desks and funny lamps. I just picked a random room, Dad said, and as Dean's looking he really can't tell which was Dad's. Figures. Their house when Dean was growing up didn't change a bit, no matter how terrible that wallpaper was. It's only when Dean pushes open the door to room 11 that there's any personality, and he flicks the light and stands there blinking, surprised. Guns and knives on the wall. Books, piled up. Empty beer bottles crowded on the little table. Dust, but—not as much as there could be. He walks in, cautious, this feeling in his gut like he's in someone's home and they've just walked out, and could return any moment. A food bowl on the floor. A shirt flung over the chair. On the desk: more books and magazines and a folded actually-on-paper newspaper from 2024, and a job application, half filled out. Dean Winchester, it says at the top, in mostly-neat capitals, and Dean rests a hand on the back of the chair and feels… strange. He tries to picture it—the man from the pictures, Dad's brother, filling up this space. Drinking beer and reading pulp westerns and checking out—oh, weird, magazine porn. Dean shakes his head. Impossible.
In the letters, Dad said: Hunting was all we knew how to do. With everything we knew, it was our duty to use the knowledge the best way we could. I went back and forth on it. Your uncle never did, even if I know there were times he wished he—that we both—could be something else. I don't want that for you. I want you to live exactly the life you want for yourself. No expectations, okay? Not from me or anyone else.
There are printed files that go back a hundred years. More than. Paper files, but old SSDs too, with connectors Dean has to find adapters for. Dad: If you want to know what we did, it's digitized. I know I always said I'd tell you one day, but I never knew how to say it. I'm sorry for that. I always thought I'd be one hundred percent honest, if I ever got a kid, because of how we were raised. I didn't know how hard that could be. Stuff that you'd want to say, but when it came time to just open your mouth and say it there weren't any words.
Dad wrote up all the old hunts, it turned out. Simple notes about where/when/how, the kind of monster it was, the number of people who died and the people who were saved. The people they had to explain things to, who knew now about the supernatural underbelly to the universe. He noted, too, if there were injuries, and Dean reads with his hand over his mouth a long, long litany of Dean W. shot, right arm; Sam W. broken bone in hand; Dean W. concussion; Sam W. strangled. On and on. No wonder Dad didn't make a big fuss when Dean broke his leg in the fourth grade.
He sleeps in the bunker overnight, in one of the spare bedrooms that's not room 11. There's a fan on the ceiling, dusty office supplies on the desk. By lamplight he reads the letters, on his back on the stiff terrible mattress, his eyes stinging and past-midnight tired. Our lives weren't the kind of thing anyone would want, Dad wrote. I spent so long trying to get away from it because I thought 'it shouldn't be this way' – and I was right, you know? It shouldn't have been how it was. But it was that way, anyway, and in the end that was something I was okay with. We were making what difference we could. We were happy. A lot of people have it worse.
'We'. Dad hardly writes Uncle Dean's name but he's in every letter. We, we, we. Dad told Dean stories, of course, the dumb stuff they got up to when they were teenagers, or the (sanitized, Dean's sure) adventures they had as adults, but despite the pictures on the wall at home and the pictures in the deposit box and the whole life that's here, Dean can't—see it. Beer bottles on the table in the bedroom, one on either side of the tiny table. The shirt slung over the chair. We were happy, he says, but—how? Dean can't imagine it.
In the last letter Dad wrote, I think I'm writing this when I've got a month or two left. Dr. Hendricks isn't sure. I wish I had more time, to explain how it was. Who we were. I never told you the most embarrassing thing in the world, but I'm old and I'm not going to be around and not much will be able to embarrass me anymore, so screw it. (Fifty years ago I would have gotten really mad at myself for that kind of comment; more things age can fix.) There are books about us. There's a hard drive, in the bunker. It's labelled BURN THIS. (That's your uncle's handwriting.) They're true, more or less. Written by a really crappy, amateur writer, but he was a kind of prophet, and he knew everything there was to know about us, and he wrote books for about five years, based on our life and the real things we did. Some of it is exaggerated and melodramatic. A lot of it is just how it happened. You'll have to decide which is which. I don't come off too well in some of them but I hope you'll understand that the world… I don't know how to describe it. Somehow the world felt different, then. It was just us, trying our best. I hope it gives you some idea of the life we had. No matter what happened, I'm glad that life led me to you.
*
What's a life?
Dean marries. Not the girl from college but a woman, later. Red hair, blue eyes. Absolutely no sense of humor beyond puns. Hates cooking and has strong opinions on movies from the 1980s. They have three kids, a girl and then a boy and then a girl again. All dark-haired, smart. Dean gives the boy the middle name Samuel and his wife holds his hand, says it sounds great.
He's a doctor. He meets hunters. He sets bones for free and prescribes medication when needed and when it will be needed. A woman, last name Novak, calls him and says you know, your dad was one of the greats?, and he meets people—older than him by twenty, thirty years, with scars and dangerous lives and guns hidden in every corner, and he hears stories. Sam Winchester, who saved the world. Dean knows—he's read the books—but there are more years that the books didn't cover, more people who didn't die because of his dad's intervention. "They were the best," one man says, shrugging, and gets no argument, nods and shrugs from every hunter in the room, and Dean goes home that night and kisses his littlest girl where she's already tucked up in bed, and he thinks: what will she know, about who her grandfather was? Who their family is? What could she possibly know?
Dean's wife dies in her eighties. An accident. A broken hip, an infection following. Still happens, even in this new century. The kids are grown, have kids of their own, and the funeral is big, and there are people at his elbow who say to him we're so sorry and who share anecdotes of her life and who support him to his chair, even though at ninety he's perfectly capable of getting to his chair himself. He's a cranky old man, he realizes. She would've laughed at him. He thinks, inevitably, of his own father's death. Silent and unmourned, except by one. What's a life.
He writes letters, for his children. The estate is handled. He calls the oldest girl and explains to her that she's going to be the executor, and that there are things she has to keep. A key. A car. Pictures, so that her boys will know where they came from. "Of course, Dad," she says, placating a little because he's old and clearly starting to lose his grip, but she'll do it. She's a good kid. Dean learned how to raise a kid from the best.
When he dies, he's expecting it. The trip to the hospital. The monitors. He knows the pain meds even if he's retired and his doctor looks like an infant but she gives him the good stuff. It's—easy. A slipping away. He closes his eyes to sleep and there is a moment where he thinks with surprisingly clarity, this is okay, isn't it, and has the feeling of someone's hand laid on his, and then he sleeps, and doesn't wake up again.
*
He opens his eyes in an armchair, in a house that he doesn't recognize but that feels instantly familiar. Music playing, somewhere, and a gold-tinged afternoon spilling through the window, and tone-deaf singing from the kitchen. His mind feels clearer than it has in… Tears come to his eyes but it doesn't hurt. He puts his fingers to his mouth and smiles, breathing in slow, and thinks—well, this is it. Heaven.
Time is no longer time. Space is—immaterial. There's a house, not their house, but it's roomy and it has what he needs and the bed he crawls into with his wife at the end of a day is comfortable, and that's what matters, as he lays his hand on her hip where he used to lay it always, and she sighs against the pillow and squirms and tucks herself into a fetal pretzel, like she always used to. The spill of her hair red against the pillow. Her warmth, plush against his bones. She smells not of honeysuckle or vanilla but just like warm, human skin, the faint bite of salt-sweat at the nape of her neck, the must in the morning in thin bluish light when she turns over and finds him awake, and smiles. Incredible. The weight of her is real, and the spot between her breasts when he kisses her there is real, and he'd always believed in some distant way that what his dad had told him was true—that there was a heaven, that there would be some kind of justice after death—but it was distant, and academic, because of course there was a life to live and patients to care for and children to raise and a wife to bury and a death to get through. What a thing, to come to. This place, with her hair on the pillow, and her smell. He hadn't forgotten it, in the end, after all.
The house sits in some place that feels like South Dakota. Home, or close to it. A lake among trees. A distance between things. He reads, and plays games he barely remembers from being a kid, and he watches the Ghostbusters movies again because his wife insists and they are, he has to admit, still funny, but he makes fun of the weird museum guy anyway, and she kicks him where her feet are tucked in his lap, and he tickles her in retaliation, and then—well, the movie will be there, later, when they're done.
She rides her bike every day. One day she comes back and says she was just visiting her mother, and Dean sits up and says, "What?" But—of course. What's time? What's a space, between this shared slow heaven and another? She shrugs—his mother-in-law says hi—and he sits there on the couch with his game paused, watching her go into the kitchen and shake her sweaty hair back from her face, redoing it into the practical twist at her neck like she always does, and he thinks—okay. Okay, maybe now.
The bookshelf has every book he could want, and seems to know what he needs to read before he does. Raining outside, spattering gentle on the eaves, and his wife made a huge pot of tea and took it to bed upstairs and left him just a cup, and so he sits at the kitchen table with his cup of tea and opens the book—Home, by Carver Edlund—and reads it, lingering, even if he's read it three times before online, his thumb brushing over the cheap too-thin pages of this physical copy. There's a poltergeist, preposterous. The psychic, odd and familiar. The brothers, united, and he reads the next-to-last chapter very slowly, lingering, as they find the box of pictures, as they get into the car together. Drive off, to meet some new dawning day.
He finishes his cup of tea. Puts on a clean shirt, combs his hair. "I'll be back," he says, to his wife, and she blinks at him from her nest of blankets with her own book and then only nods, and Dean goes downstairs and gets into his car and finds the road, beyond the garden gate, and drives.
He doesn't know where he's going but that doesn't matter. He turns on the car radio and it's playing—oldies, but really oldies, the stuff that was old when he was little. What childhood sounded like. Farms appear, melt away. Trees rising, through hills. He sings along, under his breath, remembering: a roadtrip to his grandma's house, Mom sleeping in the passenger seat and Dad driving through the night, and Dad singing very, very badly, as quiet as he could, and Dean thinking even as a kid that this was some private thing, to see, and he had to be silent and not show that he was awake or it would disappear. That feeling, it crept up on him at the oddest times, when he was an adult, and later. That sensation of the armored tank of the car moving through the dark, and the silence around them, and the quiet music inside, and Dad, in a world of his own, entirely separate from the world he shared with Dean.
Another hill. Climbing a mostly-paved road. Not raining anymore but the sun coming in slanted gold through the trees. Distance, and a curve, and then: a house. Old-looking. Older maybe than the one Dean and his wife share. In front of it, a car. The car.
Dean parks. He gets out, and the air smells washed-fresh, a little fecund. Like summer. He puts his hand on the hood of the Impala and it's sun-warm and he tears up, completely unexpected, and has to sit on the hood and hold his hands over his face, his heart—full, in a way he's felt since dying, but not in this particular way, this way of feeling that he thought had mellowed, a lifetime ago.
So much for putting on a good face. He wipes over his mouth and dashes his eyes clear. A porch, with new-carved railings. A door, painted blue. He knocks, his body feeling empty and clean and young, terribly young, and before he's quite ready the door opens, and it's—his uncle, in a purple plaid shirt and paint-spattered jeans and grey socks, frowning at him, saying, "Uh, hi?"
He looks—almost exactly like he looked in the pictures. Maybe forty, lines beside his eyes and heavy stubble on his jaw. The age he was when he died. Dean opens his mouth, can hardly dredge up what to say, and then he hears a voice say, "Dean?" and Dean and his uncle both turn their heads to see—Dad, young too, completely shocked, standing on the far side of the porch in running gear with sweat slicking his hair back from his head, and Dean drags in air and says, "Dad," and Dad grins at him, that big creased dorky-looking dad-smile that Dean only got once in a blue moon, and he steps forward and they're hugging, then, and it's—heaven. That's all he can think. Heaven, Dad's arms tight around him, his shoulders slotting in under Dad's because—Dad was so tall, and this is where Dean fit and never would fit again once Dad was gone. Here, under Dad's arm. Like being a kid again.
Dad's hand on the back of his head. A startled, shaky, deep breath in, and then hands gripping his shoulders, and being shoved reluctantly back to have Dad look down at his face, serious and worried. "How long has it been?" he says. "Are you—you didn't—?"
"I was ninety-seven," he says, and Dad's eyebrows go high and he smiles, big and glad and real, relieved. He touches Dean's face and Dean smiles back, tears rising again for no reason and for so many reasons. "I look good, don't I?"
Dad huffs a laugh. "You look great," he says, and then his eyes lift over Dean's head, and Dean has to turn around because—
What to call him? Uncle Dean. Standing there with his shoulder against the doorframe, his mouth tucked in on one side. Like from right out of one of the pictures, returning Dad's look. His eyes drop after a second to meet Dean's and Dean feels this odd jolt, in his chest. Bizarre, to see. He's real. All Dad's stories, the wall of memories, the books, and here he is, in grey socks, looking all over Dean's face like he's seeing it for the first time. "Guess you got your looks from your mom's side of the family," Uncle Dean says, finally, and Dad says, behind him, "Nice, dude," and Uncle Dean shrugs, unrepentant, but with an unexpected dimple quirking into his cheek, and holds out his hand to shake, and Dean takes it and has another shock at it, warm, callused, firm, real—while Uncle Dean says, wry, "Well, I guess some introductions are in order, huh?"
Uncle Dean and Dad share the house. It's nice, inside. Old fashioned in a way that feels comfortable, as Dean's come to expect. (He wonders, in a few hundred years—will new arrivals to heaven expect old-fashioned arcologies?) Uncle Dean brings beers from the kitchen and Dad takes his without even looking, drinking in Dean's face when Dean's doing the exact same to him. He looks so young. Younger, maybe, than he was even in the few pictures Dean has of him being a baby, held tiny in the crook of Dad's massive arm—some past time, some time Dean doesn't belong to, but Uncle Dean clearly does. Dad shakes his head after a few seconds, huffs again, rueful. "I don't even know where to start," he says.
Uncle Dean rolls his eyes, behind him, and says, "How about you ask the kid how he's doing, genius." Mean, but he squeezes Dad's shoulder too, and Dad bites his lip, looks at Dean, his head tipping. Asking.
It's awkward, but only in the way Dean would expect. To see his dad after so long—and both of them dead—and to explain… what? A life. Being a doctor, meeting a wife. Children. Grandchildren. "Great-grandpa Sammy," Uncle Dean fake-whispers, "told you you were old." Nudging Dad, half-sitting on the arm of his chair. Looking proud enough he could burst, although Dean doesn't know exactly why.
"Are you going to make dinner or are you just here to heckle?" Dad says, looking up, exasperated, and Uncle Dean raises his hands, says, "Oh, I'm here to heckle," but he gets up, too, says, "You get tired of the inquisition, kid, we've got more drinks in the kitchen," and cuffs Dad around the back of the head before he disappears down the blue-painted hall—and music comes on, after a moment. The kind of music that was on Dean's radio as he drove. Comfort sounds that go deep into some space beyond his bones.
"He's a lot, sorry," Dad says, after a second.
"I know, I read about it," Dean says, and Dad blinks at him, mouth half-open, before he remembers.
They have dinner. Uncle Dean makes burgers, fries, a spinach salad that Dean and Dad both groan at, and he looks at them across the table with his burger in his hands and shakes his head. No salad on his plate, Dean notices. They talk but about—nothing. Uncle Dean asks if the Broncos ever won the Superbowl again and Dean tries to dredge up an answer. Dad asks what his wife did for a living. Dean wants to ask things and doesn't know how. There's time, he knows, but for now all he can do is—watch. Dad leaning back in his chair with a beer, smiling at him while Uncle Dean tells some probably well-worn story about trying to fix the Impala in a rainstorm, and Dad was pissed for some reason and so kept handing him the wrong tools. "It was too dark to actually read the grip numbers," Dad says, patient like it's the hundredth time, and Uncle Dean says back, immediately, "Who needs the numbers? You can feel the weight in your hand!" Old arguments, well-worn, in the well-worn house. The way they move around each other, washing dishes, putting plates away. The way Dad's eyes will jump across the table, half a second before Uncle Dean's even opening his mouth, a smile already waiting to be pushed back down.
When it's night he says he should get back to his wife. "I'd like to meet her," Dad says, "some day."
"Gotta see who's willing to put up with a Winchester," Uncle Dean says, eyebrows waggling.
Dad sighs but nods, too. Dean gets folded into a hug, there under the tuck of his arm, and then he hugs Uncle Dean, too, impulsive and just—wanting to, feeling like a kid. Uncle Dean startles but hugs him back right away. "You're good, kid," he says, quiet against the side of Dean's head, and Dean nods and says, "Thanks," for more than he can say other than that, right then on this particular day, and then he gets into his car and pulls away from the house and looks back to see Uncle Dean gripping Dad's shoulder again while they watch him move away—and when he's home, after a blurring drive that's long enough for him to settle himself, he comes up the stairs to where his wife's warm in bed and slides in beside her and she says, sleepy, "How was it," and he says against her hair, "Perfect," because—it was. It was perfect.
*
Dean comes alone to their house twice more, on days when he needs it and doesn't see a reason not to. He brings his wife, the third time, and Dad's extremely polite and Uncle Dean asks her about engineering and Dean enjoys it, from the couch, while she gets the same interrogation he did, and they're driving home with her at the wheel, his eyes on the passing trees, before she says, "They're an interesting couple," and it doesn't strike him, for what may be a mile of blurring distance, why that sentence wasn't quite right.
It should be a shock. It isn't. That it isn't should, itself, be a shock, but he sits with it for a few days, the easy rhythm of heaven sliding around them.
He goes to see his mother, finally. She's in a place on a lakeshore. Her first husband, kind but remote, giving them space. She presses his hands between her own and he goes through the list of answers to all her questions, smiling, feeling déjà vu, and then says, cautious, that he's been to see Dad. "Oh!" she says, and doesn't seem upset. "How is he?"
"Good," he says. They never married, his parents—Dad had told him, much later, that it just didn't occur to him to ask—and he knew they didn't resent each other, but there wasn't much closeness there. He didn't realize how little until he was married himself. Still, he's cautious as he says: "He and my uncle have a place. Uncle Dean, you know?"
Mom sits back in her chair. "Well, then," she says, soft. She's youngish, too. Fifty maybe, her hair shot with grey. "That sounds about right."
He doesn't know how to ask but there's no way to do it other than just—to ask. "What do you know about him?"
Mom smiles, slow, and looks out at the lake. "Honey, your dad's a good man, but I think you know as well as I do that he doesn't give a lot away." Dean follows her look. A boat, far out on the water. Not close enough to hail. "He didn't talk about his brother, much. That said more than I think he knew it did. All those pictures. Well, you remember." She shakes her head, looking down at her lap. "I resented him for a while. A dead man. Silly of me. But then I suppose your dad could have resented Luke, if he'd—cared more. Sorry. That sounds like I'm angry, but I'm not. There just wasn't much left in Sam, that's all. He loved you and he loved someone that wasn't here anymore and there just wasn't room for me, or at least not room for what I needed. I wished I could've known him. Dean, I mean. I would've understood your dad a lot more, I think, but then—I don't think I would've ever met him, if Dean were around."
When he gets home he pulls a book off the shelf. Frail, the spine cracked badly. Supernatural, the first book in the whole series. When Dad was at college and the whole thing started. He sits on the floor by the bookshelf and lets the cup of tea his wife brings go cold on the rug, and reads again and again the scene—coming down the stairwell, finding the car in the garage, going through the details of the voice on the tape, on where their dad (Dean's grandfather) could possibly be, and Dad says there's this interview he can't skip. His whole future, on a plate. In the story, it's Dad's point of view, and he looks at Uncle Dean and Uncle Dean smirks, and Dad thinks, This is exactly what I was getting away from. Dean drags his thumb over the page, looks at the shelf. All those books. All the years in them, and the horrors in those. Hell, and apocalypse, and none of it euphemisms or easy metaphor. All the things Dad wanted to get away from—and then all the years, after, where he stayed exactly where he was. And then—a lifetime later—to come back home to a house, with a blue door, and his eyes not bothering to follow his brother as he leaves a room, because he knows without doubt that he'll be back.
In bed, he asks his wife, "When do you think the kids will get here?" and she turns over and stares at him, and says, "Hopefully not for years?"
He shakes his head, folds his arm under his head. "Duh," he says, and gets her to punch his chest lightly. "Ow. I meant… I don't know. What do you think their lives will be? Like… who will they be? I can't even imagine."
She stops trying to lightly beat him and goes thoughtful. Her thumb finds the little scar on her chin and rubs it, as is her habit, and her eyes slip over his shoulder to the distance. "They'll be—them." He raises his eyebrows, and she shrugs, rolling closer. "I mean, what do you want from me? I knew Abbie for fifty-one years and I still think that girl's a mystery. When she's… probably a grandmother herself, now, I guess. Is she still at Notre Dame? Are she and Andre happy? Are the boys healthy and do they like each other, and did she ever get Jacob to stop drawing cartoon dicks on the walls?" Dean laughs—god, he'd forgotten that—and she smiles at him, props her head on one fist. Says, softer, "Did she live the life she wanted to have? I don't know. I guess when she gets here we can ask her, but we'll never…"
No, they'll never. Dean touches the scar on her chin and she focuses on him, instead of some other world they're no longer privy to. "It's a venn diagram," he says, after a moment. "All of us. Abbie, overlapping with you and me, and then us overlapping with our parents, and on and on, all the way back. I guess we don't get to know what's outside the center parts."
"Even if there's a hundred and four crappily-written books about the other parts," she says, raising her eyebrows, and Dean shrugs, caught. She grins, shaking her head at him, and then squirms in close, tucking in under his chin. Kisses his throat, sighs. "Why not stop at a hundred? Seems random."
"I don't know, maybe the publisher wanted him to stretch it out," Dean says, and she hums, and puts her nose on his collarbone to settle in. He smooths her hair back, away from her shoulder. His favorite book is Swan Song, probably. The final one, as far as most people knew. His dad, the hero, saving humanity and the world, but that wasn't the best part. The best part was the army man, stuck in the door. His dad, looking at that, and meeting his brother's eye, and that being—enough. Just that, and all the life it represented. Enough.
"Venn diagrams," he says, aloud, quietly.
"Yes, you're very brilliant, Dr. Winchester," his wife says, mumbling. "Now go to sleep."
He kisses her hair, and does.
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impala1967dwinchester · 3 years ago
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Sam Winchester: Running Away
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Pairing: Sam W. x Reader
Pov: Reader/Sam
Warnings: Panic, anxiety, being scared, mature content, talk of sex, Sam, inner thoughts
Summary: With Y/n and Sam only being together for a short time, when Y/n learns she pregnant she freaks thinking every bad thought about the things that could go wrong.
Word Count: 2.1k
A/N: This is Dominant Sam I'm talking about here, but also a protective Sam. This is for band--pyschos 1.5 followers bingo writing challenge.
Square: First Child
Sam Winchester Master list
Main Master List
TagList: @sweetdetectivequeen @wonderfulworldofwinchester @band--psycho
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So, maybe I've been with Sam for a few months, but it's not that big of a deal. We're just a once in a blue sorta thing. Sam and I yes live together alongside his brother Dean, but I don't mean that Sam and I share a bed you know.
Okay well, maybe we do share a room. We share a comfy large bed when a hunt goes bad, or Sam wants to release some tension. We go and let go of our bodies' tension. Together we let everything go, and we sort of become one.
Sam is a giant teddy bear, but when he's had enough put onto his shoulders he needs someone to ground him, that someone for right now just so happens to be me. Bad hunts turn into long, fast, and hard nights.
Nights when Sam drags on, his large hands wrapped my throat pinning me down to the fluffy bed. My nails leaving red marks down his muscled back. His hips snapping against my cervix, his lips leaving bruises on my skin.
The way he'd snap his hips into me as I rode into him. In moments like these Sam was my cowboy, and I was his baby girl. The loud grunts and moans that echoed off the motel, or bunker walls were the most amazing sound to my ears.
The sound of our skin slapping together, and the dominant nature of Sam, his almost animalistic way of fucking me. I wasn't a virgin when I met Sam and Dean, I wasn't a virgin when Sam first came to me with this idea of friends with benefits.
But even without being a virgin, taking Sam for the first time. That made me feel like I had died and came back to life. I know saying that seems probably very odd, but Sam there is something about him that makes him so fucking... fuckable.
The moment that I came down from my high and he laid on top of me, trying his hardest to not lay all his weight on me, I reveled in those moments. Was this what it was like to fall in love with someone?
Would Sam really want that? Would I be enough for Sam?
Months it went on like this, bad hunts or just wanting to let go. It went back and forth. The deal that we held, was for the both of us, and usually, we needed each other at the same time.
Bumping into each other, cute moments. Moments when I would try to put more effort into it. I learned real quick that Sam had a thing for lace and the color red. Something about the way it felt against his hands, or how it looks against my skin tone.
Nothing's more special than having your boy toy pull off your lace panties with his teeth while he makes direct contact. Again there was that dominating nature of Sam. Sometimes my mind would float to what it would be like with Dean, but I would be very much slapped out of that thinking when Sam would snap his hips into me and ask me 'who do you belong to?' or 'Who owns your body?'.
This of course in my world would only last for so long. Something always had to go wrong. So wrong that everything that I had worked for wasn't worth it. Wasn't worth it, if I would just be crashed in the end. I didn't think any wrong could come from fucking my best friend in a way.
Because that was Sam and I are.. were. We are friends, best friends, who know everything about each other, who know when the other is about to have a break or the other needs space. What happens when Sam finds out about this.
This is a normal fuck up that be taken care of. This is my fuck up, this fuck up is huge. He won't want to stay. No, see I've ruined this for the both of us.
What happens if Sam. What if? That's the big question stop overreacting. You've spent time with Dean, ask your question then act, not the other way around. You need to actually find out if your pregnant.
'pregnant' "FUCK" I said out loud rather loud, louder than I should have said it. "Y/n you okay?" I outside the bathroom door. Panicking I slipped the pregnancy test into my sweater pocket. "Yep, I'm super," I said and unlocked the door, slipped by Sam. Smiling before I casually walked away from him. Panicking on the inside.
"what am I going to do?" I asked myself under my breath. "A Winchester baby, a baby, my baby," I said hushed under my breathe. A tap to my shoulder pulled me from my very important inner monologue.
"Y/n, what's wrong with you?" Sam said wrapping his hand around my shoulder. Mouth left gaped open. "Y/n?" Sam repeated, just my name this time made everything worse. The echo of Sam's voice grunting and moaning my name as he comes down from his high.
"Sam," I said looking up at him. These were moments that I said he was a huge teddy bear. Worry crossed his handsome face. "Y/n what's wrong?" Again he forced his first question.
"Nothing Sam. Just let it go." I said tapping his hand on my shoulder. There was a look of upset confusion on Sam's face. "Y/n don't you dare pull away from me, especially after what we have together," Sam said as I walked away. I stopped and thought about it. 'Don't pull him into it, you just take care of it.' I just kept walking.
I made sure that the pregnancy test was really correct, by going to a doctor's office. "You're about six weeks along." The doctor said. More panic. More anxiety, more questions, more thoughts. That drive back to the bunker I was fighting the idea of leaving.
If I just left, what if I just didn't come back. 'No go back and try to hide it, say you're sick, hide in your room. You won't be able to hide it for long' Sam will question you, Sam will notice, he'll notice your body change, he'll notice everything Y/n.
When I got back Sam was waiting for me in the library. "Where were you Y/n?" he asked me as I passed by him "I was out," I said passing quickly. Trying to stay away from him, the closer I am to Sam the harder it is to not tell him the truth. The grip of his hands around my wrist is so powerful, so strong.
"Stop running away. I just need you Y/n I thought..." Sam paused looking down at my body and then to my wrist. "Sam let go of my wrist. You're hurting me." I said ripping my arm from his grasp. Stomping away and down the louder echoing bunker hallway.
'LEAVE' 'No stop he's right you made a promise, a deal.' "Stop" Fighting with myself was the worst of all of this. You can't run away from yourself. No knock at my door, but I wouldn't have known. I had taken a nap my thoughts clouding my mind. Waking up to a quiet bunker and a note stuck to the coffee machine. "Y/n whatever is going on.
That's what I'm here for. Please baby girl. I don't know what to do. Shoot me a message, or even text Dean. Just let me know you're okay." Signed Sam. Yet another wave of new thought, new emotions. I want to stay, but it wouldn't be good for either of us. Nobody benefits from this.
A normal hunts take Dean and Sam about a week tops so with the letter that Sam left behind I can only imagine that Sam is pushing Dean to hunt a lot faster. Get the hunt over and done with come home and figure out what is wrong with me.
I say I've got two days tops before the boys get back. To toggle with the idea of leaving. Two days doesn't seem like enough time, but I need to not trap them in a situation like this. Sam doesn't need to have another thing on his shoulders, Dean doesn't need the worry or the panic. Of a Winchester baby.
Taking a long walk around the bunker brought memories alive in my mind's eye. The great, the good, and the bad. Most of them included Sam. The night he asked me to start this friend with benefits or the wild night that he took me on the book-filled library table. He fucked me in the middle of the wide open.
Would it be bad to say that I fell in love with him from that moment? He made me feel like the only girl in the world. A few spots in the kitchen early morning breakfast being made, and in the garage washing whatever car Dean would let us wash.
'You need to go' Memories pinging in my head. Hitting all the corners of my head. This is the most stressful thing I've ever had to do. There's a baby inside of me now, every choice has to be for this little one. This choice was for Sam and for this little one.
My hand laid on my still flat stomach. I wish that I could feel Sam's hand on top of mine, or watch his face. But that wouldn't be a good idea and I know that.
"They're going to a Winchester in and out," I said walking past Sam and Dean's rooms. I think I'll just have to write a letter to Sam, a sort of backwards odd way of responding to his letter.
This letter will just be my goodbye. "Hey Sam, by the time you read this I'll be long gone. Let me explain. I'm pregnant, with of course your child. We never got the chance to talk about being parents, never got the chance to even have a normal relationship. Sam, I fell hard for you, so hard that I don't want to hurt you. I know you most likely aren't ready to be a dad, so yes I know I'm taking that choice away from you. I am making so many mistakes and I don't want to be a burden on your shoulders or even a burden on Deans. They'll find out about you, they'll be nosy like you, be hardheaded like you, defy me like you defied your father." I wrote out pausing to let my shaking hand take a break.
"Cowboy, I'm running away, because Sam that's the only thing I know how to do. Don't you dare think... Don't you dare ever for a second think that I don't love you, or that this baby won't grow up knowing who is, who knows maybe I'll come back... I love you, Sam, I love you cowboy."
I read over it once and then twice, Dean stood over my shoulder. His hand lying still against my blade. I swiped the pad of my thumb over my Y/n nicely small handwriting. "Sammy?" Dean questioned. "Hmm?" I hummed fearing my voice would give too much away. "What did she write?" He asked, "Y/n wrote that she's pregnant, and she is running away afraid to put the burden of my child on my shoulders and on yours." I said continuing to look at the page in front of me.
"Dean we.." "I've got you, Sammy. We'll find her bring her home and you wife her up." Dean said, grabbing my bag and racing back to the impala. "She's on foot, and most likely hasn't made it very far, I'll call Charlie, you call her," Dean said, whipping out my phone it tumbled in my hands landing on the footwell of the front seat.
Pulling it out it came with pictures, pictures of the three of us. Sitting on baby's hood, her in the middle of the two of us next to her. I could see it now, a baby Winchester, sitting on her lap and taking that picture all over again.
"Sam, Charlie says that she's gonna try her, see if we can sort of trick her into going with Charlie until we can get to her and bring her home," Dean said.
"Yeah let's hope she wants to come home," I said the mix of different emotions and feelings shoring through me, I felt the revive of the impala's engine. 'There's no running away from the Winchesters.'
Completed on: 05/04/2021
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rosaliestark01 · 4 years ago
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Dusk Till Dawn - Part 7
Peter Parker x Reader
Summary: Peter and your friends realize that you’re in trouble, meanwhile Tony seeks advice from the other Avengers
Warnings: angst, injured characters, angry!Y/N
A/N: @annies-marvel-imagines will no longer be posting more parts, but she will still receive credit.
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Tony paces around his lab, clearly thinking hard. Lately, that was where he spent most of his time. Currently, He was working on an upgrade for your suit. Usually, he'd have finished the upgrade weeks ago, but for some reason, it is never good enough, and he inevitably ends up scrapping it and starting over.
"Tony, you've been working for hours," Pepper says as she steps into the room. "Vision ordered pizza."
"I'm not hungry," he mumbles without looking up. This time, he was sure that he'd be able to finish the upgrade. Then, he'd be able to move on to upgrading Peter's suit, then his own.
"You've been saying that a lot lately." Pepper sighs as she walks up to him and places a comforting hand on his shoulder. "Does this have anything to do with Y/N?"
"You mean my daughter who hates me?" He mutters under his breath, but she heard it nonetheless.
"She doesn't hate you. She's just going through a tough time." Pepper was a teenager once, and she'd had times where her relationship with her parents wasn't perfect, despite them wanting the best for her. All she needed was time, and maybe you do too.
"Pep, she can barely look at me." In all his years of raising you, Tony had never thought that your relationship with him would ever become what it is now. "Did I do something wrong?"
Pepper didn't exactly know what to say to that. She didn't think that Tony did anything wrong, yet how could she make him see that?
"Come and eat. Maybe we can all talk about it downstairs," Pepper finally said as she leads Tony to where everyone else was waiting.
-----------------------
"Happy?"
Harley was currently poking Happy with a selfie stick he had found under someone's car in an attempt to wake him up. Unfortunately, it wasn't working, and Peter was starting to lose it.
"Dude, he's out cold," Harry groaned in annoyance that Harley actually thought that poking him could possibly wake him up. Harley rolled his eyes as he stood up, leaving the selfie stick next to Happy's motionless body.
Meanwhile, MJ was becoming fed up with Peter's constant pacing. She, and the rest of their friends, could clearly see that he was starting to lose his mind with worry, which was the least helpful thing at the moment.
"Sit down," MJ said to him in hopes that he'd calm down enough to think clearly. None of them could really be in the right state of mind while their superhuman friend was in panic mode.
"I can't-" He argued, and both Harry and Ned had to sit him down on a nearby bench. He seemed calmer, but not by much.
"Peter, just think for a second. Something isn't right," Ned exclaimed. It was pretty evident that something bigger was going on than just you going missing and Happy being knocked out.
"Yeah." Harley agrees, nodding his head while deep in thought, "Y/N goes missing, and Happy is out for the count."
"So someone took her?" Betty asks. Everyone was thinking it, but she was the first to say it aloud. It was scaring them how real this was starting to feel.
"Eloise," Peter huffed angrily. He should have known that she'd ruin everything, yet he allowed himself to let his guard down.
"Pete, Ellie didn't take Y/N," MJ sighed.
"Then who else could have?" He yelled. He was sick and tired of everyone seeing Eloise as an innocent misguided girl when in reality, she was the devil in disguise."I have told you guys since she moved here that she is bad news, but nobody listened! Now Y/N is gone, Happy is hurt, and I'm never going to see the love of my life again and-"
"Why would Eloise take Y/N?" Harley asked, not disagreeing with Peter though not wholly convinced. "What use would she have with her?"
"That's what I'm going to find out?"Peter stated as he stood up, his friends following close.
"You can't do that by yourself," MJ stated.
"I'll call Mr.Stark." ------------------------- "I dunno. It seems pretty clear that Y/N can't stand to be in the same room as him," Bucky stated bluntly, causing Steve to give him a light slap on the head.
"Buck," Steve scolded, but Bucky wasn't the only one who thought so.
"He has a point," Sam chimed in, although not wanting to be hit on the head like Bucky.
"Hey." Nat chastised. She's seen first-hand how much Tony cares about you. "It's pretty clear that Tony cares about Y/N. She is his daughter, after all."
"Does Y/N have a diary?" Rhodey asked, causing Pepper to glare at him.
"You're not going to read Y/N's diary," She states firmly. You deserve better than that. "That is a breach of privacy."
"So she has one?" Rhodey asks but quickly quiets down as soon as he sees the glare Pepper sends his way.
"Hey, it might give a reason for why she's so distant," Bucky mutters to the group, which provides mixed reactions. Few nod their heads in agreement, while few shake their head. Either way, they all have one thing in common, which is your best interests at heart.
"It might also give her a reason to distance herself even more. We want to gain her trust, not break it," Pepper argues sternly. She looks at Tony for backup, but one look at him tells that he is desperate for things to go back to the way they were.
"I'm gonna look," He finally says while getting up. Pepper gives him an incredulous look, so he continues, "Guys, this has gone too far. Whatever is wrong with Y/n has put her in danger. If Peter hadn't sensed that something was wrong, Y/N could be dead right now. I'm going to look."
For the past two weeks, he couldn't stop thinking about what could've happened at the bank. You could have died if Peter hadn't shown up. He was worried beyond belief that you'd not only die but die hating him.
"We all care about Y/N," Steve said, bringing some relief to Tony that at least someone was on his side. "She's a good kid, and as much as I disagree with invading her privacy, I do care about her safety. I think that any information could help. We need to get to the bottom of this."
Sighing, Pepper realized that maybe Tony and Steve were right. Something was going on with you, and she worried that it might get worse if something wasn't done soon.
"Well, I think it has something to do with that friend Y/N has been hanging out with," Bruce notes, causing everyone else to mumble words of agreement. Y/N hadn't started acting out until that troublemaker showed up.
"Agreed," Wanda said. "Nothing but trouble."
Everybody hesitantly makes their way into your room, and Nat's eyes immediately land on two flash drives, a red and a blue one,  next to your computer.
"Maybe these could be something?" She says, plugging the red flash drive into your computer. Suddenly, everything made sense. The flash drive was full of files about you that belonged to Hydra. It had almost everything to know about you, but the most concerning one shocked everyone.
"She knows I'm not her real dad," Tony sighs. Everybody, except for Pepper, seemed to be speechless. None of them woke up in the morning knowing that they'd find out that you weren't really Tony's daughter, much less discover that you had HYDRA files on your computer.
"What do you mean you're not her real dad?" Bucky asks, just as confused as everyone else.
"And you never thought to tell Y/N yourself?" Steve interjects sternly. This was something you had a right to know. Obviously, you'd get upset from finding out from someone else."Do you know who her real parents are?"
"That's not important," Tony snaps, causing Steve's blood pressure to rise. It seemed important enough to you for you to start shutting everyone out.  It's no wonder you couldn't trust anyone.
"It sounds like it is," He says coldly.
Before Tony could argue further, his phone started ringing. Judging from the ringtone, he could tell it was Peter, so he answered it quickly.
"What-?" Tony's exasperated voice was cut off by Peter's panicked rambling.
"Mr.Stark, Y/N's gone, and Happy is unconscious in the parking lot."
Everybody froze as soon as they realized what Peter was saying. Something had happened to you, and that was more important than finding out that Tony wasn't your biological dad.
"What?! What happened?"
"I don't know! She said she was going to the bathroom, and she never came back, and now Happy is lying unconscious in the middle of the parking lot, and I don't know what to do!"'
By now, everyone was panicking. This was definitely a million times worse than the bank incident because nobody knows where you are, who you're with, or what you're doing.
"Okay, just stay there. Someone will come to get you."
---------------
"Are you going to tell me what the emergency is?" You ask Ellie as she drives you towards the city. You didn't need super senses like Peter to know that this was beyond suspicious. It wasn't sitting well with you at all.
"Your dad is hurt," she muttered, but you heard her nonetheless.
"My dad?" Worry began to flow through you until you remembered that Ellie had no way to know something like that.  "How? He was at the compound-"
"Your real dad," she agitatedly reminded you as she rolled her eyes. It made your blood boil how rude she was being. This wasn't like her at all, and you couldn't help but want to get as far away as possible.
The rest of the car ride was silent until you arrived at Ezekiel's apartment. It didn't look any better than when you were last there. In fact, it looked more run-down than it was before.
The moment Ellie pulled out a key to unlock the apartment, your suspicion grew tenfold. Why would she have access to his apartment?
"What happened?" You sighed as you both entered the apartment to find Ezekiel sitting on the recliner with a bloodied rag pressed to his side. It looked like he had the injury, but the pain didn't seem as apparent as it should. Your "dad" wasn't any better than she was, but that didn't mean that you let him get hurt. Still, he gave you the same weird vibes that Ellie did.
"Tony Stark happened," he barked. He suddenly stood up and began going through his drawers and sloppily throwing. "We need to get somewhere safe."
"Not until one of you tells me what the hell is going on," You say. Things were going so well until Ellie showed up. Now you have a headache and a possibly massive problem in the form of two suspicious individuals.
"Stark found out that you've been meeting with me," he explained, but you weren't buying it. The only people who knew were You, him, and Ellie. You even made sure that you weren't being followed.
"How?" You ask, crossing your arms, waiting for a good enough response.
"I don't know, but he showed up at my apartment and beat the living hell out of me," He retorted, his face scrunching up in anger.
You look at Ellie, who is standing by the door. To anyone else, it seems like she's just standing there, but you've had enough training from Nat and Bucky to know when someone is blocking an exit.
"I don't believe this." You mutter to yourself.
"You think I just happened to end up like this?" Ezekiel yells. You couldn't believe that you were stupid enough to fall for this. Their constant push for you to turn your back on your family was a huge red flag that you ignored. Not to mention you haven't forgotten that time that Ezekiel forgot your mom's name.
"What do you need my help with?" You ask, realizing that the only way out of this is to play along.
"I need you to help me destroy the Avengers."
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teamfreewill2pointo · 3 years ago
Text
Transcript of End of the Road Special
Transcript of End of the Road Special. 
Please let me know if I made any errors in transcription. Twitter version Family Don’t End with Blood Transcription Winchester Mythology Transcription
Dabb: Ultimately, we came up with something that we're all very proud of Singer: You never know what the audience is going to like so we really tried to say "what would make us happy? Would we be satisfied with where we've taken them?"
The Carry On song was a guideline.
Singer: The myth of what these brothers were throughout 15 years... We didn't shy away from fatalism, but we wanted to be able to have it be kinda uplifting as well.
Dabb: If you're going to do something that feels like a complete arc, you have to kinda go back to the beginning of it (clips of them hunting vamps from s1 & 15.20) When it comes to Sam & Dean- it's all about getting back to, in some ways, these two guys on the road in this car.
Dabb: They've been doing this job for 15 years now. They've fought everyone from demons to vampires to God himself, but at the end of the day, they're still working guys, out there on the road & taking cases. We've tried to never lose sight of that.
Dabb: There are times when we've been wrapped up in our own mythology a little bit. We've always tried to get back to the basics, which are: these two guys, saving people, hunting things. 
Eugenie: I think we sort of knew generally what the ending would involve.
Eugenie: We might not have known the mechanics, but we sort of knew there would be a victorious, glorious sacrificial ending bc I think sacrifice is a big theme in the series.
For every great thing you do, a cost must be paid.
Singer: Andrew & I talked about it. We were in agreement pretty quickly... talked to the rest of the writing staff & let them know what we wanted to do and we were open to suggestions. And then we pretty much pitched it to Jared and Jensen.
Jensen talks about flying to LA. Jensen: So before we ever even started 15, we knew how the last portion of the story was going to go. We didn't know how we were going to get there, but we kinda knew the final- the finish line- we knew what... what that was going to look like.
Jared: I don't think there's ever been a season of SPN in 15 years where the way the writers thought the show would play out for that season- ended up being the way it played out And so we were aware of that. They told us here's what we're thinking, here's what happens to Castiel
Jared: In the finale, Dean dies & Sam lives on. And then we think they're going to meet up in heaven. 
I remember Jensen... just because I know him so well- he seemed to bristle a little bit.
Jensen: It was hard to hear then & it was hard to read now. Not because I didn't like it, not because I wished it had gone differently... I'm not adverse to it. I think it's a great ending. I'm proud to film it.
Singer: And we just aimed for that, you know, throughout the season. We knew where we were going.
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Jensen: Reading it & knowing that... there's just a weight that is so much larger reading these scripts than I've ever experienced before. 
There's an emotional weight that these scripts are going to carry & these episodes are going to have that I don't think we've ever seen before.
Brad: [J2] were so young when all of this started. They brought to it such conviction & such commitment to the effort. 
That's one of the things that kept the show going for so many years... a show that was designed for very young guys, footloose & fancy free, & on the road…
Brad: To see these guys grow up b4 your eyes into- men, not boys any longer- was amazing. 
BABY Jared: Though the story does involve Sam & Dean chasing supernatural things, it really is a story about two brothers that love each other & ultimately will do anything for each other.
Jensen: There's really one person that gets it on the level that I get it, and that's Jared. Jared: I've never spent as much time with another human being as I have with Jensen Ackles. He will be my friend and brother forever. And I know that.
BABY Jensen: There's a lot of dynamics between the two brothers, there's a lot of history between them, there's a lot of banter between them... it's good stuff S15 Jensen: We had a partner in crime & we leaned on each other for, you know, for times when it was tough.
Jensen: But we also won together. We got to share the experience of success & the experience of getting picked up for another season. Watching these two characters go through what they're going through, when we're working 14 hours & it's 2-3 o’clock on a Sat morning and we're just now finishing filming out in the rain and mud and we gotta race to the airport to get on a plane because we've got a photoshoot in LA & we've gotta do on camera interviews and we gotta promote the show that we love so much that we were just in the mud & the rain filming hours before we're exhausted and it's like there's only one person that gets that right now. That gets how I feel and that's this guy standing next to me. That's pretty cool. That's pretty cool to have somebody like that.
Brad: We knew it was going to be impossible to tie up every aspect of all of the cans of worms that we opened up. 
We did want to bring a proper ending to the guys, the guy's relationship.
Brad: Then of course we had this huge corner we painted ourselves into with the most powerful thing in the universe being the big bad of the season. We try and find a proper send off for Jack & for Cas. What to do w/ the boys & is that a together farewell or an individual?
It was just... lots of moving parts. 
Dabb: I give a lot of credit to Bobo who really was the one who started banging the drum early & often to ending the mythology in 19 and end the characters in 20.
Brad: You're battling God & battling God & you have this epic situation going on through the first 3/4 of the show & then what? You send off Dean in act 4? That just felt wrong. Eugenie: We had this obligation, it was really mandatory, that we tie up the mythic narrative and leave the final episode for the emotional resolution. I [was] more on the side of not wanting to best God. To have God change to be more like his creations. So there were philosophical arguments, but we always knew God's resolution was going to be a big ticket item.
Jensen: We'd started day 1 of the 2nd to last episode, 19. We were 1 day down on that episode & we were just about to start our 2nd day & we got the call that morning that we were not going to be coming in that day.
Jensen: So we figured ok, we'll figure out protocol, figure out what we need to do, & we'll just regroup, come back on Monday. As that day progressed, it was like- this looks like more of an apocalypse that is ascending upon us than just a bad cold.
They pulled the plug & they said everybody go home. 
Singer: Fortunately, we got assurance from both the studio & the network that one way or another we were gonna finish the series. That was comforting to us, but we didn't know when we were going to go back.
Eugenie: We didn't know what we were going back to... if this was the last time we would ever see the set. There was no plan. It was just get out of dodge. Dabb: When it first happened, we thought it would be a couple of weeks, maybe a month.
I had conversations w/WB where they expected everyone to be back shooting in June & then things got worse & pushed & pushed.
Eugenie: Slowly as we settled into that 4 or 5 month period, discussions were going on w/the studio, & the networks, & the actors. We knew there would be restrictions on what we were allowed to shoot, but finally, the mechanics were figured out. 
Singer: So they were ready to go pretty quickly, shooting in Van, where covid wasn't quite as virulent as it was [in LA].
Dabb: We were one of the first shows, one of the first WB shows to start back up. So in a way, we were kinda a guinea pig. But, in being that, I think everyone took it really seriously. We had 0 positive tests. Crew members weren't going out on the weekends.
They were like look, if I get sick, it hurts the whole show. That speaks to the family culture up there, where we've had so much of our crew for so long. Where J2 & Singer provide such great leadership.
Singer: When I was in prep for 20, I was basically in the office but couldn't go to the set. It was very odd for me not to be able to go to the set while I was in prep. 
Everybody just hung in there & did what they were supposed to do.
Brad: Then we were faced with the dilemma of having to rewrite a lot of the stuff bc of the pandemic bc of the limitations that we knew were going to come on the production.
Jensen: We were gearing up for, not only the end of that season, but the end of the series. There was a lot of big, big things written-packed- into those last two scripts.
Jared: At first, it was supposed to be a lot of our old cast from prior seasons in a Roadhouse with Kansas.
Everybody had already agreed. Kansas was going to be in Van. We were going to have dad there & mom there. Just probably 20 or 30 different actors & actresses who had been a part of the SPN's canon over the last 15 & a half years.
Jensen: It was scheduled to be the last day that we were going to film, so it was almost like rolling right into a nice wrap party on camera. 
Brad: The idea of flying a boatload of ppl up there to quarantine for 2 weeks so they could shoot for a day was making less & less sense.
Eugenie: How do we make this work? And while you're doing that, you also don't want to sacrifice the heart and soul of the project. 
So we came up with a reduced, much more intimate ending. It has been replaced by something equally magical & rewarding.
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Singer: I felt an enormous responsibility in directing the finale of a show that's been on for 15 years. Andrew, when he saw the cut, he said some really nice things to me as to, you know, the way I handled the material.
Jensen: The scenes that were filmed on our last day on the sound stages were filled with the most emotion of the final episode. 
Singer: One of the really hard things was we're on another stage that wasn't the MoL stage & they started wrecking the MoL sets
They'd been working on this set and been apart of this- this family for just as long if not longer than the set's been around. I was like "it's really sad seeing this get taken down" and the other guy said, "I'm trying to hold back tears while I'm swinging this hammer."
Jared: As we start saying goodbye to characters, to locations, like it just seems like every day you would wake up and there would be some reason to cry. 
Misha: This is a show ultimately about love, & empathy, & caring, & I think that Castiel embodies that.
Misha: Half the crew was crying. It was really such a sweet, supporting environment to be in for the demise of a character that, of course, for me is really important. 
But it was so lovely to see that, you know, the folks that I'm- I'm working with were also there for Cas at that moment. 
Alex: To get to work with these caliber people & see your friends every day is really special & is not something that often happens in this business for this long. It's been definitely a topsy turvy last couple weeks here with us and the crew. 
Jared: Friday of the final full week was the big scene in the barn with the vampires where Dean suffers his fate. They did the first two days with the entire stunt team & the young boy actors. 
And then they cut it for Thursday night and they're like, okay, Friday, tomorrow, we’re starting the dialogue. Dean, you're on the post. Sam, you just cut off the last vampire's head.
That was the scene- that was where Supernatural was really encapsulated. 
Jensen: And then the next week we kind of had this- on the road encore get together filmmaking scenario that felt more like we made it & it was more pats on the back as opposed to tearful goodbyes. 
Dabb: In a weird way you can look at the 15 seasons is like Sam & Dean's emotional evolution. You know instead of therapy, they kill vampires, but other than that it's kind of the same & brings them both to a very good place. And a place where they can, as the song says, you know, lay their weary head to rest. 
This felt like the most honest & emotionally fulfilling episode for these characters to us. Jared: I got thinking about how Supernatural started & how the majority of times how I thought it should end. It started with Sam & Dean Winchester. I think it's proper that it ended with Sam & Dean Winchester together again. 
Jensen: When the cameras stop rolling & Bob yelled, “Cut!” and Bob yelled, “That’s a series wrap on Supernatural.” There was- a there was a loud cheer that echoed through that canyon we were filming in. I will- I will happily say that there were hugs that happened and that needed to happen. Those are people that I spent not just years with, but so much time with- it's like brothers in arms and so to put it to bed the way that we did felt really good and then felt good to hug some people, I'll tell you that much. Singer: I thanked everyone, but I wanted to really thank people who had been with us from the beginning and as I looked around, there were so many people who had been there from the beginning.
We really were a family. I always say about this show is one of the reasons that it was a success and is that it was not only about the Winchester family, but it was about the Supernatural family. 
Jared: So now that's all said and done, I guess I can look back at it and just be proud that I helped this show carry on and I'm really proud of the blood, sweat, and tears that I put in, and I feel like- I feel like that sacrifice was also maybe one of the things I learned from Sam, you know? Sam had to sacrifice a lot. So, I'm honored and flattered and grateful that I got to be a part of that journey.
Dabb: You're never going to have another show like this. You're never gonna have another experience like this. For a lot of different reasons, from how long it ran, from the family that the show became, from the amazing fans that we have. [Footage of us] From the emotional investment people can put in over 15 years of their lives. 
Some started watching this when they were in high school, when they were 15, they're 30 now, they might have kids. That's their- that's like half their life. They've been with this show. You're not gonna have that again. Shows just aren’t gonna run this long, especially genre shows, but I don't know that I'm ever gonna do anything else in my career that I'm gonna be more proud of than having been involved in this show. 
Jared: The things that stick out are just how important it is to keep putting one foot in front of the other. And keep on working and wake up every day and treat it like it could be your last and- and if you make it out the other side, you'll be happy and proud of what you did. 
Jensen: The crew had packed up, they had cleared the bridge, and they were all starting to, you know, load their trucks and get moving. And Jared and I just kind of hung back, and we just took a moment. I looked at him and I said, “I’m proud of us, man. I'm proud of what we've done.”
We know that that's the collective we, that is everyone that is involved, that is- you know from the top down. You know, for our portion, for what we contributed to this monster of the show, he and I reflected on that, and still able to see and smell the roses.
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1000roughdrafts · 4 years ago
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Baby Winchester 2021
A/N: gift fic for @rileynicole1967. Merry Christmas! Thank you for being such a huge supporter, and for all of your kind words. I hope you like it. I dont have a laptop anymore so this is posted from my phone, hope the format is alright.
Summary: Reader finds out she's pregnant, and tells Dean in a cute way.
Warnings: fluff, puking, pregnancy, mention of sex, a tiny bit of angst but youd have to really watch for it.
W/C: 1.5k
This is also kind of a fix it fic for the season finale but I warped the time to be close to Christmas.
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Excusing yourself from Thanksgiving dinner, after taking a bite of a meal your boyfriend spent hours to prepare, almost made you feel as horrible as the realization that the spontaneous sickness was accompanied by an AWOL period.
You let it slide, blaming the uneasy feeling on those intrusive thoughts, the worries that slip in and mix with hopes, turning into an anxious dream. A dream that involved having a family with Dean.
While you never had that whole marriage and kids conversation with him, you know that somewhere deep inside of him is a craving to nurture and care for a child of his own.
The way he talked about his past with Lisa and Ben was one giveaway, but when the two of you had sex he was careless, and so were you. One of you would courteously offer up the use of a condom, while the other would hear the suggestion with one ear, muttering an "oh, yeah, we probably should," between kisses, but the intention was already lost on the both of you. 
It was like under the surface of "we can't have a kid, we're hunters,"there was a shared hope that maybe it would just happen, and it would become part of the challenges you take on in day to day life. Wouldn't really even be much of a challenge, other than keeping the kid safe, but what safer of a place than a bunker?
You'd be lying if you said you hadn't considered the thought, even if just for a daydream. It was a scary thought, raising a baby in this world, let alone in your world, but regardless, you wanted it. 
Five days from Christmas, another period hadn't come. Sitting on the toilet you cover your eyes with your hands, pressing a bit deeper than you should, hardly able to control the bounce in your leg. On the floor in front of you is a pregnancy test, your heart racing too fast for you to watch it as it decides your future. 
The confliction you feel is enough on its own. The one hand, excitement, the other, fear; a hope for both positive and negative to show up on that little stick. 
Thinking back on the symptoms you'd read online they all seemed to line up with normal PMS symptoms. Your breasts were sore and heavy, but you've never examined them enough to know if they're really changing. You've been nauseous, even puking, but often that's not outside of PMS either. The only thing that really screamed 'pregnant' was your two missed periods… until you open your eyes to a test with two pink lines. 
With shaky hands you bend forward to pick it up, feeling like every sense has been numbed and magnified at once, like your eyes are playing tricks on you. Your body throws out a nervous chuckle, re-reading the test like you're studying for a final before allowing yourself to actually smile. Panic and excitement fills you but you ride out the high, allowing it to consume you for a moment before planning your next move. 
Slipping the test in your bra between your breasts, you throw the box it came in into an empty metal trash bin, setting it on fire to hide the evidence. Dean will find out eventually, but it has to be perfect. 
You already had a world of ideas on how to tell him, and with Christmas just days away, the perfect time. You drive to the craft store to see what you could put together. 
Walking down the aisle you turn to another and see blank christmas ornaments to decorate. Something inside of you screams, thousands of images popping into your head of what you could do with some paint and an ornament. Grabbing a present shaped ornament you head over to the paint section. You pick up a couple small gift bags and stuffing paper. 
Leaving the bag in your car, you walk through the door to see the boys are decorating the bunker with random strings of light and tinsel. 
"Looks great," you smile "now all we need is a tree." 
"Well now that you're home we can go get one," Dean smiles, walking over to kiss you on the cheek. 
You drove to all of the lots in Lebanon, all of which sold out of their best trees and left with the charlie brown's. Both Sam and Dean turned to you at each one with questions in their eyes, and you'd just shake your head. There's no way you'd let a three foot tree sit in a building as beautiful as the bunker. You'd find the perfect one, it just needed to take some time. That's when Dean suggested a different place. 
He drove the three of you to a secluded woods, opening the trunk for a saw. 
With wide eyes and a hidden smile, you jump out, Sam following. 
"You're gonna cut one down?" you laugh. 
Dean shrugs, lifting the saw to examine it. Smiling, he looks at Sam, "give me a hand with this will you?" he says, nodding to the other saw that sits in the trunk. 
While the boys decorated the tree, you found it the perfect opportunity to sneak away and decorate your ornament. You slip into your car for the bag and run to a room you could lock, starting right away.
On Christmas morning, Dean woke you with a warm homemade peppermint mocha. The things that man could do in the kitchen made your head spin, or maybe it was the little life growing inside of you that made you so dizzy. 
You hurriedly set the coffee on the nightstand and run to the bathroom, puking up the sweet, peppermint dream in moments. 
Dean is quick to your side, kneeling down with his hand on your back, rubbing comforting circles. 
"Are you okay?" he asks, and you can only nod. "Was it too much peppermint?"
You shake your head with a chuckle, wiping your lips with toilet paper before spitting into the toilet and flushing it all away. 
"No, the coffee is great," you smile, turning to rinse your mouth out and brush your teeth, "I just don't think I ate enough yesterday," you say, mouth full of toothpaste but knowing it will be the last lie you have to tell him about the showing symptoms. 
You walk out and accompany them as Sam pulls a gift from the tree and hands it to Dean. Dean smiles as you go to sit next to him. 
"Oh!" you say with your best attempt at faking surprise, "I forgot an ornament" you say, barely able to conceal your smile. 
You pull it from your pocket and hand it to Dean, stifling a giggle. 
He smiles, "sure thing," he says, reaching for it. 
It takes him a few steps to look at it, but even with his back turned to you you know when he reads it. He freezes, staring down at the golden letters that read: Baby Winchester 2021. 
"What?" he says, whipping around to face you, and you just smile. Sam is alert, looking up from his phone as if Dean's voice startled him into the moment. Dean's face is tense, but he relaxes it to a smile, "what?"he says again, more excitedly, "are you serious?" he says in a laugh. 
Sam stands and walks to Dean's side, reading the ornament over his shoulder, "no way!" he smiles. 
You laugh, standing to grab the gift bag from under the tree with the test in it. 
"I'm serious," you say, giving him the little gift bag. 
Dean pulls the test out, Sam still at his side and when he looks at those little pink lines his face flushes, tears in the corners of his eyes threaten to come down. Sam is quick to run to you, wrapping you in a bear hug, saying congratulations before both of you have your arms wrapped around Dean. 
There's silence for a moment, and you know what it means just by looking in their eyes. In their minds, just last week they were fighting mime vampires, the hunt almost getting away with Dean's life had he not missed the nail in the wall and fell backwards instead, and this week, they're expecting a baby. A baby in a world with vampires, and ghosts, and creatures that want you all dead. 
You break the silence, "I know," you say almost somberly. 
"What are we gonna do?" Dean asks, fear in his voice. 
"We're gonna do what we always do. We're gonna keep fighting, but now, we'll be fighting for this little guy," you say, hand around your stomach. 
Dean wipes the tear from his eye before it can hit his cheek and wraps his arms around you in a hug, Sam joining in shortly after in an embrace you wish you could stay in forever. 
Sure, it's going to be difficult raising a baby in a hunter family, but with these two goons by your side, you wouldn't have it anyway else. 
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winchester19-67 · 4 years ago
Text
Thankful for You
Pairing: Dean x Reader
Warnings: Fluff
Word Count: 2,285
A/N: Happy Thanksgiving! Feedback is appreciated!
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“Dean Winchester!”
Dean jumps, causing the oven door to slam shut as he lets go of it. He turns on his heels, his expression like that of a little kid who has got caught with their hand in the cookie jar.
“Hiya, sweetheart,” Dean clears his throat a bit as he gives you a nervous look. “I thought that you were out at the store.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t move there, you know,” you tell Dean as you walk over to set all the bags down onto the island. “Please tell me that you weren’t just sneaking a piece of the turkey.”
“What?” Dean asks you with wide eyes but you can see right through his ploy. “Um… No, sweetheart. Of course no. I was just seeing if it was done so that it wouldn’t burn on ya.”
“Uh-huh. Like I believe one little bit of that,” you tell Dean as you walk over to open up the fridge. “Will you please help me put these groceries up?”
“Fine,” Dean mumbles as he walks over and begins to pull things out of the bags. Dean glances over at you and his heart drops a bit when he sees the expression on your face. “Hey, are you mad at me, sweetheart?”
“No,” you sigh. “I’m not mad but I… I want tomorrow to go well for you and Sam.”
“Sweetheart, a little piece of turkey eaten early is not going to ruin tomorrow,” Dean tells you softly as he walks over to wrap both of his arms tightly around your waist.
“Yeah,” you sigh as you look over at the kitchen table. “Dean, did you eat a piece of the pie too?”
“It was fresh,” Dean pouts as you elbow him and you turn around so that you can see his face. “It was a little, tiny piece of pie.”
“I’m trying to get everything cooked today so that all I have to do tomorrow is stick it in the oven to warm it up,” you tell him. “I’m never going to get everything done if you keep eating it all!”
“Alright, calm down,” Dean tells you in a soothing tone when he finally gets that you are not in a teasing mood. “Hey, why are you getting so upset about this?”
You take a deep breath as tears well up in your eyes. “You have helped me so much get over everything that’s happened to me,” you tell Dean softly. “You know that I have had some bad experiences with guys and I had trust issues. I had problems accepting the fact that I deserved something better. And then you found me and were the absolute most amazing man that I have ever met. Dean, you showed me what it was like to have a life, and I promised you that I would show you what it’s like to have a normal life.”
“And you’ve been doing that,” Dean tells you softly as he reaches out to gently wipe a tear off of your cheek with his thumb.
“I’ve been trying but it seems like something always pops up and ruins it all, Dean,” you choke out. “Our first Thanksgiving together you and Sam had to go on a hunt. That Christmas we were snowed in at a motel room after a hunt. New Years you had the flu and didn’t feel like celebrating. On your birthday it was another hunt and all you got was a lousy phone call from me.”
“(Y/N)…”
“I have tried to make all of the special days good for you but…”
“(Y/N), everyday that I get to be with you is a special day,” he tells you softly.
“You know what I mean,” you tell him. “Dean, if it isn’t a hunt then it’s something else, and this is the first time that I have talked you boys into taking the week off. I want it to perfect for you and Sam.”
“A little bit of food sampling isn’t going to make it any less amazing, honey,” Dean tells you.
It feels like there’s a big lump in your throat as you speak, and there are more tears trying to spill over your lashes. “My childhood memories of Thanksgiving included getting to see Dad sit at the head of the table and carve the turkey every year,” you tell Dean. “I just… I don’t know. It’s stupid.”
“It is not stupid,” Dean whispers. “You know that you can and you should tell me anything that you want to, sweetheart.”
You take a deep breath and look Dean in the eyes. “Thanksgiving wasn’t the same after Dad started getting sick, and I was hoping that maybe I could get that feeling this year and let you experience it too. I… I told you, Dean. It’s dumb.”
“It isn’t dumb,” Dean tells you as he wraps both of his arms tightly around you. “I get it, honey. But I still don’t understand how me taste testing is going to ruin anything.”
“I don’t know,” you sigh as you rest your head over against his chest. “In my mind I just want everything to be perfect and seeing a chunk taken out of the turkey and a piece of pie missing gets on my nerves a bit.”
“Well, get used to it because this is what Thanksgiving with me is going to look like,” Dean chuckles as he tightens his arms around you a bit.
“Yeah,” you sigh.
“Hey, is everything okay?” Dean asks you softly as he pulls away enough so that he’s able to see your face. “You feeling okay, sweetheart?”
“Yeah,” you nod and you try to give Dean a soft smile. “I’m alright, baby.”
“You always get like this around the Holidays and I don’t like it,” Dean tells you.
“I know. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“There’s nothing wrong with you,” Dean chuckles. “It’s okay to get a little sad when everything’s so different then what you’re used to.”
You take a deep breath. “Don’t you ever get upset because you and Sam missed out on so much?”
“Not exactly,” Dean shrugs. “Because no matter what I’ve always had Sam and I’m okay with that. Now I’ve got you too and that makes it even better.”
“Yeah?” you ask him.
“So much better,” Dean smirks as he leans in to press his lips firmly to yours.
“I guess that sometimes it is just that simple,” you tell Dean softly. “Holidays don’t have to feel like a special day or different from all of the others for them to be special.”
“No, they do not,” Dean tells you. “And yet you deserve everyday to feel special so I am going to try to make tomorrow go as smoothly and as perfectly as I can.”
“Thank you, baby,” you smile.
“Now, what do you say you and me go take a break with a movie?” Dean asks you.
“In other words you just want to cuddle,” you laugh. Dean rolls his eyes before he moves his fingers along your sides, causing you to giggle as you try and break away from his grasp. “Hey, you’re a great cuddler,” you giggle.
“Don’t you know it,” Dean chuckles as he presses a kiss to your cheek. “You okay now, sweetheart?”
“Yeah,” you breathe out. “I’m alright, Dean.”
“Good,” Dean smiles as he begins to pull you away from the kitchen. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
You frown when you hear arguing from the kitchen. Seriously? You think. Dean promised me that today would go smoothly and those two can’t stop bickering?
You walk into the kitchen and stop in your tracks to take it all in.
“Mornin’, sweetheart,” Dean smiles when he sees you standing there in the doorway.
“Good morning,” you smile as you walk further in to the room. “You boys have been busy this morning.”
“Well, one of us has been at least,” Sam says as he narrows his eyes at Dean.
“Hey, I’m the supervisor,” Dean smiles as he walks over to you to wrap an arm around your waist. “Like it, sweetheart?” Dean asks you softly as he presses a kiss to your temple.
“I love it,” you smile widely as you lean your head over onto Dean’s shoulder. “It looks nice in here. Thank you, Dean.”
“Hey, I’m the one you should be thanking,” Sam tells you.
“Ah, don’t let Sammy fool ya, sweetheart. This was my idea,” Dean smirks at you.
“Uh-huh, I’m sure,” you say and you playfully roll your eyes a bit at Dean. “Thank you both.”
“Hey, don’t give him credit,” Dean tells you. “I mean it. All Sam was supposed to do was keep you from walking in here before I finished, and he obviously failed at that.”
“Yeah, because if I hadn’t stepped in and helped you then we wouldn’t get to eat until tomorrow,” Sam says as he walks over and pulls you away from Dean.
“Hey, she’s my girl! Get your own!”
“Oh, you’ll live for a minute,” Sam rolls his eyes.
“Thank you both so much,” you tell them softly.
“Hey, I told you that I was going to try to make today perfect all for you,” Dean tells you as he pulls you away from Sam.
You frown. “I feel bad now for getting so tore up yesterday.”
“Oh, sweetheart, don’t feel bad,” Dean tells you softly. “I guess that I should’ve been more patient and stayed out of the food.”
“Says the man who stole another piece of pie.”
“Be quiet, Sammy,” Dean scowls.
“Okay, both of you. Stop arguing please,” you giggle.
“You know, we’d argue a lot less if both of our mouths were full of turkey,” Dean tells you.
“Well then let’s eat.”
Dinner goes just like you wanted it to. Dean carves the turkey, everything tastes great, and five minutes into it you have to break up a food fight.
“Sweetheart, why don’t you go lay down for a while?” Dean asks you as he gets up from the table and grabs your plate. “We’ve got clean up duty.”
“No. You two put all of this together this morning,” you tell Dean.
“Yeah, but you’re the one who cooked yesterday, so we’ve got this,” Dean tells you.
“Thank you, baby,” you tell him as you reach up on your tiptoes to press a kiss to his cheek. “And you too, Sam.”
“No problem,” Sam smiles.
You take a deep breath before walking out of the room and down the hallway to your and Dean’s room. You crawl underneath the blankets and you let your eyes slide shut. After a little while, Dean walks into the room and curls up underneath the blankest beside of you.
“Thank you, Dean,” you whisper as you rest your head over onto his chest. Dean wraps an arm around your waist and presses a kiss to your temple.
“Anything for my sweetheart,” Dean tells you softly.
“You want to take a little ride?” you ask him.
“Mmm. Maybe later. I don’t think that I can move right now,” Dean says, causing you to giggle a bit at him.
“I love you.”
“I love you too, baby.”
You take a deep breath. “Hey, Dean?”
“Hm?”
“Thank you so much for making today special for me, and also for showing me that it can feel like any other day and can still be special. I guess I just have these expectations for days like today and when I don’t think that they’re going to turn out right…”
“I get it, sweetheart.”
“I’m sorry that I overreacted on you yesterday.”
“It honestly isn’t a big deal so please don’t feel guilty about it,” Dean says softly.
“Okay,” you breathe out as you try and relax a bit in Dean’s hold.
“Hey, guess what we forgot to do while ago.”
“What’s that?” you ask him.
“Say what we’re thankful for,” Dean whispers into your hair as he nuzzles his nose into your skin.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” Dean smiles. “I mean, my answer would be kind of obvious anyways.”
“Oh, what’s that. Pie?”
“Haha. Funny,” Dean says sarcastically. “But yes pie would definitely be on the excessively long list. You know what would be number one on that list though?”
“What’s that?” you ask him.
“You,” Dean tells you as he pulls away a bit so that he can look you in the eyes. “I’m thankful for you and you have no idea how much better my life is with you in it.”
“Dean,” you breathe out as tears well up in your eyes. “I’m thankful for you too. Baby, you do so much for me and I could never thank you enough.”
“You don’t have to,” Dean tells you softly. “That’s what I’m here for.” Dean pulls you in tightly to him before hiding his face in your neck. “After we take a nap then I’m going to finish off that pumpkin pie.”
“If Sam doesn’t get there first while we’re napping.”
Dean’s eyes widen and he lets go of you before jumping up out of bed. When Dean runs into the room he has the pie pan and two forks in his hands.
“Dean, you’re ridiculous,” you laugh as Dean sits down beside of you on the bed and hands you a fork.
“Sammy ain’t getting my pie,” Dean tells you as he takes a big bite.
“Dork,” you laugh.
“Yeah, but I’m your dork,” Dean smiles widely as he leans in to give you a sweet kiss. “I love you, sweetheart.”
“I love you too, Dean,” you smile widely. “Happy thanksgiving.” Dean gives you a soft smile as he leans over to press his forehead against yours.
“Happy Thanksgiving, baby.”
Tags: @polina-93 @adoptdontshoppets @justanotherwinchester @blue-pink-green @spnbaby-67 @deanwanddamons @defenderrosetyler @mlovesstories @akshi8278 @idksupernatural @hobby27 @emoryhemsworth @flamencodiva​ 
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avengerscompound · 4 years ago
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The Tower: Family - 19
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The Tower: Family An Avengers Fanfic
Series Masterlist PREVIOUS //
Pairing:  Avengers x OFC, Bruce Banner x Bucky Barnes x Clint Barton x Wanda Maximoff x Steve Rogers x Natasha Romanoff x Tony Stark x Thor x Sam Wilson x OFC (Elly Cooper)
Word Count: 2349
Warnings:  Pregnancy
Synopsis: With new powers, Thor now living on Earth full time, a wedding to plan, and Natasha and Wanda expecting, a lot is changing for Elly and her large and rather unconventional family.  When Elise’s parents try to reestablish connections, Elly questions what being a family actually means.
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Chapter 19: Names
I was just under twenty weeks pregnant when I went to have my glucose test and the ultrasound that would tell us about any major abnormalities and possibly what sex the baby was.  The twins were on one of their home days and we were taking them along too, so they could be there when they learned if the last of their new siblings would be a brother or sister.  Everyone was excited and there had been bets made on if it would be a boy or a girl.  Some people seemed to think that statistically, it would have to be a boy as there were already three girls on their way.  However, Tony, Bruce, Sam, and Bucky all knew that’s not how statistics worked and seemed to think that it would be a girl just because the universe wanted us to have to all agree on four different girls' names at the same time.
While I was waiting for the sugar drink to take effect Natasha and Wanda had their checkups.  They were now up to 28 weeks and everything was really good.  Even Wanda with the twins was looking very on track.  Both girls were growing strongly and Doctor Schroeder had no concerns at all about her getting to full term with them.
When I’d finally had my blood test and come into the examination room, Natasha and Wanda were finishing up and I was directed to get up on the table for my ultrasound.  Steve, Tony, and Bruce were in attendance.  Pietro was sitting on Bruce’s knee playing with a stethoscope, while Steve held Riley and she tried to grab every single thing that was in reach of her.
“How have you been feeling, Elise?”  Doctor Schroeder asked as I got into position and she set up the ultrasound machine.
“Good,” I said. “The morning sickness passed.  I have more energy.  They kick a lot so I don’t get worried about them too much.”
“That’s good.  And you’re keeping your stress levels low?”  She asked, squeezing some gel on my stomach.
“Well…” I said, guiltily.  “Less stress than when I was pregnant with the twins.”
She shook her head and pressed the paddle to my stomach.  “You really need to be taking care of yourself, Elise.”
“You tell that to the world,” I snarked, and she laughed as she pressed the paddle down on her stomach.
The baby came into view on the screen, looking like an actual baby right down to the fingers and toes.  “I’m assuming you’re all finding out the sex,” she said.
“Oh yeah.  I definitely want to know what flavor of spawn El is cooking,” Tony said.
“And I’m guessing you’re all hoping for a boy,” she joked.
Tony went to speak, but Steve quickly cut him off.  “We’ll all be happy either way.”
“What about you kids?”  Doctor Schroeder asked.  “Do you want this to be a brother or a sister?”
“I wanna sisder,” Riley said quickly.
“No, Wiley,” Pietro argued.  “Deres fwee sisders.  I wanna brovver.”
Doctor Schroeder started laughing.  “Well, let’s see which one of you gets your wish.”
She moved the paddle getting it into position to see better.  “Alright, if you’re placing bets, now’s the time,” she said.  Tony crossed his fingers and started chanting, “Boy, boy, boy, boy, boy.”
“And we have a…” she said slowly, dragging out the suspense for as long as possible.  “Boy.  You’re having a boy.”
“Yes!”  Tony said, pumping his fist in the air and leaning over and kissing me deeply.
“You hear that, Piet?”  Bruce asked.  “You get a brother.”
“Yay!”  Pietro said, bouncing on Bruce’s lap.
“Oh, no,” Steve said.  “We’re going to have a little mini-Tony in the family.”
I started laughing and cradled Tony’s jaw.  “I know.  Isn’t it great?”
“A boy,” Tony repeated.  “Three girls and a little boy.”
“Will this make picking names easier or harder, do you think?” I asked.
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The answer to that question was ‘harder’.  Having one boy made deciding on the name harder.
After we finished up with the doctor we met the others on the garden deck with the dogs for a kind of picnic to try and work out names. With the twins, I had been the one to decide their names.  I accepted input but no one was willing to argue with me about which names I settled on because I’d been under so much stress during the pregnancy.  This time, we were all deciding together.
Having three girls on the way meant that everyone was willing to be more open to accepting girl’s names put forward by other people because there was always another daughter to have the girl’s name they preferred.  There was only one boy and anyone that had a name they liked or was special to them wanted it to be the one used.  So while the kids played with the dogs, we all sat around arguing about names.
“Hey, hey,” Steve said, putting his hands up.  “Maybe we need to write a list.”
Tony opened up a screen that we could all see.
“So for girls we have; Sarah, Rebecca, Kate, Thour, Torunn, Ada, Lyra, Rose, and Marya,” Steve said.  “And for boys we have; Paul, Thomas, William, Módi, Edwin, Ian, George, and Alex.”
“That’s more names than kids alright,” I joked as I helped myself to an egg salad sandwich.
“Should we vote?”  Natasha asked.  “I only suggested a girl’s name and Tony only suggested a boy’s name so we might be able to work it out through votes.”
“I don’t know about that,” Bucky argued.  “Some of those names are important.  Some are just names we like.”
“Maybe people who have names they wanted to be used already should get less of a vote this time,” Wanda suggested.  “I mean, Pietro is already named for my brother.  It is only fair that the names I suggested be put at the back of the line.”
“Does that mean El doesn’t get a say this time?”  Clint asked.  “I mean, Piet and Riley were named without a vote. She just decided.”
“Whose fault is that, Clint?” I snarked.
“Right,” he said, holding his hands up.  “I know.  Sorry, I was just asking.”
“Elise gets just as much a say as everyone else,” Steve said firmly.  “She may have selected Riley and Pietro’s names but she chose them based on people who were important to some of us.”
“Daddy, daddy, daddy,” Riley said, running flat out into the group, followed by Spotty.  She slammed into Sam’s side, drawing a soft ‘oof’ from him before grabbing his arm and pulling on it.  “Come, come pway.”
“Hold on, you monster.  We’re just trying to pick the names for your new brothers and sisters,” Sam explained, picking her up and tossing her in the air.  “After I finish my lunch I’ll play.”
“Why don’t you and Pietro get in the swings and I’ll push you,” Wanda suggested.  Riley seemed to think that was a good idea as she ran back off with the dalmatian on her heels.  When she and Pietro climbed up into their toddler swings, Wanda flicked her wrist and used her telekinesis to push them.
“Is it worth noting that Sarah was a name put forward by two people and so was Rebecca?”  I asked.
“That’s a good point,” Steve agreed.
“Plus those are family ones.  I’d really like to name one of my daughters after my sister,” Bucky said.  “And it was Bruce’s mom too right, Bruce?”
Bruce nodded.  “That’s right.  I would definitely like to honor my mother.  She was the only reason I made it through infancy.”
“And I’d like to use Sarah for the same reason,” Steve agreed.
“Plus Sarah was my late sister’s name,” Sam added.
“I’m fine with Sarah and Rebecca being two of the names,” I said.
“Anyone not okay with that?”  Tony asked.  When no one argued it, he moved the names Rebecca and Sarah to a new column.
“Was there any other girl’s names that were special to us?”  Steve asked.
“Marya was my mother’s name,” Wanda said, still flicking her wrist back and forth as she swung the kids.  The sounds of the squeals floating over to us.
“And Rose was the name I chose when I had a miscarriage,” Natasha said. “I know that’s not the same thing but… I feel attached to the name.”
Clint put his arm around her and rubbed her side.
“They’re both really pretty names,” I said.  “I’d be happy with either.”
There was a murmuring of agreement from the others. Tyr who seemed to be finished playing with the kids came over and curled up on Bucky’s lap and he started playing with the spaniel’s ears.
“I guess the question would be if either of you is happy to have the name as a middle name?  And if not, do you want to hold onto it in case we have any more children in the future.”
“I can wait,” Wanda said, caressing her stomach. “Pietro was named for my brother and I want to do this again.  Maybe not for a while but I love being pregnant.”
Tony moved the name Rose under Rebecca and Marya to a completely different line.
“Alright, we’re getting somewhere,” Steve said.  “Anyone not okay with any of these girls' names being middle names?”
“If we ever use Thour, I’d like it to be a first name,” Thor said.
“Same with Kate,” Clint added, and both names were moved to the row with Marya.
“Well that leaves three names, which is exactly what we need,” Bruce said.  “So let’s just see how they sound together.”
There was a little toing and froing, and at one point Clint and Sam got up to play with the kids while we argued about how the names sounded together.  In the end, we settled on Rebecca Torunn for the baby Natasha was carrying, and Sarah Lyra and Rose Ada for the twins.
“Alright we have eight boys’ names and one boy,” Steve said.  “How are we going to do this? What names are important to us?  Ian was my grandfather and George was Bucky’s dad.”
“Paul was my dad,” Sam added.
“Edwin was Jarvis’ first name,” Tony said.
“But all of you have also had a kid or more named after someone important to you,” I reasoned.  “Has anyone not done that?”
“Well you, and you’ve carried the most babies,” Sam said playfully.
“That is true. But I did also name the twins with no discussion,” I added.  “I don’t know if I have any names that I really love anyway.  I like having the names be important to all of you.”
“Seriously though, El,” Bruce said.  “All of us have put names forward and all of us have had at least one name that was important to us used already.  Isn’t there a name you grew up loving?  Or a family member who you did love?  A grandparent maybe?”
I shook my head and shrugged a little.  “I liked the name Nova I guess,” I said.  “But I’d much rather he be Edwin or Ian or Paul than Nova.”
“Not George?  Rude,” Bucky teased.
“Come on now, Buck,” I teased back.  “You have a common name like George and you don’t even use it.”
“Oh and Paul is so… uncommon,” he snarked.
“Anyway,” I said, rolling my eyes.  “Bucky, Steve, Sam, and Bruce now all have first names for kids.  Yes, Riley’s middle name comes from Tony’s mom, but given that this baby is one he specifically asked to have, I think it’s fair that we name him Edwin unless anyone has any huge objections to that.”
“I don’t!”  Tony joked.
When no one argued with it the name Edwin moved from the maybe pile to the list under Rebecca, Sarah, and Rose.  “Alright, Eddie is gonna need a middle name,” Tony said.
“I say George,” Bucky said.  “Seeing as Elise just seriously dissed my dad’s name.”
I smothered a laugh and pushed him.  He wrapped his arm around me and pulled me back so we were both lying on the ground.  I squealed and started wrestling with him and soon the dogs and then the twins were trying to get in on the action too.  “Bucky!”  I squealed as I struggled under him.  “This isn’t how you get what you want!”
“Really?”  He asked as he started tickling me.  “I think it’s gonna work.”
“Stop it!  I’m gonna pee myself!”  I squealed.
“Daddy!  You weave mommy awone!”  Pietro said, protectively pushing Bucky to get him off me.
Bucky sat up laughing.  “Oh no, I’m sorry, peanut.  I shouldn’t be so mean to mommy should I?”
Pietro put his hands on his hips and huffed.  He looked so much like a mini Steve that it would have been easy to forget that Clint was actually his biological dad.  “Oh man,” Tony laughed.  “Cap version 2.0.”
“Thank you, Piet,” I said, pulling him into my arms and cuddling him.  “We were just playing.”
“Otay, mommy,” he said, snuggling up to me.
“Daddy Bucky wants your little brother’s name to be Edwin George Skjodbærer.  What do you think?”  I asked.
Pietro seemed to think about it for a moment and nodded his head.  “Is good.”
Steve chuckled.  “Well, I think the king has spoken.  Edwin George?”
Everyone nodded in agreement and Tony moved George next to Edwin in the list.  “That’s one more thing done,” he said.  “Now all we really need to do is stock up on baby supplies and hire the nannies.”
“There is one other thing we need to work on,” Steve said seriously and looked at me.  “We need to figure out how to get rid of El’s stress.”
I frowned and nodded.  It was definitely something I needed to work out, but I was afraid that any steps I took might just make it worse.  Whatever the case was, I need to go speak to my mother and hope that I could get some kind of closure for good.
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// NEXT
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wiypt-writes · 4 years ago
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Stark Spangled Banner
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One Shot: Vanilla
Summary: A year on the run following the events in Siberia has changed Steve…but not too much. He’s still a man of simple tastes… Warning:  Language, SMUT (NSFW, 18+)
Pairings: Steve Rogers x OFC Katie Stark.
A/N: This sits alongside SSB Ch 35: Not A Perfect Soldier, But A Good Man. I had it in my head for a while and couldn’t quite fit it in. And those of you who read “Leave No One Behind” might recognise a little of the scenery, so to speak.
Disclaimer: This is a pure work of fiction and classified as 18+. Please respect this and do not read if you are underage. I do not own any characters in this series bar Katie Stark and the other OCs. By reading beyond this point you understand and accept the terms of this disclaimer.
Stark Spangled Banner Masterlist // Main Masterlist
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August 2017
Another day, another under-the-radar mission. This one breaking up a gang that had been terrorising locals, running guns and arms, raiding local refugee camps and kidnapping children to ship out to god knows where, for god knows what.
Frankly, it had knocked Katie sick, so she had been only too glad to get out of there once they’d ‘dispensed’ the ring leader into the care of Fury’s contacts. Well, by that they mean they’d left him hog tied in the middle of the African desert at the co-ordinates they had been given. What happened to him, well, even the world’s sentinel of justice, honour and truth couldn’t find it within him to give a shit. Not after what they’d just seen anyway.
Katie stole a glance at Steve as they drove the ‘borrowed’ jeep back to where Sam had landed their jet. Their time on the run had hardened him. Over a year now spent in shadows, and it was almost as if those shadows had claimed part of him for themselves. His hair was longer, far longer, usually worn pushed back off his face but the exertion of the fight they’d just had, left the front strands flopping over his sweaty forehead. His beard was dark, and thick, speckled with the odd bit of copper and blonde here and there, hiding his jawline entirely and leaving his face almost completely unrecognisable.
To the average man on the street he looked like just another person, maybe worthy of a second glance for bearing a passing resemblance, maybe, to the fugitive Captain. The one thing that remained unchanged were his eyes. Whilst they were tired, carried a heavier burden than before, they were still the same eyes Katie had noticed and fallen in love with, and they still flashed with warmth and a sparkle whenever he looked at her.
And as long as that was there, she knew he was okay.
They reached the jet, Sam hopped down from the back of the jeep and headed in first over to the coms system, swiping at the screen.
“Hey, Steve?” He turned to his head back over his shoulder. Steve walked up the ramp, looking at Sam expectantly. “Fury’s patched us through the co-ordinates of a place to stay. Looks to be a hundred or so miles North. Might be worth holding up there for the night?”
Steve hesitated for a while, they’d been running missions back to back now for almost three weeks. He was desperate to get back…well, home he supposed. To their cottage in Scotland where they’d holed up for the past twelve months, where Wanda was currently waiting. But, as he glanced around, Sam’s face was sporting a nasty gash above his eyebrows, Natasha had taken a few hard digs too and was clutching her side and Katie had taken a heavy blow to the face, the bruise already forming on her cheek.
They were tired, whacked, maybe it was best they got their heads down and headed back in the morning.
“Alright.” Steve nodded. “Bring it up on the map.” Sam pressed a few buttons and then the holo-display sprang to life. Steve and Natasha observed the image, Natasha pointing to something, Steve agreeing before he straightened up and looked at Katie and Sam who were waiting patiently. “We were just staying it looks like a good spot we can land the jet. There’s nothing for miles, and it’s coastal.” “Coastal?” Katie frowned, before her eyes lit up “Like, there’s a beach?”
“Yeah.” Steve smiled, not bothering to point out that their cottage in Scotland basically had its own private one. “There’s a beach, Sweetheart.”
“It looks to be an old Diving Resort on the Red Sea.” Natasha mused, swiping at the screen. “According to Fury, one of his contacts in Mossad said they used it as a front for smuggling Jewish Refugees out of Ethiopia. Operation Brothers. You heard of it?”
Katie, Sam and Steve both exchanged glances before they shrugged.
“Not surprising, I think the information surrounding it was only declassified recently.” Natasha scratched her neck as she straightened up. “Long story short they saved thousands of lives. Smuggled refugees out of camps, and then shipped them out by boat back to Israel.”
“And they used a hotel as a front?” Katie arched an eyebrow.
“Diving resort.” Natasha nodded “Was fully functional too. Pretty damned clever if you ask me.”
“Is it safe?” Steve asked.
“Fury wouldn’t tell us to head there if it wasn’t” Katie replied simply, “We can go, check it out. If we don’t like it we can head home.”
***** Sam landed the jet expertly on the beach which was hidden in a large cove. They stepped off the ramp onto the sugar white sand and Katie looked around at the various huts scattered along the shore. The main body of the hotel itself seemed to be boarded up. The four of them split up into two groups of two under Steve’s instructions, and made their way around, carefully, making sure there was no one else there, checking each out building thoroughly. Eventually they met one another at the front of the sandstone building, all nodding to signal that there was no sign of anyone else.
“The Red Sea Diving Resort.” Sam read the faded red lettering over the top of the boarded up entrance “Imaginative.”
Katie gave a scoff as she shook her head “Well I don’t know about any of you lot but I need to wash up and get changed. I’m disgustingly hot in this.” She pulled at the collar of her combat-top and turned to head back towards the jet. Steve caught her up, sliding an arm round her waist and pressed a gentle kiss to her temple.
“We haven’t forgotten.” Sam called from behind them. They both stopped and Katie glanced at Steve who met her puzzled look with one of his own.
“Forgotten what?” He asked as they turned to look at Sam.
Sam blinked, then turned to Natasha who gave a snort “Clearly they have.”
“Have what?” Steve pressed again, his tone slightly less patient than it had been.
“It’s your wedding anniversary you pair of dumbasses.” Sam snorted “God you two are…”
Clearly he couldn’t decide what it was that Katie and Steve were, instead he trailed off and headed up the ramp into the jet. Natasha followed him as Katie and Steve remained on the sand, simply looking at one another, before they both burst out into laughter.
“Oh my God.” Katie stuttered “We forgot!”
“Well, we have kinda been busy, Doll.” Steve teased, before he shook his head and smiled “I haven’t forgotten that day though. Happiest day of my life.”
Katie smiled, “Mine too.”
He gently raised her hand to his mouth, brushing her knuckles with his mouth before they too headed onto the ramp and grabbed their kit bags.
The four ex-agents walked down the sand, towards the huts they had checked earlier. They selected one each, the fact that Natasha and Sam headed a little further down the beach away from the one Steve had picked for him and Katie didn’t go unnoticed by the super soldier. Something Steve had noticed when he had looked around was how reasonably clean it was. He’d expected things to be covered in a layer of dust but it was fairly habitable. As Katie set about searching the drawers for something to make the bed with, he headed into the small bathroom at the back, turning the taps on. After an initial cough and a splutter, the system kicked in and the water began to run. Orange from sand and rust at first as it splattered the white porcelain bowl. Steve left it going whilst he moved back into the main room and saw Katie was holding what looked like an old polaroid photo.
“Look at this.” She smiled gently. “I found it when I was looking for some bed sheets.”
Steve glanced down at the photo which showed a tall dark haired, bearded man stood with his arm round a shorter, dark haired slim woman, both looking at the camera, smiling . At their feet sat, quite frankly, the ugliest dog Steve had ever seen. It was hairless, but he still couldn’t help but admit it was cute in a strange way.
“They must have been part of the team that ran the Mossad Op.” Katie shrugged. “He kinda looks a bit like you actually.”
“I don’t see it.” Steve wrinkled his face and she shrugged, moving to put the photo back in the drawer. “I found the bathroom, water is still running but not sure if it’s gonna be heated or…”
“I don’t need it heated.” Katie shook her head. “Frankly the colder the better. Now, help me get this bed sorted and then we can wash up and maybe we can spend what’s left of the Anniversary we forgot sat out on the sand?”
Steve chuckled, pulling her closer to him, both hands on her hips. He dropped his face to hers, catching her lips in a soft kiss. “Sounds good to me.”
After a quick shower each they headed back outside, where Sam and Natasha were already sat. And it turns out their friends were indeed far better at remembering their anniversary than they were. Along with their normal supplies, Sam had stashed a crate of beer on the jet, hidden in the cooler and Natasha had also managed a bottle of the same champagne they had served at the wedding, although instead of drinking it out of crystal flutes, it was sipped from mugs Natasha had dug out of the jet, which bore the Avengers symbol, a harsh reminder of the life they had all run from little over twelve months previously.
The four of them sat on the up turned logs, dotted around what, Steve correctly guessed, had been some sort of fire pit, talking quietly, watching the sun set over the ocean. It was peaceful and Steve felt like they could almost have been on vacation.
Almost.
Steve felt Katie sagging next to him and turned to see that she had her eyes closed, head resting on his shoulder. He placed a soft kiss to her head and then looked at the rest of his team. Sam’s head was drooping a little and Natasha’s eyes were heavy. He issued a soft instruction to go to bed and they both looked at him, giving him a nod and Katie stirred a little. In a graceful movement, Steve had swept her into his arms and he carried her, not unlike the way he had done two years ago that very night, to their accommodation for the evening. She sat on the edge of the bed, removing her shorts leaving her in her panties and tank top as she climbed under the scratchy sheets, Steve settling down besides her.
“Night sweetheart.” He muttered, kissing her neck as he pulled her to him, her back pressing into his chest.
“Night Soldier.” She whispered back, closing her eyes.
**** Steve turned over for what felt like the tenth time in as many minutes. He couldn’t get comfortable, and then there was the simple, yet slight complication to the situation that he’d woken from a particularly graphic dream about their honeymoon, and now he was fucking horny as hell.
He rolled onto his back, his head turning towards Katie and his eyes scanned over her face as she slept. He took in the shape of her nose, soft curve of her lips and his eye-line flickered down to the swell of her breasts which were visible under the cami she was wearing.
Okay, so that wasn’t helping. At all.
She gave a soft sigh, moving a little, her legs kicking down the sheets slightly so they fell around her hips and that was the point Steve’s already fraying self-control snapped. Shuffling closer, he pressed his lips to hers, before he moved his mouth to her jawline, down her neck, leaving soft, hot kisses on her skin as he went. His hand gently curled around her hip, fingers digging into the flesh ever so slightly and she gave a little murmur, her eye lids fluttering as his lips moved back to hers. And this time, she reciprocated slightly. His lips dropped downwards, his tongue dipping into the hollow of her throat before his affections turned to her delicate collar bone. With a gentle shift of his body, he went even lower still, his calloused hands sliding along her ribcage as he slid her cami top upwards, exposing her breasts. His large hands cupped them, thumbs brushing over her nipples and at that he felt her really respond with a soft whimper, her back arching slightly into his touch.
With one hand he traced the curve of her hip down the outside of her thigh, before he trailed his fingers across her belly, and then her soft whimpers became a harsh gasp as his fingers entered her, curling softly against her insides, coaxing more and more wetness from her as he moved, his mouth continuing to lick and sucking at her breasts. She arched her back, writhing, desperately moving her hips as she sought out the friction she needed between her legs and Steve obliged, moving his hand so the heel of his palm brushed against her clit. With a strangled moan, which she stifled slightly by turning her head into his arm, she came, her body shaking on the mattress, sheets now pushed well out of the way.
Steve’s mouth claimed hers once more, in a searing kiss as he let out a groan of his own when he felt Katie dip her hand into his boxers, wrapping her hand around his achingly hard cock.  Every inch of him was on fire and he wanted her.
“Need you.” His voice was low with desire as he pressed his lips back to her neck, nipping at the spot beneath her ear. “Want you.”
“You got me.” She whispered. “I’m yours, Stevie.”
At her words he gave a low groan, sitting up slightly so that he could pull her underwear down. He wriggled out of his own, before he settled over her, his mouth finding hers again the pair of them letting out a shaky sigh and a moan each as he entered her.
Her hands gently slid down over his back, feeling the expanse of muscle which twitched under her finger tips as he moved, slowly, deeply. Every roll of his hips sent his pelvis rocking up against her spot. Katie glanced up at him, his lips kiss swollen, eyes blown with desire, hair falling forward over his forehead. She reached up to brush it back, her hands tangling in the long strands and she pulled his face down to hers, locking their lips in a sloppy, filthy kiss.
Fuck, Steve Rogers loved sex with his wife anyway he could get it, but this, well, he was a sucker for simple vanilla and Katie was too. There was something about this position, the boring missionary one that drove both of them wild. The way Steve could cage her in his arms, fuck her into the mattress one day or make love to her the next. The way his large frame engulfed hers completely surrounding her, filling each one of her senses.  The way he controlled the pace completely, driving into her again and again until she could no longer think straight. The way he controlled the depth, sometimes using his arms under her knees to hold her open, or slinging her legs over her shoulders.  
It was a plain, vanilla flavoured heaven. One that they could visit time and time again, and would never get bored of tasting.
Steve drove as deep into his wife as he could get, rotating his hips slightly whilst he was fully seated, causing her to gasp and emit a frankly sinful moan which he swallowed with his mouth. Her hands dug into the skin of his shoulder blades and he moved, grabbing her wrists and pulling them round so he could lace his fingers between hers. Pinning her hands either side of her head he picked up his pace slightly, carefully watching her face as he felt her tightening around him slightly, a tell-tale sign she was close.
“Come on, pretty girl.” Steve panted, his lips by her ear as he gave a soft nip to her neck. “Give it to me, baby.”
The sensation and heat which was building in her core was impossible to ignore. Her breathy pants of his name became faster, as did Steve’s movements, and with a last, broken cry of his name the fire exploded in her belly and she came, hard, her orgasm rolling over her in wave after wave of white hot pleasure, which left her boneless underneath Steve, her nails digging into the backs of his hands. The sensation of feeling her around him was enough, and Steve gave a single, strangled cry of her name as he too reached his peak, his hips faltering as the ribbons in his belly untangled, the pleasure spreading from the toes to the very hair on his head.
He pressed his face into Katie’s neck, placing another soft kiss to her pulse point which left his lips salty from the slight gleen of sweat which coated them both. He pulled back slightly, releasing Katie’s hands as she flexed her fingers, knowing full well what she wanted. And, sure enough, her fingers threaded through his long hair, scratching softly at the nape of his neck. His eyes closed, and the pair of them lay in silence, completely blissed out and relaxed, hearing only each other’s gradually steadying breaths which mingled with the sounds of the waves lapping against the shore outside.
Katie felt Steve’s lips press to her forehead and she smiled softly, opening her eyes to look straight into his, those baby blues spattered with green.
“Happy Anniversary, Gorgeous.” He muttered, his lips catching hers.
“Its past midnight.” She replied gently
“Not at home.” He replied softly, before he swallowed and hung his head. “I’m sorry it has to be like this.”
“Steve, I am home.” Katie looked at him, her hands moving to cup his face “My home is with you.” She guided his head down so that his lips met hers again, her hands gently tangling in his beard “It always will be, you know this.” She whispered against his mouth before she kissed him, deeply, wriggling a little. Steve gave a short grunt and she felt him starting to twitch inside her again. With an arch of her eyebrow she tipped her pelvis up and in a flash Steve had reached up, pinning her wrists down by her head.
“Keep going and imma be hard again in about five seconds flat.” He whispered, and Katie grinned.
“I’m counting on it, Soldier.” She smirked “Because I’ve got a hankering for some more plain old vanilla.”
**** Chapter 36 Part 1
**Original Posting**
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twilightfansofcolor · 4 years ago
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Black!Bella (New Moon edition)
wc: 1.7k
So the summer is here and Bella is on cloud 9
Without a doubt one of the best summers ever
When her leg healed up, Charlie took her hiking just like when she was little, or they’d go to La Push to look at the tidepools or they’d just go to Seattle to visit the aquarium
Sleepovers with Jessica and Angela where they’d stay up watching Studio Ghibli movies, binge watching the Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar YouTube channels, giving each other makeovers and giving each other recommendations about skin care products
Long conversations with Renee about college
Renee thinks Bella should try a school in New York
Charlie wants her to go an HBCU
She never told Charlie that she filled out applications for NYU and a school in Louisiana that she liked, and that she was expecting to hear back from them soon
Bella and Edward would spend hours at their favorite bookstore chain in Port Angeles looking through the summer releases
They went there so much they were offered membership cards where they’d get 15% off every purchase
Sleepovers with Alice where Bella would constantly ask her what she saw in that C*nfederate 
Bella’s first few weeks of school fall around the same time as her birthday
She doesn’t have that many classes with Edward or Alice which she finds odd since Forks High is a small school
 Bella’s birthday is pretty much canon
Renee gave her a gift box of her favorite Godiva chocolate, makeup and skincare products while Charlie got her a Nintendo Switch with a few games so they could play against each other on Mario Kart.
The birthday party is still the same and ends in disaster 
Edward starts distancing himself from her, and so does Alice
Alice doesn’t wait for her outside her art class so they could walk to physics 
Something is wrong, Bella can feel it in her bones even though Angela and Jessica tell her that it’s probably nothing
Bella is bracing for whatever is coming. Could it be Victoria seeking revenge and Edward doesn’t know how to tell her?
Something worse, much worse
Bella listens to him tell her that they have to leave Forks and it takes her a minute to realize that the Cullens have to leave town without her
“In the hospital, you said you’d stay!”
“As long as it was safe for you, and after what happened at the party, it’s clearly not safe for me to be around you, Bella.”
Edward kisses her on the forehead one last time before he leaves, probably forever 
Charlie isn’t home from work so she just works on dinner in a daze with the television volume up as loud as she can stand it, NCIS blaring from the living room
Charlie confronts her when he finds out that the Cullens left town and that’s when she just cries, acknowledging it for the first time in hours
The following weeks after his departure are touch and go. 
She goes weeks without getting her hair braided, and just keeps it in a bun/poof 
Bella doesn’t wear makeup no matter how many times Charlie tries to entice her with the Vogue YouTube channel
“C’mon Bella, you love Saweetie,” Charlie said as if she were a toddler again, trying to get her to eat Cauliflower 
It isn’t until Charlie calls her mom that she snaps out of it and Renee tells her what she needs to know
“Bella, I know you’re going through a hard time, but you have other things you need to be worrying about. It hurts, I know, but moping around ain’t gonna bring him back, and you’re not the first person to be dumped. You’re getting ready to graduate high school in less than a year, and you need to start thinking about your future.”
Renee had never spoken to her like that before but she realized her mom was right, she did need to start thinking about her plans for the future
After giving herself two more days to cry it out, Bella gets right back to business
She’s blasting Flo Milli while she gets ready for school, gets a new wardrobe and is now tutoring kids in school and La Push for some extra cash
Which is how she runs into Jacob again
She helps him with biology which turns into Charlie coming home and finding the two of them watching Guy's Grocery Games and arguing about which contestant they think is getting the boot next
Not that he’s complaining. He’s secretly hoping they’d get together
One Friday night in February, Bella invites him to the movies with a few friends from school
And it starts to go downhill when Jacob threatens Mike, who got sick halfway through the movie
Jacob reveals his feelings for Bella but she has to reject his advances
She loves Jacob, he’s been so sweet to her, but she cannot handle another relationship when she’s barely over the first one
When Bella calls him on Saturday morning to apologize, he doesn’t pick up the phone or answer any of her texts but she thinks nothing of it, chalking it up to him being sick
The next time she calls, she calls the house and Billy tells her Jacob is feeling better but that he’s not up for visitors, so she takes matters into her own hands
She spends the entire morning parked outside his house waiting for him
Bella doesn’t recognize him, he’s a lot bigger, his hair is shorter and his usually warm brown eyes look cold
Jacob tells her to go home and not to come back and Bella knows that Sam finally got him like he did Embry and he proceeds to tell her how he’s not good enough for her like the Cullens and alludes to the fact that he knows the Cullens’ secret
“You’ve been lying to everyone. Charlie… but you can’t lie to me, Bella. Go home. Or you’re gonna get hurt.”
She just stands there in the cold rain, getting soaked from head to toe, and she can’t tell if she’s crying or if it’s just the rain hitting her face
She has a strange dream involving a brown wolf the size of a horse, Jacob, and surprisingly, Edward
Bella confronts Jacob again, this time almost getting into it with Paul who turns into a wolf right in front her
Embry and Jared take her back to Sam’s house where she meets Emily
Bella and Emily get along well, and she finds out Emily is from the Makah tribe in Neah Bay, but she’s an elementary school math teacher’s assistant at the tribal school
She’s relieved when Jacob comes back to the house, safe and free of scratches and they walk along the beach and catch up
Bella is just happy that her friend is back and she vents about what’s really been bothering her: the encounter with Laurent, saying that Victoria is still looking for him
“You don’t have to worry about them. We took down the one with the locs easy enough.”
It doesn’t register for a minute so she just stands there, trying to make sense of it. “Y-you… killed Laurent?”
At this point, Bella is crying with tears of joy, her mascara smearing with tears and Jacob just holding her
Their friendship is back to normal in no time and pick up right where they left off
Bella has to remind Charlie, Angela and Jessica several times that she’s not dating Jacob 
Not that she hasn’t thought about it
It would be so easy, and both of their dads would be happy, and she wouldn’t have to lie like she does with Charlie and any of her friends
One day they’re just driving around, goofing off when she sees a group of kids jumping from the cliff
She’s getting her phone out to dial 911 before Jake stops her and tells her that they’re just cliff diving
Jacob offers to take her sometime, maybe when it’s warmer out, promising they’ll start at the lower level
It’s dark when they pull up to her house and Bella starts to invite him in for dinner when she notices a familiar car parked down the street
Bella remembers everything about that car, the quiet engine as she sat in the back seat while his C*nfederate brother drove them to Phoenix, the feel of the leather seats as she slept.
They go in anyway, and Bella is surprised to see Alice sitting on the couch reading a magazine, but she needs Bella’s help because Edward is in trouble
The audacity. The sheer fucking audacity
“I haven’t heard from you in almost a year. You avoided me in the halls, you blocked my number and my email, but now when you reappear from thin air I’m supposed to help you? What do I get out of this?”
Alice insists that Edward needs Bella’s help, that she can’t do this without her
At this point Bella knows that Charlie put a tracking device on her phone, and she’s not going to risk it
Jacob begging her not to go, and she really doesn’t want to go either
Instead she writes a quick letter telling Edward not to do what he’s thinking of doing just because they’re not together, saying that she’s happy with how her life is and she gives it to Alice to pass along
Despite EVERYTHING that happened, she wants him to be safe, so Bella gives Alice the letter
“What does this mean? Would they come back?” Jacob asked after Alice had left.
Bella knows what would happen if all of the Cullens came back: more young Quileute kids turning into wolves, and she doesn’t want that to happen, but she can’t stop it from happening either
“I really have no clue, but that’s their decision, and I have no hand in that game.”
It takes three days before the Cullens return to Forks, and she’s facing Edward again one day in the woods behind her house
Bella just tells him everything she’s been feeling since he left and more
“There isn’t any hope for us, there probably never was, and we can’t pretend any of this never happened, Edward. You know that. We can’t go back to normal, because it wasn’t normal in the first place. You were right the first time, and I should’ve listened.”
It goes without saying that Bella is going to keep the secret, but she’s also going to move on with her life, and wants Edward to do the same
Alexa, play “Clean” by Taylor Swift
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buckthegrump · 4 years ago
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Bucky Barnes x Female Reader
Summary: Y/n hates Bucky Barnes. Absolutely loathes him what makes it worse is that she has to share her office with him. Now with a promotion on the horizon she has to find a way to work with him and not against him.
Word Count: 1464
Warnings: this one has a lot of fluff, swears, sickness stuff, your welcome
A/n: this fic is just the gift that keeps on giving
The next time Y/n opened her eyes, there was an obscenely beautiful black man with his face directly in front of her. She squinted at him.
“How are you feeling?” The strange man asked.
“Like everything is on fire,” she answered, “Who are you?”
“I’m Sam. I’m a doctor.”
“What kind of doctor?” Y/n flipped onto her back. “Because with my luck, you’re some kind of ass doctor.”
She hadn’t realized that doctors still did house calls.
“I’m a physician, so I’m equipped to handle almost everything. So no, I don’t specialize in asses. But I could make an exception for yours.” Sam smiled at her.
“Even if I wasn’t sick, that line would make me gag.” Speaking of which, her stomach lurched again.
“C’mon, Sunflower,” Bucky spoke from her other side. He was still on the bed, his hand now on her hairline. His thumb was gently stroking her forehead. “You gotta sit up so he can check you out.”
“Oh, so he can also specialize in my boobs?” Y/n teased as she sat up.
“Making jokes even with a fever of 104,” Sam said, nodding, “I like this one, Barnes.”
“Stop flirting with your patient,” Bucky grumbled. 
Sam took her temperature and looked at her throat. While he was doing all this, Y/n’s eyes were trained on Bucky. His eyes were bouncing between her and Sam, he never actually made eye contact with her, but he looked at her.
As she looked, no, gazed at him. Because that’s what she was doing, gazing up at him like a lovesick fool. And she was decidedly not in love, she was however sick. But she was trying to remember why he called her sunflower. He’d been doing it since their first week together.
Had he seen the tattoo on her upper thigh? No, there hadn’t been an opportunity for that. Except for last night. This morning? When had she gone home from work?
“What day is it?” She asked, completely forgetting about her other question. She laid back down, not having the strength to sit up for much longer.
“It’s still Friday,” Bucky answered.
She opened her mouth to make a snarky remark but closed it and gagged again.
“Bucky claims that your temp spiked to 104, but it’s dropped back to a cool 102. So unless it spikes again and stays at 104 for longer than thirty minutes, you should be fine,” Sam said. “Barnes, flush her with fluids. Don’t let her die from dehydration.”
“Thanks, Sam,” Bucky said. He was obviously trying to rush him out the door, but Doctor Sam wasn’t having it.
Sam turned to Y/n smiling. “Give me a call once you’re better. I’ll take you to a fancy restaurant and let you order anything off the menu.”
“Goodbye, Samuel!” Bucky ordered.
“Gesh, I’m going.” Sam sent her a wink over his shoulder. “Tony says to stop ignoring his calls!”
“Tell him I’m not ignoring them, I’m a little busy. And he doesn’t have to call me all the time.”
The door slammed, and Bucky turned his attention to Y/n again. This time, he made eye contact with her.
“How are you feeling?” He asked.
“Better, but I’m cold again.”
“That would be the fever,” Bucky sighed. He sank down, so he was lying next to her. She snuggled into his right side, he stilled at the movement. He took a deep breath and unfroze. 
“Why do you call me sunflower? And why does Tony Stark ‘check-up’ on you? Are you some sort of genius?” She mumbled into his side.
“The first day we worked in the office together, there was a bouquet of sunflowers on your desk -”
“They were from my parents. Sunflowers are my favorite,” she whispered.
“Yeah, I know. The fact that your family sends them to you every year on your birthday or any other significant day kind of gave you away. And if that hadn’t been a giveaway, your tattoo would’ve clued me in.” She could hear the smile in his voice.
“How did you -” That’s when she realized that her shirt and sheets had been changed. “You’ve seen my boobies.”
“No, you changed your own shirt,” he chuckled, “You didn’t even wait for me to look away. Luckily, I have quick reflexes. But your little sunflower did peek out a few times. It’s cute.”
“Have you ever wanted to see my boobies?”
“Do you really want to know the answer to that? Because if I say yes, you will think I’m a pig who only ever thinks about women to sexualize them. On the flip side of that, if I say no, you might be offended that I wouldn’t want to see your bosom.”
“Well, knowing that you are the kind of person that says bosom, I’m leaning towards you saying no,” she chuckled.
“I just edited a romance novel. It was the first thing that came to mind that wasn’t tits,” Bucky said. Y/n laughed, a little obnoxiously for someone who was sick, but she couldn’t help it.
“Well, I forgive you for not saying tits while I’m all sweaty and gross.” She draped her arm across his stomach. “I’m sorry that I’m getting you all sweaty. And thank you for changing my sheets.”
“It’s no problem, sunflower. Now, go to sleep.”
“You’ll be here when I wake up?” Her body was exhausted, her eyes already closed.
“I’d never leave you,” he whispered, but Y/n wasn’t sure if she’d heard him correctly or if she would remember this when she woke up.
* * *
Y/n went in and out of consciousness. Oftentimes, Bucky was still there by her side. At one point, he’d changed into different clothes, not ones she recognized but definitely not the ones he’d worn to work on Friday.
There were a few times when Bucky hadn’t been in bed with her, but she heard him in the kitchen fussing about. He’d returned before she fell back asleep and made her take some sort of medicine and force-fed her broth. Ok, maybe he didn’t force-feed it to her, but there was absolutely him spoon-feeding her like an infant.
“I can feed myself, ya know,” she said. He made an oh-my-apologies-your-majesty face and held out the spoon for her. “No, I don’t want to.”
“Then quit complaining,” Bucky said. He returned to feeding her quietly. They sat there in silence; the only sound in the room was the occasional clink of the spoon hitting the bowl. “When you called yourself unloveable. . . Do you believe that?”
“I have no proof that it’s wrong,” she wiped her chin of a dribble that almost ran down her neck, “and that was more about romantic love than any other type of love.”
Bucky stared at her after putting the now-empty bowl down. Y/n, who was feeling better, was still a little sick and still a rambler. So she stupidly opened her mouth so more words could fall out.
“That time I told you about the corn maze? It’s the one and only date I’ve ever been on, until recently. But I don’t really count that as a date, given the outcome. And no one’s ever tried to kiss me. Not that I haven’t kissed anyone, but it was never in a romantic sense. It was once or twice for a play. And then once while I was drunk at a party, and that was the quickest of pecks.” She gasped, preparing herself to continue.
“Am I not attractive enough? I know I’m not a classic beauty or very hot. . . I just want to be desired by someone.” Y/n looked down at her lap. She was unable to look at him; she couldn’t risk the pity that was undoubtedly in his eyes. Hit with another wave of exhaustion, she laid back down, mumbling thanks to Bucky before drifting back to sleep.
* * *
Being asleep while sick had always been weird for Y/n. It was almost as if she was never truly asleep for most of it, at least after the first day.
Which is why she wasn’t sure it had happened. It was definitely a dream, but a small part of her had hoped it was real.
“I think you’re beautiful and very desirable. I don’t get how you’ve gone this long, thinking that no one will ever love you the way you want to be loved. It blows my mind that no one has even tried.” Bucky’s fingers lightly traced shapes across her arm that was still over his stomach. Or it had returned to his stomach. In her dream, and probably in real life as well, she pressed herself closer to him. “One of these days I’m going to have to tell you that.”
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metalbvcky · 4 years ago
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*Shows up late to the Stucky/Marvel fandom Post-EG with Starbucks and dozens of fics that I’ve read in hand* So you guys like fanfiction?
Yeah so, because of quarantine I’ve been consuming a ton of fic. I’ve probably read over 1.5 million words in just a couple months. So why not share what I’ve been reading! Note that some of these are older (popular) fics so veteran Stucky peeps will probably know of them since I not too recently delved into the realm that is Stucky fanfic. :)  
Down below are over a dozen fics with different tropes, Canon/AU’s, and what not. Please do heed the tags on some of these. For the curious: My AO3 bookmarks. 
Also shoutout to @stuckylibrary, the mods over there are doing the lords work. 
Key:  ♥ = My fave, S = Smut, DS = Dom/Sub 
Heroes are Easy, People are Hard ♥ by Halbereth, Lorien - Words: 152,284 | CW Fix It, Slight Canon Divergence, Recovery, Slow Burn
Shuri and Wanda cleared Bucky's triggers shortly after Killmonger's attempted coup, and he and Steve went on the run. But it turns out there's more to "fixing Bucky's head" than "getting Hydra out of it." When a group of rogue scientists manage to neutralize the serum and make Steve very sick--pre-serum "this is bad" kind of sick--and they're cut off from contact with Wakanda, Bucky knows only one person with resources to help. He calls Tony and surrenders on the condition that Tony tries to help Steve.
From there, it's basically three variously messed-up guys’ trajectories from "This Is Fine", "Reasonably Speaking I Know It’s Fine", "I Will Be Fine With It" to actually being fine, guest-starring a far-better-adjusted teenage boy who climbs walls, a 1957 Ford Thunderbird, two women with a keen sense of the absurd, and Bruce, the Zen master of “it’s fine that it’s not fine.” Add in the fact that Bucky's been secretly in love with Steve since the thirties and things only get harder. Learning to be a person is the hardest thing Bucky Barnes will ever have to do--but he's got company along the way.
Reap The Whirlwind by Cristinuke - Words: 18,221 | Canon Universe, Post CW, Domestic 
Bucky finds a cat. Or rather, a cat finds him.
Your Favorite Ghost by augustbird - Words: 21,013 |  Canon Divergence, Post TWS
It's harder than Steve ever expected to bring Bucky home.
Despite the threatening sky and shuddering earth (they remained) ♥ by praximeter (Zimario) - Words: 71,532 | Canon Divergence TWS, Body Modifications 
“They really didn’t want the mask to come off.” Hill thumbed through the scans, and pulled out a film that she then handed over to Sam, face mostly expressionless but for the flat line of her pursed lips.
Sam accepted the film and held it up to the light, angling so both he and Steve could see it, squinting at the outline of the Winter Soldier’s skull, and the blips of unnatural white that showed up, God, in his brain, not to mention about half his teeth, plus the mask, with its thin protrusions—
“Those are pins,” Steve realized. He looked over at Hill. “The mask—it’s nailed to his face.”
Hill’s face was as unmoved as ever. “Like I said. They really didn’t want it coming off.”
This city bleeds its aching heart ♥ by Renne - Words: 34,537 | Canon Universe, Fake/Pretend Relationship 
The one where Steve and Bucky pose as a happily married couple while on a mission for SHIELD, to catch an international arms dealer hiding in a suburban neighbourhood.
The Best Way to Wake ♥ by LeeHan - Words: 42,293 | Post TFA, Canon Divergence TWS, Recovery 
James Buchanan Barnes lay in a glass pod in the middle of the table, frozen since he fell. Steve’s hands were on the glass before he realized he’d moved. “Wait, Captain!” “Get him out,” Steve whispered, his hands searching for a clasp, a keypad, something. “Captain, we need to keep him in stasis—“ “I said get him out!”
Infinite Coffee and Protection Detail ♥ series by owlet - Words: 264,438 | Canon Divergence (sort of) 
The mission resets abruptly, from objective: kill to objective: protect
Undersell, overcommit by silentwalrus - Words: 10,222 | Canon Universe 
Steve goes so hard for Bucky that he becomes a licensed, practicing massage therapist.
Sparked Up Like a Book of Matches by Sena - Words: 26,734 | Post-TWS, Canon Universe 
Steve lives in Stark Tower and doesn't have much to do when he's not going after Hydra strongholds. He attends charity events to make Pepper happy. He goes hiking with Sam. He hangs out with Clint in Bed-Stuy and watches Dog Cops. Sometimes Tony gives him super alcohol in a sippy cup. Sometimes he sees Bucky out of the corner of his eye and wonders if it's real or if he's starting to lose his mind.
Alternately, the one with terrible jokes, a foot chase through the Lower East Side, and a tiny little robot named Shitcan.
Sugar Sweet ♥ from the Red Velvet series by ColorCoated - Words: 173,400 | Modern/Sugar Daddy AU, Age Difference, Slow Burn
"What's your name?" It wasn't even a line. He was just pretty and Bucky wanted a name to go with that face. With that strong jawline. With those deep blue eyes. A little smirk, "Steve."
Awww, Steve. He looked like a Steve. Bucky pursed his lips in a way he hoped was attractive, "You should buy me a drink."
College Student Bucky finds himself immediately attracted to Steve. He knows that Steve's a bit older than him, and that Steve himself is put off by the age difference. . . But that doesn't stop Bucky from wanting to climb him like a tree.
Steve and Bucky Go Away for the Weekend (and cook a lot) ♥ by E_Greer -  Words: 30,126 | Canon Universe, Domestic 
In which Steve coaxes Bucky out of the Tower for a birthday weekend away and sweet, fluffy domesticity ensues. Phlintasha helps keep Bucky calm, Steve has Opinions about how you set the table, stories are told, greenhouses are toured, baths are had, books are read, tears are shed, stars are gazed upon, and everyone makes Bucky feel loved. Includes Friday night dinner, Saturday morning breakfast, Saturday lunch, Saturday dinner, and Sunday brunch.
Dona Nobis Pacem by thegraytigress - Words: 65,214 | Canon Universe, Recovery 
"This job... We try to save as many people as we can. Sometimes it doesn't mean everybody, but if we can't find a way to live with that... Next time maybe nobody gets saved."
An incident on the battlefield exposes how much Steve's falling apart under the crushing weight of leading the Avengers after Sokovia. Now Bucky's adopting a new mission: save Steve before he destroys himself completely, even if it means the end of Captain America.
Give 'Em Hope ♥ by L1av - Words: 130,022 | Modern/Hospital AU, UA/Age Difference 
Dr. Steve Rogers likes to think that if his patients have hope- their chances of survival will increase. Bucky Barnes has a 20% chance of survival and a desperate yearning to experience life. Against Steve's better judgment, he develops a relationship with his patient. It's illegal. It's wrong. But it's giving Bucky the hope to keep going, so Steve's going to keep giving it, because he wants Bucky to survive. He needs him to.
You belong (to me) by hermionesmydawg - Words: 29,759 | S, DS, Canon Compliant, Post CW
"Hold on." Bucky lifted a finger and backed out of the doorway, returning a moment later with his cell phone. He snapped a photo of Steve, typed a few words, and then returned to his apple. "What the hell were you doing at a sex club last night?"
"Not having sex, if that's what you're wondering." An alert sounded from Steve's nightstand - a new Snapchat message. He rolled his eyes and unlocked his phone. Sam was always sending stupid Snapchats and frankly, Steve couldn't figure that goddamn app out and cursed whoever created that piece of shit.
The chat wasn't from Sam this time, however. It was a picture of himself, not looking guilty at all, with the caption "when your buddy catches you looking at p*rn."
Circling Back from the It’s Not Linear series by chaya - Words: 59,642 (Series Total: 136,782) | Canon Divergence
Steve looks for Bucky, Bucky finds Steve, Steve tries desperately to put Bucky back together. Bucky tries desperately to let him.
Continuing Education by 743ish, romanticalgirl - Words: 14,443 | S, Canon Universe/College, Shrunkyclunks 
Steve is invited to be a guest lecturer on the WWII unit for Bucky's college course. Bucky's more than happy to glean any extra knowledge (in more than just history) from Steve, and Steve's happy to eductate him. But then Bucky has to decide if he can handle the fact that Steve throws himself into danger, and if the sex is worth it. Or if it's not just sex anymore.
Salt & Sugar by GoldBlooded, stfustucky - Words: 19,598 | Modern/Restaurant AU
Steve Rogers is a bigshot celebrity chef in New York City, and Bucky Barnes is a classically trained pastry chef in Moscow.
When billionaire and mutual friend Natasha Romanoff calls on them to collaborate for her Memorial Day Benefit Gala, they both brace themselves to spend the week working with some jerk they're bound to hate. Except... Steve makes a burger that could bring Bucky to tears, and Bucky makes tartlets so beautiful Steve's sure they qualify as art. Maybe, just maybe, together they could make this a night to remember.
@/sgtbarnes1917 and @/cptrogers1918 by BayleyWinchester - Words: 114,203 | Canon Universe, Social Media Fic 
Bucky Barnes broke Twitter with one photo
Proprietary Information ♥ from the Additional Information series by notlucy - Words: 85,141 (Series Total: 165,871) | Modern AU, Age difference, Slow Burn
Okay, so Bucky Barnes has a crush on Steve Rogers. The guy's gorgeous, talented and, oh yeah, the Chief Design Officer of the biggest tech company in the world. In other words: he's so far out of Bucky's league that he might as well be in a different stratosphere.
Deep in the Woods (Where My Heart Has Been Waiting) by SilverMyfanwy - Words: 15,353 | Pioneer-AU, Shrinkyclinks 
Steve Rogers gets lost in the woods in a snowstorm. Bucky Barnes takes him in. Pioneer-era AU ish with Shrinkyclinks, evil chickens and a cabin in the woods.
A Bucky Odyssey by inediblesushi, thorstbench - Words: 9,952 | Shrinkyclinks,  Cap!Bucky, Nurse!Steve  
Bucky Barnes, Captain America, has a plan to make Steve Rogers, SHIELD nurse, fall in love with him. Confiding in the Internet might not be the best idea, though. So when the bad pick up lines do not work and Steve looks determined to staying single, he decides to be more himself and less what he thinks he should be.
At first I wanted to wait to post this until I finished a few more fics from my ever growing read-later list but what the heck, now or never! I’ll probably end up making a part 2 reclist by the amount of fic I’m reading these days. 
Happy reading and stay safe out there fellow Stucky trash members!!
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anogete · 4 years ago
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Watch me vomit up my thoughts
It’s been a while, hasn’t it?  I’m sorry I’ve disappeared on everyone.  It’s been... a year.  I think that probably goes for everyone, not just me.  If you’re interested in a personal life update, then read on.  If you’re looking for an update on my writing then I regret to inform you that I haven’t written a single thing this year.  Maybe next year, though.  There is always next year, right?  I think I saw a blurb that we’re getting Sam and Bucky back in March.  And Loki shortly after.  Maybe that will be my inspiration.
I’m fortunate enough to have a job that lets me comfortably work from home.  I’m also fortunate enough to own a home.  And my last blessing is that I don’t have kids, so I didn’t have to figure out the nightmare of childcare and home schooling like some of you.  My library on the second floor of the house has been my office since mid-March.  I’ve been transitioning into the Associate Financial Advisor roll this year and that has been going well.  I’m supporting the clients I’ve worked with as an assistant for the past nine years, so it’s been easy-going.  I’m able to order my groceries for pick up to avoid going in the stores and I live in an neighborhood where it is easy to get delivery from restaurants.  I’m incredibly lucky to have all these things going for me and I am thankful every damn day.
I fell into a bit of a funk this spring and early summer, but managed to pull myself out of it in August.  I started planning my meals, walking 2-5 miles every day, and exercising on the Peloton bike I bought a year ago.  I also started reading again and zipped through almost 50 books between June and now.  By November, I was feeling strong and healthy.  I felt like I had found a balance between work and activity and self-care.  I was still coming to terms with my grandma passing in March of last year and with Ferguson (my sweet doggo) passing in September of last year.  But I was trying and things were getting better.  I felt like I had my feet underneath me.
Lemme stop you here if you don’t want to read about death and some general medical stuff.  Because that’s mostly what you’re getting from here on out.
On November 21st, my mom texted me at 5:30am.  I got it right away because I usually wake up around that time, alarm or not.  She said she had dropped my dad off at the hospital because he was having difficulty breathing.  Apparently, he’d been feeling bad for a week, but insisted to everyone that it was just his sinuses draining.  I called her and began questioning her like I was cross-examining a star witness.  I was able to piece together a really fucking shitty story.
My dad always went to a friend’s house on Friday evenings to have a couple beers and hang out.  We’d all warned him since March that he needed to stop, but he insisted it was fine.  He bought into a lot of the cavalier attitude that the Trump fans have over this virus. Plus, he was 64-years-old and didn’t take any medication so he probably thought it was no big deal.  He spent a few hours at his friend’s house on November 6th.  Unbeknownst to anyone at the time, he received a call from that friend on November 11th that the friend and the friend’s wife had tested positive for COVID.  He didn’t share this info with my mother, my brothers, or my uncle, all of whom had been near him.  By November 15th, he was coughing but insisted it was drainage when my mom suggested he take something for it and go to the doctor.  By November 18th, he was worse and admitted to my mom that his friend had tested positive but that he hadn’t seen him for almost two weeks so his problems were just sinus-related and not COVID.  My mom hates confrontation, so she accepted this and didn’t tell anyone, including me and my brothers.  By November 19th, he had a fever and was having trouble breathing along with a persistent cough.  He finally agreed to take some cold medicine, but refused to call his doctor’s office despite my mom asking him many, many times.  At 4:30am on November 21st, he woke my mom and asked her to take him to the hospital because he couldn’t breathe well.  She dropped him off and returned home to text me since they wouldn’t allow her in the building.  She also texted my brothers, who admitted that they felt like they’d had a cold for several days.  I live 4 hours away and haven’t traveled since March, so I hadn’t seen any of them.
A nurse called my mom a couple hours after she dropped my dad off to tell her that he was positive for COVID and pneumonia and they were admitting him to put him on a bipap.  From what I understand, that’s the oxygen mask that pushes air into your lungs.  Later that day, the health department called my mom and told her to quarantine for two weeks.  My mom cooperated and gave them my brothers’ phone number (they live together), my uncle’s phone number, and the name and number of the person we suspected my dad was infected by (his friend).  My brothers opted to get tested and were positive.  They quarantined for two weeks and had mild to moderate symptoms (brief fever, very tired, cough, drainage).  My mom had virtually no symptoms with the exception of some drainage that she took Mucinex for.  She didn’t get tested, but she lived and slept in the same bed with my dad for a week while he was symptomatic.  If my brothers got it from 30 minutes in the same room as him, surely she got it as well.  My uncle and his son got tested, but they were negative.
My dad was cooperative with the doctor and nurses at first, but as the first day wore on he became irritated.  He’d been without his chewing tobacco (yes, I know: eww) for several hours and was going through nicotine withdrawal, but wouldn’t admit that to the nurses or doctor.  The next day he was put in ICU, still on the bipap, and even more unruly and rude to the staff taking care of him.  They called my mom to ask her to talk to him and convince him to cooperate.  They said if he couldn’t recover on the bipap and required a ventilator then “things would be very bad.”  My mom tried to talk to him by text and he just continued to insist that he was well enough to come home.
I used to be close to my dad when I was a kid, but we’d grown apart over my adulthood.  Over the past 20 years, my dad morphed into someone different.  Everyone around him, especially my grandmother, told me they saw this happen the same as I did.  The result was that my dad became someone I didn’t like and didn’t want to spend time with.  He also didn’t seem to know how to talk to me anymore.  To be fair, I didn’t give him much help in that regard.  I texted him to see how he was doing and the conversation quickly devolved into him complaining about the care and insisting he was well enough to come home.  I tried to reason with him and appeal to his love for my mom by saying that my fear was him coming home and giving her the virus.  He told me that he’d decided he was no longer contagious and this was just a bunch of bullshit.  This conversation via text continued through Monday and Tuesday (November 23rd and 24th), but it took a turn for the delusional.  The doctor can only assume that the virus and the lack of oxygen had resulted in hallucinations and delusions.  My dad told my mother and I that he was in an office building owned by a man named Mr. Pritt.  He said he was the only patient and that this man was having his workers experiment on him and that they would eventually kill him.  He demanded that we come get him immediately so he could recover at home.  When we told him he’d die if he came home because he was too sick, he insisted he wasn’t sick at all and became very angry with us.  He accused both my mom and I of conspiring to kill him because we wouldn’t help him.  One day he told me that I’d confirmed what he’d known all along.  I asked him what that was and he said, “That I always loved you more than you loved me.”  This really hurt because even though I knew he was loopy, I also knew that he’d probably actually had that though before.
He began refusing treatment on those days and wouldn’t accept the steroids they were trying to give him and raised hell when they tried to take him for a chest x-ray.  He also told them he didn’t want to be placed on a ventilator even though he had agreed to one when he was admitted.  He was texting all of his friends and telling them he needed a ride home.  He attempted to get up and leave the hospital twice, falling in the floor both times because he was so weak from lack of oxygen once he took the mask off.  He also told my mom and I that he was secretly removing the mask when the nurses couldn’t see to prove to them that he wasn’t sick.  He was taking and sending blurry pictures to us of the room as “evidence.”  He told my mom to forward the pictures to “the feds.”  The pictures were of his hospital bed, the whiteboard with his nurses’ and doctor’s names on it, his IVs, etc.  By the morning of Wednesday, the 25th, I was getting some off-the-wall texts from him.  He was begging us to come check him out of the hospital at that point and we were trying to play along and tell him we were getting everything in order for him to come home soon.  Eventually, he told me that he wasn’t getting out of there alive and that he loved me.  I told him I loved him too and begged him to do whatever the doctor said because the doctor wanted to help him get better.
A few minutes later, the nurse called my mom and asked if she’d been on the phone with my dad.  My mom said she and I hadn’t spoken to him by any way other than text since he arrived at the hospital.  The nurse said he had been on the phone with a woman, trying to convince her to come get him.  The nurse made him put the call on speaker so she could tell the woman that he wasn’t well enough to leave.  Because she was concerned that her message didn’t get through before my dad hung up, she called my mom to make sure he hadn’t convinced my mom to check him out against medical advice.  My mom assured her that we had no intention of breaking him out of the hospital, but she didn’t know who the woman was.  It wasn’t her or me.  We called a long-time former co-worker of my dad’s that I’ve known since I was a kid and she said she hadn’t talked to him.  We called his best friend and asked if he’d called and spoken to the man’s wife.  Not her either.  More on this later.  I’m sure you know where it’s going.
We were stumped, but didn’t have time to deal with it because the nurse practitioner called and told my mom that my dad was delusional and could no longer make his own decisions.  They said he had no chance of survival if they didn’t put him on a ventilator immediately.  My mom called me.  I told her to agree to it.  The nurse called her back and gave the phone to my dad.  He had agreed to the ventilator as well and wanted to tell my mom that he loved her and me and my brothers and his dog.  His speech was slurred and muffled from the bipap mask, but she at least heard that.  They intubated him right after the call.  He was on a paralytic for a week.  When they backed off on the paralytic, they had to increase his oxygen.  A week later, the nurse tried to kindly tell us that he wasn’t getting better and his chances of survival were low.  She suggested we start to talk about turning off the ventilator and letting him go.  We did talk about that, which was very upsetting for everyone, but the doctor said he’d been on the ventilator for two weeks and we’d give him one more week to see what happens.  By this point, he no longer had pneumonia. But the damage COVID did to his lungs couldn’t be repaired.
The ventilator was on full blast (highest pressure, highest oxygen) just to keep him somewhat stable.  The days were ticking by and he still wasn’t making progress.  Any step forward was followed by a bigger step back. My mom would call and get the update from the nurse most days, but I did call myself a few days.  When I’d call and talk to the nurse, I’d get a grim picture that my mom didn’t seem to get or understand. I talked to her on December 12th and asked her if she was trying to protect my brothers and I or if she really thought he was going to get better.  She admitted that she’d had a feeling for days that he wasn’t going to get better.  We decided to just wait for the doctor to call.  The nurse called my mom on Monday, December 14th and told her that my dad’s blood pressure was all over the place and they were struggling to keep him stable, that the ventilator was turned up to the highest settings and it was barely enough to keep him going.  My mom texted me and told me she asked them to call me.  The doctor called me within about 20 minutes and basically told me that my dad wasn’t going to make it.  They’d had him on a ventilator for 19 days and within a couple days his throat tissue would likely become necrotic from the pressure of the cuff keeping the tube in place.  They could only continue the ventilator if they could put in a trach and he wasn’t stable enough for that.  In addition, he needed more support than the ventilator could provide.  I was told he was either going to go into cardiac arrest while on the ventilator and die or they’d be forced to take him off the ventilator because of the damage to his throat.  The most damning thing he told me was that he’d removed the sedation but my dad didn’t wake.  He wasn’t responsive, wouldn’t squeeze their hands, wouldn’t flinch when they tested his reflexes, nothing.
I was told we could come sit with him and say goodbye when the ventilator was removed.  I asked when and the doctor said soon.  I live 4 hours from my parents, so I told him I’d leave right away and have my mom call to make arrangements for me to come to the hospital.  I called my mom and told her all this and asked her to let the hospital know.  I packed a bag and rushed out the door.  On my way out of town, the doctor called me back and asked if I was on my way.  My mom had told them that we’d come by the next morning and he was worried my dad wouldn’t make it through the night.  So, I had to have a shitty conversation with my mom about how we couldn’t schedule my dad’s death for 7am on Tuesday, that it needed to happen at 8pm on Monday.  I do not recommend these types of calls.
I got into town around 7pm and picked my mom up because she’d decided she wanted to come with me.  My brothers said they couldn’t handle it and decided to stay at my mom’s house.  My mom and I were taken to the COVID floor, given gowns, and gloves, told he was COVID positive so we’d need to continue to wear our cloth masks (no medical mask, is that safe?!), and escorted to his room in the ICU.  Guys, he looked so fucking tired and so sad.  It was heartbreaking.  The nurse said their ICU was full and most of the patients were in the same shape as my dad.  We talked to him for a few minutes, held his hand and all that shit.  He didn’t respond in any way, so I don’t know if he was even there.  We stepped out of the room while they removed the tube and gave him some medicine.  When we went back in, his breaths were labored and it looked like he was gasping for air. My mom almost lost it because she wasn’t expecting that.  I told her she could go wait in the hall and I’d stay with him until he passed.  The nurse was kind enough to give him a little more medicine to make it less dramatic, but it was still difficult watching him breathe in that way.  My mom sat so she couldn’t see his head to make things easier on herself.  We sat there with him for about 40 minutes before he passed away at 8:32pm on Monday, the 14th.
I stayed with my mom last week and helped her arrange a private graveside service and the burial.  She wanted to do a funeral and I thought that was the worst idea, so we agreed on doing a celebration of life next year when things are a little better (hopefully).  To my knowledge, I haven’t had the virus.  I operated under the assumption that my mom and brothers had it and were immune for now and wouldn’t transmit it.  So, I was able to be with them without mask, but I did wear a mask when anyone else was around.  I can’t say the same for the fucking funeral director and the locksmith’s employee who opened my dad’s safe for us, though.  I live in a bigger city and mask wearing is pretty wide-spread here, but I saw so many people in my hometown (a more rural area) who didn’t bother with them.
Anyway, while all these graveside preparations are going on my mom goes through the bag of personal items from my dad that the hospital gave us.  She tossed his clothes in the washer and placed his two rings into a bag to give to the funeral home so he could be buried in them.  She also pulled out his wallet and his cell phone.  His wallet has a picture that was obviously cut from an old driver’s license of a woman named Deb.  Apparently, this woman lives in Florida and had attended junior high school with my dad.  About two years ago, my parents took a trip to Florida and visited with her for several days.  She even friended my mom on Facebook.  So, the old driver’s license picture of her was very weird.  What was even more disturbing?  His wallet also contained a plastic bag of hair that very obviously is not my mom’s.  And there was a piece of paper with three phone numbers on it.  His phone was locked with a PIN and was set to wipe itself after 20 incorrect tries.  I did tried to break into it, but wasn’t successful.  My mom admitted that she suspected he’d been talking to someone on his phone for years, but she never directly confronted him about it.  She’d just make comments about him always texting on his phone and being secretive.  Two Christmases ago he bought her a ring at a store that she has an online login to.  This particular store posts the receipts for all purchases linked to the customer’s account to the website.  She saw that my dad had purchased two pieces of jewelry even though she only received one.  My dad has never in his life bought me a Christmas present without my mom assisting, so she knew it wasn’t for me.  She still didn’t confront him, though.  She just told him that she could see the itemized receipts online.
I sympathized with my mom because I’ve experienced the infidelity of a partner in a relationship and if I were her then I’d want to know.  But I also told her that I don’t know digging into it will make things any better and may not even give her the truth.  He’s gone and there is nothing that can be done about that or anything else.  While I was running errands for her the day before the graveside service, she messaged Deb in Florida and asked if she wanted her picture back.  She also called the three phone numbers in his wallet.  One went to Deb.  The other two were the cell phone and work phone of my dad’s best friend’s wife, Anne.  The same friend and wife who likely gave the virus to my dad.  My mom told me when I got back that she’d done this and admitted she’d always felt like my dad was talking to Anne and might have an inappropriate relationship with her.  I suspect my mom is right.  Gut instinct is usually accurate.  She said she didn’t think anything physical was going on with Deb, but she did think my dad was carrying on a flirtatious relationship with her via text.  In both cases, he tried to hide it.  And if you hide it, then you know it’s wrong.  That night Deb messaged my mom back and said she had heard about what happened to my dad and was very sorry.  She said that my dad was always clear that he was married and nothing went on that was inappropriate, but that he gave her someone to talk to when her husband was sick and dying five years earlier and they’d always kept in contact.  Again, I don’t think my mom can count on anyone to give her the full story without spin or deceit.  A couple days ago, she texted me a picture of a receipt from my dad’s truck.  It was from last Christmas from a department store.  It had two pieces of jewelry on it.  She looked them both up using the UPCs listed and found the necklace he gave her last year and a ring she doesn’t recognize.  We don’t know if he was giving this jewelry to Deb in Florida or Anne, his friend’s wife.  Or someone else we don’t even know about.  And we’re probably never going to know.  Do I want to call Deb and Anne and tell them I want to full story?  Fuck yeah.  Do I think it will fix anything?  Fuck no.
TL;DR?  I finally found some balance in my life late this summer.  This balance was destroyed when my dad got COVID and died after three weeks in the hospital.  And when you’ve already got a not-so-great relationship with your dad, you get all kinds of feels when he dies in a traumatic way and then you find out he’s been screwing around on your mom.  I also have lots of anger toward him for knowingly exposing my other family members to the virus simply because he didn’t want to own up to getting it after doing something we’d all told him to stop doing.
Health-wise?  I think I’m okay.  It’s been almost ten days since I was with him in the hospital and seven days since his graveside service.  I haven’t had any symptoms yet and I think most people show symptoms by now.  Regardless, I’ve been at home since I returned last Thursday evening and I intend to stay home until January 2nd.  My boyfriend is also home and will be here until January 2nd as well.  Just to be safe.  My brothers are mostly recovered, but both still have a bit of a cough.  My mom never had much in the way of symptoms and seems fine.  My dad was 64 and overweight.  We found out once he was admitted to the hospital that his regular doctor had told him he was a diabetic and my dad insisted on “treating” that with cinnamon instead of actual medicine.  Other than those things, he didn’t have any health concerns.  Be careful, ya’ll.
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Maybe it wasn’t written in the stars
Happy (belated) Holidays, @spoop-geist! You asked for “any kind of Danny angst” - I hope this qualifies.
Word count: 9642
CW: implied/referenced suicide
 Tucker accepted the call almost immediately, as usual. His room was dark, his face illuminated only by the light of the phone screen.
 “Danny, hey. You’re looking surprisingly happy.”
 “What, me?” Danny’s smile widened. “I don’t know what you mean.”
 “Really, though - this is the first time I’ve seen you really smile since you’ve been in the hospital. What’s the occasion?”
 Danny paused for effect, then said, “I told my parents.”
 “Oh, wow. That’s …”
 “You guys were right - if whatever’s making me sick is a ghost thing, they might be able to help. I didn’t want to risk being stuck here longer than I needed to be because I was too much of a coward to tell them.”
 “Nobody thought you were a coward, man. Telling them took a lot of courage.”
 “Yeah, I suppose.” Danny laughed awkwardly. “I actually waited until right before visiting hours were over, so that the hospital staff would make them leave afterward. I was afraid they’d need some time to cool down, you know.”
 “But I take it the conversation went well.”
 “What gave it away?” he asked, grinning. “Yes! Yes, it went well. Tucker, you have no idea the relief I’m feeling. I want to cry. I cried already. I’m just … it still doesn’t feel real.”
 “Congratulations? Is that the right mood?”  
 “I think that fits, yeah. Thanks.” Danny flopped back onto his pillow, careful not to pull on the tube connected to his oxygen mask. “It feels so good to be done with it.”
 “Have you told Sam?”
 “I’m going to as soon as I hang up.”
 “You called me first? She’ll love that.”
 Danny frowned. “I didn’t mean anything by it; you were just first in my recent contacts.”
 “Sure, but she’s your girlfriend.”
 “What? No she isn’t.”
 “She is a girl, yes? And you’re dating her?”
 “We went on a date. We’re not, like, officially a couple.”
 “So, what, you’re courting her?”
 “Yeah.” Tucker looked surprised. “Is that alright with you?”
 “I just don’t understand why you’re so old-fashioned about relationships. Have you been overshadowed by a dead Victorian boy or something?”
 “Cute, yeah, that must be it. Obviously I’m the one here who’s completely out of touch. You know, I don’t think the guy who thinks that two years is a generation is an authority on what is or isn’t old-fashioned.”
 “It can be, depending on the context, and also that’s irrelevant, and also I think you should call Sam.”
 “Okay, yes, I will.”
 “And, you know, take care of yourself. And let me know if you need anything and all that. I wanna be here for you.”
 “You’re always there for me, Tuck. And I will. Thanks.”
 “Anytime.”
 Danny hung up, found Sam’s name and hovered his finger over the “call” icon. She wouldn’t really be upset that he hadn’t called her first, right? He took a breath and tapped the button. A moment later, Sam’s face appeared, smiling. She’d taken her makeup off for the night, but Danny knew she probably wouldn’t be asleep for another couple of hours.
 “Danny!”
 “Hey.”
 “What’s up? Any news?”
 “No news about the, you know, but I do have good news of a more personal nature.”
 “Oh?”
 “I told my parents.”
 Her jaw dropped, just a little. “That you’re Danny Phantom?”
 “Yeah.”
 “And everything’s good?”
 “It really is. It was super emotional and admittedly I did say some stuff I wasn’t really planning on saying, and some of it was pretty mean, maybe justified but still mean, but they were totally understanding and apologetic - I mean, really, they apologized! They said they were wrong and they promised to change and that whole schtick. And it just felt -” his voice cracked slightly, and he suddenly felt his eyes stinging. He started blinking rapidly to keep the tears at bay. “It felt really good, to hear them say all that. And to just have this off my shoulders.” No tears escaped his eyes, but he kept blinking to try to make the stinging go away. “Sorry.”
 “You’re allowed to cry, Danny. It’s okay. Besides, I’m goth. Crying is, like, our favourite emotion.”
 Danny chuckled. “I don’t think crying is an emotion.”
 “It is in some cultures.”
 “Okay.” He took a couple of deep breaths and checked his pulse oximeter - 91%, not too bad. “Well, yeah, that’s my news.”
 “That’s really great, Danny. I’m really happy for you. And proud. I know how big this was.”
 “Yeah. Yeah, it … it was nerve-wracking. But worth it.”
 “Was Jazz with you?”
 “Yeah, she’s been really leaning into the overprotective-big-sister role since she got back.” Danny cringed slightly as he remembered how she’d come into his hospital room for the first time and almost immediately started lecturing a nurse about the lack of natural sunlight Danny was getting. “I would have thought going to college might mellow her out, but she’s more the same than ever. Not that I’m complaining that she was with me when I talked to mom and dad. I don’t think I could have done it without someone I knew would have my back.”
 “You know I or Tucker could have been there, right? We wouldn’t have minded.”
 Oh, shit, should he have asked her to be there? Did she expect that because she was his quote-unquote girlfriend? “Well, it was kind of a family conversation.”
 “Right, totally fair. Have you told Tucker, by the way?”
 “Uh, yeah, I told him like a second ago, and then he made me hang up to tell you. He was afraid you’d be offended that I called him first.”
 “Ha! Probably because he would have been offended if you’d called him second.”
 Danny smiled. “Probably. I love him, but he is a tiny bit jealous sometimes.”
 “Do you remember that time …”
 “Ugh, no, I don’t, let’s not talk about it.”
 “Sure thing. So you told your parents, they were cool, was that the end of the conversation?”
 “They said they’re gonna set up their lab to try to figure out what’s wrong with me, working under the assumption that it has something to do with my ghost half. Not thrilled about the fact they’re probably going to need to take, you know, samples. But the alternative is worse, so.” He shrugged, then realized his shoulders weren’t in frame.
 “I’ll keep praying, too. With the combined powers of modern science and the Almighty, I’m sure you’ll be out of there in no time.”
 “Thanks.” There was a pause. He felt like he was supposed to say something else, but he didn’t know what.
 “So, it’s a good thing you called, because my grandma and I were planning to bake some cookies for you, but I wanted to ask if I’m allowed to bring homemade stuff into the hospital. Oh, and my grandma wanted me to let you know that she’s praying for you, too.”
 “Tell her thanks and I’m not sure about the food. I’ll ask the nurse next time they come in. Text me so I don’t forget.”
 “Will do.” There was a pause again. Danny wondered how to tell the difference between an awkward pause and a regular pause. “Did you have any other pressing news to share?”
 “I don’t think so. Things are pretty dull around here.”
 “So you’ve said. Okay, I’ll see you tomorrow, possibly with cookies.”
 “Sounds good.”
 “I love you.”
 “Love you too.”
 Sam disconnected, and the silence Danny was left in wasn’t really silent at all. The beeping of the heart monitor, the ticking of the wall clock, and the hiss of the oxygen tank were so much more noticeable when they were the only things to pay attention to. He thought, not for the first time since he’d been here, about the vacuum of space. No sound, just the gentle darkness enveloping him and the billions of stars to keep him company. They wouldn’t twinkle, they’d just be points of light, the photons having traveled uninterrupted for thousands of years just to reach his eyes. He wished he could see the stars now. He wished he could fall asleep every night and wake up every morning surrounded by stars. In a thousand lifetimes, he was sure he’d never get tired of the view.
 ***
 Jazz stepped into the cramped hospital room holding two water bottles.
 “I know you said soda,” she began, not even waiting for Danny to protest, “but that stuff has a lot of sodium, and I know I’m not a doctor, but you really need to stay hydrated, so I think you could stand to drink a water bottle now and then.” She held one of the bottles out, and he took it with as little hesitance as he could muster. It was cold, at least.
 “Sure, I can do that. If it’ll make you feel better.”
 “Well, I thought maybe you would do it for your own health, but I’ll take it.” Danny opened the bottle and took a few gulps as Jazz took a seat in the plastic chair beside his bed. “So, how are you feeling?”
 Danny rolled his eyes; it was at least the dozenth time she’d asked the exact same question in the past two weeks. It would be fine if she would accept “okay” as an answer, but she always wanted more detail.
 “About mom and dad, good but a little nervous. I’m glad they’re so accepting of Danny Phantom, but sometimes it feels like they care more about him than me, you know? It’s all they want to talk about.” Jazz nodded seriously, like she was being briefed on a military assignment. He almost wished he hadn’t said anything. “Bored, otherwise,” Danny continued with a shrug. He looked at the water bottle in his hand. “Slightly craving soda. But, you know, this is good, too.” He uncapped the bottle again and downed the rest. He knew if he waited until it was warm he just wouldn’t drink it.
 “Have you talked to mom and dad about how you feel?”
 “Well, no.”
 “They won’t change if they don’t know there’s a problem.”
 “I guess not. But I don’t want to start a fight, especially when it seems like everything is basically going well.”
 “I can understand that, but you deserve better than ‘basically going well.’ You deserve to be happy, Danny.”
 “Sure, but you don’t think there’s even a small chance that starting a fight about this would make me less happy in the long run?”
 “It doesn’t have to be a fight. Mom and dad still love you, even if they aren’t always the best at showing it. They want you to be happy.”
 Danny fiddled with the tube of his oxygen mask. “I know.” Of course he knew that. But he also knew that them loving him didn’t necessarily mean that he could get through to them. He’d thought he’d done that already, when they agreed to reconsider their all-ghosts-are-evil stance, but even the best-intentioned leopard could only change so many of its spots at once.
 “Well, I hope you figure something out that works for you. In the meantime, I can try to help with the boredom, but not for too long, unfortunately. I have some readings I need to do before tomorrow.”
 “Oh, I mean, you could go home if you need to do homework. I don’t want to distract you.” He didn’t want her to leave, of course, but he knew from experience this wasn’t the best environment for focusing on schoolwork, especially since she already had the added difficulty of not going to class because she was visiting him.
 Jazz smiled faintly. “I was thinking I could do it here, if you don’t mind just sitting in silence with me for a while. And, hey, do you have any homework?” Danny’s slight wince apparently answered the question for him. “So why don’t you work on your homework and I’ll work on mine? We can be accountability buddies.”
 “What’s that?”
 “What, accountability buddies? It’s when two or more people agree to do something together and keep each other accountable for doing what they set out to do. A lot of people have accountability buddies for exercising - maybe that’s where the term is from, I’m not sure - but it works just as well for studying.”
 “Leave it to you to take a thing that jocks do and make it a nerd thing.”
 It was Jazz’s turn to roll her eyes. “Danny, I don’t know if anyone has informed you, but you are, in fact, also a nerd. I know a lot of people who would say you’re a heck of a lot nerdier than I am, actually.”
 “I wasn’t …” He shook his head. “Whatever.”
 “Oh, wait, was that a compliment? If it was, thank you, but I didn’t come up with the idea of having a buddy to keep you accountable for schoolwork. Really, that’s basically what a study group is.”
 “Is it? I guess so. I’ve never been in a study group. Kinda thought they were just a plot device in movies and TV shows to get the cast together.”
 “Well, they can certainly fill that role, too, but they are real, and they can be pretty cool.”
 “You would think studying is cool.”
 Jazz frowned. “What makes you say that?”
 “That you think studying is cool?”
 “That you don’t. Where is this too-cool-for-school attitude coming from?”
 “It really doesn’t need to be that deep, Jazz. I was just teasing you. That’s a normal thing; it doesn’t mean I have some deep-seated mental issues.”
 “Oh, trust me when I say that we all have some deep-seated mental issues, and denying that fact never helped anyone. For example, I think maybe you’re not doing as well in school as you want to, and you also think that studying is for losers. Do you think you’re going to get better at school while thinking that?”
 “I never said that I think studying is for losers, and even if I did, how I do in school is based on, you know, the work I do, not how I feel about it.”
 “But the work that you do is a behaviour, and behaviours are caused by - and cause - thoughts and feelings. It’s all connected. So if you want to change your behaviour, one of the best things you can do is identify the thoughts that are causing it. That’s basically how cognitive behavioural therapy works.”
 “Ok, cool. And …?”
 “And, if you want help with that, I can print off some worksheets for you.”
 “Would that make you feel better?”
 “Will you promise to at least read them? Proper CBT is a little bit labour intensive, and it’s really not the same experience working with just a book and not a therapist, but I think it could be useful for you to learn some of the language and techniques, even without committing to the whole process. It becomes another tool in your toolkit, if nothing else.”
 “Another weapon in the arsenal against … bad mental health?”
 Jazz hesitated a second before smiling and saying, “Exactly.”
 “Then sure, I will do that, then. Who doesn’t love more weapons?”
 “Yes, that does make me feel better.”
 “Cool. Now, didn’t you say you had homework?”
 “I believe we both did, if I’m remembering correctly.”
 Danny glared ruefully at his backpack for a moment before he reached into it and pulled out a textbook and a binder. “Yeah, yeah, I’m doing it.”
 ***
 “Hey, sweetie.”
 Danny took out his headphones and sat up. “Hey, mom, long time no see.” He was joking, of course - she’d been here every day for the past month, except yesterday. But she frowned, and Danny wished he hadn’t said anything.
 “I’m sorry - I wanted to come visit yesterday, but -”
 “It’s okay, mom. I was just joking. You’re fine.” She smiled weakly, but her eyes still looked sad. Danny had a feeling his answering smile was not much more convincing. “So, what news?” She didn’t need to say anything - the way her face fell, losing even the shadow of happiness, was answer enough. But she spoke anyway.
 “We’ve … ruled out a lot of things. So, we are making progress.” Danny didn’t think that was the way she thought of it. “But we still don’t know …” anything useful, Danny filled in mentally.
 “You don’t know how to cure me.”
 “Sweetie, I’m so sorry, but we have to keep our … chins up. We’ll get through this together.” Had she been about to say ‘keep our spirits up’? Was she trying to make a pun, and then thought better of it, or did she not realize it would sound like a pun until she’d already started talking? He thought about asking, but he didn’t want to accidentally upset her again. He kept doing that. Obviously this whole situation was a bummer, but over the past couple of weeks, it seemed that people always got sadder when he spoke to them. As if it wasn’t bad enough that his health was a burden on everyone, apparently he had a talent for saying the wrong thing. He smiled again, trying to make it look more genuine.
 “I know we will. I know you and dad are kicking ass in the lab - you’re two of the smartest people I know. If anyone can do this, it’s you. I mean, it’s all of us, the Fentons, together. We don’t give up, right?” Why did that sound so unconvincing? His mom nodded.
 “Of course we don’t. Speaking of which, your father and I are still trying to convince the doctors that we can take care of you at home, but they’re still pretty nervous, given how …” She glanced at Danny’s oxygen tank. “… how quickly things might deteriorate if something did happen.” Danny nodded. He’d only had one scare since the one that had landed him in the hospital in the first place, but he was certainly grateful for the ability to summon a nurse so quickly with the push of a button.
 “I do get where they’re coming from, but also, it would be nice to go home.” He wondered what home would be like. Would they keep him in the lab, so they could run tests more easily? Would he be able to walk around the house? Would it feel like the nightmares where he was trapped down there, being experimented on? Or maybe he was just being paranoid. Maybe he would be able to sleep in his bed, in his room, and everything would be almost normal except for the oxygen tank and the regular visits to the doctor.
 Danny shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess I trust the doctors to make the best decision. But, thanks for trying. And, you know, for … everything.”
 She came to the side of the bed and crouched down, so her eyes were level with his, and she took his hands in hers. It was too close; Danny wanted to pull away. He didn’t know why. But he resisted the urge, and he met her gaze. “You know your father and I would do anything for you, Danny. And do it happily. We love you.”
 “I know, mom. I love you too, and dad. You guys are the real superheroes.” He smirked at that last part, and it wasn’t even faked. It was just such a corny thing to say, he almost laughed. Especially since it wasn’t true at all.
 “Aww, Danny.” She looked like she wanted to cry, and she leaned in for a hug, which Danny returned awkwardly, mostly because of the positioning, he told himself. “I love you so much,” she muttered into his shoulder. “You know that right?” She pulled back to look at his face again, and she stroked his hair. Danny smiled what he hoped was the right amount. “Your father and I love you, and we want nothing more than for you to be happy and healthy and safe.”
 “Mom, if you’re trying to apologize again for trying to hunt me …” She was shaking her head. “Okay, good.”
 She stood up, then leaned down again briefly to kiss the top of his head before going to sit in the chair against the wall. “So, how are other things? How’s school going? I hope your teachers are cutting you some slack.”
 “Eh, not really, but it’s fine. I mean, I have plenty of time to do homework, and no distractions, so I’m actually keeping up pretty well. Better than before, I think.” He frowned. “I hope that doesn’t reveal some kind of uncomfortable truth about me.”
 “I wonder if ...” she began, then she apparently thought about whether to say what she’d been thinking. A moment later, she said “You haven’t been ghost hunting, right? That must make a pretty big difference.”
 “Yeah, I haven’t, that’s true.” He wished he could, but his grasp of duplication just wasn’t at that level, and he couldn’t exactly practice, now. “It is okay out there, right? I mean, you and dad are trying to figure out what’s up with me; you can’t also be out ghost-hunting all the time. And you banned Sam and Tucker from ghost-hunting alone, so you don’t have a lot of help, besides the red huntress, I guess. I’d hate to think … I don’t know. That the town was descending into chaos or something because I’m not there.”
 “That’s sweet of you to worry. It’s also very in-character of you to feel like you’re holding all of Amity Park on your shoulders, but I can assure you that we’re managing to keep the chaos firmly at bay, even without you. It’s almost as if you don’t really need to push yourself to exhaustion. Like, maybe, you can actually relax and just be a teenager.”
 “Hm. That’s one theory, I suppose.” He said it with a straight face, but then he cracked a smile, and his mom did too, and he was starting to feel like this whole conversation thing was going the way it was supposed to. In a more wistful voice, he said, “Still, it would be nice to go outside. See the stars, feel the wind in my hair, that sort of thing.”
 “Well, when you get out of here, you’ll be able to do all that and also get your schoolwork done, since you won’t be out ghost-hunting until the sun rises anymore.”
 “No, definitely not.” Not unless it was really important.
 “Though, I’m curious about your grades … Do you feel mentally the same way you did before, like your mental capacity for doing schoolwork is the same, and your improvement is just because you have more time, or do you feel like your mental abilities are different now, so that the work feels easier? Does that make sense?”
 “Uh, yeah, I think so. I think my mental abilities are the same, and the work still feels pretty hard … I guess math is easier, just because I’ve had time to catch up and read and watch stuff online that explains the parts I didn’t understand, so now I have that solid foundation to build on the new stuff we’re learning. But I don’t think everything is easier in general. I think it’s just time. I suppose I am sleeping better, and that’s supposed to be a big deal for attention span and stuff, but I don’t think I’ve noticed a huge difference.”
 “And you haven’t been in ghost form at all since you’ve been in the hospital, right?”
 Oh, of course. This was about him being half ghost. Everything was, nowadays, wasn’t it? “No, I haven’t. How could I transform when I’m hooked up to a heart monitor? I think someone might notice the sudden lack of a pulse.”
 “Yes, I think that would be a cause for concern.” She said it with a joking tone and a half-smile, but Danny was having trouble matching the expression now. “And you don’t feel like staying in human form for this long has had any mental effects, deleterious or beneficial?”
 “I don’t think so.” His voice was flat.
 “Don’t you find that interesting?”
 “I guess. Can we talk about something else?”
 She looked disappointed. “Of course we can, if that’s what you want.”
 “It’s just -” Danny stopped. He knew he should say something. He wanted to, even.
 “What is it?”
 “I don’t … like it … that …” He looked down at her feet. This was so much harder than it needed to be.  “… it feels like you always want to talk about … my ghost half. I feel like every conversation always ends up there, and it makes me feel like you … I mean …” He was trying his hardest to do the whole ‘I-statements' thing, but gosh it was annoying. “It makes me feel … not … seen. Like you’re only seeing me as a half-ghost, now, instead of that being just one thing about me.”
 “Oh, sweetie.” She walked back over to the bed, knelt beside it, and gave him another awkward hug. “Baby, I’m sorry. I thought you would want to talk about it. I didn’t want you to think it was something I was afraid of or judging you for. I wanted it to just be a normal thing to talk about, like school or friends. I’m so sorry that I did the opposite.” She pulled away from the hug, but left her hands on his shoulders as she met his eyes. “I promise I don’t see you any differently, Danny.”
 Danny was very tempted to accept the apology and leave it there. But he didn’t think he’d be brave enough to broach the topic again, so whatever he wanted to say, he knew he’d better say it now. “But you do, though. I mean, I expected you to. I’m literally a ghost - that’s different. But when you ask me about ghost stuff, it’s never just … normal questions, like you would ask about school or friends. You always sound more like a scientist than a mom.” She looked hurt by that, and Danny immediately regretted his words. “I mean, I’m not trying to say you’re not being a good mom or anything like that, just … You do see me differently. You are a scientist, and I am a ghost, and that’s … I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m trying to say.”
 His mom appeared to be thinking about what he’d said. She looked upset, but he didn’t know whether it was about-to-start-crying upset or about-to-start-lecturing upset. Finally, she just said, “I don’t understand.”
 “I mean … I don’t expect you to see me the same way, but I guess I don’t want you to treat me differently? Or, no, that’s not … I’m not saying I don’t want to talk about me being half ghost, because that is part of who I am and I do want to talk about it sometimes, but I’d rather, when we talked about it, that you would be more interested in, you know, me and how I’m feeling and stuff, instead of my … biology or psychology or whatever.”
 “Danny, I’m trying to understand, but I thought that’s what I was doing. I thought I was asking you about your feelings and experiences. I do care about you as my son, not some science experiment.” She was definitely looking closer to about-to-start-crying upset, now, and Danny had to look away.
 “Okay, well, sometimes it doesn’t feel that way, I don’t know. Maybe I’m just biased, but sometimes, a lot of the times, it feels more like you’re gathering data for a report instead of just talking to me.”
 “I want to do better, but I’m not sure how.”
 “Just … maybe let’s just stick to not talking about ghost stuff unless I bring it up first. Does that work?”
 She nodded. “I can do that.”
 “Thanks.”
 “I love you, Danny.”
 Danny leaned against her shoulder, and she responded by wrapping him up in her arms. The hug still felt awkward, but he didn’t really want to pull away.
 “I love you too, mom.”
   ***
 “I’m not sure I would’ve come back so quickly,” Valerie said. “It might be nice to get a vacation from all the high school bullshit.”
 “Yeah, I’ll be honest, I somehow managed to forget how much of an outcast I was, and having tubes stuck in my face hasn’t helped, if you can believe it.” Danny looked idly around the cafeteria. Nobody was openly staring at him, but he saw a few people throw glances his way. He shook his head and turned back to Valerie. “But trust me, being stuck in a hospital room is no vacation.” Still, he wished he’d at least tried to convince the school he needed to stay home a while longer. Maybe he could have pulled it off.
 Sam eyed the ambiguous meat that had slipped off Danny’s fork while he wasn’t paying attention. “You can’t tell me that the food wasn’t better, at least.”
 “The hospital mostly just had prepackaged stuff, so, I guess that was better, but I kinda like getting different foods every day, even if they suck. Variety is the spice of … food, I guess.”
 “I think spice is the spice of food.”
 Danny didn’t reply - he’d just noticed someone walking purposefully toward their table, and he groaned. Sam and Valerie followed his gaze, and Valerie muttered,
 “Not this again.”
 Danny shot a look at her, and then at Sam, who shrugged as if to say, ‘I don’t know, either.’ Danny wanted to ask Valerie what she meant, but obviously that would have to wait.
 “Fenton,” Wes began, a smile that could only be described as sarcastic plastered across his face, “it is so good to see you again. It’s been so quiet the past few weeks.”
 “Oh, has it? Where did you go?”
 “Oh, no, no I’ve been around. But it’s actually funny that you say that, because there is someone else who’s usually here who -”
 “Just spit it out,” Sam said. “The faster you’re done, the sooner I don’t have to be talking to you anymore.”
 Wes didn’t look at all phased, but of course he didn’t. If he was capable of being phased, he would have stopped bothering Danny and his friends years ago. Danny thought about telekinetically untying Wes’ shoelaces, but remembered that he had switched to slip-ons last semester precisely to avoid that.
 “Fine. Nobody has seen Phantom since Fenton here was in the hospital. That is,” he said quickly, sensing that everyone at the table was getting ready to cut him off again, “until last night.” Oh, right. Danny had been so excited to see the stars again, he hadn’t even thought about being stealthy. “Apparently he was spotted over a park by multiple people. Danny, you got home from the hospital yesterday, right?”
 “No, I’ve been here the whole time. I don’t know how you missed me.” Wes rolled his eyes. Sam smirked. Valerie was looking down at her food. She looked … uncomfortable. Embarrassed, maybe? What the heck had Wes said to her?
 “Well, I’m just saying,” slogan of assholes everywhere, Danny thought, “that it’s an interesting coincidence.” He turned to Valerie, who was still avoiding eye contact with everyone. “Don’t you think it’s interesting, Valerie?”
 Valerie’s expression went from awkward to pissed in no seconds flat. She glared at Wes, stabbing her fork in his direction as she spoke. “I think you need to back off. Nobody wants you here, nobody wants to talk to you, nobody gives a crap what you think. And, like you so nicely pointed out, Danny just got out of the hospital. You couldn’t leave him alone for twenty-four hours? Come on, man. Just leave.”
 Wes raised his hands in surrender. “Okay, okay, I’m -”
 “She said leave, dude,” Sam snapped. “That means now.” Hands still raised, Wes backed away from the table without saying another word. Danny mentally reached out to form a small ecto-shield under Wes’ foot, causing him to slip and fall onto his ass to the laughter of the nearby tables.
 Danny turned his attention back to Valerie, who was looking at the clock. They were about ten minutes into the period. “Hey, sorry about him,” Danny said. Valerie met his gaze, her expression somewhere between surprised and confused. “I wish I knew how to make him only harass me instead of everyone around me.”
 “Oh, it’s … it’s fine, Wes is Wes, it’s not your fault.”
 “He never, I don’t know, made you uncomfortable or anything, did he? I mean, more than just being his normal jerky self?”
 “No,” she said, very quickly.
 Danny shot a sideways glance at Sam, who had her eyes narrowed. She asked, “Are you okay? Do I need to kill Wes for you? I can make it happen, just say the word.”
 “No. No, guys, I’m fine. It’s nothing like that. I just hate the way he treats Danny.” She didn’t look angry anymore, though. She just looked distracted. Her eyes kept moving around the room. “I mean, it’s ridiculous right? A ghost being part human? Who ever heard of something like that?” Danny did not laugh nervously, nor did he exchange a look with Sam. What he did was nod, which was obviously the least suspicious thing to do. “And I mean, it’s not like he has any evidence. Just, you know. Coincidences.” She dropped her eyes to her food, again.
 “He claims to have coincidences,” Sam said. “But he has a pretty clear agenda. You can’t just trust everything he says.”
 “Right. Right, yeah. How would I know whether Phantom was actually seen last night, or any time over the past six weeks? All I have is his word.”
 Danny could see that Sam was about to say something else, but he spoke first.
 “Val?”
 She looked up. “Yeah?”
 He could feel his heart trying to escape his ribcage, and he considered whether to give himself more oxygen. “Why don’t we just finish lunch and forget about Wes for now. And maybe later … if you want to … talk …” He shrugged. Valerie was quiet for a minute - or maybe a couple of seconds - then she smiled faintly.
 “Can do. But, I don’t really need to talk. It’s okay.”
 “You’re sure?”
 “Yeah. I mean, what is there to talk about? Some dumb kid and his dumb theories? I already forgot what he was saying.”
 ***
 Danny awoke with a feeling of mild dread, as he usually did, and he did his best to dispel it by meditating, as he had recently started doing. He tried to just imagine himself floating through space. When his mind drifted, it was mostly to his parents. He wanted to believe they were making progress, but … he didn’t. After almost three months, they still seemed to be saying the same things, about how that last analysis had ruled certain things out, and how this new analysis would really give them something to work with, and so on. At least the doctors were honest about the fact that they didn’t know what to do.
 Eventually he opened his eyes, blinking against the sunlight. It was Sunday. He vaguely remembered that Sunday used to be a chill day to relax and do whatever he wanted. At some point it had become a day to catch up on all the school he’d been neglecting all week due to ghost-hunting. Danny hadn’t been doing much by way of ghost hunting, since he’d gotten home from the hospital. (He got winded easily, even in ghost form. That seemed unfair, that he needed oxygen even as a ghost. But he supposed it was the trade-off for having access to some of his ghost powers even as a human.) Somehow, though, he’d still managed to neglect his homework all week, and now he had a draft of an English essay to write in a day. So apparently it was never the ghost stuff - he was just terrible at school. He was going to fail and never get into university and -
 No, stop. Danny took a deep breath from his diaphragm. That was a cognitive distortion. Catastrophization or something? Overgeneralization? Either way, he had evidence it wasn’t true. Danny had been doing well this semester. He probably shouldn’t have waited so long to write this draft, but he did have his thesis and a few quotes picked out. He still had all day. He took a few more deep breaths before taking out his English binder and his laptop.
 Tucker came by in the afternoon with some brownies.
 “Is it good?” Tucker asked, excited.
 “It’s great,” Danny said between bites, “Did you make these?”
 “Yeah, it’s a new thing I’m trying. Turns out brownies are, like, really easy. And cake and cookies - you just mix a couple basic ingredients, throw in whatever else you want, and then cook, and now you have food.”
 “Convenient.”  
 “Right? I can’t believe I’m only just now discovering this. Can you imagine being ten years old and knowing that desert was never more than an hour away, if you wanted it?”
 “There might be a reason that knowledge was kept from us.”
 “Adults and their conspiracies. So, what have you been up to?”
 “Ugh.” Danny glanced at his laptop. “Right now, English essay.”
 “You make it sound so exciting.”
 “Well, it’s certainly got my heart rate up, since it needs to be done by tomorrow, for whatever that’s worth.”
 “What are you writing about?”
 “The Lord of the Flies as an indictment of toxic masculinity.”
 “Sam’s idea?”
 Danny made a face. “No. I can criticize society, too, you know.”
 “Sorry, sorry.”
 “Also, I’m a trans guy, so I feel like I’m pretty well within my wheelhouse, here.”
 “Fair point. So it kinda sounds like you are actually enjoying writing it.”
 “Eh, it’s not as interesting as I’m making it sound. It’s just finding quotes and then explaining how they show that the author believes such-and-such. Well, you know; you had English last semester.”
 “Yeah, I guess I don’t remember it as a rigorous intellectual exercise. Speaking of rigorous intellectual exercises, though, you remember the robot I was telling you about?”
 “The one you’re building? Sure.”  
 Tucker held up a finger, then fished his most recent project out of his bag and held it out for Danny to examine. Danny’s eyes widened the appropriate amount and Tucker grinned, satisfied, as Danny took it and turned it over. “That arm can grip everything from an egg to a bowling ball - the grip strength varies smoothly and it has a smart sensor that chooses the minimum effective strength. And it can choose whether to use the legs or the wheels - they’re tucked up underneath, there - based on the type of terrain, which it judges based on data from the gyroscope and the camera. Oh, do you wanna see the code?” Tucker took out his phone.
 “Uh, you can show it to me, but I don’t think I’ll understand much of it.”
 “I won’t get too detailed, I promise. I’m just really proud and I wanna show you what I did.”
 “You should be. This is totally cool.” He looked at the robot again. “I wish I could do stuff like this.”
 “What’s stopping you?”
 “A lack of the knowledge of how to do it, for one thing.”
 “So learn. What are you doing this summer?”
 Tucker had him there. “Not much.”
 “You should do a coding course. There are some really affordable, totally online ones that you can do from anywhere. I mean, there are some garbage ones, so do your research, but if you have even a little bit of interest, I absolutely recommend it. The future is written in code; if you can write code, you can write the future.”
 Danny laughed. “That’s a pretty good tagline.”
 “And it’s true, too.”
 “Okay, I’ll look into it.” He typed a note on his phone that read ‘coding course for summer?’ “And I believe you were going to regale me with the story of how you taught this thing to tell different types of ground apart.”
 ***
 Danny didn’t blink, and neither did Dr. Dufour. The doctor took a deep breath. Danny didn’t. Finally, the doctor said, “No. I’m not legally required to tell them.” Danny let out his breath.
 “Then I don’t want you to.”
 “Are you sure, Danny? I want you to really consider what the next few months are going to look like.”
 “That’s what I’m doing. I don’t want it to look like … everyone mourning me while I’m still here. I just want it to be normal.”
 “It might be easier for both you and them to find closure if you have more time to talk about and make peace with the situation.”
 “I know.” Danny pulled his knees up to his chest and leaned his forehead against them. “I know. Maybe later … but not right now.”
 ***
 “You can breathe, dad. I’m the one with the oxygen tank, remember?” Jack was still standing next to Danny, looking around, hands raised as if to grab some tool or press some button. But of course Danny had already adjusted his oxygen intake just like the nurse had shown him and Jack and Maddie how to do before Danny had been allowed to come home. Now his pulse oximeter was showing 93% - low for a normal person but pretty high for Danny. And Danny looked … well, a little bit paler and a little bit heavier than he had three months ago, but otherwise perfectly fine. Of course, he’d looked perfectly fine a few minutes ago, too, right before his blood oxygen had suddenly started dropping.
 “You’re sure you’re okay? Is there anything else I can do?”
 “I’m all good.”
 “Do I need to bring you to the hospital?”
 “No. Doctor Dufour says that I only need to come in outside of the tests and check-ups if something changes. This is … this is normal.” Danny looked so sad when he said that, it broke Jack’s heart. He just wanted Danny to be okay.
 “It’s not normal, son. I promise, it won’t always be like this. We’ll fix it.”
 Danny smiled a little. “I know you’re doing everything you can. The doctors are, too.”
 “You can’t give up hope, son. We can do this.”
 “Yeah, I know. I didn’t mean …” Danny, looking like he was lost in thought, turned to look out the window. “I just meant, this is normal for now. It’s nothing to worry about. That’s all.”
 “You’re right, I’m not worried. You’re one of the strongest people I know. You’ll get through this.” Jack bent down to squeeze Danny in a bear hug.
 “Dad, oxygen tubes.”
 Jack let go quickly. “Sorry.”
 “It’s ok.” He met Jack’s eyes and smiled. “I love you.”
 Jack caught his breath. It wasn’t something Danny said often, and hearing it brought happy tears to Jack’s eyes. “I love you too, son.”
 “Now, can we forget about this -” he gestured to his oxygen tank “- for a bit?”
 “Already out of my mind,” Jack said, and Danny tried to hide a smirk. He sat back down in Danny’s desk chair, which complained under his weight but held him just fine. “What were you talking about before? Creation disks?” Danny smiled again, much bigger this time.
 “Accretion disks, but I actually like ‘creation disks’ if you’re talking about the formation of stars. Or, it works for protoplanetary disks, too. But I was talking about quasars, which are kind of the opposite. You know how black holes form, right? Just as a quick summary, the fusion of light elements like helium releases energy …”
 Jack listened as intently as he could. He’d been disappointed at first when Danny had told him he wanted to talk about things other than ghosts and ghost hunting - it had been something they could easily bond over, and Jack didn’t understand why Danny wouldn’t want that. It had felt like a rejection, like he was saying he didn’t want to bond with him, or even that he didn’t want to be like him. But when Jack saw how excited Danny got talking about this space stuff, he could tell this was a good thing, even if he didn’t understand it.
 ***
 “ … not sure whether I should be making the posters out of something more durable, maybe laminating them. Obviously a lot of them are just going to get torn down, because, you know, people don’t like when the system that benefits them is called into question, so it might be kind of wasteful. On the other hand, I definitely don’t want them just getting wrecked if it rains or …” Sam stopped, realizing that Danny was somewhere else. It took him a few seconds to notice she wasn’t talking anymore.
 “What? Sorry, did you ask me something?” Sam frowned. “Shit, I’m sorry, I just didn’t sleep well, and -”
 “Danny.”
 He looked nervous. “Sorry.”
 “No, I’m not … Danny, are you okay?”
 “Yeah, just tired.”
 “Like you were ‘just tired’ every time your parents asked why you looked like shit after fighting a ghost?”
 “No. Just regular tired.”
 “You know you can talk to me.”
 “I know.”
 “What were you thinking about, just now?”
 “Nothing. I don’t know.” He shrugged. “Just … nothing.”
 He was obviously upset, and Sam had the feeling that he wanted to say something but was second-guessing himself. She didn’t know what to do about it, though. “Is there anything else you want to talk about? I was going on about my stuff for a while. What’s up in your world?”
 Danny shrugged. “Nothing interesting. And I like hearing you talk.” He smiled. “I love you.”
 “I think that’s the first time you’ve said that.”
 “What? I say it all the time.”
 “No, it was always ‘I love you too.’ This is the first time you said it first.”
 “Oh, well …” He looked so uncomfortable. Maybe she shouldn’t have pointed it out. “It’s true, though. I love you.”
 “I love you, too, Danny. All of you.”
 He laughed nervously. “What … what is that supposed to mean?”
 “It just means … you don’t have to tell me anything that you don’t want to. But if you do tell me … anything, it’ll be okay.”
 “I …” Sam could see the mental back-and-forth. There was something he wanted to say, but he wasn’t sure it was a good idea. “Do you promise not to get upset? I don’t mean mad at me, I mean … upset. In general.”
 Sam did not think she could promise not to have any kind of negative emotional response, but she also badly wanted to know whatever it was he was afraid to say. “Okay. I promise.”
 He took a deep breath, then another. He looked down at his pulse oximeter, and his eyes widened a little. It showed 89%. He took a few more deep breaths before he spoke. His eyes were firmly fixed on his sheets. “I’ve been wondering … what would happen … if I died.”
 Oh, yeah. She could see how someone might find that upsetting. Danny peeked up at her. She had no idea what he saw on her face.
 “I think my ghost half would still exist, or at least I don’t see why it wouldn’t, but would it still be partially human, or would I just be a full ghost, with all the full ghost powers? Would I feel like the same person? Would I have an obsession? Just stuff like that, you know. I’m not trying to be morbid or anything, but … that’s what’s been on my mind. I don’t want you to read too much into it, but you asked, so. Yeah.”
 She could read too much into it, if she wanted to. But Sam would be the last person to believe that there was anything inherently wrong with being morbid. If Danny wanted to speculate about his own death, more power to him. And besides, she’d been wondering a lot of the same things.
 “I appreciate you sharing that. And I promise I’m not upset.”
 Danny’s shoulders dropped as he let go of the tension in them. “Thank you.”
 “You’re not thinking about hurting yourself, right?”
 “No!” He looked disturbed that she had even asked. “No, of course not.”
 “I had to check. And you’re … okay? Generally?”
 “Yeah, I am. Things have been going really well, lately.” For a moment, his eyes were focused on something far away, again. Then he met her eyes and smiled, and she smiled back.
 ***
 When the temperature suddenly dropped in Wes’ bedroom, he knew exactly what it meant, even before he heard the familiar voice behind him.
 “Hey, Wes.”
 Wes spun around in his desk chair, trying to mentally chart a route from where he was sitting, past the ghost in the middle of the room, to his bed, where his small ecto-gun lay hidden under the pillow.
 “Calm down, I’m not here to fight you.” Phantom - Fenton - was floating just above the floor in a casual pose, his hands at his sides. Wes eyed him with open suspicion.
 “What do you want, Fenton?”
 Fenton smiled a little. “If you can believe it, I want to apologize.”
 Wes crossed his arms. “I can’t.”
 Fenton nodded. “That’s fair. But I’m going to do it, anyway.” He lowered himself gently so he was standing on the floor, and then a ring of blinding white light appeared around his waist. Wes hit the floor, covering his head with his arms in a vain attempt to protect himself from whatever this was. There was no heat, no noise, no shockwave. The light faded after a second and Wes heard Fenton chuckling. He looked up to see Fenton - Holy Shit. Fenton, looking as human as he’d ever looked, standing where Phantom had just been. “What’s wrong, Wes? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” Fenton chuckled again.
 “You … you just … but … why?” Wes winced slightly at his incoherence.
 “Why am I finally admitting it after all this time?” He shrugged. “I don’t know. Does it matter?”
 “Is this … the apology? You’re sorry for making everyone think I was crazy when I was right?”
 “No, I think I was very justified in keeping this secret. But I probably wasn’t justified in tormenting you with my powers. Constantly tripping you, stealing your homework -”
 “I knew it!” He could never tell any of his teachers that a ghost stole his homework, but what other explanation was there? And all those times he tripped over seemingly nothing … of course it had been Phantom. Wes had known, just as surely as he’d known that Phantom and Fenton were the same person, but it felt so good to have it finally confirmed. “Wait, did you pour water on my pants that one time to make it look like I peed?”
 Fenton burst into laughter. Wes glared. “Oh man, I forgot that one. That was brutal.” Fenton wiped a tear from the corner of his eye. “Yeah, I did. I’m sorry for that, too.”
 “You don’t look very sorry.”
 “I mean, it was funny. But -” He took a deep breath, then got a nervous look on his face and suddenly the white ring appeared again. Wes flinched and closed his eyes, then opened them to see Phantom standing there again. “Yes,” he said, looking more serious, now. “I am sorry. I never really tried talking to you. I just decided that, since you were trying to out me, you must be a bad person, and I was justified in messing with you however I wanted. But you’re probably not as bad a person as I think you are, and even if you are, that doesn’t make it ok for me to bully you like that.”
 “So … you’re saying you’ll stop?”
 Fenton smiled, but there was something about his eyes … it almost looked like he was about to start crying. Could ghosts cry? “Yeah. You don’t have to worry about me messing with you anymore.”
 “Are you going to tell everyone that I was right?”
 Phantom’s expression didn’t change. He just looked at Wes. After a few moments, he took a breath as if he was about to stay something, held it for a second, and then disappeared. Wes felt a soft rush of air and figured he was probably alone, again.
 “... What the Hell was that about?”
 ***
 “Hey, what’s up?” Danny’s voice was slightly muffled by what Jazz assumed was wind.
 “Hey, not much. Are you outside? I can’t hear you very well.”
 “Oh, sorry.” For a second there was just the sound of wind, then a static-y noise that made Jazz pull the phone away from her ear, then it was quiet. “Is this better?”
 “Yeah. I didn’t interrupt anything, did I?”
 “No, I was just stargazing up on the roof. How are you? How are things?”
 “Things are good. I’m enjoying all my classes this quarter, great profs. I’m taking a really interesting one about the effects of the environment on health, so things like how poverty affects the immune system, all through the lens of neurology, of course. It’ll probably be one of the harder classes that I’ve taken, but it’s really exciting stuff. We don’t even have a textbook; it’s all based on really recent research that the prof is collecting on the course website. So that’s fun. What about you? How are things?”
 “Uhh … good, I guess. It’s close to finals, so, busy. No change in health.”
 “Well, hang in there. You’ll get through it.”
 “Thanks.”
 “I actually wanted to talk about school. Not trying to stress you out or anything, but I just learned about a new program Stanford is going to be offering that’s aimed toward future astronauts.”
 “Oh. Cool.”
 Well, that certainly wasn’t the reaction Jazz had expected. He usually got so excited about anything related to becoming an astronaut. “Do you want to hear about it?”
 “Yeah, sure.”
 Was he okay? Should she ask? “... right, so, it’s not a separate degree, but if you’re in the aeronautics and astronautics undergraduate program, there’s going to be a specific class you take each year, with some kind of capstone project at the end, like a thesis I guess, uhm, and then when you finish there’s a special designation you get, which, basically it will look really good for any grad school applications. I can send you a link if you want, there aren’t too many details yet but I thought you’d be interested to know for when you start applying to colleges.”
 “Uh, yeah, you can send that. I’ll take a look. Thanks.”
 She should say something. He might be annoyed now, but she didn’t want to regret it later when she found out something was really wrong and she could have helped. “Danny, are you okay?”
 “Yeah, fine. Aside from the obvious, I mean.”
 “You said there’s been no change?”
 “Yeah. Still sick, but getting by.”
 “It’s just, you sound sort of down. Not to be presumptuous, but I thought you’d be excited that there’s a program that can bring you closer to being an astronaut.”
 “Oh, yeah, well … it’s just, my grades, you know? I’m not sure about getting into Stanford, let alone a special program at Stanford.”
 “Oh!” Of course it was about that. He’d been struggling to reconcile his current grades with his future plans since freshman year. “Well, I can’t promise anything, but you know I’ll help you with your application, right? And there’s still time to get some extracurriculars in to round things out, especially since you’re not spending as much time with ghost hunting these days. And, actually, you’re kind of working with mom and dad in the lab, now, right? So you’re getting a head start on a lot of engineering stuff - that might give you a leg-up.”
 “Yeah, I guess so.”
 “I don’t mean to stress you out prematurely, but if you start thinking about your application now, I think you can have something really strong. Again, not making any promises, but I wouldn’t count yourself out just because you don’t have the highest grades. Lots of people have good grades, but the admissions officers will really care more about your experiences outside the classroom.”
 “Okay, cool. That’s … something to think about, then. Sorry, it’s getting late here, so …”
 “Right, right, I’ll let you go. It was good to talk to you.”
 “Yeah, you too. … I love you.”
 The line disconnected before Jazz could respond.
 ***
 Maddie read the note first. She found it lying on top of Danny’s uncharacteristically well-made bed. There was no addressee or signature.
     If things go according to plan, I’ll see you soon.  
     If not, know that I’m grateful to you for everything, and I’m sorry, and I love you.  
 ***
 Apparently, things didn’t go according to plan.
 ***
 “... reported it to the police, but it doesn’t feel like they’re doing enough.” Jack was trying not to raise his voice. His hand that wasn't holding the phone was clenched into a fist. “I get that they’re busy, but he’s my son, and he’s missing, and I can't just -”
“You don’t need to explain yourself; I understand.”
Jack sighed. “Thanks. So, do you think there’s anything you can do?”
“I regret that my powers as mayor are quite limited in this regard, but I can assure you that I will dedicate all of the resources at my disposal, both public and private, to finding Daniel. Nothing is more important to me than assuring his safety.”
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