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urdreamydoodles · 17 hours

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Hi! First, I would like to say I love your content! It really makes my day. So, I would like to thank you for that! And I would like to request a how they officially got together for the X-Men characters (especially Laura and Wanda. I love them but also I love them all) if that's possible.

X-Men x Reader

How you became official

You have shared close, unspoken feelings with your crush but you're waiting for the relationship to become official. The X-Men—each overcome their personal hesitations, and with deep emotions, they finally commit to the relationship, making your bond official.

Characters: Logan Howlett, Remy LeBeau, Kurt Wagner, Erik Lehnsherr, Scott Summers, Jean Grey, Wade Wilson, Rogue, Wanda Maximoff & Laura Kinney

Pleasure is all mine ♡ I am so happy when I hear that people like what I do—like SO HAPPY. Hope you like it! — Love, Marie, your friendly marvel fangirl

Logan Howlett (Wolverine)

- The tension between you and Logan had always been palpable. For months, there had been lingering touches, teasing remarks, and stolen glances. You’d even shared a few heated kisses that left both of you breathless. But Logan, true to his nature, was hesitant to fully acknowledge whatever it was that had blossomed between you. He’d always been protective, always watching you with those sharp eyes, making sure no harm came your way, yet he kept his distance emotionally, unsure of what to do with his feelings.

- One evening, after a particularly exhausting mission, you and Logan found yourselves alone at the mansion, both bruised and tired. He insisted on patching you up, even though your injuries were minor. Sitting on the bed, his fingers brushed over your skin as he tended to a small cut on your arm. There was a silence that settled between you, heavier than usual. His hands lingered on your skin a little longer than necessary, and when your eyes met his, the unspoken words hung in the air. He let out a soft sigh, his usual gruff demeanor melting away.

- “I ain’t good at this, darlin’,” Logan finally muttered, running a hand through his tousled hair. “But I can’t keep pretending like you don’t mean everything to me.” His admission caught you by surprise, but it also felt like something you’d been waiting to hear for a long time. You moved closer to him, resting a hand on his chest, feeling the steady beat of his heart. “Then stop pretending,” you whispered softly, leaning in, your lips brushing his. This time, when he kissed you, there was no hesitation, no pulling back. It was real, raw, and full of the emotions he’d been hiding. That night, as he held you close, Logan made it clear that you were his, and he was yours, officially.

Remy LeBeau (Gambit)

- With Remy, it had always been a game of flirtation, a dangerous dance of witty banter and stolen moments. He was a charmer, no doubt, but beneath all the swagger and smirks, you saw the depth of his feelings for you. Over time, the teasing kisses and suggestive comments became something more, something real. You hadn’t put a label on it yet—Remy never liked being tied down to definitions—but there was no denying that you both felt it. He made you feel like the only person in the room, even when surrounded by others. However, despite the intensity, neither of you had ever called yourselves a couple.

- One night, after a long and exhausting mission, the two of you found yourselves alone on the mansion’s rooftop. Remy had brought a bottle of wine, as he often did, and the two of you sat side by side, the cool night air making you both huddle closer. You could feel the warmth of his body against yours, and as usual, the easy conversation between you flowed, sprinkled with his usual innuendos. But tonight, there was something different in the air—something heavier, more intimate. He looked at you, his red-on-black eyes softer than usual, his smirk replaced by a more genuine expression.

- “Y’know, cher,” Remy began, swirling the wine in his glass, “I been thinkin’. You an’ me, we’ve been dancin’ ‘round dis thing long enough, non?” You raised an eyebrow, intrigued but unsure of where he was going with this. “And what ‘thing’ are we dancing around, exactly?” you asked, a playful smile tugging at your lips. He leaned in, his lips brushing lightly against your ear as he whispered, “Whatever it is dat makes me think about you every damn day, even when I’m supposed to be focusin’ on somethin’ else.”

- The confession made your heart race, and for once, Remy wasn’t hiding behind his charm or teasing nature. He was being real, vulnerable even. You turned to face him fully, searching his eyes for any hint of hesitation, but all you saw was sincerity. “So, what are we, then?” you asked softly. He chuckled, the sound low and warm. “How ‘bout you be mine, officially?” he suggested, his hand sliding up to cup your cheek. Before you could respond, he kissed you—slow, deep, and full of the emotions he’d kept hidden for so long. When he pulled back, he smiled at you, his thumb brushing against your skin. “Now dat’s official,” he said with a wink, and from that moment, you were his, and he was yours.

Kurt Wagner (Nightcrawler)

- Kurt had always been sweet, gentle, and respectful of whatever it was between you. The two of you had shared some deeply intimate moments, though never anything too forward. There were stolen kisses, hand-holding in private, and soft words exchanged when no one else was around. You’d grown incredibly close, and though the connection between you was undeniable, Kurt seemed hesitant to take things further. He’d often expressed his concern about his appearance, about how people saw him, and though you reassured him constantly that you didn’t care, he couldn’t shake the self-doubt.

- After a particularly hard day at the mansion, you found Kurt sitting alone in the chapel he frequented. He looked lost in thought, his blue tail swishing behind him as he sat in the quiet. You approached him cautiously, not wanting to disturb his moment of peace, but he noticed you right away. “Ah, mein Schatz,” he greeted with a warm smile, his yellow eyes lighting up at the sight of you. You smiled back, sitting next to him, and for a few moments, the two of you simply sat in silence. There was something comforting about being in his presence, even without words.

- Eventually, Kurt broke the silence. “I’ve been thinking a lot about us,” he admitted, his voice soft but steady. You glanced at him, your heart skipping a beat. “And?” you prompted, curious but not wanting to pressure him. He sighed, his gaze dropping to the floor. “I… I want us to be more, but sometimes I wonder if I deserve someone like you,” he confessed, his insecurities showing through. You frowned, gently placing your hand on his arm. “Kurt, I don’t care about appearances, or what others might think. I care about you. And if you want us to be more, then let’s be more.”

- His eyes met yours, full of uncertainty but also hope. Slowly, he reached for your hand, intertwining his fingers with yours. “You truly mean that?” he asked softly, his voice almost trembling. You nodded, squeezing his hand reassuringly. “Yes, Kurt. I want us to be official.” His smile was soft but filled with so much warmth that it melted your heart. Leaning forward, he pressed a gentle kiss to your lips, careful and reverent, as if he was afraid to break you. When he pulled back, he rested his forehead against yours, his voice barely above a whisper. “I will do my best to make you happy, always.”

Erik Lehnsherr (Magneto)

- Erik was different. Your relationship with him had always been complicated, filled with tension and unspoken words. Though you had shared many intimate moments—his lips against yours, his hands on your skin—it never felt quite solidified. Erik was a man driven by his convictions, always focused on the larger picture of mutant survival, and it sometimes felt like there was no room in his life for something as trivial as romance. But you knew better. You saw the way his eyes lingered on you when he thought no one was watching, the way he softened in your presence. Still, despite the closeness you shared, neither of you had ever put a label on what you were.

- One evening, after a particularly heated discussion about the future of mutants, you found yourselves alone in his quarters. The conversation had left you both on edge, but rather than arguing, you simply stood there, the air between you charged with tension. Erik had always been a man of few words, and tonight was no exception. He sat in his chair, his posture rigid, his eyes fixed on something in the distance. You could tell he was deep in thought, and you wondered if it was about you, about what the two of you had—or didn’t have.

- Finally, after what felt like an eternity, Erik spoke. “You know, there’s not much room for… affection in the world I envision,” he said, his voice low and contemplative. You felt a pang in your chest at his words, but before you could respond, he continued. “But you… you are an exception,” he admitted, his gaze finally meeting yours. “You’ve become more important to me than I anticipated. More important than I intended.” His admission caught you off guard, and for a moment, you weren’t sure how to respond.

- “Does that mean…?” you trailed off, not wanting to push too far. Erik stood up then, walking over to you, his eyes never leaving yours. “It means that I cannot imagine a world without you in it,” he said, his voice steady. “And that terrifies me.” You reached out, placing a hand on his chest, feeling the steady beat of his heart beneath your palm. “You don’t have to be afraid of that, Erik. I’m not going anywhere,” you whispered. He leaned down, pressing his lips to yours in a kiss that was both tender and possessive. When he pulled back, his voice was firm. “Then it’s official. You are mine, and I am yours.” From that moment on, Erik made it clear that, though his cause was still his priority, you were his greatest exception.

Scott Summers (Cyclops)

- Scott was always a man of discipline, order, and precision. Your relationship had started slowly, marked by cautious glances and subtle touches. You’d spent countless nights together, sharing intimate moments that only hinted at something more. But with Scott, it was never simple. His responsibilities as a leader weighed heavily on him, and he often hesitated when it came to personal matters. You both knew that your relationship had grown beyond casual, but Scott’s reluctance to make it official created a barrier between you.

- One afternoon, you found yourselves alone in the mansion’s common area, the rest of the team out on a mission. You were reading quietly while Scott went over some paperwork, his usual serious demeanor fully in place. After a while, you glanced up at him, unable to hold back any longer. “Scott, we need to talk,” you said softly, setting your book aside. He looked up from his work, his brow furrowing slightly. “About what?” he asked, though you could tell he already knew what was coming.

- “About us,” you clarified, leaning forward slightly. “We’ve been doing this… whatever this is, for a while now, but we’ve never actually said what we are.” Scott’s face softened, and he set his papers down, giving you his full attention. He sighed, running a hand through his hair. “I know, and it’s not because I don’t want to. It’s just… I have a lot of responsibilities. I can’t afford to be distracted.”

- You felt a flicker of frustration but kept your voice calm. “I’m not asking you to choose between me and your duties, Scott. I just want to know where we stand.” He stared at you for a moment, his expression unreadable behind his visor. Then, to your surprise, he stood up and walked over to you, kneeling down so he was at eye level. “You’re important to me. More important than I’ve let on,” he admitted, his voice quiet but firm. “I want this. I want you. And I’m ready to make it official, if you are.”

- His words caught you off guard, but a warm feeling spread through your chest. You smiled, leaning in to kiss him gently. “I’m ready,” you whispered against his lips. From that moment on, Scott was fully committed to your relationship, making sure you knew just how much you meant to him, even as he balanced the weight of leadership.

Jean Grey (Phoenix)

- With Jean, things had always been intense. Your connection was undeniable, both emotionally and mentally. She could feel your emotions as clearly as her own, and you could sense her thoughts even without telepathy. You had shared stolen kisses and moments of passion, but the two of you had never defined your relationship. Jean was constantly worried about the power she held, about losing control, and that fear often bled into your relationship. Despite her deep feelings for you, she hesitated to make anything official, afraid of what could happen if her powers ever spiraled out of control.

- One evening, after a particularly stressful mission, you found Jean sitting by the lake behind the mansion. Her arms were wrapped around her knees, and her usually vibrant eyes were filled with uncertainty. You approached her quietly, sitting down beside her. She didn’t say anything at first, but you could feel the storm of emotions swirling within her. “Jean,” you said softly, “what’s going on? You’ve been distant lately.”

- She let out a sigh, resting her chin on her knees. “I’m scared,” she admitted, her voice barely above a whisper. “Of what?” you asked, even though you already had an idea. She glanced at you, her eyes filled with worry. “Of losing control. Of hurting you.” The vulnerability in her voice broke your heart, and you gently took her hand, giving it a reassuring squeeze. “You won’t hurt me, Jean. I trust you.”

- Jean looked at you for a long moment, her telepathy allowing her to sense the sincerity behind your words. Slowly, she leaned into you, resting her head on your shoulder. “I want to be with you, officially,” she whispered. “But I need you to know that sometimes… I get scared of what I am. What I could become.” You wrapped an arm around her, holding her close. “I’m not afraid of you, Jean. Whatever happens, we’ll face it together.”

- That was the moment when your relationship became something more than just fleeting kisses and stolen moments. Jean allowed herself to open up to you completely, and from that day on, you were her anchor, the one person she could always rely on to ground her, even when the Phoenix inside her threatened to rise.

Wade Wilson (Deadpool)

- Being in a "not-official" relationship with Wade Wilson was a rollercoaster. You knew what you were getting into from the start: snarky comments, dark humor, and an unpredictability that left you on your toes. You and Wade had already shared kisses, and he was not shy about his attraction to you. However, there was an unspoken agreement between you two not to put labels on it, at least not yet. Wade often deflected serious conversations with jokes or by breaking into some random monologue about chimichangas, but you knew he cared—he just had a hard time showing it in a conventional way.

- One day, you were patching him up after yet another dangerous mission. Wade winced slightly as you applied antiseptic to a particularly nasty wound, and for once, he was uncharacteristically quiet. You caught his eye, pausing your movements. “What’s going on, Wade? You’ve been… less annoying than usual today.” He cracked a half-hearted smile, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “You know, sweetheart, I’ve been thinking—maybe you deserve someone a bit more… stable. Someone who doesn’t get blown up every other day.”

- You frowned, brushing a strand of hair away from your face. “Wade, I knew what I was signing up for. If I wanted someone normal, I wouldn’t be here patching you up. I’d be out with some guy who can’t even tell a good joke.” He chuckled at that, but there was still hesitation in his eyes. You sighed, leaning closer. “Listen, I care about you. A lot. And I’m not going anywhere. So maybe we should stop pretending this isn’t something more.”

- Wade’s eyes softened at your words, and for a moment, he was vulnerable—something rare for him. “You really want this, huh? The whole 'you and me' thing?” You nodded, a small smile tugging at your lips. “Yeah, I do.” With that, Wade pulled you into a surprisingly tender kiss, his usual bravado replaced by something more genuine. “Alright then,” he murmured against your lips. “Guess we’re official now, huh? Sorry, you’re stuck with me.” You laughed, knowing full well that life with Wade would be chaotic, but it would also be full of love, in his own unique way.

Rogue

- With Rogue, everything was complicated. You had both grown close over time, sharing moments that teetered between friendship and something more, but her powers always made it difficult to take that next step. Despite that, the two of you had kissed—carefully, with gloves and all—and it had left both of you wanting more. But Rogue was hesitant, always afraid of hurting you, of losing control. So, the relationship remained unofficial, a constant dance between affection and restraint.

- One evening, you were sitting on the porch of the X-Mansion, the cool breeze ruffling your hair. Rogue sat beside you, her gloved hands fidgeting in her lap. You could tell something was weighing on her mind, and after a few minutes of silence, she finally spoke. “Ah’ve been thinkin’… maybe it’s not fair to keep you waitin’ like this. Bein’ with me isn’t exactly easy.”

- You turned to her, surprised by her words. “Rogue, I’m not waiting for anything. I’m here because I care about you, and I’m willing to figure this out, no matter how hard it is.” She looked at you, her green eyes filled with uncertainty. “But what if ah hurt you? What if ah lose control?” You reached out, gently taking one of her gloved hands in yours. “We’ll take it slow, like we always have. I trust you, Rogue. And I’m not going anywhere.”

- She looked down at your joined hands, her expression softening. “You’re really serious about this, aren’t you?” You nodded, your heart swelling with affection for her. “I am. I don’t care about the risks. I just want to be with you.” Rogue’s lips curved into a small smile, and she leaned in, brushing a soft, gloved kiss against your cheek. “Ah reckon we’ve been dancin’ around this long enough,” she said softly. “Ah’m ready to make it official… if you are.” You smiled back at her, feeling a weight lift off your shoulders. “I’m more than ready.”

Wanda Maximoff (Scarlet Witch)

- With Wanda, your relationship had always been filled with intense emotions, as expected with someone as powerful and passionate as the Scarlet Witch. You had shared a deep connection since the moment you met. The stolen kisses and the soft touches between the two of you hinted at something more, but neither of you had labeled it yet. Wanda had always been cautious, worried about the risks her powers posed to those she loved. Despite that, there was an undeniable chemistry that neither of you could ignore. She was protective of you, more so than anyone else, and that spoke volumes.

- One day, after a stressful battle, you found her sitting alone on the edge of a cliff near the mansion, gazing out into the horizon. You knew she often retreated when things got overwhelming, but this time, you weren’t going to let her push you away. You sat down beside her, your shoulder brushing against hers, and for a while, neither of you spoke. The silence between you wasn’t uncomfortable; it was comforting in its own way. But you could sense the storm of emotions brewing within her.

- “I’m afraid,” Wanda admitted softly, her voice barely audible. You turned to her, reaching out to take her hand in yours. “Of what?” you asked, your thumb gently rubbing circles over her knuckles. She glanced at you, her red eyes glowing faintly. “Of losing control. Of hurting you. Of losing you.” Her vulnerability touched your heart, and you squeezed her hand, pulling her closer. “You won’t lose me,” you promised, “I’m not going anywhere.” You leaned in, pressing your forehead against hers, feeling the warmth of her breath on your skin.

- In that moment, something shifted between the two of you. The walls she had built around her heart began to crumble, and for the first time, she allowed herself to fully open up to you. Wanda kissed you then, soft and slow, her fingers tangling in your hair. When she pulled back, her eyes were full of determination. “I want this,” she said firmly, “I want us. Officially.” You smiled at her, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear. “I’ve been waiting for you to say that,” you replied. And from that moment on, Wanda made sure you knew just how much you meant to her, letting you in completely.

Laura Kinney (X-23/Wolverine)

- Laura had always been a difficult person to read, with her guarded personality and hardened exterior. But over time, you’d broken through her defenses, forming a bond that went deeper than either of you had expected. Though the two of you had shared kisses and moments of closeness, Laura had never fully allowed herself to label your relationship, hesitant to accept something she didn’t fully understand. Despite her tough nature, she had a soft spot for you, one that she tried to hide, but it was always there, just beneath the surface.

- After a dangerous mission that nearly cost you both your lives, you found yourselves alone in one of the mansion’s training rooms. Laura was pacing back and forth, frustration etched across her features. You knew that look—she was angry at herself, angry for not being able to protect you the way she wanted to. “You could’ve died,” she growled, stopping in front of you. “And it would’ve been my fault.” You stepped closer to her, reaching out to grab her wrist gently. “But I didn’t,” you said softly, “We’re both okay.”

- Laura’s green eyes locked with yours, and for a moment, you could see the fear and pain swirling within her. She pulled away from your touch, running a hand through her dark hair. “I don’t know how to do this,” she muttered, her voice raw with emotion. “I don’t know how to be… with someone.” You could hear the vulnerability in her words, and it broke your heart. Stepping forward again, you cupped her face in your hands, forcing her to look at you. “You don’t have to be perfect,” you whispered, “Just be with me.”

- The tension between you melted away as Laura finally allowed herself to let go. She kissed you then, her lips urgent and desperate, as if she was trying to prove something to both you and herself. When she pulled back, she rested her forehead against yours, her breath heavy. “I don’t want to lose you,” she whispered. You smiled, brushing your thumb over her cheek. “You won’t,” you promised, “I’m not going anywhere.” From that moment, Laura stopped running from her feelings and embraced the fact that she wanted you in her life—officially. She may not have been good with words, but her actions spoke louder than anything else.

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strangemaleswaps · 17 hours

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Strange Spellbook Swap

I've always wondered how couples stay together so long. My husband, Derek, and I had been married for 3 years now and while we get along great and support each other through everything, the sex had been pretty stale for awhile. Half the time he's not really in the mood and when he is, we usually just jerk off next to each other. I was getting tired of it and craved something more. But Derek was still so cute, him being a socially awkward nerd, and I was scared to tell him how I feel because he might cry.

That afternoon, I was on my way to pick him up from work. We only had one car, but since both our jobs typically had the same shift, I always headed over to pick him up at his job at the library. I didn't actually have work today so I went a little earlier to look at some books. When I arrived, Derek noticed me and smiled real big.

“Hey! You're early!”

“Yeah, thought I'd browse a bit.”

“Ah ok. I just organized it all so you get to see my work!” He smiled again and continued helping customers in line.

I browsed through my favorite genre - fantasy. I always loved ones that involved magic, spells, and amazing worlds. I noticed one book that kinda stuck out a bit amongst the shelf. It was some kind of spellbook with a brown leather cover, and had a bit of dust on it, which seemed strange because the rest of the shelf was perfectly clean. I opened it up and found that it was indeed a spellbook. I wasn't the most superstitious person ever, but I did believe there was some kind of magical force out there that could do incredible things.

I flipped through the table of contents and noticed there was a category called “relationships”. I turned the pages to the section and saw a bunch of spells - ones to make someone fall in love with you, ones to get promoted at work, ones to impress your family, things like that. I was about to close the book when I found one page - how to spice up your sex life. That was just what I needed! Even if it didn't work, it couldn't hurt to try.

I walked over to the counter right as another guy started talking to Derek. He was a real muscular guy wearing a white shirt and tan hat. His pants left absolutely nothing to the imagination with the way they were tight fitting around his ass. A mustache covered his thick face, which complemented his bright green eyes. He was carrying a tote bag.

“Hey can I help you?” He greeted the man with an eager attitude. “Need a book recommendation or anything?”

“Oh no I don't read.” The man spoke with a deep manly voice. “I mean, who has time to when you could be working out?” I could see the rare irritated look on Derek's face.

“Then…what do you need from the library?” He replied, much less eager than before.

“Just dropping off some books for the wife. We're going on vacation and they’re due tomorrow.” He took a couple books out of the tote bag.

“Allright. I can take them.” The man handed him the books and immediately turned around and left. Derek's smile returned when he saw me with a book in my hand.

“Hey! What'd you get?”

“It's a book of spells.”

“Of spells? Like real ones?”

“No way,” I laughed. “Just some dumb thing. Looks fun to read though.”

“Allright. Gotcha.” He checked me out and I sat down, waiting for him to finish the rest of the closing.

That evening after dinner I tried to seduce him but he wasn't having it once again.

“Sorry, work has me so exhausted you know?” I wish that I wanted to, but…well I just don't want to. Sorry.” I stood there defeated.

“Ok.” I let out an emotionless reply. As Derek brushed his teeth and got ready to head into bed, I flipped through the pages of the spellbook. I found the “spice up your sex life” spell and read the instructions. I needed to recite the incantation while looking at a picture of the two of us. I took out my phone, and scrolled through my gallery until I found the perfect picture. Then I started to recite the spell. Nothing happened. I tried again. Still nothing. At that point I was mad at him and now mad at the spellbook for wasting my time, so I headed into the bedroom. There I found Derek waiting for me.

“Hey…look I'm sorry. How about tomorrow morning we have some fun? I promise I'll go through with it!” Maybe the spell did work afterall! We both had a day off tomorrow so that was perfect. I was so excited that I could barely sleep.

The next morning I woke up to Derek nudging me awake. Excitedly, I turned over. But to my surprise, it wasn't him smiling at me, but a hairy guy with a mustache. He was giving me a sexy smile.

“Hey…you ready?” He gave me a look of uncertainty and cleared his throat. I didn't even know what to say but I was so confused that there was total stranger in my bed, so I had to say something.

“Who are…you?” He frowned beneath his mustache.

“What do you mean? Oh no, am I having an allergic reaction somehow? That would explain my voice and why my eyesight is blurry even with my glasses on. It's me though! My face must be so puffy…oh god."

”Holy fuck. It's Derek! But this was far beyond an allergic reaction. He's an entirely different person! He pushed the covers off and was about to get out of bed, probably to take a look at himself in the mirror, when he glanced down at his body. This was definitely not normal. He was muscular, tan, and hairy - a stark contrast to what he normally looked like. He made a terrified face, which was a strange sight on such a macho guy.

“What? What's happening? I-I…” He looked at me with worry in his eyes, and it was then that I realized WHY this was happening. It must've been the spell. I guess turning your boyfriend into a muscle hunk would definitely spice up our sex lives. But I couldn't leave him in the dark.

“I-I,” I started. “It was my fault. That spellbook I got, I used it on you. I didn't expect this though!”

It was then that I realized WHO he was. That guy we saw at the library yesterday. He somehow swapped bodies with him!

“What? What spell was it?”

“Spice up your sex life. I just…was getting bored. And you were never in the mood.”

“Oh…but it turned me into this?” He then rushed to the bathroom. I followed. He immediately recognized himself as soon as he looked into the mirror.

“Hey! I'm that guy from yesterday!? Why did it turn me into him?”

“I-I don't know! Maybe it picked someone from a recent memory?”

He gazed at himself in the mirror with an open mouth, and touched all around his face, pinching and feeling his mustache.He gazed down and admired his new muscles, feeling all around his pecs and the chest hair growing from them. He then turned around and stared at the mirror again, this time making a variety of expressions.

“What am I supposed to do? I can't stay like this!”

“I don't know! There must be something about a reverse spell in the book.” Flipping through the book, I once again found the page I needed. I read every word but didn't find anything about a reverse spell. Could he be stuck like this?

“Maybe if we see like a professional?”

“What, like a fortune teller witch lady or whatever?”

“Exactly.”

“Well. I do remember seeing something like that close to town. A psychic. Maybe they can help?”

“We could try.” I looked up fortune tellers and found Madam Cleo - Psychic. It was a short drive away. I was hoping we would find our answers there.

“I got it.”

“One problem,” Derek said doubtfully.

“What?” He stared down at himself and then answered.

“I don't think anything will fit me now…” I couldn't help but laugh out loud.“I think we can find something at least.”

We dug through the closet and eventually found the Lakers jersey that my uncle gifted me a few years back. I wasn't even into basketball and it was a few sizes too big, but at least it helped us in the end! Derek slipped it on and gazed at himself in the mirror. It fit pretty nicely.

“Not really my style…but it'll do for now.” He put his finger on his chin and then rubbed his head. He froze when he grazed the back of it.

“What’s wrong?”

“I'm…balding.” He turned around and tilted his head up to show me. He definitely had a bad case of male pattern baldness. I thought it was pretty hot, but he looked terrified.

“Hmm…well. That's something we can just fix with a hat. I walked into the bedroom, grabbed one of my hats, and put it on his head. It completed the look well.

“I guess this'll work. Maybe.” I laughed again.

“You'll be fine.”

We got to the car, Derek struggling a bit to fit in the passenger seat with his new frame, and headed over to the fortune teller. It was a warehouse-like building, although much smaller. As we were about to walk in, someone else walked out. He was a young looking guy around my age, but at least 200 lbs heavier. He looked like he made absolutely no effort to control his weight.

“Hey! That lady is awesome!” He said excitedly. “She told my fortune and said that I would lose weight very soon! I can't wait!” He then ran off, his gross looking belly jiggling up and down, and drove away.

I kinda felt bad for people like that, that actually believe that sort of thing…what am I saying? We're the ones going to a fortune teller for help. I just really hoped she was legit then.

We walked in and found that the interior was nicely decorated, completely different from the outside. Shiny wooden floors, a chandelier, and LED lights hanging from the walls. All of that surrounded a crystal ball in the center. Within a few seconds a woman dressed in a typical fortune teller outfit appeared from a curtain in the back.

“What does the future hold for you two today? Let's find out,” she said with an ominous tone to her voice.

“Actually we're not here to get our fortunes told. We need your help.”

“What do you mean? She asked, dropping the ominous tone.

“Well my husband here is a victim to a body swapping spell gone wrong.” I showed her the book, flipping to the page.

“Oh my,” she said with a concerned look on her face. “This is very powerful magic indeed.”

“But how do we reverse it?”

“I don't know for sure. But the victim should try to recite it instead.

“Victim? You mean Derek? How would that work?”

“Do not question why things are the way they are. Now go!” She said suddenly. With that, we hurried back home to recite the spell.

“Ok how do I do this now?” Derek asked.

“Just recite the spell, and focus on a picture of us.” He recited the incantation.

“Nothing happened…how was it last time?”

“Same as this time. I guess it took awhile to take effect. What should we do in the meantime?” He didn't reply, but instead stared at himself in the mirror.

“You know, now that this face actually has a brain behind it, it's actually kinda hot.” He then walked over to me and got real close. I'd never been intimidated by Derek before for obvious reasons, but this time I couldn't help but feel dominated by his brawny self.

“The spell picked this guy because you thought he was so hot didn't it? That's gotta be it.” He said with a low voice.

“Y-yeah. I admit it. He seemed dumb at the library but hey, he was a hunk.”

“And now I'm that hunk.” He started feeling all around his body again. He then glanced at his dick and began to stroke it. I knew exactly where this was going and I was all for it.

“Well then Mr. Muscle Hunk, why don't you show off that body a bit more?”

“I'd like nothing more…but I'm gonna go shower first. Who knows where this guy's been?”

“Yeah good idea. I'll be in the room.”

I was so excited! This was gonna be the hottest thing ever! I headed toward the closet to find something sexy to put on. Suddenly I felt a bit dizzy. I noticed my skin seemed to be glowing somehow. Within seconds it turned ghostly white, and then became so bright, it hurt to look at. Why was I glowing? It seemed to be just my body though, nothing was happening to my clothes. As quickly as it came, the glowing stopped and the dizziness returned. I didn't have time to see what happened, because as soon as the glow stopped I lost my balance and fell onto the nearby chair.

My clothes felt incredibly tight, but it wasn't long before I realized why. I was fat! My shirt didn't even fit over my large belly. My pants must've popped a button as my gut hung over them. I tried to get up but the weight of my gut kept pushing me backwards. How do fat guys even do this?

When I finally got up and onto my feet, I rushed to the mirror, my hanging belly flopping up and down. My face looked familiar…oh shit. I was that guy we saw at the fortune teller's! Did the spell do this? How did this happen?!

I heard the shower stop, meaning Derek was going to meet me here any minute now. I couldn't believe the hottest night of my life was about to be ruined! Why did this have to happen?

The door opened and there he was, standing there in a pair of briefs. They were always a little big on him, but with his new body, they were pretty tight. It looked like he shaved his head too. He stared at me, at first he looked shocked but then his expression changed. Was that a look of lust?

“So the spell did something to you too?”

“Yeah…look at me! I'm a mess!” I jiggled my flabby moobs to prove my point.

“Well…”

“Well?”

“It's not so bad.”

“What? What do you mean?”

“I mean…well you know how you said I look hot like this? And that the spell probably made me like this for that reason?”

“Yeah. What are you getting at…wait.”

“Mhm.” He mumbled with a sexy smirk.

“Y-you think I'm hot like this?!" He got real close and started making out with me. It was the most intense make out session I'd ever had. The feeling of his thick mustache rubbing against my face was a sensation I would've never expected could feel so good.

“Does that answer your question?”

“Yep,” I said with a smirk.

#strangemaleswaps #male tf #male body swap #weight gain #body swap

86 notes · View notes

rootedinrevisions · 2 days

Text

Unplanned Journeys: Part 2

SUMMARY: The journey through pregnancy unfolds as you and Jake navigate each milestone together. From the nerves at your first doctor’s appointment to the tender moment when Jake notices your baby bump for the first time, everything feels more real with each step. At the anatomy scan, you find out the gender, sparking sweet discussions about names and the future. As you work together to set up the nursery, Jake’s suggestion to move in makes your growing family feel even more complete. Finally, the big day arrives, and after an exhausting labor, you hold your baby in your arms—marking the beginning of the next chapter of your life.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Thanks to the Anon who sent the request for this in! I hope you enjoy it! Also, there will be AT LEAST one more part to this coming. I haven't decided yet how long I want to make this story quite yet.

WARNINGS: Angst. Unplanned pregnancy.

WORD COUNT: 4.2K

TAG LIST: @omgbrianab I @shanimallina87 I @fanficmom94 I @smoothdogsgirl I @djs8891

If you would like to be added to my Tag List please feel free to comment, send an ask, or send a DM and I'll be happy to get you added!

The sterile scent of the clinic filled the air as you sat in the waiting room, nervously tapping your foot against the tiled floor. The crinkle of a magazine in your lap was the only thing distracting you from the tight knot in your stomach.

It was a familiar setting—nothing new about doctor's offices, after all. I mean you'd been to the doctor's before. But today felt different. Monumental.

Jake sat beside you, his hand resting on your knee, his thumb brushing small, soothing circles. Every so often, his gaze would flicker over to you, checking in silently. His calm presence should have grounded you, but the nerves were relentless, pulsing under your skin. This wasn’t just any appointment. This was the first time you’d be seeing your baby.

“Breathe,” Jake murmured softly, his voice low so only you could hear. “You’re squeezing the life out of that magazine.”

You glanced down, realizing your knuckles were white as you gripped the edges of the glossy pages.

You let out a shaky breath and loosened your hold, giving him a small smile. “I didn’t even notice.”

“I did,” he said with a teasing grin, but his eyes were soft. “It’s gonna be okay.”

You wanted to believe him. You wanted to feel that same confidence radiating from him, but the fear was still there, gnawing at the edges of your mind. What if something was wrong? What if—

The sound of your name being called jolted you out of your thoughts. You stood up, your legs feeling like jelly beneath you, and Jake rose with you, his hand slipping into yours. His grip was firm, reassuring, as you followed the nurse down the hallway, your heart pounding in your chest.

The exam room was small but cozy, with pale blue walls and an exam bed in the center. The ultrasound machine sat next to it, and just seeing the equipment sent another wave of nerves washing over you. This was really happening.

The nurse smiled kindly, gesturing for you to take a seat on the exam table. “We'll have you go ahead and undress from the waist down. You can lie back and make yourself comfortable. The doctor will be in shortly.”

As you lay back, the flimsy paper sheet thing they had given you covered your midsection down to your thighs. Your stomach twisted with anticipation. Your mind raced with a thousand thoughts, but Jake was there. He took your hand, his thumb tracing small patterns on the back of your hand.

“It’s gonna be okay,” he repeated, his voice steady and calm. “Whatever happens, we’re in this together.”

You nodded, swallowing hard. You wanted to believe him—to trust that everything would be fine—but the uncertainty still clung to you.

Moments later, the doctor entered, a friendly smile on her face as she introduced herself. She explained what would happen at this appointment in a calm, soothing tone, but you barely registered the words. Your mind was too busy spinning with possibilities. Would there be a heartbeat? Would everything look normal?

The doctor dimmed the lights and began preparing the ultrasound machine. Your breath hitched as she spread the cool gel across your abdomen, and you instinctively squeezed Jake’s hand a little tighter. His other hand moved to brush a stray hair from your forehead, his eyes never leaving yours.

“You ready?” he whispered.

“I don’t know,” you admitted, your voice barely above a whisper.

Jake leaned closer, his forehead almost touching yours. “No matter what, we’ll figure it out. You’re not in this alone.”

His words gave you just the slightest bit of comfort, enough to make you nod as Dr. Bennett pressed the probe gently against your belly. The room went silent for a moment, the sound of the machine whirring softly in the background as the image on the screen flickered to life.

And then you heard it.

A soft, rhythmic thump. Steady and strong.

You blinked, your breath catching in your throat. There it was. The heartbeat. Your baby’s heartbeat.

“There we go,” the doctor said with a smile, her eyes focused on the screen. “Everything looks good so far. Strong heartbeat.”

You stared at the monitor, unable to tear your eyes away from the little flicker of life that appeared on the screen. Your baby. It was so small, just a tiny blip, but it was there. Real. Alive.

Jake’s hand tightened around yours, and when you looked over at him, you saw the same awe mirrored in his expression. His eyes were fixed on the screen, his usual confident, laid-back demeanor replaced by something softer—something you had never seen before.

His lips parted slightly as if he was about to say something, but no words came out. He was just as overwhelmed as you were.

Tears pricked at your eyes, the emotion of it all finally hitting you. You hadn’t realized how much you’d been holding in until this moment—until you saw the heartbeat, heard that steady rhythm, and knew that everything was okay.

Jake finally spoke, his voice quiet but filled with awe. “That’s… that’s our baby.”

You nodded, too choked up to speak, the tears spilling over. Jake’s hand moved from yours to gently brush them away, his touch tender and reassuring.

“Hey,” he whispered, leaning in closer. “It’s okay. Everything’s okay.”

You nodded again, but this time it wasn’t out of fear or doubt. It was because you finally believed it. Everything was going to be okay.

The doctor smiled warmly, snapping a few images for you to take home before wiping the gel off your stomach. “You’re measuring right on track. I’ll see you again in four weeks, but everything looks great.”

As she left the room, Jake turned to you, his eyes still wide with disbelief but now filled with a quiet kind of joy. “That was… I don’t even know how to describe it.”

“I know,” you whispered, your heart still racing from the rush of emotions. “I can’t believe it either.”

He reached out, gently placing a hand on your stomach, where the gel had just been wiped away. His touch was soft, reverent, as if he was afraid to press too hard. “We’re really doing this, huh?”

You covered his hand with yours, feeling the warmth of his skin against yours. “Yeah,” you said, your voice full of wonder. “We really are.”

Jake smiled, a soft, genuine smile that made your heart ache with affection. And for the first time since finding out, you felt the panic slip away. You were scared, yes—but with Jake by your side, you knew you could handle whatever came next.

Together.

* * * * *

You stood in front of the mirror, towel wrapped loosely around your body as you brushed your hair, your reflection catching your eye more than usual. Something had changed. It was subtle—barely noticeable unless you really looked—but it was there. The soft curve of your belly, just below the towel line, had begun to take shape.

You placed your hand on it, fingers tracing the gentle swell. It felt strange, unfamiliar, and yet… there was something deeply comforting about it. A quiet reminder of the life growing inside you, inching its way into the world.

Jake was in the other room, probably scrolling through his phone or flipping channels, oblivious to the tiny moment of realization you were having. The baby bump hadn’t fully registered with you yet either, but standing here, in the soft morning light filtering through the bathroom window of his place, you couldn’t deny it. Your body was changing. The bump was there.

Part of you wanted to hide it for a little longer, to savor this secret for yourself. But a bigger part—one that was filled with excitement and curiosity—wanted to share it with Jake. To see the look on his face when he realized just how real this was becoming.

After drying off and slipping into one of Jake’s old t-shirts, you wandered into his bedroom where he was sprawled on the bed, head propped on one hand as he absentmindedly flicked through a football game.

You leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, a small smile tugging at your lips as you watched him. He didn’t even notice you at first, too engrossed in the game. But eventually, he must have sensed your gaze, because he turned his head, his eyes finding yours instantly.

“Hey,” he said, grinning lazily. “What’s up?”

You hesitated for a moment, chewing on your bottom lip before you took a deep breath and stepped closer to the bed. “I… I want to show you something.”

Jake raised an eyebrow, pushing himself up to sit on the edge of the bed, his curiosity piqued. “What is it?”

Your heart fluttered with nerves, but you moved to stand in front of him, the oversized t-shirt hanging loosely on your frame. You took another breath, then lifted the hem of the shirt just enough to reveal the small, gentle swell of your belly.

Jake’s reaction was immediate. His eyes widened, his breath catching as he stared at the bump, the soft curve that hadn’t been there before. For a moment, he didn’t say anything—he just looked, like he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing.

Then, slowly, a smile spread across his face. Not just any smile—one of those rare, breathtaking smiles that lit up his whole face, eyes crinkling at the corners, as if he’d just discovered something truly magical.

“Is that…?” he started, his voice soft with awe, before trailing off. He reached out, his hand hovering near your belly like he was asking permission.

You nodded, unable to speak past the lump in your throat.

His hand made contact, fingers splayed gently over the bump, as if he was afraid to press too hard. He rubbed his thumb lightly against your skin, tracing the small curve with a mixture of wonder and joy. It was like he couldn’t get enough of the moment—couldn’t wrap his head around the fact that this was real.

“That’s… that’s our baby.”

You smiled, tears welling up in your eyes as you looked down at him, his expression so full of love it made your heart ache. “Yeah,” you whispered back. “I'm starting to show.”

Jake shook his head slightly, still in awe, his hand moving slowly over the bump like he was trying to memorize the feel of it. “I can’t believe it,” he murmured, his gaze never leaving your stomach. “I mean… I know we’ve been talking about it, but seeing this—it’s real, isn’t it?”

You nodded, feeling the same mix of disbelief and excitement swirling inside you. “Yeah,” you said softly. “It’s real.”

He looked up at you then, his eyes shining with emotion. “You look beautiful,” he said, his voice low and sincere. “Even more beautiful than before.”

A warm flush spread across your cheeks at his words, but before you could respond, Jake stood up, pulling you gently into his arms. His hands settled on your waist, his thumbs brushing the bump as he pressed a soft kiss to your forehead.

“I can’t believe I missed this,” he said with a small laugh, his lips still close to your skin. “How long have you noticed?”

You leaned into him, resting your head against his chest as you let out a quiet laugh. “Not long,” you admitted. “I only really noticed today.”

Jake pulled back slightly, just enough to look at you. “Well, I’m glad you showed me,” he said, his smile still lighting up his face. “I don’t want to miss any of this. Not a single second.”

You reached up, cupping his cheek with your hand, your thumb brushing over his stubbled jaw. “You won’t,” you whispered, your voice thick with emotion. “We’re in this together, remember?”

He nodded, leaning down to press a kiss to your lips—soft and sweet, filled with all the emotions neither of you could quite put into words.

As the kiss ended, Jake’s hands found their way back to your belly, his fingers brushing over the bump again. He looked down, his face full of wonder as if he still couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

“This is crazy,” he murmured with a small chuckle, shaking his head. “But it’s also… amazing.”

You smiled, your heart swelling with affection for him. “Yeah,” you said softly. “It really is.”

Jake wrapped his arms around you again, pulling you close, and for the first time, the two of you just stood there, holding each other, feeling the tiny life growing between you. It was a quiet, beautiful moment—a shared realization that everything was changing, but in the best way possible.

* * * * *

The soft hum of the ultrasound machine filled the small exam room as you lay back on the table, Jake seated beside you, his hand tightly holding yours. The lights were dim, and the air was thick with a mix of nerves and anticipation. You weren’t sure if it was the faint chill of the gel the technician had spread across your belly or the fact that in just a few minutes, everything would feel a little more real.

Jake squeezed your hand, his thumb rubbing small circles into your palm, silently telling you that he was right there with you, just as anxious and excited as you were. You turned your head to look at him, catching the faintest hint of a smile on his face, though his eyes were glued to the monitor in front of you.

“Alright, let’s take a look,” the technician said, her voice calm and friendly as she moved the ultrasound wand over your belly. The screen flickered with shapes and shadows, the sound of the baby’s heartbeat filling the room, a rhythmic thud that made your own heart skip a beat.

Jake’s grip on your hand tightened slightly as both of you stared at the screen, trying to make sense of the images. The technician moved the wand slowly, explaining the different parts—the baby’s head, arms, legs. But the moment you’d both been waiting for was still ahead.

“Are you ready to find out?” the technician asked, her eyes flicking between the two of you.

You nodded, biting your lip, a nervous excitement bubbling up inside you. Jake leaned closer, his eyes wide with anticipation.

The technician smiled, and with a small movement of the wand, she pointed at the screen. “Congratulations,” she said softly. “You’re having a baby boy.”

The words hung in the air for a moment, sinking in. A boy. You felt Jake’s hand tense, then relax as a slow grin spread across his face. He glanced at you, his eyes shining with pure, unfiltered joy.

“A boy,” he murmured, the words barely audible, as if he was saying them more to himself than to you.

You smiled back at him, your heart full. “Yeah,” you whispered. “A boy.”

Jake let out a small laugh, his free hand moving to rest on your belly, his thumb brushing over the slight bump. “A little man,” he said, his voice filled with wonder. “I can’t believe it.”

You couldn’t help but laugh softly, the relief and excitement finally washing over you. Everything felt a little more real now, a little more tangible. You had a son—a baby boy who was going to turn your entire world upside down in the best possible way.

After a few more minutes of watching the baby wiggle on the screen, the technician handed you some printed images from the scan, and soon you and Jake were heading out of the clinic, stepping into the cool air of the parking lot.

The ride home was quiet at first, the two of you still processing the news. Jake’s hand rested on your thigh as he drove, the soft buzz of the radio playing in the background. You glanced over at him, noticing how he was still grinning like a kid on Christmas morning.

“You’re really excited, huh?” you teased, though the warmth in your voice gave away just how much you loved seeing him this happy.

Jake glanced at you, his smile widening. “Hell yeah, I’m excited. We’re having a boy. That’s… that’s huge.”

You nodded, feeling the same excitement bubbling up again. “I know. It’s crazy.”

A comfortable silence settled between you, but you could feel Jake thinking, his mind already racing ahead. And then, almost predictably, he asked the question you’d been waiting for.

“So,” he started, his tone casual but with a hint of curiosity, “have you thought about any names?”

You let out a small laugh, turning to look at him. “Of course I’ve thought about names,” you said. “I’ve been scrolling through Pinterest boards for weeks now. I’ve got a whole list.”

Jake raised an eyebrow, glancing at you briefly before focusing back on the road. “Oh yeah? Let’s hear ‘em.”

You pulled your phone out, scrolling through your saved baby names. “Okay, well… I’ve always liked the name ‘Caleb.’ It’s kind of classic but not too common, you know?”

Jake nodded thoughtfully. “Caleb’s nice. What else you got?”

“Uh, let’s see… there’s ‘Wyatt,’ ‘Eli,’ and ‘Noah,’” you said, rattling off a few more names you’d saved.

Jake seemed to consider them for a moment, but then he let out a soft chuckle. “Those are good,” he said, his tone warm. “But, uh, I was kind of thinking about something more… I don’t know, meaningful? Maybe a family name.”

You raised an eyebrow, curious now. “A family name?”

Jake nodded, glancing at you again. “Yeah, like… well, my granddad’s name was ‘Jameson.’ I always thought that was a strong name. And my dad’s middle name was ‘Robert.’”

“Jameson Robert,” you repeated, testing it out. “That’s pretty solid.”

Jake smiled, clearly pleased. “Right? It sounds like a name you could grow into. A name with some weight behind it.”

You couldn’t help but grin at how serious he sounded. It was clear Jake had already been thinking about this—probably long before today. “I like it,” you said. “But we don’t have to decide right now. We’ve still got time to figure it out.”

Jake nodded, his hand giving your thigh a gentle squeeze. “Yeah, you’re right. I just… I don’t know, I kind of like the idea of carrying on some of the family names. But I’m open to anything.”

You smiled, leaning back in your seat as you watched the landscape pass by outside the window. “We’ll figure it out together,” you said softly. “Besides, we’ve still got a few months to pick the perfect name.”

Jake chuckled, glancing at you with that easy, warm smile of his. “Yeah,” he said. “But I’m calling it now—he’s gonna be a little Jameson.”

You laughed, shaking your head. “We’ll see about that.”

The rest of the drive home was filled with easy conversation, tossing baby names back and forth and laughing about which ones definitely didn’t make the cut. You felt lighter than you had in weeks, the excitement of the day settling into something quieter, something deeper.

By the time you pulled into the driveway, the two of you hadn’t landed on a final name, but it didn’t matter. You still had time. What mattered was that you were in this together—building a family, one moment at a time.

* * * * *

You stood in the small bedroom of your apartment, surveying the space that had felt cozy just a few months ago but now seemed increasingly cramped with the realization that a baby was on the way. Jake was pacing the floor, tossing around ideas for rearranging the furniture, while you tried to mentally picture how everything could fit.

“What if we move the dresser to the other side?” Jake suggested, pointing toward the corner where a floor lamp barely fit. “Then we could push the bed over, and maybe…” He paused, considering the layout again. “I don’t know, it just feels tight in here.”

You sighed, running a hand through your hair. “Yeah, it’s going to be a challenge. I wasn’t exactly planning on having a baby when I moved in here.”

Jake leaned against the wall, crossing his arms, and looked at you with a thoughtful expression. “You know,” he said slowly, “I was thinking… maybe you could just move into my place.”

You blinked, surprised by the suggestion. “Your place? But we’ve only been together a few months, and now with everything that’s happened…” Your voice trailed off as you considered the implications.

He straightened up, stepping closer. “I mean it. My place has two bedrooms. We can easily turn one into a nursery, and I want you and the baby close to me. We could be a family.”

The warmth in his voice sent a flutter through your chest. You searched his eyes for any hint of hesitation, but all you saw was sincerity. “Are you sure? This is a big step. We haven’t even been together a year yet.”

Jake nodded firmly, the look in his eyes unwavering. “I know it’s fast, but I want to do this together. I want you both with me. I don’t want to miss a moment once he gets here.”

Your heart swelled at his words, a mix of excitement and anxiety flooding you. “It’s just… a lot to think about.”

He reached out, pulling you into a warm embrace. “I get it, but we’ll figure it out together. You’re not alone in this. We can make it work.”

As you melted into his arms, you felt the weight of your worries begin to lift. The idea of moving in with Jake was both daunting and exhilarating, but deep down, you knew he was right. It would be good for all of you.

Pulling back slightly, you looked into his eyes, your smile growing. “Okay. Let’s do it.”

Jake’s face broke into a wide grin, and he lifted you off the ground in excitement. “Really? You mean it?”

You nodded, laughing as he set you back down. “Yeah, I mean it. I’m just as scared as I am excited, but I want this. I want us to be a family, and I want us to be together.”

Jake’s smile softened, and he brushed a strand of hair behind your ear. “Then it’s settled. Let’s make it happen.”

You felt a rush of happiness as you both embraced again, knowing that despite the challenges ahead, you had each other. You could build a home together, and soon enough, you’d be welcoming your little one into the world.

* * * * *

The day had stretched into what felt like an eternity, filled with anticipation, exhaustion, and a whirlwind of emotions. You lay in the hospital bed, beads of sweat on your forehead, clutching Jake’s hand tightly. He was your anchor, whispering words of encouragement and squeezing your fingers every time a contraction rolled through you.

“You’re doing amazing, babe,” he said softly, brushing a damp strand of hair from your face. His voice was a calming presence amid the chaos, and every time you met his gaze, you felt a surge of strength.

Hours passed, and the pain became almost unbearable, but you pressed on, motivated by the thought of finally holding your baby in your arms. You could feel the excitement in the room as the medical staff prepared for the final moments. Jake stayed right by your side, never leaving you, his eyes filled with concern and love.

Finally, with one last push, the cries of your baby filled the room, piercing through the haze of pain and exhaustion. Your heart raced as you heard that precious sound, a mixture of relief and joy flooding through you. The nurses gently placed the tiny bundle on your chest, and you looked down, tears brimming in your eyes.

There he was—your son. His little face, scrunched up and wailing, filled you with a warmth you had never known. You glanced up at Jake, who was beaming, his eyes wide with wonder as he took in the sight of his son for the first time.

Jake leaned in closer, pressing a tender kiss to your forehead, his breath warm against your skin. “You did it,” he whispered, his voice thick with emotion. “He’s perfect.”

You smiled through your tears, feeling an overwhelming sense of love and pride. “Look at him,” you murmured, your voice barely above a whisper. “He’s ours.”

Jake nodded, his eyes glistening as he gazed at the two of you. “We’re a family now.”

In that moment, nothing else mattered. The pain of labor faded into the background, replaced by an all-consuming love for this tiny human that you had created together. You felt Jake’s hand wrap around yours, his thumb stroking the back of your hand as he leaned in to share the joy of this incredible moment.

As you cradled your son against your chest, the world around you fell silent. It was just you, Jake, and your beautiful baby boy, the three of you beginning this new chapter together.

#Top Gun Hangman #Top Gun Hangman Fanfiction #Top Gun Hangman Fanfic #Jake Seresin #Jake Seresin Fanfiction #Jake Seresin Fanfic #Jake Hangman Seresin #Jake Seresin x reader #Hangman x reader

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sugar-crash · 2 days

Text

🍬King Candy (Wreck-It Ralph) x (gn) Reader👑

(Beginning Relationship Pt. I Edition!)

(I thought this song would be fitting considering King Candy’s voice is based on the vocal performance Ed Wynn did for the Mad Hatter… That and its… Nostalgic🔑 [I saw the animation meme culture rise and fall.] lol)

- So, as we all know, the more unpleasant parts of his personality (which could tie him to Turbo) are suppressed, and hidden, though they can still peak out when he’s feeling particularly malicious.

- He’s a slime, a real manipulative rat who’s so sure he can keep everyone in the dark, who takes it slow with you at first to try to maintain his hard work.

- There’s a clear wall between what he displays in front of others and how he is, just the way he likes it, but honestly— If you mean so much to him, you get a weird mix of the two (well, more than usual), a kind of sweet goofiness that’s followed up with a snide remark about being the most skilled in some specific topic.

- Again he’s not the best lover, though from his previous indiscretions he has learned to be more open to others feelings— But only for your sake, mostly cause he can’t stand anyone else besides you…. And Sour Bill sometimes, but he’s mostly the personification of a minimum wage worker.

- Spending time together after hours is a must, though he’s more understanding now than he was before, not demanding every moment of your time but relishing whenever you do.

- I think all that time alone before Sugar Rush got plugged in made him lonely, and less stubborn to admit that he wants that comfort from someone else.

- I don’t think it’s much of a far reach when I say maintaining the King Candy persona is something he is very fluid in, but it’s exhausting at times.

- When he gets that seldom time alone without any of his kingly duties he finds himself yearning for your comforting touch, that stubbornness making way as he makes Sour Bill retrieve you.

- I can see moments between the two of you to be on the tamer side, not as many arguments like Pre-RoadBlasters, little to none really, but there are these tense moments where you ask him something a little too close to home and he becomes stiff in your arms if only for a brief moment.

- As much as he wants to be, not only for himself but maybe even you— He isn’t perfect, he isn’t the person he tries so hard to be, that gleeful and peppy voice going flat the second he isn’t feeling it anymore.

- It becomes apparent the more you know him he’s far more serious than he lets on, puffing his chest up slightly when things don’t go his way and he has to play dirty, which he’s certainly no stranger to...

- In comparison to himself when the arcade first ever opened, he’s certainly grown from that childish hatred, for better and for worse.

- He’s more affectionate for one, providing you with comfort fitting to how you are feeling at that moment, little compliments, and gestures of affection to quell your anger and anxiety in a matter of seconds.

- Quick to learn every little thing about you to make sure he’s able to relate to you, though his intentions with this information go back and forth.

- He wants everything on a silver platter, not only for himself but also for you, making the other subjects of Sugar Rush bend over backward for you, even when you object to all the attention.

- I think one of the ways he dotes on you in a way is date planning, various areas in Sugar Rush vary which can be very nice date spots… He seems like the picnic blanket and tea liker as King Candy, as stereotypical as that is lol.

- Though if that isn’t your style, he can always do dates at the castle, like baking— chatting the night away, it’s the simple things in life <3

- Even with his character growth he is far from a good person, which we all know and love for the most part. He’s fully aware that the things he does to bar you, Venallope, the Sugar Rush inhabitants, and even the arcade entirely is cruel, spiteful even. But what could he have done? Let himself fade into obscurity and be characterized after one of his biggest mistakes?

- No, no, not when he still has so much to provide— He’s a person, just like everyone else, better yet he was programmed to be better. Why should he stand aside and let the world spin without him? Why should he look at you from afar when he has every right to want you?

- That’s part of the reason why he’s so adamant about keeping his spot as the monarch of Sugar Rush, he’s the rightful ruler after all.

(Cr cqh’r lncp, hjw cq cr?)

#king candy #king candy x reader #turbo #turbo wreck it ralph #wreck it ralph turbo #x reader

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vidavalor · 14 hours

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The Devil Takes The Hindmost

The Big Damn Post I've promised for ages on all the stuff suggesting that what we're watching in S2 is Aziraphale's mental health crisis leading to his fall...

...with a focus on a religious concept that intersects with secular ideas about mental health-- The Devil Takes The Hindmost-- that was unintentionally mentioned by Mrs. Sandwich and might be what's going on in The Final 15.

Plus, a look at the possible purpose of The Whickber Street Shopkeepers and Traders Association in the story and a dive into the symbolic role in Aziraphale's story played by Muriel... the most adorable Angel of Death anyone's ever seen.

@ao3cassandraic @komorezuki @kayleefansposts @masnadies -- This is basically what I was starting to talk about the other night, if you're interested. @ochre-sunflower -- the meta I mentioned.

TWs: suicide; depression; PTSD; negative self-thoughts... It's optimistic by the end but it's a look at some darker stuff in the story so please take care.

In GO S2, we have a lot of stressors building and overlapping for Aziraphale, with each episode adding new ones, all boiling hotter and hotter until we reach the The Meeting Ball. There, everything stops for the arrival of Shax at the door.

When she turns up, all the other plots cease to be relevant in the moment because the whole story's stakes upon her arrival now come down to a single, pivotal question:

Are these demons going to get into the bookshop?

On the surface, in our plot, Shax, Eric and the smallest number of completely ineffectual demons that a redemptive Furfur could get away with sending without looking like a traitor 😉 are interrupting Aziraphale having turned his first pass at hosting the monthly meeting of The Whickber Street Shopkeepers & Traders Association into a party.

Why is he doing that? For a dizzying number of reasons. So he can try to protect Gabriel by getting Maggie and Nina together and try to be part of his community by using the party to get Maggie and Nina together which is also so he can protect Gabriel... but, let's be real, it's really all so he can dance with Crowley...

Our heads are spinning as much as Aziraphale's is by this point and it's exhausting just to try to recap everything he's dealing with by The Meeting Ball... which is why it probably isn't surprising that all of that story just stops when the brick goes through the window and Shax is at the door. Because, symbolically...

...this is an anxiety attack.

Shax and the demons are Aziraphale's inner demons and they're trying to force their way past the threshold to take control of the bookshop the way that darkness can consume a person...

...as they're trying to take control of the bookshop that is what, symbolically?

Aziraphale, yes.

Aziraphale and Crowley. (And, as we looked at recently, also Maggie, on account of her family's history with it.)

Why this bookshop attack that is a metaphorical anxiety attack at this point in the story?

Because a lot of what Aziraphale wants out of life was happening before the demons that represent his inner demons showed up at the party.

For the first time ever, Aziraphale was no longer compartmentalizing his worlds and hiding parts of his life from people. He had Maggie and Gabriel under the same roof-- his human and angel families together. He had neighbors over and felt brave enough to call himself one of them by hosting the meeting. He was impacting the society around him in a big way by unifying Whickber Street's black market with its "legitimate" front by inviting Mrs. Sandwich to join the group. He was helping Maggie and Nina fall in love.

Most importantly, there was what the whole thing was really for: having all that happen with Crowley there, too, and everyone knowing they are together. Being able to dance with him and be a couple openly like everyone else. This Jane Austen cotillion coming out ball for ladies Maggie and Nina is really a coming out party of sorts for Crowley and Aziraphale. This is like the Christmas party of Aziraphale's dreams here. The one he's never, ever been able to have.

It's a wonderful thing when people who are in a great deal of emotional pain decide they've just had enough and want to break free of their misery and allow themselves to work towards being happier.

It's just a very delicate period because it can go either way, in a hurry. One minute a person can be thinking they're on top of the world and starting to live the life they've been dreaming of but the next minute find themselves freefalling emotionally. This is especially true of people who feel they have to present as cheerful and optimistic for everyone else and who hide their pain behind a smile.

They are some of the most at risk of their lives becoming like the Salinger short story about trauma and suicide referenced in S2-- "A Perfect Day for Bananafish"-- in which a man suffering from PTSD is believed to be fine by himself and those around him, has a nice day at the sea and chats with a symbolic daughter-like character and then, unceremoniously, goes to his hotel room and shoots himself dead.

As Maggie shows us during The Meeting Ball when she parallels Aziraphale's struggle, people get tired of being afraid and want to live-- want Nina, who is coffee, which is freedom-- but they can overdo it, if they're not careful, and wind up taking steps backwards.

Sometimes, the thrill of feeling like they might be on the edge of something good can cause someone to go too far, too fast, and, without the right support, they can find themselves going faster than a rollercoaster-- and right off a cliff as a result.

These people might look at their inner demons and think they're fine, now, actually, and that the darkness doesn't frighten them at all and they're all over their negative stuff-- all good now. No problems here.

Problem is that, sometimes, in the process, they might realize they're lying to themselves when they suddenly tell those inner demons that they can come in and say all that pathetic shit to their face... before they're really ready for that. Maggie, paralleling Aziraphale here, shows that with Shax during the bookshop attack. Not the best way to deal with inner demons, that.

And one person's inner demons can be an unintentional trigger for others, which is one of the things that started off Aziraphale's mental health crisis boiling up into a breakdown earlier in the season.

Aziraphale was already having a terrible week and then he projected his own issues all over his adopted goddaughter when she was having a moment and wound up accidentally saying something about himself that she took to mean about her and that came out sounding incredibly hurtful in a way that Aziraphale didn't mean for it to be. He then sought to make it up to her by finding a way to make her romantic dreams come true but was, all the while, silently berating himself for not having handled it flawlessly in the first place.

And when that got mixed in with trying to *checks Aziraphale's S2 list*... Jesus...

...recover from PTSD, manage all the anxiety and depression that comes along with it, deal with the fallout of his relationships with his abusive family, save his losing it brother from a religious cult/fascist regime trying to kill him and figure out why he's lost his memory, assuage his guilt over the memory-wiped angel that he feels he failed to save that showed up at the door, figure out wtf to do with the bookshop/embassy he's never wanted to run but that has become the M-25 that he's built and is now stuck in and that just reminds him that he hasn't any family to pass it onto, and, most importantly?

Tell his partner that he would like to live openly with him in the a little cottage by the sea in the South Downs...

I mean, by the time Mr. Vacuum showed up and suggested that Aziraphale add to the list that this week also be the first time he's ever hosted the monthly meeting of the business organization of the street he's basically founded but doesn't let himself really feel like he belongs to?

Sure, Mr. Carpet. Sure. Bring it on. Why not, at this point?

But Mr. Vacuum's idea actually caused Aziraphale to think he had the perfect solution-- continue to do what he was doing all week and combine this shit together! Protect Gabriel by tying him to Maggie and Nina and solve Maggie and Nina through the Whickber Street meeting and, well, if he's going to make it romantic for Maggie and Nina, well...

...maybe this is how Aziraphale can solve his biggest problem-- finding more of a way to just be forever near that one, particular person who makes everything okay.

So, by the time we get to The Meeting Ball? Aziraphale is pretty much losing his damn mind.

The heebie jeebies that Crowley gets in the street? It's not the low-rent demons. He knows what they feel like. He can't identify it but the thing that is really, really wrong is Aziraphale himself, in a dark reverse of Aziraphale feeling Crowley's love in S1.

Thousands of years of feeling a lack of enough control over his life have basically led Aziraphale to snap. Parts of it are very funny. Gabriel dressed up as Liberace circling with temptation trays of vol-au-vents is as hilarious as it is loony. Miracling the room so that everyone speaks like it's the 19th century causes a lot of humorous scenes, especially with Mrs. Sandwich... but is also a horror show. Justine loses her ability to speak English well and others have trouble understanding one another. It's like a zanier, more comedic version of Aziraphale's parallel antichrist, Adam, taking over The Them and deciding how, when, and if at all, they could speak.

It's a person in Aziraphale, who is normally very kind to others but not really to themselves, whose pain and anger have built within them to a breaking point and caused them to take that out on others and become, for a moment, almost the exact kind of person from whom he tries to protect others.

During this part of the season, Mrs. Cheng and Mrs. Sandwich have some dialogue that I think might be the whole rest of the season's plot in a nutshell. It happens here:

Mrs. Sandwich being unaware that "seamstress" is a 19th century-era euphemism for a sex worker means that she doesn't realize that she actually is, on one level, telling Mrs. Cheng what she does for a living. Her frustration is coming from the fact that Mrs. Cheng also doesn't know this euphemism and so thinks Mrs. Sandwich is a literal seamstress-- someone who sews and mends clothes-- and not a figurative/euphemistic one. While that and the rest of this scene is worth a whole deep dive in and of itself, it's not the bit I want to focus on here. That bit is what Mrs. Sandwich says as she gets increasingly upset.

Keep in mind as we look at this that the person who is the literal seamstress in this scene is not Mrs. Sandwich. It's the person whose magic is inhibiting her speech-- so, who is speaking, in a roundabout way, through her-- and who is the one changing everyone's outfits as they come through the door.

The seamstress really of note here is Aziraphale.

In the midst of her frustration, Mrs. Sandwich is trying to curse in 2023 terms but they are coming out in 19th century-era equivalents and this means that she says the following things when cursing:

She insists that she's not a godforsaken (abandoned by God; left to Satan) seamstress, that she's not a benighted (taken by darkness) seamstress, and, finally... while probably trying to say "what the hell"... winds up saying the whole season's plot in response to Mrs. Cheng asking her the also rather meta question of "what, in short" the problem is in that moment.

What, in short, is the plot?, asks Mrs. Cheng, on a meta level.

What the fuck is going on in this story?

To which Mrs. Sandwich replies:

"The Devil take it."

The curse "The Devil take it"-- meaning you give so little about something or someone that Satan can have it-- comes from a religious teaching (that works very well from a secular perspective, too) known as "The Devil Takes the Hindmost". It's this teaching that I think is extremely important to S2 and is arguably around what the story is structured.

This teaching argues that people who are excessively self-sacrificing are putting themselves at risk of being taken by darkness/Satan because of the cumulative effects of the anger, anxiety and depression that comes of denying that they are people with wants and needs of their own for too long.

It's about the people who go beyond kindness. It's about those who don't see themselves as part of the pack of people and think that the world isn't for them. They believe that their needs and wants don't matter as much as the need to prove to themselves that they aren't a horrible person-- which they do, in their minds, by denying themselves a full life of their own.

Sound familiar? It should. It's Aziraphale to a T.

Why are these people in "The Hindmost" for Satan to take when they're not terrible people?

Because they fall to the back of the pack of humanity.

Because they are left open to the darkness because they do not allow themselves to have what they work so hard to help others make for themselves.

The pain of that eventually renders them as bad off emotionally as those they counsel, or worse. The more they deny themselves, the more that pain builds and it can push them down dark paths.

They're in "The Hindmost" not because anyone left them behind, exactly, but because they've shut out the people around them.

They aren't letting people in.

It's about here that we can bring up that Good Omens is built around doors and all of S2 is basically about getting in the bookshop that is Aziraphale. It's here that we can mention Shax-- the darkness-- repeating demands to Aziraphale, to Crowley, to Beez to be let in. It's here we can mention The Final 15 and the world's most depressing kiss-- the literal embodiment of "let me in" as a theme-- and the horribleness that followed.

So, if S2 is The Devil Takes the Hindmost and he's headed Aziraphale's way the whole season with a large oat milk latte with a hefty jigger or dash or whatever of almond syrup and the job (the Job...) offer from Hell to tempt him, then we're watching (for now) the last days of the angel Aziraphale because a fall is a form of death.

It doesn't mean it's the end entirely because, as Gabriel discovered, everything goes down but flies? They go up.

Flies are the product of letting someone in and not shutting out the love and care you need. That can only be done through accepting, at least for a little while, that you are allowed to be a person and deserve to be cared for the way you care for others. If a person does that, they can fall but they'll have what they need to get back up and to help them stave off future falls.

Letting people in and talking to people about how you feel-- figuratively: feeding your fellow ducks your frozen peas and listening to theirs--- is how we all defeat the darkness together and make it so that Satan never shows up at any of our doors.

Yes, it is, Crowley. Would have been helpful if you had mentioned any of your own Hell-and-Book-of-Life frozen peas at all to anyone but the audience all S2 but this meta isn't really directly about you so you get a pass for now 😂 Back to your partner...

So, this The Devil Takes The Hindmost stuff? Almost immediately after Mrs. Sandwich says it, the story begins to have the characters literally act it out.

Shax is The Devil in that she's a devout diabolical minister of Satan so she's representing Satan at the door.

First up? Gabriel.

Gabriel mirrors Aziraphale's excessive self-sacrificing. It doesn't matter to him that he just met most of the people in the bookshop an hour or something ago. If that angry mob outside wants him for who fucking knows what reason as this poor bastard can't remember anything 😂 then Gabriel is happy to throw himself on his sword for them.

In reality, no one in the shop should have let Gabriel go out there alone. The whole point of "The Devil Takes The Hindmost" is that if everyone looks after each other the best that they can?

There won't *be* any hindmost.

There will just a pack of people who are all keeping each other safe from the darkness.

Jim is ultimately fine to tussle with Shax, though, because that is the part of the teaching that he exemplifies.

Gabriel has been protected. He's not completely fine-- who ever is, really?-- and he's still not really over this current bout of depression but he's safe from Satan and the darkness.

He's safe because he has Beez, Aziraphale, Crowley, and his new friends on Whickber Street.

Gabriel has a pack and is allowing himself to be part of it. As such?

The Devil can't touch him. Shax can't recognize him and sends him back inside. Gabriel is not in The Hindmost because he's been hidden, safely, by his group.

Gabriel goes back to the middle of the pack where he spends the rest of the attack, helping Aziraphale fight off his metaphorical inner demons by way of aiding Maggie and Nina to save the bookshop.

It's the next to the door, though, who is not so lucky, and gets to be the first example of The Hindmost.

From the way, way back of the pack that has formed of the humans, Gabriel, Crowley and Aziraphale in the middle of the bookshop pushes forward our beloved Mr. Brown of Brown's World of Carpets.

The President of The Whickber Street Shopkeepers and Traders Association-- the Gabriel of the humans-- feels it's his job to sort out this mess... only he has even less clue as to what's going on than Gabriel did... and he's much, much more vulnerable.

Mr. Brown tells Shax that he doesn't know why she is "interfering" with the people in the shop, unknowingly using the word used in religious circles to talk about The Devil coming after people. Mr. Brown is a guy at real risk here. Going into the circle and getting discorporated if you're not prepared? Facing The Devil at the door without preparation is the same, terrible thing. Mr. Carpet has no idea wtf he's up against here and his motivations for going to the door are the heart of The Devil Takes The Hindmost.

What does our lionhearted Mr. Brown do for a living? What is he, symbolically?

He sells carpets, right? What are carpets?

Well, they're rugs, for one thing. They're found in every business and home in existence. They are necessary for living and also an example of having comfort in your life. (They're also walked on and taken for granted, like our Mr. Brown is quite a bit.) You pick out carpets on your own or with the people with whom you are making a life-- and they tend to symbolize that life.

We see, in 2.06, the shot highlighting the lotus flower carpet that Crowley and Aziraphale have in the bookshop, that they use to cover up the Heavenly circle in the floor-- the one they put Gabriel on to do the protection miracle. It symbolizes the life Crowley and Aziraphale have made together to which they've now let Gabriel in.

What else are carpets? In Good Omens' use of language, they're also cars and pets. Rugs, cars and pets... three of the most common things owned by people living a life on Earth, with the word own itself in Mr. Brown's name.

Brown's *World* of *Carpets*... this dude is, symbolically, everyone.

He's life itself.

That's why it's Mr. Brown who gets taken by the demons and, later, saved by Crowley and left in the care of Mutt, who is human magic-- the character who symbolizes the wonder and mystery and joys of being alive.

Mr. Brown-- an extremely common name for a man whose pain is extremely common. He's lonely. He's overlooked. He's the president of this group of apostrophe and Christmas lights-obsessed, irritating and wonderful, typical, human people because he's unflappable and no one else wants to do it. No one else will do all the boring work and hear all the complaints the way he will and he's made that his role and he hates it. In that way, he's the Beez of Whickber Street-- as desperate for appreciation as Aziraphale. He's Burbage and Shakespeare, wanting an audience that isn't sleeping, drunk, or flirting their way through Hamlet. He's Crowley and Aziraphale:

Mmm, good job... Oh, do you really think so?

Mr. Brown of Brown's World of Carpets is a professional carpet salesman. He spends his days selling everyone what they need to make lives of their own but his own life is far lonelier and smaller than he would like it to be. He doesn't have a partner or true friends, just the people of the group into which he's struggled to really fit, despite running it. He's nerdy and awkward. His over-the-top, affected manner of speaking belies the fact that he feels like he's jiggery pokery, through and through. If I took Mr. Brown's name and profession out of this paragraph, I could be describing Aziraphale just as easily, but for the fact that Aziraphale does have Crowley, if not in the open way he wishes for. Because of that, Mr. Brown being taken by The Devil is also foreshadowing the end of S2 for Aziraphale.

Like most, Mr. Vacuum has got some surprising resolve-- some unexpected moxie-- but, fundamentally, this man has spent S2 showing that he is one more papercut away from a nervous breakdown.

So, when he tries to prove his worth to the group by putting himself at risk, it's excessively self-sacrificing. While there are some titters of alarm and warnings to him not to leave the pack, the one who objects the most is Crowley. Mr. Brown, though, doesn't let Crowley in. He doesn't recognize him because it's partially to look good in front of Aziraphale that Mr. Brown has jumped to the front of the pack. It's his loneliness, his lack of his own life, his need to be part of the group and appreciated. His need to be the hero.

Only, Mr. Vacuum is what happens when you aren't prepared for the darkness and you haven't let anyone in to help you. Shax, realizing that Crowley has been lying to her about the threshold by the way that all the humans have been backed into the living room, tests the theory and Mr. Vacuum gets taken by The Devil.

The Devil Takes The Hindmost.

Mr. Brown went from the literal hindmost of the pack inside of the bookshop up to the front to self-sacrifice excessively, got taken by Satan, and then, in a darkly amusing turn, got tossed back through to the hindmost of the pack of demons outside. He's also near the back of the line for coffee the next morning at Nina's.

If The Devil can come for Mr. Carpet, we see, he can come for anybody. Now this lingering and malignant sense of unease we've been feeling throughout The Meeting Ball tips here into real horror.

Crowley is up next to evacuate the rest of the humans in the shop. He's going to walk them all in a pack past The Devil. They go out in mini-groups within a larger pack. He tells them that they need to all stick together and mind each other, not the demons.

If they do that, they live. If they don't, they won't.

It becomes that simple because it is that simple.

Crowley doesn't just tell The Whickbers how to do this, though-- he leads them out. Because he's one of them, too... but really also because this is all a metaphor for Aziraphale's mental health breakdown getting going and what happens when you are having an anxiety attack or a depression episode?

What goes out the door?

The things that keep you alive, right? The good stuff in life. That is defined differently for everyone but a lot of it overlaps for many of us. Many of those things are what The Whickber Street group characters stand for in the story. Aziraphale owns the land for most of Whickber Street so, in addition to being characters in their own right, all of the members of The Whickber Street group represent Aziraphale.

They're all the things he loves the most-- his reasons for living, and what helps keep the darkness away for him. This is really why, symbolically, neither they nor Crowley (symbolically, love) can be present in the shop when Aziraphale is melting down at his worst.

Crowley leads the pack out with Mrs. Sandwich up front. He is allowing himself to be part of the pack here. He might be supernatural and the group human but it doesn't matter. They're all people and there's more to it than miracles. Crowley can't face the darkness on his own-- and neither can Mrs. Sandwich. Neither of them should have to. So, they don't. They choose to be each other's friends and let each other in and they're both better for it and so is the rest of the pack. This is an example of how to deal with darkness in a positive way.

Crowley trusts Mrs. Sandwich in general but for this task, in particular, because who knows best how to deal with the darkness?

Survivors of prior run-ins with darkness, that's who. His fellow "fallen woman", Mrs. Sandwich, has got her hat pin and his back and Crowley has hers.

So, out the door of the bookshop that is Aziraphale goes love, friendship, sex, romance, healthy communication, human magic, community, food, music, and so much more... because not taking care with our mental health issues rob us of what we love.

Left in the shop? Maggie and Gabriel-- Aziraphale's past and his family... and Nina-- the possibility of freedom (her American-themed coffee shop) and what's left of Aziraphale's hope for the future. Nina's decision to stay symbolizes Aziraphale hanging onto some hope.

After Crowley and The Whickbers leave and Maggie accidentally lets in Shax, the demons have gotten in and are advancing. Without those who are no longer in the shop and with Crowley missing, Aziraphale's anxiety ratchets up and the demons-- his inner demons-- gain ground. The goal becomes keeping them from getting into the residence floor upstairs-- to the place to which Aziraphale has let hardly anyone in. The parts of himself that are not public-facing or for acquaintances but only for those he allowed himself to get close to. Maggie and Nina can be on the landing up there. Gabriel can stay in the guest room. They're family. Only Crowley is allowed free reign in the whole of the bookshop.

For the first time, we have an angel not named Aziraphale teaming up with humans to fight for a place on Earth. The start of the 'all of us versus all of them' that Crowley foreshadowed as still to come at the end of S1? It isn't some big battle for the planet. It is a battle for the life of a single person in Aziraphale because every person matters.

It's The Commander of The Heavenly Host rooting around the upstairs rooms of the bookshop collecting all the fire extinguishers bought to help Crowley deal with his trauma that he can find to supply his troops-- the human Maggie and Nina-- on the front lines.

It's Aziraphale's loved ones coming together to fight to save the bookshop that is, symbolically, Aziraphale himself.

Ultimately, though? Crowley, Gabriel, Maggie and Nina can help hold off the demons that are symbolically Aziraphale's inner demons but it's ultimately going to come down to Aziraphale and Aziraphale alone whether or not these demons are going to overrun the bookshop.

We reach the point where Aziraphale has to choose-- is he going to let the demons take him over or is he going to send them back? He decides, in this moment, to blow up his halo.

We learn that Aziraphale's halo isn't divinity floating atop his head-- it's a tight, hard band around his mind. It's mental health issues, in physical form. He is in visible pain and breathing shallowly as he struggles to take it off. If you took away the halo from the picture, it's visually very much like someone having an anxiety attack. He uses it to discorporate the demons-- to send his inner demons packing.

Well, almost all of them...

Shax, the one that voices his darkest inner thoughts, remains. She's unconscious for awhile, lying dormant on Crowley's couch.

Aziraphale tells Maggie and Nina that he thinks blowing up his halo might have "just started a war" and, symbolically, it did.

Because when you blow up your halo, it can work for awhile but if you still aren't able to address the underlying, fundamental issues at the root of why you have a halo in the first place, those dark thoughts will come back.

Those demons are coming back and, sure enough, Aziraphale's bookshop is full of plenty of voices by early the next morning. While he won The Battle of The Bookshop, he loses The Battle of The Bananafish the next morning.

While Aziraphale stopped the attack on the shop-- his anxiety attack-- with the halo, we learn the next morning that then something else happened the prior night that we didn't see that is affecting the rest of 2.06. We hear about it from Aziraphale after Satan shows up in this bit here:

What's this, now? Aziraphale doesn't want to chinwag with The Metatron because they already chatted the night before and our angel doesn't think there's anything left to be said. Our angel says he's made his position quite clear.

So, The Metatron got on the circle thing zoom after Aziraphale discorporated demons with it and blew up his halo and, by that point, Aziraphale had had enough.

Aziraphale told The Metatron, in so many words, to go fuck himself.

This is really what Aziraphale is trying to say when he tells Crowley that he "did the thing with The Halo." Yes, he literally blew up his halo to discorporate the demons and stop the bookshop attack but the halo is his the weight of all of his cumulative trauma from Heaven... which makes it also, symbolically, The Metatron. Aziraphale blew up his ties to Heaven by telling off The Metatron. He told off the floating head hanging over his head as part of blowing up the halo crushing his mind.

So, Aziraphale then spent the whole night assuming correctly that, if you yell at Head Office, he's going to tell Satan that you're fair game.

Aziraphale doesn't want to fall. He doesn't want to be a demon-- not because he thinks of them as lesser beings because he doesn't think of them that way. Because being a demon is a terrible existence and Aziraphale would rather not have his soul be owned for all eternity by his partner's assailant who is also, literally, The Devil. He's a hard pass on that and had a plan to have Crowley help him avoid it.

Satan and other events made sure that he and Crowley couldn't communicate what they were thinking and feeling to one another openly from the time that Crowley left the bookshop with The Whickbers through the end of S2. If they had been able to and if Crowley had any idea what was truly going on, things would have been very different. The story is Aziraphale's fall, though, so it has to be bad for now to improve in S3.

Because it's Satan at the door with the coffee, he uses Crowley to identify him as The Metatron to everyone else and, so, has convinced Crowley that he *is* The Metatron and that Satan is nowhere in sight. Crowley doesn't see Aziraphale's fall coming, as can be the case with many people-- even those who know of the mental health challenges of those close to them.

Crowley thinks that the biggest threat to Aziraphale in The Final 15 is The Book of Life-- and, I suppose, in a symbolic way, it is.

The Book of Life-- in the way that Crowley thinks it exists-- is not real. It's his and Beez's anxieties from when they were angels manifested as a ghost story to tell more impressionable angels. Yet, as a concept? It kind of is sort of exactly what Aziraphale goes through in S2. He feels erased into non-existence by Heaven already and he's fighting for his life.

Right, so, a hundred years ago lol, I mentioned that Muriel is key to this idea. Let's look at how their presence is highlighting Aziraphale's issues and ushering him closer to death/falling.

While two angels with memory issues show up at Aziraphale's door in S2, Gabriel is a tale of hope while Muriel is a cautionary tale.

If your memories are "all your you"-- your sense of self, formed through your history-- then, while Gabriel was preserved in The Fly, the example of what can happen without one?

The horror show of a total and complete, catastrophic loss of a sense of self? So... death?

That's Muriel.

There is an angel named Muriel in some Western Christian traditions who becomes a figure called The Abaddon, which is The Angel of Death. The Abaddon factors into different takes on Revelations and apocryphal Biblical stuff. There are several different ideas on who The Abaddon is, though my understanding is that their role as The Angel of Death who brings souls to their final judgement is pretty universal throughout.

In some traditions, The Abaddon is seen as the antichrist. In others, it's Satan. In S1, Good Omens played around with some characters seeing the role of The Abaddon in these ways during Armageddon: Round One through how the Satanic nuns referred to the antichrist baby and Satan as "The Angel of The Bottomless Pit", which is the descriptive phrase given to The Abaddon in multiple different religious writings.

In other religious traditions, though, The Abaddon is thought to be an angel of Heaven or a trio of angels of Heaven. It's these ideas that I think Good Omens is playing with in S2 with, I feel, the heavier emphasis on the true Abaddon being the one most frequently referred to that way-- Muriel. Also supporting the idea of Muriel as Death is that there is also that a character in Salinger's "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" with that name. Muriel is the one set to inherit the main character's wealth and property after he kills himself at the end of the story.

So, how is our lovebug Muriel The Angel of Death?!

For that, we have to look at what a fall is.

Consider that The Metatron can tell Satan that an angel is fair game but, in order for that angel to actually fall to Hell, they have to fail to resist Satan's temptation. What the show is subtly saying is that every angel who is a demon is not just an angel who got caught out saying or doing something that threatened The Metatron's power but, also, an angel who was also already falling into despair and, so, couldn't resist Satan when he came to claim their soul.

The literal fall that happens-- the "freestyle dive into a pit of boiling sulphur", as Crowley called it-- is a symbolic thing that happens after an angel has been unable to resist Satan and, so, is now considered by Heaven and Hell to be a demon.

If you consider that the way the literal fall has been described-- going off a cliff; the parallels to Gabriel nearly jumping out a window-- all of these are images of ways that people sometimes kill themselves. Heaven and Hell come at angels and demons from a place of abuse that pushes them towards suicide. Even in S1, it wasn't straight out murder that Crowley and Aziraphale faced-- they were both forced into what, to Heaven and Hell, would have seen as committing forms of suicide. Crowley getting into a bath of holy water; Aziraphale stepping into hellfire.

So, we're saying that the physical fall happens after an angel has already fallen, and that, in order to fall to Hell, an angel has to have already first fallen into despair.

If the show wants Aziraphale to fall in the Heaven/Hell sense of it, he has to have a mental health breakdown and I'm reminded that the opening credits of this show are Crowley and Aziraphale walking the Earth with all of their history layering up behind them and following along with them and then they go up and up and up on a track in S2 and stop just prior to?

Falling off the edge. The literal fall is what we've stopped just short of but, all along so far, we've been watching the fall in progress build.

The reason why we've never been "shown a fall" on Good Omens is actually because the whole story to date is Aziraphale's fall. It doesn't even really start with S2-- it started long, long ago. It also, though, really kicked into gear just prior to the start of S2, as is noted a bit in this moment here:

Nina asks if everything being weird started the prior week when the power went out and Aziraphale replies:

Trauma is like that. It can be things that happened in your metaphorical 2500 BC that are coming back to bite you in your 2023 AD. It's cumulative. It builds and pushes. You can go and go and go and then, one day, your power just goes out. Your energy to fight is just gone and a storm is brewing. A series of events can push someone who is in an already vulnerable mental health state towards a full on fall into despair and that is what I think S2 is fundamentally about.

S2 is a suicide narrative. Our Clarence Aziraphale is going a bit George Bailey. Even as, on the one hand, he's taking big steps forward to claim more of the life he wants, it's the underlying trauma that he hasn't yet been able to fully deal with that is making him also, at the same time, begin to quietly wonder if those around him would be better off if he were not in their lives.

This is why the most dangerous character in S2 is not Satan or The Metatron.

It is, quietly, Muriel.

How so?

Because when people begin to have more frequent suicidal thoughts, their reasons for living that usually keep them going begin to change to being more of a list of obstacles that are preventing them from death. As a person falls into depression to a point that they begin to feel like maybe everyone around them would be better off if they weren't there, they begin in their minds to try to "solve" the problems that are keeping them from dying. They try-- not always super-consciously-- to set things up in such a way so as to convince themselves that their ties to the Earth will be neatly resolved with minimal bother for anyone else and, more importantly, that all their loved ones will be set up to be fine without them.

People in despair can-- and will-- come up with what are, objectively, absolutely bonkers rationales because, ultimately, they want coffee but they are in such despair that they thinking about ordering death.

Muriel's arrival means that Aziraphale then basically has a solution to every obstacle in his mind in such a way that he clears a path straight to taking his life. They help solve two of his "obstacles": Crowley and the problem of the bookshop.

Muriel is dangerous because they show up at the door with the same curious, upbeat, enthusiastic personality and sense of wonder at the magic of the world that Crowley both loves in Aziraphale and needs in his life.

Muriel is also who can take the bookshop. They're an angel who needs an escape and who loves books and Earth. They're perfect for it. Aziraphale is also horrified to realize that Muriel doesn't recognize him and what the implications of that are and he feels guilty about not having saved them somehow. They begin to represent his self-determined failures and giving them the shop would be, in his mind, making some of that right.

To Aziraphale, Muriel is the cheer and hope that Crowley needs in his life and they've taken to each other like ducks to water, which is then also coming after Aziraphale has subtly been pairing up his partner with the also-immortal-and-traumatized archangel with whom Crowley has much in common and whom we are told in S2 that Aziraphale knows that Crowley finds attractive.

Shax pops up throughout to help show some of Aziraphale's dark thoughts about himself.

What are you, Aziraphale? Crowley's emotional support angel? The one who went native? Do you need more big, human meals, Aziraphale?

The comments in Edinburgh that are not really about the car. It's really more like Aziraphale calling himself "an old piece of junk" and thinking Crowley deserves the chance to get an upgrade to someone better. Gabriel's good-looking and has been through much of the same as Crowley. Muriel is upbeat and makes Crowley smile. Crowley having friends who are supernatural is a great thing but, under the surface, it's also leading Aziraphale to create an inner narrative where he's telling himself that he's replaceable in parts by Gabriel and Muriel and that he wouldn't be leaving Crowley alone if he were to take his own life.

Aziraphale is telling himself that maybe the best way to love Crowley is to make it so that Crowley doesn't have to deal with him.

What did Crowley say about his stars once? The first time they met?

Six thousand years-- that's nothing.

Engine won't even have properly warmed up by then.

Crowley's borderline-immortal. He'll live forever. Six thousand years is a blink of the eye to them. He'll get over me, Aziraphale is telling himself, and find someone worth spending eternity with.

Aziraphale didn't see a path towards death until Muriel's arrival because he didn't fully have a solution to the bookshop and Crowley. That's what makes that adorable moppet of an angel the deadliest character in S2.

The reason why Muriel leapfrogs over every other character and makes it down to the last, pivotal minutes of Crowley and Aziraphale's story in The Final 15-- in a part of the story where even Gabriel is gone-- is because Muriel is death.

It's because this is all about whether or not Aziraphale is going to take the freedom of coffee from Mr. Six Shots of Espresso and live or whether he's going to take the false freedom of the lies he's telling himself from Satan and die.

Is he going to try to take his own life or is he going to find a way through this time, as he has before?

"It's just you and me, Aziraphale." What a statement that is.

It's both true and a complete lie.

Crowley and Muriel are both still in the room when Satan says that so, objectively, it's not really just him and Aziraphale... except that he is controlling Muriel and Crowley in different ways. In that way, it really is only Satan and Aziraphale left by this point. It's down, by that point, to just whether or not Aziraphale is going to live and since Satan is here for him, it's not looking great.

Satan is the embodiment of Aziraphale's life or death choice here and that choice, in many ways, is the only two other beings left in the shop at that point.

It's Crowley or Muriel. It's life or death.

Satan also as Aziraphale's darkest thoughts, really... as Aziraphale's internal dialogue playing out.

What about my bookshop? he asks himself.

Really: What about my life?

Muriel, replies Satan... replies the darkness... replies Aziraphale to himself.

You could entrust it to Muriel.

They need an escape. You'd be doing them a great favor. You'd be sacrificing yourself for them and redeeming yourself for failing to save them. It'd make what you're thinking of doing noble, actually. It'd make it okay. It'd make you a good person.

Aziraphale struggles, right? He almost doesn't do this. He almost says he thinks he's making a mistake because he knows he is. It's just that his every conflict has come up all at once and overwhelmed him.

Even still, the darkness has him pretty solidly-- but not completely-- until this moment right here:

Aziraphale is no fool and he's questioned the idea that this is The Metatron; he's actually trying to tell Crowley that he thinks it's Satan for much of That Scene in the bookshop and to get Crowley to see it and help him, in case it is. Aziraphale hopes he's wrong, though, because he wants it to be The Metatron because he thinks that is the way to fix things but it's not and he knows it, deep down. He doubles down because he's embarrassed, because he feels foolish and afraid and like he has nothing to offer Crowley without the power he thinks he lacks.

Satan's temptation, though, ultimately works because of the final of the death by a thousand cuts here in the whole "Second Coming" moment.

After Satan gets Aziraphale to leave the shop with him to head to Heaven, he, as The Metatron, flatters Aziraphale a bit. He says the things that Aziraphale has always wanted someone in Heaven to say to him. He tells Aziraphale he's needed and that they specifically need and appreciate who he is-- an angel who knows how things are done on Earth. It's validating who Aziraphale is and who is he proud of being in the way that Aziraphale has always wished would happen.

Aziraphale is hurting so much that he starts to wonder if maybe he was wrong about all of this. He was pretty sure before but, maybe, just maybe, he was wrong and he wants to be wrong because then it means maybe that he'd know who he is. Maybe it would mean he would no longer have to be an angel who goes along with Heaven as far as he can because Heaven would be finally starting to see the light.

Maybe this isn't Satan. Maybe it really is The Metatron. Maybe all of this is real. Maybe he can go to Heaven and take this job and really have the power to protect Crowley and they won't have to be afraid anymore.

Then, Satan drops the bomb. He fires the killshot.

He lets Aziraphale hear him say "we call it 'The Second Coming'" while pretending he didn't mean for Aziraphale to hear it.

This is the moment that Aziraphale knows it was all a lie.

He knows for sure who that is now. He has gone from being 98% sure to a full 100%. He knows that it's not The Metatron but Satan holding open the elevator.

Satan had to tell him, as it's the only thing Satan has to do in some form at the end-- because it has to be Aziraphale's choice. Satan sure as fuck doesn't have to be fair about it-- and he definitely wasn't-- but it's at this moment that Aziraphale knows with absolute certainty that there isn't a job offer.

How could there be if The Second Coming is on the table? They'll never put Aziraphale in charge of Heaven with Armageddon as the agenda. He's the angel who stopped it the last time. It means that Aziraphale knows for sure that, if he gets into the elevator, he's effectively killing himself, because this is all to entrap and kill him, not to promote him.

Satan sets it up so that the final things Aziraphale is thinking about when he makes the choice are that there is no chance that Heaven will ever improve and that they're going to do Armageddon again and just keep doing it until it happens and it's all hopeless and Aziraphale will never have the power to protect Crowley and they're going to just keep living this nightmare forever and he's been doing this for thousands of years and he can't take it anymore.

People who are suicidal are stuck in cycles of their lives they feel they can't get out of and that's exactly what Aziraphale is reminded of in the moment before he gets into the elevator.

He doesn't want death-- he wants coffee.

He wants Crowley, standing appropriately in front of Give Me Coffee or Give Me Death, with the coffee art and the blues and greens of Earth all around him. The canopy plants in the backseat. This is what Aziraphale wants but he just doesn't know how to get there anymore and the darkness wins out. The villains always win a battle at this part of the story or else there's no plot left going forward and there is a forward because it's Aziraphale. There are ways back from this but that's for S3.

Give Me Coffee or Give Me Death, as we know, is substituting the word coffee for the word liberty in the original quote and that's exactly what happens in Aziraphale's decision to get into the elevator. The truth is revealed-- there is no job, which makes him feel like there is no way to ever be free while living. He's exhausted by fighting the same battles, over and over, with no way to escape in sight, and takes what he thinks is the freedom of not suffering anymore.

He chooses the false freedom of death over the true freedom of living-- Satan's coffee over Mr. Six Shots of Espresso in a Big Cup-- because Aziraphale loves that espresso more than anything but he struggles to love himself. He thinks, in that moment of despair, that the best way to love Crowley is to set him free by leaving life.

It's the Job minisode foreshadowing all of it and going back to the start of his story for the end.

It's nothing important, Aziraphale, don't worry...

Just your kids, your house, your businesses, your money, your neighbors, your street, your car, your books, your friends, your community, your Earth and the love of your life.

Just all the love and magic of the world.

Just all your you. Just your life...

When the first shot of the season was the skies sweeping down towards the front of the shop door... and the final shot of the shop in S2 is The Angel of Death-- Muriel-- entering it alone, claiming it and closing the door? When the light goes off in the bookshop window?

When Aziraphale-- after running around with a paralleling clipboard for half an episode-- leaves a note on the dash for his wife, like International Express Delivery Dude did in S1? When his "I love you, Maud" is the car playing Crowley "A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square"? That's when we can see why Death appeared to Aziraphale at the end of S1 and has been headed his way since.

Satan's temptation, yes, but executed with the help of The Angel of Death, who helped push Aziraphale into the lift with The Devil and not towards Crowley and The Bentley, where Aziraphale's love has always been willing to give him a lift, anywhere he wants to go.

In a show where people are symbolically what they profess that it is that they do-- midwifery/cobblering, conjuring, "seamstressing" and so on... all of those things are positive. They're about helping others and loving the world. With that in mind?

Go back and look at Muriel's arrival at the bookshop again...

What is adorable is, also, a fucking horror movie of a declaration:

Muriel is a human police officer.

Friends... that's Death.

Muriel is the only one with a horrible self-declared profession. They're not helping birth ideas and babies and art and mending everyone's pain. They're not a working, professional magician helping to develop the street. They're not a healing seamstress. They don't sell old films and records and books. They don't feed anyone at their restaurant or sell musical instruments to nourish their lives. They aren't the best guy on the block-- Mr. Brown and his World of Carpets, giving people what they need to outfit a life of their own. They're the not a member of The Whickber Street Shopkeepers and Traders Association-- like their paralleling Jim becomes as he begins to regain the will to live.

Crowley is worried about caring for Gabriel being too much for Aziraphale but it's really Muriel that is a walking trigger for him.

Gabriel is a character people think is a villain who is really a lovebug; Muriel is a character people think is a lovebug but who is, symbolically, the worst possible thing to ever show up on your doorstep.

Gabriel is saying books are keen and hot chocolate is amazing and live, live, live, live, Aziraphale...

He's the part of Aziraphale's mind that is trying to save himself while Muriel is the part that is luring him towards death.

Muriel is saying the best part of a cupperty is to look at it, Aziraphale.

It's not for you. You're an angel. You aren't supposed to want to live your own life. You aren't supposed to have wants and needs at all. Even if you go into that back room to be with Crowley alone and try to shut me out, I will break down the door and come after both of you before too long is up.

Muriel is cosplaying Earth's most invasive and violent profession and they're so sweet about it that it tends to bury the eeriness of their arrival. In Muriel, Aziraphale is confronted with his paralyzing perfectionism, his negative self-worth, his rampant imposter syndrome, and his excessive self-sacrificing-- all at once.

All his negative feelings are here at the door in the form of this fun house mirror version of himself-- a cheery and also clinically depressed angel, who is actually cosplaying humanity the way Aziraphale always feels like he is, even if he knows at the core that he's every bit as human as the billions on Earth.

The world is for the professional conjurers, for the humans, for everyone but Aziraphale, in his mind. He is supposed to be above needing any of it. He is supposed to never be angry, anxious, tired, depressed, hungry. He isn't supposed to need the home and books and music and food and sex and magic that he lives for. This angel isn't supposed to be a member of The Whickber Street Shopkeepers and Traders Association but he founded the street, let alone the group, and he'll die trying to host a meeting because nothing makes him feel more himself than when he lets himself be a part of the world.

Muriel's presence worsens his depression spiral, which we've seen is what happens when the negative thoughts get to be too much.

In S2, he goes a sherry-and-stomach-settling-drop diet. He doesn't eat the eccles cakes. He doesn't slow down and enjoy much of anything. Part of the joy of the ox rib scene is that Aziraphale isn't really enjoying himself that much in the present in S2 and it's the only thing like it in S2. Aziraphale, in S2, has put himself and his demon on half-rations and talks about his frozen peas to his fellow duck less. He goes back and forth between trying to self-care (Shostakovich and going to the Gabriel statue and brief moments of flirting with Crowley) and self-neglect (the entire rest of the season lol). Mix in too many additional stressors like what S2 had and it goes from the anxious period of fasting in 1967 to the cause for big time alarm that is S2.

Intellectually, Aziraphale knows that mindful human living is prescriptive. He saves Gabriel by starting to teach him what he knows about it. There's always been a little voice whispering at Aziraphale, though, that it might be right for others but that doesn't mean he's supposed to feel or need those things. He should be above it because that, apparently, would make him the good person that he doesn't often believe he is. His feelings aren't even about being an angel in the Heaven sense so much as in the human anxious perfectionist sense, in that he's excessively self-sacrificing because he doesn't fundamentally believe he's a good person.

There's nothing wrong with being as kind and generous to people as you can. It's when you're doing that while also not acknowledging that you are a person with wants and needs at the same time that you can self-sacrifice yourself right off a cliff as a way of trying to convince yourself that you're not a bad person.

You can deny yourself the life you want out of the excuse that it's your purpose only to care for everyone else but it's not really virtuous. It's a form of self-harm.

What hurts so much about S2 is 1941 because the minisode then gives us Crowley and Aziraphale slaying demons left and right. It gives us what a good day looks like in a whole season that is, otherwise, a series of bad days mixed with things that are also not within their control that then lead to the worst, possible ending.

We see, really, how good they are at caring for one another. The kiss scene is made infinitely more painful by us having seen in the 1941 minisode another conversation in the same spot in bookshop when Aziraphale was struggling with these same issues that went so very differently.

Crowley is very good at gently reminding Aziraphale that, not only is he wonderful, but that he's a person, too, and that everyone feels like they are jiggery-pokery sometimes. Everyone struggles with the voices of others and themselves trying to judge them and how that impacts a sense of self. That fighting through that to be able to live and love is, unfortunately, a pretty common experience of being a person.

This is not new for Aziraphale. It's so very old, stirred up hardcore in S2, now that it's been four years since Heaven contacted him. Aziraphale doesn't know that it's because Gabriel is trying to protect him. He thinks he's so inconsequential that Heaven couldn't even be assed to send someone to formally fire him and take the bookshop embassy that, despite being something of an albatross around Aziraphale's neck, he's also really proud of having built.

Aziraphale wants Heaven to fuck off but he also feels embarrassed by the fact that Heaven could fuck off so easily and that he feels like he doesn't have a friend there to speak of after thousands of years. He is ashamed of it needing to be Crowley who gets them a contact for info in Shax because he sees it as more dangerous for Crowley to need to be in contract with the demons and as a failure to protect him-- the thing that's at the core of Satan's temptation at the end of the season. (Also why Crowley is trying not to tell him about Shax taking his job and his conversation with Beez, which is a huge mistake but it's coming from a good place.)

Surely, Aziraphale thinks, if he hasn't fallen and he's still an angel... if he still is one, he's not really sure, as what is a non-working angel?... then, if he were good, there'd be some angel up there who would still be talking to him. He knows Heaven isn't good, exactly, but not all of the angels are terrible. As anyone who has ever had to go no contact with an abusive family knows, the illogical doubts that creep up can make a person think that maybe they're the wrong ones. At your worst, you can wonder: if the whole family thinks you're wrong, are you really right? Aziraphale knows he is right but it gets complicated.

Add to that the stress of worrying that something will happen to Crowley every time he goes out the door (part of Aziraphale's own trauma for millennia, made worse by 1827), and Crowley's PTSD exacerbated by the fire in S1, and Aziraphale's negative self-thoughts are being triggered even worse than usual. He's blaming himself for them not being safe, when that's not fully within his control... which, in Aziraphale's mind, is the whole problem and an example of how he is failing Crowley.

This is all long before Gabriel shows up at the door and the season gets started with a series of events that then worsen Aziraphale's state of mind. By the time Muriel shows up at the door, these negative kinds of thoughts out in full force in Aziraphale and Muriel represents them.

Muriel might be cute as a button and, as a character in their own right, being used left and right by Heaven, but it doesn't change the fact that Muriel is, symbolically, a mashup of the human and supernatural cops trying to kill them that Crowley and Aziraphale have been outrunning their whole lives.

The Angel of Death is a cop because of course they are, right? What other group of people has been existing to entrap, imprison, torture and kill people for eons?

From the book: If you want to imagine the future, imagine a boy and his dog and his friends. And a summer that never ends.

S1 was summer. It was the nightingales.

S2 is the lingering doom of preparations for Christmas lights. It's the days getting shorter and colder. The nightingales have flown to warmer climates. Because this is Good Omens so the season of Aziraphale's fall is set in the season of... well, the fall.

The good news is that, both literally and metaphorically?

Summer is always just around the corner.

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daydreamerwoah · 9 hours

Text

Family Tree (Chapter 2)

Adding on to the next story I want to work on :)

Simon x Y/n <3

Taskforce 141 had just gotten back from their usual mission in Al Mazrah. The guys were exhausted but satisfied with the outcome of successfully taking down another terrorist that had stormed the area. Kate Laswell had just finished debriefing the team on everything when Kyle "Gaz" Garrick asked if they wanted to grab drinks with him and his girlfriend. She was getting off work soon and was very much excited that he was back safe - a slight celebration, what she called it. John "Soap" MacTavish immediately agreed because he wasn't about to turn down an offer for a good Scotch. And while John Price would have just gone home and had a cigar before heading to bed, he decided to go as well.

All that was left was Simon "Ghost" Riley. The mysterious man who liked to be alone... most of the time. But he'd never turn down a chance to get a bourbon. It took a bit of convincing from Soap - Johnny as he usually called him - to get him to tag along, but he finally gave in. A short huff - that was muffled by his balaclava - falling from his mouth as he shook his head at the sergeant's antics.

Their usual spot was a pub that was on the other side of town. The locals usually cramped the space, but sometimes, a few soldiers from the base would make the drive to grab a drink and some food. Every once in a while, the owner - an older man who was probably in his 70s, would conversate with the team, having been in the SAS many years ago himself. He'd tell stories about his time in war and service, often making people smile or laugh with his jokes that went along with them. It also wouldn't be as busy as it was with the other pubs that were closer to the base or in the center of town; it was also close enough to each of their homes as well.

"Baby!" a woman's voice somewhat shouted throughout the bar as Ella pranced in the place and hugged Kyle tightly as soon as she greeted him. She was usually a calm person, but whenever she hadn't heard from her boyfriend in over two weeks, she'd always worry. But there he was with his boys, alive and well; tired but well.

As they settled into their seats and their drink of choice was brought to them, a weight felt like it was lifted off of their soldiers. They were finally able to relax after spending two weeks fighting, shooting, and sleeping on the fucking ground.

"How's work, Ella?" Price asked after taking a sip.

"It's good. Have a new girl that started two weeks ago. She's nice.. quiet, but nice," she giggled.

"So, like L.T., huh?" Johnny teased, making the others laugh. Even somewhat of a chuckle escaped Simon's lips, although it was muffled by the balaclava.

Everyone knew that Ghost was a quiet man; an intimidating man. If anyone ever got a chance to even be in his presence for more than a minute, they'd say he was a grumpy ass human being, rarely talked, always gave an answer with a hum or a curt nod, and probably was a real ghost since no one had really ever seen his face before. But those who knew Simon well (which was really just 141) would say he was someone who had gone through a lot of shit in his past, he had a good heart and supported his team, and he had incredibly dark humor. Sometimes, making them indulge in one of his awful dad jokes.

So it was truly was funny that Johnny made the joke about Ella's coworker being like him; quiet. He even knew that he really was.

"She just moved here from America cause of family. I tried to get her to come have a drink, but she said she had something to do," Ella said, "Maybe next time you guys can meet her."

They all hummed and continued sipping on their drinks, letting the thoughts of the mission slip further and further away from their minds until they had to think about it at a later time. Ella talked about a few things about work, which was always good for them to listen... at least they didn't have to talk about their own work.

**************************************************************************

When Simon made it home, the first thing he did was unpack his duffle bag with his gear in it. From the hard-shell skull mask he wore to his toothbrush, everything was put back in its place before he stripped out of his clothes and turned the water on in the shower. While it needed time to at least get warm, he glanced at his body in the bathroom mirror. The dark purple bruises that covered his left shoulder and the side of his abs made his pale skin look odd. Well, it was definitely odd to anyone else, but for him, he was used to coming back home with cuts and bruises all the time. No bullet at least, he thought, remembering the last time he came home with bandages on the same shoulder from when he caught a stray bullet on the last mission. Being what he was - who he was - came at the cost of injuries and pain. He was lucky that death hadn't caught up to him since the last time he thought he was going to die years ago. But it was the life he chose.

No. It was the life that chose him.

Sighing, he stepped into the shower, allowing the warm water from the shower to encase all over his head, face, and body. It was... peaceful in a way. The only time he ever got to really think about anything in his life was the time he would take a shower after coming back from a mission. Each second he washed the grime and dirt off of his body with the wood-scented soap, he thought about his past. He thought about his family - or the lack thereof. Family. A touchy subject that he tended to stay away from. Hardly anyone knew about what happened to them; their deaths. And he kept it that way. It wasn't because of doing what he did after he found their bodies... it was just something that he had no desire to even bring up... with anyone.

After his shower, he could have gone to bed, but sleep was never easy for the man. Once he dried off and put on some sweatpants to cover his lower half, he walked outside on his patio and sat in the chair. He tossed a pack of cigarettes and a lighter on the small table that he brought out with him before leaning back in the chair and gazing up at the sky. It was a clear, cool, and breezy night. He should have put on a jacket, but for some reason, the temperature didn't faze him. If he squinted just right enough, he thought he could see the stars that shone through the streetlights in the town. It was peaceful, silent, and lonely. But he didn't complain. He liked being alone. There were times when he couldn't understand how Kyle and Ella had been together for as long as they had. Through the tough missions and long deployments, he thought she would have left him a long time ago. But it wasn't like he could really understand either... he had never been in a real relationship before. Choosing to have one night stands - usually while he was on leave - was something he had grown accustomed to. Especially because it didn't muddle things up. No feelings were attached, and he didn't have to worry about seeing the girl again.

Pulling out a cigarette from the packet, Simon stuck it between his lips and grabbed the lighter, flicking it to light the cig. The nicotine engulfed his lungs immediately as he inhaled, enjoying the feeling of it going straight to his brain. He knew smoking was a bad habit, but it was one he had yet to even attempt to try and break. Between the stress of missions and being a Lieutenant, the only outlet he had outside of work was a cigarette in his mouth with a glass of bourbon in his hand. Sometimes, he'd watch a football game or rugby match, or he'd listen to his collection of music on the turntable he bought from an old man who was getting rid of some junk. But tonight, he just welcomed the quietness of the air, smoking his cigarette until he finished it. It was going to be a challenge, but he eventually made his way to bed, laying down as he stared up at the ceiling. By some miracle, after an hour, rest seemed to fall over him as he closed his eyes and drifted off into a dreamless but deep sleep.

The next morning, he was refreshed. His morning cup of tea bringing him back to life a little more as he cooked breakfast for himself. It was nothing special, just bacon and eggs, but it was enough for him. And once he finished eating, he showered and got dressed before heading out to buy groceries. He'd be home for at least the next two months, so stocking up the pantry was better than eating out every single day, even if he could afford it.

He decided to stop in the cafe that was close to his home to pick up another tea to take while he shopped. He enjoyed their take on the simple tea he usually made at home, so he thought, why not? When he stepped inside, the place was somewhat busy, but no one was standing in line, which was great; he could get his drink and leave. But there was one thing that caught his attention. The flustered and in a hurry woman who was shifting her weight on her feet as she waited for her drink to be called out.

You.

As always, you were in a hurry to get to work. Flustered because once again you forgot your umbrella. You slightly cursed the invisible weatherman that seemed to have told you it wouldn't rain today just because last night it was clear. Simon was somewhat surprised to see you again, not that he was purposely looking for you, but there definitely was an awkward interaction the last time he saw you. You basically walked backward into him, stepping on his boot by accident. But god, that soft smile you gave him made his eyebrows draw together a bit. Hardly anyone smiled at him the way you did.. mostly out of embarrassment, but he didn't need to know that.

When he walked up to the cashier, he could have sworn he felt a gaze on him. Your gaze. And once he placed his order and paid, he turned around, confirming his suspicion that you had been staring at him. Your eyes cutting away, embarrassed for even looking at him. When he walked over to you - the same spot where customers waited for their drinks to be finished - you wanted the ground to swallow you up. At first, you weren't sure if that was the same man you bumped into a couple of weeks ago in the cafe, but the moment he turned around and you saw the black surgical mask over the lower half of his face, your face turned so red. His brown eyes locking on to yours for a brief second made your pulse quicken.

Thank god, your latte was called out, making you scurry over to the counter to grab it before rushing out of the cafe, not even being brave enough to look at him again. It wasn't like Simon had plans to talk to you anyway, but he did think it was slightly entertaining. Maybe one day, if he saw you again, he'd tell you there was no need to feel embarrassed about the awkwardness between you.

Wait, why did he think that?

It wasn't like you two knew each other, but he didn't like the feeling of making you feel super uncomfortable if he could help it. And that was odd. It made his mind draw a blank for a split second before he internally shook his head. Still, his drink order was called out and he grabbed it before heading to the store.

What do we think about chapter 2? Still not sure about details on how I want to go with this. I have ideas but let me know if yall are still liking this after this chapter lol! This is going to be a SLOW BURN so just know it's gonna take a while for reader and Simon to develop feelings :)

Taglist: @simp-4-masked-men @dayrin085 @jessicab1991 @kylies-love-letter @kalypsoox @brownlee-22 @firefoxkairan

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