#like I love Drusilla and I think she should have been in the show much much more but she very much is capital E Evil

[coraniaid]

The only thing more powerful than the Buffy writers' reluctance to give screentime to a woman over the age of thirty is the collective Buffy fandom's eagerness to seize on the slightest scrap of canon characterization as evidence that said thirty-plus-year old woman is some sort of monster.

The show: Willow Rosenberg likes spending time with her mother and does so willingly even after moving out (as we see, for example, in Forever) and her mother was keen to invite her high school boyfriend over for dinner to try to get to know him as soon as Willow admitted to her that he existed (at the end of Gingerbread) and her mother was fully accepting (literally "proud") of Willow when she came out as a lesbian (already implicit, but confirmed in The Killer In Me). Oh, but she has a full time job in academia and sometimes Willow wishes she paid her more attention (this despite the fact that Willow canonically does hide things from her all the time) and she doesn't always notice when Willow cuts her hair or properly remember her friends' names and she only met Willow's first girlfriend a few times.

The fandom: well, clearly Willow is as much a victim of parental abuse as Xander Harris or Amy Madison or Faith Lehane. This is a completely reasonable and proportionate conclusion to come to based on one on-screen appearance and some throwaway lines of dialogue.

I mean ... don't get me wrong. Shelia Rosenberg is not a good mother. She's not much more than a cardboard cutout, really. Less of a character than even Hank Summers, and that's saying something.

What she is, really, is the sort of lazy cliche you get in a lot of teen movies of the 1990s and 2000s (something which is true of Joyce Summers as well at times, only Sheila is permitted far less depth or screen presence or other redeeming features). She's a somewhat reactionary take on the idea of an adult woman who dares to have a professional career and therefore cannot "properly" attend to the needs of her children. A woman too busy focusing on the abstract (her academic study of "adolescent development") to care about the practical (the growing pains of her own teenage daughter).

(Get it? See, it's funny, because she's a woman with both a child and a career. What will those crazy feminists dream up next?)

As written, Willow's mother kind of sucks: not because she's a bad person but because she isn't written as a person at all. She's a joke, and not a good one.

But the weirdly popular idea On Here that Willow is somehow traumatized by having what is, by all accounts, a fairly ordinary and comfortable childhood is absurd. There is simply nothing in the text to support this.

[missrosiesworld]

Can you write rina from zzz x gn reader fluff

I sure can! 😄 Here are some sweet headcanons about Rina when she has a crush:

Subtle Nervousness: Despite her usual calm demeanor, Rina becomes slightly flustered around her crush, fiddling with her gloves or adjusting her hair more often than usual.

Rina: "Oh, I seem to have been fussing with my gloves... again." She tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear, offering a soft smile.

Crush: "You look great, no need to worry." They give her a reassuring nod.

Rina: "Thank you... That means a lot coming from you." She quickly glances away, a slight blush coloring her cheeks.

Overly Polite: Rina’s already impeccable manners become even more pronounced when speaking to her crush, with extra emphasis on courtesy.

Rina: "Please, after you. It would be my greatest pleasure." She inclines her head slightly in respect.

Crush: "You’re always so thoughtful, Rina." They smile warmly as they walk past her.

Rina: "It’s only proper to treat someone like you with the utmost courtesy." She follows behind, her heart fluttering.

Culinary Experimentation: Rina tries to impress her crush by cooking dishes she’s never made before, even if they don’t turn out well.

Rina: "I... tried a new recipe. I hope it’s to your liking." She watches closely as they take a bite.

Crush: "This is... different. But I appreciate the effort, Rina." They give her a supportive smile.

Rina: "I’m relieved. Perhaps next time, I’ll perfect it just for you." She clasps her hands together, her nervousness easing slightly.

Extra Care in Appearance: Rina spends even more time ensuring her appearance is perfect before meeting her crush, checking her reflection multiple times.

Rina: "Does this attire seem appropriate? I wonder if it's too much..." She smooths down her skirt, glancing up at them.

Crush: "You always look amazing, Rina. You really don’t need to worry." They offer her a warm smile.

Rina: "Your reassurance is... comforting. Thank you." She gives them a sincere look, feeling more at ease.

Gentle Teasing: She starts playfully teasing her crush in subtle ways, something she rarely does with others.

Rina: "You seem to be quite the charmer today. Should I be cautious?" She tilts her head, a soft smile playing on her lips.

Crush: "Only if it means I get to see you smile more." They wink at her.

Rina: "Flattery will get you everywhere, it seems." She chuckles softly, a genuine smile breaking through.

Seeking Their Opinion: Rina asks for her crush’s opinion on matters she normally wouldn’t, showing she values their perspective.

Rina: "What do you think of this arrangement? I’d love to hear your thoughts." She steps closer, her focus entirely on them.

Crush: "It’s beautiful, but with your touch, I’m not surprised." They gently brush a petal, looking back at her.

Rina: "Your approval means more to me than you know." She gives them a warm smile, feeling a sense of pride.

Blushing Bangboo: Drusilla, who is in tune with Rina's emotions, sometimes lets slip Rina's feelings by making playful comments.

Drusilla: "Rina, you’re blushing again. Should I fetch some cold water?" The Bangboo giggles, nudging her lightly.

Rina: "Drusilla, please... That won’t be necessary." She tries to suppress a blush, avoiding her crush’s gaze.

Crush: "I’m curious, what makes you blush, Rina?" They lean in slightly, intrigued.

Rina: "Just... the warmth of the moment, I suppose." She smiles shyly, her heart racing.

Frequent Assistance: Rina finds excuses to assist her crush, even in minor tasks, just to spend more time with them.

Rina: "Here, let me assist you with that. It’s no trouble at all." She carefully takes the item from their hands, her focus unwavering.

Crush: "You’re always so helpful, Rina. Thank you." They smile appreciatively.

Rina: "It’s my pleasure... especially when it’s you who needs the help." She gives them a meaningful look before continuing.

Uncharacteristic Forgetfulness: She occasionally forgets small details when talking to her crush, something very unlike her usual precise nature.

Rina: "I’m terribly sorry, what was I saying? It seems you have a distracting effect on me." She chuckles softly, shaking her head.

Crush: "I’m flattered! But don’t worry, it’s kind of endearing." They give her a reassuring grin.

Rina: "Endearing, you say? That’s a new one for me." She smiles, her usual composure slipping charmingly.

Daydreaming: Rina might catch herself daydreaming about her crush, only to snap back to reality with a slight smile.

Crush: "Rina, are you with me?" They gently squeeze her arm, concern in their voice.

Rina: "Ah, my apologies, I was just... thinking of something pleasant." She smiles, a soft, dreamy look still in her eyes.

Crush: "I hope it was something good." They smile back, intrigued by her expression.

Rina: "Very much so." She gives them a meaningful glance before returning to the conversation, a small smile lingering on her lips.

[tyrantisterror]

A Dozen Or So Great Vampire Ladies

Ok, so, on a mostly unrelated post the topic of good vampire ladies came up, and @bisexualdaikaiju suggested/challenged me to do a top 10 vampire women list. As a self-professed lover of vampire women, it felt like a challenge I couldn't back down from. But it is kind of challenging, for two kind of contradictory reasons.

First, while there are MANY female vampires in fiction, most of them feel like afterthoughts, getting far less characterization than their male counterparts, who more often than not are the star villains of the show. When these supporting lady vampires do get something to do, it's generally the same role: make their human lovers sad when they rise from the dead as a monster that has to be killed, an emotional beat that is often undercut by a lot of these vampire women not getting much characterization to endear them to us before they died. Everyone wants to have the Lucy Westerna plot beat from Dracula but they don't want to do the work that Bram did to make Lucy lovable. The lady vamps who get to step out of Lucy's shadow are rare - but that just makes them all the more wonderful.

The second problem is that, since this is an obsession of mine that few seem to share (there are lots of vampire fans, but man do the boy vamps get to hog the spotlight among them), I've done a lot of scattered thinking about it and I just know I'm bound to forget at least one excellent lady vampire character that should be here. And whittling it down to ten, and trying to rank them? That's too hard! My thoughts are too mercurial to do that reliably in a way I don't forget!

So instead here's a list of, like, a dozen or so lady vampires that I think are just fucking stellar, many of which I think break the mold of what pop culture makes us expect lady vampires to be. It is not ranked - I love all these characters more or less equally, and think it's a lot more interesting to see how they take their archetype in different directions than to figure out which one is "best" of the lot.

Carmilla Karnstein

I'm going to start with the most famous literary female vampire, Mircalla Karnstein from Carmilla. I think she might be the first vampire to have an unhealthy obsession with using anagrams of her real name as aliases, though I'm sure now that I've typed that someone will find an earlier example to school me. She's also the one who popularized the idea of lady vampires being extremely sapphic, with an arguably genuine romantic affection for her female victims. She's got well-deserved clout, basically, and like Dracula has been adapted countless times and reinterpreted in some excellent ways. My favorite screen Carmilla is Ingrid Pitt's take, which captures her fierceness, passion, and tragic nature so well.

2. Amy from Fright Night

Ok, we're having one Lucy Westerna knockoff on this list, but as Lucy knockoffs go, Amy is one of the best. It actually helps that she spends 90% of her movie as a human, because we get to know and love her so much before she turns monstrous. And once she does...

It is pants-shittingly terrifying. I will never stop raving about the vampire designs in this movie - they made their "game faces" so fucking monstrous and I feel like in a better world this would be the standard ever since, especially since they still gave the vampires pathos while making them so ghastly when they've got their feeding faces on.

3. Drusilla

Buffy the Vampire Slayer had a bunch of vampire characters, and to its credit they did a decent job of making the ladies just as distinct as the gents. Harmony and Darla could both have made this list, but my favorite was always Drusilla, who was so traumatized before she became a vampire that it kind of overwhelms the demon spirit inside her. Like, bare minimum thing to make a lady vampire more interesting than 90% of other female vampires in fiction: give her at least one personality trait, preferably an interesting one, outside of being a vampire. Drusilla's fun, and she survives the entire series after dumping her boyfriend to be a single female vampire. Good for her.

4. Ruby from Scary Godmother

Ok look I am a fake Scary Godmother fan but kudos to the artist of the books for making a lady vampire who's very clearly of the nosferatu mold and is also explicitly benign and sweet. A+ vampire lady character design. I hope it doesn't awaken anything in me.

5. Nadja

What We Do in the Shadows is excellent at finding new takes on vampires in general - it even made me actually like Psychic Vampires as a concept, a feat I thought was impossible - but goddamn do I love Nadja specifically. She's got a distinct personality as vampire ladies go, being very confident and self-assured while also being a complete fucking goober (it is a comedy, after all). She's perfectly capable of being terrifying AND hilarious, often at the same time. A vampire girl failure, in the parlance of our site. I love her.

6. Lady Dimitrescu

I know that she's apparently only in a fourth of the game, but it's still pretty great that Resident Evil 8 decided its mascot villain - its equivalent of the Tyrant, G, Nemesis, etc. - would be the hottest woman I've ever seen a milf an 8 foot tall lady vampire. She's not dainty and willowy like most lady vamps in fiction - not an ambush hunter - but rather HUGE and capable of tossing a human around like a rag doll. She's a physical powerhouse and she looks fine feminine while doing it. Despite being an unabashed blood-sucking monster, she still has enough depth and complexity to have important relationships (like a genuine love for her "giant mass of hive mind flies" daughters), and also she gets to have an awesome transformation into a fungal vampire dragon, which is rad as hell. Also goddamn, her fashion sense is immaculate.

7. Hecate from Hellboy

"Hey, she's not a vampire! She's a goddess! That doesn't count!" Fuck you, my list, my rules. Hecate posits herself as the progenitor and mother of vampires, she drinks blood, and her main form in the comic is as a sicknasty lamia version of the iron maiden used by Elizabeth fucking Bathory, if she doesn't count as a vampire, nothing should. She is the concept of a vampire amped up to maximum capacity, a major mythological figure and an awesome villain.

...also I lowkey shipped her and Hellboy when I was a teenager. They could have made it work!

8 - 12. Carmilla and her girl squad from Castlevania

I suppose I could have counted Castlevania's Carmilla as an adaptation of Miss Karnstein - they're both basted out of Styria, both sapphic, and it's clear she's meant to be an adaptation of the former, just as the Dracula of this show is meant to be a take on Bram's famous vampire. But ultimately they're VERY different characters in the grand scheme of things - Castlevania's Carmilla has none of the tenderness and vulnerability of her literary counterpart, instead being full of barely restrained fury. She is an excellent villain, complex enough to be interesting but thoroughly despicable enough to make it VERY satisfying when she bites it.

I also love her girl posse... in concept, at least. They've all got great designs and the groundwork of interesting characters, but of the the three, only Lenore, the waifish redhead, gets to do much of note. The two on the edges kind of just show up for a few scenes and then bail before the plot catches up to them, doing very little of note - though at least the big hunky one gets one of the coolest fight scenes in the whole show.

Back to Lenore though - she gets a really nice character arc, and manages to become one of the few sympathetic vampires in the series (while still doing a lot of monstrous shit - she is not a defanged vampire by any stretch). I think her death scene is one of the most moving moments in the series finale.

13. Seras Victoria

A good female vampire has at least one non-vampire part of her personality, right? Ok, so, Seras is:

the muscle in almost every scene she is, which is to say, the one absolutely beating the shit out of people while her allies run for cover

the perky henchman/morality pet of one of history's greatest monsters

the sole ray of sunshine in cast of edgy, cigar-chomping grizzled mercnaries and antiheroes she's been pressganged into fighting alongside

the victim of some HIDEOUS trauma even before her vampirization

the protege of a wise master who gets a full hero's journey arc, taking up his mantle at the end of the series

Like, I love her. She's the secret protagonist of Hellsing. She's got layers like an onion. The scene where she killed Zora Blitz reminded me why I love anime.

(yeah it's the TFS version fuck you)

14. Youko Shiragami

My Monster Secret is not a horror manga. It is a romantic comedy about a bunch of idiots trying to keep painfully obvious secrets hidden and succeeding only because almost everyone around them is as dumb as they are, just in very different ways. It is a manga where an entire chapter can be summarized as "all the characters race to get the last McRib, using their various supernatural abilities to try and cheat their way to the front of the pack." It is one of the funniest and most heart-warming stories I have ever read, one of my favorite romances of all time, and an excellent piece of long form story-telling.

One of the two main characters is Youko Shiragami, a vampire girl who can't let anyone know she's a vampire or else her dad will pull her out of school. She desperately wants to have a normal life with friends and, like, school shenanigans, but her fear of people uncovering her secret and hating her is so immense that she's been isolating herself from everyone, accidentally torturing herself by being close to what she wants but unable to actually have it.

At least, until Kuromine, the other main character of the story, discovers her secret while trying to ask her out on a date. He ends up promising to keep her secret, and the two of them form a real friendship that blossoms into a very sweet romance, where Youko gets to display all her incongruous personality traits that go against what you'd expect of vampires - namely, that she's kind of a ditz, with an unrefined style of speech and a complete inability to be suave and seductive. She's a sweet, flaky goofball with a big heart, who just happens to drink blood and tan really quickly in the sunlight. There is no other vampire like her, and the world is richer for her being in it.

15. Marceline, the Vampire Queen

This list isn't ranked, but if it was, I'd put Marceline at the top. I think she is not only the most unique and deeply characterized lady vampire in fiction, but ranks right up there with Dracula in how she redefines the idea of what a vampire can be. Like, look at the forms she takes!

There are DOZENS of different monstrous shapes Marceline takes during Adventure Time's 9+ seasons of television, and any one of them would be a superb and memorable vampire on its own. And she's ALL of them. Just on a design standpoint, she is a standout. I think only Dracula himself could compete.

But she also explores what the concept of what a vampire is in ways no other vampire in fiction can, in part because of the unique nature of Adventure Time's setting. In a world where humans are an extreme minority and most people are weird monsters, a vampire isn't that odd, so we get to explore what being a vampire means divorced from the comparison to "normal" human beings. There's the expected tragedy to Marceline, of course - she's a 16 year old who has been stuck in that adolescent state for hundreds of years, and much of her character arc over the show (including the magnificent vampire-centric storyline, "Stakes") focuses on the horror of being stuck in that transitional state, not quite a child but not quite an adult. Marceline struggles to mature, to understand herself and others, and her vampirism both keeps her distant from reaching those goals but also gives her a lot of time to figure out how to approach them when the opportunity arirves. Marceline goes from one of the most immature and selfish characters in the show to perhaps the most emotionally intelligent, blossoming into a sensitive and thoughtful person she could never have been without first becoming a creature that seems so inherently opposed to ever having those traits.

And she did it all in a children's show where she was rarely if ever allowed to actually drink blood - a problem the writers got around by having her suck the red color out of things, which is right up there with the Joker Venom from BTAS in terms of genius ideas spawned by children's show censorship.

Marceline is the GOAT.

[raisedbythetv89]

Ok ooooook OK SO.

Spike was literally made for Buffy because he was made for and by Drusilla, and Buffy and Dru are the same person:

Innocent, kind-hearted young girls, with special gifts that cause them to carry more guilt/burden than others and they are used/abused/traumatized by angelus/angel, then neglected and abandoned, with Spike being there to pick up the pieces and nurture, care for, and love them the best he can to help them move past their angel trauma (which is actually an impossible task with Drusilla because of the sire aspect but isn’t with Buffy)

WHICH is why I believe William’s first act as a vampire was to try and save his mother. He was literally created to be Dru’s knight. Not only her protector but her healer. Which is why his first instinct when it should be all about blood lust is instead, to heal his mother who he still loves even as a vampire. I mean even Dru, a certified nutcase, is like you wanna do WHAT?!?! When Spike tells her his plan to save his mom😹

This is also why I believe angel trying to mold Spike into his image never really took or rather Spike was able to break free from it. Angel was created by darla for the intent of death, torment and destruction.

Spike was created to care for and love Dru. Which required an OBSCENE amount of patience, determination, humility, and love of a challenge. Which is why he was so intrigued by slayers, another seemingly impossible task - but the joy/fun was in the TRYING, the thrill of the unknown and the unpredictability of it all. Which are all the traits he needed to be there for both Dru and Buffy while also ensuring he never gives up on them as long as they want him there, and then some lol.

IM FREAKING OUT ABOUT THIS

Because also this is soooooo not where I planned on going with this but “I was made to love you” episode title is now drawing in the connection of, is this why Spike didn’t initially see the problem with the Buffy-Bot until he saw the reaction of Buffy herself who often acts as his moral compass as he relearns what is “good” after 100+ years living by vamp code because him AS A HUMAN, in his vulnerable, dejected and devastated state was killed and made into a vampire for the sole purpose of loving and caring for Drusilla selflessly, without regard for himself, much like the bots were!! So why would he see the harm in creating something like that for himself when no one was going to die in the process and it meant he could stop fixating in the real buffy? Both of which to a vamp who’s only been trying to live by human morals again for like 14 episodes vs 120 years with NO help just trial and erroring his way through becoming a white hat which his starting point is “I would like credit for not taking advantage of bleeding disaster victims” and “what do you mean building a shrine to show how deep my devotion is and chaining you up, offering to kill my ex, and forcing you to talk to me and admit your feelings aren’t the way to do this??” 😹😹😹 like he gets it so wrong, it’s comical in season 5 because he truly is so earnest about all of it because while yes it is all for a chance with Buffy, he genuinely wants to be better for her so he can earn that chance. As he says to Riley “a fellas gotta try” after saying he doesn’t think he has a chance with her.

He was an Eleanore who desperately needed his Chidi. Which Buffy is his moral compass but she ends up being a “let them fail/push them into the deep end” kind of guide. So he makes A LOT of mistakes along the way as many of us often do in general but especially those of us who were raised by abusive parents; who in our adulthood, have to learn to discern what is healthy vs abusive to be a good person to both yourself and others and be in actual healthy relationships with boundaries and respect with zero practical experience or good instincts to go on.

NONE of this excuses any harm that Spike causes at all. That is not the point of this to say “oh he didn’t really do bad”, no he did. Spike caused a lot of harm but this perspective that I’ve finally been able to put into words is why none of the harm ends up being a deal breaker for me and many spuffys because it puts his choices in the right perspective which is not that of a human even though he looks like one a lot of the time.

Spike pre-soul, making the mistakes he makes isn’t the same as a human or a vamp with a human soul making the mistakes because he doesn’t have his human soul motivating and informing the decisions he makes. It really mimics different cultures in a lot of ways as anya really demonstrates during her wedding with all her talk of demon culture and tradition (and her own struggles to assimilate into the human world again and she HAS a human soul and xander to help her) and the initiative being VERY n*zi coded and Riley being called a bigot because he is ignorant to much of demonology. So un-souled spike has a more potential for forgiveness of his mistakes than human soul havers because he is always genuinely TRYING to do right by Buffy even when he gets it horribly wrong. And the characters in the show always hold him accountable and make him feel TERRIBLE for the mistakes he makes.

Why does he have such potential for forgiveness you ask? The best example is to think of the concept of someone trying to assimilate themselves into a new culture. We can’t expect them to blend right in perfectly and get all the culture norms right, right away (again -anya-but also a real life example - when I travel in Italy and catch up with friends there I STILL always stumble and forget they’re always gonna go in for a double cheek kiss greeting - pre covid anyway - and I KNOW it’s a thing but if I’m out of practice it takes me a while to start greeting people that way again and it makes for some AWKWARD ENCOUNTERS until I get it down😹). It takes time, and normally guidance and patience from others that spike honestly doesn’t often have except in the form of being yelled at or beat up until he gets his soul. But his willingness to TRY anyways despite failure, rejection, ridicule and cruelty. How can I not love him?? He is me, I am him!! I was also met with so much unhelpful criticism and cruelty when I was just trying to learn and do a good job.

Both as someone who is autistic and didn’t know it for a lot of life; I too felt like I was blundering through without a guide or a rule book and I was sure I was making mistakes because people would get upset but I had NO help identifying what exactly I did wrong or what to do instead. So I knew I was messing up but had to keep guessing and trying anyway and getting it wrong again and again!

And as someone raised by an emotionally distant/abusive narcissist, navigating healthy relationships became even MORE difficult and I made a lot of bad choices along the way that landed me in some awful relationships much like what spike and Buffy devolve into towards the end of season 6 because both of them are up stream without a paddle when it comes to healthy relationships, healthy coping mechanisms, and communication. They know pain, avoidance, fighting, torment, and ecstasy from always living in extremes and life or death situations (notice Buffy struggles the most in the season with no threat of the apocalypse until the last two episodes - season 6 - which is SO common for people with trauma, you really fall apart when things are low stakes)

It’s why the tenderness and gentleness of season 7 means SO MUCH. Both of them experiencing these tiny pockets of true peace with each other after everything they’ve been through individually and together. Experiencing true peace like we see from them is one of the hardest things to accomplish if you have severe trauma.

I’m always really happy when I can digest these complex themes enough to communicate why I love them so much and why they’re so important to me. The fact that this show had so much in-fighting amongst the writers and misogynists trying to make spike pathetic and accidentally making him one of the most complex characters, plus episodes based specifically on neurodivergent/queer peoples’ traumatic coming of age experiences because the parallels are SO strong there no way they’re not lol. This all means I can probably spend the rest of my life dissecting the layers of this show and learning about myself in the process and always find something new 🙃🙃🙃 and clearly I love all aspects of spuffy so god damn much as they each embody a big part of my life experiences in so many beautiful yet tragic ways.

[deadboydetectives-confessions]

Man, I love a lot of the shows that I grew up with, but I as I was trying to think of more possible DBD crossovers to suggest, I thought of BtVS & it's wild now to think of how that was considered "feminist" & "progessive" for its time (oh the ways in which Joss Whedon & Neil Gaiman are cut from the same fucked up cloth, wrt how they both have made careers out of presenting themselves as "feminist men," which is it's own rant, tbh) and the ways that DBD just casually blows BtVS out of the water in terms of gender parity & racial & sexual diversity:

--DBD shows up out of the gate with two main cast members who are women of color, something BtVS never had in seven seasons. Closest we got is Kendra & she was a recurring character who was killed early. & season seven with some of the potentials I guess -- I don't think any of the potentials were main cast though (was Kennedy?)

--DBD has no straight, white men wrt the main cast or recurring cast. Charles is a person of color, Edwin is gay/queer/mlm, Tragic Mick is black, TCK & Monty are some flavor of queer, all the rest of the regulars are women or female-coded. Meanwhile, BtVS has Xander for 7 seasons. It's not until Andrew -- who was a villian! -- that we get a queer man as a regular/main cast member and that's season 6 & from what I remember it is kind of frustratingly done! (Season 4 is the first canonical queer rep with Willow/Tara. Retroactively we know Willow is queer from tge get go, but watching in real time it was a surprise when she came out) And as homoerotic as Angel, Spike, & Giles might be to fans, they're all written as straight on the show and they're all white. The first character of color who gets a main role is in season fucking seven with Principle Wood.

--there's not a true female big bad on BtVS until the 5th season. I love Drusilla, but Angel is the S2 big bad not her. There's the S4 millitary professor lady (totally forget her name), but ultimately it's her creation, Adam, who is the big bad. Meanwhile DBD is blessed with Esther right out of the gate.

--Ratio wise, I always think about how of the 90's Trek series Voyager is the "feminist" one, but if you look at the main cast the ratio of men:women is always 2:1 in every season it aired. BtVS isn't as bad as Voyager & tbh I forget who was main cast vs supporting (like, Tara should have been main cast but wasn't, I know that), but DBD is just set up from the on-set in a way that feels so much more female-powered, imo.

Anyway, I just wanted to take a second to appreciate all that. When I see meta posts about Crystal seeped with with misogynoir or when I get frustrated that there seem to be more fics that focus on TCK or Monty than there are fics that focus on Niko or Jenny or when I get bummed that there aren't any canonical ace or trans or nonbinary characters, it's also nice to remember how things used to be and how much the media landscape has improved. I can name multiple shows currently on with queer characters. Multiple shows with black women & other women of color in the main cast. I still have a lot of fondness for BtVS & I'm definitely using it as a scapegoat here, but it's true that my enjoyment had a lot of caveats & I don't feel that when watching DBD. I really appreciate that.

.

[variousqueerthings]

I'm genuinely shocked you are a Bangel fan and not a Spuffy fan.

I'm not actually 😂 I am waaay more into their growth when they're apart, but that's because when they were together they were like cellophane -- nothing getting through, very wrapped up, constantly having The Most Intense Conversation (to the point that the show itself made a joke about it)... ok cellophane doesn't talk, but you get the idea...

it minimized especially buffy for me - but not in a bad way. s1-3 buffy is still figuring a lot of herself out, and sometimes character-writing is about the goldfish pond being too small and eventually breaking out of it - but also angel, who is commonly considered - and I agree - more interesting on the show angel. buffy expands after angel is out of the picture, which is interesting from both a holmesian and doylist perspective -- does she grow because the writing no longer relies as much on angel as anchor (sure), does she grow because she was in a relationship that involved her not being as sure of herself as a person yet and then (due to some horrible things) having to step out of that relationship (yeah)

does buffy also get into some wildly complicated and unhealthy relationships subsequently, interestingly enough not being in love with riley despite the potential that he might have been the only person who was good for her (he's not and he's also annoying, but the point is when she first starts dating him she's fascinated by the appeal of a relationship where the world isn't ending all the time) (but buffy is also a traumatised person and there's a whole other analysis on her relationships and abuse and toxicity and trauma)

I faaaaar prefer buffy and faith, buffy and kendra, and buffy and spike (and angel and spike and drusilla and darla) in the fanfictiony sense. in the show-sense, buffy and angel are fulfilling some tropes very well and then breaking out of them as the show goes on, but canonically buffy is in love with angel in some way from near the beginning until the end of the show -- what this should make us start thinking about is polyamorous!buffy........

but I also prefer reading with show text: why is buffy with angel? why does she fall in love with him, and vice versa? why does he have such a hold on her throughout the story and vice versa? interesting questions, whether or not one "ships" it or not

[colubrina]

I have feelings on the Black family (will I ever shut up about Bellatrix calling Sirius “my dear cousin” and taunting Harry with the reminder that she is the one with the biological connection to Sirius? No. Will I ever stop thinking about Snape toasting Bellatrix for killing Sirius and neither Narcissa nor Bellatrix are shown to toast him back? No. We got snippets, and those snippets paint a very interesting picture of what the Blacks’ relationships were like pre-Voldemort and even what it might have been like for Sirius and Bellatrix to be locked up in Azkaban together for 12 years) and Pygmalion very much helps to sate that. Narcissa saying she was raised to believe falling in love with a rich man was as easy as falling in love with a poor man, Drusilla saying a Black should never marry a werewolf, Sirius only getting disowned for his marriage to Remus and not anything else but still showing up to family gatherings without being kicked out, Regulus directly calling Remus “the cause of [Sirius’s] disgrace: these things are all tied together and inform us that the Black family has Remus permanently on their shit list for Sirius being disowned, he never would have been had he not met Remus. Sirius doesn’t even like Drusilla but the moment the Order keeps calling her “that Black girl” when her wedding to Neville is announced, Sirius is hollering that she has a name; he defends her and Neville not allowing Alice to meet Belladonna by pointing out that telling Drusilla she looked like a whore at her own wedding wasn’t exactly going to endear her to the couple. Sirius hands over the Weasley family without hesitation the moment he learns Dumbledore is planning to use the kids and Belladonna is going to Hogwarts; Molly trusted Sirius with the Fidelius secret and Sirius picked his family without thinking twice. All of this also fits nicely with my headcanon that the Black family is the wildest family in Britain and it sucked for people attending school with them, imagine talking shit about one of them and then the rest just appear outside your classroom and pull you aside for a “chat;” this is a regular occurrence because they are the epitome of “only I can be mean to my relatives.” I like to think that Narcissa, for all she is very much a proper pureblood wife, is also still talking to Sirius throughout the fic and we just don’t see it; Lucius makes a point to be in a different section of the Manor when Sirius visits because he gets that his wife loves her family and that Sirius may be on the opposite side but he’s trying to help his family (as Narcissa frostily informed him of Sirius trying to get Belladonna away from Hogwarts to protect her when Lucius tried to protest. Lucius, no fool and not interested in being murdered in his sleep, gave in to the inevitable and allows Sirius in his house) but Sirius gives him a migraine no potion can fix. Pygmalion, my beloved.

I love the Blacks because they are TERRIBLE but loyal to one another (at least in my head) in ways that are wildly dysfunctional but their version of love. And they might HATE each other, but God help anyone else who dares to agree that, yes, that other Black is worth hating. Because, oh hell no. That is not allowed.

[mooshadventuring]

✨ Insert Buffy pun ✨

I’m currently more sleep deprived than I’m used to being these days so this is my big welcome back to the hellsite présent to myself. This should probably be kept to the tags but I can’t be bothered. If anyone reads this I can’t be held responsible for my words or actions.

Sooooo…. this’ll be a collection of ratings and miscellaneous thoughts on all the characters from Buffy that I can remember. Coming from someone who’s watching this show for the first time in the year of our lord 2022 (qb please don’t cancel the mouse before I finish it). I think I’m on season 3 episode 14 or 15ish? This is all keeping in mind that I have barely been, as the kids (me. I am the kids) say, watching with my eyes. Which really I have no excuse for because my latest knitting pattern has just been a seed stitch scarf but I digress.

Buffy - 8/10. Solid protag energy, except I question her taste in men. That doesn’t fully detract from her as a character, but again what’s with the yuck (see Angel below). Also I didn’t realize she was the main character before watching?? Like idk why but I thought the girl from Ice Princess was the lead and so far she hasn’t even shown up yet.

Angel - 3/10. Normally I love a wet pathetic excuse for a man but there’s just something about the 90s aesthetic and general way he carries himself that’s not doing it for me. There was real potential when he turned evil, because I have a type and that’s evil, but even then he was like. Not very intense about it? You’re telling me he’s meant to be the biggest baddest vamp ever to vamp? Sounds fake and that’s not ok.

Willow - 9/10. Honestly she was my fave starting out, if only because the combination of quirky awkward and smart is pretty adorable. Docked one point for the hang up on Xander, but I’m excited for her potential. Also I did go into the tag for spoilers bc I’m impatient af and the trajectory towards evil intrigues me.

Xander - 3.5/10. I wanted really badly to like him at the start, and found him funny for about 3 episodes before reading that he was supposed to be a Joss Whedon like reader insert. And I can’t unsee that. Also the way he treated Cordy was terrible but then he acts all justified about it? I’m only rating him above Angel because at least he didn’t let me down so much as never raise me up in the first place.

Cordelia - 7/10. Rated as such only bc I feel like it would be unfair to rate her above Buffy but then also docked a point for the Xander. Gross.

Giles - 6/10. He tries his best and I respect him for it. The thing with Buffy’s mom was weird tho.

Spike - 6/10. Once again the 90s hair is a real detractor bc I’m superficial babyyyy. So far a strong contender tho bc he seems chaotique and that’s what I go for usually.

Drusilla - 3682738282/10. Vibes of 2 feet from a fainting couch at any given time but also homicidal and obv unhinged. I wanna be her when I grow up.

Obviously the numbers are a joke but so far these are my very much so coherent thoughts. If anyone replies I will be darn tootin’ amazed.

P.S. I’m mostly over my zombie phase now but I feel like Buffy could do zombies better. This is my constructive criticism for a 20-something year old show that has no way to make use of the feedback.

[wolfstrong]

rank the btvs characters!!

this is literally so hard i cant do it i love them all. like i literally CANNNOTTTTTTTTT. i suppose there is some split between characters who are my everything, those who i kinda just don't care that much about, and those who i dislike. so i will share that

AT THE VERY VERY VERY top are my scoobies. Buffy Giles Xander and Willow i like cannot put anyone ahead of them because of my morals. BUT VERY CLOSE BELOW THEM.

Cordelia, i think ill put her first because shes a OG and if she would have stuck around for the whole series she would have been up there with the rest of my scoobies. SHE SHOULD HAVE BEEN THERE THE WHOLE TIME. imo. THEN TARA. because shes so awesome and i love her. and then kinda in no particular order is Dawn and Spike but tbh maybe Dawn a little more then Spike even tho i haven't known her for as long i just really like her

and thennn teetoring in the neutral space is Faith and Anya just because both of them are characters i didn't like at all at first but now i love them. and tbh same with Angel kind of but more like i think he's so lame that I'm kinda obsessed with him. I'm glad he left the show and i kinda like him more in his absence. I like Oz but he's honestly kind of the true neutral. I don't know, I think he just didn't shine in the ways he was supposed to. like he does not piss me off at all in the least bit i just cant feel very passionate over him. mostly cuz his character is just kinda sitting there and doing nothing but like that's the point

and at the very bottom is Riley who i truly believe made the show worse and he didn't leave soon enough

Shout out to Harmony who isnt a big enough character to be included but i love her and its a joy whenever shes on the show. Same with Drusilla, shes pretty cool but again i felt like she wasn't there enough but i like when she comes back to fuck shit up or is mentioned. like yesssssssss slay. also shout out to Joyce who was there a lot but i kinda feel neutral about and I'm sorry she died cuz that was sad. I think that's everyone if i forgot someone major well... woops. i tried to mentioned everyone whos face appears in the intro in the main ranking

[jupitermelichios]

so someone on the buffy wiki asked a question that i have basically been thinking about non-stop since i saw it

how would btvs be different if spike had died when he was originally planned to, during the church collapse in season 2

and there's a lot of interesting logistical questions (honestly the answer is not much, he very rarely actually contributes to the main plot, probably because most of the writers room hated using him) like how would s7 end (you just create a different arbitrary mcguffin), would the buffybot still exist (probably yes, you just make her a warren or a jonathan thing and remove spike from the equation), what would buffy's s6 unhealthy coping mechanism be (my instinct is to say a buffy/xander subplot, which would be objectively worse but would hit basically all the same narrative beats, and would also make the xander/anya breakup feel a bit less weird)

but that isn't the reason i've been obsessing over this

the reason i've been obsessing over this is that if spike dies in that church, drusilla should logically become a recurring villain, probably hitting a lot of the same broad plot beats as spike did

and now i can't stop thinking about a version of buffy where dru gets actual character developement, where they have to think of cool shit to do with her future-seeing powers (being completely incidental to the plot is a very weird quality for clairvoyent powers to have tbh but they never once make effective use of them in the show)

and i also realised that in a version of season 6 where dru is a main cast member, or at least a recurring guest star, the obvious choice would be for her to mentor willow

willow never gets any kind of magic teacher in any way that matters, and she never gets to talk to another canon-queer person apart from tara, and giving willow a mentor figure who is magic and queer and probably pretty supportive, but also is absolutely 100% trying to make willow worse would be so interesting! and maybe it would force the writers to remember that giles knows magic, and you could have a 'which will willow choose' dynamic going on between this proudly bi proudly magic vampire and the closetted deeply afraid of his own magic human and it could be so interesting! like i fucking love spike and giles's canon relationship, but it never goes anywhere and this would absolutely have to go somewhere

also there would obviously be a subplot, probably in season 4, about dru manipulating events to bring spike back from the dead, but he'd come back as human, and the scoobies would want to protect him from her both because he's human and because spike died before they realised he's not actually a threat so they think vampire spike is a big deal, so he'd be a main cast member and build relationships with them all, and you've got human spike and vampire dru kind of circling one another and flirting but also being freaked out by one another, and however you chose to end the subplot it would be the kind of compelling tragedy that all the best spike stories are. if he choses to become a vampire then you're functionally killing the relationships he would have built with the scoobies by that point, and if he chooses to stay human, you're breaking dru's heart, and basically every other variation i can think of is also tragic, and i love basically all of them

and dru would fucking hate glory, even if you never did the chip subplot in s4 and didn't use human spike to bring her into the group, you could absolutely fold her into the gang in s5 using 'the enemy of my enemy' as the justification

there are so many little problems with buffy that you could fix using dru as a recurring character - the watcher's council functionally only exist when needed, they have no real presence, but they're canonically fascinated with dru and want to experiment on her so they'd have a reason to have a recurring presence in the show that isn't directly related to buffy. vampires have no culture and the one time they were given a religion the writers were too scared to explore it in any depth, but dru is possitioned to interact with the cult of aurelius in a way spike never was, so they might be forced to actually think about the fact that vampires ought to have a unique culture and religious perspective and general outlook on the world. the concept of bisexuality might have to exist. everything with how angel interacts with the gang post s2 would be so much more interesting, and there'd be a reason to bring darla back and give her some character developement. mental health! they'd have to talk about mental health prior to season 6!

i'm not going to write this fic, because it would be so fucking long, but please join me in imagining the au that could have been if buffy comics weren't all terrible, or i had infinite time for writing fic

[firemanwhenthefloodsrollback]

reasons I have thirsted over every single buffy character at some point in my life (bearing in mind I was 11 when I started watching and 26 now so I’ve been the right age for some characters in the past but nooooot now):

buffy and spike I’m not even going to explain. those two characters, between them, are my bisexuality and my whole romantic identity. separately and together, you have no idea, but particularly together, wow. can’t get into it because this post would be 100k words.

willow - everything in season four where she and Tara were becoming friends and then friends and it was all unspoken and very breathy. dark willow in her military jacket. there weren’t that many moments when I was attracted to willow because I felt deeply that I was willow but there were some.

xander - when I was 11 I felt really bad about buffy turning him down, i felt he deserved better and she should consider him because he was funny. This is something I’ve examined and reconsidered in the last fifteen years.

giles - completely skipped over him as a teen but now, yes. i thought he was like seventy when I was a preteen but I realise the error of my ways. when he rolls his sleeves up.

angel - no one ever kissed me like that in graveyards I’ll tell you that for free.

darla - I stopped writing this post to stare into space and think about Darla’s breathy voice and the fact she woukd definitely kill me.

cordelia - I grew up in britain where there were no cheerleaders and therefore no stereotypical mean cheerleaders making barbed comments standing very close to me. I could have learned some things about myself earlier if I’d considered why that was something I wanted.

jenny - it’s the gently barbed comments about the internet with the flawless 90s hair. I had no teachers like her at the time or since.

oz - I did not give him what he deserved in the show then I started dating someone a lot like him who was just so calm, respectful, good and funny and it opened my eyes to oz. I’ve never read fanfic about oz, he’s not my type on tv, but in the real actual world oz is who I want.

faith - this is tumblr I don’t need to explain.

riley - I did like riley at the beginning of season four particularly! Not so much as a military dude but as a cute TA who has books dropped on his head. Those first few episodes were absolute gold.

anya - anya was portrayed so much as funny rather than sexy on the show but she had so much thirst potential! I don’t think this got converted into reality while I was watching it. I adored anya but more as a friend.

tara - fingers intertwining in hush? falling back on a pillow in a deeply magical way? the last bit of under your spell? anytime spells made tara fall back on a pillow or bed I was there with my urgent little preteen brain.

dawn - as a 12yo I honestly didn’t get why her dressing sexy in Him was that big of a deal because she was about the age of main cast in the first few seasons? I think because at that age she didn’t seem young and powerless to me, she was still older than me and s7 dawn was just very powerful and cool.

robin wood - again not til I rewatched as a grownup but now I have watched as a grownup I am absolutely on board with a passionate education professional with a sense of humour and a dark past. he suffers from being so directly contrasted against spike in first date but in any and all other circumstances, yes to robin wood.

characters I have never thirsted for and my provisional reasons:

the master - not a lot to get on board with here kinda just a priest in an odd outfit with fruit punch mouth.

drusilla - I love her as a character and she is very beautiful but I think she was a bit odd for me? I find her poignant and that interferes with me finding her attractive

harmony - harmony was always standing right next to people I had much stronger feelings for

joyce - I think it’s the hair. even tho I’m probably old enough now to date joyce and it not be creepy (?) the mum hair means she will always be my mum. that’s my mum right there.

most villains? - mayor, adam, glory, caleb. I know some people fancy glory and she is very beautiful but buffy was right there being powerful and blonde.

the trio - this is just not allowed, obviously. I do find tom lenk funny in the post buffy world tho. I’d get lunch with him, but that’s v different to fancying andrew.

all the potentials - eh

[coraniaid]

I was thinking about how Kendra really should've been mentioned in Fool For Love given its an episode where Buffy wants to learn about previous Slayers' final battles so Top 5 episodes in which Kendra should've been mentioned in?

Ignoring the episodes I'd have liked to actually see Bianca Lawson return in (either in flashback or some alternate dimension or in a dream sequence or as the First) and ignoring Fool For Love as well since you mentioned it already (but I agree that's a good call otherwise).

S3E07 Revelations -- obviously Angel didn't personally kill Kendra, but he played a very major role in her death (she came back to Sunnydale to stop his plan to wake Acathla, he lured Buffy away from the library so she wasn't there to protect her, he sent Drusilla to kidnap Giles and Kendra tried to stop her). So it would have been nice, in a way, if anybody had thought to bring Kendra up during that scene in the library where they're arguing about Buffy keeping Angel's return a secret and how he killed Jenny Calendar and tortured Giles. Especially when they're doing so mere feet away from the spot where Kendra was murdered. It would have nice to suggest that Buffy wanted to talk to Faith about Kendra at the end, too (even though I think Faith still brushes her off the way she does in canon).

S3E08 Lovers Walk Relatedly, it would have been nice if -- while Spike was busy feeling sorry for himself and remembering all the nice spots in Sunnydale where he and Dru had murdered people in better times -- the writers had remembered Buffy had reminded him that one of the people his ex had fun murdering was Kendra. Or that, way back in Becoming Part 2, the very last time Buffy said Kendra's name out loud in the show came with a threat to kill Drusilla ("Forget about Drusilla. She doesn't walk. She killed Kendra.")

S3E15 Consequences. Don't think this even needed Kendra to be mentioned by name, but it would have been nice if the show had acknowleged that this is in the third time in barely a year than Buffy has been questioned by the police in a murder investigation. And by the same guy all three times! Detective Stein doesn't seem to be part of the town-wide conspiracy to cover up the supernatural, so what does he think really happened to Ted and to Kendra? I get that the show at this point wasn't trying to be too serialized (but Ted, at least, will get brought up at least one more time in Season 4's Fear Itself), but ... I dunno, I just think it would have been a nice bit of continuity to have Stein tell somebody (Buffy? the Mayor?) that not only does he think Buffy was involved in Finch's death but that he still hasn't ruled out her being involved in Kendra's death too (whatever his bosses told him to make him drop it).

S5E14 Crush. This isn't actually a very good episode (as indicated by the words 'written by David Fury' that appear on the screen at the beginning) so we can't expect too much from it, but ... look! It's Drusilla! Back in town for the first time since Becoming! And Spike's talking about killing her, even. "Why do I care?" Buffy asks him, which would be a perfectly fine way for Buffy to express her disinterest in Spike and demonstrate her refusual to be swayed by his attempts at coercing her to 'admit' her romantic feelings for him if this were any other random vampire, but this is meant to be a vampire Buffy has a strong preexisting personal grudge against. She killed Kendra, David. That's why Buffy should care. You could, I dunno, at least have Spike bring that up again? ("If you don't admit there's something there ... I'll untie Dru, let her kill you instead. Just like she killed that other Slayer.")

S7E17 Lies My Parents Told Me. I mean, not the canon version of the episode, which is basically unsalvagable, but in some other better version of this episode where Buffy finds out that Robin was Nikki's son it might have been nice to contrast Robin's years long quest for revenge with the fact that Buffy didn't allow herself to leave town and hunt Drusilla down for revenge. Not because she didn't care about Kendra (at least, she cares about Kendra in my version of the show...), but because she had a responsibility to everyone alive in Sunnydale. That would, at least, be a better way to echo Nikki's "the mission is what matters" line than the gross way the episode settles on ("You're trying to get revenge on a man who doesn't exist anymore! Also, isn't it cool and fitting he got 'his' coat back?")

[impalementation]

spike, angel, buffy & romanticism: part 4

part 1: “When you kiss me I want to die”: Angel and the high school seasons

part 2: “Love isn’t brains, children”: Enter Spike as the id

part 3: “Something effulgent”: Season five and the construction of Spike the romantic

* 

“But I can’t fool myself. Or Spike, for some reason.”: Buffy and Spike as a blended self

Before I get into seasons six and seven, it’s worth asking: why would the show do all of this? Why would it spend all of this time developing a supporting villain and joke id character? Why would it give him a romantic arc? I see people say that the writers only gave Spike these storylines because he was popular or they wanted to keep him around, but even that being the case, there was no need to give him the specific arc that they did. It’s more than possible to read meaning into the story that they chose from the array of possible options. 

Here is the thing about the id. It’s not actually something separate from you. It’s not a ravenous monster you can blame your weaknesses on while remaining pure and dignified. The id is part of you. The immediate and enduring appeal of Spike is, I suspect, strongly influenced by the fact that the things the id wants are so very human and sympathetic. His foibles and mistakes are often painfully familiar, even exaggerated through vampirism as they are. In fact, it’s precisely because Spike is allowed to show a full range of reactions to love, because the writing is under less pressure for him to do the “right” or dignified thing, that he can at times be compelling in ways other characters can’t. If Spike just did nasty things, his appeal wouldn’t be much more complicated than the appeal of Angelus, who people tend to like as a villain or storyline rather than as a relatable character. But Spike doesn’t want to dismember nuns or construct elaborate murder tableaux. He wants familiar things like love, identity and meaning, even if the ways he goes about getting them can reflect people’s worst impulses. 

Which brings us to Buffy, and Buffy’s story about growing up. Buffy is Buffy’s show, which means that every writing choice tends to revolve around her arc in one way or another. And this goes for Spike’s storyline even more than most. In the final three seasons of the show, the writing finally engages with how inextricable the id--and all of its impulsive, inarticulate romantic desires--really is from a person’s self. So instead of keeping Spike at a comfortable distance, both Buffy and the writing begin to take him seriously. They begin to invite him in.

Starting in season five, it’s telling how frequently Buffy herself projects on Spike, rather than just the writing setting them up as mirrors. She tells him that he’s the “only one strong enough” to protect her family, and later assigns Dawn specifically to his protection. In “Spiral” she describes him as “the only one besides me that has any chance of protecting Dawn.” This is a very intimate role that she otherwise only assigns to herself (and which is not really based on pure practicality, considering that she’ll later describe Willow as her “big gun”--yet never gives Willow the task of protecting Dawn). She tells him that he cannot love, which is the thing she fears most about herself. Her protests that Spike is a vampire, and thus cannot express or want human things like love, mirror her lamentations that as the Slayer, she cannot have a normal life.

From the Gilliland Gothic double essay:

More than any of her other lovers, Buffy and Spike overlap one another so often that at times their character arcs become nearly indistinguishable. With Angel, Buffy traveled a parallel path in attempting to master self-control. With Riley, her journey ultimately took her in the opposite direction. With Spike, Buffy’s journey is most closely shadowed, in that her interactions with him in many ways can be seen as metaphors for her feelings about herself.

So now Spike is multiple things. On the one hand, he’s the soulless id he’s been since season two. His vampiric behavior represents a morally uninhibited way of reacting to romantic frustrations, among other things. But on the other hand, his vampirism now also marks him as like Buffy, not merely her opposite.* Nor is he only her mirror in the realm of romantic love. The part of him that is a vampire is the part of him that is supernatural (ie, Romantically larger-than-life), that sets him apart from regular people, and dictates how he can and cannot behave. Just like Buffy’s slayerness. His vampirism is what makes him capable of protecting Dawn, while also making him (supposedly, according to Buffy) incapable of human feeling--again, just like Buffy’s slayerness. Instead of Buffy’s Slayer side being aligned with Angelus, who was an unmitigated evil, it becomes aligned with Spike, who is something more complicated. 

*(Though it must be noted that this was a process that began in season four, with the show aligning Spike with the Scoobies by making him a victim of the Initiative. Spike being supernatural suddenly marks him as non-normative, just like the Scoobies, in contrast to the institutional conformity that the Initiative represents. The evolution towards treating the Romantic supernatural as something positive and associated with identity plays a key role in transitioning the show to the more complicated attitudes of the last three seasons.)

This shift in the show’s attitudes towards the id affects how Spike is used. In “Blood Ties” for example, Spike assists Dawn in breaking into the Magic Shop and in “Forever” he helps Dawn resurrect her and Buffy’s mother. In both cases, Spike could be read as embodying impulsive behavior that Buffy is supposed to be better than. Yet both cases specifically involve Spike helping Dawn, who is repeatedly portrayed as Buffy’s human side. As Buffy says in “The Gift”: “[Dawn]’s more than [my sister]. She’s me. The monks made her out of me. [...] Dawn is a part of me. The only part that I--”. In other words, Buffy’s id becomes closely tied to her humanity, even going so far as to become its safeguard. “Blood Ties” ends with Buffy affirming her connection to Dawn, which Spike’s rule-breaking directly enabled, and “Forever” ends with Buffy acknowledging how desperately she wants her mother back too, and becoming closer to Dawn as a result. (Compare to “Lovers Walk”, where Buffy acknowledging her id results in her breaking away from Angel, not drawing closer to anyone). Or in “Intervention”, Spike building the Buffybot directly parallels Buffy’s own anxieties about what she thinks she should be. She thinks she’s losing her ability to love, and that effusive fakery is her only recourse (as she said in “I Was Made to Love You”: “Maybe I could change. [...] I could spend less time slaying, I could laugh at his jokes. I mean men like that right? The joke laughing at?”), a fear that even has some merit, given that her friends cannot tell her and the bot apart. Instead of Buffy and Spike having separate arcs in the episode, Spike learning the difference between real and fake dovetails with Buffy’s own relationship to her realness and fakeness. It turns out that neither of them want a bot version of Buffy. They want real emotion, things like sacrifice and heartfelt gratitude. If even Buffy’s id would let itself be killed for Dawn, then maybe she has nothing to fear from herself. Maybe there is some beauty in the emotional part of her nature that she thinks she must repress.

In other words, part of the writing (and Buffy) fully engaging with romanticism and the id, means engaging with the ways they can be bad and good. There’s this weird thing that happens with Spike as soon as he falls in love with Buffy, where suddenly his actions are more uncomfortable, and to many, off-putting, because their object is Buffy (instead of another vampire like Harmony or Drusilla, who either enjoy the same vampiric things he does, or the audience might be inclined to see as a moral nonentity regardless). His comic id quality becomes somewhat darker and more serious, almost like the way Angel’s early season two darkness becomes more serious after he loses his soul. But at the same time, Spike’s actions are also more intriguing, sympathetic, and even noble...because their object is Buffy. It makes no sense that a soulless vampire should not only fall in love with the Slayer, but genuinely attempt to transform himself into someone worthy of her love. And yet that’s exactly what Buffy inspires him to do. By loving Buffy Spike’s dual nature, and the dual nature of his romanticism, is thrown into relief: it’s something that can be selfish and creepy, yes, but also something that hints at the idea that real romanticism does exist. Something worth feeling romantically about does exist. Thus the writing can at once criticize, say, the way the chivalric mindset conflates love and suffering, while also suggesting that there are kinds of love it’s worth being transformed by. (Meanwhile, Spike’s fumbling bewilderment over how to love Buffy, and what the rules of loving people correctly even are, creates a human middle ground between monstrousness and heroism). By leaning into the way that Buffy and Spike have been used as mirrors for three seasons, and introducing the mythology-bending idea of Spike being in love with Buffy, the writing is able to fully engage with this complicated, contradictory nature of love and romance.

All of which is to say. Spike becomes a potential love interest, and is given a convoluted inner conflict between monstrousness, humanity and heroism, in precisely the season in which Buffy begins to reckon with her own inner conflict between her darker impulses, her human reality, and her supernatural role. It’s no coincidence that season five opens with Dracula, an icon of romantic vampire mythology, tempting Buffy with darkness and promising her insight into her nature. Or that a vampire kidnaps Dawn--again, her human half--in the next episode. Or that the season’s antagonist is a super-strong blonde woman who wants to destroy Dawn instead of protect her. Or that she says goodbye to Riley, the boyfriend who embodied her hopes for a more normative way of being (notice how Riley is progressively destabilized by everything non-normative about Buffy’s life, and provokes those anxieties Buffy expresses in “I Was Made to Love You”). Over and over in season five, Buffy fears that her Slayer half is cold, destructive, and otherwise dangerous. That these Romantic things like gods and vampires have it in for Buffy’s vulnerable humanity. Yet Buffy’s vampire id simultaneously gives lie to these fears by proving itself capable of heroism and genuine human feeling.

In other words, Spike becomes a potential love interest in a season that treats the Romantic--ie the grand and mythical--as something more than just an attractive lie to be disabused of. Rather, the question that season five seems to posit to me, and which will not be fully answered until the end of season seven, is this: once you do clear away the attractive lies, once you accept the hard realities, once you’ve seen the darkest underbellies, what are the things that are left that are truly grand and beautiful? What are the stories that are really worth telling, and the heroes that are really worth having?

And the show asks and answers these questions on both a very personal level, and a more meta, systemic level. On the personal level, Buffy and Spike are forced to confront their illusions not just about the world, but about themselves. They are made to ask themselves what constitutes a heroic role or a demonic weakness, versus basic, unromantic humanity. And on the meta level, the show asks questions about our expectations for how both love stories and chosen hero stories are supposed to go.

part 5: “Everything used to be so clear”: Season six and the agony of the real

[dontmindmyshadowhunting]

When Clary meets Ash (Fan Fic)

Hey :) this is how I imagine Clary and Ash's reunion (after the events of TDA) in the fic I am currently writing.

It's Chapter 5 of "The new Shadowhunter Academy" (Ao3 link to the full fic is here but don't click or skip Chapter 4 if you are not in for Kitty sexy times).

Thanks to @amchara for providing beta work and to @blaidr for letting me bounce my ideas off him.

To give you context, Ash met Dru in Faerie and they exchanged their numbers. Clary seized the opportunity to obtain Ash's number from Dru and write him the following text message:

“Hey, Ash. Dru gave me your number and please don’t be angry with her, I am very strong headed and there was absolutely no way she could have refused. I am Clary. You may have heard of me. I am your late father’s sister. That’s right, your aunt. You can call me whatever you like. Emma told me what you did in Thule, how you saved her. How you saved everyone. That was very brave of you. In a way, both of us were faced with a very difficult choice and made the same. Doing what we thought was right. I would love to meet you and tell you about my mother – your grandmother – or just talk about anything. It can be things totally unrelated to the Shadow world. Hobbies, movies, books and games we like. You can pick the time and place. Neutral territory. Hope to see you soon. Clary.”

This is what happens following the text:

*****

Clary wrapped her oversized woolen coat tighter around herself, as she made her way through the crowded streets of Manhattan. The route was familiar. She took it almost every week to meet up with her parabatai and have what they called their “mundane hour”. They talked about everything, from Clary’s art to the latest TV shows they had binge watched. No topic was off the table, save for anything related to Shadowhunter duties, and the Shadow world in general. As co-head of the New York Institute and since recently, artist owning her own gallery, her weeks were very busy so she looked forward to those rare and precious moments when she could escape with Simon. Her heart rate seemed to accelerate with each of her steps, and it didn’t help that she also had the strange feeling she was being observed. When she reached her destination, she took a deep breath and opened the double glass doors leading her inside the coffee shop. She and Simon had their regular routine there, and her gaze went automatically to their usual spot, near the large windows.

A broad-shouldered jock with a baseball jacket was already sitting there, speaking loudly to his cheerleader girlfriend. Two of his friends were standing next to him, mock punching his muscular arms. It made her realize that Ash probably never had this. High school friends and romance. Ash. She was still struggling to figure out why he had asked her to meet up at this place, at the exact time she usually got there with Simon. Was it him being considerate, a clumsy way to make her feel comfortable in familiar surroundings? Or was it a warning? I know your habits, and precisely where you take your coffee, when and with whom.

Her gaze swept over the crowded room - her heart seemed to have moved up her throat, the frantic pulse almost choking her - and zeroed on a tall, white blond haired boy ordering coffee at the counter, standing with his back to Clary. She sucked in a breath. Ash. He was fully clothed in black - Dru had told her that was his usual style - and huge headphones were covering his ears. She slowly and cautiously approached him and when she was close enough, put a tentative hand on his elbow. “Ash,” she whispered. The boy glanced over his shoulder, his blue eyes quizzical and… it was not Ash.

She mumbled an apology.

“Clary,” said a voice coming from behind, and she froze. It was not a boy’s but a man’s voice, the sound beautiful and ethereal. She just stood there for a few seconds before she slowly turned.

What had she expected? Merely a taller version of the young boy with pointy ears and a sour expression that she had met three years before, dressed in the same refined velvet clothing threaded with gold that identified him as fey royalty?

If so, she had clearly been mistaken.

She blinked a few times to make sure her mind wasn’t playing tricks. He was tall, as she had anticipated (Sebastian had been after all). At least two heads taller than her and probably taller than Jace. But he was also very different from the Ash of her memories, from the sketches she had drawn of him after they had crossed paths. He had amazingly grown into his features, his face now the best combination of the Seelie Queen and Sebastian’s. As if he had picked the most alluring colours of the palette. And the result was… Stunning. Clary’s hand twitched, aching for a pencil.

He was not dressed in black, but in plain blue jeans and he had stuffed his hands in a very elegant, long pale gray cashmere coat. His white blond hair and pointy ears were concealed under a deep green beanie, the same colour as the scarf around his neck.

He arched a silvery eyebrow at Clary, his expression bemused, and she realized she was staring.

“Clary, seriously?” he said, his gently scolding tone at odds with his enchanting voice. “This guy isn't even half as good looking as me." He glanced pointedly at the patron in question, who was gaping at him, and shrugged. "No offense, dude,” Ash added as an afterthought.

He turned his attention to the barista. She was beautiful, dark skinned with long braided hair and pouty lips. “Hello, gorgeous. We’ll have a double espresso with oat milk and a dash of cinnamon for the lady and a plain black coffee for me.”

Clary stifled a gasp and tried to hide her discomfort. He knew exactly how she took her coffee, and she didn’t know how she felt about this.

The pretty barista nodded eagerly, her cheeks red and her big dark eyes dreamy as she stared at Ash. “Why don’t you… Go sit at your table and I’ll bring you your beverages when they are ready?” the girl offered enthusiastically. The long line of patrons that had formed behind Clary and Ash would probably disagree but she didn’t seem to care.

“That would be lovely,” Ash said in his euphonious voice. “And so are you.” He winked at her, and Clary wondered if she would need to catch her while she swooned. He paid before Clary even had a chance to reach for her purse.

“Come,” he said in a commanding tone, as he made his way to Clary and Simon's usual table. This was unnerving.

The jock seated there paused in the middle of his conversation with his girlfriend when he saw Ash stand casually next to him. Clary braced herself for a heated exchange, but she should have known better.

“You want to sit somewhere else,” Ash said evenly, one hand inside the pocket of his designer coat and the other stretched out in front of him as he studied his fingernails.

“I want to sit somewhere else,” the jock repeated in a monotonous voice, his gaze blank. He stood, as if in a trance, and his girlfriend and friends followed him, puzzled, to an empty table at the far end of the room.

Ash drew a chair for Clary and she sat. He did the same, opposite her. He pulled off his beanie, and shook his silvery hair, like a crown of liquid white gold. He wasn’t dressed for the part but he had never looked more like a prince.

“Ash… please don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“Your mind tricks.”

He cocked his head and observed her, his face unreadable, for what seemed like an endless minute.

“You’ve been my aunt for what? Five minutes? And you’re already trying to boss me around?”

“I am not trying to boss you around, Ash. Simply asking you not to abuse your powers.”

A shadow flickered across his green eyes.

“I’ll let you in on a secret, Clary. I spend much more time and energy holding back than using my powers. If I did let go, trust me, you would know.”

Clary opened her mouth to reply but was cut short as the barista popped in front of them and placed the mugs on the table. She slid a paper napkin to Ash, her phone number scribbled on it. Clary tried not to roll her eyes, as Ash flashed his dazzling smile at the girl, who almost tripped on her own feet as she returned to the counter.

Clary lifted her cup to her lips and paused, as she caught sight of the cinnamon powder floating on the surface. She put it down.

“What about this?" She pointed at her coffee mug and waved around them. “ What is it, if not a show of power? What are you trying to tell me? That you know everything about me? That you’ve been spying on me?”

Ash pulled on a fake shocked expression, mouth open and green eyes wide in mock innocence. “Spying on you? What are you talking about?”

“Come on, Ash. The evidence is right here.” She lifted her cup abruptly, and hot liquid splashed out of it. “You know exactly how I like it. When I take it, where I take it.”

Ash’s mouth twitched. “Where did you pick up these lines? From the script of some lame X-rated movie?”

“Adult movies have storylines?” Clary asked, arching her eyebrows.

“Of course they do. Where do you think the Grimm Brothers took their inspiration from?”

He grabbed the paper napkin and started mopping the coffee she had spilled on the table. The blue ink faded and the barista’s phone number vanished.

“You lost that girl’s number,” Clary noted.

Ash shrugged. “I have a girlfriend now.”

Right. Drusilla Blackthorn. From the moment she had met her, Clary had known that the smart and quiet turquoise-eyed girl would someday turn heads.

Clary knew that Dru hadn’t really confirmed their relationship status yet, but it was neither the time nor place to broach the subject with Ash. She was, after all, on a mission to win over her nephew and had not been doing a very good job so far.

A young lanky boy with pink hair and piercings covering his skin walked by and dropped a glossy flyer of the upcoming Mortal Instruments concert on the table between them. Clary hid a smile. It reminded her...

“I have something for you.” She said as she fumbled inside her bag and took out the drawing she had made of Jocelyn, Luke and herself, in front of Luke’s upstate farm (before it was turned into the new Shadowhunter Academy) and laid it on the table.

Ash looked at it hesitantly, like a kid who really wanted to grab the candy but was afraid there was a mouse trap under it. He hunched his shoulders forward and clasped his hands under the table, as if to keep himself from temptation.

“I recognize your art. I like it. I also appreciate Julian Blackthorn’s but I may not be as objective where… one of the subjects of his drawings is concerned.”

“You’ve seen my art?”

He leaned back on his chair, crossing his long arms behind his head. Somehow, he managed to make it look graceful.

“Which Shadowhunter hasn’t? I noticed that you often drew Jace with angel wings.”

“Yes. That’s how he used to appear to me. In recurring dreams.”

“Was it?”

“Was it what?”

“Jace. In your dreams.”

“Who else would it be?”

“Someone who looks like him, but who actually has wings.”

“You mean Kit.”

Ash shrugged. “It would make more sense.” His gaze flickered back to the drawing, which still lay on the table, untouched. “You look a lot like your mom.”

“So do you”, Clary blurted before she could take it back.

Ash shot her an unfathomable look.

“How is she?” She asked.

“You mean, the Seelie Queen? You tell me. You must see her more often than I do.”

“Well, not really. I am not that involved in politics, even though Alec is Consul. Julian Blackthorn is the one who deals with her most of the time. She appears to have... a fondness for him.”

“Who doesn’t?”

Clary’s mouth quirked up.

“I am glad you are getting along with the Blackthorns. They are such an incredibly strong and talented family.”

“They are.” He turned his face away, but not before she could see the expression of longing plain on his delicate features.

She swallowed. She was painfully reminded that Ash never had a shot at a happy family. Born of a political union, and dragged here and there, though interdimensional portals, by people more interested in his powers than anything else he had to offer as a person. And judging by how Dru talked about Ash, he had a lot to offer.

“I imagine it must have been awful living in Thule… But what you did for Emma and Julian back there... if it hadn’t been for you…”

“I don’t want to talk about Thule,” he interrupted her. “Can I borrow this?” He asked, his long fingers brushing the Mortal Instruments concert flyer.

“Sure.”

She watched as he started folding the paper, realizing with a jolt of surprise that he was making an origami and wondering what shape would come out of it. It was odd seeing him doing such an innocuous thing, as if he was not a faerie prince with a heavy heritage and a giant target on his back, but an ordinary boy. She remembered what Emma had told her of her encounter with Ash in a nightclub in Thule. The way he had shown no interest, playing a video game in a corner of the room, while Sebastian was committing atrocities. Had he really been as indifferent as he looked?

“Ash, we don’t need to talk about Thule if you don’t want to, but if I can help you… If there is anything I can do-”

“Why?” He looked up sharply. “Are you able to create a rune that could undo the things I saw?” His tone was even, but his delicate fingers had started slightly shaking and he suddenly dropped the paper - his work unfinished - to fold his hands under the table to hide it. From that moment, she knew.

“No…” Clary said, drawing the word out. “But trust me, coming from someone whose memory has been tampered with... it’s not a solution.”

“I said undo. Not forget.” He snapped. “I am not such a coward that I would choose blissful ignorance over knowledge.”

He caught himself, blinking, then clenched his jaw and looked away. As if he was ashamed he had allowed himself to show any emotion at all. But Clary had managed to catch a glimpse of what lay underneath the mask and wanted nothing more than to see the rest of it.

“I don’t think you are a coward,” she said.

He looked over at her, a silver eyebrow raised. “I let it all happen, didn’t I? I didn’t lift a finger.”

“Because you couldn’t. Sebastian would have killed you. And you, Ash, are just like me. A survivor.”

He snorted and crossed his arms in front of him, leaning back on his chair. He had stretched out his long legs and Clary realized that he was tapping a foot nervously next to hers.

“Wrong. I could have. I chose not to. Because I am selfish. I don’t care about other people’s fate.”

His face split into a lazy, wicked grin. Clary could see Sebastian’s influence in his leer, but she wouldn't let it deceive her. Just as she wasn't fooled by his laid-back demeanor.

“I think it’s the opposite, actually. I think it’s because you care too much. It’s not death you are afraid of. The thing is, you have such a tender heart, you need to protect it from an affliction far greater than any physical pain you could endure. So you’d rather lie to yourself and pretend you feel nothing.”

From the long conversations she had with Tessa about her ancestors, Clary knew of a Fairchild boy who had been too compassionate for his own good. And he had been surrounded by loyal friends and loving parents, even though he had shut himself, putting on a facade while burying his grief in alcohol. Ash never had that kind of support. Throughout his life, he was left to figure things out on his own. If he was as empathetic as Clary thought he was, Ash probably had no other choice but to deal with his sensitivity alone. It was a miracle he had turned out the way he did.

“You have a lot of imagination,” he said after a moment. The ghost of a smile was still playing on his lips but something had passed across his eyes. “Then again, you are an artist. You seek beauty in the ugly. You find colors on a blank page. I admire your faith, but in this case, there is nothing to see.”

Clary jutted her chin stubbornly and they held each other’s gaze - his green eyes glittering in amusement and hers dead serious - in a staring contest.

“Still,” he said when he finally broke, first. “I shouldn’t have lashed out at you. I am sorry.”

Clary softened. “Don’t be. I am glad you are finally showing your true self. You don’t need to wear your mask around me, Ash.”

He chuckled. “Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.”

“It’s funny that you would quote Oscar Wilde.”

“And why is that?”

She shrugged. “Just another thing you share in common with a Fairchild I heard stories about.”

“Clary,” he said in a gently reproving tone. Her name sounded like a caress in his melodious voice. “Are you being purposefully cryptic to arouse my curiosity?”

She moved closer, so she was sitting at the edge of her chair, and leaned forward, hands folded over the table.

“If you show me yours, I’ll show you mine,” she whispered. “Let me in. Shed all pretense.”

“I can’t promise you that,” he whispered back in confidence, leaning closer still so that their faces were inches from each other. “It’s like fabric that burns and melts into skin. If you peel it off, the skin goes with it.” He grimaced, reclining on his chair. “It won’t be a pretty sight. I don’t think even my level of hotness could sustain it.”

“Ash…” Clary said, sensing that she finally had an opening to say what she had been brooding over ever since she had learnt of Ash’s return from that forsaken land. “I wanted to tell you… I am sorry.”

Ash’s green eyes widened.

“Sorry for what?”

“I should have looked for you. I should not have given up on you.”

Ash’s jaw clenched and he looked away. “Don’t,” he said through gritted teeth. “You don’t owe me anything.”

“I do. Seb-...Ash, we...”

“What did you just call me?” He snarled. His eyes snapped back to her, suddenly cold as ice.

“Sorry, Ash. What I meant to say is… we are family."

“I already have a family.”

“I know that you care about Janus…”

“I don’t want to talk about him,” he cut her off.

“And we don’t need to. I just wanted you to know… I understand that he’s been like a father to you, and I don’t plan on moving against him, unless he strikes first or makes it impossible for me to overlook his actions.”

“Because of me?”

“Of course, because of you.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Ash… You are my nephew, my blood. You may not feel the same way about me, but that’s how I feel about you. I want you to know that, if things go wrong, for any reason, you can always turn to me. My home is your home.”

“What you are actually telling me is, Ash, if I kill the one person who has ever really cared about you - and it might definitely come to that - you can always grab my hand, still sticky and warm from his blood. Well, how nice of you. To quote Oscar Wilde again, true friends stab you in the front.”

“That’s not what I am-”

“Clary,” Ash interrupted as he stood. “Do not make me choose between you and him. Because…” Looking down at her, he swallowed hard, as if the words pained him. “Because you will lose.”

She knew exactly what he was telling her. Because they were the same in that way. Ruthless, even with their own blood, when it came to protecting their loved ones. If I had to choose between killing him and you, I would not hesitate. I would end you. Yet, despite his cold statement, despite his sharp and resolved tone, his eyes seemed to carry a deep regret.

“Ash, I understand what you're saying and I swear I am not trying to make you pick a side”, Clary said, suddenly desperate, as she mirrored him and stood. “Please don’t go. I am sorry I brought it up. We will stop talking about him. Starting now.”

“This was a bad idea. Never try to contact me again.” He drew his green beanie from the pocket of his coat and put it back on. He turned and strode toward the exit. She grabbed the family drawing that still lay on the table, stuffed it in her bag and followed him, half-running, as he was quickly losing here with his long legs.

“Ash! Please. Give me another chance. I am so sorry.”

He paused right outside the coffee shop, closed his eyes and sighed. “Don’t be. It didn’t change what I had planned to tell you anyway. I don’t want to know anything about you or your mother. I don’t want to have anything to do with either of you.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” she said, and he whipped his head around to look at her in surprise. “I know you were under house arrest. You probably had to break out of whichever place they were holding you in to come here. You wouldn’t have done that unless you wanted something. Something from me. Tell me, Ash. Tell me what it is.”

He turned his face away so she could not see his expression. A full minute passed and she had almost given up on receiving an answer, when he finally spoke.

“My fa… Sebastian. How different do you think he would have been if not for the demon blood?”

“Oh. Ash.” she whispered. She brought her knuckle against her sternum instinctively, as if to cover the gaping whole in her chest. “I saw him, you know. The brother I should have had. The father that should have raised you. If only for a few minutes.” She paused to bite back tears. “In those few minutes, he told us how to get rid of the Endarkened and said he was sorry. It’s not much to go for, but… that’s not all. I have recurring dreams of the green eyed boy that was robbed from us. And I know in my heart he would have been the best brother a sister could ever dream of.”

He was still looking away and she could see the sharp line, the stubborn set of his jaw. She wanted to hug him, to tell him she would not fail him again. That they could mourn her brother, his father, together. That he didn’t need to bear the anger at everything that was wasted alone.

He finally turned to look at her. A tear had escaped to run freely down his cheek. He had completely shed off his mask, and what Clary saw was like a stab in her gut. She shivered. Wordlessly, he reached for his deep green scarf and tied it gingerly around her neck. The way Sebastian had when they had walked down the streets of Paris. Ash looked nothing like her brother had then. His green eyes held an infinite sadness that spoke of a grief deeper, older than the short years of his life.

“It doesn’t change anything.” He said - she hadn’t imagined his beautiful voice could sound so hollow - and turned to leave.

“Ash, wait.” She grabbed him by the elbow and he froze. His eyes widened as his gaze zeroed on the fingers covering his coat, as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing. She realized she had never touched him before.

“Clary, what do you want from me?” He asked in a tired voice.

“I just want to get to know you.”

“Trust me, you don’t. I am not the brother who was stolen from you. I cannot replace him. If anything, I am just like Sebastian was before me... my father’s broken toy. There is no way to fix me.”

“I don’t believe it for a second,” she said, almost frantic. “And I don’t want to find my brother's replacement, I want to get to know you! Ash. The real Ash.”

“I already told you. That’s not happening. Don’t ever try to contact me again. I am serious.”

“So that’s it?” She tried not to sound too whiny but panic was eating away at her stomach and she thought she would throw up. “You went through all this trouble spying on me, learning how I take my coffee to simply disappear from my life from one moment to the next?”

He gazed at her for a moment, his expression unfathomable. It seemed like an eternity before he finally spoke.

“I was not spying on you, Clary. I was merely following your stalker.”

“What? You were… protecting me?”

“Take care of yourself, Clary.”

He said as he stepped away from her and vanished into the crowd.

****

Clary threw herself in Jace’s arms as soon as he opened the door to their bedroom at the New York Institute. He froze, then started stroking her hair in a soothing gesture.

“Clary, what happened? Is everything okay?”

“No,” she said, her voice muffled against his chest.

“Tell me, Clary. What is it?”

She pulled away and wiped tears with the back of her hand. Jace’s face was a mask of shock. Clary couldn’t blame him. She almost never cried.

“I messed up.”

“What did you mess up?”

She walked to the bed and sat on the mattress. She took a deep breath, bracing herself for his reaction. “Ash. I met up with him earlier today.”

Jace tensed and his hands clenched into fists. “WHAT- Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because you would have insisted on coming.”

“Damn right, I would have. And I would have been right, too. Look at you, you look miserable.”

“It’s my fault,” she said in a small voice. “I pushed him too far.”

Jace sighed and came to sit next to her, putting a comforting arm around her shoulder. “I am sure you did nothing wrong, Clary.”

“I thought- When I showed him the drawing… the way he looked at it, Jace. He is not indifferent. He cares.”

“What drawing?”

“The one I made of the family,” she said absently, as she grabbed her bag and started fumbling inside.

She sucked in a sharp breath. The drawing wasn’t there. Peeking out in its stead, and folded out of the flyer of the Mortal Instruments concert, were origami faerie wings. The Fairchild family symbol.

[classic80sand90smovieloves2]

Meeting and Dating Spike

(Not my gif)(Requested by anonymous)

(There are so many options for meeting Spike that it was genuinely hard to choose which one I wanted to write for this. I could do probably do a whole post about various meeting scenarios)

- Spike knew about you far before the two of you met. He’d been watching, or more accurately stalking you, ever since he saw you with the Blonde slayer. 

- Initially, it’s to use you as a weapon; to taunt the slayer with the threat of hurting her weak little mortal friend. It makes his fun little game of getting under her skin so much easier. All he has to do is show up near you, linger just out of your view or look as though he’s about to approach you and her face crumbles into a look of both severe warning and fear. 

- But he never does confront you, not until you’re forced to find out that Buffy is a slayer and that vampires are real and that your life is very much so in danger if you don’t start taking some precautions. 

- So you stopped walking at night, or going anywhere at night, even with friends. Stopped hanging out in shady places, always carried holy water or a cross, etc. You were doing well, you were being safe, until one night when you went out with some friends; after a few quiet and safe months for everyone, and without thinking, you did so with no “weapon”. 

- At first, you had a surge of fear course through you upon finding that you forgot your safety precautions at home, but as the night dragged on and nothing happened, you were able to calm down. You had fun, your life was back to normal at least for a little while, and soon enough your friends were dropping you off back at home. 

- You waved to them as they drove off, brushing away your hair as the wind blew it in your face. You turned to head inside your house, only getting a few steps forward before a hand gripped your shoulder and pulled you backwards. 

- If there was ever a time to die of fright, now would be it. Of course, standing before you was the bleach blonde bat himself. 

- He was far more handsome than you ever expected from Buffy’s warnings but that was besides the point. He flashed a grin at you, moving forwards as you clumsily walked backwards to get away from him. 

“Hasn’t anybody ever warned you about being out alone at night, pet?” 

- You couldn’t have answered if you tried though it turned out you didn’t have to. The sound of a car approaching broke the silence and in an instant Buffy was jumping out of the passenger side seat and running towards the two of you. 

- Spike merely held his hands up in a mocking gesture of surrender as the blond threatened him, his eyes locking darkly on you for a lingering moment before he stalked off. Buffy guided you to your door and made you promise to be careful, handing you the jacket you’d forgotten at the party. 

- That was the last time you saw him for a long time though you’d heard of his temporary alliance with Buffy when trying to stop Angelus and Acathla from sucking the world into hell. Buffy assured you that he’d left town with Drusilla and wasn’t coming back, putting your mind at ease. Well, at ease until he did come back. 

- Heartbroken, depressed, and alone Spike returned to Sunnydale, and who did he visit? Well, who else but you! 

- You were sitting on your back porch when he arrived, completely alone with everyone in your house out for the night. Turns out that fight or flight wasn’t the only response one could have when encountering something dangerous; there was also freeze. 

“Spike,” you could barely get the name out, eyes wide, heart racing nervously. “What are you doing here?”

- He gazed at you for a long moment, his jaw set moodily and his eyes contemplating and stormy. And then, as though it were normal, he took a seat beside you on your porch and began to speak. 

- He started from the beginning, talking about helping Buffy, leaving town with a girl, their relationship. And then he began to speak about their fight and subsequent breakup, and in pure shock you realized that the man had started to cry. 

- Now unbeknownst to you and as I said before, Spike had watched you for a long time. He’d seen the way you were with your friends and how kind you were and him, desperate for someone to talk to, had decided that he would unleash his tale of misery upon you. 

- Okay, so you’d comforted your friends during breakups before but comforting a depressed vampire after a breakup; one that only months prior was undoubtedly going to kill you, was not something you were prepared for. 

- Tentatively, you reached out and placed your hand on his shoulder, stilling there for a moment, trying to think of what you should do. Before you could speak, he’d leaned down and pressed his face against your shoulder, branching off into more of his story. 

- You took his cold hand into your free one and began to speak, hesitantly offering comforting words and explanations, reasoning with him that maybe this girl wasn’t meant for him as much as it would hurt for him to admit it. 

- After a few minutes of this, he raised his head from your shoulder, sniffling and wiping his face before setting his gaze forward and awkwardly excusing himself. You; still bemused by the entire encounter, said goodbye and without thinking told him that you’d “be here”. 

- He froze for a moment before nodding and slinking off into the darkness. You merely took a deep breath and went back inside your house, wondering what the hell your life had become. 

- As time would tell, your caring nature would prove to be a driving force in the creation of a friendship between you and the vamp. You showed him (1) one ounce of kindness and he latched onto it, feeding from it like the vampire he is. 

- He’d taken your advice to heart, kept himself from Drusilla and settled into his cozy crypt in Sunnydale, though that wasn’t the only place he resided. Spike had also taken to loitering around you and your house. 

- No one has ever really been nice to Spike which is awful to think about but true nonetheless. It hadn’t really bothered him before since he’d never had anything to compare his treatment to, but now that you’d shown him genuine care and kindness, well, he wanted more. 

- So yes, he loiters, he visits, he acts as though his sudden trailing of you is not odd in the slightest. You don’t have the heart to turn him away, not after that emotional display of his, so you just accept it although wearily at first. 

- After a while, you begin to trust him. If this was all a ploy then hell, his dedication was enough to warrant his right to kill you. But it wasn’t a ploy, as much as Buffy believed it was when she found out, scolding you for being stupid and demanding that Spike stay the hell away from you. He didn't. 

- He makes every excuse in the book to come and see you, showing up uninvited yet unsurprisingly nearly every night and sometimes day. It doesn’t even really matter what you’re doing at the time, he has no problem just sitting and watching, helping, or doing something on his own. 

- It takes some time to realize why he’s so drawn to you and when he does, he doesn’t know what to do because it’s finally so obvious to him. And it scares him.

- Above all, he fears rejection because the more time he spends with you, the more he realizes that you not returning his affections is going to tear him apart. So he puts off telling you though not for long, he can only keep himself from confessing for so long before he finally can’t take it anymore.

- He calls you from a payphone one night and asks if you can come see him, “just for a little while” though you know it won’t be, knowing him. You glance at the clock and though it’s late and you should probably be going to bed, you agree.

- Soon enough, you’re walking into his humble abode and questioning him as to what he wanted you over for, missing the way his eyes locked adoringly onto you as you shrugged your jacket off. He remains quiet for a minute until you call his name curiously.

- Finally, he confesses everything. How you’re the only one who’s ever really been nice to him. How he thinks you’re beautiful. How he loves your personality. And finally, how he loves you. You’re shocked to say the least but you don’t have time to be shocked, he’s looking at you expectantly; vulnerably, waiting for an answer and hopefully one that won’t shatter whats left of his heart.

“I-I don’t know what to say.” You stutter out, swallowing the lump of emotion that’s made it’s home in your throat.

“Just say that you love me back.” He whispers.

- He’s pleading with you now and the mere thought of how truly in love with you he must be to discard his usual sarcasm and defensiveness and genuinely beg you to not reject him pushes you to respond.

“I love you too.” You can see the weight lift from his shoulders as he moves closer to you.

“Say it again...please.” He asks quietly and your heart races.

“I love you.” You reply as he reaches you, mere inches away from your own body. He pulls you into him, his arms wrapping around you tightly, pinning you to him.

“One more time. ...Just please, one more time.” He whispers into the crook of your neck.

“I love you. I love you. I love-”

- Your words are cut off by a desperate kiss. Months of yearning and longing piled up into one amazing, beautiful kiss.

- You always thought that a kiss making you weak in the knees was something reserved only for movies but it was then that you found out that wasn’t the case. By the time you were forced to pull away because of a little thing called the need to breathe, he was the only thing holding you up.

“I love you.” You told him earnestly, gazing into his eyes, your hand smoothing the back of his hair. He silently tilted his face up, pressing his lips to your forehead before pressing it against his own.

“Stay with me?” He asked and you recognized that it meant two things all at once.

- He keeps himself glued to you at all times. You’re that insufferable couple who can never keep their hands; or lips, off of each other, he can’t at least.  

- He likes playing with your hair. Doesn’t matter what’s going on, whether you’re perfectly happy, horny or arguing; his hand gravitates to your hair without thinking.

- Painting his nails.

- Passionate, slightly rough kisses. He ravages your mouth whenever he can.

- Making out, like, a lot. Doesn’t matter what mood either of you are in, all he wants to do is shut out the world and focus on your lips and the way he can get you to make those quiet little moans.

- Sitting on his lap. Be careful though, he gets particularly handsy and needy whenever you do. 

- He’s pretty much horny all the time and when he isn’t right off the bat, he’s very easy to turn on.

- Teasing him with your neck; it drives him crazy. If you let him feed off of you, I assure you, it will be the most erotic thing you’ve ever been through.

- He compliments you a lot, especially when you get all dressed up, but he’ll also sometimes just bite his lip at you, looking you up and down and making you seriously contemplate not going out like you were planning. 

- He calls you sooo many pet names. Things like: baby, darling, love, sweetheart, pet. Not to mention the one’s he’s made into pet names with how much he calls you it. 

- Calling him William; it always seems to do something to him whenever you do. He can’t really describe what he’s feeling but he isn’t going to tell you to stop.

- Getting “bloody awful” poetry written about you. You don’t even care if it’s bad, you find it adorable and romantic either way, though you’ll probably only get to read it if you go snooping.

- Chivalry is ingrained deep within him and it always comes out when he’s with you. He opens doors, pulls out your chair, etc, without even thinking about it.

- Getting to wear the jacket™. He’ll give you hell for not bringing your own coat but will do so while draping his own over you and pulling you close.

- Singing along to the radio with him. He likes classic rock so that’s usually what’s playing.

- Soft, lingering touches. 

- He acts as though he’s touch starved even though he’s obviously had affection people before; namely Drusilla. He gets all weak when you put your hands on him or show him affection. Either that or he just gets all riled up.

- As much as he loves your kindness, he does like when you’re aggressive and mean to him. There’s just something about an angry woman that drives him wild.

- He has a bad habit of talking when he shouldn’t and/or being aggressively; and unhelpfully, sarcastic. Get used to telling him to or making him shut up, your choice.

- Innuendoes, sarcasm and delightful quips.

- Late night visits. If you can, I’d suggest adopting a nocturnal sleeping pattern. 

- But don’t worry, or, well, maybe you should, because he’ll also visit you during the day, wrapped in a blanket and quite literally smoking. He’ll greet you as though it’s completely normal, defensively asking if it’s a crime to want to see “his girl” when you incredulously ask him what he’s doing. 

- Does he accidentally stay at your place until after the sunrises so that he’s “forced” to stay with you the entire day? Maybe....

- He’s clingy and possessive in an endearing, slightly annoying way. He only does it or acts like it because he loves you so much so you can’t really be too bothered by it.

- He likes to think of himself as a big bad vampire but deep down he’s a sentimental, emotional softie who’s desperate for love.

- Comforting him. He deserves to have someone be there for him and believe in him and you’re that person. You’re the only one who really gets to see that broken side of him and you should be honored by that privilege.

- He’s not very experienced in comforting people but he has this inexplicable urge to do so whenever he see’s that you’re upset. Even if he’s furious with you, the moment he see’s tears, it’s like the anger drains out of him and leaves him with a heart that’s aching at the sight of you so hurt.

- He insists on looking after you when you’ve fallen ill or gotten hurt. He trusts no one else to do it, not letting them near you unless he’s sure that they can help in a way he can’t. You’re practically held prisoner until you’re well again, though he makes your imprisonment quite enjoyable.

- He holds you while you sleep, watching over you, memorizing every detail of your face. Usually, you’re either cradled against him, your face resting against his arm and your arms wrapped around his waist, or he’s spooning you from behind and pressing kisses to whatever bare skin he can reach.

- He makes these confessions that have your heart racing and tears wanting to come to your eyes because of how beautifully romantic and touching they are. They can be about anything having to do with you: your beauty, your personality, the things you do, or just how he feels about you in general.

- He’s genuinely scared of how hard he’s fallen in love with you. He’s never really been close to anyone; not like he is with you at least, so it frightens him to see how much of an affect you have on him.

- It may sound odd but he loves your scent. It’s practically a drug to him. He huffs you and your belongings: your neck, your hair, perfume, clothing.

- He steals your clothes and photos. He’s practically got a shrine to you in his crypt, nestled deep in one of his drawers where he hopes you’ll never find it since he doesn’t want to explain what its doing there. 

- He kinda, sorta, moves into your house after you start dating. I mean, he’s there so much that he’s practically living with you. He definitely stole one of your drawers over time, sneaking his stuff into it right under your nose until you finally realize that you have an entire drawer full of just his clothes.

- You aren’t really sure how he did it, but he made your mother really like him, like even before the two of you started dating. And rest assured, if you got a boyfriend between becoming friends and dating him, Spike most definitely turned your mother against them. Either that or she just liked him so much more and tried to persuade you to date the vamp instead, which he’d be very smug about.

- Buffy isn’t fond of your relationship but she plays nice, except for when she gave him the “I’ll stake you if you hurt her” speech.

- Defending him. He gets so happy and smug whenever you do, a Cheshire grin spreading across his mouth as he stands behind you.

- He wants to be better, for you above all else, and with you by his side, he’s sure he can.

- He get’s incredibly jealous over you. He doesn’t even like hearing your exes name leave your mouth, god forbid someone were to flirt with or be interested in you. The police would find their body dead in a ditch somewhere or; at the very least, severely beaten. 

- He’s incredibly protective and selfless when it comes to you. He’s ready to kill and be killed if it means that you’ll be safe. Thankfully, not many of your threats are that big so he doesn’t have to put his undead life on the line.

- Taking care of him when he’s hurt. He only allows you to do it, not wanting to be that vulnerable looking under anyone else’s gaze. He has a habit of saying that he “doesn’t deserve you” once you finish doing something for him which make you feel the need to prove that he does.

- You get into little meaningless arguments and bicker a lot but you don’t have very many serious fights. But if you did have a serious fight, he’d raise his voice, maybe insult you a little; nothing too severe just rude, and one of you would wind up storming off.

- He’d pretend as though he didn’t care but he’d be really torn up, going to your friends to rant about what happened and moping about their homes, not caring if they want him gone or not. They’ll probably wind up calling you to come get him, or he’ll go off in search of you on his own, apologizing for everything and asking if you can forgive him.

- Lots and lots of “I love yous”. They range from being incredibly sincere to horny to lighthearted; sometimes in the same conversation!

- He plans on spending the rest of his undead life with you. He’s already got a ring and a plan to sire you when you’re ready, just say the words and he’ll be yours forever.

[spider-pxrkers]

flustered || peter parker x reader

summary: peter decides to flirt with the new avenger, y/n. he doesn’t expect her to flirt back and fluster him, making him realize he needs to get the upper hand.

request:  can you do a peter x flirty reader where at first peter is flirting buts the reader flirts back making him flustered?

a/n: the BIGGEST thank you to the loml @drusilla-as-in-blackthorn who helped and co-wrote this fic with me! she has some amazing fics, go check her out!

warnings: making out, sexual tones, swearing, sam and bucky being sam and bucky.

masterlist || co-writer ||  add yourself to my taglist!

i do not own any gifs used. all credits go to the original creator.

“Just be cool man. We practiced for hours, she’ll totally be into it.”

Ned’s voice echoed in Peter’s head like a tape stuck on loop as he entered the Avengers Compound. He puffed out his chest as he stepped into the elevator, trying to assert some sort of confidence within him to prepare himself for what he was about to do.

Steve had called for an Avengers training session today, which meant Peter got to see you again. He’d first met you during a robbery in Queens where he’d gotten tangled up. The thieves would’ve gotten away had you not shown up and ever since that day, he’d been in awe of you.

When he found out you were an Avenger too, he swore he felt his stomach do flips. His crush on you began shortly after meeting you those six months ago and is still very much there. For a while, Peter didn’t know what to do about it, but around two weeks ago Ned convinced the boy to go old school and try the one tactic ‘all the ladies loved’, and that was flirting.

He was skeptical at first, but he eventually figured he’d give it a try. And so Peter spent the whole of the night before googling pick-up lines and watching ‘flirting 101’ videos on YouTube in preparation for today. He was satisfied with his research and felt confident.

As the elevator doors opened, he took bold steps towards the rest of the team and waited for instructions from Steve. Not everyone had showed up, but you were there, leaning against a wall as your fingers mindlessly played with each other, your eyebrows furrowed as you listened to what Steve was saying. He felt his breath falter as he looked at you, you wore simple grey sweats and a ‘Stark Industries’ tank top. It was a simple outfit but for some reason Peter couldn’t take his eyes off of you. Your eyes eventually wandered towards the boy, noticing his stare. You gave him a light wink, causing his cheeks to stain red, his eyes immediately looking away.

After the briefing, Steve announced today’s training would consist of sparring in pairs. Peter silently pleaded as he grouped everyone together and he felt his heart jump when Steve announced he would be paired with you.

Everyone made their way over to their assigned partners and he watched as you walked up to him. He mentally prepared himself, taking a deep breath as you approached. He was ready.

“H-hey, Y/N.”

Shit.

He stuttered.

Why did he have to stutter?

He glanced up at you to see if you noticed but all he saw was an amused look in your eyes, as if you could somehow tell he was beating himself up. “Hey, Parker.” You grinned at him. “You ready?”

“I-” He sighed. “Yeah.”

The two of you got into your own individual sparring stances.

He could do this. He was a man of science and he had studied for this. How hard could it be to flirt with you? He had watched other members of the team flirt with each other enough to know that he could play it off as a joke if you didn't respond well. That, or he could throw himself out the window of the forty-sixth floor, whatever would be easier. 

You threw a punch at him and he dodged it, then another, then a kick. You were on the offensive side which was fine with him, he could do defense in his sleep. It gave him time to think about what to say. He had to do this right, mostly because he knew you had at least four knives on you but he was also really worried about embarrassing himself. 

 "Hey Y/N,” He let out as he parried away from a kick, recalling one if the lines he'd memorized. “If you're enjoying yourself here, I know other ways we could use this much energy." He ducked under another one of your high kicks and punched at your stomach. 

You hadn't even faltered in your attack so he wasn't sure if you had even heard him. "Yeah, I do too Spidey, but unfortunately Steve frowns upon people fucking on the sparring mats." You eyed him, the corner of your lips tugging up at his expression.  He faltered at your words, not expecting such a direct comeback, and you took the opportunity to crouch down and took his ankles out. Suddenly he was looking up at your smug expression from the floor with, what he knew, was a violent blush on his own face. "What's wrong Parker? Cat got your tongue?" You asked tilting your head to the side, a look of feigned innocence coating you. You sauntered away back towards the starting point and raised your fists, obviously waiting for him to join you. 

You had both been sparring for about an hour and since he wasn't allowed to use his web shooters, you happened to be winning - in both the sparring and the verbal back and forth. He didn't understand how you were doing it, everything he said, you countered with something equally as clever. He was grasping at straws at this point. "Y-you sure you're not tired Y/N? Cause you've been running through my mind all day." 

He was throwing hits in your general direction with no real heat. You actually laughed at that one, no wonder. "Nah, don't worry about me Parker. I can go all night." He sighed as you landed him on his ass for the third time in a row, he wasn't going to concede but you weren’t giving him much of a choice.

"I'm not a genie but I can make all your dreams come through." He groaned as he tried to get back up.

 "Yeah and that’s if I rub you hard enough?" You lightly moved your leg to push him back on the mat. When he went to stand back up, Steve shouted that everyone could take a break. He sighed. 

You and he walked side by side to the cooler where the water bottles were kept. He went over to his gym bag and saw that he had three missed calls from Ned. He dialed back.

"Hey man how's it going? You ask her out yet?" Ned sounded excited on the other line, Peter smiled, he loved his best friend so much.

"Nah, buddy it's not working.” He sighed into the phone before bringing his bottle to his lips. “Everything I throw at her she hits me back with something better. I think I should just give up."

"What do you mean?" 

"Well, earlier I said to her 'Hey can I borrow a kiss, I promise to give it back?' and she pinned me to the mat and said I could have as many as I liked." Peter replied, looking at you from the corner of your eye talking to Steve.

 "Wait, okay, no, so she's flirting back with you? That's a good thing isn't it?" Ned asked.

Peter thought about it and how smug you looked whenever you managed to knock him down. "I don't know Ned, I think she was just doing it to get the upper hand in training."

 "Well are you still training now?"

 "No we have a break just now for a bit."

 "Well,” Peter could practically hear Ned smile through the phone. “I would say kick it up a notch, hit her with something and if she says something suggestive back then act on it, kiss her or whatever."

 Peter watched you move back to your own gym bag, watched you reach down to put your bottle in it. He thought about just grabbing you and kissing you, he wanted to, really, really badly but what if you stabbed him, or worse, laughed at him? 

 "I don't know Ned, I think I'm just going to give up." 

"Well okay man, but you have my opinion." Peter almost winced at the distaste in his friend’s voice.

"Yeah, yeah, bye bud, love you."

 "Love you too." 

Peter hung up the call, sitting down and putting his head in his hands. He didn't know what to do, he wasn't the kind of guy who could just make a move on someone, and he didn't even know if you'd ever actually thought of him that way.

You were walking towards him, looking beautiful as always, a ray of light in a dark world "I must be in a museum, because you truly are a work of art." He said in almost a whisper.

But you heard him, you had a playful look in your eye. "Well if you wanna pin me up against the wall then go ahead." 

Something came over him, he didn't even think about what he did next. He shot a web out and grabbed you as soon as the words left your lips, faster than the eye could see. He twirled so you ended up braced against the wall with Peter pinning you down, one hand holding yours above your head, the other holding your hip down.

His legs braced yours, with his super strength, you couldn't move even if you wanted to. "Well if you insist." He mumbled, his eyes darting between yours and your mouth that was currently parted in.. shock?

He was waiting on you kicking and screaming, or at least coming up with a witty comment or a joke. What he wasn't expecting was a fierce blush to rise up your cheeks and your eyes to avoid looking into his. "I, eh, I, uh well, h-h-hi." You were stuttering, he had actually managed to fluster you. The same girl who’d been spewing filthy lines back at him a few minutes ago looked so small under his lock now.

He opened his mouth to say something before hearing someone clear their throat behind him. Your eyes widened as you looked over Peter’s shoulder at Steve and the rest of the team staring at the two of you while Peter’s gaze still remained on you.

You pulled out of his grip, side stepping and moving away, quickly walking back to the training mats. Peter’s arms dropped to his sides, his eyes never leaving the wall he just had you flustered against.

You avoided Peter for the rest of the session, opting to spar with Natasha while he trained with Sam. You stood opposite Nat, dodging and throwing as many hits as you could as your mind wandered. Moments ago he was the one blushing after everything you’d said, you were sure you had the upper hand. But after he held you like that, something snapped. You could still feel his fingers brushing against your hip and you cursed yourself for getting so flustered. At first you thought his flirting was cute and just for fun, but something about the way his eyes looked into yours made you think differently. Was he taking advantage of you?

Or did he actually like you?

Training ended and you quickly gathered your things, darting out of the room. You made your way into the corridor to your room before hearing footsteps after you.

“Y/N, wait up!”

You silently cursed as you sped up your pace, walking into your room and turning to close the door before a foot appeared, halting it. You looked up to see Peter place a hand on the door as he tried to push it a bit more for him to enter. You placed your hand on the other side trying to close it. “Go away, Peter.”

“Look,” he pushed at the door harder but was met with you pushing back with equal force. “Listen I’m sorry if-” You pushed back again. “Sorry if I- would you stop?” He finally sent a stronger push this time, successfully opening the door and stepping in. You backed away from him, dropping your bag figuring he wouldn’t be leaving anytime soon.

He shut the door behind him as he made his way over to you. “I’m sorry if I crossed a line back there, I just wanted to-”

“Why did you do it?” You asked, crossing your arms.

“Wh-why did I do what?”

You scoffed at him. “I don’t know flirt with me? Pin me against the fucking wall in front of the team?” You shook your head at him. “What? You think it’s fun messing with people like that?”

Peter’s stance grew defensive. “You flirted back!”

“Yeah, ‘cause I thought we were fooling around! Not that you actually-” You stopped yourself from finishing your sentence. You couldn’t do it, you couldn’t admit your feelings to him, that you actually thought he liked you back.

He seemed notice your uneasiness however, walking closer to you. “Not that I what, Y/N?” His tone was softer now, almost warmer as he now stood directly in front of you. His brown eyes bore into yours as your eyes wandered around his face, looking for any sign of insincerity.

You shook your head as you moved to walk away from him. Instead, you felt his fingers wrap around your wrist, pulling you into him as he kissed you. His arms moved to wrap around your waist, pushing you backwards until your back hit the wall by your bed with a thud. Your eyes widened before relaxing at his touch, your arms gripping his hair and neck. You felt his teeth nip your bottom lip before down to your jaw and eventually to your neck, where you let out a whimper as he began sucking on your skin, earning a smile against on your neck.

Your hands left the curls in his hair and trailed down his chest to dip under his shirt and pull it over him before discarding it to the floor. His lips reattached to your collarbone as his hands slipped down your hips to your legs, hoisting you up to wrap around him. He kissed back up your neck to your mouth where you moaned as his tongue met yours, moving you away from the wall and laying you on your bed. His forearm found its place by your head, holding him up as his other hand held you by the side. Your legs wrapped around his waist, pulling him closer as he lay above you, the two of you caught in your make-out session as if you were the only two people in the world.

You finally pulled away after what seemed like forever, your chests connecting as you tried to catch your breath. A light smile found his face as his hands moved to cup your cheek, studying your shut eyes and now swollen lips and tangled hair while you lay under him.

“I was stupid,” he breathed out causing you to open your eyes and meet his. His fingers continued to tug at the corner of your mouth. “I thought these stupid pick-up lines would..” He trailed off as he gently shook his head, a small laugh escaping him. “Would finally make you like me back.”

You softly laughed at him, your fingers drumming against his bare chest. “Well it worked didn’t it?”

He chuckled as he leant down to press a kiss to the tip of your nose.

“Yeah, yeah it did.” He leaned back in to kiss you again.

“Hey Y/N, Nat wanted to know if you were- holy shit.”

The two of you turned to look at Sam at the door, his eyes widening at the sight before him before a grin covered his face. “Well I hope I’m not interrupting anything.” He said smirking as he leant against the doorway. Peter’s cheeks turned red as he pushed off of you, reaching to get his shirt.

You got up and glared at the man, clearly annoyed. “What do you want Wilson?”

Sam smirked at you as he laughed. “Oo, she ain’t takin’ it too well. Hey, Bucky!” He called out.

“Oh my god.” You pinched the bridge of your nose as Peter put his shirt back on, a light smile finding his face as he glanced between the two of you.

Sam kicked off the wall before winking at you, walking back down the corridor. You could still hear his voice as he walked off. “You owe me fifty bucks sergeant!”

Peter laughed as he reached his hand down to yours, pulling you up. “You alright?” He asked.

"Yeah, I'm good." You nodded your head as you smiled walking out of the room with him before clearing your throat. "After damage control,” you said gesturing with your head to the kitchen where Sam now gathered the entire team while your hands gently tugged at the waistband of his pants. “What do you say you and I pick up where we left off?” He froze as he stared at you, his eyes widening. You grinned at him before pressing a kiss to his cheek and pulling away, skipping down the hall and leaving a very very flustered Peter Parker behind you.