#maybe. it's about the movie's thesis that sex/romance should come naturally

[seven-saffodils]

.

[profound-boning]

Holding Back From You

prompt: thrisha’s post pairings: destiel word count: 2k tags: no warnings apply, implied sexual content, dean’s appallingly low self-esteem, perceived infidelity, friends with benefits to boyfriends only on tumblr | dwlts

When Dean woke up in Cas’s bed with a naked Cas lying next to him and a familiar ache, he’d known right away that the night before had ended with some very athletic drunk sex.

When Cas woke up and treated him to round two, he hadn’t bothered to ask questions. Why would he when he could finally have Cas exactly like he’d always wanted?

Finally, when Cas rolled off of him and stumbled to the bathroom, Dean’s upstairs brain tuned back in.

Hey, dumbass, it said, don’t you think it’s actually a really terrible idea to have sex with your roommate and your best friend?

Why yes, brain, that does sound like a bad idea. Except that that was the best sex he’s ever had in addition to Cas being the best person Dean has ever known. Okay, so Cas is a bit of a slob and he’s so quirky sometimes and he’s a runner, which is just weird, but he’s a good guy. Would climb a tree to save a cat or drop his own bags to help an elderly lady carry hers. And Dean really wants to keep having sex with him.

So Dean doesn’t question their new arrangement. They haven’t really discussed it since that first day when a freshly-showered Cas flopped down on the couch next to Dean and asked him how he felt about spanking.

This led to an in-depth discussion of boundaries and what exactly they wanted from each other in the bedroom. Which is all well and good, except that it makes their sexy time a bedroom-only activity and now Dean is having some serious feelings-related issues outside of the aforementioned bedroom.

Granted, these issues aren’t precisely new. Dean has been wrestling internally with telling Cas that he’s halfway in love with him for a solid two years now, but when Dean fucks it up is he going to lose his roommate and his best friend, too? On the other hand, is he going to spend the rest of his life pining over Castiel Novak? That’s a firm maybe at this point. So, no, feelings-related issues aren’t new.

There is something that is new, however, and that is the dark hickey Dean has just spotted on Cas’s hip bone and the fact that Dean is currently losing his goddamn mind over it.

It’s just a hickey, right? Nothing too horrible. The problem is that Dean knows for a fact he didn’t put it there—not that Dean doesn’t love Cas’s hips, but it’s not exactly a spot he’s inclined to leave a hickey—so that means that someone else put it there and Dean’s going to be sick.

He ends up going to the bathroom, actually, but he doesn’t throw up. Instead, he leans his arms against the counter and takes deep breaths. Then, he flushes the toilet and splashes a little water on his face. He looks at himself in the mirror.

This is fine, he lies, you’re fine. It’s not a big deal that Cas is getting some on the side. It’s not like he made you some vow of fidelity. Why would he? A good roll in the hay and a half-decent roommate and that’s all. You’re not good for anything else and Cas would be certifiably crazy to think otherwise.

After that rousing pep talk, Dean goes back to the kitchen and avoids looking at Cas as much as he can.

He’s not very successful, mind you, but he tries.

He does insist that Cas puts a shirt on if he wants to cook, which is a small victory. Cas is craving scrambled eggs but he’s not so good at watching the pan so Dean takes over after a little while and they both end up with a nice plate of egg. Cas likes ketchup with his while Dean just uses a bit of salt and pepper. Cas talks at length about his stupid thesis and his stupid undergrads and he hooks his ankle around Dean’s under the table, and Dean tries to remember to breathe.

After suffering through breakfast, Dean plops himself down on the couch with the intent to spend the entire day on Netflix. Maybe he’ll take a break to hit the grocery store and grab some more junk food. And whiskey. Maybe tequila, too.

But Cas ends up deciding to stay home rather than hole up in the library, which means nature documentaries and talking about the universe. It’s the sort of thing that Dean loves to do with Cas on a normal day, but today is not a normal day.

Today, Cas is wearing a physical reminder that Dean is not anyone special, that Cas is bright and handsome and so damn good in bed it’s a small wonder there haven’t been any indicators before this. Seriously, Cas has probably been hooking up with some other friends of his this whole time.

Maybe they’re not even his other friends, Dean thinks with growing horror. What if Cas is dating someone? What if there’s someone that Cas takes out to restaurants and the movies, someone whose hand he holds when they talk together in little cafes, when they go to art museums and concerts together? What if Dean is Cas’s dirty little secret?

Frankly, he wouldn’t be surprised. But it still fucking hurts to consider the possibility.

Maybe he shouldn’t be so upset about it. Really, if they’re not doing enough to keep Cas satisfied, then what else can Dean do but reap the benefits? Surely, if Cas had a problem, he wouldn’t have turned to Dean that morning with a devilish smirk and wrapped a hand around his morning wood. He’d been so comfortable and into it. So, if Cas wants Dean, even just on the side, then why would Dean fight that? He should be grateful to get anything from Cas, not questioning it.

He’s so distracted by his internal crisis that he doesn’t notice Cas has stopped watching the movie to watch him. Then, Cas leaves over and presses pause on Raiders of the Lost Ark.

“Dean?”

“Yeah, Cas?”

Cas huffs a small laugh. “What’s up with you?” Dean shifts uncomfortably.

“Nothing, man. Why, what’s up with you?” He turns to look at Cas, who squints at him.

“Don’t pull that with me,” he says. “I know when something’s wrong with you. You’re easy to figure out.”

Or just easy, Dean thinks miserably, his mind still conjuring images of Cas’s picture perfect partner and how confused and devastated they would feel to find out that Cas sleeps with him sometimes. Fairly often, actually, he thinks with a sort of smugness mixed with guilt. Jesus, he needs to get a grip.

“Cas, I’m fine,” he insists. “Can we just get back to the movie already?” Cas looks deeply unimpressed with his avoidance, lips pursed and brow furrowed as if he can glare hard enough to see inside Dean’s head. Dean really hopes that that isn’t possible otherwise he’d be fucked, and not in the fun way.

But he relents and clicks play, allowing them both to settle into silence once more. It’s not a comfortable one, though, it’s tense with nervous energy and a sort of inexplicable sadness.

Dean thinks he’s going to die when Cas needs to stretch, raising his arms up over his head and arching his back with a little groan. The action pulls up his t-shirt to reveal his belly button and hips, that fucking hickey staring Dean right in the face. He swallows harshly.

Eventually, the movie ends, and they transition to watching bad television. Cas gets out his phone to play games while Dean flips through the channels. It’s comfortable, except that Dean cannot keep his mind off of whoever had their mouth on Cas’s body.

It shouldn’t hurt this much, but it does. Their arrangement wasn’t meant to last, Dean knows that logically, but he’s nevertheless hoped that maybe one of those orgasms would open Cas’s eyes to the possibility of something else, something with more romance than he’d ever admit to desiring.

Things come to a head at dinnertime, with Cas standing by the fridge and holding a jar of tomato sauce in his hand and frowning at it like it’s withholding the secrets of the universe. And Dean loves him. Oh God, how he loves him.

“I love—. Wait, shit. Uh,” he stammers. “It’s just—Cas, I can’t do this anymore.”

Cas looks at him with wide eyes. “What?”

“I can’t—” He gestures uselessly between them. “This doesn’t work for me. I thought I could do it but I can’t anymore, I’m not strong enough. You’re great, Cas, you’re so great and that’s the whole problem really. You’re perfect and I can’t stand only being yours when we’re horny and—and I can’t be your side piece, Cas. I saw the hickey, okay?” He points to Cas’s hip and Cas opens his mouth but Dean cuts him off, he has to get this all off of his chest right now before he chickens out. “And I tried to convince myself it would be okay, that just having any of you would be enough, but it ain’t. I—I want all of you, y’know? But I know you would never want that, and it’s just—just tearing me up inside thinking about it, thinking about never having you again, but I had to—I dunno, I felt like I had to say something, I guess. Can’t do this anymore.” Dean’s breathing hard by the end of his little rant as if he’d run a full marathon, his face and his body hot with shame. He’s tense and ready to flee, wondering if Cas will be so uncomfortable he’ll want to leave right away or if he’ll ask Dean to pack his bags. Either way, this is going to end badly.

He dares to glance up at Cas, wanting to search his expression for clues, when he notices something is off.

Cas is smiling, wide and gummy. This is Dean’s favorite smile and it’s so rare; why is Cas smiling like that and why right now?

Still holding the fucking tomato sauce, Cas takes two careful steps toward Dean, close enough to touch.

“This bruise is from when I walked into the table last night but, yes, I like you, too.”

The little gears in Dean’s brain refuse to turn and process this information. “Huh?”

“I want the same things you do, Dean,” Cas says. He takes another step forward, his smile becoming a bit shy. “I want all of you, too.” The way his eyelashes are fluttering gently makes Dean’s heart trip over itself. “I…sort of thought we were in a good place? I mean, I really didn’t want to push you into a relationship you didn’t want. I just thought we would talk about it eventually.” Cas laughs. “I guess we’re doing that now.”

Dean has yet to form any words. He’s feeling a bit shocked and off-kilter at the moment. He does, however, take a half step toward Cas and reach out to grab the hem of his shirt. He squints at Cas’s hip and thinks, yeah, that’s definitely a bruise and not the sexy kind. Huh.

“Dean?” He looks up at Cas, who’s biting his lip. “Say something?”

What could he possibly say at this moment? How could he respond to being offered everything he’s ever wanted in the form of his gorgeous roommate and best friend? He takes another step, bringing them chest to chest in their cramped kitchen. Then, he raises both hands in order to cup Cas’s cheek, to nudge his bitten lower lip with his thumb, and to push his fingers into that dark, messy hair.

“I’m the luckiest son of a gun alive,” he finally says, drawing Cas even closer. “Not sure what I did to deserve this, but I ain’t gonna question it.”

Cas rolls his eyes before he leans forward to kiss Dean’s jaw. “You’re pretty dense for an honors student, did you know that?”

“Dense and blind, apparently.”

“I’ll forgive you,” Cas says, taking Dean’s hands in his own and stepping back. “I’ll forgive you if you come back to bed with me right now and don’t get up for a while.”

“Oh, I’m thinking we’re both gonna get up.” Dean smirks, following Cas to his bedroom with bare feet and an open heart, too.

[nothingneverforever]

The Good Place (2016)

I chose to start watching this only because I was at a very low point in my life in terms of facing a dearth of TV-derived entertainment, having just finished Virgin River (2019) and Sweet Magnolias (2020). Both Virgin and Sweet are not what you'd call .. uh... productions of any real calibre or value or perhaps worth at all, like you can be certain that no niches were filled when they were realsed into the Netflix ether... But they also happen to be epic masterpieces by sheer fact of how banal and predictable and PG and saccharine and inconsequential they are, the best of the suburban vanilla Hallmark Movie genre, and basically they rock af ok?? and so when I finished both first seasons of the two series I was left empty and thirsty. And it was in this lostness that I turned to The Good Place, thinking it would be as enriching in it's simplicity, as palatable in it's shallow distraction, qualities I generally look for in the fodder to keep my eyes engaged on something that isn't the clock when I do my daily evening indoor cardio.

So maybe I should first set the stage by establishing that I simply fucking hated this series lol. I couldn't get past episode 12 (I know, this makes it sound like i already gave it way more time than it deserved, which is the truth) of the first season, because once I decided I'd had enough, it was really fucking enough and I couldn't give it one more second.

As always, here's my shoddily written premise of the series; I don't want to put much effort into capturing it's essence well because idgaf about this dumb show seriously fucking hate it lol but anyway: Eleanor (Kristen Bell) dies on earth, and goes to 'The Good Place', where all souls who were much more good than bad while living on earth go to upon their death, as opposed to The Bad Place, where the bad people go. There’s some mathematical calculation for this heaven and hell allocation basically. So the good place (i can't be bothered to capitalize it every time i type it anymore lol sorry), is run by a head architect who has designed and is in charge of the neighbourhood our characters live in, and he has a female robot assistant, Janet, who is the omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient right-hand lady who can also be called up by any good place resident who has any question for her, anytime. Anyway Eleanor, after dying on earth, was actually sent to the good place by accident, because she was actually a completely irredeemable asshole but due to some dumb boring never-happened-before error, she was sent to the good place instead of the bad place where she actually was meant to end up. Here she makes a small group of friends, some to whom she is eventually honest about the fact that she does not actually belong in the good place, and it is because of this incorrect placement that the good place is crumbling and its inner workings are going haywire etc and everyone suffers from the consequences. So blah blah blah soon we find out that it is not just her, but also some other guy who is here by mistake, and so blah blah blah etc yupp

So here are the things that suck about this show:

So there’s this other guy who also doesn't belong in the good place and who was also sent there by accident, his name is Jason okay but umm it's complicated because the person he was mistaken as (and the actual 'good person' who was intended to be sent to the good place while Jason was meant to be directed to the bad place) is named Jian Yu, a Taiwanese monk. Jason however is a Filipino-American from Florida and I guess his character is meant to be a stereotypical 'White trash' character, but it's meant to be funny or some shit so we aren't meant to be deeply affected by fact that his life was fucking sad, like how his small-town dreams were meant to be comedic relief for us to laugh at how pathetic he is when ... i dunno, I feel very uncomfortable making a joke out of real-life situations that umm aren't funny at all idk whatever... Oh also the weird (dumb/shitty/lame/thoughtless) thing about the show is how even once it is revealed that Jason is in fact his Jason-y, oblivious, infantile, one-dimensionally-tropey self, the characters who know the truth still continue to call him Jianyu throughout...? But like.... he's not Jianyu lol?

So anyway, Jason is characterised quite disturbingly to be honest as an extremely immature dudebro, to the extent that one could call him child-like. In his unhappiness at being stuck in this weird world where he can't be himself and has to pretend to be Jianyu most of the time (which involves being a complete ascetic as well as silent because the real Jianyu had apparently taken a lifelong oath of silence), Jason latches on to Janet the robot assistant. He says she is the only one who has been kind to him, etc etc etc, and begins ummmm, falling in love with her. But because he's painted as a literal baby with absolutely no rational or critical thinking skills, him falling in love with her is meant to be uhh earnest and sweet or at the very least inconsequential and jokey I guess? But like... this isn't funny...? Not when sex robots are a real thing and will probably lead to the abuse, violation, murder of millions of women in time to come because men will be so used to putting their penises into awfully, scarily 'life-like' dolls whose limbs have been programmed to move and who can even utter words of affirmation to their degenerate users that actual human females will no doubt bear the brunt of being expected to perform in life and in bed similarly to our robotic counterparts...? Yea so the good place disturbingly first makes us almost forced to feel some endearment toward Jason for finding a kindred "soul" in robot Janet, glad that he finally has "someone" to "talk to" (quotation marks cos once again she's a fucking robot), and it's all very "pure" and "wholesome" at first because again, he's portrayed as a fucking kid (one piece I read describes the character as "a sweet ding-dong human"). And then suddenly, about one or two episodes after they fall in love or whatever, Jason says:

You guys have fun. This is me and Janet's honeymoon, so we're gonna go try and figure out how to have sex.

Yeah umm so once again, in case any of you forgot, Janet's a fucking robot. If I use a scale of human consciousness out of 100 where a regular human's sense of self and awareness and independent thinking and authonomy and whatever else makes us human is at 100, Janet is probably at .... 10? at most? So yea.... i guess rape jokes are okay these days? I dunno? Literally how the fuck were there 3 entire seasons of this dumb show after this

Anyway when I attempted to put in *some* effort before I gave up, realising this show wasn't worth my precious weekend downtime, I googled Jason and Janet's relationship to see if there were any other similar voices of dissent but umm apparently, according to the headlines of articles, this is instead public opinion:

The Unlikely Romance of The Good Place’s Janet and Jason

Why Janet And Jason Are The Good Place's Ultimate Love Story, According To The Actors

How Janet and Jason broke the infinite love mold on The Good Place

From these disgusting articles, here are some choice quotes by the actors and crew involved themselves:

And the fact that this should not happen but it does makes it very special. We think that their relationship is really sweet. There's something very innocent and real about their love even though that is insane

Yeah, I always talk about this whenever I get the question, “How does Janet and Jason work?” And my response is always — and I’ve thought about this a lot — Jason is slowly becoming a little bit more aware and intelligent. He’s evolving a little bit, and through Jason, Janet is able to become more emotionally intelligent. She’s feeling these things, whether it be good or bad, through Jason because that’s what Jason is. He’s all these different emotions that he can’t tame, and Janet’s learning that. They’re kind of evolving.

Okay so perhaps I should clarify that Janet the robot goes through a couple of 'deaths' in which she comes back as a rebooted version, and supposedly more 'human' each time. So yeah I guess it's okay to have sex with robots if they actually become 0.0000001% more human-like each time they come back to life though!!!!! Sorry for overreacting guys!!!!!

Seriously though how the fuck are they even using the word 'romance' in good conscience to describe the 'relationship'

Actually as I'm writing this I'm reminded of this video by Pop Culture Detective on youtube, titled "Abduction as Romance". Jonathan the host/video creator goes through various movies through history and from contemporary cinema of this unbelievably damaging and disturbing trope, where women are shown to eventually fall in love with men who have essentially, in some way or another, abducted them, annyway here it is if anyone's interested 

I’m calling up this video because in the shows used as examples in Jonathan’s thesis, the female characters fall in love with the men just because the men happen to be the only choice they have. Okay I actually only managed to get through a quarter of the video because it was too disturbing and too awful to think about how frequently such plot points are used till today and how so much of the shitty love we see on screen is completely abusive in nature (he’s also made another video called Stalking for Love which I’m sure is as eye-opening, i haven’t watched it cos i don’t need to lol, i’m already woke thanks), but anyway the bit that I did manage to watch does remind me of this stupid love story from The Good Place that we’re supposed to be moved by. We’re seriously supposed to believe that Janet, through her reboots and whatever awakenings of consciousness she supposedly has, also has feelings for Jason just because he’s the only pathetic dumbass immature enough to think that he has feelings for her because she’s the only person who’s willing to listen and talk to him properly? When ummmm she’s only listening to you because she’s programmed to...?

Honestly I can't be bothered to talk about freaking Janet and Jason anymore

There are other things that suck about this dumb show

I don't know what kind of character development Eleanor (protagonist) goes through in the seasons that succeed that I shall never be audience to, but she remains unlikable in almost every way in season 1. This is even though the entire premise of the plot is that she learns to become a better person with each day, struggling to distance herself from her past (on earth) where she was every caricature of a selfish, cruel, demeaning, unlikable person ever. The few and short flashbacks we get to her earthly past are so annoyingly annoying that it made it almost impossible for me to continue to care for this charatcer her in her afterlife. I know, being in the profession that i am, i should have a great deal more empathy for her and where she's coming from (and i would if the show was not so fucking shitty), so i'm not hating on the fact that she was such a bad person, more so that the creators of the show did little to give us anything real to hold on to at all. Between boringly unreal dialogue, stilted acting typical of American sitcoms, overly defined character traits again typical of dated, unchallenging and unsophisticated American sitcoms, I honestly can't understand how on earth this is rated 97% on rotten tomatoes... I mean I guess if I actually read the reviews I'd understand but hehe I'm not about that open-minded, balanced POV narrative okie? :)

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Updates: Haha so ummm eventually I was too bored / curious so I decided to give this show like it’s fourth chance or something and eventually I ended up finishing the entire series and yes I cried as fuck and yes this series made me feel many feels and no I shall neither take back anything of what I said above nor clarify how or what made me change my opinion on it nor elaborate on why I ended up rather enjoying it :-) bye bye