#my very long winded answer to go with my very long winded long fic --lol kaz doesn't know how to keep things short and sweet but I tried !!

[akamikazae]

Sorry in advance for asking all these things 😭 but first up, your oc is cool! She’s so stylish as heck! She gives me that 80s funky/chill vibe and her hair is flawless! And I adore for bond with sasuke so much, Ahh. Would it be ok to ask about their lore together? How did they meet and bond together like mother and son? (And kakashi too! He’s papa).

Plus, I also appreciate all the Sasuke positivity so much. From your drawings to random posts. It’s so refreshing and uplifting for me. There’s to much negativity for the poor kid these days. And I greatly respect the “my son!” Feeling to for sasuke. I to get that parent vibe haha (sasuke is little guy no matter what, must squish respectfully).

And for atla, if your oc and characters you like. What benders would they be? And if they are besties with any of the Alta crew?

-

P.s; i do Like seeing the snake positivity! It’s wonderful seeing that. Poor things also get bad rap as well. (I like seeing hognoses, they are cute!! Myself I wish I had one and tarantulas😭) ANYWAYS, TY FOR POSITIVE CONTENT SO MUCH. Be well and have a great day/night! Sorry again for the long ask!

Never ever be sorry for sending an ask! I love love getting them and getting to chat w lovely pals like you! So thank you for popping over to send me an ask ❤︎₊ ⊹  You are always welcome to ask about my lil fam! I will try to keep it short and sweet lol ₊⊹ Ahhh thank you so much for saying so, Akami is very very dear to me! I’m glad u think she’s got a bit of a retro vibe. I always see her fitting in well w that 90s-ish style from the 80s to the 00’s ! (I actually have a 90's au for them too)

Shisui was one of Akami's first childhood friends and later her first lil love. She goes w Shisui to meet Sasuke when she’s 13yr, he’s only a few weeks old but the second she holds him and his chubby baby hand swipes her chin she falls in love. Bc of her relationship with Shisui Akami spends more and more time around Sasuke— he’d be tagging along after the big kids, but she always made time for him. Even if it was 20 extra minutes before a mission or after a long day of training, she’d hide her injuries and play with him instead. She’s one of many Anbu called to the scene the night of the Uchiha massacre. The second she found him all alone she knew she was taking him home and she quit Anbu that night.  Akami never felt heard or seen as a child so she tries her best to make sure that Sasuke has a voice. She didn’t intend to take on a parental role; it just happened over the years. She’s always open about his family and ready to listen when he confides in her, she teaches him every single uchiha jutsu she knows (and eventually kakashi does too) so Sasuke can still feel connected to his Clan. She gets him through his nightmares and defends him tooth and nail, she teaches him how to cook and use a sword. No matter what, he's always gonna be her baby and she’ll be his Kami-chan. There is nothing she wouldn’t do for him.  Akami and Kakashi knew each other as kids, they did not get along until their traumas sort of forced them to see eye to eye and rely on each other.  But it wasn’t a friendship until their early-mid teens, even then it always felt like more. Shortly after she takes in Sasuke they start a tumultuous FWB only to realize they very obviously love each other. Sasuke approves bc Kakashi makes Akami happy and is always there for her (for better or worse) and Kakashi and Sasuke start to have a very meaningful connection well before he becomes his sensei.  Yes parent squad ! Sasuke deserves the world and I love that you love him too!!<3 In ATLA Akami would be a water bender, she’s a descendant of the Yuki clan so it just seems fitting for her heritage! Tho I’d be wary of her healing abilities, she’s more of a fighter and I would not put it past her to learn how to blood bend! (She was Anbu Root for a reason💀)  Sasuke is fire bb! Kakashi I go back and forth on but I think he would be fire too .I love love love love ATLA and have tried to make an au for her but I find it hard to imagine Akami interacting w the gang (They all just feel so young lol- though she’d probably like Suki and Zuko best) I think that she would get along really well with Piandao! June, Jet and Iroh too. She’d def feel some sort of kinship for Azula (ruthless + manipulative never taught to love, w similar mommy and daddy issues!🤝lol) Yes Yes! I love snakes, they are so beautiful !! When I made my oc I really wanted to have her be ostracized because of her father and resemblance so it’s so fun to play w both the beauty and monstrous qualities for her. 🐍Akami and her summons Ryū are based off of mangrove pit vipers and Copper bellied water snakes ! Thank you again for the ask! I could blab about them all day if my super long winded response wasn’t proof lol 💕💕Take care my dear and have lovely day and or night :)

[dandylovesturtles]

I should be in bed lol but I wanted to write a turtle tot sick fic so here

I went into this with no plan and it ended up uh. way sadder than I intended. whoops.

cw: mentions of vomit

...

Blue slept through naptime. That should have been Splinter's first clue.

In the moment, he'd just been so happy to actually have four sleeping children that he'd taken the opportunity for his own nap, the old, tattered storybook he'd been reading them draped over his face. He never managed to get Blue to wind down enough to sleep, so he usually had to quietly entertain him with books or the tv on low until the others woke up. But his Baby Blue had conked out almost immediately today, and soon Splinter was snoozing right along with them.

Blue was also the last to wake up. That should have been the second clue.

Splinter was woken up by Orange, talking in loud, disjointed sentences with plenty of nonsense words as he played with an old plastic telephone Splinter had found them. Red was racing his toy cars, making his own sound effects as they skid across the floor and crashed into the wall. Only Purple was quiet, industriously sorting his legos by color and size.

Splinter sat up, letting the book slide off his face, and took stock. It was surprising to see Blue still curled up against his leg even in the midst of all the racket his brothers were making. "Blue?" he said softly, giving the little turtle a nudge. Blue blinked his eyes open, groggily looking around. "Naptime is over."

Blue pushed himself up into a sitting position, then rubbed clumsily at his eyes. He looked so tired still that Splinter debated telling him he could keep sleeping, even if it might make putting him to bed later more difficult.

But once Blue was up, he saw Red racing his cars and pushed quickly to his feet, hurrying over to join in the game. Almost immediately he was demanding Red hand over one of the cars and setting up an elaborate make-believe track for their race, so Splinter let it go.

Thirty minutes later, Blue tugged on Splinter's old sweatpants and said, "Daddy, my tummy hurts." In hindsight, this is exactly when Splinter should have put it together.

But the kids rarely got sick - a benefit of whatever Draxum had put in the gunk that turned them into this, Splinter assumed. Which was a blessing, because he was pretty limited in what medicine he could get in his condition. The boys having a hearty immune system was one of the few things Splinter had going for him.

So he hadn't moved to that conclusion. Instead he said, "Do you need to go potty?" and Blue had considered that very seriously for a few seconds before nodding and rushing off to the bathroom.

Orange threw the plastic phone into Purple's meticulously organized lego piles and Splinter moved on to the next crisis without another thought.

It was at dinner, when he caught Blue pushing his food (mac'n'cheese!) around without interest, that it finally clicked that maybe he should be worried.

"Blue, what's wrong?"

Blue didn't so much as look up. He shrugged, swirling his noodles around and around.

Splinter would be embarrassed to admit how long it took him to remember their earlier conversation, but it eventually came back to him. "Ah... Is your stomach still hurting?"

Blue's face scrunched up in misery, and he nodded.

Splinter groaned in exasperation. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"I did!"

"I mean after you went potty."

Blue grimaced. Instead of answering, he scooped up some mac'n'cheese and stuffed it in his mouth. He looked like he regretted it as soon as he'd done it.

"Do not spit that out," said Splinter immediately, because mac'n'cheese was one of the few things Purple would eat and if Blue spat it out in front of him it would go on his Bad Foods list for at least a month. And Orange had a habit of mimicking anything Blue did, which would only compound the problem.

Blue chewed and swallowed the mouthful agonizingly slowly. He looked so miserable afterward that Splinter felt bad about it.

"Are you going to throw up, Blue?" he asked, and got a furious head shake in response. "Are you just telling me that?" Another shake. "Do you want to keep eating?" A third shake. Splinter sighed and took his bowl from him. "Alright. I'll put this in the fridge, if you want it later."

Their mini-fridge was already stuffed full, but Splinter would simply have to make space, or throw all this mac'n'cheese out. He wished they had a bigger fridge, but just getting this back to the juncture in the sewers he called a home had been difficult enough.

He wished he had a bigger fridge. He wished he had a house. He wished he had a pediatrician to take Blue to. He wished he wasn't a rat man. He wished he and his kids were... normal.

It was a bad thought. He knew that as soon as he thought it, and he tried to push it down. The kids didn't need to know they weren't normal. That none of this was normal. He knew that, but...

"Throw up?" he heard Purple say, and then the telltale sound of him pushing his bowl away. Mac'n'cheese was on the Bad Foods list. Splinter groaned.

...

He found their old thermometer after the boys were finished eating. Getting a temperature from Blue was near impossible because he moved it around too much or spat it out before time was up, but Splinter would have to do his best.

After three tries, he got a reading that seemed accurate enough. Blue's body ran colder than a human child's, and it had taken observation and trial and error for Splinter to learn what constituted as a fever. As it was, Blue was only two degrees above his normal. So at least that wasn't too worrying.

He was still complaining that his stomach hurt, though. A stomach bug, then? Or just something he ate? Usually Red was the one who would put random things in his mouth unless Splinter kept a careful watch, but Blue and Orange were... adventurous eaters, too. It was possible.

They continued with their normal bedtime routine. Another thing Splinter had going for him was that his boys loved baths; getting them into their makeshift tub, even with lukewarm water, was always easy. From his research, Red, Blue, and Purple were all aquatic turtles, and Orange was not one to be left out of his brothers’ games no matter his biology.

Blue wasn't excited for bath time tonight, though. He sat quietly in the tub, making grumpy noises anytime he got splashed and playing only with his favorite blue shark toy, ignoring everything else. He definitely felt bad. Splinter was feeling increasingly terrible that he hadn't noticed.

He got them all toweled off and into their pajamas. Then into the pallet beds he had for them, all in one big shared alcove, a tattered curtain strung up for a semblance of privacy. They would need something more as they got older, but for now the boys seemed content to share space.

He tucked Red, Purple, and Orange in, then turned his attention to Blue. He had found an old bucket earlier that he (theoretically) used for mopping, and this he presented to Blue.

"If you are going to throw up, please do it in this," he told Blue. "We don't have any spare sheets."

"Not gonna," said Blue grumpily, pushing the bucket away.

"Ewww," whined Purple. "I don't want to share with Leo if he throws up."

"Not gonna!" Blue insisted, glaring at Purple, who glared back. Splinter sighed and pushed the bucket at Blue again.

"I am serious, Leonardo," he said, and that got Blue's attention. "If you throw up, do it in this bucket."

Instead of answering, Blue rolled over and scrunched himself up in a ball. That was the best Splinter was going to get, he supposed, so he just sighed and put the bucket next to Blue's bed.

"Good night, boys," he said as he got to his feet, ignoring the crackles from his back and knees.

"Good niiiight," came three echoes. Blue was giving him the silent treatment. Alright.

He went back to his own bed, sectioned off by an old divider screen he'd managed to find. Hopefully they could at least get through the night without disaster striking.

...

According to his beat up alarm clock, it was only two hours later when Red showed up by his bedside, shaking him awake urgently.

Splinter groaned his way into consciousness, blinking groggy eyes until his eldest son came into focus.

"Leo threw up," came Red's predictable report.

Splinter sighed, pushing his sheets aside and rising from his futon. "Did he make it in the bucket?"

Red's expression was not encouraging.

...

He had not made it in the bucket.

Blue sat stock still in the puddle of his own sick, eyes teary and expression a mix between stunned and embarrassed. Purple was pressed as close to the opposite wall as he could get, hands pressed tight over his nose and mouth. Orange was at Blue's side, patting his arm with his chubby little hand.

"Blue," Splinter snapped as soon as he saw the mess. "Why didn't you throw up in the bucket!?"

"Didn't think I was gonna," Blue croaked.

"Well, you did. All over your sheets." Splinter ran his hands over his tired eyes. "Now you have nothing for tonight. And who knows if I'll even be able to get the stain out. I may have to go all the way to the surface to get new ones, and do you know what a hassle that is!? The bucket was right here, Blue!"

"I'm sorry."

The miserable hiccup in Blue's voice effectively stopped Splinter's tirade, and he refocused on his son. Blue's tears had spilled over, streaking down his miserable face. He was shivering, hands clutching the fabric of his ruined sheets, wringing them tight. He looked terrified.

"I'm sorry, Daddy," he repeated. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

Something inside Splinter cracked.

Leo was only four, by his best guess. He was a baby, still. A sick baby, and Splinter was yelling at him about... about bed sheets?

Blue didn't know that Splinter would have to steal him new sheets. He didn't know that Splinter feared every time he did something so risky, that it might expose their tiny family to hostile forces - the human authorities, Big Mama's goons, Draxum's gargoyles. He didn't know that Splinter should be taking him to a doctor right now. He didn't know that sleeping on a pallet bed in the sewers wasn't normal.

He just knew that he had thrown up, and his dad was mad about it.

Immediately, Splinter stooped and scooped the still-apologizing Blue into his arms. He was getting bigger all the time, and, somehow, Splinter was getting smaller, but he could still hold his boys in his arms, still cradle them against his chest.

"Blue... Leo, listen to me."

"I'm sorry," Blue mumbled again, followed by a sad, wet hiccup.

"Shh, shh, no, my son, please listen." He waited until teary eyes were turned on him to continue. "You don't need to apologize. You did nothing wrong."

"Missed the bucket," said Blue, and Splinter shook his head.

"That's alright. You're sick. It is my job to take care of these things." He scratched at the back of Blue's shell with the arm holding him, something he knew always calmed Blue down. Sure enough, he felt his boy begin to relax. "Do not worry about the sheets. If Daddy needs to get more, he will. For now we will all share."

Blue sniffed, and buried his face in Splinter's chest. That was a good sign. Splinter kept up the scraching.

"I'm sorry I yelled. You aren't in trouble, Blue. You're alright."

Blue sniffled again. Hiccupped one last time. His tears were drying up, and his little voice said, "S'okay, Daddy."

"Oh, my Baby Blue... Thank you."

He still felt terrible as he lowered Leo back to his bed and started to strip away the soiled sheets, but Leo had calmed down considerably. He kept the bucket close, though, even as he laid back down again on his pillow.

"Leo can have my blanket," said Red, already pulling the old thing over. Splinter smiled gratefully at him.

"Thank you, Red. Blue, do you think you will throw up again?"

Blue shrugged. "Dunno."

"That's alright. It's okay if you do." Splinter smoothed the blanket over Blue, not tucking him in so he could move if he needed to. "I'll get this sheet washed out and be back, alright?"

Blue nodded. He was still gripping the bucket with one hand. Splinter rubbed his head, then stood up with his bundle of soiled sheets.

When he returned, with water for Blue, he'd thrown up again - in the bucket, this time. Orange was still by him, rubbing his arm, while Red sat behind him, supporting his back. Even Purple had come close, awkwardly patting at Blue's leg while pointedly avoiding looking at the bucket.

"Thank you for taking such good care of Blue," he told them, getting three beaming smiles in return.

They were all going to have the bug by tomorrow. Splinter would need to find more buckets.

[kordyceps]

OK I mean obviously I'm reading your steter stuff on AO3 but I'd love to know if you have an all time favourite? Either your fave of your own work, or fave of another author's that you rec/reread/still think about a million years later (or both lol)

Oh man, okay, sorry for taking so long to reply to this ask! But it's such a good one and I unfortunately have the memory of a gold fish, so I needed to do Research™ (aka reread all my favs again lmao) so I could answer it properly. 😂

I only have one Steter fic of my own atm, so I guess that's my de facto personal fav for now…

But as for other folks' work, god, there are sooooo many great Steter fics out there!! So these are just a handful of my top favs, and definitely not a comprehensive list!

Five Times Peter and Stiles Troll the Pack by taylorpotato Rating: M | 2.5k | requires an AO3 account to read Stiles and Peter yell at each other in Polish, misleading the pack into think they're fighting, when in reality it's all just like completely fuckin' filthy dirty talk lmao. Short, but very funny, and such a perfect capture of their mischievous dynamic. 10/10, would recommend!

The Devil You Know by Twisted_Mind Rating: E | 11.6k Peter is there for Stiles when no one else is, and uses that to slowly manipulate his way into earning Stiles' explicit trust. And ooooh boy, is it so delicious and spicy. God damn! Cards on the table: this fic definitely won't be for everyone since it wades into some darker waters. But oh my god do I love love LOVE Peter's characterization in it. God, I feel like I could write a whole damn essay about this fic, but then I'd just end up spoiling the whole thing LOL. Just--if you like darker, manipulative Peter and enjoy your sweetness just a wee bit twisted, then 10/10 would recommend!

The Prince and the Pease by luulapants Rating: E | 47k | requires an AO3 account to read Medieval/Royalty AU where Peter is forced to cede his claim to the throne and become a "guest" of King Deucalion's as part of a peace treaty between the two kingdoms. Stiles, who is suspiciously far too mouthy for your average servant, is gifted to Peter as a bedwarmer. This one does such an incredible, masterful job at translating the characters into its setting and time period. The sass, the wit, the wordplay! You can definitely tell the author knows their shit, and my god is it fantastic. The plot itself is also so satisfying -- lots of great ups and downs, and, ugh, just so good! (Be sure to read p2 for the full ending btw!) Needless to say, 10/10, would recommend!

Keeping him (It's all about intent) by sittinginmytincan Rating: M (& E for oneshot sequel) | 121k Stiles winds up slingshotted into his own future, where it turns out he's married to Peter Hale of all people. His only way back is with Lydia's help, but she's gone mysteriously missing somewhere on the east coast while investigating some strange disappearances. Man, this fic….. I feel like the writer for this one must have received a checklist of things I'm into and decided to mark nearly every single one of them lol. Time travel, woke up married, magical theory, an enthralling af plotline -- and it's so thorough. Like, everything is so incredibly well thought out, the characterization is on point, and the development of Stiles and Peter's relationship is just chef kiss. Definitely 10/10, would recommend!

The Striking Complication by aurevell Rating: T | 118k I don't even want to write a summary up for this one because the mystery of it all and peeling back what's happening piece by piece is, imo, the best way to experience it. This story is intense as fuck, near relentlessly oppressive, and impossible to put down. It keeps you constantly at the edge of your seat as you try to figure out what is going on and how Peter and Stiles will survive it, with these heart-wrenchingly sweet breather moments sprinkled throughout. If you enjoy time loop stories, this one is an absolute must read! 10/10, would recommend!

build-a-beau by veterization Rating: E | 41.5k Tired of his dad always worrying about him being single, Stiles decides to pay for a fake boyfriend service so he can finally get his pops off his back about it. It goes about as well as one can expect a fake texting boyfriend you accidentally catch real feelings for can go lmao. This fic is wonderfully witty, with really fantastic banter between the two of them, and it's just so very fun getting to watch the pretend part of their exchanges slip more and more into something genuine. 10/10, would recommend!

Under the Songbird's Wing by mia6363 Raing: E | 87k Stiles is captured and held in captivity alongside Peter, Deucalion, and Satomi Ito. To survive, Stiles runs through lacrosse drills and tells stories, eventually persuading his fellow cellmates out of their shells and establishing a profound, unbreakable bond between them. This one is HEAVY, folks. Like, heavy heavy. But, god, it's also such a beautiful exploration of the characters and the bonds they develop through shared captivity. I don't even know what more to say, really, it's just haunting and lovely and awful and wonderful all at once. In the mood for something that hurts? Then 10/10, would recommend!

[uncouth-the-fifth]

pythia, a supernatural rewrite. phantom traveler, p.3

read it on ao3.

words: 14k notes: hello!!! on the wings of an absolute ARMY of betas, here is a fresh new chapter for you!! since the last one was a little short i took the time to really flesh this one out. I'm a shy idiot who is SO bad at responding, but i see your comments and they mean the world to me. i literally have a folder on my computer full of the sweet words this fic has been given, and i think i've re-read the comments in that folder at least a million times over by now. ty so much for reading, and i hope you enjoy!! bloody mary is next! a very special thank you to my beta readers, bear, M, venice, feeb, and daff, who easily made this my best chapter yet. thank you specifically for keeping me coherent and sane lol <3

PITTSBURG, PENNSYLVANIA - Dec. 4th.

You don’t have to be psychic to know precisely what your mother is going to say when she answers the phone. She’ll pick up on the fourth ring with an occupied, scathing drawl and say, Look who finally has cell service.

Alright. So you’re not the best, most communicative daughter in the world. You call when you can, you honestly do, but there’s not exactly loads of emotional bandwidth to spare on the road. Peeling off all the layers of case anxiety and Winchester grief takes a while, dammit!

Maybe you’d feel less guilty if you vented to Sam or Dean, but it’s kind of lousy to bitch about Mom-stuff to, uh. Yeah. The boys. You could use a simple, uncomplicated statement like, talking to my Mom reminds me of how much of a disappointment I must be to her, and Dean would hear matricide instead. Sam’s blank, uncomprehending look wouldn’t be much better. Looks like you’re alone on this one.

When there’s a natural break in the day’s long research-fest the three of you are riding, you slip away, pace beside the Impala for a while, then finally bite the bullet and call her. Cars whisk through the slurry of snow on the road. Your phone charms rattle in the icy breeze. One ring, two rings… She knew you were going to call, she could sense it, but of course she has to torture you… three rings, four.

“I didn’t know cell service was so hard to come by in Pittsburg,” Beth greets you, sounding preoccupied. Damn, do you know her well or what?

“Hey, Mom,” you sigh. The wind is loud, so you pull your phone further down your face and try to come up with an excuse that is even halfway reasonable. “Sorry I haven’t called. It’s been ages since I’ve been around the boys, and I guess I get a little caught up with them sometimes.”

This is objectively true. She used to have a rule about you getting your homework done before they came over, purely because you forgot about everything and anything else the second Sam and Dean entered the house.

“Forget those losers. You’re my baby, I love you most,” Beth gushes, and you understand that this is her way of saying that you’re forgiven. Both of you have fallen victim to the Winchester spell before, so she can’t exactly blame you.

You’re a little embarrassed by her mushiness, but a relieved, bubbly laugh jumps out of you. “Alright, consider them forgotten. Now… I know I don’t deserve it, but I’m gonna ask you a question, and I need you not to freak out or overthink it, kay?”

Beth snorts. “You mean my two jobs as a mother? Go ahead, shoot.”

This is not the kind of question that you just “shoot,” though. It takes you a moment to string together how you’re going to ask this, and of course, you’re nothing but graceful and delicate about it. “...What do you know about demons?”

Your mother doesn’t say anything for a long, yawning second. Still, you can sense her rising swarm of questions and outrage all the way from Pennsylvania, and you try to stop her onslaught before it starts. “Hey! No questions! Just answers. I promise I would tell you if this was outrageously dangerous.”

“Then you’ve already broken your promise,” Beth utters, slipping into her Sage Grandmaster Psychic voice. Just hearing it makes you deflate. She predicts, “...Let me guess. You’ve felt nauseous. Suffocated. Hungry, but everything you eat comes right back up again.”

You toe a chunk of ice on the asphalt with your boot, grumbling, “...Yeah.”

“Then you’re lucky,” she reveals, her words still ringing with the same crystal ball clarity from your childhood. “That means you haven’t come into direct contact with it yet. I’d hope you never would, but… you are your father’s daughter…”

You know your mom. You know that’s just her way of warning you about the kind of danger you’re in, here, but all the comment does is bolster your resolve. Damn right. You are his motherfuckin’ daughter.

“Tell me,” you push.

Beth sighs through her nose. There’s a squeak on the other line, and you can imagine her at home, dropping heavily into the massive, millennia-old armchair she always took her readings in.

“Demons… well, I won’t explain to you what you can already guess. They’re unlike most legends we know of, because everything that’s written about them is utterly true. Most spirits that walk the natural earth are here to feed—vampires, werewolves—or to take care of unfinished business. But demons… they come to earth to steal, kill, and destroy.”

Welp. Your mother is truly a pillar of optimism. You’d been hoping she’d say something along the lines of, don’t worry, sweetheart, they’re just really messed up ghosts. Instead of, y’know. The most evil creatures man encountered in the bible. Bible, capital B. An uncomfortable, existential shiver rolls down your spine. Now this was something you could bitch to Dean and Sam about.

You’d grown up surrounded by the idea of demons. Even before you’d fully understood that monsters were real, sometimes you’d slip into your mother’s reading parlor while she was gone and play a game with the strange, segmented star pattern on the giant worn-smooth carpet. Don’t hop on any of the lines! Only step in the points of the star! Or, jump from sigil to sigil!

The one time you’d gotten carried away and played for too long, your mother had appeared through the beaded curtain with a stiff frown on her face. Don’t play on the devil’s trap. It’s not a toy.

There was the fraying devil’s trap in your mother’s parlor room, which was one of the hundreds of sigils burned into your mind at a young age. You’d shaken hands with demon hunters before. Most of the rituals your family practiced were in Latin; and the list went on and on into oblivion. You’d always known demons existed, but as you pace the parking lot and take in what Beth is telling you, the ramifications start to stack. Demons. Actual, literal demons. The thing that took down flight 2485—the suffocating, unimaginable presence from your vision—was a real-life demon. When you’d stood in the skeletal remains of the plane and reached out with your Gift, you’d been sensing the lingering presence of a fucking creation of Lucifer. What the actual fuck.

In a strange, backward way, you’re kind of relieved. Anyone would be fainting all over the place in the presence of an actual, real-life demon. Especially somebody like you, with all their senses turned up to 100. It makes sense that you were having such intense reactions before.

What the fucking fuck. You’re suddenly grateful to be on the phone with your mom.

You wandered toward the Impala, (checked first that you weren’t wearing the kind of jeans with the little studs that would scrape the paint), then leaned against it. “...Um. Okay. That’s just… awesome… How do they get… up here, then?”

“I’m not sure,” your mother hums, thinking. “Your great-great-aunt Miriam wrote in her records that they find their way top-side on their own. Bugs through cracks, that sort of thing. Apparently, there used to be a whole lot more of em’—in Miriam’s day it was a Proctor’s job to shove them back where they belonged, but… I dunno.” Beth helpfully jokes, “Maybe we got most of them.”

You huff out a laugh, but it’s not the most sincere. “Maybe we did,” you cough. “But, um, do we have any Proctor family secrets that could help me out here? Did great-great-aunt Miriam have a trunk somewhere full of demon-killing grenades or something?”

Beth smirks. “Great-great-aunt Miriam turned the house into a brothel and carved terrifying sigils in all the ceilings. That’s all we got from her.”

Of course. How could you possibly forget? “Oh, huh. I was wondering why we have old chains and whips in the basement. That fills in a lot more for me, thank you.”

Your mom barks out a laugh at your joke, which gets you laughing too. The sound trails off. There’s that funny pause where you both remember what you just said, then start giggling all over again—and man, does it feel good to just have a moment with your mom. The boys both have an unforgiving radar for “bonding,” and the second they realize that you love them and they’re your friends, they creep right back into their shells. Neither of them were very good at absorbing that sort of thing.

Your mom is just as skilled at spoiling the moment.

“But, seriously…” She stresses. “Please be careful. Avoid contact with these things at all costs, especially with your Gift. It’s made to find the truth, and demons are made of lies. Not a good mix. They’ll rip into your mind… take you apart if they have to. This is a lot more hands-on than you should ever be with your Gift, ____.”

“...Right,” you say through your teeth.

This is the part where you start awkwardly shoving in a goodbye without coming across as an asshole. You open your mouth, about to say something stiff and unsure, when you sense a spike of alarm ripple out from where the boys are still researching in your motel room.

Phone call forgotten, you jolt off the Impala and whip towards the door. Not a second later, Dean’s slipping out onto the stoop and sweeping the parking lot with a calm, guarded stare. He doesn’t look at you—just gestures you inside, holding the door open. Even from the parking lot, you can make out the insane amount of notes and papers Sam has coated your motel room with.

“Jerry just called,” Dean utters. “The surviving pilot from 2485? Chuck Lambert? …He just went down in a plane crash.”

You snap your phone shut and follow him inside.

-

The three of you head to the site of the next crash as fast as you can. But first, you have the pleasure of watching the boys play Winchester Telepathy when you insist on coming along. They’re still worried. You would be too, in their position. (In fact, if the roles were reversed, you’d probably chain Sam to a radiator and call it a day.) But Chuck went down in a twin plane, not a massive, two-hundred-person graveyard, so your Gift should have the legs to handle it.

…And knowing what you’re dealing with has steeled your confidence. You weren’t slashing at the dark anymore, even if what was in the dark was, um. Proof that hell exists. After days of being totally screwed over by this thing, you finally had even the slightest leg up on what was going on. You were going to take that win and run with it.

Chuck’s twin plane was hardly a twin anymore; both the engines had been shredded, the white body of the cockpit twisted like a wrung-out washcloth. The plane had dove so hard into the farmland that the snow around it had melted. You still kind of felt like tossing your lunch, but more out of sympathy than psychic backlash. People had been in that plane. The thought made you taste bile.

Sam and Dean only hover a little bit (a lot) while you open your Gift to the wreckage. You take your glove off with your teeth and touch your right hand to the ashen, snow-soaked remains of the pilot’s chair… and there it was again, the leeching, seeping, violating presence from the vision that’d brought all of you to Pittsburg. A demon.

Your Gift wrings out another scraggly, disconnected vision for you. Chuck was beyond anxious to get back in the saddle after 2485. The co-pilot, Lou, had pep-talked him like any good friend would, reassuring him that the flight would go smoothly. After that, everything—gassing up the engine, takeoff, and the brutal, horrific crash—was blotted with poison ink. Every time you tried to steer towards Chuck with your senses, it was as if the strip of film playing your vision had been burned away. His face had been scratched out of every frame. He had become something else; something terribly familiar.

The research Sam had compiled began to link with what you’re seeing. You could feel, even through the leftover wisp of the demon’s presence on the plane, that it had done this many times before.

You jolted to your feet, scrubbing the palm with the eye tattoo off on your slacks. Dean and Sam reeled back, since they’d both been looming an inch behind you as you worked.

“What’s the verdict, doc?” Dean said, bracing himself.

You turn from the wreckage and bee-line straight for the road, eager to avoid a repeat of last time. The boys follow your lead. They fall into step on either side of you, and for once you feel like the specialist Sam always said you were, complete with stern-faced bodyguards.

“Full-on Pazuzu, just like last time,” you confirm, cursing. You shove your glove back on and stomp through the snow. “I-I get it now. God, it feels so fucking obvious. It’s—it’s playing. It finds these disasters, or it makes them, and then it picks off all the survivors one by one. Chuck Lambert, George Phelps. It possessed them. Like some sort of twisted cosmic-order thing.”

Sam pulls a face. “Final Destination style?”

“Minus the hot girls and the tanning beds, apparently,” Dean pouts.

“It’s trying to finish them off, boys,” you say, swallowing hard. “That’s something we can work with. If it’s only using disasters to do the job, then…”

“...then we need to see if any of the survivors are flying soon,” Sam realizes, finishing your thought.

The second the Impala’s on the road again, Sam is fishing out the passenger manifests from the first flight and chasing down any phone numbers he can find. There is a part of every hunt where your run is forced to become a sprint, and this is that turn-over moment, tensions ramping high. What once was seven people is now five.

As Dean hauls ass back to Pittsburg, you and Sam get to calling. You thank the Mother Goddess above for shitty, awful customer service, because posing as some lousy Delta Airlines representative has Dennis Holloway sitting in seat 21A and Kathleen Willard (seat 25E) swearing off flying for good. Sam uses a similar tactic on Blaine Sanderson (seat 14D). The two of you take the safe bet that the parents of Ava Struder (seat 1C), an unaccompanied minor, aren’t fucking idiots dumping their kid on another flight the second she survives one. That leaves you with Amanda Walker. A flight attendant on 2485… because of course, this job can never be easy.

Sam tries her phone. While it rings, you cross your fingers and hope that she has quit her job and started a new life as a dedicated couch potato. Sam’s forced to leave a message. He snaps his flip phone shut with a curse and throws it into the footwell, where it clatters against his boots.

You curl a cold hand around Sam’s shoulder, soothing, “Gimme the list, baby. I’ll try her emergency contact, at least find out where she is.”

Sam sulkily passes it to you, never once shifting under your hand. You do get a small, grateful look from him over his shoulder, and the urgency and anxiety there makes your gut twist. It would be more than easy to comfort him, to stroke your fingers through his hair, to rub his collar and tell him everything’s going to be fine.

But you’re a shit liar, so you open up your phone and make the next call. Sam’s lingering gaze ducks back down into his lap.

-

Of course, your luck continues to flourish. Amanda doesn’t answer her phone. But her sister does, and she informs you that Amanda, being a flight attendant, is in fucking Indianapolis for a flight. Indianapolis. As in, a good five-hour drive from Philly—and in the complete opposite direction of where you were going. Dean barely waits until the road is wide enough to turn the Impala around. The u-ey he hits sends you, and all your stuff, careening from the right end of the bench all the way to the left.

The drive is not fast. Staring ahead and silently revving yourself up can only waste so much time, so you pull out the mini sewing kit from under the seat and do your best to patch a rip in Dean’s jeans, struggling to thread the needle even more than usual. You feel a bit like a bad hunter distracting yourself from what’s ahead, but just one of you stuffing the car with anxious brooding is enough. Sam passes back a sudoku booklet for you and then goes straight back to his thousand-yard stare.

He used to be excellent when things came down to the wire like this. After years spent in empty motel rooms, counting pennies and waiting for John and Dean to come home, Sam’s patience was unimaginable. But losing Jess… had tilted his axis. These last few hunts, you’ve noticed how crazed he gets on the last couple steps to the finish line—when none of you are sure if there’ll be anybody to save. It happens. But you’re scared of what another round of it could do to Sam, even with a stranger like Amanda; he cared so much…

Dean isn’t happy, either, but he at least has something to do. He alternates between playing brain-melting Metallica or forgetting to reload the tape, so the drive is a strange mix of music you can feel in your eardrums and silence that’s just as loud. The first piece of levity you get is thirty straight minutes of Dean over-explaining the album to you. And, thank god you ask, because Dean rattling on about the “bass and drums feeding off each other” and the “musical integrity of a locked-in rhythms section” bring Sam out of his trance. He pries his eyes away from the rolling fields of snow, scrunches up his face, and sighs, “Can we at least listen to ‘...And Justice for All?’”

You’re an excellent tactician, so you use this opening to nudge them both toward the most surefire argument starter in the Winchester handbook: What’s the best album of all time? It would’ve been harder to lure flies into honey. Dean argues more with himself than he argues with the two of you, dancing indecisively between Zeppelin II, Dark Side of the Moon, and at least twenty other albums that you are vaguely aware exist. Sam outlines that there is a difference between someone’s favorite album (Californication in Sam’s case) and the best album objectively by sales (Thriller).

All three of you play into the argument more than usual. Guess you’re not the only one desperate to think about something other than the two hundred other people who might die tonight. By the time there’s enough of a break in the conversation for you to throw your hat into the distraction-ring, you’re thirty minutes from the Indianapolis International Airport.

“Both of you are wrong,” you decide. “There’s only one reasonable answer to that question, and it’s Rumours.”

Dean audibly grumbles, and when the Impala jams to a stop in front of a red light, he dramatically points at you in the rear-view mirrors and declares: “You are obligated by hippie, witchy-girl bullshit to love that album, Proctor. And it’s good, but it’s not the best. It’s mostly…” he flashes you a mean, big-brother smile, “girly music.”

You know you’re right, so his comment rolls right over you. Cooly, you remind him, “Nuh-uh. Sam loves Fleetwood Mac, too.”

You’d figured that was a good counter-point, since Sam was hardly girly. The hand he was using to keep his notepad on his knee was all kinds of veiny and calloused, and on top of being taller than Dean, he was a lot more comfortable with his masculinity. He didn’t have mile-long lashes or glazed donut cheekbones, either.

Sam hums in agreement, like you knew he would; the two of you listened to Go Your Own Way and The Chain endlessly before he left for school. Sometimes he’d even dance around the attic at home with you.

Dean side-eyes his brother, then barks out a hearty laugh. “Case in point.”

Sam elects to pretend he didn’t hear that, and instead turns around to talk straight to you: “I mean, the end of Silver Springs alone…”

…Maybe if Dean listened to more “girly music,” he’d have more women melting over him the way you melt when Sam says that. Even though you’ve gotten used to having him in front of you again, there are moments like these where you’re stunned by how similar the two of you still are. Dreams would play in your attic and Sam would already be offering you his hands, gangly and shy and bright red for you and only you…

You listened to Silver Springs a lot after Sam started dating Jessica.

INDIANAPOLIS INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT - Dec. 4th, night.

All three of you must’ve been hyper-planning what to do the second the Impala parked, because you fan out as soon as Dean jams the break.

Sam uncaps the travel-sized hand sanitizer from your purse and empties it out onto the pavement. You’re a little sad to say goodbye to pumpkin cupcake, but then he starts pouring as much holy water as he can into the teeny bottle, and you’re reminded how clever he is. When Dean gives him a weird look, Sam explains, “3.4 ounces or less per liquid item, dude.”

“Shit,” Dean curses. Right. Travel size restrictions. That cuts your only physical weapon against the demon in half—or into a fucking fifth, I guess. But it’s something. “At least he’ll fuckin’ smell good when we send him to hell. Great.”

You give Sam the marshmallow pumpkin latte sanitizer, too. You’re going to look painfully suspicious walking into an airport with nothing but hand sanitizer and an occult journal, but there’s nothing you can do. There’s no time to check bags or trudge through security lines. Hopefully you won’t have to board, but knowing your luck…

You’re about to go peeling out of the parking lot at top speed, when you turn your boot and feel the warm piece of metal pressed against your ankle. Shit. “God, this is stupid,” you curse, and drop onto a knee. You lose the pocket knife in your boot, then dig around for the loose rock salt shells rolling around in your pockets. There’s a visible pout on your face when you abandon your iron knuckles. Anything that’d be caught by security or picked up on a metal detector goes straight into the trunk.

When you pull your butterfly knife out of your bra, Sam is suddenly very interested in the color of the sky.

The boys follow suit. By the time you’re through the doors and among the harried, criss-crossing crowd of travelers, you’ve lost ten pounds in weapons each. Dean grumbles the whole way about feeling naked. Everything in the airport is overstimulating, even at this time of night. The long, endless squares of glass looking out over the runway reflect the too-bright lights in big glossy spots, and the air is flooded with a constant stream of intercom updates and civilian chatter. You duck and weave all the way to the departure schedule, which is just the right font size to make you anxious.

Sam scans the chart. “They’re boarding in thirty minutes.”

Shit. You wrack your mind for something that could coax Amanda off her flight. But the gears in your head are suddenly muddy, and Dean’s faster than you, anyway. His eyes dart around the floor of the airport. “Okay… we still got some cards to play. We need to find a phone.”

Sam and Dean dart off like twin bomb-sniffing dogs. You move to follow them, but something tethers you in place. The buzzing, bustling commotion in the air pitches up, and then your ears are ringing, and your whole body is stinging with the ugly leeching feelings from before. The demon. It’s close.

You blindly walk in the direction your internal Winchester compass gives you, and just when Dean’s about to take a courtesy phone off its hook, your body extracts the phone from his hand on autopilot. For a brief flickering moment, you’re not yourself. Your powers talk through you.

Your Gift foresees, “That won’t work. Your only option is to board the plane.”

The boys exchange an unsettled look. For a second you’re confused why they’re giving you their Freaked Out faces, then you feel the hollow plastic of the phone in your hand, and you realize you’re a whole twenty feet from where you started. Man… you hate the whole psychic-possession thing. Just for fun, your Gift loves to take over and course-correct you when it thinks you’re being stupid. You drop the phone back on its hook with a heavy click. It takes Dean a second to answer, and he’s still giving you that look. After a long pause, he knocks up his chin and not-so-happily mutters, “...Uh, okay.”

Sam, at least, has learned to roll with your weird psychic bullshit. His voice is soft with conviction. “Fine. Plan B, then. We gotta get on that plane.”

You run your palms down your face, then steel yourself. There’s no other way, and no time to second-guess. Even your Gift has decided it’s your best plan. “Okay. Fuck it.”

The usual authority in Dean’s voice hikes up with a note of panic. “Uh, woah. Let’s just hold on a second–”

“Dean,” you wince, and your hands drop heavily at your sides. “We gotta. I’m sorry.”

Sam, per usual, reads Dean’s hesitance as something else. “That plane is leaving with over a hundred passengers on board. And if we’re right, it’s gonna crash. We have to–”

You watch as they have their usual back and forth; Sam, eager to throw himself at this, and Dean gnawing on the inside of his cheek. It’s easy for you to sense the steam of real, nail-biting terror radiating off your best friend. You feel Dean’s fear all the time–and even then it’s hard for you to picture him being afraid of much of anything, much less planes. It’s even harder for Sam to look past his little brother glasses.

“...Flying?” Sam puts it together. His voice is understanding, but super confused. “You’re joking, right?”

“Do I look like I’m joking?” Dean flails. He fists his hands as he talks, swaying back and forth to try and work up the nerve. He glances at you, the only other witness to his weakness, just once. “Why do you think I fuckin’ drive everywhere, Sam?”

Sam is genuinely stunned. Slapped-in-the-face stunned. But he takes it in stride, and, also glancing at you only once, he blurts out: “Alright. Uh, I’ll go.”

The anticipation of boarding the flight is making your skin prickle with anxiety, and you can’t help but inch back toward the ticket counter as they talk. But when Sam says this, without question or complaint, you’re instantly stepping up to his side and demanding, “Then I’m going with you.”

You brace yourself to shut down the argument you know is coming, but this Sam continues to be different from the guy you knew four years ago. This answer is just as easy for him, too. “Okay.”

Not, you’re staying here, or even, I won’t let you risk yourself like this. Just a plain and simple, okay. It bugs you. You don’t even have time to dwell on it, though, because Sam’s blatant courage tugs Dean over his fear.

“Man…” Dean utters, face twisted with nervousness. He gives in with a helpless scrunch of his shoulders, and taking that as permission, Sam twists around to buy your tickets not two seconds later.

You both watch him rush off, neither of you over the moon about this situation. Dean’s so anxious that his hands are clammy, and you can tell because he clutches at the sleeve of your jacket like a little kid. He knocks his forehead down on your shoulder with a groan, and your palm automatically loops around to give his back a soothing rub.

“This is fucking… awesome,” Dean gripes. “No guns. Can’t even bring a damn bottle of holy water. Is there some kind of psychic Xanax you can give me?”

Maybe some of your Gift drains into your voice when you promise, “We won’t have to worry about that. Everything’s going to be okay.”

Dean doesn’t make his Freaked Out face this time. He does, however, bump his forehead against your shoulder again, and sink into your touch with a rough sigh.

FLIGHT 424 - Dec. 4th.

You’d felt bad for Dean the whole time he’d struggled to get on the plane. Now, you kind of felt like choking him with your bare hands.

So many people crammed into one space was enough to flatten your Gift with the weight. Adding Dean to the mix, shoved shoulder-to-shoulder against you with his jitters ramped up to eleven, made you feel like picking your brain out with a fork. Your Gift ping-ponged between Dean and Sam, making you bounce between chattering your teeth with fear and thinking things like, wow, I just love the Dewey decimal system.

Maybe it was a good thing. You’d much rather be in one of their heads than yours.

All day, you’d done a pretty good job not obsessing over the things your mom had said over the phone. It was hard with so much time to marinate in the car, but the massive weight of the existence of demons only slammed on top of you once or twice. Boarding had managed to keep you occupied, but then the colossal body of the plane had shuddered and heaved its weight off the tarmac, leaving all chances for escape behind on the ground.

A part of you was resigned to it; it is a simple fact of your life that evil things are real. So what’s one more, right? But at the same time, you thought about the cross Sam wore under his shirt… you thought about being one of those things, being “made of lies,” like Mom had said. That, too, had been gnawing at you—what had she seen to learn all that? How did she know that a demon would “tear into your mind?��� The Vague Psychic Thing is fun, until you’re on the receiving end.

“Can you sense who it’s possessing?” Sam’s smooth, calculating voice interrupted your thoughts.

…Oh, right. You’d gotten so swept up in your own head, no doubt influenced by Dean’s incessant foot-tapping, that you’d totally forgotten to scan the plane. Tilting away from Dean and his panic, you subconsciously shifted toward eerily calm, level-headed Sam. Just catching a wisp of the clean cologne he wears cools you down a little bit. Okay. No more freaking out—it’s game time.

You’d hoped that the white noise of the flight would settle your nerves, but the air tasted painfully sterile, dry, and cottony against the back of your throat. Everything felt like cold metal touching an open nerve. If the demon’s influence wasn’t making your powers touchy, then the woman across the aisle definitely was, oozing with homesickness as she watched Indianapolis shrink far below—or maybe it was the guy two rows back, replaying an argument again and again in his head—or maybe the other two hundred fucking people stuffing the plane with their boredom and their tiredness.

You push your knee into Sam’s. He pushes back.

After a tense beat, you whisper to him over the chatter of passengers, “Too many people. There’s no way I can narrow it down to one person—not unless they’re right in front of me.” Sam’s gaze turns expectantly to Dean, who’s still in full-on dissociation mode. He’d spent the whole boarding process humming tracks from St. Anger, and you knew he was really going through it, purely because he’d stopped and restarted Some Kind of Monster three different times now. Poor guy.

One of the things that made the three of you such a natural team was your ability to rotate leadership. In moments like these, with Dean way too wigged out to take charge, you’d usually step into his shoes without much trouble. But Sam has fielded your fainting spells and panic attacks all week, so he’s already got a pep-talk prepared for the two of you.

“...Okay.” Sam checks his watch. His voice still has that touch of classic Sam softness, probably because he knows how hard this is going to sound: “Stay focused. We got thirty-two minutes and counting to track this thing down, figure out who it’s possessing, and perform a full-on exorcism.” You’re about to make a comment about how blissfully easy he makes things seem, but Dean beats you to it. He snipes, “Yeah, on a crowded plane. That’s gonna be easy.”

You snap one of your bracelets against your wrist a few times, thinking. “Who would it want to possess?”

This gets Dean’s head in the game. Easily, he recites: “It’s usually somebody with some sort’a weakness, y’know, a chink in the armor that the demon can worm through. Somebody with an addiction or emotional distress.”

As he explains this, you unlatch Dean’s claws from their death-grip on your arm and give the top of his hand a little soothing pat. Your gaze remains fixed on the pattern of the seat in front of you. “For a regular demon, maybe. This thing might not even need a chink. It wants maximum damage here—so maybe it’d go for the pilot?”

This is not a soothing thought. Checking his watch again, Sam suggests, “Or Amanda… Surviving a crash like that? I’d be pretty messed up if I was her. We should check both.”

You’re happy to spend the little time you have left wisely, so you’re quick to push out of your seat and get moving. Dean puts on a brave face and follows your lead. There are only two ends of the plane to check—this thing can’t hide forever. Just when you start to do an awkward side-shuffle to nudge Dean out into the aisle with your hip, the whole plane thrashes top to bottom, and there he goes, dropping like a rock back into his seat. His spike of panic is so genuine that you end up dropping with him.

“Come on!” Dean hisses through his teeth. “That can’t be normal!”

You and Sam immediately get to shushing and soothing him, and suddenly you understand how married couples feel when their kid starts crying on a flight. Shifty eyes in other seats pretend they’re not glaring at you. Summoning as much strength as you can to share with him, you drop a hand on Dean’s shoulder and order: “Breathe, dude. You’re okay.”

“I’m not fuckin’ four,” Dean whisper-shouts, sulking flat back into his seat.

“She’s right,” Sam whispers back. Should it be worrying you how much he’s been agreeing with you lately? Stern, he says, “Listen—if you’re panicked, you’re wide open to possession. So you need to calm yourself down. Right now.”

A weird part of you is grateful that Dean is having a rough go of it, because it’s giving you something to focus on. You’re usually pretty good with planes. But for a minute there, when the turbulence had hit, your mind had defaulted to oh shit, this is real, we’re all going to die. A slideshow of the last crash had blitzed through your thoughts. Thoughts that had nothing to do with the anxiety you were picking up from Dean.

You know you despise it when Dean uses his Parent Voice on you, so you try not to use it on him when you urge, “C’mon. I think Amanda’s in the back of the plane. I’ll check up front.”

Dean gives an unconvinced, “I’ll go talk to her,” then makes grabby hands at Sam’s pockets, “pass me one of the hand-sanitizers. Fuckin’ uh, pumpkin latte—don’t gimme that face, _____, not all of us can tell with just a look. What if it’s in her?”

“It’s a bit more than a look—” you begin to clarify, but Sam stops your back and forth with a shake of his head. He pulls out the little orange plastic container of your pumpkin cupcake holy water and passes it to Dean.

“We should try to conserve what we got,” he warns, passing you the only other weapon against the demon (marshmallow pumpkin latte). “Go more subtle—if she’s possessed, she’ll flinch at the name of god.”

Now that you’re running out of both time and options, the second Dean unbuckles his seatbelt and steps out into the aisle on coltish legs, you take the opening and bolt out of your cramped middle seat. Anything you can do to get closer to finding this thing will make you feel loads better.

You start down the aisle. As the chatter of the boys fades into the all-encompassing thrum of the plane behind you, you take slow unhurried steps past each row of seats, soaking up what you can get. A girl listens to music in her headphones. A businessman clicks away at his laptop. Each of them you comb over with your powers, and each pass feels like scooping your hand into a bowl of tacks and waiting to get stabbed.

They’ll rip into your mind… take you apart if they have to, Mom had said. You waited for that moment, steeling your nerves the closer you came to the cockpit. If the demon’s on this side of the plane, and it sensed you, would it immediately press into your mind? Would just being near you snap its presence to you like a magnet? You didn’t like the mental feeling that gave you; the stark secret-seeking white of your Gift clashing with the black choking smoke that’d been chasing you all week. When you spoke to a spirit through your Gift, it felt like you were touching fingertips through a curtain. Would it be like that? Would this demon press its claws through the veil and dig around for something to tear, to grab?

The other flight attendant on board pushes past you with her cart, leaving no barrier between you and the cockpit. Behind you, bobbing in a sea of blurry people, your Gift could distinctly make out Sam (practicing the exorcism) and Dean (talking to Amanda). You’re just a few paces from the front exit of the plane when a man emerges from the bathroom cabin, and—

He twists to meet eyes with you. Expecting you.

You’re flashed a clever, haunting smile, then—a set of glossy void-black eyes.

You wait for it. And in its own way, the presence of the demon does overpower you, bringing the heavy-as-the-sky, parasitic feeling from your visions into the real world. For a long ringing moment, you are blasted with dark leeching power hot enough to singe the entire front of your body—like a nuclear bomb had dropped down just a few steps from you. It is spidery and vicious and knowing and awful—

…but the conquering sensation never comes. Beth had said that it would root into your mind, that just feeling it with your Gift, as you are right now, would tear you to pieces. Yet all that really happens is you staring at it and it staring at you, before it shoulders its way through the cockpit door and disappears inside. The only thing you really experience is the shock of seeing it in somebody, puppeting around a person with dreams and thoughts and memories.

For a few moments, you suck down heaving breaths through your nose and stare at the closed door.

Something about it nagged at you. Besides the obvious—how different it felt compared to what your mother had described—you swear you felt something else, some ringing sense of strangeness that you just couldn’t put your finger on. Maybe it was the fact that you’d just made eye contact with a real creature of hell, an evil spirit, whatever. But you made eye contact with evil spirits all the time. This was… closer to home than that. Underneath the writhing mass of bloody, black ink that made up the demon, your Gift had recognized something unimaginably familiar.

Sensing the demon in person had reminded you of… of a sensory memory, almost. It smelled like… warm static. The old staticy TV in your house, the ancient one that sat square and unattractively on your Mom’s slanting sideboard in the living room. You remembered her crystal ashtray propped up on the top, the fizzy sound the TV made when you’d shut it off…

On the nights when it was just you and Sam home, and the house felt so big and empty that the silence throbbed in your ears, the two of you would set up a fort in front of that TV and watch old horror movies well past your bedtime. The silly effects and the dated acting were easy to tease together. You’d much rather watch movies on the newer screen in your Mom’s room, but for whatever reason, Sam insisted on the clunker in your living room.

Y’wanna know somethin’ cool? He’d asked you once, running a finger through the film of static bubbling on the surface of the glass. A little bit of the static in TVs is actually radiation leftover from the Big Bang. How weird is that? Something so old and powerful, picked up by this random piece of junk.

Sam always crashed first, leaving you alone with the white static the TV defaulted to when the movie ended. You could vividly remember how your shoulders bumped against the hard floor through the thin sleeping bag the two of you had shared—how Sam’s warmth had seeped into your shirt where he was curled up behind you, his soft sleepy breaths tickling your hair.

When you’d pulled his arm around your waist to snuggle, a spark of static had shocked you through his touch. When you’d closed your eyes and tried to go to sleep, you swore that the ancient, cosmic hum of the static in the TV ebbed and flowed at the same exact time as Sam’s breath.

In. Bzzzsh. Out. Bzzzsh. Crackling as he breathed.

It wasn’t the demon you were scared of anymore. The ancient, ever-present sting of static you’d felt deep down inside it… that scared you a million, a billion times more, because—

You felt that static every time you felt Sam.

_

It’s like trying to describe the smell of your childhood home.

Logically, you know your house must smell like something. But when you’re in one place long enough your brain filters it out as background noise, and it becomes something you can only notice after a long time away.

You’d known Sam since you were in diapers. Back then, the meager threads of your Gift were already taking him in and absorbing him into your memory. Eventually, you felt him so often that all the pain and optimism in his core, all the stuff that made Sam himself, had smoothed out into warm, familiar background noise to your Gift.

Then he’d left for Stanford. Four years passed, and the only exposure your Gift had to him was the flimsy thread stretched two thousand miles down to California. Because it’d been so long since you’d sensed him in person, hugging him outside his apartment had been like stepping into your home after a long time away—for a brief moment, the filter over your psychic perceptions of him had lifted. You’d sensed for the first time what had always been there, buried deep. The Static.

At the time, you’d gotten so swept up in Sam, Dean, and the adventure of finding their Dad, that it was easy to get sidetracked. Things came up. You got used to Sam again, and his Static faded to background noise.

Until you’d felt that demon with your Gift.

A demon. A creation of Lucifer. You’d always remember what Sam felt like—you’d never forget the smell of home—but in one of them?

Your mind whirls with so many questions that it flat-out pops, failing you. Pulled along on a cloud of white noise, you somehow manage to turn away from the cockpit and start back down the aisle. The demon is possessing the pilot. You have forty minutes, less than, to exorcize it and save the two hundred people on this flight. These are all truths floating around in your head, but no matter how much you try to circle back to one, the static of the demon overcomes you again.

Static. You think of Sam, the crackle of his soft raspy voice through the phone. Your heart is pounding in your ears, thudding away in your chest like a piston. The static had burned in the demon, burned like busted speakers and smoking plane wreckage. Little pins all over your skin pressing in. The space you have until you make it to Sam’s seat seems to yawn, your footfalls sluggish and shivery. Why do they feel the same? Why does he feel the same? The static of the demon worms under your fizzing skin, bubbling, boiling—

You stop in front of Sam’s row, and he’s already looking at you when you get close. He asks you a question. You stare at him, the whole world filled with that awful roaring buzzing, the air tight and dessert dry in the back of your throat. Even though he’s right in front of you, you feel like you barely see him—just the vague burning outline of him in your powers.

Sam reaches out to grab your wrist, tugging it away from the long marks you’re viciously scratching into the flesh of your arm. The touch of his hand causes a literal static shock to jolt from his fingers to yours. You yelp in surprise, but it’s—

It’s different. There’s a similarity, definitely, between what you sensed in the demon and what’s always been in Sam… but his Static is hot chocolate warm and fuzzy and so good. Melt-in-your-mouth good. Your surroundings filter back in, and there are his soft, worried eyes looking up at you under his brow, and his big hand soothing over the irritated skin you’ve scratched raw. Sam. The same Sam he’s always been.

…Whatever it is, whatever weird connection you’ve just made, you’re sure there’s a lot more to it than Sam having something in common with a demon. Right?

Sam takes one look at you, your insane reaction, and your mysterious reappearance, then easily puts two and two together: “One of the pilots?”

“Co-pilot,” you tell him, and one of your absent-minded hands drifts up to scratch at your arm again.

And again, Sam fishes his fingers around your wrist and pulls it away. Now that you’ve noticed it, you can’t un-notice it. His touch makes your fingertips and the ends of your ears tingle, and not completely in the boy-crush way. In the psychic way.

He asks, “You gonna be okay? We got twenty-two minutes.”

That jolts you back to life. Twenty-two minutes until this plane is smoking ashes in a Pennsylvania cornfield. Though the last ten minutes have easily overcomplicated all twenty-four years of your life, you won’t have a life period if you don’t see this job through. When Dean returns from investigating a very un-possessed Amanda, he feels the exact same way.

Your resolve hardens, and you manage to give Sam an absent-minded smile. “I’ll be fine.”

There’s no time for arguing. Dean and Sam unanimously agree that the only possible place to exorcize the demon would be in the back, where Amanda is, since you can’t exactly jump the guy in the middle of economy. You don’t exactly like the idea of roping her into this, but Amanda’s the only one who could potentially lure that—thing to the rear of the plane. It is the world’s shittiest ambush. But by the time the three of you decide what to do, you’ve burned ten whole minutes on anxious chatter. A shitty ambush is the only plan you’ve got.

Dean starts down the aisle for the back of the plane. You stare at nothing for a beat, and only remember to get out of your seat when Sam nudges your elbow. He presses his lips together like he wants to ask you the million-dollar question (“Are you sure you’re okay?”), but there is literally no time. In a haze, you shuffle out of your seat after Dean and make a feeble attempt to get your head into gear. Sam does not make it easy. One of his broad hands brushes against the small of your back as you both squeeze out of the row, and you feel like you’ve just gone down one of those static-charged plastic playground slides.

Your Gift is exaggerating it. It has to be, right? Making big connections out of little things, picking at a fresh bruise. For weeks, you’ve been crammed into a little car with Sam, into teeny motel beds with him with no room between you. Why hadn’t you felt it? Why now? Not when you were four, napping in the same bed after playtime—not when you were twelve, and Sam was the first person outside your family that your Gift had connected with. Had it always been there, living inside him? Had you missed it?

You reach the back of the plane. Amanda is there, a pale, blonde flight attendant straight out of a commercial. You are dully aware that you have twelve minutes left before the demon makes its move, always on the forty-minute mark (...and you don’t like the line suddenly drawn between Sam and such an old, biblically evil thing).

The boys talk. A familiar conversation occurs over your head, which might be why it’s easy for you to tune out. Your mind returns again to thoughts of Sam, so intense and loud in your head that it all fizzles out to nothing, and you’re left standing there with the air pressure making your ears ring. Sam. The demon. It’s stupid and intangible and you’d have no fucking clue how to explain it out loud, but your Gift is made to find the truth. Something inside that demon exists in Sam, too. Something.

You try to reassure yourself that maybe, just this once, your Gift is wrong. Maybe this is the demon getting into your mind—learning your deepest fears and bringing them to life.

Sure enough, Dean’s charm and Sam’s earnest face must win Amanda over, because she flits out of the back room like a frightened bird. The boys peer through the curtain to watch her go, the two of them as still and sharp-eared as twin watchdogs. You’re slapped back to life by the sudden tension in the room, and quickly scuttle up behind them. Right. Amanda’s getting the co-pilot. These next ten minutes will determine the rest of your life.

In the same beat, you and Dean ready your holy water, and Sam gets the written exorcism from their dad’s journal out in front of him. There’s no need for the three of you to say a word. An understanding passes between each of you, hammered in from years of hunting as a team. Sam slides up next to you and Dean gives you a firm nod, squashing your last wisps of fear. You’re here to do a damn job.

A man’s voice floats toward the closed curtain to the back room, followed not-so-closely by Amanda’s. You’re glad she’s not the first one into the room—because Dean instantly slams a fist into their face.

The co-pilot—or really, the thing inside him—goes sprawling. You’ve got a strip of duct tape bridled over his mouth before he even fully collides with you, and for the blissful moment you have him pinned, Dean gets another fierce hit in.

While he’s still stunned, you whip the co-pilot to the grated metal floor. Dean clambers on top of him and keeps him there with a firm fist twisted in his rumpled button-up.

Amanda panics, “W-what are you doing? Y-you said you we-were gonna talk to him—!”

“We are gonna talk to him,” Dean grits.

Then, you’re hosing him down with holy water, splashing it brutally in the man’s pain-twisted face. Your gut clenches with empathy. Did the demon leave his body already? You’re terrified for a moment that you got the wrong guy… until you smell the smoke. It’s not just sulfur, but full-on dead body bloat, steaming up from the big black boils that spring up where the holy water hits skin. You get a mouth and noseful vile enough to make you gag. This thing fighting you? This is definitely not a man.

Amanda watches the demon’s skin sizzle, the usual terror and confusion on her face. “O-oh my god, what’s wrong with him?”

You pour all the psychic clarity and calmness into your voice when you whip around and tell her: “It’s going to be okay. Be calm, go outside the curtain, and don’t let anybody in. Can you do that, Amanda?”

You don’t stop to listen to her answer. Sam’s already tearing through the opening to the exorcism at ninety miles an hour, his pronunciation punchy and fatally clear. That had been one of the less exciting parts of the five-hour drive here; when Sam had run through it over and over, re-training himself. One misspoken word could get everyone on this plane killed.

“Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus…”

The demon thrashes viciously in your grip, twisting and contorting under Dean in ways the human body can’t bend. Bile rises in your throat as you hear a snap, then two, as the demon does everything it can to buck Dean off. By the time you go to stun it with another splash of holy water, it’s more of a dribble. That’s your first mistake.

Two people are not nearly enough to keep this thing down. It gets a hand loose that instantly sends Dean flying, and before you even see where he lands, it cranks your head all the way to the left in one vicious slap.

Your whole face is blasted with red, stinging pain. You go down hard, smashed sideways into the cramped wall.

The pain stuns you out of the headspace you built to distract yourself, and all at once the presence of the demon is thrust upon you. The black, molten psychic power of it crackles through your body, filling your nose and mouth with the same terror hanging in your visions all week. Until you realize— It fucking backhanded you.

Trying to see past the dots swimming in your vision, you mindlessly shove off the wall, snarling with rage. No fucking way.

And then it speaks (to Sam?), and in the fizzing noise of pressure in your ears you hear it promise, “I know what happened to your girlfriend!” The constant stream of Sam’s exorcism stops cold.

When the demon speaks again, its voice, a spectral twist of the co-pilot’s and something older, drooled with pleasure. “She died screaming,” it rasped, “Even now, she's burning.”

A lot happens in the next precious seconds. First, the little circular light flushed flat to the back cabin’s ceiling explodes. Just—bursts, in shock, spraying sparks and glass all over the little room. You’re stunned enough as it is getting hit in the face, so one more thing to fuck up your vision doesn’t help. But you heard what the demon said to Sam. Through the suffocating evil flooding your mind, you feel the sharp spike of hurt and rage and grief in your best friend—and that’s the precise moment when you decide that you’ve had e-fucking-nough.

These last few days have not been winners. And though you live a pretty shitty life with an impressive amount of shitty days, even before you got to Pennsylvania, your streak of bad luck had only just gotten started. This demon has screwed with your Gift on an unimaginable level. Your last few nights have been plagued with nightmares straight from hell, and your days haven’t been much better, riddled with useless visions that get more and more disconnected every time you faint. It made it even more obvious than usual that you’re deadweight for Sam and Dean. They had to handle your boiling water burns and your freakouts, not to mention your mood swings and your unhelpful visions.

The demon hurt Dean, which is enough to get your teeth grinding. And Sam—it had cut him much deeper.

You wanted to tear it apart. You wanted to reach into it the same way it had reached into you, dig in with your nails, and rip something out. Your mom’s words buzz in your head: contact, truth, lies, rip, apart. Rationally, you know you should listen to her warning. If just looking into its eyes has forever changed your view of the man you’ve loved since you were little, then looking deeper could kill you—scramble your mind. You know that. But beside the rage and exhaustion fizzing under your skin is this desperate need to know.

Demons are made of lies. What if it was lying about Sam? What if it had screwed with your Gift in some new way, tweaking the image of him in your mind? It had to be lying. The Static in him, as warm and as good as you swore it was—it came from something evil. Sam. The man you love, the boy you’d fallen in love with, his soft sleepy breaths as he lays on the floor beside your bed, his freckly arms swimming in his too-big sleeves. How could any part of him be evil? He couldn’t be. N-not your Sam. How could he ever have something like that inside him?

You need to be sure. Consequences be damned.

As the demon rears up to keep snarling in Sam’s face, you slap a hand over its forehead—reach in—and start ripping.

_

She died screaming.

Sam can’t pull a full breath in. The words burn through his body like a syringe of poison, spreading from limb to limb. The demon snarls up at him, its foamy spit hitting Sam’s face and its teeth snapping around Jess’s name—until.

_____’s hand seals over the demon’s face. The demon’s jaw snaps shut. There is a terrible hanging moment where Sam’s brain struggles to connect the touch to what she’s doing; she never, ever psychically connected with the full face of her palm tattoo. Even with her mom Sam knew she put up a barrier, reading Beth with the smooth back of her knuckles instead.

Shit. Another fresh shot of horror lances through him. What the hell is she doing to it?

The effect is instant. Whatever button _____ had just hit, it activates every horror-movie, Exorcist-level instinct in the demon’s body. Surprised yelps echo down the back of the plane as the lights violently flicker. In electrified, strobing flashes, Sam sees it. The co-pilot’s body is diagonal on the floor one moment, and then it’s arching its back three feet in the air, lurching up into ______’s palm like she’d hit it with a defibrillator. The demon floats up and stays up.

…Until Dean brings it smashing back to the floor again, throwing his weight on top of the co-pilot. He barks, “Sam!” Right. Whatever she’s doing to it, it’s the only working distraction they’ve got. Slapped back to focus, Sam stutters out where he left off: “...O-omnis congregatio et secta diabolica—” It’s a blessing that he makes it through the next lines of the exorcism. Sam pours all of his willpower into keeping his eyes on the stained notebook page it’s written on, no matter how many times his gut begs him to check on her. All he can do is have faith. This is what she does—when Dean’s not strong enough and Sam’s too weak, she finds a damn way, come hell or high water. Sam has always had endless faith in that. So when the whole plane gives that terrible shudder that he was expecting, and then tips, and tips, and tips into a full pitch forward, Sam grips that faith with both hands. The demon’s power ripples through the rest of the plane. Everything descends into chaos. Past the curtain, the lights go out in one silent burst, followed by the explosive, concussive screams of the passengers as the oxygen masks drop. Movies are unfortunately good at capturing this precise moment, but nothing could ever replicate the way Sam’s belly swoops as all five hundred tons of the plane heads straight for the ground. Sam and Dean both go flying, crashing sideways into the walls of the back cabin. The turbulence rips the journal from his hands, and of course, with their fucking luck, it goes skidding through the curtain and down the aisle to ricochet under the seats. “Grab it!” Dean screams.

Sam can’t hear him. He staggers into the open doorway of the back cabin, clutching the frame for dear life. A terrifying, unnatural howl whistles through the cabin, even louder than the wails of the passengers. Its wind flutters his hair around his face and sends luggage toppling out of the overhead bins. For a moment, Sam wonders if the plane’s been hit or the demon has done something—but no. It’s her. He flattens himself to the floor—or rather, gravity flattens him—crawling on his belly towards the shadow of the journal under the seats. The passengers sob and shriek. The air is singed with smoky fear, and riding that same fear, Sam surges ahead, lunging for the book where it’s lodged between tossed luggage. He has to twist to get his hands on it, and it’s then that he feels it.

Down the aisle behind him, the wind drags luggage and loose papers into the void-like darkness of the back cabin—where the great, cleansing, sweeping power of her is fighting the demon. Sam believes in what he’s seen; Sam believes in angels.

She’ll buy him enough time. He knows she will.

Sam’s hands don’t shake as he pries the journal open to the right page.

“Ecclesiam tuam securi tibi facias libertate servire, te rogamus,” he shouts, and the words ring as clear and clean as a bell. The plane tries to toss him again, but Sam grits his teeth and persists, “audi nos!”

He waits. Sam sees it more than he hears it. Deep in the blackhole darkness of the plane’s cabin, something red and fiery flashes to life… flickers… and dies.

Maybe he’s imagining it, but he swears he feels the demon fizzle out. The heaviness in the air melts away. The lights, which Sam realizes had been snapping on and off, turn on for good. The hissing of the turbines spins to its normal hum. The plane swooshes back up with a slow coasting motion, then sets itself back on its peaceful forward track.

Gasps and sobs of relief chorus all around Sam, and sprawled in the middle of the aisle, he finds himself doing the same. Overhead, the pilot’s voice crackles reassurances over the intercom. As big wuffs of air cycle in and out of Sam, he waits for the moment for his heart to stop thumping, for the big “we won” moment to wash over him—but it never really does. It sits with him. For a long terrible moment, he is on the bed in his apartment in Palo Alto, Jessica’s blood boiling holes in his neck.

Even now, she’s still burning.

INDIANAPOLIS INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT - Dec. 5th, early morning.

Somehow, amid all the noise of swarming paramedics, feds, airline authorities, and stunned 424 passengers, Sam manages to remain lost in his own head. He clenches his jaw til’ his ears pop. How had it known about Jess?

The terminal is quickly packed. He’s not in airports often enough to know whether they should be packed at one in the morning, but he’s gonna guess not. It is all background noise for him. Passengers whirl past, getting cleared by cops to go home, and Dean subtly nudges the three of them into the leaving crowd. Sam has a vague notion that he’s putting one foot in front of the other, but everything feels distant and hazy. His neck blazes with that terrible tingling feeling, and he digs into it with his nails until Dean stops him.

“Sam,” Dean orders, dipping his head towards the direction of the parking lot. Apparently Sam isn’t cooperating well. “Let’s get the hell outta’ here.” For a brief moment, the awful burning feeling covering him in a fog parts long enough for him to think, and Sam realizes that he doesn’t know where _____ is. Panic lances through his chest so fast that he sobers all at once, and he opens his mouth to panic more—until he sees her, scrunched up behind Dean.

Well, clutching Dean. Left shameless by whatever she saw in that demon’s head, she’s got Dean’s hand and wrist in a deathgrip, trailing him so close that her shoes catch the heels of his boots. She does not look good. Her eyes are big and wide and she looks straight through everyone and everything, still tethered to the other dimension her powers live in. She’s got her elbows pressed into her ribs and her body bunched up so tight that Sam can almost feel her psychic overstimulation from where he’s standing.

“S’okay, sweetheart, ” Dean hushes, the first in a long, quiet string of reassurances.

Sam stares at her. Even if she’s in her own world, she must be able to feel it, ‘cause she physically leans out of his way. That should hurt him—should make him burn with sympathy—but instead, all he can think is, she would know. She would know if the demon was lying. Sam’s connected with her like that—there’s absolutely nothing to hide, even if you wanted to, so there’s no way she couldn’t see if the demon had been telling the truth.

The line of people seeping through security to get out of the airport slows to a stop, making way for the pack of paramedics hauling 424’s copilot away on a stretcher. The black boils from the holy water have left his body entirely.

He’ll ask her once. He has to try. Sam lets the two of them in front of him, Dean, then _____, almost pressing her face into Dean’s back. When they’re stopped in line, Sam lifts a hand to touch her—but stops himself, not wanting her to feel any worse. “_____,” Sam swallows, trying to keep his voice even. “What did you see? H-How did it know about Jessica?”

Before she even has the opportunity to answer, (if she can even hear him), Dean swings around to shoot Sam a pained look. “Dude, look at her. Now is not the fuckin’ time. Let her get a full breath in before you start with the interrogations, okay?”

Sam recoils. The gnashing, rebellious fire he usually saves for Dad pours out here, instead, and before Sam knows it he’s snarling back, “I can’t ask one question about my dead girlfriend?”

It lasts only for an instant, but Sam gets to watch in real time the way that hit lands. He’s aware that it’s deeply fucked up of him to enjoy throwing Jess in Dean’s face, but it is his backward, comforting reminder that she was a real person; not a four-year-long fever dream he invented to escape. No one says her name but him anymore. At least, when he talks about her, someone else is forced to feel something too.

Dean sets his jaw. He makes the mistake of trying to turn towards Sam, which _____ thinks is an attempt to shake her off—and she lets out this awful, hoarse sob sound that stops them both cold.

Sam feels like a rail spike has been driven through his chest. Dean gives him a look, then mercifully drops it.

Immediately, Dean’s wheeling her back in and soothing her. The angle at which she’s clinging to him is awkward for all three of them, so he endures her trembling and hitching little sobs as he peels off her hands and re-arranges them. Dean loops an arm around her back so he can stroke her shuddering shoulders, uttering, “S’okay, kiddo, s’ all over… ain’t nothin’ gonna hurt you…”

And of course, because Sam can never exist in peace, he watches the way ______ drops all her weight onto Dean and feels his chest squeeze. Suddenly, he’s very aware of what four years have changed between her and his brother.

The rush back to the car is silent, but for _____’s little sniffling breathes. After making it out of the blistering lights of the chattering airport and out into the peaceful snowy parking lot, things calm down.

Four separate times Sam thinks about reaching out to comfort her. The Gift always leaves her freezing cold, and early December in Indiana on top of that has her making audible little shivering sounds as they walk. Sam’s boiling under his coat. He unzips it, then zips it up again, unsure if she’d even want it. Dean gets her in the car and puts a warm blanket around her before Sam can get over his indecision.

They just saved two hundred people. In hindsight, that’s a massive win. Maybe if the demon hadn’t said what it’d said, and maybe if it hadn’t reduced her to this, Sam could celebrate. Seeing her so messed up always throws him. Less than an hour ago, she was the powerful psychic that used to have Dad clutching his telepathy-blocking charm under his shirt.

Sam scrubs his hand down his face, staring blankly at the trembling lump of blanket lying across the backseat. Now, she’s… whatever she saw in that demon.

Dean tucks her feet up onto the seat, then nudges the door closed with his hip. Sam stares past him, through him, at her silhouette in the Impala’s dark glass, because that’s somehow easier than looking at Dean.

The smattering of snow growing on the asphalt makes the whole world sound muffled. Sam feels like he’s talking to empty air when he croaks, “It knew about Jessica.”

“Sam,” Dean calls, softer this time. Asking for Sam to look at him. When he manages to heave his head up, Dean’s face is firm and reassuring. “These things—they read minds. They lie, just like Beth said. That’s all it was. Don’t let that thing get into your head, okay?”

Sam forces himself to nod. They both spare the shaking shape in the backseat one more look, then Dean’s rounding the car for the driver’s seat, and Sam’s sliding in next to him without another word.

PITTSBURG, PENNSYLVANIA - Dec. 5th, night.

Green. It had to be the ugliest color a motel room could be, Sam thought as he stared at the empty room. The walls were this sad limey green color that managed to look awful even in the dark, some parts made even limey-er by the huge neon green vacancy sign right outside their window. Their room was parked right next to it, so there was no escaping the sign even with the curtains pulled shut.

You and Dean, who were positioned right under the ugly green light, had somehow managed to fall asleep anyway. The only sound in the whole world was your soft breathing across the room and the crackle of the ancient TV.

Right now, it was playing a rerun of some televangelist in a big shiny white suit. He paced the screen on mute as Sam watched, curled on his side, laying diagonal to face the screen. Nightmares were so common for him now that the hardest part of the battle was getting to sleep in the first place. His strategy was to get so bored and so tired that his body would simply have nothing else to do but crash. Bored was the key word—Sam had tried reading, sudoku, and counting cars as they whisked by, but all of that occupied his mind too much to work. Tonight was another night where his mind was just too full to sleep.

He hoped Dean was right. He prayed that the demon had just been lying, lips pressed to the cross he kept under his shirt. Most days, Sam dropped into bed and sent off a brief prayer before the fight for sleep began. Tonight, though—tonight was one of those nights where he clasped his cross in both hands and poured his heart out. Sam prayed for his brother, his Dad, and for you, like usual, pleading for protection and strength. Sam prayed for Jessica, too.

(But never for her forgiveness—he knew he didn’t deserve that).

When Sam had first started getting comfortable with prayer, he’d always worried that he was being greedy or selfish by asking for so much. Health, food, lunch money, for Dad and Dean to get home okay. Now, it’s a natural comfort to him. To open yourself up to something higher than you, to give up your pride and ask for help—that is a mark of holiness. Goodness. Sam closes out his prayers and feels clean.

Across the room, Sam hears the covers in the opposite bed shift. He squints sleepy eyes at your silhouette, and even sluggish and drained, the shifting colors from the TV and the vacancy sign illuminate you like something not entirely from this world.

You pad over to his bedside. A soft, ice-cold hand shakes his arm. When you get up close and realize Sam’s awake, you scuttle back in surprise. “Uh.”

Sam shoves his face into his pillow. With his mind still on Jess, it’s hard for him to look at you right now. “What is it?”

It’s funny. From the moment you got off flight 424, you’d been glued to Dean’s side. Sam had kept his teeth pressed together through the entire thing, watching from a distance as you reached for Dean, spoke to Dean, took the food Dean gave you. If Sam didn’t know any better, he’d figure you were avoiding him. Now you’ve decided you want something from him?

The second you touch his arm, every wisp of jealousy in Sam dries up. Not at all in the mood to be touched, he squirms out from under your hand and hoarsely repeats, “What?” You speak to him for the first time in hours. You sound rough and broken, and the edge of that awful sob from earlier today threatens to tip into your voice. “Can I…?”

Sam keeps his face planted in the pillow. At first he’s unsure what you’re even asking for—until you drop a hand on the mattress and he feels your weight tilt closer, wanting to… to lay with him. Like when you were little. When you share beds on the road, there’s often space left between you. That’s not what you’re asking for. If that’s what you wanted right now, you’d be in Dean’s bed.

The soft, choked little voice he can’t resist begs, “I just need to feel you.”

The last sliver of guilt and self-loathing that Sam has been holding onto instantly slips out of his grasp, hearing that. For the millionth time since this morning, he’s reminded of how awful he was to you. You’d been brought to the brink with your powers in a way they hadn’t seen in years, and Sam chose that precise moment to freak out. He wished he’d been better to you. Maybe he can’t pray for Jess’s forgiveness, but he can work to earn yours now.

Sam shuffles back on the mattress and opens the covers for you. “C’mere.”

As quiet as a mouse, you duck under his arm and slip under the covers. Sam immediately realizes that he should’ve fucking braced himself or something, because holy shit, you are so close. He accidentally gave you very little room in the already small bed. To keep from tumbling off the mattress and onto the questionable carpet, you reasonably and logically slot right up against him, your back against his chest and your heads on the same pillow. Holy shit, he did not think this through. Sam has very few gentlemanly places to lay his arm. And even if he found one, your icy cold hand picks up his warm one and—right, okay, you take it and wrap it right around your middle. That’s fine too. Cool. Awesome.

Okay. Forgetting every way he could sabotage this for himself for just a moment, Sam realizes that he missed this. God, he missed it so much. You wiggle back into his body and Sam gives you a big, indulgent squeeze around the tummy, earning this watery little sigh that makes his already racing heart zing out into orbit. Friendly snuggling became a lot less friendly when you were pushing seventeen instead of nine, so Sam hasn’t allowed himself to properly, um… cuddle you… in ages.

That isn’t even the best part. That little squeeze makes him realize just how pleasantly cold you are, a wonderful ice cube in blazing hot soup. Sam’s practically cooking under the covers—and that must be perfect for you and your chilly hands, because you make the same pitiful happy noise that Sam does as you get comfortable against each other.

Maybe if this were any other moment, after any other day, that would be something you might laugh about together. Instead, Sam’s prayers are filled with you and your incredible burden. He hesitates to go all in and hold you like he wants to… until your breath makes that tight, hitching sound again, and Sam’s sure you’re holding back tears. Screw it, Sam thinks. He’ll take care of you this time. Sam presses his face into your hair and entwines your hands on your belly, unsure of what to say and yet wanting to say so much. Dean can’t hold you like this—this is something you only want from Sam.

You both go still. Sam feels you hold your breath. His legs are itching to shift under the covers and your hand awkwardly holds his, the two of you afraid to disturb the magic.

Your thumb slowly caresses along the flat side of his hand. His heart leaps into his throat, and he squeezes his eyes shut, willing himself to relax. You need this. Finally, it’s his turn to comfort you.

Sam swallows hard. There’s no way you can’t feel his heart thudding away, inches from popping clean out of his chest. Neither of you are stupid. If Dean were to wake up, you know exactly what this would look like to him—to the cleaning lady, to the strangers out on the street. But right now, in this frozen moment, there’s no one awake in the world but the two of you and the TV. It is so, so wrong. But when you touch him, Sam feels clean.

Bit by bit, you adjust to one another. Your breath syncs up. The whole time, your eyes never move from the TV, but if Sam focusses he swears something washes over him—that same great, sweeping, cleansing power from the plane, as light as moth wings on his skin. He has to bite back his smile. If you did that to anyone else, they’d find you creepy as hell.

After what feels like forever, you plainly croak, “It was lying about her. It was made of lies.”

That hits Sam like a slap to the face. That’s… yeah. That sounds right. He absorbs the impact as best he can, because although his faith was thin, Sam trusted Dean’s word and he trusts yours, too. There’s—so much that he feels about that, but he doesn’t want any more of his grief to overwhelm your Gift. Sam’s not naive. No matter how good of a person you are, no matter how considerate and understanding and empathetic you can be, Sam knows that talking about Jessica brings you some level of pain. It hurts him, too. And he has zero clue where that conversation would even begin, so he stores his shame and his loss and gives a shaky nod.

Instead, Sam asks, “...What did you see? When you looked into its head?”

Right. Cause’ that was such a better question to ask her, Sam.

You go silent. It’s a weighty, knowing silence, one that chokes the whole room. Sam readies himself for whatever you’re about to share with him. Admittedly, he’s curious. When the Gift was something new in your life, Sam used to pile on question after question about what the world felt like to you. ‘What does it feel like when Dean’s happy?’ A car motor turning on. ‘What does my happiness feel like?’ Dimples and a mystery being solved. ‘You’re joking.’ Not even a little. It fascinated Sam—how does a demon feel in comparison to a regular spirit?

“...It was just an evil spirit, Sammy,” you dismiss. “That’s all.”

Sam highly doubts that’s true. If it was just a spirit, then why did it screw with you so deeply? What had you seen in its head that had scared you? You, of all people, who was built for this? He knows there’s something more here, but after this week and all the ways you’ve fought to avoid being a burden, the fact that you’d crawl to Sam for comfort is a sign of surrender. You’ve given up. Clearly, you don’t want to talk about it. Sam isn’t going to push you. God knows he’s done that enough.

When Sam doesn’t push you, you shudder out a wet sigh and pick up his hand. At this point, Sam expects you in this state to do something weird—and sure enough, you do. You pick up Sam’s hand and you just stare at it. Just stare. Your thumb presses into the meat of his palm, almost like you’re looking for something. Feeling him. Sam’s heart gives another pathetic, noticeable throb. Feeling him and being close to him is, after everything, still a source of comfort for you. His cheeks burn.

Just to fill the silence, Sam whispers, “I’ve lost a lot of my calluses.”

Per usual, his little creep says nothing. You’re still feeling him. Your other hand comes up to investigate too, adding even more soft gentle touching to Sam’s already overloaded system. Your thumbs press into the center of his palm (reading it, maybe?), then over each bump, confirming for yourself that Sam’s real.

Maybe he’d be a bit more resilient if you were doing this to him in a crowded diner or a rowdy college party. Instead, Sam can feel the rise and fall of your breath through your thin shirt, and it’s the only sound in the dead world besides the buzzing static on the TV.

Your gaze turns to the TV. The fingers caressing his hand stop cold.

Sam says your name. He can feel your heart thud thud thudding deep in your chest, like rabbit’s feet hitting snow.

Again, absorbed completely in your own task, you don’t answer him. You roll over very suddenly under the covers. Sam hopes for a minute that being face to face with you will give him some answers, but the flash of your face he sees only serves to scare the shit out of him. You give him no time to process before you’re full-body hugging him, shoving a hand between his side and the mattress and fisting one in his shirt to bodily haul him against you. Sam sputters out a sharp noise and awkwardly slopes his hands down your back. The sudden intimacy gives him a whole world of shameful butterflies and freaks him out enough, but…

You looked terrified. The same bone-deep horror you had on your face after you saw the demon in person—when you trudged up to Sam with those haunting Proctor eyes, staring straight through him and right at his future. What had you seen in that demon?

Sam tries to speak, but you talk over him, just as haunted as you’d been on that plane.

“I love you. So much, Sam. You know that?”

It’s not a sweet, reminiscent kind of question. It is a genuine, unironic, please-tell-me-the-truth, You know that?

Sam’s brain stalls. “...Yeah. O-Of course.”

In case that wasn’t worrying enough, your hands needily grasp at his back, refusing to let Sam go as you duck your face into his shoulder. Sam can feel your entire body trembling from head to toe, can feel your hot breath on his neck choking back tears. “You’re a good person,” you tell him, insisting. “The best to me.”

“That’s—”

“I can feel it, okay?” You snap. One of your hands slips up his chest to smooth over Sam’s heart, and you squeeze him against you, promising, “Here. Right here.”

…Okay. Consider him officially freaked out. Sam manages an unconvinced, “...Thank you.”

You’re so wound up that you’re gritting your teeth, digging your nails into his shirt and clawing him as close as possible. This has to be an effect of what you saw. Which is strange, because that… whatever that was, did not feel like psychic possession or a psychic panic attack or any kind of psychic anything. It felt like you, trying to convince Sam that he’s a good person. It strikes a cold, dark chord somewhere deep within him that he doesn’t like. You’re just… you’re just reacting to what the demon showed you. You’re overwhelmed from stretching your Gift so thin. T-that’s. Yeah. Regardless, you’re scared. You need him. That, at least, is something he can work with.

“Shh,” Sam coos. He rubs a warm hand from the base of your scalp all the way down your back, then up, and back again, repeating the soothing motion until his arm goes numb. “You’re tired. Let’s go to sleep.”

You mumble something non-committal under your breath.

Sam hushes you, blindly reaching for comforting things to say. “S’ okay. You’re okay, baby. You can fall asleep on me.”

Maybe the demon showed you visions of Sam getting hurt. Something. That would explain this, maybe. He fixates on it, purely because it’s a problem in front of him that is much easier to think about than how scared he is for you, and worse, how much he loves this. Being your person. It’s a stupid, selfish thought to have in a moment like this, but—Sam wishes he could take care of you like this all the time.

As your frantic breathing smooths out into a clear, easy in-and-out, Sam wonders, wherever Jess is, what she would think if she saw this.

He closes his eyes and tries to steady his own breathing, the TV still crackling away on the dresser.

In. Bzzzsh. Out. Bzzzsh.

- tags: @samssluttybangs @cookiemumster1 @lacilou @cevans-winchester @leigh70 @seraphimluxe @emily-roberts @emme-looou @aloneatpeace @williamstop @ornella0910 @chaoticshepardplaid @dakota-dream @lcvecstiel @goghkiss @spnexploration @stoneyggirl @urm0mmmbbg @mulattomoon @poeticsorcery @deansapplepie @rennydennyy @babydollfoster @badlandsbrunette @hallecarey1 @pplanetcaravan

[melancholysway]

Hello! So I saw TMNT 2007!Raph x GN!Reader: The Confession, and it got my brain pumping, Could I request an Angsty Unrequited 2007!Leo x GN!Reader, where Leo has a crush on Reader, that he didn't acknowledge or think too much about, and he only realises the full depth of it when he left (absence makes the heart grow stronger) but does comes to accepts it as a truth and plans to grow closer to them and pursue his feelings when he returns, only to find out Reader is dating Raph, they're a perfect pair and are so happy together, and Leo isn't sure how to respond but it sure hurts.

This can be as Long or short/formatted as you like, sorry if this is extremely wordy, thanks for reading!

Omg omg I’m so excited for this one!?!?!? btw, this is over 4,000 words long, so I hope this isn't too much! this was a great request and I wrote the entire thing just now lol

I hope you enjoy!

TMNT 2007!Leo x Reader: Unrequited

(also a 2007 Raph x reader, BUT ITS NOT A POLY FIC!)

Chapter key:

~ = time skip

--- followed by italic text = flashback happening

--- followed by normal text = flashback ending

+++ - scene change (minor time skip)

________________________________________-

It started small, very small

Because you’re just a person to him in the beginning, a sorry sucker that got dragged into the depths of a New York City robbery in a small convenience store. 

You get out (kind of,) but it lands you being chased by the big guy who decided to point the gun at the cashier who noticed you left when he ordered everyone to stay put

But you’d rather run than get shot, so, there’s that. 

Thus, you unknowingly run into an unknown savior of the city you resided in, and though you thought you’d die a sorry death in the back alley of a street you couldn’t recall the name of, you’re saved. 

You thank your savior, to which, he with a slightly raspy yet calm tone answers you from the shadows. 

“You’re welcome.” 

And that’s it. But, who was he?

“Um…I’m not exactly sure where I ran to, do you happen to know which street I’m on?” You didn’t know Manhattan like the back of your hand at all. Not only that, but you were just…running. Though the city never sleeps, fate just so happened to make this new area you came to empty. This side was asleep. It had to be the gentrified area of Manhattan, huh?

And that’s how you meet Leonardo. Sort of. He gives you directions to your apartment complex, but you didn’t feel safe going alone. 

So, when he steps out of the darkness, he’s covered in a brown hooded cloak where you can’t see his body shape or face. 

He takes you home like that. But oh, here goes fate once again, and there goes this sudden gust of wind that catches him off guard, and his face is revealed. 

He’s a…

“Turtle. Mutant turtle.” 

And THAT’S how you meet Leonardo. He’s surprised at how well you take it, but, in all honesty, you really could use a friend in this crazy city you just moved to not too long ago.

Time goes on, his brother (Mikey) gets nosy as to why he sometimes goes solo during patrol going a direction, not in their usual route, and follows him quietly (kind of, he falls a couple of times, but meows so his older brother thinks it’s just a clumsy cat)

He watches as Leonardo stops on a fire escape and knocks on the window, the light from inside getting more intense as the window is opened, revealing why Leo goes off on his own sometimes

He watches as you rub your eyes, slightly tired as you greet his brother, only to be a little startled as another turtle…mutant turtle, lands right beside him

“Dude! Another human!? Hey!” 

And THAT’S how you meet Michelangelo. 

Word goes around, Mikey just can’t keep his mouth shut, plus, he accidentally set off the emergency button on his T-Phone, so Raphael and Donatello are tracking him together. Suddenly, two more mutant turtles are at your fire escape. 

“Ya jokin’ right? THIS is tha emergency?” Piercing golden eyes engulfed by a red bandana look you up and down confused, then back at Mikey. You’re the threat? 

“Mikey…are you harassing another human again?” A purple-banded turtle, who appears to look identical to Mikey, begins apologizing on his baby brother's behalf.

And THAT’S how you meet Raphael and Donatello

After inviting Leo and his brothers inside your apartment, you introduce yourself properly. Donnie takes it well, and Raph is always the warier one. But, he trusts his older brother. With his life, even. So, if he trusted you, Raphael felt obligated to do the same. 

Plus, he thought you were cute. 

Come to think of it, Leo also thought that, too. 

And thus, begins Leonardo’s small crush on you. 

It’s platonic. At least, that’s what he tells himself. He doesn’t act on it, and you show no signs of having a crush on him, so, why risk it?

You progressively become closer with Leonardo’s brothers, and soon- after knowing them for almost two months- they introduce you to their sensei. 

He loves you, by the way. How accepting you are, how sweet you are to his sons, and he can sense the hidden affection his eldest son has for you.

Time goes on, but time is a thief- waiting for an opportunity to steal the happiness of those who take it for granted. 

~

To: Y/n

I miss you. A lot, actually. I didn’t think I would miss you and my family so much, but, I do. 

Sometimes when I’m sitting in this dark cave, I feel like you’re going to run up behind me and try to scare me like you always did when I was around. I always knew you were there, but sometimes I would fake it just to see you smile. You pouted whenever I told you that you didn’t startle me. 

My training period is almost up, but I don’t feel any different than when I first landed. Are 3 months really enough to turn me into a better version of myself?

Anyway, I hope you’re doing well. I hope you’re keeping the others in line, lol. Donnie is easily overwhelmed, and I know Mikey and Raph together are nothing but trouble. 

~ L

That was the first letter you had gotten from Leo where he showed his feelings towards you. The very first letter was much more lighthearted with an exciting tone to it, and you could hear Leo’s voice in your head while you read it. 

You begin a collection of all the letters Leo has sent you so far in a blue folder. To look back on them when you miss him. 

It’s almost been 3 months already. That’s how long Splinter made Leo’s training period. But, he was doubting himself and venting to you through this letter. Was it enough for him? No, Leo’s a perfectionist. That’s not a lot of time for him. 

So, you wait, wondering just how long Leo is planning to potentially stay in South America. 

Back in the city, everything is doing fine. Sure, the 3 remaining turtles miss Leo, but he’s supposed to be coming back. As long as he keeps sending his letters to them, they’ll know that he’s safe and alive. The jungle is a dangerous place, and who knows what types of threats Leo is facing over there? 

You come around the Lair more to spend some time with Leo’s brothers while he’s gone. Raphael seems to be the most stoic about his absence, and upset about the fact that they can’t go up to the surface and fight crime. Mikey does his own thing, and for some reason, wanted to do something crazy and get a job. You had no idea how he was going to pull it off, but you were excited to see the outcome. Donatello is keeping both of them in line while trying to fix things in his free time. He starts to tell Mikey to break the toaster as Leo did so he has something to fix weekly. Yes, Leo broke the toaster weekly. 

You were already close with Leo’s brothers, but now? You found yourself gravitating towards Raphael. The topic of Leo was on his mind, and he worried. He always did, even if he tried to hide it. Though his expression was always a straight face when it came to his older brother, on the inside, he cared. He cared so much. 

And as 3 months come to a close, Leonardo isn’t back. 

To: Y/n

I tried to write this particular letter so many times. Especially to you and Raph. I know it’ll be a lot for you. 

I’m staying here. I can’t go back yet, not when I have so much more to work on. 

I’ve already discussed with Splinter back and forth with these letters, and he thought it would be best if I wrote to you and the others in the next letter I sent. 

I keep everyone’s letters. I try to keep track of the conversations we’re having. Right now, I’m having a debate with Mikey over whether the Earth is flat or not. Spoiler: It can’t. Ask Donny.

So, I guess I can ask you as well for a third opinion, do you think the Earth is flat? I mean, the Earth turns, does it not? Is that not some indication of time passing? Time passes as the world turns. Time goes on, right?

I want to keep this as light-hearted as possible, but for some reason, it’s hard to write this letter to you. I don’t want to bombard you with my feelings, but I can’t help but wonder if you think about me as much as I think about you. I’m not sure what that entails, but you are such a great friend to me, that I’m forever grateful for you. 

Just a few more months. That’s it. Just a few more months and I’ll be finished. I want to come home and see you and the others again. I’ll be a better me in that time. Swear it. 

~ L

He swore it. 

He swore to you he would be back in a few more months.

When this round of letters comes to the Lair, Raphael is livid. 

Livid because, well, he doesn’t take promises lightly. Leo promised he would come back in a few months in his letter. But Raphael was more upset that he wasn’t coming back after these 3 months. And even MORE upset about the fact that just because Leo is gone, doesn’t mean crime left with him. If anything, it’s at an all-time high. He can’t keep sitting here and watching it all happen on the news, either. 

“It’ll be a few more months, okay Mikey?” Donnie tries to soothe his baby brother, as Mikey was visibly hurt by the news. He wanted his older brother back. Now. 

“Don’t give Mikey false hope, Don.” Raph glares at the brown-eyed turtle, “It ain’t good fa him. Mikey, Leo ain’t comin’ back right now, God knows when he is, alright?” 

That’s what Mikey needed to hear, according to Raph. He didn’t want to sugarcoat anything for Mikey. Hell, he was never good at sugarcoating anything for that matter. 

~

 It’s been almost a year. Almost a year without Leonardo. A year without your best friend, and a year without the person you cared for immensely. 

You and Raphael get closer during this time. He’s the only turtle that rebels against Splinter and begins to stop crime on his own, and you appreciate him for it. You tell him that one day before you leave the Lair. 

---

So as Raphael sits up from his position on the couch, he can’t help but smirk at you. 

And good God, that smirk got you hooked. 

By this point, the city had created a vigilante name for him: The Nightwatcher. You remember seeing a news article online in which the title photo had been a blurry shot of the vigilante, which was just Raphael in metal armor. Though the rest of the family was oblivious to this, you sure weren’t. Mikey becomes a Nightwatcher fangirl, and Donnie becomes a Nightwatcher hater. 

“Wanna take Betsy out wit me tonight?” Raphael asks as he stands at your fire escape. Funny, he always gets deja vu when he stands there, it reminds him of when he first met you. How he was standoffish at first, but he found out that you weren’t so bad after all. 

“You think Betsy can handle two crazies on her back this time?” You joke, looking down your fire escape and onto the street, seeing sleek and shiny ruby Betsy parallel parked in between two ivory Hyundais. 

The last time you went on a bike ride with Raph, Betsy- the name you gave to it- sort of broke down. But, thanks to Raph’s fix-it skills (thanks Donnie,) she was up and running. 

He chuckles at your response and puts his helmet back on. He motions you to follow him down the fire escape and hands you the spare helmet you used for all bike rides. 

This one was different. 

Why? Well, the others didn’t end in a kiss. 

Raph let you do donuts around in an empty parking lot with his motorcycle, and he couldn’t help but smile at how happy you looked. How you wore your smile so well, and how he thought about other ways he could get it to appear over and over again.

He always thought you were cute. 

But as the night went on, you find yourselves rendezvousing all across Manhattan on ol’ Betsy, letting your frustrations out about Leo’s extended absence on the highway, going 65…80…85 miles on the interstate. You lost count, you were having so much fun. You both spill your feelings about the current situation with your best friend and Raph’s brother. You’re hurt. But, can you blame him? You find it in your heart to forgive Leo after that. Raphael doesn’t. It’ll take more time for him.

When it was all said and done, you wind up falling asleep on the ride back, something that never happened. But there goes fate, again. Coming at the most unexpected times. Raphael carries you back up to your apartment- to which you tiredly ask if he stays with you. You knew- as tired as you were that Raph would get questioned by Donnie when he got back at this ungodly hour. The sun was damn near starting to rise, and sleeping over at your place is one hell of an alibi. 

And then it just happens. You comment on how tired he looks, but it just makes him look even more attractive to you. THIS wakes him up, and as he wonders if he heard you right, you plant a kiss on his cheek as a thank you for staying. 

Raph tests the waters a bit and takes a risk. 

He kisses you. But, not on the cheek. 

And that, dear readers, is how your first kiss with your now boyfriend went. 

---

~

Raphael was right, it’s been an entire year. And now? There’s word from April that Leo is very much alive in South America. Though, you knew he was just fine. Despite the letters stopping completely, you knew in your heart Leo was okay. He knew how to take care of himself on his own. 

So it’s no surprise when April gives you the news. 

Your boyfriend is angry at him. Raph misses him, he told you that much, but he had this burning hatred for his brother for scaring the rest of the family like that. I mean, Mikey thought he was dead somewhere in the jungle miles and miles away. 

You think about the last letter Leo sent you.

So, I guess I can ask you as well for a third opinion, do you think the Earth is flat? I mean, the Earth turns, does it not? Is that not some indication of time passing? Time passes as the world turns. Time goes on, right?

I want to keep this as light-hearted as possible, but for some reason, it’s hard to write this letter to you. I don’t want to bombard you with my feelings, but I can’t help but wonder if you think about me as much as I think about you. I’m not sure what that entails, but you are such a great friend to me, that I’m forever grateful for you. 

You wonder what his next letter would have been to you had he not stopped all those months ago. He sure would have had a lot to say in response to yours, anyway.

To: Leo

To answer your question, of course not. The Earth is NOT flat. 

But Leo, time is a thief. You of all people should know that. You were always the philosophical type. The world turns, yes. It’s an indication of time, yes. But it matters not how much time has passed, but what you did with said time. 

To answer your other question, I do think about you. I wonder what you’re doing, if you’re swinging on vines like Tarzan or something. I care a lot about you, and that hasn’t changed one bit. This time away from you has been difficult on everyone, but getting these letters every 3 weeks helps. 

You can never bombard me with how you feel, your feelings are always valid to me. I want you to know that all those feelings you have for me are reciprocated. 

~ Y/n

Maybe it was a miscommunication? You thought that for a while. You thought you had read his last letter wrong. Did he mean he had feelings for you? Because you had also developed a small crush on him. Before he left, you liked him. 

But, what if you read it wrong? Did he just mean his feelings toward you as a caring friend who missed the yin to their yang?

Maybe you were thinking a little over your head. You weren’t even sure if he got this letter, anyway. 

You never knew. He stopped writing after that. Not just to you, but to the others as well. It was simply a thought of what once was. 

~

A few days after April comes back from her business trip, Leonardo seems to follow. It’s unexpected as hell. After spending the first half of a warm Saturday working and getting ready to head down to the Lair for the second half, you get a text message from Raph.

 

Raph, 8:00 pm 

Babe, lmk when you come down, okay? There’s a surprise for ya 

You start to think about what it could be. Maybe Mikey had a party gig earlier and got to take a slice of your favorite cake home. You always liked being surprised with a slice of cake wrapped in tinfoil when you went down to see your boyfriend. 

But only it’s not cake. 

You come toward the entrance of the Lair a few moments after you messaged Raph you were close, and there he was, giving you a quick kiss and covering your eyes. 

“Ya might like it more than I did,” His gruff voice comments. As you’re helped by Raph into the Lair, you sense something you haven’t in a long time. 

It’s Leonardo. 

You knew it from the moment Raph took his hands away from covering your eyes. You were face to face with someone’s plastron, and judging by the arm muscles you knew it was Leo. He was the only one who wasn’t as bulky as Raph, yet not as small as Mikey or Donnie. He was right in the middle.

“H-hey.” 

You thought a lot about how you would react to Leo if he came home. Would you cry? Would you not forgive him anymore? Would it go back to the way it used to be? You could only predict how your brain would react but failed to predict how your heart would. 

You hug him first. 

You always did, anyway. 

Leo wished he had hugged you first right now, though. But, it’s a sweet moment between you two. 

“I missed you, jerk.” You say into his plastron. On the surface to everyone but Leo, it’s two best friends reuniting after a year of not seeing each other. But deep down, it’s Leo hugging the person he’s grown to love. He loves you.

Raphael- as much as he despises his older brother at the moment- calms down for the time being since Leo stepped foot in the Lair an hour earlier. He knows that you and Leo were close before, and how much you missed him as a friend. You never told Raph about what you last sent Leo and what you thought of it. It wasn’t relevant, and it was sent MONTHS before that night you became a couple. It was sent way before you fell for Raph. And once again, it just wasn’t relevant. Leo never bothered to send you a letter that confirmed your feelings were friends or more than that. So, it had to be just friends. He saw you as just that, and you had to accept it. Which, you could. You could accept being platonic with him, and just be the good friends you were. 

Once you break away, you and the others sit down in the living room like old times. Mikey’s asking Leo all these questions about South America, and Donnie’s asking about the native wildlife. You and Raph on the other hand, ask the harder questions. 

“Why’d ya stay longa?”

“Did ya forget us?” 

Raphael asks him these questions, and Leo’s honest about each one. 

He stayed because he needed time. He never- not for one second forgot about you guys. He missed you all. He knows he fucked up. 

“Why did you stop writing?” You ask. 

This is a tough question. You look at him with concerned eyes, and Raph puts an arm around you. 

“I um…I got caught up in my own world, and…” Leo trails off as if he was thinking of what to say. But, he lost it. That’s when it hits him. He doesn’t say anything. He’s so fixated on the way his brother is touching you, and how you let him. Almost as if it’s an afterthought. 

“I ran out of ink.” 

“You couldn’t like, buy any?” Mikey asks, earning an eye roll from Raph and Donnie. 

No. No, he couldn’t. 

+++

As you spend your evening down in the Lair and hanging out with everyone, you notice Leo going to Splinter’s room, and you hear indistinct chatter coming from upstairs. Leo had spoken to his father when he first got back. In fact, nobody even knew Leo came back until Raphael overheard them talking from the cracked sliding door. 

Though it wasn’t your business, you wondered what they were speaking about. 

You weren’t one to eavesdrop, but the bathroom just so happened to be across from his room, so you heard their conversation for a few moments anyway. 

“The best you can do is let them be happy, my son. Which they are. You cannot reverse time when things do not go as planned.”

“I…I know, but…I realized how much I liked Y/n when I was out there. I just…I was too late.”

‘Using the bathroom could wait,’ You thought. As you continue listening. You listen to the pain in Leo’s voice as he describes how his heart shattered when he realized Raph found his way into your heart. He wondered if you noticed. Splinter says no, you wouldn’t have noticed. You would be oblivious, as Leo never took that chance to send you those letters when he was away. 

He saved them and brought them home to give to you. Well, he was going to give them to you. 

Leo lied earlier. He never stopped writing. In fact, that’s all he did in times of loneliness. He wrote. He wrote until his hand was cramped or he had to start over because he felt he wasn’t conveying his emotions well enough. He had as much ink as a turtle could have. 

That hug meant more to him than you could think. He planned on getting you alone and giving you the unsent letters to take before you went back to your apartment. But he couldn’t anymore. He couldn’t ruin the relationship you had with Raphael. He wouldn’t- no- couldn’t be that selfish. It just wasn’t in his nature. 

So what did happen with those letters?

This burning curiosity seems to take over. You take a wild guess and enter Leo’s room- seemingly untouched for the past year. There’s a small pouch on his bed, the same one that he wore when he said his goodbyes before leaving way back when. You open the front zipper, it feels flimsy from all the wear and tear. Your senses were correct, and there was a folded yellow paper in the compartment. The same color paper that Leo wrote letters on. 

You lock yourself in Leo’s room and sit down on his bed to open up this folded mystery. 

You’re surprised to see that upon opening, 3 more letters fall out in a crinkled mess on your lap. After sorting them by date, a part of you wishes that he sent them sooner. But then another part of you disagrees- the part that loves Raph. You were happy with him, so fucking happy. You were a near-perfect match for each other. He saw you at your lowest and was there to help you out. He was always caring, even if he didn’t always tell you- he showed it. 

 Not only that, but you couldn’t go back and change the past. 

7/10/2007

To: Y/n

You always were so good with words. It’s the one thing that I always admired about you.

I’m glad you feel the same about me as I do about you. You’re always on my mind, Y/n. I thought it was just a little crush at first but…gah, I’m not sure. I think it’s more. I’ve never had a crush before. Haha, I’m pretty good with unintentionally rhyming, huh?

You’re absolutely right, time is a thief. I hate myself for not realizing that with all the time I’ve taken up. I write little by little, and I apologize for taking so long with this one, but I wasn’t sure how to write that I feel like I’m falling in love with you.

And I know it’s a lot to use the word love- but I’m positive that’s what it is. As I sit here and think about you, I always go back to the first time I ever laid eyes on you. How gorgeous you looked despite the situation. How you were so sweet when fate got the best of me and revealed my true self to you. How you were sweet to me even after, and how you were warm and welcoming. The average person would have run to the hills, but you stayed. You stayed all this time, and I think that’s one of the reasons why I’ve come to love you. How accepting you are of those who are different. 

7/20/2007

To: Y/n

It was selfish of me to leave you all. I know that if I send this letter and the others I wrote to you months after I received yours, there’s a chance that you don’t have those same feelings anymore. And there’s also a chance that I’m completely taking what you said the wrong way.

But, if I didn’t, and you truly feel those feelings for me- the “more than friends” kind, then please, read on. If not, take what I say with a grain of salt. 

I guess the saying is correct; absence does make the heart grow stronger. 

With that being said, I have a rather…odd request. I know it’s a lot, I know it is. 

I want you to wait for me. I should have told you this before I left, but it was just a small crush back then. I wasn’t sure if I should tell you. 

I know, it’s extremely selfish to ask you to lock your heart and throw away the key until I return, but we all get at least one selfish pass, right? If you can’t, I understand. I hope you find someone that loves you the way I would have when I came back home. 

But a small part of me hopes you don’t find someone, and we get to be together after all. 

Then again, I can’t control anything. I can only wish. Wish upon the millions of stars that scatter the South American sky. 

8/1/2007

To: Y/n

I was always the philosophical type, and I’m glad you noticed. If this is the world where I get to be with you, I’ll cherish it. I’ll cherish you. I’ll cherish us. 

But, if the cards aren’t in our favor, then I know there’s a parallel universe where I get to be with you. 

Perhaps all I had to do was choose to write back to you instead of waiting and getting caught up in my training. Or maybe I choose to never go to South America. All of these decisions happen in the multiverse--I just so happened to get the short end of the stick in this one.

+++

Your eyes, welling up in tears, fold the slightly worn papers back up and into the pouch, zipping it back up. Curiosity didn’t kill the cat, but ignorance sure did. And right now, as sad and torn as you are, you feel relieved that you read these. Leo would have had to suffer in silence, without ever telling a soul but his Sensei. 

As you exit Leo’s room, feeling a sense of confusion and uncertainty. you ask yourself the grand question, despite being in a daze:

//

Taglist:

@bee-1n-space @ducky-died-inside

Masterlist

[crimetimesteadicam]

ok @morporkian-cryptid tagged me to do this fic author interview so here we go...

if you would like to do this, i am officially tagging you, yes you, right now. tag me back so i can see your answers

1 How many works do you have on AO3?

i got 40

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

1,044,749

3. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

sorry like none of these are lupin iii. a blight on my lupin iii blog

Wabisabi (991 kudos) - Spirited Away. idk it's short and cute, read it

BONES OF BLACK MARROW (952 kudos) - Homestuck. the infamous cyoa cannibalism sex fic. scrolling through the things people say about it in the bookmarks is always so funny

Cum mortuis in lingua mortua (925 kudos) - Homestuck. no clue why it has so many kudos lol it was like the first long thing i've ever wrote (a whole decade ago??? jesus). it's a d&d/discworld joke

Vanitas vanitatum (914 kudos) - Homestuck. the same d&d/discworld joke except the LI is turbo depressed. notable for being the only fic i ever outlined and edited and that's why it whips

Supermassive Retinol Overdose! (677 kudos) - hey look, a lupin fic made it on here!

4. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

i do when i have something meaningful to say besides "thank you!" i don't have a lot of thoughts about my own work so therefore i tend to not respond if there's not a direct question :( my head is empty. i always respond to every single comment on the last chapter of longfics though because i'm always impressed people read that far lol. genuinely, from the bottom of my heart, thank you for reading all that

5. What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

idk uhhhh i wrote a series once where two of the main couples break up at the end, but it wasn't really angsty

6. What’s the fic you’ve written with the happiest ending?

they all end pretty happily

7. Do you write crossovers?

if i did it was so long ago i don't remember it

8. Have you ever received hate on a fic?

no but people used to send passive aggressive hate about my art in fics once in a while. hasn't happened in like 2+ years

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

yes. every kind. EVERY KIND

10. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

a bot will sometimes scrape my high kudos homestuck fics and plant them on a junk ebook site

11. Have you ever had a fic translated?

yeah i think like 7 of them got translated into russian and do numbers on ficbook.net

12. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

in the past me and my friend would sit around a laptop and scream laugh write our way through crack fics

13. What’s your all-time favorite ship?

right now it's jiglup and fujilup

14. What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

i finish almost all my WIPs because i'm a freak. if i don't finish a WIP it's because some dramatic life event happened. this has only occurred two times

15. What are your writing strengths?

im a funny binch

16. What are your writing weaknesses?

i don't outline or edit or re-read any of my fanfic. i just type it and then eyeball it for typos and then post it. i COULD outline and such to really make the narrative nice and tight, but i don't find it very fun to do (for fanfic) and this is like, my relaxing wind down hobby. i just wanna have fun haha. the only reason my fics like, make sense, is because i write at least one ending scene first thing and always aim for that, and also i write out of order so i kinda know the route of the story

17. What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

it's fine if it makes sense to do it there as a narrative device

18. What was the first fandom you wrote for?

h-hetalia crack fic.....

19. What’s a fandom/ship you haven’t written for yet but want to?

once i figure out how to draw zenigata it's over for you bitches. luzeni hours on da clock

20. What’s your favorite fic you’ve written?

for lupin iii fic, i like Lightkeepers the best

[antimony-medusa]

Hi! To preface: I don't think there's any one right or wrong answer to my question necessarily, but I value your opinion as a level-headed adult in this fandom who can probably provide sensible input on the issue I'm having, so I thought I'd ask.

If a CC asks for their character not to be drawn (specifically referring to fanart, which they likely saw on Twitter) in a sexualised way, what does that mean for written fanwork content? Is it "wrong" (putting this in quotation marks since that's a loaded word, to say the least) to write nsfw content about said character and post it on Ao3, considering the differences in visibility/CC knowledge of those platforms, as well as the general consensus/expectation that CCs don't generally read fanfic anyway? Where is the line between "you should respect the CC's wishes" (avoiding the word "boundaries" since that's also very loaded in mcyt spaces) and "you can do whatever you want forever; fanworks are created by and for fans, not for the creators" drawn? Does "just don't put it where they can see unless they go looking" (i.e. correctly tagged on Ao3, not on a CC-frequented site like Twitter) apply? Would it be better not to do it at all, or only create and share said content in private spaces like Discord? Or is this all a "there is no single 'morally correct' answer, make your own personal judgement" thing?

(Sorry for the long-winded question but this is genuinely something I'm struggling with right now, lol. As I said I value and respect your opinion and views about these kinds of things in fandom, so if you have anything to say on the matter I'd appreciate your input!)

Alright so, obligatory warning for discourse on this one right at the top, and possibly also long post. These tend to be me rambling.

This is a situation that I think it's fair that a lot of people disagree. Your personal comfort level with making NSFW content in general is not where my comfort level is, we can come to totally different equilibriums. And then you add in creators expressing that they don't like seeing NSFW content of their characters, and people end up in a whole lot of different places, whether that's a complete no on shipping or NSFW, or people feeling fine to consume it but not create it, or only if it's archive locked, or only specific ships or smps, or whatever. I think it's fine that we don't all agree on this, creation is a fickle beast and we are in a weird place as a fandom of being not rpf but kinda cousins, and we can get *really* close to the creators with twitch and twitter, so people's comfort level in meshing all the parasociality and roleplay and real life of it all can end up in a lot of different places.

I just think that the most important thing for the fandom being a healthy place to spend time on the internet is that we don't go aroud sending hate/abuse to those we disagree with. a) i don't agree with internet mobs or suicide baiting or anon hate in general, b) the number of times I have seen internet games of telephone happen when it comes to this subject is unreal. To use an example from literally today, I saw someone saying that Pac of qsmp pacmike was uncomfortable with shipping art and fic and we all should stop shipping immediately, and once I tracked it back to its source, it turns out that what had happened was the creator said that he wasn't a fan that all the art was of him in the jumpsuit that used to be his skin, he has a new skin now, which turned into sexy jumpsuit art was the problem, which turned into pac hates all sexy fan art, which turned into "pac is being bombarded with nsfw art and shipping and he hates it". Now he might actually also not like NSFW art, but that's not actually what he was adressing, but it was certainly what was being circulated! So like, people warning me off of certain subjects— how do I know that they're actually accurate or if twitter just went twitter on a passing mention of something someone said on a twitch stream?

So I think it's way way way healthier for us as a fandom to sometimes disagree on the subject of "what we're drawing/writing about" and when that happens we implement Don't Like; Don't Read, and we just ignore that, or block if necessary. Don't Want To See it? Simply Don't See It. It's a bad idea to start hate campaigns for sinners, and half the time it's based on bad information anyways.

But in cases that you do know that the creator doesn't want to see that, you found an accurate clip? So this is a case where I think that there's no single moral answer to this that everyone is gonna agree on. We're all coming at it from too many different cultural backgrounds and different streamers in mind and comfort levels with NSFW in general. I don't think there is a firm answer that is gonna make you morally safe. But my personal feelings is that in cases where we know the creators doesn't want to see that, I think the important part there is that the creator never sees that, not that we stamp it off the internet entirely.

I do think, personally, ymmv, that you are not necessarily doing anything morally wrong with drawing or writing NSFW of someone's character, even if they think it's weird. There's a long history of creators saying "you can't do [this] with my characters," and it happens to be you can't [make them gay] enough to make me uncomfortable in general principle with saying creator of the character gets to call the shots in all settings forever. This happened with Anne Rice and with the supernatural fandom and like— it's the internet, we get to make the characters be gay together. This is the making sex jokes about fictional characters website, and Ao3 is the making porn about fictional characters website. I think it's fine if it exists on the internet, the question comes down to one of what we're forcing the creator to see, or what we're putting where they'll stumble upon it. Like, examples from real life— if you have a friend who's vegan, it's polite to not spend time rhapsodizing about how good meat is around them, and if you know that meat makes them sick, it's polite to do a meatless meal around them. That's a human person you want to be okay around you. But that's their boundary for their life, not yours, so even when you're being polite you have no obligation to go vegan when they're not around. And they have a politeness obligation to not walk into a steakhouse and freak out because there's meat there. They have a boundary for their life, and I'm going to respect it, but my life is a different story, and they need to take reasonable steps to protect their boundaries and not just expect everyone else to conform to them.

Or walking by someone on the street and waiting till they're out of earshot and then going "jesus christ that guy was hot" to your friends— that's fine. That's normal human behaviour. What becomes rude is when you make it hot guy's problem and yell at him. Being attracted to someone in your own space is not a problem. I'm aroace, I am not going to be in a relationship with anyone. I'm not going to ban having crushes on me, as long as you don't make it my business. Talking about an attractive person in your own space is not a problem. Being sexual in your own space— and again we are talking about fictional characters, the way I see it, these are lies we're telling about folks that are not real, who live in little minecraft worlds— that's fine. The problem is if we start catcalling people about it.

When you walk into fandom spaces you are walking into a space where we all like taking fictional guys and telling stories about them and a good portion of those stories are going to include kissing. That is not necessarily baseline normal for like, all of humanity, but people talk about tv shows they watch as one of the classic work small talk techniques. Fandom takes the "I hope ted gets together with jessica" "no he needs to work on himself first" discussion and writes stories, is all, to share with each other. Privately. On our special private website where there's a button you can click to hide your work from search engines and another one to hide it from logged-out users. If you log into the website and search things up, no tags blocked, what you find is on you for saying "I will see literally anything that exists on this subject in a space meant for literally anything". You will find gore. You will find kissing. You literally just opted in to seeing it. That's on you.

So like, there's my little defense of nsfw work existing in general, I think it existing is not a problem. I do think that we should keep it FAR AWAY from streamers. They get to set the rules for their spaces, and if someone doesn't want to see sexualized fan art, I do think we should make sure that in a reasonable way, they never have to see sexualized fan art/fic.

So like me personally, I'm going to hit that Ao3 button to hide my work from search engines, and anything NSFW (or shippy, depending on the person) is not going to go into the main tags on tumblr or twitter or anywhere I'm aware that the creators ever check that tag, and I'd probably archive lock it if the creator had publically mentioned being uncomfortable with it, and if I was regularly posting NSFW I'd block the creators on social media with any account I discuss NSFW with. I want to make sure that I am talking to my friends about the cubitos, not catcalling someone.

And I would probably err on the side of caution when it comes to social media sites that creators are on? Okay so the fandom has a habit of saying that NSFW and Shipping is BAD and can't exist, on the one hand, but on the other hand it says that anything that isn't Bad Wrong Shipping/Explicit NSFW is fine, which leads to like— extremely sexy thirst trap art being drawn and then the creators are tagged. People putting family dynamic fics that really pushes that envelope in the main tag. Gahhhhhh????? No? Don't do that?

I think it would be healthier in the fandom if we did a lot more going "this is for the fandom, not the creator" and we don't tag creators on twitter, and we took our little kissing fics, or gore, or kidfic, or neurodiverse headcanons, or anything else it might be not for the creator to see, and we kept it in fandom spaces and away from creators. But Ao3 is that fandom space that you have to opt into, it's literally archive of our Own, for fans, in that space as long as you tag it you're good.

So the TL;DR of this all is that my opinion is that if you tag it correctly on Ao3 you're fine. Maybe archive lock it. Keep it off twitter. Don't make it the streamer's problem, and you're good.

[crescentfool]

I noticed you're a Ryomina!!! How did you get into it? And do you have any good fanfics/doujinshi you can advice me to read? ANYTHING on Ryomina actually? I'm dying for anything about them!!! Thanks!!

yes!!! it's me!!! i'm ryomina fan (one of many)!!! thank you for visiting my askbox, i'll do my best to answer all of the questions because it always makes me happy to see that ryomina sparks joy for people! :D

...this got really long because i like linking to things, so i'm putting it under a read more (IM VERY NORMAL ABOUT THEM)

how did i get into it? i got into persona 3 around august 2021 through the movies- at the time my only experience with the persona series was with P5R / P5S / P5D. p3 was the one that interested me the most (i thought minato was very pretty + i caught wind that the themes of the game were very resonant with people). i picked the movies over the game because i'm a guy who plays games at a snails pace, haha.

admittedly, i did latch onto ryomina because of the scenes in the third and fourth movie (i have mentioned in the tags of this art i drew how much i felt like i was exploding and blasting off to the moon watching it).

but what really dug me into the ryomina hole (and what has kept me there) was thinking about how much ryoji encapsulates the themes of p3- and how interconnected his fate is with minato. i wrote some musings about their dynamic here, if you're interested!

tl;dr: what if we were both boys and we were mirror images of each other and i inherited your kindness and looks but god doomed our narrative even though we're soulmates

on ryomina fanworks recommendations:

regarding fics: i'm going to assume that you've probably read the fics that have the highest kudo ratings on them, so i won't really be listing those.

a personal favorite fic that i always hold close to my heart is Eurydice's Vow by crescentmoontea, which explores the idea of ryomina in p5r's third semester. this was the first fic i read about ryomina and it made me tear up lots...

i also think a lot about I Alone Await You by Nail_gun, literally scrumptious writing that captures the ryomina dynamic so so well. actually check out Nail_gun's other ryomina fics while you're at it too!

other fun fic i'm fond of: can't get my mind out of those memories (what were they?) by foxmulder_whereartthou. ryoji being homeless lives rent free in my head and it's all because of this fic. there's a bunch of other fun ryominas from the same author too (i still need to read them)

BkZa555 also has some fun AU scenarios if you're into that too, notably with Zagreus (P5-Setting, Ryoji focus) and The Definition of Insanity (TIME LOOP fuckery!), but they're currently ongoing.

these were some ones that came to my mind first- as i have the strongest recollection reading them. admittedly i haven't really been reading fic this year, so i don't have many recommendations from fic that came out this year. but if you're so inclined to let ryomina consume your soul, i definitely recommend giving the newer works in the ryomina tag a look-see and see if it strikes your fancy!

as a side note, i do have a few ryomina fics that i've bookmarked on my ao3 here, though i have to say that i'm not sure how well they hold up in terms of like... what i would seek out of a fic these days. but they made past me happy so i bookmarked them, LOL. it's kind of outdated (my collection of fic recs has my old username *disintegrates*).

regarding doujinshi: i have not read all the ryomina doujinshi available, but as a starting point, please take a look at this list from pandora-scans from livejournal!

notably, this is where you can find the strawberry-chan say good bye doujin- which features a small and cute comic from shuji sogabe (the p3/p4 manga artist), as well as other artists. the existence of this doujinshi is the funniest thing to me because it's like "HEY if you're wondering what the volume 8 cover is really gay it's because sogabe contributed to a ryomina doujin." this fact makes my head spin (positive). it explains a lot about the manga.

regarding persona side material:

i know you didn't ask for these but i thought that i mine as well list these too, since i feel that the side materials have some fun expansions on ryoji and minato's interactions. i haven't... watched/read all of these but, hey, i like to share these things!

for comic anthologies for the persona series (some of which have ryoji!). if you're interested in reading them, here's a scanlation index from maboroshi-no on tumblr. i don't think this is a comprehensive list, but i think it will be a great starting point!

for some translations of the persona 3 drama cds, check out imaginary-numbers on dreamwidth! ryoji and minato interactions can specifically be found in the persona 3 character drama cd vol. 1, and for the audio + english subs, you can watch this video on youtube:

and ohh the musical. ryoji singing and dancing gives me so much joy. i haven't watched the musical in it's entirety (only fragments), but here are some links that may be of interest to you:

Ao no Kakusei (The Blue Awakening), Sakuya version - playlist for the first p3 musical, translated by Phoenix Maiika.

Ao no Kakusei (The Blue Awakening), Kotone version - playlist for the femc version!! also translated by Phoenix Maiika on YouTube.

Persona 3: The Weird Masquerade (English Subtitles) - playlist by rumio!

P3 Weird Musical DVD & Soundtrack Booklet Scans by rumio_k - twitter thread that links to these funsies, if you don't have twitter, here's the publicly shared drive link.

god. these sure are a lot of links, huh? i hope you enjoy them- pick and choose whatever sounds most appealing! (if this overwhelmed you im sorry GKLHLDH i just like being very comprehensive in my answers about things so i got carried away).

and as a reminder, you (and anyone else reading) are always welcome to browse my tags/archive and reblog things from there anytime! i have... nearly 300 ryomina posts which, while mostly consists of art, has a few fics, meta, hcs, gifs, memes, and whatnot scattered about.

or browse the minato and ryoji tags too! there's.. nearly 1k minato. and 500 ish ryoji. and they're going to keep on growing because i can't stop being obsessed with archiving these things. god help me i am so deep in this hole called ryomina hell and now you're here too. welcome aboard!

there's always going to be a lot of fun ways to enjoy rotating ryomina around in one's brain, i think- they're a pairing with such fun symbolic imagery that is So Deep (to me) but ALSO they're immensely hilarious and weird guys (affectionate). so i love to share these things in hopes that it gives you joy too! they are the most couple ever (to me) (i'm biased)

thank you again for the ask! i hope it can satiate your need for more ryomina, and be a nice aide in exploring the p3 fanspace :)

[letmetellyouaboutmyfeels]

I noticed that your older fics tend to lean towards dom eddie/ sub buck while the more recent ones are switch buddie (which I love) so I was wondering if something in the show made you see/interpretate the characters differently or if your own writing preferences changed or if I'm reading way too much into everything

You're not reading too much into it and I'm honestly pleased and flattered that you paid enough attention to my writing to notice!

Yes, as the show has gone on, and we've learned more about the characters, I've come to the conclusion that Buddie would be more switches. I think it's natural that as you learn more about the characters that you shift how you write them - in my earliest fics for example I had the headcanon that Eddie would have had some (young inexperienced and fumbling) experiences with men, and that he'd be more into casual sex. Now I headcanon based on his behavior that he's more demisexual and wouldn't have really any sexual experience besides Shannon because of that need for emotional connection. I originally thought Buck would realize his feelings first, but given how season five went and then Eddie's reactions to Buck in season six I'm now of the opinion that Eddie realized his feelings a while ago and has been ignoring them while Buck, bless him, is fucking oblivious.

Anyway those are just two examples of how as a show goes on and you learn more about a character you shift your headcanons and perceptions about them. So yes! I've shifted in my views of how the boys would be in bed.

I do think that Buck would overall be more submissive and when he's domming, do so more as a service dom - Buck likes to know he's doing a good job and being there for the people he loves, and so domming for him would be about knowing he's giving Eddie what he needs, rather than enjoying being in control.

For Eddie, someone who has constantly in his life scrambled for control and had it yanked from him, I think he'd still overall prefer to be in charge, at least at first, and I think that'd only be submissive to someone he really deeply trusts. However given everything in season five I think he'd also find being submissive to be incredibly freeing if it's with someone he can trust to love him and hold him (metaphorically), and Buck is that person. Eddie is very much a caretaker and likes to feel he's trusted (lack of trust in his abilities is a huge issue in his relationship with his parents for example) so I think he'd really like domming Buck and seeing how much Buck trusts him to take care of him. It was really season five for me that gave me the shift in feeling Eddie would be submissive at times, given his whole arc with his trauma. I think given how important it was in his arc for Eddie to admit he loses control sometimes and needs help, submitting would be important for him as well. He'd just be pickier about it.

In other words - I think Buck's instinct in bed is submit, but he ultimately shifts to reflect what his partner wants/needs (and headcanon it's probably led to him being sexually unfulfilled before - how many times has someone wanted him to just pick them up and rail them and play that Big Strong Guy when that's not who Buck is?) and would also find fulfillment in giving Eddie what he needs because he likes doing that for his loved ones. And I think Eddie's instinct is to dom, for multiple reasons, but that submitting to someone he loves and trusts would also by very fulfilling and enjoyable.

Ergo, they switch! LOL

I think also in most sexual relationships when you're not explicitly sceneing (i.e. planning a scenario out with set roles) there's a certain fluidity to the roles of who's submitting and who's dominating. So there's that as well, it's not always gonna be clear cut who's in what role and it's going to move back and forth. Y'know?

Anyway that was an extremely long-winded answer ha ha but I'm delighted you noticed that shift! One's art is continuously evolving and when one is writing for the same characters over the years (four and counting for Buddie in my case) while continuously getting more information about them and seeing them in new situations and so on as we get with each new season/episode, there's definite shifts in one's portrayal of those characters. I'm flattered that anyone would pay attention enough to pick up on the ways in which mine's evolved.

[ladysomething]

Well, I lasted three update emails. I was holding out on starting your new fic so I could binge a lot of chapters at once, but after getting the update email today I just couldn’t wait and to no one’s surprise, I loved every minute of it! Such an interesting world you’ve created and it’s only going to get better (for us, for Charles who knows).

I do have to ask since I’m not a fic writer - when you say you’re expecting this to be around 150-180k is that daunting for you as a writer or exciting? Right now you’re averaging around 8,000 words a chapter so with that average that’s around 20 chapters and with possible (please don’t view this as pressure) weekly updates that’s 20ish weeks of fic! I’m always so curious if this seems overwhelming to writers? I know as a reader it’s so damn exciting.

lol can you tell I’m a numbers girl and not a writer?

ah thank you! I'm so glad you're enjoying it, and I totally understand the urge to want to wait. I'm excited you're coming along on the journey anyway!

moving on to your question, I'll try to be succinct but to nobody's surprise I am an absolute yapper so it probably will be a long and winding answer.

I think firstly, you kind of almost explained it yourself, but in the opposite way. I'm a writer, not a numbers girl haha. I personally (though other writers may have different experiences) don't really think about how many chapters it will be, or how many weeks of uploads, so there is really no opportunity for it to be daunting because it doesn't really enter my mind.

The outline I have for this fic IS broken into chapters, but I already am not sticking to it. When I'm writing, I often explore a scene in much more detail (and therefore many more words) that I expected when writing the note for scene. e.g. today's chapter was like "1. Charles goes into pre-heat 2. max claims Charles 3. Pierre shows up" and then it ended up being 10k. I just finished writing chapter 6, which is also at 10k, and I've ended up having to shift half of what I outlined for chapter 6 into chapter 7 because I found a natural end point and I didn't want to end up with a 20k chapter.

so, for me at least, when I write I make a lot of decisions based on my instincts. does this scene need more, or is it dragging? is this chapter complete, or does more need to be added? is there too much in this chapter, and should I split it?

all of which is to say - my estimate of 150-180k is based on how much I have written so far (55k) and at what point in the story am I up to (I honestly don't think act 1 is done yet). I suspect my estimate of 150-180k is very low, and it's not getting to that word count that's daunting, because it's not what I'm actually working towards.

what IS daunting is trying to tell the story itself. are the characters right? are their intentions coming through? am I hiding what I want to hide? do I have a note of plot I've started at the beginning so I make sure I follow it through to the end? working towards answering those questions is what I'm thinking about, and that is always daunting, no matter whether its 10k or 200k (though.... PWP is always fairly mindless hahaha).

but it IS exciting. especially when people love something. I've written a lot of fic in my time, long and short, complete and not complete, and I can absolutely guarantee that the difference between exciting and daunting is how people react. when people love something ... the nerves are there, but they're eclipsed by the sheer joy of knowing you brought a smile to somebody's face with your writing.

not to get sappy, but I whole-heartedly believe that my purpose on this earth is to make people happy through my writing. if I know that I'm doing that, I could write 200k fic after 200k fic and die a happy woman.

I hope that kind of answered your question anon! long and winding, but fairly thorough? haha

[mbakuetshurisprincess]

Out of the Darkness

AN: Hey y’all! This request was simple, like very simple, like all I had to do was write something very fluffy and cute. Unfortunately, I cannot accomplish such a mission, I must force myself to write an emotional plot into all of my fics lol. To @sundownimup-1​ who requested this LMAO I apologize if you wanted something not so deep, I uh, failed in that regard. Also, you requested this forever ago, I promise I do see y’all’s requests they just take me a min. Hope everyone enjoys tho!

Request: “Shuri x fem reader fluff. Since it's almost Christmas..The reader and Shuri are in a cabin in the woods and it's snowing, they are drinking hot cocoa.”

Summary: A much-needed break for Shuri and her girlfriend as the year winds to an end. 

Pairing: Shuri x Fem!Reader

Warnings: Tbh no idea, its mainly fluff so maybe nothing? I don’t even think I curse, don’t quote me tho. I do mention the death oh T’Challa and Queen Ramonda so be warned. 

Word count: 1,439

Suggested listening: Bloom (Bonus Track) - The Paper Kites

“In the morning when I wake. And the sun is coming through. Oh, you fill my lungs with sweetness. And you fill my head with you.”

You felt the bed next to you dip and instinctually you reached out for your partner, only to be met with a chuckle. 

“You’re so needy in the mornings usana.” Shuri cooed as she leaned her back up against the headboard. Once she was situated she grabbed your hand and brought it to her mouth placing a soft kiss on the top of your hand. She then let it fall to rest on the part of her thigh where her boxers ended, placing her hand on top of yours. 

You blinked for a second, allowing your eyes to adjust to the bright white light that flooded the room. It took you a minute to remember where you were, expecting to be awoken to the warm sun of the Golden City, not this white light. By the fourth blink, your brain remembered where you were. 

Shuri knew not celebrating Christmas was going to be hard for you since it wasn’t something Wakandans took part in. She also knew that you two had been missing each other, her spending most of her time in the lab coming into sleep at ungodly hours and you working with the Outreach Centers, getting up way earlier than you normally would to account for West Coast time. By the time she was laying down to sleep, you were waking up for work. Passing each other as you operated on different timing. You greeting her with a “Goodnight, my sweet.” and her responding with “Have a good morning, sthandwa.” Not even having enough time to share a kiss. 

That prompted Shuri to ask M’baku if he knew anywhere she could take you, just like a week-long getaway to allow a break from the hustle and bustle of daily life. Graciously, he offered the cabin that had been passed down through his family, it was deep in the Jabari woods, surrounded by trees and covered in snow. 

That's how you ended up with your hand on Shuri’s thigh blinking up at her with a dumb smile plastered all over your face. 

“What?” She asked, matching the smile on your face. You shook your head at her, your expression never changing. 

“Nothing, just love you. That's all.” You answered, rubbing circles into her thigh. 

Shuri broke eye contact with you, looking away as she tried to fight off the deep red color flooding into her cheeks. 

“C’mere.” Was all it took for Shuri to say and you were moving. She opened her legs and you slid yourself over top of her so that you were in the middle of her two legs. You peppered kisses all over each of Shuri’s thighs before you laid your head down in between them. She looked down at you and placed a kiss on your forehead. 

“Thank you for this.” You said quietly as you peered out of the window, the large trees stayed put while some of the smaller ones swayed with the strong winds outside. 

“You deserve it, my love, you deserve so much in this world. Sometimes I-” Shuri cut herself off and you looked up at her. You could see her biting her lip slightly, one of her tells she did when she was nervous. 

“Hey,” You said, tapping the outside of one of Shuri’s legs, signaling that you wanted her attention. You waited until she finally looked down at you before speaking. “It’s just us here, yeah? Just me and you. Tell me what's on your mind.” 

The look in your eyes calmed Shuri’s nerves, you always had that effect on her. But she knew if she was going to say what she wanted to say right now, she couldn’t look at you. She turned her head to look back out the window at the snow falling. “It’s just that sometimes, sometimes I thank Bast for you Y/N. I thank Bast that she brought you into my life, I can say I don’t know where I would be without you here, with me.” 

It had always been hard for Shuri to express her emotions to you, even before the passing of her brother and mother. But their deaths seemed to exacerbate the problem, so you relished hearing Shuri openly talk about how she felt. Thanking Bast yourself for this moment of vulnerability. 

“For a while, everything was so dark you know? When brother passed I- I didn’t know how I could go on but I had mother, and I had you, so deep down I knew I would be fine; even if it took a while. But when mother passed, it was like the darkness swallowed me whole and I couldn’t get out, I felt as if nothing could save me.” She paused and finally brought her eyes down to you, surprised at how intently you had been listening. “But there you were.” 

You noticed the tears forming at the corners of her eyes and it caused your breath to hitch. 

“No matter how much darkness surrounded me whenever you were around I swear I could always see light. It was small at first, but little by little you brought the sunshine back into my life. And- And I wanna thank you for that. I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for never leaving my side, no one else has done that for me.” By the time Shuri had finished, the tears that were brimming at the edges of her eyes began to fall over, softly landing on her shirt. 

You instantly sat up and turned around, wrapping your legs around Shuri’s waist, putting them between her back and the headboard she had been leaning against. You wrapped your arms around her neck and pulled her body into yours, wanting to get as close to her as you could at this moment. Her hands wrapped around your midriff, holding you just as tight as you were holding her.  

“I’m sorry usana I-I didn’t mean to cry, I just was so overwhelmed with gratitude,” Shuri spoke with her head buried in your shoulder, you felt the material of your sleep shirt dampen slightly with the few tears she let out. 

 “Hey, it’s okay my love. You don’t have to apologize for that, expressing your feelings is never an issue between us, yeah?” You calmed her down by rubbing your hands up and down her back. You rocked her back and forth for a few moments, allowing her to expel the last of her tears. “Can you look at me, baby?” 

Shuri nodded and pulled her head from your shoulder looking up at you through teary eyes. You quickly wiped away the stray tears from her face and placed a kiss on each of her cheeks before placing one sweetly on her lips. 

“I’m not going to leave you, okay?” Shuri once again nodded in response. “I am filled with nothing but gratitude for you that you choose me every day to be your girlfriend. I am honored that you let me see every side of you. Truly my love, you are my favorite person.” 

You could see Shuri fighting off a smile on her face which only led to a grin appearing on yours. She leaned in and pecked your lips once before pulling away and doing it again, she repeated this over and over till you were both laughing and you were pulling out of her arms. 

You squealed out once you finally shimmed your way out of bed, doing a victory dance as Shuri lay back watching you with a shake of her head. You looked over at the coffee table and noticed two mugs sitting on them with white puffs sitting on top of them. Wondering what exactly it was you made your way closer and peered into them. 

“Shuri!” You exclaimed. “You made hot chocolate for us! When did you even have the time?” You went to turn around and ask but the feeling of her hands wrapping around your waist stopped you. Mentally you cursed her black panther abilities for allowing her to sneak up on you like that. You placed your hands on top of hers as she rubbed circles into your stomach with the pads of her fingers.

“That’s how you like it right? With the little…” The word escaped Shuri’s mind but you were happy to fill it in for her. 

“Marshmallows! Aww, baby thank you, really.” You turned around and wrapped your arms around Shuri’s neck drawing her into a hug. She welcomed your touch and encased you with her arms. 

“You more than deserve it, my love.” 

[karinyosa]

Gene and Brinker, good sir?

AHHH okay okay

what made you ship it?

reading the book lol. ok so i feel like there's a lot of context i need to explain for this beyond just the book's subtext bc there's a bit of personal lore here. before teaching us the book, my middle school english teacher introduced each of the central four characters with this powerpoint with a slide on each one, and the way she described them like archetypically and physically made it sound almost like (to MY middle school brain) a dating sim, in which gene was the main character. like the blurb already sounds very romance novelesque so jdkshfkh. ig it wasn't too big a leap. so we already have a baseline there.

i also think that in the book brinker and gene are a secondary and competing rivarly/friendship to gene and finny's rivarly/friendship, and i think that's where the tension between brinker and gene and brinker and finny comes from. in fact this is kind of just text, like brinker and finny i think are pretty explicitly competing for gene's attention. i'm pretty sure there are some like old asp posts from the earlier 2010s era of the fandom where people are like "brinker and gene/finny have such ex energy", but iirc it was more often finny? like i'm definitely not the only person to see this Thing brinker has going on with gene, but at the time i'm p sure brinkerfinny was the more widespread take. anyway. brinker pursues gene so relentlessly both as an antagonist and as a guy who just Needs to be doing things with him, Needs to be occupying his time and attention. and yet they maintain this weird friendship/understanding throughout. to me this was most pronounced with the whole enlistment thing, and that dynamic where gene had to choose between finny and brinker for the enlistment/not enlistment??? it just gave very love triangle energy. the intensity with which brinker is fixated on gene is like. it gives repressed queer guy with problems. it's beyond wanting to antagonize him, he just is constantly coming up with excuses to be around him and to orient his focus around the pursuit of this one guy. his need to be morally superior to the object of his pursuit feels very queercoded to me. it's a very funny contrast to other parts of the book where he and gene are seemingly chill and normal friends? boy has issues

2. what are your favorite things about the ship?

HOOOOOO okay i have a long answer for this because it has to do with how i accidentally made myself insane about them. so i have this really long winded headcanon-turned-sequel fic in my Brain and Mind about gene and brinker moving in together after the war for kind of money reasons and kind of personal reasons. gene has been depression camping in finny's family's attic for a long undefined amount of time, and brinker is like hey you need to get the fuck out of there come live with me idiot. cue several years later and this is where the fic starts. i usually have it start at the time that gene would've gone back to visit devon, because i like the idea of that whole thing happening during a hs reunion in devon town, in which he and brinker joint travel and stay with his family which is its own whole awkwardness but anyway. <- culmination of everything i've ever thought about them since eighth grade

most of my genebrinker thoughts center around this period of adulthood where they're not young anymore but they're not old either, and they have all this unresolved tension and shared trauma and resentment that spills over into their "present" relationship. i think this is where genebrinker would theoretically "actually" start, in adulthood. i think there could've been ambiguous things earlier, especially during their joint enlistment period if they happened to be together, but nothing very deliberate or openly acknowledged until much later. it's this delicious mix of both having an established very domestic and familiar dynamic, knowing this person's routines and habits inside out, and yet having this pent up unspoken something. and for gene and brinker, it's not just this quiet tenderness, although i think that's bound to happen sometimes when you're essentially apartment husbands. i think they'd blow up at each other and let things slip during heated moments that they don't mean to, mostly on brinker's side, bc i think brinker's been nursing some kind of crush since hs, whereas if gene returned brinker's feelings, i think they'd slowly build over time. their familiarity with each other is also very interesting because, while they have this odd like, daddy issues(?) solidarity in the book that again feels very queer, in adulthood, it's also this thing of like, they kind of shared the murder of one of their closest friends. my fav think about genebrinker is that they know the worst of each other, that they actively participated in some of the worst parts of each other's lives, but it's that coupled with like, arguing over dinner and visiting the parents and trying to hold down stable jobs. or i guess for something more connected to the actual book, that coupled with like, accompanying your friend to an awkward meeting with his dad

this is not even all the things i think about their dynamic or all the like underlying sources of tension in their adult relationship in my head, i also think they'd be in very different places in terms of sexuality, and that would come to a head at some point, but i'll stop here because this is a question about my favorite THING, not explain every thought you've ever had about them

3. is there an unpopular opinion you have about your ship?

i think the entire ship is an unpopular opinion lmfao. like 90% of this is my headcanons. ummm i have brinker being the more responsible of the two when i write them as adults, if still the more temperamental one, so that might be controversial? i think at this stage of their lives, he's more practical and better at home ec stuff, and gene cannot fucking take care of himself for the life of him. gene is running himself into the ground while brinker is like get your fucking socks off my floor

[snickerdoodlles]

Thank you for sending me an ask for the author ask game! Now right back at you: F. canon fics or au?, V. post the last sentence you wrote, and X. give a summary of your current project! Thank you :)

you're welcome!! excited to see u in my inbox too :D ❤❤

F. canon fics or au?

yes! 😂

my preferences for canon vs AU largely depend on how much i feel a character is tied to their setting. for example, i don't really read anything that's non-mafia for kp. for me personally, the cores of the kp characters are so heavily influenced by trauma induced by the mafia specifically that i struggle to connect to versions of them that don't have that aspect. i know it's done, they're just not stories for me. i do pretty alright with AUs that are still mafia but with other elements (like magic) thrown into them to alter the setting, and i more-or-less consider canon-divergent AUs to still fall under the 'canon universe' umbrella, but i tend to be more drawn to pre-/post-canon or canon fics for kp because of the specific setting. the magnus archives would be another example of a fandom where i'm drawn to the impact of the setting on the characters specifically. i like all the characters a lot, but i frankly would not give a fuck about any of their stories outside of the horror context grinding them into dust.

on the flip side, i tend to esp love AU for anything where the setting is just set dressing to the character drama. this tends to be the case for a lot of stories with ensemble casts for me-- for example, a lot of animes, esp sport ones. i read a lot of AU for stuff like yuri!!! on ice and haikyuu!! because its a lot of fun to think of how to transfer those friendship dynamics to other settings, or put them all through hell in a different genre specifically because canon is slice-of-life. but also several of my costume cdramas are fun to AU because a lot of their drama is tied up in specific character dynamics, almost moreso than their specific settings. a story like bad buddy does AU really well too, because their story is in their romeo and juliet dynamic, not their setting.

that was a very long and rambly answer oops 😂 basically it boils down to what questions i have for a character and how necessary i feel canon is to exploring/answering them.

V. post the last sentence you wrote.

[stares at WIPs] which one of you was i last working on again...

...also some of these look very alarming without context lol, i'm just gonna cheat and give you a sneak peek for one of them 😂:

Chay's googling the pet store's hours as though they don't have its schedule well memorized by now. "I'm pretty sure us just owning a fish counts as animal abuse by now. How bad's our karma after our latest Mr. Gold, you think?" "Oh, we're definitely getting reborn as fish in our next life," Kim says over the rattle of the glass rocks he's cleaning. Chay bumps Kim's hip with his, lips screwed up in a pucker as he tries not to look amused. "Should we make merit at a temple before we go to the store, just incase?" Kim puts his hands together and bows his head reverently. "May we earn just enough that we don't wind up in a home like ours." Chay breaks, giggling loudly, and that's all the merit Kim ever needs in this life. "We could also stop risking our next life and just come clean to P'Khun." "Oh fuck no, I'm taking my chances with karma. At least it's known to be forgiving."

X. give a summary of your current project!

[points to snippet above] it's called "The Lives of Mr. Gold" !! it's summary is: Kim and Chay raise one fish.

aka Khun decides they should all bond over being fish fathers and buys Kim and Chay a goldfish to raise. Kim and Chay swear they're doing a great job of it.

[fic author asks]

[polutrope]

Hello! I am no longer in an airport so I can now send this ask!

Please tell me your thoughts on Maedhros + Maglor in "And Love Grew" so far - I am especially interested in Maedhros' perspective on the decision to send Maglor separately with the survivors. These two moments stood out to me (and Hurt Me) and I would like to hear your thoughts on what is going on in that ginger skull.

“Enough!” Maedhros shouted, then nervously glanced at the tent’s thin walls. His hand trembled. With lowered voice, he said, “You suffocate me, that is why. Your displays of remorse shame me.” With this confession, all the defiance burning in Maglor’s breast turned to ash. How long? he thought. How long have you wished to be rid of me?

Maedhros stood upon a hill watching the long caravan of Maglor’s host retreat south: a grey snake winding through the golden fields. The sun curved west behind them. Beyond, the woods of Taur-im-Duinath spread across the horizon like a vast canker. Such, also, was the shape and colour of the future Maedhros foresaw when he searched his heart.

[And Love Grew, WiP, T]

My primary motivation for writing this fic was to answer two questions about Maglor's fostering of Elros and Elrond. The first, and biggest, is how did "love grow"? That's the incentive for the plot of the fic, though I've barely gotten there in 4 chapters, oops. The second is: Why Maglor?

To me, the simplest and most obvious answer is to remove Maedhros (physically; he's ever a shadow over Maglor) from the beginnings of the relationship. Space is made for love to grow because Maedhros wasn't there. So that's narratively why I separated them.

What going on in Maedhros' head? It's a mess, frankly. I started writing a full scene for chapter 1 from his POV and his voice was just too disjointed and bleak to endure. It's either madness or despair, and I think you get a glimpse of the latter is that final paragraph and the way he views the world. At least, some readers told me that lol.

It's not untrue what he says to Maglor, at least not to me (one can read it differently). He does find Maglor suffocating. He envies Maglor's ability to process his grief (perceived ability: Maglor is not processing things very well, either), but it also angers him that Maglor is able (apparently) to distill the magnitude of their situation into something that can be processed. Maglor has become an emotional burden. Meadhros hates himself. He can't stand that Maglor doesn't hate him.

One could also read Maedhros pushing him away as a way to keep Maglor from falling even further with him. But personally I don't think Maedhros is feeling that altruistic at this moment. Maglor's presence upsets him and he wants him gone.

All that being said, I do think Maedhros is right that Maglor is the best person for the job of leading the host of refugees. Although, as he forebodes, being the "best person" at this stage of the Feanorian failure arc doesn't really count for much.

It's complicated. Which is why I'm so stuck with this fic. Thank you for the ask and for reading! It helps nudge my motivation to continue.

[halfagone]

So in the new DP graphic novel, it’s confirmed that Dan is barely weaker then Clockwork, assuming Danny is half as powerful as he is, does that help the theory that Danny is stronger then Superman?

SPOILERS FOR THE DANNY PHANTOM GRAPHIC NOVEL A GLITCH IN TIME

I will be leaving the rest of this response under the cut nonetheless, just to cover my bases.

I do own the graphic novel myself (I've read it multiple times, every time within half an hour lol) and I don't actually know if it's been confirmed how powerful he is? Obviously he does manage to best Clockwork the first time, although they inevitably break apart between Vlad and Danny's best efforts. But I don't know if that's simply because Dan is just that powerful or because of his nature in general. Let me give you an excerpt of what I'm thinking about:

Page 162, from Clockwork himself:

"He's been outside the timestream too long. His structural integrity has been compromised."

Of course the GN (I will be using this going forward to refer to the graphic novel, just so you know) also gave us a bunch of new DP lore about ghosts and what gives them powers. And from my understanding of the GN, ghostly powers (perhaps halfas specifically, if you'd prefer to headcanon it that way) are based entirely on a person's emotional and mental state of mind. Much like Jazz pointed out in the GN, it could be a psychosomatic response.

Therefore, it's very likely that whether Danny is more powerful than Superman is entirely based upon Danny's mental health at the exact point in time they fight. It could literally change during their fight, even. They could fight three different times and one time end up with a clear Danny win, one time a clear Superman win, and once an even tie.

To a degree, it could be argued that it helps the theory that Danny is more powerful than Superman. In another perspective, it could be argued that it doesn't prove anything at all. It's rather hard to tell because the writing of the show in general has always kinda gone up and down in terms of Danny's power level. And when you're talking about crossovers that have never actually interacted in official media (physical paperback, webcomics, animation, live-action, whatever you might consider a canon crossover), it makes it all that much harder to say.

I remember once upon a time a similar argument was making its rounds on Tumblr, and someone mentioned something Stan Lee once said. I couldn't repeat it to you verbatim, but it was something about how it depends entirely on the author on what character wins in a fight. A simpler, more straight-forward way of saying that it would probably be: Plot Armor. It's all about plot armor.

A more complicated response would be: how does the surrounding context of this fight affect the battle in question? Are either of them brainwashed, being puppeteered? Do they really want to fight or are they doing so against either or both of their wills? How do their morals affect their efforts? Or their relationship with the person in question?

After all, in a fic where Danny and Clark are good friends or even father and son, Clark would be a lot more hesitant to fight and possibly injure Danny in comparison to a situation where Danny is more like Dan- largely without morals and regrets- or where Clark is more like the Injustice Lord version of himself. All these things really affect the overall course of the fight.

(A lot of it does come down to plot armor, or just plot in general. I could have Clark go all out, use the power of the sun to totally blow Danny apart, but at the end of the day if I want Clark to die, he is going to Die.)

I know this is long-winded, and maybe only slightly answers your question? But the subject is rather complicated and there's no one clearcut answer and I thought it was better to expand on it than just dismiss it with a simplistic answer. <3

[ladybeug]

was scrolling thru your art tag enjoying your comics when i suddenly discovered you were the one that wrote strangers in the bright lights. having gotten into miraculous only very recently, was tickled to experience a very small identity shenanigan of my own

incredible fic btw; i love it soooooo much. brilliant, hilarious, sweet, poignant. out of curiosity have you read much postww1 modernist stuff? i adored the usage of free indirect discourse for the narration, drunken and in motion and alive, almost reminded me of virginia woolf in a weird way lol. sorry if this is weird

Hello!! I'm about to get long-winded and self indulgent in this reply, fair warning :)

here goes:

Wow!! I don’t know how you found strangers in the bright lights if you got into ladybug in any time frame that can be described as “very recently”, I wrote that in 2018 when I was digesting some personal stuff and in a fantastic ladybug renaissance (of which I have now had several, I think I’ll die in this fandom).

But I’m so glad you somehow did. I only write every couple of years when I get really specific ideas, and the time I spend on it turns into memories of who I was when I wrote it. I feel like that must happen to actual writers too, ones who write often, but I haven’t written “often” since like 2009 and have never asked, so there you go.

But I guess that’s all to say that I am very attached to that story and it’s also one of the only things I’ve written that still feels like it hit the chord I was aiming for. It is so cool that anyone still reads it!!

To actually answer your question: I have never read virginia woolf, and the only modernist stuff I've read was years ago for school classes. I have to admit none of the style was inspired by classics, but instead inspired by the weird disassociation of trying to be alone in a crowd.

I have a final self-indulgent thought, it is a fun fact I realized as I was going down memory lane about this:

I associate ‘strangers in the bright lights’ with a friendship I made that stands out as one of the luckiest and rarest friendships I’ve made – I went to a mountain goats concert alone, and stood up at the front early, and met someone else who had gone to the same mountain goats concert alone and had stood up at the front early. It was one of the fastest and most comfortable connections I’ve made, and we liked each other so much we stayed in touch, even after they moved away. We are still in touch every so often, and as far as I’m concerned in a few years they’re going to publish the best fantasy novel you’ve ever read, so watch out for that.

The fanfiction is in part inspired by that beautiful feeling of meeting someone new that you want to talk to, and they want to talk to you, and a drink or two has propped up your self esteem and you don’t have to worry about who you are tomorrow, just who you are right now. It’s escapism. You feel important, and carried by that feeling, for as long as you are there. Lonely who? Not me. Trapped by past versions of myself, who? Not me.

Anyways the fun fact is - I found out this morning that concert was a year AFTER I posted this fanfiction. I didn't know about that moment of my life as I was writing this. The two are so connected in my mind that this is genuinely surprising, but the concert was in September 2019 and I published the fanfic a year beforehand.

In the words of mr. mountain goat himself: we held on to hope of better days coming, and when we did we were right!