#oh and for context i went to school in canada

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

WIBTA for shooting my shot with someone, after our previous potential "romance" went sour?

I (F22) am friends with a guy who we'll call M (M21). M and I play the same game, so a few months prior, we ended up getting to know each other better and becoming flirtatious. M gave off a lot of signals he was very interested in me, and I reciprocated. I live in Canada and he lives in Italy; he expressed interest in being my tour guide at one point, so I asked if he'd like to go on a date with me if I went to Italy on vacation (as I have the money and time to do it over my school break). M backtracked, and said that distance meant we couldn't ever be "serious".

I felt very wounded, because he'd been very affectionate with me over the course of several weeks, and I admit it, I was a little emotionally volatile because I was PMSing. We got into a fight where we both said some goofy things, and it ended with us not talking to each other for a month. Over the course of that month, I came to realize I really missed him in my life, and I ended up reaching out to M. We both apologized and patched things up.

Another month has passed, and we're still friendly, though the nature of our relationship is a bit more impersonal now. Here's where things get awkward; I was pretty sure for a long time my feelings for M were mostly just friendship and sexual attraction. But M casually brought up that he was trying to get with a girl he knows IRL, and how jealous I got really surprised me. I was encouraging about it, but I did some soul-searching and realized that what I thought was just sexual interest was actually deeper feelings for him.

M's attempt to date this girl were pretty short-lived as she more or less led him on and then ghosted him (karma?), so now I'm left to think about what to do next. He's given the impression he's pretty stressed and busy because of school, and he's not as responsive to my messages as he used to be, which leads me to naturally overthink "oh my god, he must hate me forever".

Thus, I'm concerned I WBTA and be putting him on the spot if I admitted to him "hey, I still have a big crush on you". If I asked him on a date again if I vacation to Italy, I'd want to make it clear that even if I do have feelings for him, I'd be okay with just a brief vacation fling, but that still changes the context of a lot of our relationship. Also, he sort of already rejected me on the basis of "we're an ocean away"; does it make me an asshole if I try again with different conditions?

What are these acronyms?

[greazyfloz]

Reason

Context: Quinn and reader met back when the Hughes’ were living in Canada. . The families became friends fast but due to distance and busy life schedules they slowly distanced throughout the years. They were best friends and the reader only saw relationships with Quinn as platonic

Warning: Drinking

Word Count: 2.3k

I just graduated from the University and am currently driving to Michigan for a girls trip with some of my friends from school to celebrate. We rented a cabin on a small, quiet lake outside of Detroit to relax and drink. 

The little town we pulled into was cute and full of different little lakes. “I heard of this bar the locals go to party at night. We should definitely check that out!” I hear Kaila one of my friends say after turning down the music. “Where is it?” Brit asks. “It literally looks like it is so close to out cabin that we could probably walk there” Kaila answers. We all agree before continuing to admire the beautiful scenery of the lakes.

Farren pulls into the rocky driveway and yells out “We are here!”. We all cheer as Farren stops the car. “Ladies get yourselves ready, it is friday night and we are going to catch ourselves a little vaycay romance with a cute boat boy!”. We all giggled running off calling out dids on whichever room we all reached first before getting ready. 

I pull my makeup bag out of my suitcase and make my way to the bathroom to do my makeup. The rest of the girls have the same idea as they soon follow me into the bathroom as well. I go back to my room to pull out what I am going to wear to the bar tonight when I decide on jeans, high-waisted shorts that makes my bum look big and a tight white tee tucked in. I through my hair in a loose messy ponytail, since it is a small town/ lake town and I don’t want to go all out and just trying to fit the vibes. 

As I am getting changed I look outside to see the sun is starting to set. I quickly check my outfit in the mirror before making my way down the stairs to meet the girls in the kitchen. Farren, Brit and Kaila are all in the kitchen already ready for me. I smile “readyyy!!” I say to them as Brit runs over 2 shot glasses in hand. “Just in time, Here” she says before handing one of the shots. We all took a couple shots around the kitchen before walking down to the bar. 

We arrived to the bar and it had a good balance of people of all ages. “Ouu, there’s the bar!” Brit shrieks before grabbing Farren’s arm pulling her to the bar. Kaila and I laugh following the girls to the bar where we indulged in a couple more shots. The night went on in the small bar, and I was starting to get tired. I am guessing tomorrow we are going to be day drinking so I decided to head home a little early, I turn to the girls before saying “Alright, I think I am going to head back now, I am exhausted”, “Want we to come?” Farren stands, “No, no, stay have fun. The walk really isn’t far and it’s not that scary” I say giggling. 

As I push through the front door, to see a group of guys coming up the stairs to the entrance. I don’t really pay attention to them as a pass them until I heard a friendly “Y/N?” making me turn around to see a smiley Jack Hughes. “Oh my gosh, hi!” I say before giving him a big hug. To his side is Alex Turcotte and Brendan Brisson. I quickly say hi and give them both a side hug before pulling a way looking back to Jack. “How are ya?! What are you going here?”, “I am great! I’ve miss you guys! It has been way too long!! I’m just on a little summer getaway with some friends from school. How are you? How was hockey?”, “I’m great, good! I missed ya bugging me” Jack laughs, “We had a better season this year. Actually great season. Wait, you aren’t leaving are you?” he says, “Yeah, I am started to get tired and I am guessing I am going to have a long day tomorrow”, “Stay for a bit, I wanna catch up! Quinny and Josh are on their way too so you’ll get to see them too!”, I smile shaking my head “Sorry Jack, I am swamped” I say going in for another hug. “Well, how long are you here? You guys should come out on the boat with us tomorrow!”, “That sounds like fun! Text me and I will talk to the girls about it.”, “Will do”. Jack says before I wave to him and the boys before they enter the bar. 

When I got home I took my makeup off and started getting ready for bed. I take my clothes out of my suitcase and get myself all set up for the weekend before my phone went off. The text read an address from Jack. I texted Jack back before going downstairs to grab a glass of water for bed. 

As I’m downstairs the girls all come in. “Oh your still up?” Kaila asks. “Yeah, was actually heading up right now, how was the rest of the night?”, “it was good! Who knew a small town had such cute boys” she replied, I smiled because I just know that she is going to love the activity proposal I have for tomorrow. “Speaking of boys, would you guys want to go out on a boat tomorrow? My friend Jack just messaged me his address and he said there is a bunch of them going out tomorrow.”, “Uhh yess. Y/N  found us boats and boys!” Brit yells out making us all laugh. “Wait, Jack. Like Hughes?” Farren adds. “Yes” I smile. The girls know about my friendship with the Hughes family because they saw on Instagram that I was followed by all three boys and their mother. “Well I am going to bed” I say before heading to my room”. 

[Quinn’s POV] 

I wake up to my alarm clock going off at 9:30. I get up, get ready for the day and head down to the kitchen to get something quick from the fridge before going down to the dock to set up the boat. The boys and I planned to go out on the boat again today. Last night Jack said he ran into some girl and asked if she and her friends could join as well. 

I am out washing the boat when the boys all come out and sit on the dock. “The girls are just getting here now. I just told them to walk around” Jack says. As I look up I see 4 girls coming around the house walking down to the dock. “Hey guys!” I hear a familiar voice yell out making me turn back around towards the girls, “Y/N?” I say as she is steps onto the dock. “Quinny!!” she yells out as she runs to give me a hug “Jack didn’t tell you I was coming? You look surprised to see me” she says, “No, he forgot to mention who was coming.” I say looking at her. 

I am shocked, I didn’t even know what to say to her. I don’t remember her being so beautiful. I mean she has always been pretty but I felt like I was seeing her for the first time. I watch her turn to interact with Josh giving him a hug before we all start to get on the boat. I set on the boat and turn to give a hand to Y/N. 

“Here let me help” I say to Y/N. She smiles and takes my hand before stepping down to get on the boat. As she is stepping down though the boat rocks making Y/N lose her balance resulting in her falling into my arms. She giggles before looking up at me “sorry”, “it’s okay, you good?” I ask, she replies with a smile and nod before taking a seat in the back of the boat beside one of her friends and Josh. 

We push off the dock and we went off into the lake. As I’m driving the boat around the lake I notice Y/N in my boat’s mirror taking off her shorts and button up top leaving her in just her bright pink bikini. I can’t help but keep looking back at her through the mirror. 

The day continued with water skiing, swimming in the middle of the lake, and just drinking out on the boat. I turned the boat around to head back to the lakehouse when Jack looked over to Y/N and the other girls to ask if they were staying for a bonfire. ��Well, we were going to back to that bar we were at last night” one friend spoke up, “Nah this will be more fun I promise” Alex speaks up, “Yeah Y/N stay” I stay out gaining a weird look from Josh and Jack. “Sure” she replies making me smile.

When we get back they all head off up to the house except for Josh and I as we tied the boat up to the dock, “Sooooo, Y/N?” Josh starts, “What about her?” I ask. “You going to tell her how you feel?” Josh laughs. “I don’t know what you are talking about” I say as I step back on the boat to see if everything was cleaned out. “No Y/N stay please” Josh says in a mocking tone. I roll my eyes before I walk past him to the fire pit.

[Y/N Pov]

Today was weird. Earlier I fell getting on the boat having Quinn catch me, gave me butterflies. I have never gotten butterflies from Quinn before. Quinn hasn’t really talked to me all day, nor any of my friends. It seems like he is avoiding me because now I am at this fire pit by myself waiting for him watching all my friends from school mingle with Jack and all of his friends.

Finally Quinn and Josh walk up from the dock, so I stand up and go over to hand quinn the beer I grabbed for him when I grabbed myself one earlier. “Here” I smile handing Quinn the bottle, “Thanks” he smiles “Where is mine?” Josh pouts, “You know where they are” Quinn says. Josh leaves to go get a beer and Quinn looks at me “Well, my mom told me you graduated, congratulations!”, “Thanks” I smile at him but my smile quickly disappears when I ask “are you mad at me? Did I do something?”. “Of course not, why?”, “Quinn I haven’t seen you in 5 years and you really haven’t given me the time of day all day long. I was so excited to come and see you today and it hurts that someone I thought that would be just as excited to see me wasn’t” Quinn just looked at me, hurt in his eyes. He doesn’t say anything though. “Whatever, I’m going to find Jack” I say before leaving Quinn. 

The rest of the night I spent with Jack and Brit. Just drinking and trying to have a good time while I am here. “I will be right back. I have to pee” I say to Brit before walking towards the lake house. 

Once I finished up in the bathroom and start to walk down the hall I can hear a conversation down the hall. I wasn’t trying to evesdrop until I heard Quinn’s voice. He was explaining what happened between him and I outside. “So why won’t you talk to her?” josh questioned him “I mean it is pretty obvious… everyone on that boat, expect for you and Y/N know you have feelings for her”, “She is my best friend”, “why are you saying that like you are scared to lose her? You for real just hadn’t talked to her in years and your still alive”. ‘This day is so weird’ I think to myself. “I need a drink” Quinn says before going back outside. 

I turned around the corner before seeing Josh also looking at me. “Did you hear any of that?” Josh breaks the silence first. “Not on purpose” I lie, “Is that why Quinn has been acting weird? You think he wants to be more than just my friend?”, “I would say I think so, but I know so” Josh says before taking a sip of his beer. I, like Quinn, need a drink. 

After drabbing a drink, I head outside and find Quinn sitting with Brendan sipping his beer. I decide to walk past Quinn and Brendan before walking down to take a seat on the dock letting me legs dangle into the water. Immediately I felt the dock behind creak and a figure sit beside me. “Can I say something?” Quinn starts, “What?” I muttered back. “Actually, can you look at me please” Quinn says, I then tilt my head upwards looking beside me to Quinn that is already staring into my eyes. My heart begins to beat a little faster before Quinn puts his hand on the back of my neck pulling me in for a kiss and I let him. The kiss wasn’t long but definitely wasn’t short. 

When we broke apart Quinn begins “I fell in love with you the moment I saw you this morning”. Now I was the one that couldn’t speak. The kiss confirmed the butterflies I felt earlier in my stomach. “I’m sorry, I am an idiot” Quinn says standing up. “No wait” I say getting up to my feet. I grab his hand before saying “I am scared”, Quinn just looks at me with concern in his eyes that tell me to continue. “I overheard your conversation with Josh in the kitchen. And how he said that you haven’t talked to me in years and- I don’t know. I guess I am just thinking that seeing you again made me realize that I couldn’t live without again. I want you in my life but I-” I was cut off with Quinn’s lips again. Quinn pulls me in closer as the kiss becomes deeper. He pulls away “I think we found our way back to each other for a reason”.

[kimbapisnotsushi]

here's a list of things that i have done or have happened to me as a tutor who primarily works with small kids that i think would have also happened in some equivalent manner in suga's elementary school classroom:

one of my eight-year-olds, during a writing/spelling exercise: "i'm going to write 'I f'ed the dog' because I don't want to write 'I will feed the dog'!" me, trying not to lose it: "we are definitely NOT going to do that, let me help you change it"

my coworker who was teaching the soft 'g' to a pair of twins: "right, so we have 'g' like in giraffe! . . . but i don't know what sound a giraffe makes, sorry kids" me, who was sitting at the next table over and had been completely silent up until that point: [suddenly 'ERRROOOOOS' like an elephant] "yeah sorry that wasn't it i don't know what i was doing"

and then my coworker started laughing so hard she couldn't breathe

my boss: "the next person we're going to hire is going to be based off whether or not we can matchmake them with you"

all jokes obviously but i bet this happens to suga by the main office people

a seven-year-old of mine was trying to write "brian tried all kinds of airplanes" but i cut him off at "brian tried all kinds" bc he had spelled 'kinds' as 'kicks' and i was trying to redirect him like "think carefully - ki-NDS, how would we spell that?"

and he thought for a moment, erased the 'c', and replaced it with 'n' and left it like that

what do we get when we replace 'c' with 'n' in kicks. you tell me.

the "i f'ed the dog" eight-year-old had a project where we had to do a bit of research and i was trying to get him to read the sentence "he was born in canaan" and he squinted at it and then yelled really loudly "CANADA!!"

i was doing some context clue exercises with that same eight-year-old where we read a short passage that used a silly word in place of a real one and we had to figure out what that silly word meant, so the passage was about this girl named liselle who was a good friend except friend was replaced with "gringle" so it was all sentences like "she's a good gringle because she's nice and plays fun things" "we've been gringles since we were two years old" "liselle is one of my favorite gringles" and it went something like

him: "she's married?" me: "not quite! they play together and they know each other well, so what do you think liselle is to this person?" him, enthusiastically: "A GRINGLE!"

(yeah i was having the hardest time trying to keep it together then)

me: "sort of! when you've known someone for that long, what do you become?" him, suddenly very serious: " . . . a man."

and THEN i lost my shit

sometimes that eight-year-old has a session at the same time with another eight-year-old and they get along like a house on fire. i give them spelling tests where they have to write a sentence for each word and when i gave them the word "where" one of them yelled "WHERE DID YOU COME FROM" and without missing a beat the other one immediately yelled "WHERE DID YOU GO" and normally i'd have them write longer ones but that was so fucking funny i let it slide

this was funny bc right before that i gave them an example of "where" by singing the only two lines from "cotton-eyed joe" that i knew

"i f'ed the dog" eight-year-old, during another writing exercise: "i'm going to write 'the clothes are stained with cheese'!" me: "oh like melted cheese, right?" him: "no, dry cheese! because i rubbed it all over my clothes!" me: "this sounds like a personal experience, did this happen to you?" him: " . . . noooooo"

sometimes when i have to teach analog time to the kids i just take the clock my boss got from IKEA off the wall (bc we don't have any fake models LMAO) and bring it over to the table and the first time i did that the kid looked at me like i'd just committed the most heinous crime in the world

[tobiasdrake]

The Disappearance of Nagato Yuki-chan, Episode 7 - Wish

Have fun wishing, ladies! Just. Uh. Try not to wish too hard.

Holy shit, is Ryoko jealous? I feel like Ryoko is mad at Kyon for seemingly reciprocating Yuki's affections.

Sure puts the window-peeping and occasional ill-timed intrusion into a different light, if Ryoko's been Homura-ing Yuki this whole time.

That doesn't sound like a training camp, Haruhi. That sounds like you wanted an excuse to go to a hot spring. And/or the producer wanted an excuse to do a hot springs episode.

I want to take a moment to appreciate what absolute gibberish the phrase "North High Literature Club/Kouyouen Academy Joint Training Camp" is. Training for what? Literature!?

You can't train literature in a hot spring, Haruhi. The pages will get wet, Haruhi.

Because if yesterday's duel taught Haruhi anything, it's that she obviously can't trust any of you dipshits with the ever-important task of journaling your experiences. So she went ahead and took care of that for you.

These are counterfeit school projects for the purpose of tricking the school into funding a hot spring vacation. We're doing fraud here, Kyon. Try to keep up.

What do you think this crime syndicate is? Some kind of book club?

Lawful Menace over here completely missing the part where we are not actually planning on doing anything academic. We're doing fraud here, Ryoko. Try to keep up.

What do you think this crime syndicate is? Some sort of book club?

Ryoko whole-ass turncoating from Team Yuki to Team Haruhi because she didn't anticipate Yuki's attempts being successful? Is that what is happening here?

Because she went from attacking Haruhi for accidentally blocking Yuki to completely freaking out about the possibility of Yuki and Kyon spending time together extremely quickly.

Yeah, I'm with Haruhi. Lawful Menace has lost all credibility when it comes to claims of her stalking being well-meaning. She is definitely straddling the fence between "I want her to be happy" and "Mine mine mine mine mine mine mine mine" right now.

I know they didn't rig the seating lottery. If they'd rigged the seating lottery then Haruhi would be over with Kyon right now, rather than letting Mikuru and Tsuruya have him.

But it's hard to avoid thinking they rigged the seating lottery, especially with that smug grin on Haruhi's face.

The neurodivergent answer to being asked to make choices. I feel this every time we go out for fast food.

Oh hey! Confirmed. Yuki World did give Ryoko actual parents. They're probably in Canada, I bet.

Be funny if Haruhi absorbed the Power Spot and got her God powers back. XD

Yuki praying at a shrine. I suppose if she still has Haruhi's powers then this is probably an opportunity to trigger them. Even in her human state, Yuki seems too well-grounded and insecure to accidentally shape reality.

Unlike Haruhi, Yuki doesn't seem to have any unreasonable desires nor does she expect her desires to manifest into reality. Consequently, it's unclear whether or not she still has those powers.

But praying at a shrine might be a different context for Yuki? I dunno. Yuki is expressly putting a wish out into the universe for something she wants. That might be able to trigger the God abilities.

THIS

This is good Mikuru stuff. Is it really so hard to give Mikuru scenes like this!? All she needed was to have one friend to hang out with that isn't constantly harassing her. That's all.

Space/Time need to become best friends for life. And then Prime Space/Time need to become best friends for life. And then that's it. Mikuru can hang out with Yuki whenever the show wants her to do things and everyone else is BANNED. The entire rest of the cast's Mikuru privileges are revoked.

T_T Awwwwwwwww

That's such a great wish. This may or may not have been Yuki's opportunity to red-string Kyon, depending on if she still has The Powers. But she didn't. Because she wouldn't. Haruhi would but Yuki wouldn't.

Such a great protagonist.

[seeminglyseph]

Got stoned: idea for the concept. Silent Hill UFO endings but like. By the way of that Dream Daddy Satanic Panic secret ending that people found in the coding and went insane about.

I do desperately want to do a mini anime high school murder vacation thing and I think it would definitely be funny to do it in the theme of a secretly unlocked supernatural horror Bad Ending.

I do kind of want to play up the inspiration from like 2000-2010 anime though. Because that was my youth and like. Genuinely my first experience with the genre was the Battle Royale *manga* which is not as high art as the book or the film. The other two are good, I think the manga artist thought he was on a different project sometimes. Idk, I might be exaggerating but I was far too young to have been reading it in any case and as a result my perspective on it is that it was a pretty grotesque mix of nearly pornographic sexuality and violence handled with significantly less understanding or grace than either the considerably over-the-top film and gratuitous novel combined.

You sweet summer children with your Danganronpas and your Future Diaries. Your… Idfk. Darwin’s Games? That one with the Horoscope weirdos where the Rabbit Guy just murdered everyone in hot pants? How much murder gaming do they do these days?

Either way. That’s not the kind of series I want to pay homage to despite liking the novel quite a bit actually, but I feel like the fact that I was kinda full blast exposed to just about everything explains how I have nostalgia for anime that might in retrospect be bad. Like, yeah High School of the Dead is terrible but it was hilarious in context. And if you watch the dub it becomes its own like. Absurdist masterpiece of knowing like… “oh, no, this is garbage, but also taking the complete piss. And that’s fucking wild. What the fuck.” Which also kinda blended that era’s irreverent humour with anime’s “tits comedy and gore” which both doesn’t make sense and also does if you were a teenager in like 2010. Or drunk. Or both because you were in Canada where the legal drinking age is 18…

This is not a voice of concentrated intent, as stated above… definitely stoned and feeling weird.

[pandalandalopalis]

Randomly remembered the time where my high school held a dance that was "masquerade ball" themed and then they didn't allow you to wear masks 💀💀💀

[star-anise]

Oh goddamn my brain just exploded.

I just watched F. D. Signifier's video on "I Don't Dream of Labour" and just how much the whole discussion operates in a while different reality from the one in which Black American men and the concept of working for a living have historically existed.

His take is enormously well-informed and informative, and this isn't an idea that's of his calibre at all, it's just that his take on the context this discussion is happening in was so insightful that it shook something loose in my brain as relates to my own experiences. Mainly, it helped me contextualize a reaction I'd had last week, in a post about dream jobs outside of capitalism and whether it was okay for "engineer" to be one of them, in my background in white lower-middle class.

Like yes, I do have intellectual reasons for believing what I believe. My work experience, my research, my education in the social sciences, my curiosity about the world around me, my readings of Foucault, have all informed my beliefs that society has chronically devalued forms of labour that, in fact, it depends on so much that the entire system freaks the fuck out if those devalued workers realize that they're valuable enough to demand better.

Signifier's video helped me connect with some of my emotional reactions to socialist and utopian thought, and recognize just how much my views are also rooted in hard gnarly matter of my lived experience, and the lived experiences of the people who raised me.

I dream of labour partly because I've found a line of work that I love and that gives me meaning. But the other thing is, I dream of labour because of a bone-deep tiredness in me that says: If I don't do it, the work won't get done.

I'm a therapist, and the birth of my vocation as a therapist was in the years when I didn't have one or feel like I was allowed to ask for them, and neither did anyone else I knew, and the amount of terror and pain that we all lived with because of it would have ripped a hole in my ability to trust the universe if I hadn't decided to make myself the hero I needed. I say that if I do my work well enough I might contribute to enough social change that I'll put myself out of a job, but in practical reality, I don't think that will happen in my lifetime.

I digress. A few years after that, my mom admitted she had depression and went on disability leave from work because she was pretty damn bad. I remember when we got home after she'd picked me up from school one day, and while she was out of the house, her female friends had come to our house and gone to town on all the housework she'd been struggling to do (and then some; we knew things were different from the front door, because the floor of our mudroom sparkled in a way it never had before).

I remember it so much because I think it was only the second time in my life I'd seen her cry. Because it was so unexpected and such an amazing relief, this sense that someone else would step in and do the work for her. (Yes, my dad and older brothers and I pitched in, but everyone's expectations were that if the house was still standing at the end of our tenure it'd be a net win, and yes, I still feel ashamed for not having done more even if I logically couldn't have.)

This is part of what it means to say my gender is "farm wife". My ancestors were white settlers in western Canada, where farms were divided up in a grid pattern that guaranteed that homesteads would be pretty isolated. My grandmothers were children during the Great Depression. For their mothers, being a farmwife meant doing work their family depended on to survive, and knowing that until their oldest daughter got old enough, there was no one to do the work if they didn't. That sense of necessity lives in us still. My mom will endure a job she hates for ages, but feel unable to quit without having another one lined up. I still have "you do not have to fix it" on my phone lockscreen, because unsolved problems cry out to me in the voice of my terror when I was 13 and nobody was saving me.

The thought of coming home and finding my floor washed for me is so impossibly amazing I don't know how I'd even cope with it. The only person I can currently think of who'd actually do it is my mom. And she and I are still trying to sort out the toxic effects of this legacy, where we take on work because we feel we have to and then get angry when we aren't respected or rewarded for it, or try to avoid being the target of that anger by not asking for help we need. The thought of leaving work undone inspires such a deep, visceral level of fear and shame that it's hard to think around sometimes.

All of which helps me explain and understand my reflexive "Oh, fuck YOU" reaction to people who say that in the future robots will flip our burgers and burp our babies, but in the meantime, it's being corrupted by a neoliberal agenda to try to make the backbreaking work of ordinary people five pounds lighter. I am the enemy if I ever hire someone to wash the floor for me.

I'm not sure that "Oh, fuck you" response is bullshit, though. Like, I feel like I'm supposed to say that my ideological enemy is the capitalist boss who mandates workloads, not the edgelord tankie who sends hatemail to insufficiently radical "liberals", but this entire thought process has just helped me formulate why I hate those goddamn tankies so fucking much.

The work of defeating capitalism is important and real and more people need to be doing it. But it's stark raving idiocy to pretend that it's the most important work there is, because before it comes the work of keeping people alive. The work of keeping people fed and clothed and housed, healthy and well, connected and cared about. And I'm always thrilled when I get to do so in a manner that also resists capitalism, but if the only people helping me do that are capitalists, that is who I'm going to fucking ally with. Because the work needs to be done, and I would like to die without the family curse of never feeling able to trust that people will survive if you pause for one moment making my bones glow in the dark.

So if your only reaction to that is to say I should heroically struggle in ideologically pure isolation because Capitalism Bad but also in Big Rock Candy Communism my work won't be necessary so it's not like you feel any need to help me?

Yeah, you're my enemy. Get out of my fucking way.

[forasecondtherewedwon]

Runaway Ride

Fandom: Never Have I Ever Pairing: Devi/Paxton Rating: T Word Count: 4889

Summary: Kamala gets herself into a pickle, Devi needs to go to her, and Paxton has a car. Problem-solving has never been so simple, but that's how it is when your new boyfriend is Paxton Hall-Yoshida. Throw in a little hand-holding on the highway and this family crisis might just be the best date Devi will ever have.

When they finally took a break from dancing—disconnecting hands from hips and shoulders, lips from lips—Devi stepped away in a dreamy headspace. She almost collided with Jonah, but he didn’t tell her to look where she was going, only offered a shrewd, indulgent smile.

Actually, everybody was treating her like that; every eye that caught hers on her way to the table where she’d left her stuff was unjudgmental, admiring, straight up fairy-godmotherly. Devi hadn’t received this much notice since her dad’s death and her subsequent paralysis. And those looks had been pitying, freaked out. Positive attention was new and cool and she wondered, as she grabbed her phone out of her turquoise clutch, whether her socials would show more of the same when she opened them. Would people have snapped stealthy pics of her and Paxton dancing now that she’d been vaulted into the pseudo-celebrity strata of the high school hierarchy? Would the Insta posts be captioned with hashtags of their ship name? Paxi? Daxton? Vishwall-Yoshumar?

Devi never got to check.

Unlocking her phone, she found two missed calls from her mother. Maybe two wouldn’t have seemed like a whole lot to someone else, but Devi knew that, in order for her mom to risk rudeness by stepping away from the company she was hosting at home not once but twice, she’d need to be pretty frantic. Two missed calls from Nalini Vishwakumar were the equivalent of six or seven from any other mother.

Skirting the edges of the gym as she headed away from DJ Humanoid—that nit-witted saboteur of slow dances—Devi was about to call her mom back when her screen changed to an incoming call from Kamala. She pressed her other hand to her ear and answered it.

“Hey. Do you know what’s going on with my mom? She called me twice and, honestly, she knows I’m at the d—”

“Devi, shut up. Sorry,” Kamala sighed. “But I may have kidnapped your history teacher and now I’m panicking a little.”

Devi stopped in her tracks.

“You did what? Why is the sound weird?”

As she was trying to identify the background noise coming from Kamala’s end, her eyes swept over the crowd of her classmates and landed on Fabiola’s. Her friend had been smiling, mid-sway as she held Eve from behind and chatted with Sasha, but it fell off her face like Devi off Dr. Jackson’s roof. Fab disentangled herself from her girlfriend and crossed the room to stand with Devi. She was frowning, silently asking for an explanation for Devi’s distress, but Devi didn’t really have one yet.

“We’re in his car on the highway,” her cousin was saying. “He was a little drunk, so I’m driving.”

Devi had imagined that Kamala was exaggerating, but no, this was really starting to sound like a kidnapping.

“You better be on hands-free right now,” she lectured. Then, because she wasn’t exactly a paragon of road safety herself—barely an hour ago, she’d walked right out in front of Paxton’s jeep—didn’t wait for confirmation. “What the hell happened? Context, Kamala!”

“Well, as soon as I snuck out of the house—”

“But why did you sneak out?!”

“Devi, I can’t talk about that right now!” Devi’s eyebrows shot up at the clear and abnormal hysteria in her cousin’s voice. “I ran out of the house,” Kamala continued, “totally directionless, and the first thing that popped into my head was Manish’s invitation for me to come to karaoke…”

“Ew, what the fuck, don’t call Mr. K that.”

What? Fab mouthed at her, but Devi shook her head.

“That is his name and what he asked me to call him. Anyway,” Kamala said, sounding strained, “I went to your school and met up with him and now I’m driving his car and I think I might have shut my sari in the car door, but I’m scared to pull over and check because if I stop the car, I’m going to have to confront things and I think I’d rather not do that yet.”

“Kamala,” Devi said in a heavy, careful voice. “You have to pull over. I totally get what you’re saying because it sounds like something I might do—minus the part where you kidnapped Mr. K—” Fabiola’s eyes went dramatically wide as she was adjusting her tiara. “—but this isn’t you. You don’t run away from your obligations and elope with my teachers!”

“Manish and I didn’t elope. It isn’t in any way romantic.”

“For sure though? It’s not?” Devi heard another voice in the car ask.

“Mr. K, back off! Kamala’s in the middle of a crisis!” she shouted. “And please be drunk enough to forget that I yelled at you.”

“Devi, what should I do?” Kamala asked, sounding desperate in a sad way now.

“Where are you?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Ok, well, which direction are you heading in?”

“Um, either north or south.”

“You’re a disaster,” Devi muttered.

“What was that?”

“Uh… I said, don’t drive any faster. Try to read the next sign you pass so you can tell me where you are.”

“Alright,” Kamala said.

Devi tilted her phone away from her mouth so her cousin wouldn’t hear her frustrated sigh. She locked eyes with Fabiola.

“Kamala panicked at her engagement dinner and ran off with Mr. K. They’re either headed for Mexico or Canada, but I’ll know more in a minute.”

Fab blinked.

“Wow.”

“I know. It’s a lot. And this is me talking,” Devi emphasized.

“I don’t know if you would do anything this big. Mainly because you don’t have a driver’s license.”

“True.”

“Santa Barbara in twenty-six miles,” Kamala said in her ear.

“Damn, you made good time.”

“The traffic was quite manageable.”

“Try to calm down a little and get off the highway when you can. Don’t go past Santa Barbara. I’m coming to talk you down in person,” Devi said. “Oh, and don’t answer any of my mom’s calls; she’ll just stress you out.”

“That doesn’t seem very responsible. How about I send her a text when I stop to let her know I’m ok?”

Devi rolled her eyes.

“Suit yourself.”

“Thank you, Devi. But how will you get here?”

“Let me worry about that. Text me when you stop so I know exactly where I’m going.”

“I will.”

“’K. I’ll see you in a bit.”

Devi hung up and sighed massively, slumping into the wall and feeling a streamer crumple against her back. She and Fabiola stared at each other.

“What are you gonna do?” Fab asked.

“Be the hero my family needs, but not the one they deserve.”

“Are you misquoting Batman to justify doing something reckless?”

“First of all, rescuing Kamala isn’t reckless, and second of all, the movie isn’t called Batman, it’s The Dark Knight. Young-ish Christian Bale, hello.”

Fabiola pointed a finger at her own face.

“Young-ish out-of-touch lesbian, hello. At least I was close.”

Devi sighed again while Fab smiled sadly at her in obvious sympathy.

“It’s after ten at night. How am I gonna get to Santa Barbara?”

“Assuming you’re not going to ask your mom—”

“No.”

“Then you need a ride.”

“You need a ride? I’ll drive you.”

It was Paxton, walking up and tentatively taking Devi’s hand while darting uncertain glances at Fabiola. Devi felt her entire face light up.

“You don’t want to know where or why?” she teased.

His expression said those were insignificant details. Wow. Devi’d never had a fantasy where Paxton joined forces with her, bounty hunter-style, to track down a flighty Kamala, but this felt oddly romantic. Passionate even? They’d see where the night took them.

“You wouldn’t wanna leave the dance unless it was serious,” Paxton reasoned. “So, I’ll drive you. You wanna go now?”

“I guess we better. Lemme just grab my…”

“I’ll get it,” Fab said, raising a hand like the nerd she was as she volunteered.

She darted back through the dancers to grab Devi’s things and Devi watched their classmates part for their Cricket Queen. She was so proud of Fab. Also, she felt kinda bad for ditching such a momentous occasion. But Kamala needed her, and would totally do the same for her if she ever went off the deep end and kidnapped a dude while fleeing a proposal. Not that Devi could see herself fleeing a proposal (she glanced at Paxton as she thought this, then quickly away, thinking, Way too soon!). Carrying out a kidnapping? With a sufficiently convincing pro-and-con list, anything was possible.

“Basically, Kamala freaked and drove to Santa Barbara with a drunken Mr. K,” Devi said, because Paxton might not have asked to be informed, but she wanted him to know what he was getting himself into. Beyond that, she wanted to give him the chance to say, No way, Devi. I came here to look hot and dance up on you, nothing more.

“Oh shit,” was what he said.

“Damn right, oh shit. You still want to drive? This is going to take a while.”

She should probably have felt guilty about trying to subtly persuade him with her eyes, but not only was Paxton the least complicated option, he was also her first choice. If she maintained eye contact long enough, Devi figured it might trigger some kind of boyfriend override that made going for a long drive at night just as appealing as staying here and dancing with her butt pressed thrillingly to his groin when the teacher-chaperones weren’t looking.

“As long as we can hit up the bathrooms first. I was going to, but then I got talking to Trent, and then Marcus was doing a handstand…”

“Definitely,” Devi assured him. “Good call. Empty the tank. Oh, actually, that reminds me… how much gas do you have in your jeep? If we need to stop at a gas station, I’ll have to factor that in to the ETA I give Kamala.”

Paxton shook his head at her, smiling in what she liked to think was affectionate amusement.

“I filled it up on the way here. I needed a minute to, uh…” To her epic astonishment, he ducked his head self-consciously, cheeks pinking. “You know. Get my shit together. Up here.” He tapped his temple with his index finger. “I wanted to show up for you, like, completely. You know?”

Right as Devi was at dangerously high risk of sagging to the floor in blissful bonelessness, Fabiola sprang to her side, shoving the rest of her possessions at her.

“Ok, ok!” Devi said, harried.

She had to dump it all on the bathroom counter a minute later anyway, but after she’d done her pre-road trip pee, she came out and gave Fab a better thank-you.

“Your Highness,” Paxton told Fabiola with a nod.

Fab nodded back, smiling wryly.

“Prosecutor.”

“I think this is the start of a beautiful friendship,” Devi assessed, “but we gotta go! Say congrats to Eve for me again!”

“Sure. Drive safe!”

Devi and Paxton pushed through the doors together, striding quickly with his hand wrapped around hers. In the parking lot, she glanced sideways to see him digging his keychain out of his front pocket.

“Oh,” she said, “so I wasn’t just feeling that you were very happy to dance with me.”

Until they got into the jeep, it was too dark to see whether she’d gotten him to blush again, but she liked to think that she had. He was definitely smiling.

They got in and Devi carefully tucked her skirt around her legs, mind on Kamala’s cautionary tale. At least it was until Paxton leaned forward to shrug out of his jacket and she saw his shoulder muscles jump beneath his fitted button-down, his narrow black tie swinging forward. Dang. Fifty shades of Hall-Yoshida.

“Santa Barbara?” Paxton double-checked once he was settled behind the wheel, steering out of the student lot.

“Santa Barbara.”

Until they were on the highway and heading out of Los Angeles, Devi did her best to keep her worry about Kamala’s situation contained to the way she flapped her phone against her thigh. Usually, she was stressing about the problems right in front of her (when she wasn’t blatantly ignoring them, only to have that approach bite her in the ass later), but with whatever was going on with Kamala, she kinda had to look ahead.

Had she wanted Kamala to get engaged to Prashant that badly? Well, the best thing about Prashant was that you never knew when having additional hot relatives would be to your benefit. (Devi was already hoping that Mr. K would get over the more nerve-wracking elements of this night and just remember having fun with her stunning cousin… and that this could possibly translate into at least a month of generous grades, if she could somehow spin these shenanigans as an intentional blind date arranged by herself.) However, an engaged Kamala was wholly different from a married Kamala. She wouldn’t be around to watch nonsensical episodes of Riverdale, or be duped into hijinks, or listen to Devi when her mom was too tired, or bitch about her shitty lab-mates in exchange for sitting through Devi bitching about her complicated feelings on the subject of Aneesa dating her ex. She wouldn’t live with them anymore, and the family that had begun to miraculously fill out after her dad had died would be back down to three. And the other two members of it would be old (Sorry, Mom, she thought) and not at all prepared to champion her dating life or the cleavage-accentuating formal dress currently buoying it.

So, yeah, Devi was looking ahead—eyes glazed over as the yellow lights of cars slipped around them to prevent her vision from fully adjusting to the blue-black sky—and feeling more than a little nervous and scared of the Kamala-shaped hole she’d have in her life if her dazzling, dorky cousin left her house for one she might eventually fill with the most beautiful children the world had ever seen.

Thankfully, Paxton was there. It startled her when he took one hand off the wheel and felt across her lap to grab hers, loosely interlacing their fingers. Devi quit hitting her phone against her leg. She sent off their updated location to Kamala and then let her phone fall flat.

“Did she say where she was?” Her boyfriend’s voice was quiet in the car and she realized for the first time that her head had been too crammed with thoughts to put on any music.

“Carpinteria State Beach. Do you know the exit?”

“We’ll find it.”

“And if you want me to drive while you rest on the way back…”

Paxton laughed.

“No way. Safety first.”

“Says the guy driving one-handed,” Devi countered, not that she was eager to surrender the hand warming hers.

He turned his head just long enough to shoot her a look.

“Whoa, pal, eyes on the road!” she said. (She had a half-baked plan to call her boyfriend ‘pal’ a few times and thereby de-weaponize the word in a memory that still felt like a fading bruise, an almost-gone sore spot in who she and Paxton were before they were openly a them.)

“Sorry,” he said, staring out the windshield again. He grinned. “You look gorgeous.”

“Really?”

“So gorgeous.” Paxton’s voice was softer this time, the underlying laugh it had carried since she’d offered to drive his jeep drained out of it. It was nearly a sigh.

“Thanks. So do you.”

“You know, I feel fucking awful for hitting you with my car, but I still think I mighta felt worse if I’d walked in and seen you dancing with somebody else.”

Devi twisted their hands, touching the back of his to her thigh so she was sandwiching it between leg and palm for a moment, aiming for reassuring.

“I wanna say I would never be that flaky, but my previous offenses speak for themselves.”

“So does doing this with me.”

“Uh,” she droned, “to recap, you left a fun thing to do a huge favour for me. You’re talking about it like this is my act of redemption. I feel like if you examine it for a sec, you’ll see how I’m actually kind of a dick for accepting your help.”

“I want us to be together,” he said bluntly. “Here we are. Together.”

“It’s that simple?”

“I don’t see why it can’t be.”

“Huh. I think you’re really gonna be good for my tendency to overcomplicate a situation.”

Paxton laughed and unthreaded his fingers from Devi’s. But it wasn’t to release her for pointing out that this date was, in actual fact, the coordinated response to a family crisis; his fingertips moved lightly over her palm, momentarily trapped when her fingers flinched inward in reaction to how it tickled, then traced along the thin skin of her inner wrist. He wasn’t trying to pull away. He was lingering. Though his touch when he sunk his hand into her hair or drew her closer by her waist had always been fairly gentle, it had often had the faint aggression of hastiness to it, clutching her as they made out in her room, always listening for footsteps in the hallway. How Paxton touched her now was pure, exploratory tenderness. It made the hairs on the back of Devi’s neck stand up as a wave of shivers rushed up her spine and crested somewhere around the nape of her neck.

He must’ve felt that wave break, the foamy aftereffects in some tic of her arm or quickening of her pulse while his fingers skimmed gradually up the inside of her arm towards her elbow, because he chanced another quick glance at her.

“That feels good,” she explained.

Paxton looked forward, nodding slowly, and shifted in the driver’s seat.

“Good.”

She thought it must have felt good for him too, knowing he’d made her shiver.

—

The miles were flicking past for Paxton—another, another, another, as fast and steady as the dashed lines painted between the lanes, his arms cutting the water on the front crawl. He wanted Devi, beside him, to believe that he was paying attention to his driving, but he was honestly kinda zoned out. Like that time he’d swum to San Diego, he let his body go through the motions (in this case, twitching the wheel, putting on cruise control when traffic thinned so he didn’t have to focus on the pedals) while his mind floated freely.

Where it floated was to his girlfriend.

At ten years old, he’d been the last kid in his swim class to jump off the 10m board. It was optional—a treat after getting water up their noses turning somersaults below the surface and doing egg-beater legs in between—but all the other boys in the group had done it eagerly, shrieking on their way down to sloppy pencil dives. Paxton had climbed the stairs all the way to the top easily enough, even stepped onto the wide platform, bordered by metal railings and rough under his bare feet. He’d walked out to the end and frozen to find himself so high above the pool.

He hadn’t feared the water, he’d feared the air. Being so exposed on his own at the end of the diving board. Eventually, he’d retreated, then surprised the coach waiting down at the poolside by turning around and taking the jump at a run. Few memories felt as good as the sensation of giving himself back to gravity and letting it reunite him with the water. He’d just had to get past the exposure.

Same thing tonight, going to find Devi at the dance. Holding her hand in his had been him reaching the platform, but when they stood together, just inside the school’s doors, Paxton hadn’t known for sure whether he would take the leap or retreat. And not just for a running start this time, but in a way that turned his sixteen-year-old present self back into one of those nervous ten-year-olds who wimped out and had to take the coward’s way down—descending each step they’d climbed. He might not have run, and yet he hadn’t needed to back up and race into their relationship either. Momentum hadn’t carried them inside for everyone they knew to see them. It had been a calm approach, even if he’d been shaking on the inside when he saw Trent staring at them.

So maybe Paxton had learned something in the last six years, or maybe it was harder to feel exposed with somebody right next to you.

She really did look gorgeous, like he’d said, and because he didn’t want her to worry about his focus if she spotted him gazing at the side of her face while she texted her cousin, the glances he stole were of the knee region. Her dress’s overlay sparkled when the high lights of eighteen-wheelers passed them and the specific teal of the dress itself reminded him of a river he’d swum in once during an out-of-state family vacation. Natural and deep and fresh, and exasperating for his parents because he’d accidentally doggy-paddled himself all the way to a small waterfall and hadn’t heard them calling him back for dinner around the campfire. He felt all that about Devi, except for hoping for a different reaction from his parents when they met her.

Holy shit. He was going to have to introduce his girlfriend to his embarrassing hippy parents. But then, she’d already met Rebecca, so maybe they were set? A sister’s approval should count for a ton.

No, no, no, Devi would have to meet his parents. He was doing this. The two of them were doing this. Paxton exhaled determinedly through his nose and made himself concentrate on the remaining miles he needed to cover. His mind, anyway. His hand continued to stroke and search, covering his girlfriend’s hand with his until he had her fingers tucked away protectively under his own, and then caressing all the way up to the crook of her elbow so suddenly that she made a noise between a laugh and a yelp because he’d unintentionally tickled her. Man, she was cute.

The very end of their journey required the most concentration from Paxton; he finally took back his hand to have both on the wheel as he steered them off the highway and Devi’s got lonely or something, because it chased across to where he was sitting and landed on his thigh. His jaw clenched. He could feel the heat of her palm through his pantleg and congratulated himself on being a driving legend for driving smoothly to where they needed to park for beach access.

Devi had a pink sweater that she put on, but Paxton grabbed his jacket out of the back as well in case she needed it. It was almost midnight and a breeze rolled up off the water, rippling his tie and swishing Devi’s dress. He didn’t have to ask what they should do next—there was just one other car parked nearby and Devi’s cousin was already standing outside of it, raising a hand to wave sheepishly as they got out of his jeep.

“Here,” he said, holding out his jacket for his girlfriend to put her arms through the sleeves. “You guys talk. I’ll be down at the beach.”

Devi turned her back to him as she accepted the jacket, but she glanced over her shoulder with a look of concern.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. You’ll want privacy. I need to stretch my legs anyway.”

“Just don’t swim away, ok?” she requested. “I don’t think I can handle more than one rescue mission per night.”

Paxton could tell by her expression that it wasn’t entirely a joke. He grinned and gripped his lapels, now on Devi, reeling her in.

“I promise. You’d probably take the opportunity to try to drive the jeep home, and I don’t want to risk that.”

“Me committing grand theft auto or me getting hurt?”

“I bet they tested you for smartness,” he said, “but you think they have a test for being a smartass? You’d score high, Vishwakumar.”

“I know, I know, you don’t want me to get hurt.”

She was so infuriatingly flippant, rolling her big brown eyes at him.

“That’s right,” Paxton said plainly. There he was, up on the platform again.

Devi straightened his tie and let her hand rest flat on his chest. He remembered how overwhelmed she’d looked the first time he’d placed her palm there, right on his skin. Even now, it almost made him laugh.

“Ok,” she said, and he was surrendering himself to the sweet strength of gravity, propelled down to the beach while Devi stayed to talk to Kamala.

—

Devi had heard that there were tidepools here, and she was nervous about stepping into one and spearing some aquatic animal on her high heel. Well, she couldn’t magically improve her night vision, but she could take her shoes off and remove the possibility of impalement. They dangled from her fingers as she picked her way down to the beach.

Her boyfriend was sitting in the sand, staring out at the ocean. It just looked so romantic—with the stars the sky was too bright to see at home, and the waves, and the back of Paxton’s white shirt in the moonlight—that Devi decided to slip into the scene without saying anything at all.

A mistake. Paxton gasped and jumped. Apparently, he hadn’t heard her over the noise of the water.

“Sorry, sorry!” she said.

He sighed and smiled, getting to his feet.

“How’d it go?”

“I think it went well. She was feeling calm enough to drive, so she’s on her way home now. She’s gonna cover for me until we get back.”

“That’s good… but what about Mr. Kulkarni?”

“He was passed out in the passenger’s seat,” Devi stated. “I guess he’s kind of a lightweight? Kamala said she’s going to drive back to our school and leave him and his car in the parking lot. She’s planning to call my mom for a ride home. If it were me, I think I’d take the bus and try to sneak back into the house as quietly as possible, but Kamala still has a lot to learn about how to thoroughly dodge your problems.”

“And maybe about how to climb to the second floor of your house from the outside?” Paxton suggested with a meaningful smirk.

She did her best to return it, but the odds were that it didn’t look nearly as sexy on her. Then again, she had moonlight and midnight and well-displayed cleavage on her side.

“How’d you learn to do that so quietly anyway?” Devi asked, tossing her shoes to the sand and stepping forward to boldly wrap her arms around Paxton’s waist.

He’d had his hands in his pockets, but as soon as she’d begun to move towards him, he’d pulled them out. His arms encircled her, his hands on the back of his own black jacket. Although Devi wanted to offer him the jacket back—he felt slightly chilly through his shirt—she didn’t want the two of them to separate. Besides, body heat was a thing. This was practically what it was for. So Devi just pressed herself closer, breathing the scent of the ocean and Paxton’s fading cologne.

“Trent,” he said.

“Yeah, actually, that checks out.”

Were there boundaries between warming someone up while having a conversation and just hugging them? It wasn’t clear to Devi, but it felt good when they both went quiet for a while. She stood unevenly on the cold sand and listened to the thud of Paxton’s heart.

“You never said yes,” he said eventually, quietly.

“Yes to what?”

“I told you I came to the dance as your boyfriend and you never actually agreed to be my girlfriend. We kinda just started making out.”

Devi lifted her cheek from his chest so she could look at him. He didn’t appear disappointed, more like he was making an observation. Maybe he’d been reflecting, out here in the dark, while she and Kamala had talked.

“In my books, that’s an obvious yes,” she said, grinning. “What more do you need?”

She could see him trying not to smile.

“A little atmosphere would be nice,” Paxton said. “Maybe a long drive, or the beach. A full moon. Romance me, Vishwakumar.”

Devi vibrated with silent laughter. Or her heart was just beating really, really freaking hard.

“Sounds like you’ve got some pretty big expectations there.”

“And stars,” he added. “There should be a shitload of stars.”

With that, he took one hand off her back to point far above them. Devi tipped her head back, the light of the stars a friendly blur as she tried to pick one to settle on, just one. Paxton’s face coming forward to hover over hers blotted them out. Her boyfriend kissed her, light and ghosting and then firm and slow.

“On the other hand,” he said, pulling back a little, “I think we were onto something with the making out.”

Devi smiled and dug her toes into the sand to make herself taller, lips at the ready and realigned with his.

“We did set a precedent.”

[felassan]

Article: ‘Mass Effect & Dragon Age’s cast members on how BioWare builds dynamics’

I spoke to several figures from BioWare juggernauts Dragon Age and Mass Effect, to get a clearer idea of how those iconic team dynamics we associate with the two titles were created. [interviews]

This article is a really neat read. :) Contains character insights, behind-the-scenes info and some reflections on representation.

Some excerpts under the cut due to length:

A huge theme of these interviews, naturally, was BioWare themselves. As well as general praise for the support, the working environment, and the success of the finished product, many singled out individual directors by name, and credited BioWare’s focused approach with getting the best out of them. Hale even claimed they were “the unsung heroes,” that underpinned the whole Mass Effect trilogy. [...]

“Usually there’s almost always a BioWare writer on the line with us, usually up in Canada, when we’re recording. So you’ll have the director, me and one or two BioWare head honchos up there supervising. That’s the way that’s the way it worked on Inquisition too. There’s a really collaborative vibe.” [...]

This consistency across the recording process is likely why the calibre of performance is so high across both trilogies. “The team of writers of BioWare are extraordinary,” Nick Boulton [Male Hawke] says. “So they keep you on track pretty well. The key was having Caroline Livingston, who was directing most of it – all of it, in fact. She would be there to give context notes, and also keep me on the straight and narrow, as far as characterization went. So we were led through very well by the BioWare team.” [...]

Insight on Jack:

Courtenay Taylor describes Jack as being “a very comfortable pair of old stinky sneakers to step into,” and explains that her connection to Jack’s story was a core way she was able to bring it to life. “[Jack has] a pretty familiar psychology that I had. She was very reminiscent of how I was, to some degree, in high school. She’s putting up a barrier to get people to prove themselves, so you have to run the gauntlet in order to get the good stuff. When you’ve been abused as badly as she has, then psychologically one of the tracks you can take is ‘I will not allow myself to be vulnerable’. And that really resonated with me.”

Taylor also says that this guard Jack puts up meant that, ironically, many of the players found it easier to connect with her. “I got really great feedback from a lot of people about struggles that they had had in their personal lives,” she says.

“I think [Jack’s change between Mass Effect 2 & 3] is a smaller story, but it’s a big story for a lot of people. I have a lot of friends who had addiction problems. And quite a few of my friends give back by going back to the community that they’ve come out of, and finding people that need help. At its core, that’s a big, important through line for Jack – every one of us is worthy of love. And it doesn’t matter how difficult you are or how troubled you are or what has happened to you or what someone has done to you. You are worthy of loving and being loved.” [...]

Taylor also saw something personal in her own performance, especially since there weren’t a lot of women like Jack in popular media when Mass Effect 2 launched. “There was a huge amount of love for her because gender/appearance wise, she is something that I felt at that time had not been explored. And I know that some of the things were cut, but in what we originally recorded [Jack was pansexual], and in 2008 or 2009, there weren’t a tonne of conversations about being pansexual,” she says.

“She was a counterpoint to a lot of the other female characters. She was sort of the far end of the spectrum. You’ve got Miranda who’s beautiful and pulled together, but that only serves a certain population. And there are a lot of people that identify as women who could relate to having these feelings and these emotions – she’s not gender specific. To me, she’s angry. And I don’t know that there had been, at that time, a female character who was so not typically female, who was capable of such a range of emotions. She ended up being the permission to a whole group of people who don’t identify with that kind of woman. Because in entertainment, where did that bald girl with a flat chest who was pansexual go? Where do you fit in? And that really resonated with me. If you don’t relate to Miranda, Jack can be a really nice option.”

Insight on Josie:

It’s a sentiment echoed by Allegra Clark, who used a major tragedy in her own life as motivation for the siege of Haven in Dragon Age: Inquisition. “I think the first time you really start to get to know [Josephine] as a person is when she talks about Haven after the attack. That conversation she has about the first people to jump in and protect people being the workers, and how she’s just watching everything be destroyed. I was actually thinking about 9/11, as a New Yorker. So that was a very personal moment for me. But it was those little moments where she starts to open up and blossom that you get to see her as a person.” [...]

For Clark though, those boundaries were much more personal. “When I was told I had booked Josephine, I was just like, ‘I’m a companion in a BioWare game, and a romanceable companion at that’,” Clark says. “I recognised going in that people were going to connect really hard to this character. People are going to have entire playthroughs that are based around romancing Josephine. She helped me explore my own bisexuality, and that is always the thing that that warms my heart the most when people come to me about my LGBTQ+ characters, and say ‘they helped me understand parts of my own identity’. I actually wasn’t out of the closet publicly, or even to parts of my family when I started recording Inquisition. So it was interesting, getting to tell essentially part of my story as well. Before even being able to say to the world ‘hi, I’m bi’ – though all the signs were there. I was in a relationship with another woman at the time. It’s like ‘oh my God, they were roommates!”

Zevran:

While all were full of praise for BioWare’s writing and working environment, the love of actually playing the game was exclusive to Clark. Most others admitted they had never played at all; Curry confessed he had no idea if Zevran was even alive [as he hasn’t played]

Sam Traynor:

“I think Traynor was revolutionary in what she was doing at the time,” Wilton Regan says. “What was so different about Traynor was she wasn’t romanceable for either gender, you had to be playing as FemShep to choose a lesbian love option . And that was so brave of them to do at the time. But it brought us leaps and bounds forwards, because having that inclusivity then makes it just easier for the next game, and for the game today. And now it’s a standard – you should be representative of all sexualities if there are romance options in your games, and increasingly major games pretty much always have some sort of gay, bisexual, lesbian or heterosexual choice. It might not be as fluid as all of the spectrum of sexual choices, but you’ve got a strong variety in comparison to where it was 20 years ago, for example.”

Sam Traynor and Josie:

Part of representing groups that don’t often get representation in video games is that your character gets to become a role model, and that’s something Wilton Regan and Taylor have particularly fond experiences of. “It’s quite flattering and quite lovely to think about,” Wilton Regan says. “I’ve had a lot of lesbians who are coming out of the closet or coming to terms with their sexuality, who’ve come up to me and said that playing FemShep and romancing Traynor was a really big part of that. And lots of bisexual women as well. There’s something just very beautiful about the idea that BioWare has put so much faith and trust in me over the years with these really pivotal roles, and these big, beautiful characters. I feel very humbled by that. Very, very humbled.”

Meanwhile, Taylor wasn’t even sure people would like Jack, so finding out how deeply people related to her was a huge surprise, and she suspects that’s because Mass Effect allows her to be angry without being written off as a stereotypical, hysterical woman. “People didn’t like her when the trailer came out, and I was like, ‘Oh God, everyone’s gonna hate her!” Taylor laughs. “I was really surprised to be at a convention and have someone come up and say, ‘Can I introduce you to my nieces? They’re six and eight, and they love you’. I’m glad they have a good female role model in Jack.”

[cripplerage]

So I used to be a Christian. I was raised Christian, chose to be baptised at 8, went to all the bible studies and services. The leaders thought I was going to go on to be a missionary or a pastor or something, idk. (I didnt, I turned out gay instead - they dont talk to me anymore lol) So, after school I decided to go to bible college. I learnt the geography of biblical events, I learnt the historical and political contexts surrounding biblical events, I even learnt some ancient Greek and translated some of the bible from its original Greek to English in exams.

This isn't to humble brag, this is to preface that bible college is a WEIRD ASS PLACE. So, welcome to my blog. I've decided it's going to be devoted to all the weird shit I've encountered as a Christian, and I guarantee some of you won't believe some of these happened.

Quick PSA: I am not against all Christians or Christianity. I may take digs at Christians every now and then because most of the Christians I've met are hateful bigots, but I know not all of them are so please don't take offence if you're a nice Christian :)

This first story is one of the best ones: the garlic man. Obviously not his real name. The garlic man started at bible college at the same time as me. He was in some ska band in Canada when I was a baby(I've seen a video), he was a conspiracy theorist, and he had a tattoo of a cartoon lady with big boobs on his calf. Not what you'd expect a bible scholar to look like.

He was a cool guy, very laidback. Oh, and he had 2 KILOS of garlic cloves in a container that he'd just carry around. Apparently he heard that garlic cures some thing so he got a lot of it and then it didn't work, so he was just stuck with it. What does someone in that situation do? Maybe... make a lot of garlic bread? NOPE. He just started hiding them around the school!

In the library, you'd find them placed on top of books in the shelves. And next to a communal lolly jar, a jar of garlic cloves suddenly appeared. In the rec room, he placed one on top of a clock and for some reason it instantly stopped working. He also put one on top of the tv antenna. The school only intervened when he tried to put some in the vending machine! One day, we had a pancake morning. We were supposed to bring our favourite toppings. He brought the garlic.

Perhaps best of all, for some unknown reason, when Covid hit, the school consulted him on how to abide by covid regulations. Because he was a conspiracy theorist and had done a lot of research into it. He actually did a good job, but it was still a confusing decision...

I never finished the study there, because in sem 2 the curriculum became very homophobic. But damnit, I miss the garlic man!

[elsanna-shenanigans]

August Contest Submission #8: The Body of the Monk

Words: ca. 2,000 Setting: mAU Lemon: No CW: angst, implied past abuse, Anna's 15yo but like nothing severe

Elsa, in all her pale, white-haired, blue-shirted, hand-shaking, sweating glory, stood outside a house. It wasn’t just any house, mind you. It was an expensive, sprawling sort of house. The sort of house with stucco covered brick, and big windows to let in a lot of light.

It was also the sort of house where the climbing plants up the side had gotten under the roofing tiles. It was the sort of house where the stucco was flaking off, where heavy curtains were shut against the afternoon sun.

It was also, in theory, Elsa’s house. That was why Elsa’s hands trembled and her legs felt weak. It was why she was sorely tempted to just turn around a leave and continue to never come back.

On the other hand, she’d just ‘graduated’ from the boarding school and what else was she supposed to do with no money? Move north and get a job? That sounded like a good idea. Maybe she could move to Canada or something. People were friendly there, right?

Elsa poked the doorbell before her brain could carry her away.

Clearly no one was home though. A second was more than enough time to wait for someone to open the door, surely. There was no need for her to stand there like an idiot waiting for someone to answer the door when the house was clearly empty.

On the other hand, it was technically, a little bit, her house so… did she even need to knock? Should she go and check under that pot for the spare key? Where had that pot been, anyway?

The door was opened by a girl, shorter than Elsa and vastly more red-haired than Elsa. She had bags under her eyes and freckles dotted her skin and she stared at Elsa. She stared very hard at Elsa.

‘Um… hi… Anna,’ Elsa said, giving a little wave like an absolute buffoon.

‘Elsa?’ Anna stared. ‘ELSA!’ Anna fairly leapt on Elsa, almost knocking unprepared Elsa over. Anna wrapped herself around Elsa and held tight. Elsa blushed, her body flushed with heat. She awkwardly patted Anna on the back.

Before she could say anything, Anna pulled back, sliding her hands down Elsa’s arms. ‘It’s soooo good to see you, Elsa,’ Anna said, taking Elsa’s hands.

Elsa blushed harder. Her arms tingled. Her body felt warm.

‘Come in,’ Anna said, pulling Elsa toward the door. ‘Come in, come in.’

Elsa let herself be pulled in the door. ‘It’s good to see you again, too, Anna,’ she said. ‘It’s um… I’m sorry I didn’t like… call ahead or anything.’

Anna shook her head a lot, letting go of one of Elsa’s hands to pull the door shut. ‘No, no, no,’ Anna said. ‘It’s fine, don’t worry about it.’

Elsa managed a little smile. ‘I’m um… sorry?’

Anna grinned and wrapped Elsa in a hug again. ‘No you’re not,’ she said. ‘I’m not sorry they’re dead. About fucking time.’ Anna’s hands rubbed up and down Elsa’s back.

That warmth was building in Elsa’s body, her hands were trembling. Anna’s hand ran up Elsa’s back and Elsa shivered. Her hand ran up to the back of Elsa’s neck and Anna leaned back just a little and went up on her toes.

Elsa’s breath hitched. She was sure she should do something. She needed to stop this, but she couldn’t quite make her body move. Anna leaned in and pressed her lips to Elsa’s.

Anna’s lips were soft and warm, her body was soft and warm. Her hand was firm and felt like fire on the back of Elsa’s neck. Elsa’s whole body felt like fire. Her hands were shaking, her legs were shaking. Her heart was hammering in her chest.

But finally, Elsa made her body move. It felt like it had been an hour, felt like a week or a month. Elsa’s body felt glacial as she reached up to put her hands on Anna’s shoulders. Elsa pushed Anna away and her breath hitched. It felt like some great loss, it felt like some great betrayal. It felt like Elsa had failed.

‘When he sleeps naked under a thin blanket, does the monk’s body become less eroticised, I wonder?’ Anna smiled and pulled away. She winked, turned on her heel and wandered into the living room.

‘Spare bedroom’s made up,’ Anna called back. ‘It’s where your old room was.’

***

Even though their parents had left them quite a lot of money, along with the house, Elsa decided to get a job in a cafe. She also enrolled in a cooking class at the local community college because.

Anna came home from hanging out with friends or something, it was summer break, to find Elsa in the kitchen. On this particular day, Elsa was teaching herself how to make puff pastry from scratch for some reason.

Anna sat at the dining table. The kitchen, dining room and living room were conjoined, so Elsa could see Anna sitting there, watching her like a hawk. She tried to ignore it. She tried to ignore the way her mind flashed to the sensation of Anna’s soft, warm lips.

After all, Elsa was eighteen and Anna was fifteen. Also, they were sisters. Basically the whole thing was wrong. Even so, Elsa hadn’t dared to raise the issue with Anna. She hadn’t dared to talk about it lest she think about it for even a moment and get herself worked up or something.

And here she was, thinking around it as she felt herself flush. Here she was, trying not to think about it and getting worked up. After all: sleeping naked under that thin blanket had never worked for the monk.

Elsa folded up the pastry, wrapped it, and put it in the fridge. Anna was right behind her when she turned around. The only space between them was a bouquet of red roses.

‘Oh,’ Elsa said, blushing harder.

‘Yes.’ Anna pressed the flowers against Elsa’s chest. ‘As a thank you for... being here, I guess. Also for cooking so much. And for, you know...’ Anna wiggled her eyebrows.

Elsa took the flowers. ‘That’s um...’ Her mouth was dry, her heart was beating faster than she would have liked. ‘That’s really nice of you, Anna.’ She spotted a card in the bouquet.

The card said ‘Love you. How’s that thin blanket treating you?’

Anna leaned in to kiss Elsa on the cheek. Elsa flushed again, opened her mouth to say something and stuttered. ‘I... I... Anna... you shouldn’t...’

Anna smiled. ‘Sure thing, monk. Just a sisterly kiss.’

Anna retreated to the dining table as Elsa searched for a vase to put the roses in. She tried not to think of any of the bouquets of red roses she’d been given before. She tried not to think about what red roses meant. But her blush didn’t fade.

‘Were you allowed to get flowers in heaven?’ Anna asked, playing with her hair.

‘I...’ Elsa took a moment to pour some water into the vase and take deep breaths and fail to calm down. ‘Yes. The boys were allowed to give us flowers.’

Anna smiled. ‘No flowers from any girls, then?’

‘No, that wasn’t allowed.’

Anna nodded. ‘I’ll get you more flowers, in that case,’ she said.

‘Um...’

***

The dining table was starting to fill up with flowers. The kitchen counter already had too many. It was approaching the middle of the summer holidays, and had only been two weeks since Anna gave Elsa those red roses.

Almost every day, Anna went out with some friends that Elsa never met, and came back with another bouquet of flowers. It wasn’t always red roses, either. There had aslo been some white roses and some orange roses. But there had also been an orchid, some white and purple lilies, some carnations, some tulips, even some white and pink crocuses.

Almost all of the notes had read ‘From a girl to a girl. It’s allowed.’

Anna hadn’t kissed her on the cheek again since the bouquet of red roses. But she hadn’t had to kiss Elsa at all achieve the apparently desired effect of Elsa blushing furiously and starting to stutter.

***

Three days before Anna’s sixteenth birthday, Elsa started making the cake. Or she started on one of several cakes that she had decided to make so that Anna had options. And besides, Anna was too skinny, no one needed to be that skinny.

Anna sat down at the dining table. They spent a fair amount of time like this. Elsa spent a lot of time in the kitchen, teaching herself to make all kinds of pastries and sweets. Anna spent a lot of time at the dining table, playing on her phone or her laptop or talking to Elsa.

‘What do you want for your birthday, Anna?’ Elsa asked, turning on the stand mixer. They weren’t quite as loud as food processors.

‘You.’

‘No.’ Elsa blushed a little, but not nearly as much as she would have when she arrived a couple of months ago.

‘A kiss.’ Anna smiled. ‘From you.’

Elsa flushed a little harder as she thought about it. For whatever nonsense reason, it felt slightly less weird if Anna was sixteen. Anna was still her sister. Elsa also got wildly flustered any time Anna showed affection. Though that seemed fair, given the context.

At length, the stand mixer having gone far too long, Elsa nodded. ‘Sure.’

‘Sweet.’ Anna did a fist-pump and everything. ‘Thank you. Can I give you a hug?’

Elsa stared at Anna for a second before remembering to turn the mixer off. ‘Um, sure,’ she said. She tried to remember if Anna had actually asked before.

Anna got up and gave Elsa a careful hug. It was kind of nice and Elsa flushed as she felt Anna’s warmth against her, but that was to be expected. It wasn’t the kind of aggressive affection that Anna usually displayed.

Anna kissed her on the cheek and giggled. Elsa flushed harder and frowned at Anna. ‘Couldn’t resist,’ Anna said. She grinned. ‘I’m so excited for my birthday. I’m getting a kiss from a monk, that’s gotta be special or something.’ She slid back into her seat at the table. ‘Do you think I’ll turn into a monk if you kiss me?’

‘I… I don’t think it works like that,’ Elsa muttered, dumping the overworked batter into a cake pan anyway.

‘Is it like being a werewolf, only spread by bite?’

Elsa blushed hard enough that her vision fizzled at the edges.

‘Ooh.’

Elsa knew what Anna was about to excitedly proclaim before she said anything.

‘For chistmas I want you to bite me.’

Elsa took a deep breath and sighed, massively.

***

On the day of her sixteenth birthday, Anna proclaimed that she was going to see a film with her friends and left in the mid-morning, which suited Elsa anyway. She still had three cakes to finish and a birthday present to mentally prepare for.

Instead of mentally preparing herself, Elsa made three types of icing, then some meringue roses, then some candied rose petals. Then she wondered if that would come across as way too romantic, tried eating one of the petals and threw the rest out.

Elsa sat around fidgeting for a bit before an idea occurred to her. It certainly wasn’t a less romantic idea than giving someone candied rose petals.

Anna got home from the film at about three in the afternoon. She was slightly sweaty, what with the blistering heat outside, and she was so fucking excited that she hadn’t slept more than four hours in the last three days.

Anna took a deep breath, she needed to be chill. She was the chill one. She would be chill about this. ‘I’m just going to wash up,’ she called to Elsa, or at least to the noises in the kitchen. ‘Just be a minute.’

Anna rushed upstairs, rinsed her face, then wiped off the minimal, but wildly smudged, makeup. Should she apply more? Should she use that dark lipstick that stained everything? Did she even still have that?

‘Anna, the cakes are ready?’ Elsa called.

Cakes? Anna was pretty sure she remembered talk of cakes. She still hadn’t expected there to be multiple cakes somehow. She decided not to put on any makeup and just hope that Elsa would still find her flustering without it.

Anna rushed into the loungeroom and stopped dead. There was Elsa, standing between the lounge set and the dining table. Elsa was wearing a light-blue, fit and flare sort of summer dress with a white, frilly apron over it. She looked stunning as ever.

More important: Elsa was holding a bouquet of white and red roses.

‘Ah – Are those for me?’ Anna stuttered. Fuck. Wasn’t she supposed to be the chill one?

Elsa nodded, and blushed furiously, and it was cute as hell. Elsa took the couple of steps to reach her and handed over the bouquet. There was a note that said ‘happy birthday’ which was weirdly disappointing.

Until Elsa took a deep breath, blushed scarlet, leaned in and kissed Anna on the lips. Not quite a peck, not quite not a peck. If Anna had been a cartoon character, she would have melted into a puddle.

‘Alright,’ Elsa said, blushing so hard she might have caught fire. ‘Come and eat some cakes.’

[twoidiotwriters1]

Déjà Vu (Or are we losing our minds?) VI -Modern!Shirbert

Words: 2,292

Series’ Masterlist

Previous Chapter // Next Chapter

Chapter Six: Kindred Spirits.

Anne to ‘Golden Trio’: I know you were looking forward to our party this weekend but I just got my period and I’m DYING so… rain check?

Cole: Bitch—

Diana: Oh, no! :( I hate when that happens, but it’s okay, we can wait!

Cole: I just want you to appreciate my friendship right now cause I’m on the verge of throwing myself over a cliff but fine, I have no uterus, no opinion. I’ll have to stand these beasts a while longer

Diana: Those are your nieces, nephews and siblings you’re talking about, Cole…

Cole: And I love them but doesn’t mean they don’t suck

Anne: I love you so much Cole, I promise next week it’s on!

Anne dropped her phone on her nightstand, then it buzzed once more, she groaned but picked it up anyway, Josie's name on the screen.

Josie: Ruby’s having a crisis. Waiter guy won’t answer his phone and now she’s on the verge of shaving her head.

Anne: goddamit I just got my period, I’m still on my pj’s!

Josie: We can go to your place? I really don’t want to deal with Ruby on my own...

Anne bit her lip, she had the tendency to lack patience during her periods, but the girls needed her, so she couldn’t say no.

Anne to ‘Golden Trio’: If you guys feel like witnessing some drama Josie’s heading to my place with a "Pink Crisis."

Cole: Fuck, did that waiter broke things off with Ruby already?

Anne: Apparently he’s not answering her texts and Ruby’s about to go crazy.

Cole: I’m in. Anything as long as I can leave the house.

Diana: Sorry, I was talking with Minnie May

Diana: btw I’m in too, let me see if I can take the car and I’ll pick you up @Cole

Cole: Cool, text me when you’re coming.

Anne dropped her phone again, this time on her pillow, and got up to let tell Marilla and Matthew that the girls plus Cole were coming. 

A strange thought came to her as she got up from bed. She felt like there was something missing, something was out of place, or unfinished. Was she supposed to text someone? Had she missed an appointment?

‘A doctor's appointment,’ said a voice at the back of her head.

Anne snorted at the absurdity of that, she knew there was no doctor's appointment scheduled, what the hell was wrong with her? Maybe it was just the hormones...

___________________

Bash was still not over the fact that Gilbert had had a “wet dream” about Moody’s girl and kept teasing whenever he could. It wasn’t Ruby though, Gilbert knew that, somehow.

He was sure that the girl in his dreams had red hair and grey eyes. Or blue, he couldn’t remember well. Either way, as the afternoon went away he started to forget. Sure enough, it’d been nice, he woke up feeling some sort of strange joy for the rest of his shift until it was time to close the diner, then his mind drifted to the dishes he needed to clean and the bills they had to pay.

While Mary was upstairs putting Delly to bed Bash sat next to him on the living room, making sure to mess up the comfortable position Gilbert was in by putting his legs on the boy's lap and laying on the whole lenght of the couch.

“Sometimes I feel like you’re the real twenty-year-old in this house and I’m the parent,” Gilbert rolled his eyes, pushing Bash’s legs away.

“That’s cause you’re always grumpy. You know why you always grumpy, Blythe?” Bash smirked.

“I don’t want to know.”

“It’s because you need to get laid.”

“There we go…”

“Why can’t you be a normal young adult and get one of those apps to hook up?”

“Because everytime I try it, all I think about is how I could end up murdered or sick- Do you want me to die of syphilis, Bash? Is that what you want?”

“Don’t be dramatic.”

“I’m not that desperate for sex, anyway.”

“I don’t wanna know the context of that sentence at all,” Mary walked in holding a basket full of Delly’s clothes. “But since you have all this free time to talk about your sex life, why don’t you help me with the girl’s stuff and fold them while I make myself a cup of tea?”

“Sure,” Gilbert agreed, happy to change the subject.

___________________

“Am I asking too much? Does god hate me?”

The group groaned in exasperation at Ruby’s inquires.

“I think you should finish your tea and breathe,” Diana said patiently.

“What she needs is to get her shit together and understand that it’s the twenty-first century. No man is going to propose to you after a drunk make-out session, Ruby!” Josie rolled her eyes.

“I know that!” Ruby said defensively. “But he’d been so nice even before that... I thought he liked me!”

“Maybe he does,” Anne said. “You have to remember that it’s Christmas, maybe he’s shopping? Maybe his phone got busted? I don’t know, give him the benefit of the doubt!”

“You know what my advice is,” Cole said simply.

“Yes,” Diana and Anne said at the same time.

“I’m gonna say it anyway. Dump the idiot and live your best life. Why are you trying to have a serious relationship when half of the boys in college are desperately trying to get in your pants?”

“Are you trying to get her pregnant or with syphilis? Because that’s how you do it, that's how you get syphilis,” Anne said crossed her arms. “She doesn’t have to sleep around to be happy! She just needs to be logical!”

“Okay, Dr. Heart, what do you recommend?” Josie huffed.

Anne whined and curled up under the covers. Ruby and Josie were sitting at the edge of her bed while Diana and Cole laid casually on the floor, their heads against the pillows Anne had given them so they weren’t completely flat on the ground.

“I don’t know, I’ve never dated a guy for more than a month.”

“Ew, Roy,” Cole said instantly.

“But maybe… I don’t know, do you have his intagram or something?”

“I do,” Ruby sniffed. “I haven’t checked it cause I didn’t want to look desperate and you know how I always accidentally like old pictures…”

“Facebook?”

“No...”

“If you have his instagram, you have his facebook,” Cole said.

“How come?”

“Give me your phone,” His hand lifted from the ground, Ruby gave it to him.

“Okay, so we decided to go full stalker then,” Josie said bluntly.

“It’s either this or…” Anne stopped herself before saying ‘or hearing Ruby mop for another three hours’ but managed to hold her tongue just in time.

“This is for the best,” Diana replied almost as if talking of a medical procedure.

“Can someone go to the bathroom and fetch me the painkillers?” Anne groaned.

“I’ll go, see if I can drown myself in the toilet,” Josie mumbled. “I can’t believe you guys are my best friends…”

Anne laughed at that. Truth be told, Josie and her weren’t exactly close during their youth, Josie even sort of made her life a living hell for a whole year during Junior high, then some random dude tried to take advantage of her during a school dance and Anne stood up for her in front of the whole school. Josie spent the rest of her highschool years making up for her bad actions by defending Anne from any nasty comments anyone would throw her way.

She kept this up even during college, and Anne would’ve gladly told her it wasn’t necessary if it wasn’t because Josie seemed to get more insulted whenever Anne tried to point it out than if she was actually insulting her.

“You know what I’d love to have right now?” Anne yawned.

“A nap?”

“I’d love to have one of those god awful pancakes they used to make in our highschool’s cafeteria. God, they were awful, but for some reason I’m craving those fucking pancakes...”

“You ever crave flowers?” Diana asked absentmindedly.

“What?” Anne laughed. “What do you mean?”

“Like, you walk past a flower shop and you see a gorgeous bouquet, and then some random day you’re like, ‘Man, I wish I had the bouquet, it’d look amazing on my coffee table'”

“I… no– wow, I think it’s the first time you've beat me, Diana. That was the weirdest thing I’ve heard in a while.”

“Oh please, you love flowers, you must have felt that way at some point!”

“No, I swear,” Anne sat up. “I mean, maybe because if I see pretty flowers I just buy them, never been one to say no to buying flowers.”

“That’s the reason why our flat always stinks like gardenia, or roses, or lilies…” Cole adds distractedly.

“You know,” Ruby said, a bit calmer than before. “No boy has ever given me a bouquet.”

“That makes two of us,” Anne patted her knee.

“Three,” said Cole.

___________________

“So, Moody got mugged as soon as he left the bus station yesterday,” Gilbert sighed.

“Oh god, is he alright?” Winnie asked through the phone.

Winifred was back in town for the holidays, and she had many stories to tell about Paris and the girls she’d met there. She was one of Gilbert’s best friends from highschool, if not the only he still had from that time apart from Moody.

They were planning to have lunch the next day, but she’d called him to let him know she was home now, safe and sound, and they were chatting the night away.

“Yeah, a black eye and no phone or wallet, but fine,” Gilbert chuckled. “What’s worse is that he’s not even mad about that, he's upset that he won’t be able to text his girl...”

“What?!” She gasped. “I didn’t know Moody had a girlfriend!”

“He doesn’t,” The boy squinted. “Well, I think they saw each other the other night at the bar and they kissed, but I’m not so sure.”

“Right, because you were utterly shit-faced.”

“Yup.”

He heard her laugh.

“I miss you two so much! Honestly, sometimes I feel like french guys lack sense of humor.”

“Oh, but I bet the girls were quite amusing, considering you oficially dated at least two of them throughout the semester,” He teased.

“Didn’t say I wasn’t having fun,” Winnie replied, he could pictured her smirking. “Looks like the only one who’s got no game is Canada’s Golden Boy! What’s the matter, Gilbert? No girl is worthy of your charms? Are you waiting until marriage?”

“Not quite,” He grinned. “I’ve been busy studying, that’s all.”

“I worry about you, don’t want to see you in ten years all grey and grumpy.”

“That's awfully rude, Bash is not grey and he’s ten years older than us!”

“Yeah but I’ve heard that if you don’t have sex you die faster.”

“That’s the biggest slander I’ve ever heard. Don’t try to scare the future Doctor with fake news!”

“Well, future Doctor, I just want to make sure you don’t end up as the spinster of our group. Not that is bad, if you want to be alone that’s cool, but please don’t be a bitter one, you know, like those old librarians?”

“So what should I be then, the old spinster that invites you to have tea every sunday?”

“Yeah, you could even own a coffee shop- oh wait, you do!”

“Rude,” Gilbert frowned, but he was still smiling. “The Orchard is not a coffee shop, just so you know.“

“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” Winnie chuckled. “See you tomorrow?”

“Totally.”

“Got it!”

___________________

The girls straightened up at Cole’s announcement, all of them excited.

“And?” Diana urged him.

“Good news or bad news?”

“Bad news,” Cole looked up. “He posted this five hours ago…”

He handed the phone to Diana, then she gave it to Anne, there she read the most recent post on his page:

‘Someone stole my phone and wallet, please block the number in the meantime. If you need me you can send a private message here.’

“Could’ve been worse,” Anne gave the phone back to Ruby so she could read what it said.

Ruby sighed heavily.

“He doesn’t hate me.”

“Of course not, you’re a ray of freaking sunshine,” Josie retorted.

“I still think this is god giving you the opportunity to reconsider,” Cole replied. “Don’t commit, Ruby, you’re too young to get married–”

“She won’t get married!” Diana slapped his arm, then hesitated. “Well, at least not anytime soon... right, Ruby?”

“It’s late, children,” Marilla peeked through the door. “You can have dinner here if you want, we have room for all of you, but if you don’t then I suggest you to say your goodbyes now...”

“Thank you Marilla,” Anne smiled. “They’ll be on their way.”

“You can stay the night if you want as well,” Marilla added. “Matthew and I missed the fuss you kids make around the house whenever Anne invites you.”

“That’s so kind, thank you,” Ruby beamed.

Marilla left and Anne turned to look at the group.

“So any of you want to stay?”

“You know I do,” Cole smirked.

“Same,” Josie admitted. “My mom's being a pain right now: ‘Are you dating someone, love?’ ‘Will you ever give me grandchildren?’”

“I’d like to stay too,” Ruby said, deep in thought. “I know he’s not avoiding me, but I really don’t want to sleep alone tonight…”

“You have two younger sisters, Ruby.”

“It’s not the same!”

“See?” Cole said. “Ruby gets it!”

“I’ll have to pass,” Diana sighed. “My dad needs the car tomorrow morning, last minute shopping.”

“We still have next week,” Anne assured her with a small smile.

Taglist.

@ninizkd @http-itsrebecca @fuckthisshitimoutyall @just-here-to-escape-from-reality​​ @little-boats-on-a-lake

[teriwrites]

2020 Writing Wrap-Up

Something that I do every year on the 1st is go back through absolutely everything I’ve written throughout the previous year and compile it into one massive word document. Everything from outlining notes to unfinished short stories to my NaNo project wind up in that file, where I like to read back and reflect on what I’ve gotten done through the year. 

Every year, I end up having written more than I expected, and this year was no different! 

Total for 2020: 203,119!

This is the first recorded year (I think it’s year 4 that I’ve done this for?) in which I’ve cracked 200K! It’s also the first year I’ve ever actually followed through on my resolution to share some of my writing online! So as rough as 2020 has been, I still somehow managed to break some personal records in writing. Which probably has everything to do with the fact that I joined this community earlier this year, and it’s been incredibly encouraging and supportive!

I also branched out a bit more this year in a few ways. I worked on some poetry and prose, which is not something I’ve put a lot of time into before so tends to be a challenge. It’s nothing that I’ll be posting anytime soon, but it was fun to work on in the moment, which is especially important in such a wild year as 2020.

One snag that I definitely hit was the fact that I have a lot more unfinished work than most years. A majority of the short stories I started working on never got finished. But I can’t even be too upset about that, because I totally loved being able to read back on even the fragmented pieces I ended up with. And while I do think a large part of that (for me) is discipline over inspiration, I’m willing to accept that, sometimes, things will remain unfinished. And it’s okay to stop working on them. 

My overall focus shifted a bit this year, too, which was interesting. I worked more on longer things than most years - started out the year by finishing my first draft of Castle on the Hill, continued making some edits and reworking its outline, did a large part of Beneath Alder Creek’s first draft in November. Right now, I’m working on what I expect to be a novella by the time I’m done with it. It’s a big contrast to the usual, short and snappy short stories that fill most of my previous wrap-up files. But I still definitely write those sometimes, and it’s nice to be able to try stretching and testing my own boundaries. 

This is the part of my wrap-up where I go ham throwing in some of my favorite out-of-context quotes from a variety of different things I’ve worked on. Some of them might be familiar, a lot probably won’t. I’m going to post it beneath the thing so this doesn’t become even more absurdly long!

Some of the ~highlights~ of 2020:

First Thoughts in the Morning: wow the sexual tension between me and the alarm clock right now. Later Reflection: wtf? (a literal note on my notes app that I included because I Cannot remember writing any of this and it made me laugh)

Edriele’s gaze trailed down to the woman’s armor, and her stomach twisted. “Where did you find your attire?” The woman glanced down in surprise, as though she’d forgotten she was wearing it. “It was fitted to me when I gained my ranking. I suppose it draws attention, but after my confrontation at… you mean to ask me whether I’m impersonating a Knight!” “The thought had crossed my mind,” the Sister replied dryly. (novella WIP)

“Do you need to make a stop at your house before we head to the chapel?” Leslie asked as they started off. “What for?” Winnie asked. Leslie looked pointedly at the tip of her galoshes poking out from beneath her dress. With another roll of her eyes, Winnie sighed. “Oh, I suppose so.” (Beneath Alder Creek)

When the third meeting for the Society of the Hidden Immortal Tribe was called for the decade, I knew heads would roll. Gathering the entire society together took months. Everything had to be hush-hush; that was the entire point of spreading ourselves out. Plus, every time a letter arrived in the mail, it was a reminder of the idiot who had decided we needed a name change. Everybody agreed that being deemed the ‘S.H.I.T.’ was humiliating, but nobody could agree on a better title, so it had remained the same for nearly a full century. That was the problem with living forever. You always had more time to make decisions, and, in the end, nothing ever got done. (S.H.I.T.)

When she leaves, I’m not sure I remember a word of what she’s said. But as the stresses of the semester wash back in, and my mind clears like being pulled out of a dream, I suddenly understand how one could crash upon the rocks without realizing they’d ever changed their course. (A Modern Siren)

When Georg arrived later, he found Klaus leaning forwards onto the table, staring vacuously at one of his textbooks. "Studying hard?" he taunted as he approached and dropped into the seat Ingrid had been occupying. "I talked with Ingrid," Klaus explained. Georg's eyebrows shot up in genuine surprise, but he quickly recovered and looked pointedly at Klaus' posture. "Go that well, then?" "She said I'm arrogant and completely self-involved and that I never take what a girl says into account whenever I'm on a date." With a haunted gleam in his eye, Klaus stared up at his friend. "I think she's right." "Well then it's a good thing somebody pointed it out," Georg offered, and he turned to his work. (Castle on the Hill)

Takemoto Hana rested a hand over her face. She couldn’t see the swirling of darkness over her head, but she heard the whine behind its words. With a wry smile, she asked, ‘Do you not know how to brew tea?’ ‘Of course I know how to brew tea!’ The dark spirit’s voice boomed with a defensive defiance that rang false in the funny little woman’s ears.  (The Funny Little Woman)

“None of us want to be here right now,” Edgar called out to the hall. “None of us want to go back through the handbook and listen to the steps of proper etiquette in immortality. But it seems that, once again, it’s necessary.” “Dammit, Dave,” muttered the man next to me. I said nothing, but I couldn’t help but agree with the sentiment. Dave was… how do I describe Dave? To call him an idiot would be underestimating his craftiness. To call him a genius, I’d have to ignore all of his dumb antics. Cruel was too strong. Misguided was too innocent. Mischievous fit best, but even that fell short. Dave was a trickster god, if ever one existed. (S.H.I.T.)

Ridiculous, he told me with a self-conscious laugh of someone who didn't expect to be believed. I smiled, but I didn't join in. (The Little Roads)

“Hey, where did Alina go?” Lorelai asked. Zoe shrugged, but Jaiden cleared his throat. “I think you crossed one of her boundaries, Lo. She specifically asked not to involve her girlfriend in this, and then you did anyways. I know we needed the help, but friendships have to be built on mutual trust, my dude. You should’ve at least let her know your plan before you went behind her back.” The two women stopped and shared a look. “Hey, Jaiden,” Zoe asked. “Do you know the capital of Canada?” He shook his head. “I dunno, Ontario?” “Amazing.” (Mirror, Mirror)

"We had a bet going over whether you'd make it in time," Hans told him. "Did you win or lose?" Josef replied. Hans flipped a 5-Deutsche Mark coin over to Peter, who grinned as he pocketed it. "I'm glad you have so much faith in me." Josef's voice dripped with sarcasm. (Castle on the Hill)

Taliesin reached over his head and grabbed at one of the low-hanging bows, picking leaves from it. “I’m not sure.” Winnie stopped. “What do you mean?” “I mean that I don’t know.” (Beneath Alder Creek)

While she attended to these, the man beside her began to stir. Ella could see him out of the corner of her eye, attempting to push himself up into a sitting position. ‘You may want to lie back down,’ she told him, scrubbing uselessly at her skirt. The man continued to sit up anyways, pressing a hand against the side of his face. ‘Am I killed?’ ‘No, but your savior may be.’ Ella threw her skirt back to the ground. ‘When the Madame sees the state of me, I’ll be spending my future afternoons off making a new dress out of the fabric scraps.’ A frown crossed the man’s face as he considered her words, followed by a scowl of understanding. ‘You work for them. The bourgeoisie.’ (Cinderella)

Ingrid took the seat and began digging through her bag for a book. As she did so, she explained, "There were no other tables open in the building - even in the quiet section upstairs - so I figured that I would just ask the first person I recognized if I could sit with them, and well... here we are." "Don't worry about it," Georg answered when Klaus found himself dumbstruck again. "Just ignore the oaf, he'll leave you alone." Ingrid shot a grin at Georg, and Klaus suddenly wondered whether it was a good idea to have the two of them sit together. (Castle on the Hill)

Up ahead, I could see the glass walls of the bus stop. Usually, I waited for the bus leaning against the metal frame of the stop, leaving the seats inside open for children on their way to school. But the seats were empty now. I still avoided them. (Flo’s Magical Emporium: The Pandemic)

Now, I ask that you do not feel too much self-pity. For as easy an error as it may be to mistake a visiting aristocrat’s son for the hired help, the true talent in such a display causing his immediate departure lies within you alone. And to think that the meeting was the work of your father’s tenuous sway over the court! Well, I am sure the time away will do him some good, lest you begin to consider that you’ve ruined his position as well as your prospects. (Dearly Detested,)

Edgar was at the front of the lecture hall, and standing beside him was Dave, smirking as though at some private joke that only he was in on. He was wearing sunglasses, despite the dim lighting of the room, probably because he thought he looked cool. I rolled my eyes. What a tool. (S.H.I.T.)

 The work is different now. Countryside pathways winding through the forest lie forgotten for years without the familiar steps of a traveler. Off beaten paths in the city are never unknown for long, and sometimes streets that were once crossed by thousands a day fall back into obscurity. (The Little Roads)

“How much time will you give me to think on it?” she asked suspiciously, wrapping her arms around herself as though afraid they’d reach out to him if not kept in check. “You have all the time in the world,” the golden man said. “The boy’s, however, runs out with every passing second.” He extended his hand. (Beneath Alder Creek)

You ever met a rich person? Not comfortably wealthy. Not ‘my Uncle Kenny is a lawyer’ rich. Not even ‘widow answering the door to her manor on a hill dressed in fine silk’ rich. No, I mean proper, so-much-money-you-literally-can’t-spend-it-fast-enough rich. They say it isn’t worth Bill Gates’ time to pick up a $100 bill off the floor because he’ll have earned more in the time it takes to grab it. That kind of rich. They seem to be bred for times like these. Their houses are a source of endless entertainment – movie theaters, bowling alleys, personal gyms with a view of the sprawling landscape they overlook like cruel dictators. There’s no need for them to leave during a pandemic; they have access to the equivalent of a luxury resort most families have to save up month to visit. Necessities can be stockpiled in one of the useless extra spaces in the house. I mean, I once had to hide out in a luggage room for a contract. That’s right. An entire room dedicated to holding luggage, bigger than some of the apartments I’ve rented. I thought their residential labyrinths were my greatest source of grief. But social distancing? I’m one bad contract away from retirement. (Bounty Hunter During a Pandemic)

Shaking his head, Detlef pulled a new sheet from his notebook. “Look, I’m just saying, if we can get the satire right, we can be a modern Jonathan Swift.” “I don’t want to be a modern Jonathan Swift, I want to be a student actually passing his debate course!” Peter snapped. (Castle on the Hill)

Moonlight illuminated the German’s fair hair and pale skin, the effect more malevolent apparition than man. (Face on the Other Side of a Dark Window)

Back then, he’d been known for commissioning the exact same portrait of himself every hundred years, hanging them in a hallway in his manor and trying to pass them off as his line of ancestors to any of the locals. It had been a far less skeptical age, and Dave had earned himself a small band of worshipers before Jeff Goldblum himself had been forced to intervene. (S.H.I.T.)

Clara stood before the board of advisors assisting with her thesis. She was one, very intense paper away from her M.A., and she wasn’t about to risk it all by being too proud to ask for help. When she’d made the appointment to meet with them, she expected a series of questions surrounding her topic. Instead, they’d opened by offering her a job. “You want me to steal from the school?” Dr. Pye wrinkled her nose at the suggestion. Next to her, Dr. Pritchard said, “Don’t think of it as theft, dear. It’s merely redistribution.” Clara hadn’t amassed tens of thousands of dollars in debt to be lectured on the definition of robbery. “Either way, it involves me sneaking into the Chemistry department and taking a huge risk to get you some new toys to play with.” (Origins: The Ghost)

“Why is undermining Pryderi so important to Queen Ceridwen that she would risk breaking a timeless alliance just to dismantle them?” Her stomach twisted into a knot, protesting against the answer. “There are few members of the Dusk Court that we know by title.” A shadow passed over Enid’s expression. “The Lord of the Undernell is second only to the Queen.” “Great deeds build the reputation of one in their own court. Cruelty builds it in both.” Taliesin buckled under Winnie’s weight as she suddenly leaned against him. (Beneath Alder Creek)

“Why are all my friends so quick to endanger themselves?” I muttered as I packed up Midas’ crate. Natalie swiveled around from the candy aisle. “So you’re finally willing to admit that we’re friends?” “Save it.” (Flo’s Magical Emporium: The Pandemic)

[organized-chaotic-disaster]

WARNING, election talk, mentions of COVID

Oh my god, my dad

My FUCKING father

I cannot believe this person is related to me (tho, to be fair, his side of the family is... much worse than he specifically is)

So, context: I only work Fridays and Saturdays during school so that I can, y’know... not fail and/or have a mental breakdown while I’m in school

So, I have work tomorrow for the first time since the election happened, and I’m like

“Oh my god I can’t believe I have to work tomorrow, it’s been virtually impossible for me to think or even talk about anything besides the election”

AND MY DAD JUST FUCKING. BRUSHES ME OFF LIKE “I literally don’t care lol it’s not a big deal it’s not like it’s gonna affect us, there’s more important stuff going on in my life to worry about”

AND I JUST. BRO. I SWEAR TO GOD.

YES, we aren’t American, we’re Canadian, but guess fucking what???? The result of this election has a global impact

And you think this won’t affect Canada?? Really?? It’s not like the US is our biggest trading partner or anything OH WAIT

Also we live like 5 minutes from the border. Do you really think this won’t impact us, dad?? Not even in the slightest bit?? Really now????

And besides that, so fucking what if it doesn’t affect us?? It affects a whole lot of other people, primarily marginalized communities like people of colour (especially black people, in the case of the US), the working class, LGBTQIA+ people, prisoners, etc.. Like, do you have literally no compassion????

I am privileged. I’m white, my family is middle class (idk for sure how much my parents make BUT we aren’t lower class I don’t think?), I have a stable job. I don’t live in the States. I am LGBTQIA+, but Canada is historically better about that than other places, it’s more the social aspect that’s worrisome. I’m very privileged overall.

But just because my life isn’t at direct risk here doesn’t mean that no one else’s is

My best friends are a married couple, one of which is from the US. He’s only been a permanent resident in Canada for a year. His entire blood-related family is in the States. I care about them. I’ve known and been friends with other people from the States. I care about them. Hell, I care about the people I follow, whether it be on tumblr, twitter, or youtube, and many of those people are from the States. 

Also, even if you ignore everything else, Trump’s handled COVID extremely poorly, you can’t deny that. Even if we ignore every other issue with Trump, if he stays in office right now, who knows how much worse it’ll get? I don’t know much about American politics, but I imagine Biden would handle it better than Trump, the person who went to events with COVID, denies the severity of the issue, and all sorts of other shit

I just. I can’t fucking believe my dad sometimes. He’s not as bad as I paint him to be - he actually has some really reasonable moments. But then shit like this happens and I really just need to take a breather

Sorry about all this venting btw, I just. Swear to god

[theycallmegothboy]

1-100 >:DDDD REVENGE!!!

FELIXXXXXXXXXXXX >:(( 1. Spotify, SoundCloud, or Pandora?  -spotify  2. is your room messy or clean? -it’s pretty messy i guess  3. what color are your eyes? -blue and grey

4. do you like your name? why? -yeah it’s fine 5. what is your relationship status? -single 6. describe your personality in 3 words or less -certified intrusive thot 7. what color hair do you have? -brown and rn it’s red 8. what kind of car do you drive? color? -i dont have a car 9. where do you shop? -hot topic, goodwill, target 10. how would you describe your style? -comfy emo 11. favorite social media account -of mine, probably discord or youtube 12. what size bed do you have? -twin >:(( 13. any siblings? -i have 1.5 brothers  14. if you can live anywhere in the world where would it be? why? -probably vancouver, idk canada seems lit 15. favorite snapchat filter? -i like the one with devil horns and a tail but its cute 16. favorite makeup brand(s) -i dont wear makeup 17. how many times a week do you shower? -i used to shower every day, but i dont do anything that gets me dirty so like maybe 3 times but if i leave the house then i shower 18. favorite tv show? -stranger things 19. shoe size?  -8 or 9 20. how tall are you? -5′6 with shoes >:(( 21. sandals or sneakers? -sneakers wtf 22. do you go to the gym? -lol no 23. describe your dream date -making some pie or something together and then eating the pie and then sitting on some rooftop looking at stars 24. how much money do you have in your wallet at the moment? -quite a bit actually but i’m saving up for a phone lol so soon it will be like maybe 10 dollars lmao 25. what color socks are you wearing? -not wearing socks but the ones i had earlier were white (ankle length) 26. how many pillows do you sleep with? -just one but it sucks 27. do you have a job? what do you do? -NO BUT IM TRYING TO GET A JOB BUT THE FUCKIN PEOPLE THERE ARE GHOSTING ME AND WONT REPLY TO MY EMAILS SO LIKE SBJHBJS 28. how many friends do you have? -like 4 lmao 29. whats the worst thing you have ever done? -idk nothing super bad but i do a lot of small shit that makes me feel guilty when i realize what i did 30. whats your favorite candle scent? -juniper rosewood 31. 3 favorite boy names -leo, clay, charlie 32. 3 favorite girl names -ivy, uh... idk thats all ive got 33. favorite actor? -no clue 34. favorite actress? -no clue 35. who is your celebrity crush? -not a celeb but i’d smash danny phantom 36. favorite movie? -nightmare before christmas or edward scissorhands 37. do you read a lot? whats your favorite book? -no, but my fav book is probably the prince and the pauper? idk 38. money or brains? -CASH MONEYYYY jk probably brains but if your entire personality is being “smart” like fuck off lmao   39. do you have a nickname? what is it? - a bunch of people call me son (see #49, #100), some call me rat, dumdum, goth boy

40.how many times have you been to the hospital? -just once i think when i was birthed. i also went once with my brother cause he kicked some scissors i left out on the floor and it sliced his toe the fuck open and he needed stitches and i watched him get the stitches and almost passed out :/ 41. top 10 favorite songs -please dont make me do this i dont have it in me 42. do you take any medications daily? -yea i take 20mg of vyvanse but i need to get it raised to 30 cause 20 is Not Enough 43. what is your skin type? (oily, dry, etc) -i got some dry fuckin skin yall dont even know 44. what is your biggest fear?  -it depends. the dark is a pretty constant one though 45. how many kids do you want? -like 2 or 3 eventually 46. whats your go to hair style? -in my face, looking stupid 47. what type of house do you live in? (big, small, etc)  -it’s pretty small 48. who is your role model? -i dont fuckin know lmao  49. what was the last compliment you received? - “i belive in you, my son, you’re an amazing human being“ (same friend mentioned in #100, not actually a parent of mine) 50. what was the last text you sent? -”no it’s a raccoon“ YOU GET NO CONTEXT LMAO 51. how old were you when you found out santa wasn’t real? -i dont think i ever hardcore believed in him, maybe i did though i remember sleeping under the tree one christmas eve waiting for him but i was like “oh yeah that makes sense“ i guess 52. what is your dream car?  -i honestly dont give a shit as long as it actually fucking works 53. opinion on smoking? -cigarettes? fuck no that’s nastyyy. weed? that’s fine i guess but wait till you’re like 18.  54. do you go to college? -no. am sophomore n highschool 55. what is your dream job?  -musician/palentologist 56. would you rather live in rural areas or the suburbs?  -fuck the suburbs lmao, but also im tired of rural, so like.. semi urban?? 57. do you take shampoo and conditioner bottles from hotels?  -no but i take the little soaps >:)) 58. do you have freckles?  -yes 59. do you smile for pictures? -awkwardly, yes 60. how many pictures do you have on your phone?  -dont have a phone but i have like 12 on my computer currently. 4 are of me, the rest are of my cat or random shit 61. have you ever peed in the woods?  -yes 62. do you still watch cartoons?  -cartoons these days kinda suck but like if they were good fuck yeah i would like gravity falls can come hang yknow? 63. do you prefer chicken nuggets from Wendy’s or McDonalds? -i had nuggets from mcdonalds today so i guess them? i dont really care 64. Favorite dipping sauce?  -i got sweet and sour but i dont like it that much. that schezuan sauce was great 65. what do you wear to bed?  -wouldnt you like to know? ;))  66. have you ever won a spelling bee?  -NO ive only been in two. the first one i misspelled the word “turmoil“ cause i had never heard it before and the second one i spelled the word “owed“ as “ode“ cause i was thinking like ode to joy and then i felt like a big Fool afterwards :(( 67. what are your hobbies? -lol what hobbies 68. can you draw?  -i am physically able to draw, but not well, no 69 (haha). do you play an instrument? -yeah i play a few 70. what was the last concert you saw?  -i saw Chicago in either georgia or tennessee i cant remember in like 2016 71. tea or coffee? -hot coffee, iced tea. NOT the other way around. (i love both though) 72. Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts? -starbucks 73. do you want to get married? -sure why not 74. what is your crush’s first and last initial? -dont have a crush 75. are you going to change your last name when you get married?  -idk maybe 76. what color looks best on you?  -i dont know but i wear black a lot and that’s pretty dope 77. do you miss anyone right now? -yeah  78. do you sleep with your door open or closed? -closed 79. do you believe in ghosts? -on the fence. not 100% “oh my god look at these gHoSt oRbS i need to sage my house!!!“ but i accept that there’s some things i wont understand about the world and that i have no answers to. i wouldnt be surprised if there are, and i wouldnt be surprised if there aren’t. 80. what is your biggest pet peeve? -whatever my adhd decides i viscerally hate with a firey passion right at that moment  81. last person you called -my brother (the 1 of the 1.5 from #13 and the one who sliced his toe in #40) 82. favorite ice cream flavor?  -chocolate is dope 83. regular oreos or golden oreos?  -regular double stuff. if you say golden, mint, peppermint, or thin oreos i’m gonna have to euthanize you, i dont make the rules.  84. chocolate or rainbow sprinkles? -rainbow cause it’s prettier  85. what shirt are you wearing?  -queen shirt from hot topic 86. what is your phone background? -i didnt get a phone between question 60 and now but my computer one is some mountains with the moon in the background 87. are you outgoing or shy? -really depends on who i’m around 88. do you like it when people play with your hair? -YES FUCK AAAAAAA (this girl played with my hair literally once in middle school and i was like oh shit and i had a crush on her until the end of middle school true story,,, so ashley if you’re out there-) 89. do you like your neighbors? -to the left they’re fine and their dog is nice but idk what happened to the horses so that’s sus but that’s where our cat came from so they can hang  guess, behind me they’re fine but their boys are loud, to the right they’re fine, and even further to the right are the dope neighbors and waaaaaaaaaay far to the right is a llama and he’s dope as hell 90. do you wash your face? at night? in the morning? -whenever the fuck i remember to/have the energy 91. have you ever been high?  -i dont think so but i wouldnt put it past myself 92. have you ever been drunk?  -not that i can remember, no 93. last thing you ate?  -sloppy joe from a can 94. favorite lyrics right now -”not gonna waste my life, cause i’ve been fucked up“ 95. summer or winter?  -fall. fuck you 96. day or night?  -night but i like it when it’s actually night and it doesnt get dark at like 4 fucking pm cause that makes me depressed 97. dark, milk, or white chocolate? -dark is good, milk is fine, white is only suitable for fancy stripes on chocolate covered strawberries 98. favorite month?  -i vibe with september 99. what is your zodiac sign -sagittarius (was almost a scorpio but i was holding out >:))) 100. who was the last person you cried in front of?  -in person, my mom like 6 months ago, on a discord call, my friend (i love you by the way, you’re the best,,, i dont think he has tumblr but im just putting it out there) like a month or so ago. i hate crying in front of people, i turn into such a hyperventilating snot monster which is not suitable for human gaze and thats the real tea :/

felix this took like 2 hours of my life i will never get back i hate you and i hope you’re happy with what you’ve done <3 <3

also anyone who wants to stalk me, enjoy this information that im handing to you on a silver platter :)) <3

[luci-in-trenchcoats]

Follow Me Home (Part 3)

Summary: Dean and the reader head up to Vancouver on a long shot but discover their friendship might not stop there...

Pairing: Cop!Dean x reader

Masterlist

Word Count: 4,700ish

Warnings: language, kidnapping, brief smut

A/N: Enjoy!…

______

“The rain’s pretty,” you said the next morning as you woke up, sitting up in Dean’s bed as he worked on his computer beside you, rain pouring down outside. He smiled and scratched at his bedhead.

“It’s probably a good thing that you like it if you live here,” he said, closing his eyes. “It doesn’t look like your father had a record. Your mother either.”

“Of course,” you said, laying back on the bed.

“Your father used to have a girlfriend. He broke it off with her a few years back but she might be worth talking to. He might have shared some things with her,” said Dean. “It’s a long shot.”

“Where does she live?” you asked.

“Vancouver. Canada,” he said. “About three hours from here.”

“Can I even go there?” you asked.

“Y/N might not have a passport but Jane does,” he said, nodding over to the small table in the room, a few papers scattered on top of it. “We’re probably chasing our own tails at this point.”

“Probably. But I’d rather make sure it’s a dead end than not ask at all,” you said.

“Why don’t we get dressed, grab a quick brunch and then we’ll take a ride up there?” he asked.

“Sounds like a plan.”

“Shocker. Dead end,” you said with a smile a few hours later as you walked back towards the rental car. Dean chuckled and shrugged. “Hey, at least we tried.”

“Well since we’re having such a crappy day, why don’t we make the most of this little trip before we fly home tomorrow,” he said.

“What do you have in mind?”

“Why don’t we grab a late lunch and then we’ll see if we can turn your day around, sweetheart.”

“Wow,” you said a few more hours later, the sun already set as you looked around. “Look at the lights.”

“It’s really pretty,” said Dean, smiling as he grabbed your hand. You weren’t expecting the surprise trip to the canyon park but you certainly weren’t going to argue with him. It was gorgeous. Lights were strung along all of the bridges, in the trees, the place looking like it was some kind of winter wonderland, minus all of the snow.

“Hey, is Thanksgiving soon?” you asked.

“Next week,” he said with a smile. “You remembered it’s November.”

“Context clues,” you said, waving your arm around, pointing at a giant candy cane.

“Still. You remembered,” he said.

“I’m not entirely hopeless after all,” you said with a laugh.

“You never were, Y/N,” he said, shoving his hands in his pockets as you started to walk down a trail. “Not too many people could be in your situation and be handling it this well.”

“I want to know why is all,” you said. “Why me?”

“I want to know why you were outside half naked in November,” he said.

“What’s your detective hat telling you?” you asked. Dean shrugged, quiet for a few minutes before he let out a big breath.

“I think someone wanted to hurt you which explains why you were so scared when we met. If that’s the case, I’m not comfortable leaving your side yet,” he said. “Which is why a safer move might actually be to stay up here, keep you out of harm’s way.”

“We can stay at my apartment,” you said. “That’s free at least.”

“...everyday we learn a little more about what happened which helps. We’ll get there and get it so you feel safe at home,” he said.

“I don’t know where my home is anymore,” you said.

“Maybe it’s wherever you want it to be,” he said.

“Dork,” you said, reaching out and wrapping your arm around his. “I think the answers are back in Kansas.”

“I can head back and you can stay here,” he said.

“Oh. Yeah. Okay,” you said.

“Or we can stay up here and I can get Sam to do the leg work,” he said. “I think I’m a bit nicer to hang around than Broch.”

“I don’t like that guy,” you said.

“He’s the chief of a major city. I don’t imagine it’s an easy job,” said Dean. “Still, he could be a little more compassionate.”

“Well not everybody’s a super cop like you, Dean,” you said, Dean smirking back at you.

“I’m just doing my job,” he said, slowing his pace as you came to a long bridge. “Afraid of heights?”

“No. Pretty is all. You do way more than just your job by the way, Dean. You’re supposed to find out what happened to me is all,” you said. “But you...you do more.”

“You must not have ever heard of that to protect and serve part,” he teased. 

“Dean.”

“You need a friend right now and this is the biggest thing I’ve ever worked...and we used to be good friends,” he said. You turned your head up at him, Dean staring out ahead on the bright path. “The Winchester’s weren’t exactly rolling in it when I was little. My dad got a better job when I was about ten, not too long after you went missing. We moved to the nicer side of town after that. Before that though...we used to live on the same street. We used to play.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t remember,” you said. He chuckled, stopping in the middle of the bridge.

“Y/N, it’s alright. I barely do and I wasn’t bonked on the head a few days ago,” he said, fixing your hair away from your healing cut. “You and Sammy were always playing. I was normally around somewhere.”

“We were friends?” you asked.

“Well my stupid ten year old self probably wouldn’t have admitted to being friends with a six year old but yeah, we were,” he said. “Then one day we went outside to ask you to play and the street was covered in cop cars. I never saw you again for twenty years. Not until a few days ago.”

“Well thanks for finding me,” you said, looking into the dark canyon and down at the water below. “Even if you suck at it.”

“I am excellent at hide and seek, thank you very much,” he laughed. “You didn’t play fair, Jane.”

“Don’t call me that,” you said.

“Sorry.”

“She’s not real,” you said with a sigh.

“You are,” he said, touching your cheek. You gave him a smile, Dean looking at you with a soft face. He bent his head down and lightly kissed you, pulling away when you stared at him. “I’m sorry. That was unprofessional.”

“Who gives a shit?” you said, stepping closer to him.

“Y/N-“

“Dean.”

You smiled and tilted your head up, barely catching his lips. He closed his eyes for a moment, slowly opening them when you moved away.

“I’ve kissed you before,” you said. “Something to do with ice cream.”

“Yes, you did,” he said with a small smile. “It didn’t quite feel like that though.”

“I trust you,” you said.

“You’ve known me four days.”

“I’ve known you more than four days, Dean. I trust you,” you said.

“Okay, sweetheart,” he said, nodding his head. “Want to keep going before our lovely drive back?”

“Yeah,” you said, pecking another kiss to his lips, Dean smiling through it this time. “Thank you for bringing me here. It’s sort of been the highlight of my day.”

“Mine too,” he said with a laugh. “Alright. Alright. We can do more of that later. I promise.”

“Y/N,” laughed Dean when you stumbled back into your apartment late that night. You pushed his rain coat off his shoulders, barely letting him kick off his boots before you walked him back into your bedroom, pushing him straight onto the bed. “Y/N, behave, young lady.”

“I might not remember it but I know I like sex,” you said, settling on the bed and straddling his hips, giving him a big smile.

“We are not having sex. You’re not on anything and I don’t got anything and-“ he said before you leaned down and kissed him, Dean leaning into it before he broke away. “Y/N.”

“We can still feel good right?” you asked, licking your lips. “I could get very familiar with those lips of yours…”

“I’m not 69’ing with someone who doesn’t remember sex ed,” he said with a laugh.

“Then teach me so whatever this feeling is in me gets better,” you said.

“You mean horny?” he asked.

“Yeah, horny. In control. Make it feel better. You’re really good at making me feel better, Dean…” you said.

“Y/N. No,” he said. You frowned and rolled off of him, laying down in the empty side. “We can kiss if you want?”

“I…” you said, sitting up and looking back at him. “Say that again.”

“We can kiss if you want?” he said as he righted himself.

“A boy said that to me in high school when I turned him down for sex,” you said.

Dean stared at you blinking a few times.

“You do understand what sex is, don’t-“

“Of course I know what it is. I know I’ve done it. Like I said, it’s feelings,” you said. “Sex is a lot of feelings.”

“Well it is an intimate thing. It makes sense why your brain-“ said Dean before you kissed him hard. He broke off with a pant, staring at you again. “Fine but this ain’t going in that, got it? Strictly a little playing around and that’s it.”

“I think I’m remembering something else,” you said, pushing back on his shoulders.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“I really enjoy being on top,” you said, hovering over him.

“I’m man enough to enjoy both,” he said with a smile. “You think you know how to do this?”

“Oh, I know what I’m doing, Dean.”

“Shit, Y/N,” Dean panted against your stomach as you were still coming down from your third orgasm of the night. He throbbed in your mouth and you swallowed around him, Dean groaning as he came. You rolled off to the other side of the bed when he finished, Dean forcing himself up, leaning back on his arms. “You are really, really, really good at that.”

“I know,” you smirked, throwing an arm over your face. “That was fun. I feel like I can remember more stuff now. Relationships. Good sex, bad sex, playing on my own.”

“Where’s this rank?” he asked.

“No one’s gotten me there with just his oral skills alone and certainly not more than once,” you said, closing your eyes with a smile. “Thanks.”

“Thank you,” he laughed, spinning around to meet you at the other end of the bed. You moved your arm away, Dean turning on his side. “You look happier.”

“I just 69’d with an incredibly hot man,” you said, Dean chuckling as he pushed your hair behind your shoulder. “I’m remembering. Slowly, but I am. I feel less scared than before, more of that grounded feeling fore sure. I know you aren’t going to let anything happen to me again.”

“Damn right I’m not,” he said, bopping the tip of your nose. “Want to stay up here in Washington a little while? See if Sam can hunt down how and why you got back to Lawrence while you’re out of harm’s way?”

“Yeah,” you said as a new chorus of rain hit against the windows outside. “That sounds good with me.”

“Good morning,” you said, Dean walking back into your bedroom after a quick shower. 

“Good morning. Your bathroom is super nice by the way,” he said. “You have heated tile floors and super fluffy towels.”

“Whoa. I must be rolling in the big bucks,” you laughed.

“Well you are an architect. In Seattle. I’m going to guess you do alright for yourself,” he said, digging through his suitcase for some clean clothes. 

“You know...You could just not get dressed,” you said, Dean standing upright. “I want to stay home and eat take out and make out.”

“Well that does sound appealing but I do need to do a little bit of work in the event you have a psychotic person on your ass,” he said. “...But I’ll keep it to undies and a tee?”

“I suppose I can live with that,” you said, sitting up with a stretch.

“Take a shower. You’ll feel better. I got to change your bandage on your head when you’re all done,” he said.

“Okie dokie,” you said, throwing back the covers, Dean shaking his head at you.

“Okie dokie. I like that,” he said. You smiled and headed past him into the bathroom, the glass all steamed up from Dean. He hadn’t been in there too long so you weren’t worried about there not being enough hot water left. You slipped inside and turned it on. It was a much nicer shower than you’d taken at the hospital after they’d checked you out for sure.

You closed your eyes, standing under the water until your fingers were pruned. Your head was a bit clearer and after a few minutes, you were exiting into the kitchen in some underwear and an oversized shirt, Dean sipping on a cup of coffee with his laptop on the counter.

“I thought you weren’t putting on clothes,” he laughed.

“I figured we could match,” you said, moving to make your own cup. “So what has super cop discovered thus far?”

“I’m working on it,” he said, his phone ringing, Sam’s name popping up. He smiled as he answered, putting it on speaker. “What’s up? You crack the case?”

“No. You guys are still hanging out up in Washington?” asked Sam.

“Yeah. We’re crashing at Y/N’s place since the local PD doesn’t seem to care as much anymore,” said Dean.

“Good. Weird stuff is happening around town and I want Y/N to stay away from here,” said Sam. You shared a look with Dean, Dean staring back at you.

“Define weird, Sammy,” he said.

“Every cop in the department had their home broken into last night but nothing was taken, including your place. Then there’s the fact motel 8 and the Marriott and the Hilton all had their offices broken into but again, nothing was taken,” said Sam.

“Did security pick up anything?” asked Dean.

“Frank got someone dressed in black on his home security feed and the hotels got more of the same. This guy didn’t want to be seen. At all,” said Sam.

“You get a face?” asked Dean.

“No. They were covered head to toe. Odds are it’s a guy based on the build but other than that, we got nothing.”

“Nothing? You’re telling me that six different police officers with over a hundred years combined experience, who all had their homes broken into, got nothing?” said Dean. Sam was quiet on the other end, Dean taking a deep breath. “I’m not mad. I just really need you to keep an eye on things down there. Obviously someone is looking for Y/N which concerns me. They don’t know where she is yet and I’d prefer it stays that way. It’s pretty obvious she didn’t just trip in the woods.”

“I know. We’re gonna try and find out who this guy is and what he wants with Y/N,” said Sam. You quietly sat up on the counter with your mug, flicking at the peeling bandage on your forehead.

“I’ll send you what we got on our end so far. Be careful, Sammy. This guy sounds smart. I don’t like that,” he said.

“I know. Stay safe. Don’t let Dean annoy you too much, Y/N,” said Sam.

“Oh, I won’t,” he laughed. “Talk to you later, Sam.”

He sighed as he hung up, your gaze on your coffee cup.

“Someone’s looking for me,” you said.

“We’re gonna find them first,” he said, standing up and walking in front of you. “Okay?”

“Do I just have shitty luck or is all of this connected?” you asked, playing with your bandage again.

“Don’t pick,” he said, pushing your wrist down. “Where’s your first aid?”

“Top cabinet,” you said, lifting your chin. “Yeah, top one.”

“Is being home helping?” he asked gently as he went to the cabinet, smiling as he pulled it out.

“It’s an apartment. It’s not home,” you said as Dean walked back over. “It doesn’t feel like home. It’s cold.”

“Well you were right. Jane Jones has only lived here three months,” he said, flipping open the red bag beside you. “It could still be home.”

“No. It’s nice but no. Too modern. Too in the city. I moved here out of necessity I’m pretty sure,” you said.

“Well you don’t have to stay,” he said, pulling out a small bottle of alcohol and a cotton ball. He dabbed some on and peeled off your old bandage, carefully moving your damp hair back. “Hey. Y/N. Look at me.”

You hadn’t realized you shut your eyes, Dean giving you a soft smile.

“You were looking a little scared there,” he said. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” you said, Dean waiting a beat before cleaning the healing skin. You gripped your mug tight and set it aside, Dean pulling his hand away.

“Y/N. What’s going on?” he asked.

“I don’t…” you said, grabbing the cotton out of his hand and rubbing it against your head.

“Y/N. It’s clean. Stop,” he said, pulling your hand away as you took a deep breath, looking up with wide eyes. “You remember something.”

“I know how I got to Kansas.”

“Alright. Y/N,” said Sam on the other end of the line half an hour later. “One of our guys just confirmed that you did in fact use a pre loaded credit card to book a plane ticket on Monday and flew down in the evening on your own. You rented a car using that card in Kansas City. It’s not been recovered yet but we would theorize you came to Lawrence likely sometime late Monday evening or night.”

“Why’d you pay with an untraceable card?” asked Dean, cocking his head at you as you sat on the couch. “What did you find out between the time you went to confront your father Monday morning and the time you booked that ticket...it was only a few hours…” 

“Y/N. Didn’t you tell your boss you were taking days off? What time was that?” asked Sam.

“Uh, she sent that email at 7:53am, Monday morning,” said Dean, lifting his head up from his computer. “You were always going to Kansas, Y/N. You knew that.”

“You took two grand out in cash last Friday. She was always planning this,” said Sam. “But why?”

“What did you find out that’s not written down anywhere…” said Dean, leaning back on your couch, kicking his feet up on the coffee table. 

“It must have been about my mom. Maybe I wanted to see her or find out more about her...why else would I go back there?” you said.

“Good point. Sammy. Look into Y/N’s mom. Family, friends, people she worked with. I want to know every single person that knew the Y/L/N’s,” said Dean.

“You want the Winchesters on the list too?” asked Sam.

“Did you attack Y/N on Monday night?” asked Dean rolling his eyes.

“Of course not.”

“Then don’t be a dipshit. People that are dead you can leave off the list too, genius,” said Dean.

“Dean,” you said with a smile. “You know, it’s probably not a bad idea to include the kids I went to school with and their parents. Just in case.”

“You heard her, Sammy. She didn’t even go to the academy and I’m fixing to make her second in command when I get back,” said Dean.

“At least I remember my birthday,” said Sam. You scoffed, Dean chuckling.

“Cute, Winchester. I’ve never heard that one before,” you said.

“She’s got a better memory than last you saw her, Sam. I’d watch out,” said Dean.

“If you could remember everything that happened that’d be great,” said Sam.

“You know I wasn’t trying that method that but I’m totally gonna do that now,” you said. “That’s like super helpful of you, Sam.”

“I sense sarcasm,” said Sam.

“No, never,” you said, Dean biting his bottom lip.

“When this is all over, we gotta hang out again like when we were kids,” said Sam.

“Find this guy for me quick so we can, Sam,” you said.

“We will,” he said. “Call if you guys figure anything else out.”

“Will do. Oh and can you go over mom and dads and empty the dehumidifier?” asked Dean.

“Seriously?” sighed Sam.

“I told ‘em I’d do it while they’re up at Uncle Bobby’s,” said Dean. “Please?”

“Fine. But you let me fix you up with Robin in my spin class now,” said Sam. 

“No! She’s the health nut job. Besides, I’m…” said Dean, glancing at you. “Not available.”

“Hold up. You got-“

“Better get on the case, Sam,” said Dean, ending the call.

“Smooth,” you said. 

“Well she is nuts,” said Dean, standing up and heading towards your kitchen.

“Are you not available?” you asked.

“I...don’t know,” said Dean, looking over his shoulder. “I don’t really know what this is.”

“I think it’s called dating, Dean,” you said, earning an eye roll from him. “What exactly was that for?”

“We’re not…” he said, closing his eyes when you raised an eyebrow.

“Oh no. Please, finish that sentence,” you said. He licked his lips and crossed his arms. “You get your blowjob and now it’s back to business?”

“Excuse me but you were the one all over me last night,” he said. 

“You afraid of commitment or something? I didn’t even say we’re boyfriend and girlfriend. I said maybe we’re dating on account of all the flirting and all that,” you said.

“Am I afraid of commitment? I’m not the one that went missing for nearly a week and not a single person she knows even reported it. You even get a text from anyone checking up, huh? No? I wonder why,” he said.

“Fuck you,” you said. He smiled, cocking his head. “Go work in my office and get away from me.”

“Something we can agree on,” he said. He swiped his laptop from the living room and headed down the hall, slamming the door shut after himself. You narrowed your eyes and went back to your bedroom, putting on some clothes and grabbing your raincoat before you slipped out of the apartment.

“What the hell are you doing?” asked Dean when he found you on bench in front of the bay a few hours later, the walking trail not too far behind you. “Y/N.”

“What? What do you want?” you said, glaring as you turned your head at him. He sighed as he sat down, reaching out and wiping your face off. “Stop.”

“You’re crying and I got a feeling it’s my fault,” he said.

“Way to figure that one out, super cop,” you said, turning your body away.

“Y/N...this isn’t the time or place to go over dating or a relationship. We-”

“You kissed me first,” you said, pulling your hood more when it started to rain harder. “You started it.”

“...I like you. I do. I want...I want to spend the day in pajamas hanging out and getting to know each other too. But my job right now is to protect you. I’m not talking about some random guy here. There is someone who is smart and calculating out there that wants to hurt you, maybe worse. They want to hurt you and I know you’re tough. So it scares me because this person got a hold of you once. They are after you despite the risks and that scares me more because it means they are bad news. I can’t protect you if I’m worried about…” said Dean, running his hand over his face. “I want to and I’ll take you on a real date as soon as this is dealt with. I promise. Please try to understand where I’m coming from.”

“You’re scared of more than just this guy,” you said, looking back at him. He stared out at the choppy water, his hood hiding most of his face. “Someone hurt you.”

“You can remember a tenth of your life and you can see through my bullshit better than anyone I’ve ever met,” he chuckled.

“You can protect me, Dean. You can be my friend too. You can be more. I need you around. I remember more and better around you. I understand. I understand what it’s like to be betrayed by someone you care about. My own father lied to me the past twenty years. But I won’t be angry and sad forever because of it. I like feeling happy and there are these little moments like at the bridge or-”

He leaned over and cut you off with a kiss, cold water dripping all over your faces from your hoods. Something about it felt different. You felt the hurt behind it. It wasn’t shy or sexy like the night before. It felt like a warning almost to stay away.

“My ex-girlfriend cheated on me three months ago,” he said. “Because I’m quote, ‘too pathetic and-’”

“She’s wrong,” you said.

“Y/N-”

“Wrong. Understand?”

“You barely know me,” he said.

“I don’t know details. You I know,” you said. “Okay?”

“Okay,” he said, nodding his head. “But don’t you dare run off on your own again, got it?”

“I won’t. I was mad. I come here when I get mad,” you said. Dean turned around in his seat, spinning back around.

“Y/N. I don’t want you to do anything but keep looking forward. There’s a man back there on the bench. It’s probably nothing but I want us to get out of here, alright?” he said.

“Do you have your gun?” you asked.

“Yeah. Under my jacket. If I pull it out I’ll tip him off though,” said Dean. 

“No need for that,” you heard behind you. You both spun around, the man suddenly right there and pushing back his hood. You cocked your head, Dean doing the same as you recognized the face from the picture on your fridge.

“Dad?” you said, looking at Dean who looked equally confused. “I...I thought you died on Monday.”

“You two better come with me. This one catches cold easy.”

_____

A/N: Read Part 4 here!