#she’s definitely still a social smoker if for no other reason than that it bothers people | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

hale-of-stiles-heart · 7 years

Note

Could I request a destiel au where maybe dean has been smoking since he was in high school, and he's never really had a reason to quit. He's perfectly content to stay in his ways until he meets and falls for Sam's friend Castiel, who is severely asthmatic. He can't be around when Dean smokes, because it's a trigger for his attacks, so dean tries to quit for him? (Sorry this is so long! 😂 I love the seven minutes in Heaven ficlet, but the way!)

This got a little longer than I intended (mostly because I spent way too much time on the backstory) so I hope you enjoy it! Also, I’m so glad you liked the seven minutes in heaven fic! (also on ao3!)

Dean had never intended to become a smoker.

It was just something that sort of happened. Like the fact that he lost his virginity in the backseat of his car when he was sixteen or happened to enjoy wearing women's panties or fell in love with his brother's best friend.

He had smoked his first cigarette when he was thirteen.

His mom had been out for the night, having dinner with a few of her friends that she hadn't seen in awhile. Sam was out of the house, having a sleepover with a few of his own friends.

His dad had ended up falling asleep on the couch after watching a rather intense wrestling match. Gunner Lawless had won, of course.

Dean had been bored out of his mind, desperately trying to come up with some way to entertain himself. Like any thirteen year old red-blooded American boy, he was a little reckless, rebellious for the sake of being rebellious.

Watching TV had been out of the question since they only had one, which was stationed in the living room, and turning it on would mean waking his dad. And his dad could be a grumpy son of a bitch when woken from up, like a crotchety old bear whose hibernation had been interrupted.

Video games were out of the question, too. Mostly because they required the use of the TV and partially because Sam had taken their best games with him.

He ate some leftovers from the night before, using the carved up turkey to make a few sandwiches. But as much as he loved food, it was a poor substitute for worthwhile entertainment.

He was desperately searching for a way to pass the time, to cure his mind-numbing boredom, and satisfy his insatiable curiosity. So, with his dad still snoring on the couch, Dean swiped his pack of Marlboros and a lighter and snuck outside to smoke his first cigarette.

His dad had been a smoker since he was a teenager himself, a trait he had picked up from his own dad. Dean had always secretly suspected it had something to do with maintaining a manly image.

Dean's mom had been insisting that John quit smoking for years, citing the numerous health risks involved with the dirty little habit. But his dad had always just brushed it off, always claimed it would be his New Year's resolution, always put it off for another year.

John had finally relented when Mary decided to take a more passive aggressive route.

Whenever John would come home from a long day of work at the garage, covered in grease and grime and sweat, and leaned in to kiss her hello, Mary would twist away. Waving a hand, she would dismiss, "Oh, John, you know I hate kissing you after you've smoked."

That pattern had gone on for weeks. And as much as Dean hated to admit that his mom holding out on his dad in the bedroom — hell, he didn't even like to think about it — was what finally convinced his dad to quit smoking.

John had gradually reduced his cigarette consumption little by little. He slowly but surely went from a pack every few days to a pack a week to a pack a month.

But at thirteen, Dean hadn't been thinking about the fact that his dad was a taking a step to improve his health. All he had been thinking about was trying out a cigarette himself.

With John slumbering on the couch and no one else home to catch him, Dean had tiptoed into his parents' bedroom where he rummaged around for his dad's pack of cigarettes. He had eventually found it in the pocket of his dad's favorite leather jacket along with an old silver Zippo.

Prize in hand, Dean had quietly crept outside to the backyard to enjoy the spoils of his little covert mission. He had hidden in the shadow of a tall pine tree, not wanting any of their neighbors to spot him.

He had shivered a bit, the ground cold beneath his socked feet. Winter would be there soon, hopefully bringing snow days so he could get out of his most boring classes.

He had placed the butt of a cigarette between his lips the same way he had seen his dad do a million times. Flicking the igniter on the Zippo, summoning a small dancing flame, he raised the lighter to the end of the cigarette.

He had only managed to take a few short puffs of the cigarette before he was bent over coughing, hacking up a lung. His eyes had watered from the intensity of his coughing fit, his stomach aching from it.

He hadn't understood how anyone could get addicted to smoking. It was horrible. And it tasted beyond disgusting.

It definitely wasn't as cool as everyone in the movies made it look.

Dean had snubbed out the cigarette after recovering from his fit, tossing it over the fence into their neighbor's trash can to destroy the evidence of his little crime. He hadn't wanted to get the same lecture about how dangerous and disgusting smoking was that his mother had often given his father.

Slipping back inside, he had returned the pack of cigarettes and the Zippo to his dad's jacket pocket. Then he brushed his teeth three times and chugged two glasses of water just to get the taste of nicotine out of his mouth. It really wasn't that cool.

The only people he had ever told included his three best friends and, after swearing him to secrecy, Sam. It remained his dirty little secret for years until more important ones took its place.

He had smoked his second cigarette when he was seventeen, only a few months before he turned eighteen.

He had been at a party celebrating the most recent win of their high school football team, of which he was the star player, voted MVP after nearly every single game they played. One of the other players on the team, a rich kid whose parents were out of town often enough for him to do so, had invited half of the school to his palatial home.

Dean had been hanging out with Benny and Jo, Charlie having already found a pretty girl to disappear upstairs with. They had been sipping on illegally obtained beer in red solo cups, shooting the breeze about school and work and other crap that wouldn't matter once they graduated.

From across the room, a cute cheerleader had caught his eye. In her bright hot pink tank top and the tiny scrap of faded denim that she called shorts, she was rather hard to miss.

She had winked at him, biting her plump bottom lip between her teeth and beckoning him over with a crooked finger, nodding her head towards the sliding glass door that led to the backyard. He would have had to be an idiot to refuse such a blatant invitation.

With a salute to his friends that was greeted by a round of eye rolling, Dean had crossed the crowded room to her. The pretty brunette had led him outside to a patio where a few other guys from the football team were hanging out, each of them with at least two girls hanging off their arms, all of whom vying to be the next homecoming queen.

All of them were smoking, the lit ends of their cigarettes bright in the shoddy patio lighting.

He had been smart enough to know that smoking wouldn't make him cool, that he shouldn't smoke just to fit in with a people whose names he barely knew. But he had also been young and dumb enough to only be thinking with the head between his legs.

So when the brunette, whose name he later learned was Amy, pulled a white and green box out of her back pocket and offered him a cigarette, he had accepted without a moment of hesitation.

That time, he managed not to double over coughing, muffling the few coughs that did escape his lips by laughing a little too hard at the stupid jokes one of the other guys made. It had been a menthol cigarette, the taste of mint soothing the nausea he felt thanks to the plethora of chemicals he was inhaling.

Amy had seemed impressed. Enough so that she blew him in the bathroom later.

He had started smoking regularly after that, at least socially. He would accept a cigarette whenever someone at a party or a bar offered him one, telling himself that it would be rude to refuse.

Women seemed to like it, along with a few guys. They told him it made him seem more mysterious, more mature.

Personally, he had to agree. He thought it gave him a bit of a James Dean quality. Especially when he wore his leather jacket.

He started carrying gum and breath mints around wherever he went, for both his own benefit and others. He didn't imagine it was all that enjoyable to kiss someone who tasted like an ashtray.

Unfortunately, he had to hide his smoking from his family. At least until he was old enough to buy us own cigarettes and by then, he was a bona fide smoker.

He smoked between classes while in college, attending the University of Kansas for automotive technologies. He always made sure he could sneak out for a smoke break every few hours at work.

When he moved into his own apartment, he was able to smoke freely, not having to worry about the smoke bothering anyone.

The only place he drew the line was his car. His baby deserved better than the stench of nicotine and tobacco that lingered when he smoked, that soaked into every fiber of his clothing.

His mother had been beside herself when she found out. Not a second later, she had launched into a lecture that Dean already knew by heart, detailing the horrible effects of smoking. Meanwhile, his dad had just looked impossibly guilty, more disappointed in himself than in Dean.

Yet while they both clearly disapproved of his smoking, along with Sam, they accepted that they couldn't make him stop smoking. He doubted that anything could.

He didn't think he would ever find a good reason to quit. Until he met Castiel Novak.

Castiel — or Cas, as Dean had taken to calling him — was the teacher's assistant for Sam's Introduction to English Literature class at the University of Kansas where he was finishing up his general education courses before transferring to Stanford.

From what Sam had told them about his English class, Cas was more of a teacher than the actual professor, some washed up writer named Chuck Shurley. Apparently, Chuck was more interested in bemoaning his own hurdles with his book series than actually teaching.

Cas, on the other hand, had no problem actually teaching the material, from Shakespeare to Vonnegut. And, from Sam's stories about class, he was damn good at it.

Sam talked everyone's ear off about how smart and interesting and nice the TA was, constantly singing Cas' praises and lauding his rather impressive credentials. Apparently, Cas had gone to an Ivy League school and had written his own series dealing with legendary creatures, one that was actually pretty good.

According to Sam, Cas also had a natural talent for making boring, ancient plays written by a bunch of old dead guys fascinating. For making the curriculum less of something they had to suffer through and more of an adventure that they were embarking on together.

It was after that particular comment that Dean had accused Sam of having a crush on the cute teacher's assistant. He pointed out that Sam's girlfriend, Jess, might be a little jealous.

But Jess had just shocked them both by turning to Sam and casually announcing, "Hey, if you're up for it, I wouldn't say no to a threesome."

Dean's suspicions about his little brother being infatuated with the teacher's assistant were further cemented when Sam and Cas continued hanging out after the fall semester ended and Sam was no longer in the class Cas practically taught. Hell, they even had a standing weekly get-together.

They usually went out for coffee or met up at the college library. On one occasion, they had gone out to a local bar for a drink on a Saturday night, leaving Sam with a story about how ridiculously high Cas' alcohol tolerance was.

After months of hearing about the Columbia graduate, published author, one hundred and sixty IQ scoring teacher's assistant, Dean finally asked Sam when he was going to get to meet the fabled Cas.

Sam had just rolled his eyes and told Dean to drop by the campus one day and he would introduce them. The chance of meeting a hot co-ed may or may not have given Dean some extra encouragement to drop in on his little brother at school.

So, the following Thursday, after finishing his early morning shift at Bobby's garage, Dean decided to swing by the school. Sam's last class of the day ended at four o'clock on the dot, his history professor extremely punctual.

Dean pulled up around three forty two, parking in the visitors section to avoid getting fined. That left him some time to kill, even after he made his way to the main building.

Naturally, he lit a cigarette while he waited.

He leaned back against the brick wall of the main building as he smoked. The chilly February air teased at his hair as it rustled the bare branches of nearby ornamental trees, the cold of winter stubbornly lingering.

A group of girls left the building in knit sweaters and leggings, holding cups of hot, steaming coffees. They glanced over at him, raking their eyes up and down his body with blatant interest.

He responded by flashing a bright smile and sending a charming wink their way. Like a gaggle of high school girls, they ducked their heads and giggled amongst themselves as they continued walking to their cars.

The front door opened again, drawing Dean's attention. This time Sam strode out in all of his gargantuan, moose-like glory, his long hair billowing in the wind like he was some kind of Fabio wannabe.

He was wearing a Stanford Law sweater under his brown flannel, already showing off the fact that he had already been accepted to the prestigious school. And people called Dean cocky.

Sam was talking to another man, head tilted to the side as he gestured with his right hand. At first, Dean assumed the other man was the famed Cas but he quickly discounted his theory.

Sam had described Cas well enough that Dean would know the guy from a mile away. And the guy Sam was talking to wasn't Cas.

He was too short, for starters, maybe five eight while Cas was reportedly around Dean's height. Not that it was a glaring discrepancy, just a noticeable one.

He had light brown hair, unlike Cas whose hair was either an extremely dark brown or pitch black, Sam had admitted that he was never sure which color it actually was. He had a full beard that matched his hair color, thicker than the facial hair that Sam claimed Cas had.

He had blue eyes from what Dean could see, finally a similarity with Cas. Cas' eyes were the bluest blue to ever blue if the way practically mooned over them was any indication.

The yet to be named man was dressed more like a student than the uptight, always professional Cas that Sam described, in a tattered hoodie over a graphic t-shirt that was stained in various places. He was wearing faded jeans with tears in the worn out knees, the fabric frayed around his ankles and his dirty sneakers.

Dean was still crossing off reasons on his mental checklist of why the mystery man couldn't possibly be Cas when he overheard Sam say, "Alright. See ya later, Professor Shurley."

"Hey, jerk," Sam said by way of greeting as he made his way over to Dean after waving goodbye to Chuck who continued on his way towards the faculty section of the parking lot. He grimaced when he noticed the cigarette in Dean's hand, disapproval written all over his face.

"Bitch," Dean responded automatically, their rude little way of addressing each other an involuntary reflex at that point. He nodded his chin at Chuck's retreating back, taking another drag of his cigarette as he asked, "So, that's Shurley, huh? The one who wrote all those shitty, pretentious books—"

"Dean..." Sam interrupted, a pinched expression on his face. He waved his hand in front of his throat in a slashing motion, Dean reading the universal 'cut it off' gesture loud and clear.

"Aww, c'mon, Sammy!" Dean groused, throwing up his free hand in exasperation. Gesturing towards Chuck, who was definitely out of earshot, he pointed out, "You said it yourself, the guy's writing is complete shit! He's a total hack!"

"Dean," Sam said again, a bit more urgently this time. His expression went from pinched to pained as he tried yet again, "Knock it o—"

But before Sam could even finish his sentence, another voice piped up. Said voice was gravelly yet as smooth as honeyed whiskey, like whoever it belonged to gargled with Jack Daniel's and grit, as it placated, "It's alright, Sam. My father's writing can be a bit...pretentious, for lack of a better word."

With a thoroughly beleaguered sigh, Sam pinched the bridge of his nose as he took a few steps to reveal that there was someone standing behind him. Someone that Dean would recognize anywhere despite having never met him before. Cas.

He was just as good-looking as Sam had claimed, hell, maybe even more so.

He had light blue eyes that were downright angelic, calling to mind giant wings of celestial light and glittering halos. They reminded Dean of clear spring skies, of days spent fishing at the lake, of pleasantly cool mornings.

His lips, which Dean had no shame in admitting drew him in like a moth to the flame, were the most perfect shade of pink, though they looked a bit chapped. Dean would be lying if he said he didn't immediately think about them in a less innocent situation.

His hair was dark like Sam had described and even more messy, seemingly jet black yet dark umber when the pale sunlight hit it. His jawline was made rugged by the dark stubble there, slightly longer than the five o'clock shadow Dean was sporting but not quite long enough to be considered a full beard.

He was dressed like a teacher's assistant, at least Dean's idea of a teacher's assistant, in his black suit and crisp white button up. There was a deep blue tie around his neck, slightly loosened and backwards, both of which made Dean smile at the tiny bit of dishevelment.

It made him more human, less like the infallible angel that Sam had described.

Cas had a tan trench coat hanging over one of his arms, folded carefully to avoid any potential wrinkles. In his free hand, he carried a black leather messenger bag, the strap slung over his shoulder.

Dean was still staring at Cas' black Oxfords, which were immaculately polished and shined, when something suddenly occurred to him, something that Cas had said. Jerking his head up, he met Cas' brilliant blue eyes, his own wide as he blurted, "Wait, did you say... Chuck Shurley's your dad?!"

Cas just nodded, looking remarkably unperturbed for someone whose father had just been rudely insulted by a complete stranger.

"But your last name!" Dean cried out, feeling like a complete idiot the second the words left his mouth. He scrubbed a hand over his face as his cheeks flushed with heat. He really needed to learn to think before speaking.

"By all accounts, I'm a bastard," Cas replied calmly, a tiny smile curling up the corners of those pretty pink lips of his. Shifting his weight to his other foot, he explained, "I was born out of wedlock, thus my father and I do not share a surname."

"Uh, yeah... Yeah, that makes sense," Dean mumbled, mostly to himself. He scratched the back of his neck as he stared down at his shoes.

He didn't have the nerve to look Cas in the eye as he stammered out an apology. "Sorry, dude. About what I said 'bout your old man."

Out of the corner of his eye, Dean saw Cas shrug. Tipping his head to the side the tiniest bit, Cas dismissed, "There's no need for apologies. My father's writing certainly does leave something to be desired. He has quite the penchant for killing off fan favorites and absolutely massacring character development."

"I know, right?!" Dean exclaimed, momentarily forgetting about his embarrassment in favor of snapping his head up and beaming at Cas. Absentmindedly flicking some ash off the tip of his cigarette, he gestured around aimlessly, gushing, "Like killing off Felicia? Fucking stupid! And all the queerbaiting? It's ridiculous!"

"You-You actually read those books?" Sam inquired incredulously, his eyebrows drawing together as he looked at Dean like he had just grown two more heads.

"'Course I did. All of 'em," Dean scoffed before raising his cigarette to his lips for another quick puff. Blowing out a stream of smoke, he shrugged and explained, "I wanted to know if Jensen and Misha, stupid names by the way—" he glanced over at Cas "—ever got together, okay?"

"I'm sure my father will be very flattered," Cas stated, his tiny smile growing into something wider and more genuine. Dipping his head, he quipped, "Though I suppose I should leave out the critiques as he never seems to enjoy it when I mention them to him."

Dean barked out a laugh at that, still relieved that Cas didn't seem too upset by the fact that Dean had insulted his father only a few minutes prior. He moved his cigarette to his other hand and flashed one of his most charming grins as he held out his now free hand to Cas.

"I'm Dean, by the way," he announced, his smile widening. "Dean Winchester."

Cas shifted his trench coat to his left arm, his movements careful and meticulous, making sure he didn't rumple his suit. He held his own hand out, shaking Dean's as he beamed at him, introducing, "As I'm sure you've already guessed, I'm Casti—"

But before he could finish, he was suddenly doubled over coughing. He turned his head to cough into the crook of his elbow, his shoulders shaking with the force of his hacking.

His face started to flush a deep red as he continued his forceful coughing, sweat beading at his temples. Whenever there was a pause in his coughing and he had the chance to greedily inhale mouthfuls of air, he wheezed.

"Whoa, Cas!" Dean cried out, dropping his cigarette as he moved towards Cas. But Cas just held up a hand, stopping Dean in his tracks as he continued coughing. "You alright, man?!"

"Jesus, Dean!" Sam reprimanded, setting a hand on Dean's chest and pushing him back a few feet. Dean turned to gawk at his brother, wondering why the hell Sam wasn't letting him help Cas. There was clearly something wrong with the poor guy!

It suddenly made sense when Sam pointed out, "He has asthma!"

Sure enough, when Dean turned to look back at Cas, the teacher's assistant was digging through his messenger bag to pull out an inhaler. He raised it to his lips and took a long inhale as he pressed down on the inhaler pump, closing his eyes as the medicine did its trick, soothing his cough and letting his breath begin to return to normal.

In an instant, Sam was at Cas' side, a hand on his arm as they talked in hushed voices. As Sam fussed over him — asking him if he was okay, if he needed some water, if he wanted to sit down — Cas waved his hand, insisting, "I'm perfectly alright, Sam. I just have a sensitivity to tobacco smoke. I'm fine."

Eyes widening, Dean dropped his gaze to look down at the cigarette he had dropped. Guilt and realization washing over him like a tsunami.

The cigarette was still lit, a thin, undulating stream of smoke rising up towards his face like a vengeful spirit, taunting him. He stomped on it. Dragged the sole of his boot across it until the paper ripped and tobacco was smudged against the gray stone of the front walk.

Snapping his eyes back up, Dean hurried to apologize, babbling, "I'm so sorry, Cas, I had no idea. Is there anything I can d—"

"Dean, it's fine. I'm fine," Cas cut him off with a polite smile as Sam straightened up, dropping his hand from where it had been on Cas' forearm. With a negligible shrug, Cas held up his inhaler, shaking it for emphasis as he explained, "There's a reason why I always carry an emergency inhaler."

Dean had apologized a few more times but Cas had simply continued to wave them off, instead steering the conversation back to introductions. They were finally able to shake each other's hands without anyone breaking into a coughing fit or start bleeding from their eyes.

With Dean's luck, that was the best he was going to get.

They had talked a little bit about Sam's classes, the only four which stood between him and law school all the way in California. They were mostly art classes he needed for his art requirement along with his history class.

Sam asked about the sections that Cas was working with, and indeed mostly teaching himself. Apparently, in addition to being a teacher's assistant for English classes, he helped Chuck with his theology classes.

As both Winchesters walked Cas back to his car, an old Continental that somehow suited Cas more than any other car Dean could ever think of, Sam invited Cas to their dinner with their family some night. It was an invitation that Cas had eagerly accepted, a bright smile on his face.

Just like that, over the next few months, Dean saw more of Cas than he would have expected when Sam had first told him about the TA.

After the first time Cas had gone over to the Winchesters' for dinner, which had gone exceptionally well in spite of Dean's constant worries that he might send Cas into another asthma attack, Cas had become a regular fixture in the Winchester household.

He was invited to dinner at least once a week. Mary and John absolutely adored the dorky little guy, practically adopting him as a third son.

On weekends, when Cas didn't have any classes to work with and didn't have any shifts at his part-time Gas-n-Sip job, he would go over to the Winchesters'. He would spend hours baking in the kitchen with Mary, helping her bake the most amazing culinary creations that Dean always volunteered to taste test.

Other times, usually after he finished with all his classes, he would hang out with Sam. They would talk about everything from what Stanford professors were the best to nerdy shit like Kafka and new Netflix documentaries.

Hell, he even helped John with his extensive records collection. Apparently, one of his brothers, of which he literally had dozens, was an antiques dealer who was always in search of new buyers for vinyl records and other classic rock memorabilia.

He showed up whenever invited to watch baseball games and NASCAR races and wrestling matches even though he admitted to not being a fan of any sport in particular. Regardless, he was always more than willing to sit through Dean and John's, and sometimes even Mary's, loud booing and cheering.

He usually brought over the most decadent treats for them to munch and was always so enthusiastic about whatever they were watching, even though he had no idea what the rules were. Dean just didn't have the heart to tell Cas that just because he was invited he didn't have to actually show up.

Cas started spending time with Dean, too. They would meet up for drinks after work a couple times a week, Cas showing off his notorious alcohol tolerance.

As it turned out, they along swimmingly when Cas wasn't in the throes of an asthma attack and Dean wasn't unknowingly insulting Cas' dad. And even though Cas was pop culturally challenged, they found they loved the same books and had complementary tastes in music.

He ended up meeting Dean's friends, coincidentally already friends with Charlie who worked with one of Cas' brothers, Gabriel, at his bar. Benny, Jo, and Garth all adored Cas on sight, welcoming him into their little group the second they met him.

While Cas was admittedly short on friends, the multitude of siblings he had certainly made up for it. Dean eventually wound up meeting a few of them.

He ran into Balthazar, a blonde blue eyed bastard with an inexplicable British accent, while he was stopping by the Winchesters' to sell John an old Beatles album. Balthazar was nice enough, if not a little condescending.

Dean met another one of Cas' other brothers when Gabriel brought his '69 Mustang into Bobby's garage. As much as they bonded over a mutual love of classic cars, Dean was a little taken aback by Gabriel's inappropriateness and the fact that he threatened to chop Dean's dick off if he ever hurt Cas.

And, of course, Dean had already sort of met Cas' father. Though, he wasn't sure if that counted since they had never been properly introduced or even spoken a single word to each other.

But as much as Dean loved hanging out with Cas, every time he did, he found himself plagued with worry. What if he accidentally sent Cas into another asthma attack?

What if he didn't shower thoroughly enough or wash his clothes well enough and there was still some smoke clinging to him? What if he reeked of tobacco and nicotine every time he sat next to Cas on movie nights and the poor guy had to refrain from vomiting?

Dean was always careful to avoid smoking within two hours before hanging out with Cas, always showering and brushing his teeth beforehand to avoid any lingering scents or smoke. But the worry still lingered, the fear that he would end up hurting Cas somehow.

And the reason that bothered him so very much? He had fallen for Cas. Ass over ankles fallen for him.

He wanted to take Cas out to some fancy restaurant where they looked at people like trash if they asked for ketchup. He wanted to go on a long drive with no destination, Cas sitting beside him in the passenger seat.

He wanted to cook for Cas, make him dinner every night and breakfast in bed every morning. He wanted to cuddle on the couch with Cas while watching one of his lame documentaries, while he ran his fingers through Cas' dark hair.

He wanted to wake up every morning and see Cas lying in bed next to him. He wanted to kiss Cas and see if his chapped lips were rough or smooth, dry or wet.

He wanted to undress Cas, peel him out of his immaculate suits, slow and careful and reverent. He wanted to taste Cas' bare skin, see if it tasted like he imagined, sweet like honey and salty like sweat.

He wanted to get tangled up in silk sheets with Cas and never get untangled. He wanted to lie on a beach with Cas, soaking up the sunlight as waves crashed over their bare skin.

He wanted to marry the freaking guy. He wanted to buy a nice little white picket fence with him, maybe get a dog, adopt a few kids.

God, he wanted everything with Cas. But he couldn't have it. He couldn't have any of it.

Not if he continued smoking.

So the first thing Dean did after working up the nerve to actually ask Cas out on a date was quit smoking. But unlike his dad who had gradually weaned himself of the habit, Dean decided to quit cold turkey.

In the days leading up to their date, he found himself fidgety and woefully unable to focus. He could hardly concentrate on anything, whether it be work or reruns of Dr. Sexy.

He constantly picked at his lips, missing the sensation of holding a cigarette between them. He went through twice as much gum as usual, needing to occupy himself somehow, the repetitiveness of the chewing motion soothing him along with the familiar taste of mint.

As time went on, he grew progressively snappish and terse, growling at the slightest irritation. Bobby ended up sending him home early after he bit Kevin, their receptionist's, head off over something trivial.

By the time Saturday rolled around, he was suffering from bouts of nausea, hot flashes, and a horrible case of insomnia. But he would be damned if he canceled his first, and perhaps only, date with Cas just because he was dealing with a little bit of withdrawal.

He and Cas had agreed to meet at one of the more upscale restaurants in town, a place that was affordable yet fancy enough for a date, at seven which gave Dean enough time to shower and get dressed.

Wanting to look his absolute best, he spent an embarrassing amount of time agonizing over what to wear. He finally decided on a deep red button up over a black t-shirt and some dark jeans, along with a new pair of boots.

He spent a decent amount of time styling his hair until he deemed it sexy looking enough. He even spritzed himself with some of the expensive cologne he reserved for special occasions.

Despite his difficulty concentrating, craving nicotine more than he ever thought he would, Dean had the presence of mind to stop by a local florist and pick Cas up some flowers. It may be a little sappy but he wanted to make sure Cas knew it was a date, not just a casual hangout.

He made it to the closest flower shop fifteen minutes before it was set to close, feeling like a jackass for holding up the woman behind the counter. He paid double the price for a bouquet of white roses, tulips, and camellia, apologizing for showing up so near closing time.

He was almost late to the restaurant after getting stuck in traffic behind some asshole who wouldn't get off his damn cell phone. Luckily, he managed to pull up to the restaurant with just enough time left for him to fuss over his hair one last time.

"Hello, Dean," Cas greeted from where he was sitting on a wooden bench in front of the restaurant when Dean walked into sight from the parking lot. He smiled shyly at Dean as he twiddled his thumbs, making the mechanic's heart race.

Cas looked devastatingly handsome in a blue chambray shirt and a pair of black jeans, his outfit more casual than any other Dean had seen him in. His hair looked like it had been combed but it was still messy, mussed despite Cas' best efforts at taming it.

He stood when Dean approached, brushing away nonexistent wrinkles on his shirt. Once he walked closer, Dean held out the bouquet he had bought for Cas, announcing, "Uh, I got you these."

"They're beautiful, Dean. Thank you," Cas gushed, taking the bouquet from Dean's hand, careful not to prick himself on the sharp thorns on the rose stems. He brushed his thumb over a pristine white petal, beaming up at Dean as he softly murmured, "Camellias. You remembered."

Of course he had. How could he ever forget Cas' favorite flower? He wasn't an idiot.

Cas had mentioned that he was partial to camellias a month or two ago when he had been helping Mary pick out new flowers for the garden. Dean had been helping his mom build planters for said flowers, lingering in the doorway as Cas and Mary talked about everything from roses to chrysanthemum.

Feeling his face flush at the memory, Dean scratched the back of his neck, valiantly resisting the urge to swoop down and peck Cas on the lips. Instead, he just gave a one shouldered shrug and mumbled, "Yeah, no problem, Cas."

"Shall we go in?" Cas inquired a moment later, still smiling radiantly. He nodded his head towards the front door of the restaurant, drawing Dean's attention away from Cas' lips in favor of looking over at the intricate glass inlay.

He nodded, swallowing heavily to help settle his nerves. As he led Cas up the steps to the front door, he set his hand on the small of his back, relishing the fact that he could actually touch him.

Ever the gentleman, to his mother's delight, Dean held the door for Cas, ushering him inside with a bright smile. They walked side by side to the slim black hostess' podium.

They were greeted by an almost too cheery blonde hostess in a tight black pencil skirt and a white blouse. Tucking two menus under her arm, she asked, "Would you like a table inside or outside on the patio?"

Cas looked to Dean for an answer, his smile soft and sweet. Without much thought, he blurted, "Inside."

Then he remembered the hot flashes that he had been having for the past few days. It was unnecessarily warm within the restaurant considering it was mid-spring.

He glanced around the restaurant, scanning his eyes over the crowd. The place was absolutely packed, tables pressed claustrophobically close to each other.

It was rather loud, scores of people talking over each other to create a dull roar that seemed to echo in his ears. Given his frequent headaches since he decided to quit smoking, he didn't think the noise would be all that good for him.

His fingers tingling a bit, Dean nervously cleared his throat. Before the hostess could round the podium, he quickly amended, "Uh... Actually, on second thought, I think outside might be better."

With a nod, the hostess led them out a side door to the patio. A dozen or so tables were spaced out within a fenced in area, covered with white tablecloths.

It was much quieter outside, only a handful of the tables occupied. There was a flame crackling in a fire pit, casting a warm light over the patio.

There was a slight breeze, typical of the time of year, cool but not cold enough to warrant Dean running back to his car for a jacket. Lights were strung up around the patio, bright but not glaring, providing a hint of romantic ambiance.

Dean pulled out Cas' chair for him, earning a delighted grin from the TA. After pushing Cas' chair in, he rounded the table to take his own seat, accepting a menu from the hostess with a polite smile.

"What'll you be having to drink?" The hostess asked, tugging an order pad out of her waistband. She grabbed a pen out from behind her ear, looking at them expectantly.

"I'll just have water," Cas answered, beaming at the hostess before turning his undivided attention to Dean who was starting to feel a little nauseous.

"Uh, ginger ale for me," he requested, forcing a smile as the hostess jotted it down. Once she finished, she announced that their waitress would be there with their drinks in a few minutes, wishing them a nice night before she disappeared back inside.

"Are you feeling alright, Dean?" Cas questioned, setting his bouquet on the table in favor of reaching out to lay his hand on top of the one Dean had resting on the table.

As much as Dean would have loved to intertwine his fingers with Cas' and hold his hand all night like some freaking sap, he couldn't. His palms were growing sweaty and they were shaking again, a strange tingling in his fingertips.

He yanked his hand away, dropping it onto his lap so he could wipe his palm on his jeans. Glancing between Cas and the napkin wrapped silverware in front of him, he hastily assured, "Yeah, Cas. I'm fine. Never better."

Cas just hummed. He narrowed his eyes for a second before cracking open his menu, encouraging Dean to do the same.

Raking his eyes over the list of entrees, the mere thought of food intensifying his nausea, he started tapping his foot. He could feel a wave of heat crash over him as sweat started beading on the back of his neck, on his upper lip.

He desperately tried to stay focused on the fact that he was on a date with Cas. Because he was actually on a date with Cas!

But he couldn't. The words on the menu seemed to blend together and every time he tried to say something, to initiate some kind of first date small talk, but the words kept getting stuck in his throat.

He tried licking his lips, swallowing more than he needed to, but it did no good. If anything, it just made it worse.

Cas seemed rather absorbed in the menu so Dean followed his lead, desperately trying to make out the words in front of him. He finally settled on a burger, figuring he couldn't go wrong with that. Besides, a burger wasn't likely to make his nausea much worse.

Glancing up over the top of his menu, he snuck a look at Cas who was squinting down at his own menu. He was about to say something, anything, to spark a conversation when a different woman appeared beside their table.

She introduced herself as she set down their drinks, flashing a bright grin as she looked between them. Pulling an order pad out of her back pocket, she jotted down their orders. Taking their menus, she flounced away, ponytail swishing behind her.

Cas sent Dean a small smile as he reached out to grab his glass of water which reminded Dean of how thirsty he was. He downed a decent amount of his ginger ale in one sip, praying it would help with his nausea.

The last thing he needed was to throw up his lunch and completely ruin their date. Of course, that made him start thinking about all of the other ways he could fuck it up.

From choking on a chunk of hamburger to saying something stupid and upsetting Cas, the multitude of scenarios raced through his mind at lightning speed. Jesus Christ, one wrong move and he could irrevocably mess things up with Cas.

It was a daunting realization, one that made concentrating even more difficult. He was too wrapped up in his dead end thoughts to ask Cas about his day or the sections he was teaching or how his family was doing.

He took another long sip of his drink, jiggling his leg. Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, Dean babbled, "So, uh... Nice night, huh? Not too cold, not too warm. How've your classes been? You’re doing theology again this semester, right?"

Beaming, Cas nodded. But as he launched into a story about the debate they'd had in class about whether the Bible should be interpreted literally or metaphorically, Dean found himself spacing out.

His body was flooded with heat, his palms unbearably sweaty no matter how many times he wiped them on his jeans. And all he could think about was how wonderful a cigarette would be, the soothingly familiar taste calming his anxiety as the nicotine placated his fidgeting.

Maybe he could pick up a pack after the date, just smoke one cigarette then quit for good. But he knew he couldn't do that, it would ruin all of the progress he had already made.

Besides, that would be extremely unfair to Cas. Speaking of which, Cas let out a heavy sigh and frowned at Dean, announcing, "Dean, if you don't want to be here, you don't have to stay."

"What?" Dean squeaked, incredulous. Scrunching his face up in confusion, he said, "Why wouldn't I wanna be here? I wanna be here! I'm having a great time! With you!"

"No, you're not," Cas returned, his tone filled with a sad kind of wistfulness. Shaking his head, he gestured at Dean with his hand, pointing out, "You're fidgeting like you can't wait to leave and you've been staring at the table for ten minutes."

"Shit, I have?" Dean asked helplessly, running a hand down his face in frustration. Way to fuck this up, Winchester, he berated himself.

"Yes, you have," Cas confirmed, his voice turning more resigned by the second. Lowering his eyes to his lap, he explained, "I'm very happy that you asked me out but I've been on enough pity dates to recognize when I'm on one. You don't have to continue the charade. Tell Sam I appreciate the gesture but it's unnecessary, I—"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait a second," Dean cut him off, holding up his hand. "You think Sam put me up to this? To asking you out because he...because he felt bad for you? That's batshit crazy, Cas."

Cas just shrugged, still looking down. Sighing, he announced, "It's happened before. More times than you might think."

"Well, that's not what happened this time," Dean declared firmly. "Believe it or not, Cas, I like you. A lot. That's why I asked you out. I'm just... I'm so fidgety and spacey and shit because I quit smoking, okay?"

That got Cas' attention. He snapped his head up so fast Dean would be surprised if he didn't get whiplash, his mouth forming a perfect o.

"You quit?" Cas inquired after gaining his bearings. Tipping his head to the side in that ridiculously endearing way of his, he went on, "Why?"

"Can't really kiss you if it'll give you an asthma attack," Dean answered, feeling his cheeks flush as he did.

"You quit for me?" Cas murmured in blatant disbelief. When Dean nodded, he asked a follow-up question, inquiring, "Dean, did you quit 'cold turkey'?"

Swallowing a laugh at the fact that Cas actually did the air quotes, Dean nodded again. That earned him a fond eye roll from Cas who let out yet another sigh.

Grabbing the bouquet of flowers, Cas started to stand. Frantically, Dean blurted, "Wait! Where are you going?"

"We're going, Dean," Cas announced. At Dean's confused expression, he clarified, "We'll get our food to go. We need to stop by a pharmacy and get you some nicotine patches."

"Right now?" Dean whined, still worried that he had completely ruined their date. But Cas' sudden blush made him pause.

"Well..." Cas trailed off, biting his bottom lip coyly. "I might be rather eager to kiss you."

Dean didn't think he had ever stood up so fast, nearly overturning his chair in his overzealousness. In a moment he was standing by Cas' side, curling an arm around his waist as they made their way to the counter.

Maybe quitting cold turkey was a good thing. Especially since it meant he got to kiss Cas later.

#destiel #destiel au #alternate universe #my fic #fic #first meetings #first dates #smoker!dean #mechanic!dean #teacher's assistant!cas #asthmatic!cas #getting together #withdrawal #nicotine withdrawal #insecure!cas #starsinoureyescas

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niigoki · 8 years

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STEVEN UNIVERSE Title: Never Knows Best - Chapter 26 Rated: M Link to Ao3: http://archiveofourown.org/works/7848907/chapters/21126383 Link to FF.net: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12115868/26/Never-Knows-Best

“Alright, this feels like a camp trip already!” Amethyst’s sarcastic voice came from behind Peridot’s seat as she shifted, struggling with her seat belt. “Only instead of a lake, we’re going straight to Hell Town.”

“Don’t make me get up and punch your gut,” Peri was trying to relax as the bus closed its doors and left the station for a long 5 hour trip to the State next door, but her hyperactive best friend was terrible at relaxing on trips like this. It wasn’t because of the anxiety of an accident in the middle of the road (like the one Peridot was feeling), but simply because staying put in a moving vehicle for over 20 minutes was the definition of Hell for Amethyst.

“Please do, at least seeing you attempt to punch me will give me something to do for five hours.”

“Is she always like this?” Bismuth, who was sitting behind Amethyst, asked Jasper by her side.

“Beats me, I’ve never met any of these people before yesterday.” Jasper simply replied looking outside, her mind far away from the current reality. “Except for Lapis.”

“So, Lapis is the blue-haired one,” Bis was trying to understand what exactly she’d thrown herself into.

When Jasper called her and apologized for her behavior, asking her to help, Bismuth’s immediate response had been yes. She didn’t really think much of the details – as long as she could be there for whatever trouble her teammate was going through, she would gladly buy a bus ticket to a town she’s never heard of before. But now that they were actually on the bus, she started to think properly. “And she’s your sister.”

“Adoptive sister.” Jasper corrected her.

“Right. Your sister’s girlfriend is that bartender from the pub we went to a few days ago.”

“I guess.”

“And fussy over there is her best friend, which is also the receptionist of the place where you made your tattoo.”

“Yeah.”

“So… who’s the one beside her?”

“I’m Amethyst’s boss,” Pearl explained without turning around, awkwardly. “Pearl.”

A few hours ago, when Pearl saw Lapis and Amethyst at the bus station, she had felt quite comfortable, but as soon as other people started showing up, her social skills pretty much vanished. Also, thinking that Jasper and another huge and muscular woman were sitting right behind her made her really weak on her knees – okay, so maybe she had a type.

“Okay…” Bis repeated each person’s name in a mumble to herself and sighed after a while. “Yeah, I already forgot your sister’s name.”

“Adoptive— look, don’t worry about it. Just try to sleep or something, it’s going to be a long ride.” Jasper finally removed her gaze from the road and leaned back with her arms crossed and a tired expression. She was starting to think that having so many people accompanying her on such a personal travel was totally inappropriate, but now it was too late.

Bismuth wanted to try to cheer her up; this place they were going to was clearly stressing her out for some reason she had yet to uncover, but right now she thought that it was truly best to let Jasper rest.

“Yes, sleep. A very good advice, Jasper.” Peridot said, turning around to face Amethyst. “An advice we should all follow.”

“Pearl doesn’t seem very tired.” Ame replied and Lapis had to place a hand on top of Peridot’s to stop the bartender from actually getting up and punching her friend in the gut.

“Let’s just calm down,” Lapis tried and Peri allowed herself to relax under her touch. The smoker then turned to Pearl with an apologetic look. “Sorry you had to sit down with Red Bull over there.”

“Oh, trust me, I’m used to her antics already.” Pearl didn’t seem fazed by her employee’s behavior and took her phone out of her pocket to text someone.

“You make me seem so unprofessional.” Amethyst crossed her arms.

“Pfft—” Peridot’s snort was met with a rough push on the back of her seat and she got up as far as she could to yell at Ame again. The two argued for about two minutes before Jasper pretty much growled from the deep of her throat, making both quiet down as quickly as they had started. Lapis for once agreed with Jasper’s rude tone, and smiled when she felt her small girlfriend rest her head on her shoulder, finally calming down.

“What a lively bunch.” Bismuth commented, but there was no follow up from the woman beside her, and the conversation was over. Not like it had started.

The rest of the trip went smoothly, with the three pairs pretty much just talking to each other occasionally and not bothering the other passengers, who were already eyeing them angrily from the ruckus from before. Peridot was constantly touching Lapis somehow, be it by resting on her or just holding hands when the position made her neck cramp, and she was glad for it. Having physical contact right now was proving to be much better than being alone.

It hadn’t really dawned on her yet that she was going to face Malachite in a few hours. Lapis was trying to distract her brain with other thoughts, such as seeing familiar places of her old home town again. She wondered if the restaurant she loved so much was still open, or if the park they used to go to sometimes was still full of dogs. There were other places she didn’t really want to go, such as the gym in which she was forced to train for years, and the old mansion. Lapis knew exactly where the mansion was even after all these years, so she was going to avoid that place for good.

She bit her lip and turned around to take a peek at Jasper, and was surprised to see that she was sleeping. Lapis knew her better than this, though, so she knew Jasper was just pretending so she wouldn’t have to deal with anyone. Lapis’ gut twisted in a sad and bitter feeling, and she felt this enormous need to sit next to her and just… be there, present. The bus was bumping on the road, though, so getting up was not recommended.

“You okay?” Peridot’s voice brought her back to reality.

“Yeah,” Lapis looked back at her. “Just thinking.”

“Bad thinking?”

“…Not necessarily.” It was funny; a few days ago, thoughts about Malachite, Jasper and her old life would definitely be on the ‘bad thinking’ list. Now, they were just… neutral thoughts. Not good ones, but not extremely awful either. “You being here helps a lot.”

Peridot smiled and squeezed her hand. “I’m glad. Um… sorry about the mess with Amethyst earlier.”

“It’s okay,” Lapis chuckled. “It lifted the mood.”

“Don’t let her hear you say that,” Both girls laughed a little before settling on a comfortable silence again. “It’s just… I’m pretty anxious, and arguing with her distracts me from it. It’s awful, I know.”

“Not really. I’m sure she does it because she knows it helps you.”

“Oh.” That thought had never crossed Peridot’s mind, but it was such an Amethyst thing to do that she was surprised she hadn’t noticed it before. “You think so?”

“She cares about you in her own… Amethyst way. That’s a good thing.”

Peri looked down and smiled a bit. “Yeah. I guess it is.”

Behind them, Pearl was with her eyes closed as she listened to music on her headphones, and Ame was trying not to bother her, but the silence was bordering unbearable. With a stretch, she accidentally (very much not) bumped her arm on Pearl’s shoulder, and retracted it immediately when she opened her eyes. “Sorry!”

“It’s alright.” Pearl responded and closed her eyes again.

“Um,” Ame searched in her brain for something to talk about before the conversation died again. “You think Garnet is managing the shop alright all by herself?”

“She’s resourceful.”

“Right.” She scratched the back of her neck. “So… what are you listening to?”

“You talking.”

“Ouch.” Okay, Pearl was definitely not in the mood to talk. “Got it, I’ll just… count how many cows we see in the road.”

Pearl sighed and removed her headphones. “I’m sorry. I’m just not used to travel with so many strangers. I guess I’m simply a bit nervous.”

“Oh, I see.” Ame smiled and playfully poked her arm. “Well… don’t need to be nervous around me, right?”

Pearl returned the smile and Ame’s heart jumped – that genuine happiness in her boss’ face was extremely beautiful and she really wanted to see it more often. “I’m sure no one is able to be nervous around you.”

“What does that mean?”

“That you’re easy to talk to. You’re very friendly and outgoing. There’s always that willingness to talk to others that you have, which I can’t quite understand, honestly.”

“Oh, that’s because I love people. It’s not that hard to get.”

Pearl’s smile turned into a melancholic one. “There it goes again…”

“Huh?” Amethyst paused, afraid of having said something wrong. Pearl reassured her with a shake of her head.

“You really sound a lot like Rose sometimes. It’s a bit frightening, to be honest.”

“Oh…” Rose again. Lapis’ teacher, Steven’s mom and Pearl’s… something. The woman sounded like a true angel on earth, and Amethyst didn’t really know how to act around Pearl when she brought her up so suddenly like that. “I’m… sorry?”

“No, it’s a great thing!” Pearl reiterated, now a lot more awake. “I meant that as a compliment. I mean… I wish I could be half of what she was.”

“You…” Ame wanted to say that she was a lot more than that, but how could she, when she had no idea how Rose Quartz was like? For Amethyst, Pearl was not only beautiful, but her genuine passion towards things was admirable; the way her eyes shone whenever she talked about her tattoo parlor or when she sketched new drawings for her portfolio, or even then way she got frustrated over a silly online game because she wanted to fit in. Pearl was diligent, organized and compassionate, things Amethyst truly valued in a person, because it was the total opposite of herself. “You’re your own person, though.”

“What?”

She wasn’t sure if she even had the right to say something like that, but seeing Pearl putting herself down because of Rose really bothered her. “You’re not Rose, sure, but I’m not her either. You have so many other good qualities.”

“Qualities I’ve only earned by trying to be like her.”

“So what?” Amethyst almost laughed at the ridiculous words. “Isn’t that how life works? You’re not born with a set of ideals that you carry forever, you learn and change by interacting with others. Hell, you went from nun to hot punk, if that isn’t proof of this, then I don’t know what is.”

Pearl stared at her in silence before breaking out in a contagious laugh. It was the first time Amethyst heard her boss laughing and she couldn’t help to bask in the pure joy of it. “Oh- oh gosh… aren’t you a philosopher?”

“I don’t mean to brag, but people used to call me Amestotle in college.”

“Did you even go to college?”

“…That’s not the point.”

As soon as the both of them managed to catch their breaths, Pearl turned to look at her in the eyes. “…Thank you, Amethyst.”

“For what?” She flushed at the direct eye contact, which was totally not like her to do.

“For reminding me of important things like that.” Then she looked out of the window again. “I might not be Rose, but I can try to carry out her legacy of helping people. I mean, this is why I even came on this trip.”

Pearl reminisced Amethyst’s call one day ago and grinned. She was home cooking a healthy meal, when her receptionist called and asked if she was free to go on a life changing trip with herself and Lapis. Pearl was extremely confused by her words, but when Amethyst explained the whole situation, something inside her felt heavy. Pearl dismissed the call at first, but couldn’t ignore the knot on her stomach, so she called Garnet for advice.

“What do you want to do?” Garnet had asked.

“W-well, I can’t possibly miss work. In fact, I can’t let her miss work either! I don’t know why I—”

“Go.”

“W-what?”

“It’s okay, there’s not much movement in the shop anyway. And I think you need this. It would be good for you.”

“But Garnet, I don’t…”

“It’s what Rose would’ve done. You know that.”

And those simple sentences were enough. Garnet was right; Rose would have jumped into the unknown at the first opportunity if it meant helping and making a difference in someone’s life. Pearl had always valued that in her, and often wondered if she would be able to do the same if it happened. Now that the chance had presented itself, she didn’t want to back down from this.

Besides, helping one of Rose’s students was going to be a privilege.

“I’m glad you did.” Amethyst smiled back at Pearl, and both just stared at each other for a bit more than probably was necessary.

“So…” Pearl broke the spell with a smirk. “Hot punk, huh?”

Amethyst nearly choked. “I m-mean, your style! It’s pretty much… come on, undercut and tattoos, that’s pretty hot punk!”

“I’ll take that compliment.” Pearl finished with a wink, and Ame’s chest felt weird.

---

Upon arriving, the first thing the six women did was use the bathroom. Peridot was rubbing the sleep off her eyes, as well as Bismuth, who couldn’t stop yawning; Jasper stretched her cramped muscles and Pearl and Amethyst tried to be subtle about staring, but failed absurdly.

Lapis just walked away from everyone for a while and stared at the sky, closing her eyes and breathing deeply. The chilling air of her hometown made its way into her lungs and she didn’t feel like smoking while she was there.

“Hey,” Jasper’s voice behind her made her open her eyes. “You good?”

“We’re back.” Lapis said, simply.

“We’re back.”

Peridot finally woke up enough to look around her and noticed Lapis and Jasper talking away from the group. She decided to let them be alone with each other for as long as they needed while on this trip; it was something personal for the both of them, after all. Peri didn’t know what was going on inside their heads, but it was probably really complicated. Seeing a familiar place was one thing, but when it brought back bad memories, it was probably a whole other story.

“Are we going?” Lapis asked.

“Do we have to?” Jasper sounded like a spoiled child who didn’t want to clean her room, and Lapis couldn’t help a tiny grin.

“Eventually, yeah. But not right now.” She looked up at her. “I’m starving.”

Jasper smirked back. “Lenny’s?”

“Lenny’s.”

Their favorite place to get a burger.

Lapis returned to the group and gathered everyone, explaining where they were going first. They bought a bus ticket, and after a 10-minute ride, arrived at a station near the famous restaurant. Lapis’ stomach growled as soon as they stepped in and she smelled the familiar scent. She looked at Jasper with a genuine smile and shining eyes, and the athlete reciprocated the expression. Peridot noticed that and grinned, happy to see the two of them getting along better than before.

“Okay, so here’s how this works,” Lapis said as they all sat down. “You’ll get a Number 5, no questions asked.”

“What if,” Amethyst looked at the menu. “I want a Number 7 instead?”

“You don’t. Trust me.”

“I’d trust her.” Peri affirmed.

“You’re biased.” Amethyst retorted, but gave up. “Alright, whatever you say. It’s your turf.”

“This is going to ruin our diet, man.” Bismuth frowned as she tried to search for something in that menu that wasn’t dripping with oil and fat.

“You’ll thank me later.” Jasper looked a lot more alive, and Bismuth’s heart swelled with emotion at her friend’s playful gleam. “Besides, I thought that and athlete’s health wasn’t all about the body, but the mind as well.”

“How is this good for the mind?? I can feel my heart constricting just by reading what’s in this thing, and it’s not of joy!”

Their banter went on and Pearl decided to just trust Lapis’ judgement. She was in an unfamiliar city with unfamiliar people around her, so she would just go with the flow. “I’ll have a Number 5, then.”

The waitress took their orders and the six huge burgers arrived in a relatively short amount of time. As soon as Lapis and Jasper gave the first bite, they sighed contently.

“Holy shit.” Both said at the same time and let out a chuckle at the coincidence. Amethyst and Peri exchanged looks and smiled at each other without sharing a word.

With a full stomach and paid bills, the six women exited the place only to stop midway to plan what they were going to do next. Jasper took the hospital address out of her pocket and checked on her phone the best way to get there. “So, we could take another bus and then go all the way… here. Then it’s just a twenty-minute walk.”

“Sounds great, but if I take another bus right now I’m going to puke.” Amethyst groaned as she patted her huge belly. “Can we stop somewhere for a bit? I need to digest.”

Jasper and Lapis exchanged looks. “Well… there’s a park near here. We could rest on the benches for a bit.”

“I was thinking more of an inside place. With an AC and cushions.”

“Hmm…” Lapis tried to think of a place like this. “There’s a shopping mall, too, but it’s a bit far away.”

“Ughh…”

“Why are you complaining so much? We’re not here on tourism.” Peridot put her hands on her hips, annoyed at the selfishness of her best friend.

“Excuse me, not all of us have the metabolism of a puma. I ate that whole burger and I need to lie down for a bit!”

“You’re not the only one in this group, Amethyst!”

As the two continued to argue again, Jasper rolled her eyes and kept checking her map. Lapis wasn’t sure of what to do; in one hand, she could use a resting spot before facing her worst nightmare, but in another she really didn’t want to delay this for too long. Those people had taken a day off to accompany her on a personal issue, and she felt bad for wasting their time like this.

“If I may suggest,” Pearl’s clear and calm voice interrupted the fight. “Is there a possibility of us spending one night at a hotel?”

“What?” Lapis was surprised at the idea. “But you have work tomorrow.”

“Well, that’s true, but Garnet said she’ll hold the fort and I trust her.” She turned to Amethyst. “I’ll let you off the hook, and if I’m not mistaken, Peridot here works at night. If we return tomorrow in the afternoon, she will be able to make it to work in time.” Then she turned to Jasper and Bismuth and tried not to stutter as she looked at the perfectly built bodies. “Of course, I don’t know if this would fit your schedule.”

“We’re on a break!” Bismuth replied with her characteristic friendly smile. “That wouldn’t be a problem for us.”

Jasper didn’t look up from her phone, but nodded.

“Well, that’s good then.” Pearl looked back to Lapis. “Besides… I think it would be good to take a little break before facing such a difficult thing. With your body and mind well rested, it’ll be much better.”

Lapis’ eyes gleamed and she smiled back, with soft eyes. “Okay. Thank you, Pearl.”

Amethyst side-eyed her boss proudly; to think that Pearl would go as far as missing two working days to help a stranger, that was a selfless act if she’s ever seen one.

“Found it.” Jasper said suddenly and everyone looked at her. “A cheap hotel.”

“So that’s what you were looking for in that goddamn phone.” Bismuth shoved her to the side playfully and Jasper just told her to shut up with a faint blush.

“Let’s go, then.”

Then they all followed Jasper.

“Good news, they’ve got three cheap rooms!” Amethyst came back with Jasper from the lobby with three keys; The two of them, incredibly, were the better suited people to strike a bargain. Well, mostly Amethyst – Jasper was there to be intimidating. “Bad news, we’ve got to share a bed.”

“How is this bad news?” Peridot teased with a smirk.

“Well, sorry, not all of us got to find a girlfriend before the trip,” She gave her a room key reluctantly. “So… how are we gonna split?”

“Like we did on the bus?” Peri came to the most logical conclusion.

“R-right. Yeah, that makes sense.” For some God forsaken reason, the thought of sharing a bed with Pearl made Amethyst nervous. She was never nervous around people she liked. Amethyst was the One Night Stand Queen, what was going on with her? Besides, wasn’t that a good thing? She’d been wanting to have some privacy with Pearl for a while now, and this was the perfect opportunity.

Ame decided to crack a joke to break the tense mood, so she looked at Jasper and Bismuth. “Are you even gonna fit in the same bed together?”

“You’ve never been to a training camp, have you, pipsqueak?” Bis replied with a wicked smirk, and Amethyst didn’t want to think about what happened on training camps for rugby athletes.

“Alright, that settles it then.”

Grabbing their bags, the six women went upstairs and walked into their designated rooms. The fun part was that the three rooms were all next to each other and had a balcony that led outside; if they needed to talk, they could just step out and chat.

The double bed in the middle of the room occupied most of the place. As soon as Lapis and Peridot walked in, they threw themselves in the bed and sighed contently. Peridot shifted so they could snuggle, and Lapis giggled at the gesture, placing a kiss on top of her head. She felt extremely relaxed.

Bismuth and Jasper threw their bags on the floor, and Bismuth jumped on the bed like a kid. She asked if Jasper wanted to jump with her, but her teammate just scolded her and stepped outside for a bit.

And Amethyst and Pearl sat on the corner of the bed, far away from each other. Pearl excused herself for a bit and Ame nodded with a crooked smile. As soon as disappeared into the bathroom, Amethyst buried her face in a pillow.

That was going to be a long night.

#lapidot #steven universe #su #my fic #peridot #lapis lazuli

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insearchofgatherings-blog · 5 years

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Almost You

One

There was something in your hair on the first day we met.

It’s an interesting peculiarity that I can’t quite recall what it was, but I remember being drawn away from direct eye contact a great many times like some magnetic repulsion was preventing it. I never believed in love at first sight, and the past few years has indeed proved that to me. For all I feel for you now is adoration in its purest form, yet all I thought that day was that you must have been walking through some trees earlier that night, or perhaps had an aesthetic predisposition towards placing imperfections amongst your appearance.

Sometimes I feel like there should have been a defining moment on that night, as Alex so bashfully introduced us, but I took as much notice of you as I did of his many fleeting romantic encounters. The same amount as he no doubt gave to mine. We had a mutual apathy towards each other’s romantic escapades, built from years of disappointing almost-relationships and a long, near-impossible struggle to like or even level with the people we would choose to introduce.

Perhaps I should have taken note of the strange rarity that this was only your second date, and dear Alex often refuses to tell me even the names of his elopees before then, let alone bring them to a social gathering. He tells me that he fears I put them off. I know he fears a lot more.

It’s always dark down there, in The Closet’s subterranean lair that they pass as a music venue. Even more than the absence of windows or breathing space, it’s like they purposefully break lights and remove reflective surfaces to try and hide the parts they haven’t cleaned properly. They’re one of those establishments that use the term dive as if it’s some kind of accolade, perhaps they see the stairs to the basement as a ‘dive’ into some kind of heightened cultural experience. I always knew that Jasmine would put the show on there, though I secretly wished for something better. But for all my complaints about the smell, the dark, the gropers and the bar staff that deny the groping, I seem to have an awful lot of significant emotional experiences in that dark, grimy underground cupboard. Not least the ones with your sister, but I’ll get to those later.

I never thought you were significant. Not on that night, and perhaps not even by the third or fourth nights of your presence. You were like a cancer, creeping in beneath the radar, beginning to take your grip on our lives while we slept, and when we finally realised how far you had climbed under our skins, it was too late.

I had already forgotten your name by the time we left, but in all honesty, it’s rarer for me to remember. Who?, I responded, when Anna sought for my thoughts on you during our mandatory post-performance pizza. That you hadn’t joined us was probably another sign, but it appears I was immune to signs that night.

Alex’s new date, she continued. Haven’t seen her before.

I had long grown tired of the kinds of analytical discussions of relationships that fill the twilight zone between smalltalk and bigtalk, but Anna almost lived for it. I even began to think this was the only reason she associated with Alex anymore because he was a consistent hive of new gossip. The combination of straight-talking friendliness with a historic struggle of never knowing what he wanted, from life in general as much as relationships, made him a beacon for those with delusions of cracking his code.

Spooky. I replied. Too cool for him. I at least remember that line distinctly from that night, but little else. I’m not sure where it came from, the idea that you were too cool for him. Perhaps I meant that you were too cool for me?

Did you talk to her at all?

A pause, as I tried to recall what we had even conversed about.

She’s a writer of some kind, like an actual one, not one of those uni students who has a tumblr, Anna continued, unprompted. I bet she’s heard about his reputation for sending girls away in tears and needs some writing inspo. Can’t say he’d make a compelling lead though.

No, I responded, after a pause. Still deep in thought. Anna fired up again, starting off on a rant that I must have filtered. I think I remember her bringing up Jamie as a comparison. Jamie was Anna’s favourite of the long run of flings, but I don’t think there was any apt comparison.

No, I mean I don’t think she knows his rep. I followed. Think she’s new to town. Has an accent at least.

As if that means anything, she fired back. Being incorrect wasn’t Anna’s favourite, and I punched myself for stoking any attempts at an argument. I could have continued, recalling the one thing that Alex had told me – that you’d only been here a month, but I knew that an argument wasn’t worth the bother.

We headed back down, spotting the crowd of vapers and analogue smokers outside the sole door slowly shrink as they were called to the depths by the sub-bass of an arpeggiator. The roof of my mouth was completely numb from the pizza, as is the norm for these sorts of evenings. No time to sit and enjoy. Neither of us bothered to find you or Alex in the crowd. I’m not sure why. Perhaps we had sensed something that we had better stay away from.

I hadn’t seen this new band of Jasmine’s before. I think this was the third or fourth group I’d seen her with, the musical projects coming and going like hair colours. Whatever talent she undoubtedly had was almost always truncated by her reluctance to work through a project, always settling for a few gigs and a few shoddily put-together originals, never to be heard outside of dive bars or rehearsal spaces.

They played a piece that night that I recognised. I sat through the whole song wondering if it was a cover or just Jasmine’s rushed songwriting completely ripping something else off. It was an instrumental, played on two synthesisers and an alto saxophone. Or maybe it was tenor, BK never seemed to bring the same saxophone to any gig, him being the worst of all the scene for bandhopping. The lights in the room had all been turned blue, a deep, aquatic blue with a kind of light filter that made everything feel underwater. As derivative as the music was, I remember noting that you don’t exactly need to be original to get an emotional response. I was immersed in the sounds, all the hundreds of artificial reverbs swarming me and enveloping me like a warm blanket.

It was definitely a cover. Too good to be Jasmine’s, I thought, quite rudely discarding the talents of someone I described as my third-most-talented-associate in the bin. I remember seeing you and Alex during it, and I looked directly at you, probably the only time I did properly that night. Dark room, dark hair, dark lipstick, dark dress. All gothed up and spooky, like so many of Alex’s flings. But you were smiling. A big, lame smile. Nothing spooky or mysterious about it, nothing pretentious or melodramatic. You were tapping along as if you recognised the song too. Like you actually knew what it was, unlike me. Perhaps that’s why you were too cool for me. I always knew more music than people. Not this time.

It was nearly three years before I worked out what it was. Rachel’s Song. Blade Runner. We were watching it at Alex’s flat, in preparation for the sequel. When the melody came in it all flooded back, and I looked across at you. There was that smile. The dorky, nerdy smile. No pretence. No melodrama. I don’t remember watching the film at all that night, from then on all I could watch was you.

#short story #writing #creative #blade runner #novella #almost you

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topsolarpanels · 7 years

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Is it too late to save the world? Jonathan Franzen on one year of Trump’s America

As the ice shelves crumble and the Twitter president threatens to pull out of the Paris accord, Franzen reflects on the role of the writer in times of crisis

If an essay is something essayed – something hazarded , not definitive , not authoritative; something ventured on the basis of the author’s personal experience and subjectivity- we might seem to be living in an essayistic golden age. Which party you went to on Friday night, how you were treated by a flight attendant, what your take on the political outrage of the day is: the presumption of social media is that even the tiniest subjective micronarrative is worthy not only of private notation, as in a diary, but of sharing with other people. The US president now operates on this presumption. Traditionally hard news reporting, in places like the New York Times, has softened up to allow the I , with its voice and opinions and impressions, to take the front-page spotlight, and book reviewers feel less and less constrained to discuss books with any kind of objectivity. It didn’t use to matter if Raskolnikov and Lily Bart were likable, but the question of “likability,” with its implicit privileging of the reviewer’s personal impressions, is now a key element of critical decision. Literary fiction itself is appearing more and more like essay.

Some of the most influential fictions of recent years, by Rachel Cusk and Karl Ove Knausgaard, take the method of self-conscious first-person witnes to a new level. Their most extreme admirers will tell you that imagination and invention are outmoded contrivances; that to occupy the subjectivity of a character unlike the author is an act of appropriation, even colonialism; that the only authentic and politically defensible mode of narrative is autobiography.

Meanwhile the personal essay itself- the formal apparatus of honest self-examination and sustained engagement with notions, as developed by Montaigne and advanced by Emerson and Woolf and Baldwin- is in eclipse. Most large-circulation American magazines have all but ceased to publish pure essays. The kind persists mainly in smaller publications that collectively have fewer readers than Margaret Atwood has Twitter adherents. Should we be mourning the essay’s extinction? Or should we be celebrating its conquest of the larger culture?

A personal and subjective micronarrative: the few lessons I’ve learned about writing essays all came from my editor at the New Yorker, Henry Finder. I first went to Henry, in 1994, as a would-be journalist in pressing need of money. Largely through dumb luck, I made a publishable article about the US Postal Service, and then, through native incompetence, I wrote an unpublishable piece about the Sierra Club. This was the point at which Henry suggested that I might have some aptitude as an essayist. I heard him to be saying,” since you’re obviously a crap journalist”, and denied that I had any such aptitude. I’d been raised with a midwestern horror of yakking too much about myself, and I had an additional racism, derived from certain wrongheaded notions about novel-writing, against the stating of things that could more rewardingly be depicted . But I still needed money, so I maintain calling Henry for book-review assignments. On one of our calls, he asked me if I had any interest in the tobacco industry- the subject of a major new history by Richard Kluger. I rapidly said:” Cigarettes are the last thing in the world I want to think about .” To this, Henry even more quickly replied: “ Therefore you must be talking about them .”

This was my first lesson from Henry, and it remains the most important one. After smoking throughout my 20 s, I’d succeeded in ceasing for two years in my early 30 s. But when I was assigned the post-office piece, and became terrified of picking up the phone and introducing myself as a New Yorker journalist, I’d taken up the habit again. In the years since then, I’d managed to think of myself as a nonsmoker, or at the least as a person so securely resolved to quit again that I might as well already have been a nonsmoker, even as I continued to smoking. My state of mind was just a quantum wave function in which I could be totally a smoker but also totally not a smoker, so long as I never took measure of myself. And it was instantly clear to me that writing about cigarettes would force me to take my measure. “Thats what” essays do.

President-elect Donald Trump speaks at his election night rally in New York in November 2016. Photograph: Carlo Allegri/ Reuters

There was also the problem of my mother, whose parent had died of lung cancer, and who was militantly anti-tobacco. I’d concealed my habit from her for more than 15 years. One reason I needed to preserve my indeterminacy as a smoker/ nonsmoker was that I didn’t enjoy lying to her. As soon as I could succeed in discontinuing again, permanently, the wave function would collapse and I would be, one hundred per cent, the nonsmoker I’d always represented myself to be- but only if I didn’t first come out, in publish, as a smoker.

Henry had been a twentysomething wunderkind when Tina Brown hired him at the New Yorker. He had a distinctive tight-chested manner of speaking, a kind of hyper-articulate mumble, like prose acutely well edited but scarcely legible. I was awed by his intelligence and his erudition and had promptly come to live in dread of disillusioning him. Henry’s passionate emphasis in “ Therefore you must write about them”- he was the only speaker I knew who could get away with the stressed initial “ Therefore ” and the imperative “must”- allowed me to hope that I’d registered in his consciousness in some small way.

And so I went to work on the essay, every day combusting half a dozen low-tar cigarettes in front of a box fan in my living-room window, and handed in the only thing I ever wrote for Henry that didn’t need his editing. I don’t remember how my mother get her hands on the essay or how she conveyed to me her deep sense of betrayal, whether by letter or in telephone calls, but I do remember that she then didn’t communicate with me for six weeks- by a wide margin, the longest she ever ran silent on me. It was precisely as I’d dreaded. But when she got over it and began sending me letters again, I felt insured by her, insured for what I was, in a manner that is I’d never felt before. It wasn’t just that my “real” self had been concealed from her; it was as if there hadn’t really been a self to see.

Kierkegaard, in Either/ Or , builds fun of the” busy human” for whom busyness is a style of avoiding an honest self-reckoning. You might wake up in the night and realise that you’re lonely in your matrimony, or that you need to think about what your level of consumption is doing to the planet, but the next day you have a million little things to do, and the day after that you have another million things. As long as there’s no end of little things, you never have to stop and confront the bigger questions. Writing or reading an essay isn’t the only style to stop and ask yourself who you really are and what your life might mean, but it is one good way. And if you consider how laughably unbusy Kierkegaard’s Copenhagen was, compared with our own age, those subjective tweets and hasty blog posts don’t seem so essayistic. They seem more like a means of avoiding what a real essay might force on us. We spend our days reading, on screens, stuff we’d never bother reading in a printed book, and bitch about how busy we are.

I quit cigarettes for the second time in 1997. And then, in 2002, for the final time. And then, in 2003, for the last and final day- unless you count the smokeless nicotine that’s coursing through my bloodstream as I write this. Attempting to write an honest essay doesn’t alter the multiplicity of my egoes; I’m still simultaneously a reptile-brained addict, a worrier about my health, an eternal adolescent, a self-medicating depressive. What changes, if I take the time to stop and measure, is that my multi-selved identity acquires substance .

One of the mysteries of literature is that personal substance, as perceived by both the writer and the reader, is situated outside the body of either of them, on some kind of page. How can I feel realer to myself in a thing I’m writing than I do inside my body? How can I feel closer to another person when I’m reading her terms than I do when I’m sitting next to her? The answer, in part, is that both writing and reading demand full attentiveness. But it surely also has to do with the kind of ordering that is possible merely on the page.

Former FBI director James Comey testifying before the US Senate select committee on intelligence in October. Photograph: Saul Loeb/ AFP/ Getty Images

Here I might mention two other lessons I learned from Henry Finder. One was Every essay, even a think piece, tells a story . The other was There are two ways to organise material:” Like goes with like” and “This followed that.” These precepts may seem self-evident, but any grader of high-school or college essays can tell you that they aren’t. To me it was especially not evident that a believe piece should follow the rules of drama. And yet: doesn’t a good debate begin by positing some difficult problem? And doesn’t it then propose an escape from the problem through some bold proposition, and put in obstacles in the form of objections and counterarguments, and finally, through a series of reversals, take us to an unforeseen but fulfilling conclusion?

If you accept Henry’s premise that a successful prose piece consists of material arranged in the form of a story, and if you share my own conviction that our identities consist of the narratives we tell about ourselves, it stimulates sense that we should get a strong make of personal substance from the labour of writing and the pleasure of reading. When I’m alone in the woods or having dinner with a friend, I’m overwhelmed by the quantity of random sensory data coming at me. The act of writing subtracts almost everything, leaving merely the alphabet and punctuation marks, and progresses toward non-randomness. Sometimes, in ordering the elements of a familiar tale, you discover that it doesn’t mean what you thought it did. Sometimes, especially with an debate (” This follows from that “), a completely new narrative is called for. The discipline of fashioning a compelling tale can crystallise thoughts and feelings you merely dimly knew you had in you.

If you’re looking at a mass of material that doesn’t seem to give itself to storytelling, Henry would say your merely other option is to sort it into categories, grouping similar components together: Like goes with like . This is, at a minimum, a tidy route to write. But patterns also have a way of turning into stories. To make sense of Donald Trump’s victory in an election he was widely expected to lose, it’s tempting to construct a this-followed-that narrative: Hillary Clinton was careless with her emails, the Justice department chose not to prosecute her, then Anthony Weiner’s emails came to light, then James Comey reported to Congress that Clinton might still be in difficulty, and then Trump won the election. But it may actually be more fruitful to group like with like: Trump’s victory was like the Brexit vote and like the resurgent anti-immigrant patriotism in Europe. Clinton’s imperiously sloppy handled in her emails was like her poorly messaged campaign and like her decision not to campaign harder in Michigan and Pennsylvania.

I was in Ghana on election day, birdwatching with my brother and two friends. James Comey’s report to Congress had unsettled the campaign before I left for Africa, but Nate Silver‘s authoritative polling website, Fivethirtyeight, was still giving Trump only a 30% opportunity of winning. Having cast an early vote for Clinton, I’d arrived in Accra feeling only moderately anxious about the election and congratulating myself on my decision to spend the final week of the campaign not checking Fivethirtyeight 10 times a day.

I was indulging a different sort of compulsion in Ghana. To my shame, I am what people in the world of birding call a lister. It’s not that I don’t love birds for their own sake. I run birding to experience their beauty and diversity, understand better their behaviour and the ecosystems they belong to, and take long, attentive walkings in new places. But I also maintain way too many listings. I count not only the bird species I’ve seen worldwide but the ones I’ve seen in every country and every US state I’ve birded in, also at various smaller sites, including my back yard, and in every calendar year since 2003. I can rationalise my compulsive counting as an extra little game I play within the context of my passion. But I truly am compulsive. This builds me morally inferior to birders who bird exclusively for the joy of it.

It happened that by going to Ghana I’d dedicated myself a chance to break my previous year-list record of 1,286 species. I was already over 800 for 2016, and I knew, from my online research, that trips similar to ours had produced virtually 500 species, merely a handful of which are also common in America. If I could see 460 unique year species in Africa, and then utilize my seven-hour layover in London to pick up 20 easy European birds at a park near Heathrow, 2016 would be my best year ever.

Hillary Clinton …’ Careless with her emails .’ Photograph: Jewel Samad/ AFP/ Getty Images

We were assuring great stuff in Ghana, spectacular turacos and bee-eaters found only in west Africa. But the country’s few remaining woodlands are under intense hunting and logging pressure, and our walkings in them were more sweltering than productive. By the evening of election day, we’d already missed our only shot at several of my target species. Very early the next morning, when polls were still open on the west coast of the States, I turned on my phone for the pleasure of confirming that Clinton was winning the election. What I found instead were stricken texts from my friends in California, with pictures of them staring at a TV and seeming morose, my girlfriend curled up on a sofa in a fetal posture. The Times headline of the moment was ” Trump Takes North Carolina, Building Momentum; Clinton’s Path to Victory Narrow .”

There was nothing to be done but go birding. On a road in the Nsuta forest, dodging timber trucks whose momentum I associated with Trump’s, and yet clinging to the idea that Clinton still had a track to victory, I insured Black Dwarf Hornbills, an African Cuckoo-Hawk and a Melancholy Woodpecker. It was a sweaty but satisfactory morning that objective, when we re-emerged into network coverage, with the news that the” short-fingered vulgarian”( Spy magazine’s memorable epithet) was my country’s new president. This was the moment when I insured what my mind had been doing with Nate Silver’s figure of 30% for Trump’s odds. Somehow I’d taken the figure to mean that the world might be, worst case, 30% shittier after election day.

What the number actually represented, of course, was a 30% chance of the world’s being 100% shittier.

As we travelled up into drier, emptier northern Ghana, we intersected with some birds I’d long dreamed of watch: Egyptian Plovers, Carmine Bee-eaters and a male Standard-winged Nightjar, whose outrageous wing streamers devoted it the appear of a nighthawk being closely pursued by two bats. But we were falling ever further behind the year-bird pace I needed to maintain. It occurred to me, belatedly, that the trip lists I’d seen online had included species that were only hear , not ensure, while I needed to see a bird to count it. Those lists had raised my hopes the way Nate Silver had. Now every target species I missed increased the pressure to find all of the remaining targets, even the wildly unlikely ones, if I wanted to break my record. It was only a stupid year listing, ultimately meaningless even to me, but I was haunted by the headline from the morning after election day. Instead of 275 electoral elections, I needed 460 species, and my route to victory was becoming very narrow. Finally, four days before the end of the trip, in the spillway of a dam near the Burkina Faso border, where I’d hoped to get half a dozen new grassland birds and see zero, I had to accept the reality of loss. I was abruptly aware that I should have been at home, trying to console my girlfriend about the election, exerting the one benefit of being a depressive pessimist, which is the propensity to chuckle in dark times.

How had the short-fingered vulgarian arrived at the White House? When Hillary Clinton started speaking in public again, she gave credence to a like-goes-with-like account of her character by advancing a this-followed-that narrative. Never mind that she’d mishandled her emails and uttered the phrase ” basket of deplorables “. Never intellect that voters might have had legitimate grievances with the liberal elite she represented; might have failed to appreciate the rationality of free trade, open perimeters, and mill automation when the overall gains in global wealth came at middle-class expenditure; might have resented the federal imposition of liberal urban values on conservative rural communities. According to Clinton, her loss was the flaw of James Comey- maybe also of the Russians.

Admittedly, I had my own neat narrative account. When I came home from Africa to Santa Cruz, my progressive friends were still struggling to understand how Trump could have won. I remembered a public event I’d once done with the optimistic social-media specialist Clay Shirky, who’d recounted to the audience how “shocked” professional New York eatery critics had been when Zagat, a crowd-sourced reviewing service, had named Union Square Cafe the best eatery in township. Shirky’s point was that professional critics aren’t as smart as they think they are; that, in fact, in the age of Big Data, critics are no longer even necessary. At the event, dismissing the fact that Union Square Cafe was my favourite New York restaurant( the crowd was right !), I’d sourly wondered if Shirky believed that critics were also stupid to consider Alice Munro a better writer than James Patterson. But now Trump’s victory, too, had vindicated Shirky’s mockery of pundits. Social media had allowed Trump to bypass the critical establishment, and just enough members of the crowd, in key swaying states, had find his low comedy and his incendiary speech “better” than Clinton’s nuanced arguments and her mastery of policy. This follows from that : without Twitter and Facebook , no Trump.

After the election, Mark Zuckerberg did briefly appears to take responsibility, kind of, for having made the platform of selection for fake news about Clinton, and to suggest that Facebook could become more active in filtering the news.( Good luck with that .) Twitter, for its part, kept its head down. As Trump’s tweeting continued unabated, what could Twitter possibly say? That it was constructing the world a better place?

Mark Zuckerberg suggested that Facebook could become more active in filtering the news. Photo: Steven Senne/ AP

In December, my favourite Santa Cruz radio station, KPIG, began operating a fake ad offering counselling services to addicts of Trump-hating tweets and Facebook posts. The following month, a week before Trump’s inauguration, the PEN American Center organised events around the country to reject the assault on free speech that it claimed Trump represented. Although his administration’s travelling regulations did afterwards make it harder for novelists from Muslim countries to have their voices heard in the United States, the one bad thing that could not be said of Trump, in January, was that he had in any way curtailed free speech. His lying, bullying tweets were free speech on steroids. PEN itself, only a few years earlier, had given a free-speech awarding to Twitter, for its self-publicised role in the Arab spring. The actual outcome of the Arab springtime had been a retrenchment of autocracy, and Twitter had since uncovered itself, in Trump’s hands, to be a platform made to order for autocracy, but the ironies didn’t end there. During the same week in January, progressive American bookstores and authors proposed a boycott of Simon& Schuster for the crime of intending to publish one book by the dismal right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos. The angriest of the bookstores talked of refusing to stock all titles from S& S, including, presumably, the books of Andrew Solomon, the president of PEN. The talk didn’t aim until S& S voided its contract with Yiannopoulos.

Trump and his alt-right supporters take pleasure in pushing the buttons of the politically correct, but it merely works because the buttons are there to be pushed- students and activists claiming the human rights of not hear things that upset them, and to shout down notions that offend them. Intolerance particularly flourishes online, where measured speech is punished by not getting clicked on, invisible Facebook and Google algorithms steer you towards content you agree with, and nonconforming voices remain silent for fear of being flamed or trolled or unfriended. The outcome is a silo in which, whatever side you’re on, you feel absolutely right to detest what you detest. And here is another way in which the essay distinguished from superficially similar kinds of subjective speech. The essay’s roots are in literature, and literature at its best- the work of Alice Munro, for example- invites you to ask whether you might be somewhat wrong, maybe even entirely wrong, and to imagine why someone else might dislike you.

Three years ago, I was in a state of fury about climate change. The Republican party was continuing to lie about the absence of a scientific consensus on climate- Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection had gone so far as to forbid its employees to write the words “climate change”, after Florida’s governor, a Republican, insisted that it wasn’t a” true fact”- but I wasn’t much less angry at the left. I’d read a new volume by Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything , in which she assured the reader that, although” period is tight”, we still have 10 years to radically remake the world economy and prevent global temperatures from rising by more than two degrees Celsius by the end of the century. Klein wasn’t the only leftist saying we still had 10 years. In fact, environmental activists had been saying the exact same thing in 2005.

They’d also been saying it in 1995: We still have 10 years . By 2015, though, it ought to have been clear that humanity is incapable in every way- politically, psychologically, ethically, economically- of reducing carbon emissions quickly enough to change everything. Even the European union, which had taken the early lead on climate, and was fond of lecturing other regions on their irresponsibility, needed only a recession in 2009 to change its focus to economic growth. Barring a worldwide insurrection against free-market capitalism in the next 10 years- the scenario that Klein contended could still save us- the most likely rise in temperature this century is on the order of six degrees. We’ll be lucky to avoid a two-degree risebefore the year 2030.

In a polity ever more starkly divided, the truth about global warming was even less convenient to the left than to the right. The right’s denials were odious lies, but at least they were consistent with a certain cold-eyed political realism. The left, having excoriated the right for its intellectual deceit and turned climate denialism into a political rallying cry, was now in an impossible posture. It had to keep insisting on the truth of climate science while persisting in the fiction that collective world action could stave off the worst of it: that universal acceptance of the facts, which really might have changed everything in 1995, could still change everything. Otherwise, what change did it build if the Republicans quibbled with the social sciences?

Because my sympathies were with the left- reducing carbon emissions is vastly better than doing nothing; every half-degree helps- I also held it to a higher criterion. Denying the dark reality, pretending that the Paris accord could forestall misfortune, was understandable as a tactic to hold people motivated to reduce emissions; to keep hope alive. As a strategy, though, it did more damage than good. It conceded the ethical high ground, insulted the intelligence of unpersuaded voters (” Truly? We still have 10 years ?”), and foreclosed frankfurter discussion of how the global community should prepare for drastic changes, and how nations like Bangladesh should be compensated for what nations like the United States have done to them.

Dishonesty also skewed priorities. In the past 20 years, the environmental movement had become captive to a single issue. Partly out of genuine alarm, partly also because foregrounding human problems was politically less risky- less elitist- than talking about nature, the big environmental NGOs had all invested their political capital in fighting climate change, a problem with a human face. The NGO that especially enraged me, as a bird lover, was the National Audubon Society, once an uncompromising defender of birds , now a lethargic organization with a very large PR department. In September 2014, with much fanfare, that PR department had announced to the world that climate change was the number-one menace to the birds of Northern america. The proclamation was both narrowly dishonest, because its wording didn’t square with the conclusions of Audubon’s own scientists, and broadly dishonest, because not one single bird demise could be directly attributed to human carbon emissions. In 2014, the most serious threat to American birds was habitat loss, followed by outdoor cats, collisions with buildings, and pesticides. By invoking the buzzword of climate change, Audubon got a lot of attention in the liberal media; another point had been scored against the science-denying right. But it was not at all clear how this helped birds. The only practical effect of Audubon’s announcement, it seemed to me, was to discourage people from addressing the real threats to birds in the present.

Snow Geese in New Mexico, USA. Photograph: Nature Picture Library/ Alamy/ Alamy

I was so angry that I decided that I’d better write an essay. I began with a jeremiad against the National Audubon Society, widened it into a scornful denunciation of the environmental movement generally, and then started waking up in the night in a panic of repentance and doubt. For the writer, an essay is a mirror, and I didn’t like what I was find in this one. Why was I excoriating fellow liberals when the denialists were so much worse? The prospect of climate change was every bit as sickening to me as to the groups I was attacking. With every additional degree of global warming, further hundreds of millions of people around the world would suffer. Wasn’t it worth an all-out effort to achieve a reduction of even half of one degree? Wasn’t it obscene to be talking about birds when children in Bangladesh were threatened? Yes, the premise of my essay was that we have an ethical responsibility to other species as well as to our own. But what if that premise was false? And, even if it was true, did I genuinely care personally about biodiversity? Or was I just a privileged white guy who liked to go birding? And not even a purehearted birder- a lister!

After three nights of doubting my character and motives, I called Henry Finder and told him I couldn’t write the piece. I’d done plenty of ranting about climate to my friends and to likeminded conservationists, but it was like a lot of the ranting that happens online, where you’re protected by the impromptu nature of the writing and by the known friendliness of your audience. Trying to write a finished thing, an essay, had made me aware of the sloppiness of my reasoning. It had also enormously increased health risks of shame, because the writing wasn’t casual, and because it was going out to an audience of probably hostile strangers. Following Henry’s admonition (“ Therefore “), I’d come to think of the essayist as a firefighter, whose undertaking, while everyone else is fleeing the flames of shame, is to run straight into them. But I had a lot more to fear now than my mother’s disapproval.

My essay might have stayed abandoned if I hadn’t already clicked a button on Audubon’s website, confirming that, yes, I wanted to join it in fighting climate change. I’d only done this to gather rhetorical ammunition to use against Audubon, but a spate of direct-mail solicitations had followed from that click. I got at least eight of them in six weeks, all of them asking me to give money, along with a similar deluge in my email inbox. A few days after speaking to Henry, I opened one of the emails and discovered myself looking at a picture of myself – fortunately a flattering image, taken in 2010 for Vogue magazine, which had dressed me up better than I garment myself and posed me in a field with my binoculars, like a birder. The headline of the email was something like” Join Author Jonathan Franzen in Supporting Audubon “. It was true that, a few years earlier, in an interview with Audubon magazine, I’d politely praised the organisation, or at least its publication. But no one had asked for my permission to use my name and image for solicitation. I wasn’t sure the email was even legal.

A more benign impetus to return to the essay received from Henry. As far as I know, Henry couldn’t care less about birds, but he seemed to see something in my argument that our preoccupation with future catastrophes discourages us from tackling solvable environmental problems in the here and now. In an email to me, he gently suggested that I lose the tone of prophetic disdain.” This piece will be more persuasive ,” he wrote in another,” if, ironically, it’s more ambivalent, less polemical. You’re not whaling on folks who want us to pay attention to climate change and emission reductions. But you’re attentive to the costs. To what the discourse pushes to the margins .” Email by email, revise by revision, Henry nudged me toward framing the essay not as a denunciation but as a question: how do we find meaning in our actions when the world seems to be coming to an end? Much of the final draft was allocated to a pair of well-conceived regional preservation projects, in Peru and Costa Rica, where the world really is being made a better place , not just for wild plants and wild animals but for the Peruvians and Costa Ricans who live there. Run on these projects is personally meaningful, and the benefits are immediate and tangible.

In writing about the two projects, I hoped that one or two of the big charitable foundations, the ones expending tens of millions of dollars on biodiesel development or on gale farms in Eritrea, might read the piece and consider investing in work that produces tangible results. What I get instead was a missile attack from the liberal silo. I’m not on social media, but my friends reported that I was being called all sorts of names, including “birdbrain” and” climate-change denier “. Tweet-sized snippets of my essay, retweeted out of context, induced it sound as if I’d proposed that we abandon the effort to reduce carbon emissions, which was the position of the Republican party, which, by the polarising logic of online discourse, attained me a climate-change denier. In fact, I’m such a climate-science accepter that I don’t even bother having hope for the ice caps. All I’d denied was that a right-minded international elite, meeting in nice hotels around the world, could stop them from melting. This was my crime against orthodoxy. Climate now has such a lock on the liberal imagination that any attempt to change the conversation- even trying to change it to the epic extinction event that human beings are already generating without the help of climate change- amounts to an offence against religion.

I did have pity for the climate-change professionals who denounced the essay. They’d been working for decades to create the alarm in America, and they ultimately had President Obama on board with them; they had the Paris accord. It was an inopportune time to point out that drastic global warming is already a done deal, and that it seems unlikely that humanity is going to leave any carbon in the ground, given that, even now , not one country in the world has pledged to do it.

In 2015, President obama described the Paris accord as the best chance to save the planet. Photo: Pool/ Getty Images

I also understood the ferocity of the alternative-energy industry, which is a business like any other. If you allow that renewable energy projects are only a moderating tactic, unable to reverse the damage that past carbon emissions will continue to do for centuries, it opens the door to other questions about the business. Like, did we really need quite so many windmills? Did they have to be placed in ecologically sensitive regions? And the solar farms in the Mojave desert- wouldn’t it induce more sense to covering the city of Los Angeles with solar panels and spare the open space? Weren’t we sort of destroying the natural environment in order to save it? I believe it was an industry blogger who called me a birdbrain.

As for Audubon, the fundraising email should have warned me about the character of its management. But I was still surprised by its reply to the essay, which was to attack, ad hominem, the person whose name and image it had blithely appropriated two months earlier. My essay had, yes, devoted Audubon some tough love. I wanted it to cut out the nonsense, stop talking about 50 years from now, and be more aggressive in defending the birds that both it and I love.

But apparently all Audubon could see was a threat to its membership numbers and its fundraising endeavors, and so it had to disprove me as a person. I’m told the president of Audubon fired off four different salvos at me personally. This is what presidents do now.

And it worked. Without even reading those salvos- simply from knowing that other people were reading them- I felt ashamed. I felt the style I’d felt in eighth grade, shunned by the crowd and called names that shouldn’t have hurt but did. I wished I’d listened to my anxieties in the night and maintained my opinions to myself. In a country of some anguish, I called up Henry and dumped all my dishonor and regret on him. He replied, in his barely legible route, that the online reaction was merely weather.” With public opinion ,” he said,” there’s weather, and then there’s climate. You’re trying to change the climate, and that takes time .”

It didn’t matter if I believed this or not. It was enough to feel that one person, Henry, didn’t detest me. I consoled myself with the thought that, although climate is too vast and chaotic for any individual to alter it, the individual can s