#which i love considering i’m writing a thing about him dying over and over again

[neptunesenceladus]

i finished 2003 teen titans, those kids really go through some shit

[that1emowitch]

Bruce, high on painkillers, is being babysat by Jason. Jason has to do an emergency Red Hood thing, and lacking an alternative, slaps a stock domino on Bruce and drags him along.

Bruce proceeds to say/do the most unhinged shit. The goons are suddenly viscerally aware of where Hood got it from.

WOW okay you guys are unhinged, you know that?

(And I love it <3)

A/N: I fully intended to write a crack fic, but the feels crawled in through the plot holes I missed and made their homes in the heart of the story. Also I don't know what you mean by 'stock domino' so I'm assuming it's one of those dollar store ripoffs.

(TW: Accidental overdosing on painkillers, mentions of blood, Jason's usual level of swearing, some goons almost dying but like in a funny way.)

Word Count: 2328

Jason wants to scream.

Like, let it rip out on an abandoned cliff in the howling rain kinda scream.

But no, he's stuck babysitting Brucie Wayne who accidentally OD'd on fucking painkillers after trying to treat himself in Alfred's unfortunate absence (how does that even happen?!).

Dick and Damian are out doing some brotherly-bonding thing, Tim's with the Titans, Duke and Cass are at the movies, and Steph has declared herself "not one of Bruce's kids." Leaving Jason as the only one free to look after their "Dad".

Jason pushes Bruce down on the Batcave's gurney for the billionth time after he attempts (keyword: attempts) to walk again, scowling. None of them are getting any waffles from me again. Or pancakes. Or scones. Or anything I make for them out of my sweet, kind heart. Those little shits.

Jason puts two fingers on Bruce’s wrist, checking his pulse. His skin is cold and clammy, breathing slow, but at least he’s not vomiting anymore. He sighs, collapsing on a chair beside Bruce. He's tired. So fucking tired.

Just as Jason's eyes flutter shut for a moment, the Batcomputer's alarm suddenly blares.

Bruce shoots up, shouting, "ALARM!"

Grumbling, Jason drags himself to the computer, pushing Bruce down along the way. He opens the glaring red notification, brows creased.

Black Mask's goons have intercepted some military shipment...

"Ugh..." Jason groans, and moves to put on his helmet (he never changed out of his costume), checking his guns, when a sudden crash from behind him snaps his attention to the man-child he's supposed to be babysitting.

Bruce has stepped off the gurney and collapsed face-down on the med bay's floor.

He can't just leave him there, can he?

Jason considers his options: He could either strap Bruce to the gurney and leave (in which case Dick will have his head), or he could take Bruce out on the streets with him (in which case Dick will absolutely want to murder him.)

Jason smirks. It’s obvious which one’s the right choice.

Ten minutes later, Jason’s riding through the city at over a hundred miles per hour, with Bruce strapped to the backseat of his motorcycle. Bruce is wearing a dollar store ripoff of the Robin domino and a Robin-themed cape made of Tim’s bedsheets, looking absolutely ecstatic at the high speed.

They arrive at the warehouse where Black Mask’s goons have transported their stolen goods, parking in a shadowed spot a building away. Jason gets off, helping Bruce onto his feet, and says, “Now, I’m going to go shoot some people, you stay hidden and quiet, got that?”

“Guns are bad,” Bruce replies, holding a finger to Jason’s helmet. “Just like clowns. And ducks.”

Raising an eyebrow, Jason shakes his head. He doesn’t have time for this right now.

Jason quickly scales the nearest building, grappling to the roof of the warehouse. He peeks in through a hatch in the roof to survey the area. There are about a dozen armed goons, none of them looking very bright. There are 4 crates they’re guarding, likely filled with ammo.

Cocking his guns, Jason jumps down through the hatch, landing right in the middle of the warehouse with a ‘thud’ sound. “Surprise,” He grins, raising his guns.

“Aye, that’s Red Hood, ain’t it?” Comes a goon’s terrified voice. The others around him immediately aim their guns at Jason— they’re clearly untrained.

Suddenly there’s another thud behind him. “That’s a bucket, you morons!” Comes a too-familiar, slurred voice. Jason turns around to come face-to-face with Bruce, eyes wide. 

In a fight with any real criminals, this distraction would have cost Jason his life. But luckily these adorably clueless goons are just as shocked as him.

Unfortunately the distraction only lasts for a few seconds. Jason immediately jumps into the fight, shooting three goons in the kneecaps and dodging a few bullets. From the corner of his eye, he sees two more goons running out the door, crying. He punches another guy in the face, instantly knocking him out, and is about to turn back to check on Bruce when suddenly something hard collides with his skull.

Jason staggers slightly, trying to regain his balance, when he sees a goon holding a giant stone, wearing a proud grin.

Fuck, his helmet’s probably busted…

Then suddenly Bruce is running towards the goon, hands fisted and veins popping, screaming, “NO ONE HURTS MY SON!”

Then Bruce’s fist collides with the goon’s with a sickening crunch, splattering blood across the floor as the man crumples to the ground. Bruce doesn’t stop there, and continues to beat him up, yelling profanities.

It warms Jason’s cold, (un)dead heart to watch that— to see his Dad fighting for him. It’s like they say, you’re most truthful when you’re drunk— or high. This is how much Bruce loves him.

Then another thought strikes him— Bruce is going to regret being this violent when he sobers up. It’s going to claw at him, tear him up, and he’s going to compartmentalize and end up punishing himself by overworking.

Jason rushes forward, pulling Bruce off of the man. “B— Robin, stop!” He shouted, looking into the man’s domino-covered eyes.

Bruce’s brows furrow. “Robin?”

Jason points to Bruce’s Robin-themed cape and stock domino.

“Ah.” Bruce nods, pulling away. “You okay? Did you see any duck?”

“Duck?” Jason pauses in confusion. But before he can question it farther, he spies the three remaining goons using a ladder to climb up through the roof of the warehouse, trying to escape.

“Stay here. And do not move.” Jason orders Bruce, and runs after them.

He makes his way up the ladder as fast as he can , exiting under the polluted night sky. The goons, the ridiculously stupid goons, are standing around the edge of the roof, trying to figure out how they’re going to get down.

He doesn’t get paid enough to deal with this ridiculous shit.

Actually, scratch that, he doesn’t get paid at all.

“Wow, you guys are pathetic,” Comes Red Hood’s robotic voice, startling the goons, and one of them accidentally topples over the edge, screaming. Jason ensures that the guy’s hanging on tight— he can wait.

He cocks his guns, aiming both at the two standing goons. Both men are trembling with fear, hands up in surrender. “Hood— Mr. Hood, please—” One of them squeaks, but one look from Jason shuts him up.

“Please. Mr. Hood was my father,” Jason quips, his robotic chuckle sounding sinister. 

That’s when he hears another voice behind him (again)— “But I’m your father.”

Jason jumps, whipping around. “How did you— I didn’t even hear you come!”

Bruce just shrugs innocently, waving his bloodstained hands at the terrified goons.

Then Jason hears the distinct sound of a gun being cocked. From the corner of his eye he sees the bolder of the goons, the one that had spoken before, taking aim.

“DUCK!” He yells, falling out of the way.

Instead of dodging, Bruce falls into a defensive stance, looking around frantically. “Where?!”

The bullet barely misses Bruce’s ear as he turns his head.

Jason has had it with sky-high Bruce now. Annoyance rising, he quickly shoots the two goons in the kneecaps, forgetting about the one hanging off the edge, and stalks up to Bruce, glaring.

“What is up with you and ducks?!” He demands, his voice raised.

“Ducks are evil,” Bruce spits, nose wrinkled. “Just like clowns. And bats.”

Jason’s brows raise. “Bats are evil?”

“Yeah, duh, that’s why everyone’s scared of Batman.” Bruce rolls his eyes, his drawl sounding too much like Steph. “Bats are scary.”

“You really took ‘become what you fear’ too literally, huh?” Jason snorts, putting his guns back in their holsters. Then he takes off his helmet, checking the damage— just a slight crack at the back. Not too bad.

“You know, I fell into a hole and into a cave when I was a boy and a dozen bats attacked me. I nearly died.” Bruce continues, gesturing towards the air with his hands. 

“Yeah, right.” Jason shakes his head, chuckling. “Now come on, we gotta get you back.”

That’s when another voice rings out, high-pitched and scared. “Um, Mr. Hood? Please HELP! Please, please, please—”

Jason’s attention snaps to the corner of the roof— ah, right, the goon’s still hanging off the edge, isn’t he?

He grumbles, making his way over, and squats above the man, shaking his head. The man below him looks like he’s pissed himself, face ashen, tears running down his cheeks, muttering, “I’m gonna die, I’m gonna die, I’m gonna die…” On repeat.

“I’ll pull you up on one condition,” Jason looks down at him, voice low. “Never become a gun for hire again. If I see you fighting on the streets…” He pulls out his gun.

“No, no, I won’t, I swear…” The man whimpers, eyes squeezed shut. Jason sighs, and grabs the man by the collar and hauls him up. He crumples onto the roof, curling into a ball.

“Take out your phone and dial 911, tell them you’ve been naughty,” Jason orders, his gun pointed at the man’s head. (What? A guy needs to have some fun.)

The man whines, and immediately obliges.

“Pathetic,” Jason ties the man up quickly, and makes his way over to Bruce, who was sitting on the floor of the roof, taking apart some random crushed handphone he’s found.

“Get up, old man. GCPD will be here soon. We’re going home.” He pulls Bruce up, ignoring how he longingly stares at the dismantled phone.

The two of them grapple down from the roof, landing safely on the pavement. As they walk towards his bike, Bruce says, “Did you know I ate a phone once?”

Jason stumbles slightly. “What?”

“Tasted nice. Like electricity. Crackle-y.” Bruce hummed, his face straight (as straight as someone dating Superman could be). He isn't kidding.

That, or he's delusional.

“Don't try it. You might turn into a computer or something.” Bruce nodded very seriously.

“Oh god,” Jason snorts. “I'm so glad my helmet’s recording all this. Perfect blackmail material.”

“Black's a very, very pretty color.”

Jason rolls his eyes, revving the motor, making sure Bruce is safely strapped onto the backseat behind him. “You're just emo.”

“What's emo?” Bruce raises an eyebrow, words slightly slurred.

“Y'know, when people wear all that black makeup, skinny jeans, with hair covering their eyes.” Jason explains, putting a spare helmet on Bruce's head. “And listen to, like, My Chemical Romance and Fall Out Boy and Panic! At The Disco. The Emo Trinity.”

“Oh, oh!” Bruce's eyes sparkle. “Dickie used to do that! He went to a My Chemmy concert once, but he didn't want me coming along.” He pouts.

Jason thinks of all the times Gerard Way has shoved a mic down his throat and grabbed his junk. “Yeah, I wonder why.”

Then he turns around to look Bruce in the eye. “But, Golden Boy was emo? Seriously?”

Bruce just smiles and nods, saying, “Now go.”

“Going,” Jason smirks and speeds down the streets of Gotham city, not slowing down until their surroundings change from shitty apartment buildings and broken street lights to the eerie quiet of Bristol. He can see the Manor in the distance when he takes a hidden turn, straight down the road that leads to the Batcave. 

He pulls into the underground ‘garage’ section of the Cave, parking his bike before helping Bruce off. As he removes Bruce’s ripoff domino and “cape”, he says sternly, “Now, you tell no one of what we did today, got that? Not a soul.”

Bruce just flashes a thumbs-up and smiles in the most un-Bruce-like way possible. It’s a little creepy, honestly.

“And even if you remember this once you sober up you won’t talk, because you swore on your soul not to tell.”

“Mhm. Kay.”

“Good.” Jason smiles slightly, helping Bruce back to the gurney, making him lie down. He checks him over for any symptoms that the painkiller overdose is making his health worse. His skin’s still cold and clammy, but his breathing’s more steady. His pupils aren’t as small anymore, and he’s way more responsive than he was an hour ago.

Huh. Maybe all he really needed was some exercise.

Jason sits down beside his father, taking a deep breath. “Hey, uh… Did you really mean that, back there? That… That I’m your son?”

Bruce’s brows furrow. “Yes, who else’s son would you be? Superman’s?”

A short laugh escapes Jason. He moves closer to Bruce, lying down so his head is resting beside the older man’s. “I just…” He sighs, unable to form the right words. “I know it doesn’t always seem like it, but… I love you, Dad.”

“Aww, Jaybird…” Bruce’s hand moves sluggishly to cradle Jason. “I love you so much more than you could ever imagine.”

A small smile plays on Jason’s lips as he closes his eyes, leaning into his Dad’s touch. Maybe… maybe babysitting a high Bruce isn’t so bad.

[BONUS!!!]

Dick walks into the infirmary nearly an hour later with Damian trailing behind him, intending to check up on Bruce. He’s been ringing Jason’s phone for a while now, but he hasn’t been picking up. And… Honestly, Dick’s getting worried.

“Tt. I knew we shouldn’t have left Father’s safety in the hands of an incompetent fool such as Todd,” Damian frowns, scowling.

“No, no, it’s probably just a misunderstanding,” Dick tries to reassure his baby brother, but he picks up his pace. “I mean, we both know what Jason’s like. One moment he’s nice, one moment he’s—”

His voice trails off as he sees Jason sitting on a chair beside Bruce, who’s on the gurney— both asleep, with Jason’s head resting on Bruce’s shoulder, and Bruce cradling him.

“Aww, Little Wing…” Dick smiles, pausing. Even Damian freezes behind him. Dick steers him away, back into the main house, so as to not disturb the sleeping pair. “Yeah, they’re okay. Nothing bad happened.”

[sethsclearwater]

thinking about paulxreaderxseth or paulxreaderxjared earlyyyyy into their relationship/imprinting when they first realize she has a daddy kink 🫣 like it takes them having really rough sex for the first time for it to slip out and she’s so embarrassed but they love it and can’t believe it since they thought she was so innocent omfg I’m dying just writing this to you

— the 🫣 anon who stays requesting poly I can’t help it

OH MY GOD??? this would be PERFECT with paulxreaderxjared - these two clowns would just be going absolutely CRAZY when she lets it slip and would never let her live it down💀

...

"taking my cock like such a good girl aren't you?" paul asked as he pounded himself into you, his thrusts remaining unrelenting despite the tears rapidly streaming down your cheeks as you tried your damndest to keep up with him and jared.

the two boys had managed to push you into the subspace on 2 separate occasions, though only just barely. today though seemed to be a completely different story. you were a sobbing mess, barely able to form a coherent sentence as your imprinters fucked you.

before you could even think about it, you were responding to paul, "yes daddy-" you whimpered and that caught both boys' attention, jared letting out a loud laugh as paul let out a low groan, his thrusts stuttering a bit as he tried not to cum right then and there.

"what did you just say to paul babe?" jared asked, sitting on the edge of the bed next to you. he cupped your face in his hand, smiling as you subconsciously leaned into his touch, cheeks a bright pink as you processed what you just said.

"called him daddy," you whispered, peeking up at jared through your tear soaked lashes, your desire to be good for him outweighing your embarassment over the whole thing.

you let out a loud whine when paul reached down to rub your clit with his thumb, picking his thrusts up again when he was sure he wasn't going to cum, "'s what i thought," jared mused, stroking your cheek with his thumb, "didn't think she had a daddy kink," jared teased, allowing his gaze to drift down your body and then up to paul who just laughed and rolled his eyes.

"always full of surprises this one," paul responded, rolling your clit between his fingers which had you letting out a loud sob as you tried to process all the pleasure, more tears streaming down your cheeks at the action, "you gonna cum on daddy's cock, kitten? show me how good my cock feels in that little pussy of yours?" paul teased, keeping his composure together awfully well considering how close he was to shooting his load into you.

you nodded, blubbering some incoherent response before you finally managed to get out, "yes daddy," both boys laughing as you reached up to frantically brush away the tears from your cheeks.

you felt the coil in your belly tightening as you neared your orgasm, quickly reaching your hand back until you found your other imprinter's cock, eliciting a loud groan from the male when you wrapped your fist around his cock.

"want you to cum too daddy," you whimpered, more tears rapidly streaming down your cheeks as you tried your best not to cum until you knew both boys would be cumming with you.

"'m right behind you babe," jared reassed, dropping his head back to let out a loud groan when you began pumping your hand up and down his cock, all three of you desperate for your respective releases.

"go on princess, cum on daddy's cock," paul encouraged, his comment sending you right over to the edge to your orgasm, both boys cumming right after you as promised.

you were desperately sucking in lungfuls of air as you rode our your orgasm, paul's grip on your hips softening as he came down from his high.

once your eyes finally fluttered open a few minutes later, you found jared looking down at you with his usual goofy smile on his face, "so a daddy kink, huh?" he asked, both boys laughing as your cheeks were immediately coated with a dark pink blush.

[underoossss]

okay i’m new to your bloggg but i was wondering if you could write about carving pumpkins with steve? reader x steve, and steve keeps sharing kisses with the reader instead of carving his pumpkin. the reader is trying to focus hard on their pumpkin, which gets extremely hard with stevie giving them puppy dog eyes for another kiss. the night ends with a movie night where they watch steve’s favorite, “ferris buellers day off” and steve can’t focus on the movie and can only focus on his girl.

hello! thank you so much for this request i think it's so cute and had the best time writing it! 1k

You can feel his eyes on you, a warm thing almost like his touch. You're sitting outside, on Steve's backyard with newspapers strewn out and pumpkin seeds sticking to it. Steve sits to your right with his own pumpkin in front of him, a big one that's lopsided to the left. It's half carved, it has been for the past 10 minutes because he can't stop staring.

"Stevie." You say, still concentrating on the vampire face you're carving into your pumpkin. There's a smile on your face as you look over at him, stomach flipping at the besotted look on his. "What happened to your pumpkin?"

Steve's leaning his chin on his palm, eyes caressing your face as he looks and looks and looks. "It can wait, there's a pretty girl I'm checking out."

You pretend to look behind you and laugh when Steve rolls his eyes. "If I'd known wearing your clothes would distract you so much I wouldn't have." A glance downwards towards your hoodie –his hoodie– makes Steve's lovestruck look return.

"Babe, you always distract me." Steve shakes his head, moving to sit closer to you.

"Remind me to never get in a car with you again." You shake your head attempting to continue your pumpkin carving before Steve grabs your hands. Glancing sideways you find the beautiful brown eyes you love, soft and wide because Steve knows how to get what he wants. "If I kiss you, would you let me finish my pumpkin." You smile, just as crazy about him.

At Steve's answering smile you do too, and when his hands find your waist and tug, you can't help but giggle into his kiss. The giggle turns into a smile, then into a grin until eventually you're able to kiss your boyfriend back just as deeply as he's kissing you. His lips travel down to your jaw and your neck, raising goosebumps on your skin as he goes. "Was dying to kiss you." Steve mumbles into your skin.

You laugh when he kisses a ticklish spot on your neck. "Stevie, you kissed me earlier. Barely an hour ago."

"Too long." Steve's lips go back to yours so he can kiss you softly, the tip of his nose brushing the side of yours.

Bringing both your hands to his face you pull back, smiling at the pout he gives you and his second attempt at puppy eyes. "That won't work this time, I want to finish carving my pumpkin and you got your kiss."

"But–"

You shut him up with one last peck and turn back to your vampire carving so you can continue your work. "The sooner you finish the sooner we go back inside Stevie."

It seems that your logic spurs him back into action, though this time he sits much closer to you even as he hides what he's making from you. You want to say you continued without any more distractions, but that would be a lie. Steve turns out wants to be all over you today, which is no different than any other day if you're being honest, but love fizzes under your skin at the massive wave of love that Steve's sent your way all day. Kisses and flirting and hugging and touching, all slow down your pumpkin carving activities but eventually you finish.

"Tada!" You turn your now-lit pumpkin towards Steve, beaming at the cute glowing vampire. It's not perfect, not at all, but it's bad enough to be considered adorable.

Steve smiles proudly. "Best pumpkin in all of Hawkins."

"Let me see yours." You urge, curious to see what he so secretly worked on.

"Don't laugh." Steve warns, then turns the lopsided pumpkin to reveal a big S + your initial with two hearts on either side. The candle inside makes the letters glow, and it's so silly but so meaningful it brings tears to your eyes. How lucky are you to be so loved by the boy next to you that all he wants to carve into his pumpkin is your initials. "Babe, it can't be that bad." Steve jokes.

You laugh through some tears and shake your head before climbing over his lap. Your hands hold his face gently as you press both your foreheads together, heart pounding and flipping with love. "Do you know how much I used to wish for someone like you?" You ask in a whisper. "And now I have you and your love and sometimes it doesn't feel real you know?"

"It's real." Steve smiles, leaning in to kiss you gently –a barely there brush of lips. "I love you so much; sorry if it–"

"Don't say sorry." You shake your head, smiling as you look into his eyes. "I love you and how much you want to be with me Stevie. So much."

Steve's smile only grows. "Good." He says before kissing you again, properly this time as his arms go around your waist. "How about we bring these to the front porch? We still have lots to cross out from your list."

You made a list with all the fall themed things you wanted to do in October, the pumpkin patch was the first and carving the pumpkins was the second. There are about ten more to do. "We can make pumpkin bread." You nod, slipping off Steve's lap and grabbing your vampire.

"We can watch a movie while we wait." Steve suggests, trailing behind you inside the house.

"You just want to make out on the couch, Stevie." You glance at him over your shoulder.

"Is that a no?" He asks to which you shake your head; he already knows the answer

"When have I ever said no to your puppy eyes?"

✶✶✶✶

i hope you liked this! feedback and reblogs are always appreciated🥺

masterlist

[watching-sam-and-dean-again]

Supernatural, Season 8 Sam Musings (Ranting):

There are many things I love about Season 8, like The church scene in Sacrifice, or the four (four!) brother-hugs we get throughout the season, or the moments of Dean trying to take care of Sam (even though Sam fights it), or having side characters that I actually like (for the most part … not Amelia), or the good moments of bad-brother-communication (there are some), but what I absolutely hate is the sacrificing of character for "story" that we see in this season.

So, shocking as this will be to the few who follow me or have read my thoughts (rants) before, but I’m a Sam-leaning brothers fan. And as someone who is Sam-girl adjacent, the beginning of Season 8 makes me ragey. Ironically, it was partially the "abuse" of Sam's character by the writers (among other things) that actually confirmed my tilt towards Sam because it forced me to think more deeply about Sam and his motivations. The writers also pulled some shady crap with Dean's character.

So, you can find my ramblings under the cut, if interested …

So, let’s tackle Sam's oft considered worst offense first: Sam not "looking for" Dean. What the actual fuck was this? I mean, I get it in theory; they brought Sam low in the start of the season, making him "betray" and "fail" Dean again, in order to high ten his rise to Savior Sam 2.0, but it was lazy writing, and almost unforgivable in two ways, out of character actions and failure to meaningfully explain said actions.

First, I’m sorry, but it’s just out of character to have Sam—Psychotic Without Dean—Winchester not look for his brother. We have so much canon proof of this that him not looking for Dean in season 8 is almost offensive. In "Faith" when Dean is going to die, Sam finds him to a "faith healer," and when it turns out another life was exchanged for Dean's, Sam obviously isn’t happy about it … but, I don’t exactly see him wishing to undo it either. In "In My Time of Dying," Sam is totally distraught throughout the entire episode because Dean is dying, even willing to embarrass himself in front of Dean by pulling out a "talking board" (or whatever it was called) just to try and communicate with him, and he wanted to save him so badly but didn’t know how. These two episode alone show us that Sam would not be okay with just "loosing" Dean, and that if Sam thinks there is even a hope of saving Dean, he isn’t just going to shrug and walk away. So, at the end of Season 7, if he thought Dean was still alive, the Sam we know should have been exhaustive,y hunting for Dean.

Second, if Sam thought Dean was dead, which I think was what the show was suggesting but could have made it more explicit, Sam should have been going insane, as he’s done in the past. In Mystery Spot, Sam basically becomes a revenge-driven automaton, even stabbing Fake Bobby in hope of getting Dean back. And when Dean is killed by the hellhound in "No Rest for the Wicked," Sam is destroyed. Season 4 shows us that Sam tried to trade his soul for Dean's, just an instant trade, but the demon wouldn’t deal. We see that Sam was full-on suicidal after losing Dean, basically attempting suicide by demon, drinking and taking pills. If Ruby hadn’t intervened (for her own evil purposes, but still…), he would have gotten himself killed, not might have. When none of the immediately self-distractive options worked, Sam once again went into full-on revenge mode. Sam without Dean, or at least Sam without a Dean alive somewhere in the world, is not okay. He is desperate and frightening.

Arguably, he’s not actually okay in Season 8 either, but his distress after losing Dean was too subtle, to the point that it almost makes him look a bit cold. So, to me at least, not seeing Sam very obviously fucked up, in some way beyond dating Amelia, over Dean's disappearance/death is a disservice to the character.

On the other hand, if the writers just needed Sam to not look for Dean because the drama was just too delicious for them … more important than, you know, staying true to character … then they should have bloody well shown us why. And showing us Sam shacking up with a bitchy pain in the ass Veterinarian was not giving him anything like fair treatment or good characterization, or understandable motivation.

Now, the subtext is that there was more going on in Sam's head than, "Oops, I hit a dog and met a rude vet. I guess I’ll just give up wondering if my brother is alive and move in with this woman who isn’t even particularly nice to me." He even said that hunting had gotten everyone he loved killed, and he that just "ran," in the first episode of the season. So, to me, this means Sam definitely thought Dean was dead, but the show doesn’t actually make it explicitly clear, at least I don’t think so. And this matters because there is a big difference between thinking Dean was lost and not looking for him VS thinking Dean is dead and not trying to sell his soul (or something else mystical and dangerous) to bring him back to life. It’s actually breaking the cycle and healthier for Sam to believe Dean is in heaven, and try to move on, but the show frames his actions, through Dean and Bobby as this huge failure of character. Also, Sam choosing running away from hunting (which has gotten everyone he loves killed) VS giving into revenge and basic insanity again, while not healthy in its escapism, is actually better than becoming an obsessive psycho. So, not just the fact that Sam didn’t look for Dean that is the problem, it’s the execution of how and why he didn’t look for Dean, or lack of exploration around these issues, that I’m especially annoyed by.

So, because we got what we got in the start of Season 8, my explanation to make it work, or headcanon, is that when Sam thought Dean was killed (not just missing) in the explosion of dick 😏, he utterly fell apart. As in, he collapsed in a heap and lost himself in his own head for a while. Maybe he even went a little insane again, sure that he was having a terrible hell-ucination again, even though Cas had supposedly taken his insanity onto himself at this point. Maybe he even feared he was still in the cage after all, and living through yet another nightmare scenario. So, Sam shattered. When he finally pulls himself together, he realizes he has two options, lose himself again in revenge and obsession over trying to bring Dean back to life, or give up the life that has brought him nothing but pain (and Dean, but Dean's gone now). So, he goes with the latter, thinking surly Dean would prefer that he try to live a normal, non-hunting life rather than utterly losing himself in suicidal behavior and revenge again … right?

What the show doesn’t bother to address either, and what many fans seem not to consider or care about, is that pre-Season 8 Sam has only had the devil out of his head for a matter of weeks/months at this point, and he’s still chalk full of fairly newly recalled hell trauma from being stuck in the cage with said devil for over a hundred years. Dean still wasn’t okay in Season 5, a season after getting out of his 40 year stint in hell, and the show addressed this pretty clearly, which is good. With Sam, the show doesn’t bother to remind the audience of his trauma or link it in any meaningful way to Sam's decision to give up hunting and not try to get Dean beck.

I think that’s the most unforgivable part of the first half of the season for me, not showing us in a way that, while some fans might still not consider it a good enough reason, the audience can at least understand why Sam made the choice he did. If the writers wanted Sam to make a decision that was not consistent with what we have seen of him this far, then they needed to show us why he acted differently this time. The show gave us a buttload of flashbacks (often not smoothly), so they could have very easily given us a few flashbacks of Sam falling apart, choosing to try to live without going insane over Dean, grieving his brother. We could have seen these things and still had time for him to meet and stay with a woman (not Amelia) for even, say, six months before Dean gets out of purgatory. Dean could even not be satisfied with Sam's explanation, or Sam could get defensive and not tell Dean how bad he was doing at first, so the brother drama could still be in tact, but at least the audience would understand Sam's motivations more. In a show where Dean usually gets the benefit of the doubt due to being our more regular POV protagonist, the narrative, and his protectiveness, it was a poor choice not to flesh out Sam's decisions more.

Season 8 was one of the rare times we actually see things from Sam's POV fairly often, and they wasted it on an unlikable love interest and half-explained motivations. The way the season is structured, it looks like it’s actually trying to argue that Amelia was the reason Sam gave up hunting (and Dean), but then it depicts her as incredibly harsh, annoying, and, frankly, not worth giving up Dean for. Giving Sam this particular love interest, one he has no chemistry with, makes it even harder to empathize with him because we (or most of the audience) don’t like her.

The real reason Sam gives up is essentially that hunting cost him too much, and he was too broken to carry on after losing Dean. But, the emphasis on the relationship, even though it’s explained that Sam and Amelia were basically just two broken people pulled together by their pain, doesn’t do enough to actually make it appealing, or to make me buy that Sam even loves her. I get that the show isn’t on the side of Sam living a normal life, and that’s actually fine, but making the relationship so … lame just helps stack the deck against Sam.

Meanwhile, Dean's friend-who-isn’t-Sam is incredibly likable, so we sympathize with Dean giving up Benny for Sam mid season, but most of us have been waiting for the moment when we no longer have to see Amelia being grating all over our screens since pretty much the first time we saw her. Thus, Dean's jealousy, dismissive remarks regarding Amelia, and his casual cruelty in letting Sam think she’s in danger just to get him out of the way, have less weight with the audience because so many of us don’t like her anyway. Whereas, Sam's sudden hate for vampires when he’s always been the more sympathetic brother when it comes to monsters, feels like it comes out of nowhere. And he ends up looking like a dick because the audience knows that Benny is a good guy (vampire), even though Sam doesn’t. Dean is no less jealous of Amelia than Sam is of Benny, but it comes across as more unreasonable in Sam's case. And he seems to be the only one who is often considered to be acting petty.

Here too, I feel the show does a bad job showing Sam's motivations. Sam has an instant hate-on for Benny, and his stated reasons are pretty much … he’s a vampire. And when arguing with Dean, the show has Sam bring up Amy. I mean, sure, Amy was a more recent monster and issue in their lives, but she isn’t a fitting Benny parallel, in my opinion. To me, Benny was to Sam, what Ruby was to Dean. They are both monsters: vampire VS demon. They both saved a brother’s life: Ruby saved a suicidal Sam VS Benny saving Dean in a land of Monsters. Both fought alongside a brother for a shared goal: Sam killing Lilith vs Dean getting out of Purgatory. Both monsters caused jealousy for sort of replacing the other brother: Sam chose to trust Ruby over Dean regarding Lilith VS Dean literally telling Sam that Benny (unlike Sam) has never let him down, and he lies to Sam to protect Benny. Sam should have brought up the mistake of trusting Ruby in their argument, if he thinks Dean is wrong to trust Benny. Of course, if Sam so much as said "Ruby," Dean would probably just fixate on Sam not listening to him back then. The thing is, looking at the Benny issue in relation to Ruby, it’s actually fair that Sam distrusts Benny. Of course, i do I think he’s also jealous and feels guilty.

Anyway, the season then sort of tries to make up for Sam being hard to sympathize with, by making Dean be straight up cruel to him a few times, which I don’t love either.

[chairofchaos]

The Introduction: A Letters of Love Short Story

Summary: Carmine writes the Introduction Letter to “Letters of Love” while enjoying the company and comfort of his mate. You do not need to have read Letters of Love in order to enjoy this one shot, though it would be recommended you read at least the first two sections of Part I to understand things fully.

Rating: Teen (Letters of Love still holds an Explicit rating.)

Word Count: 1.3k

A/N: Thank you to all of you lovely people who enjoyed Part I of Letters! You all have been phenomenal, and I cannot thank you enough. Thank you for your patience in letting me get to Part II when I get home from vacation. Let me know what you think about this one! Comments, DMs, asks, blood oaths of loyalty to get the next part early: I accept them all!

“Love,” Carmine called gently from his desk in the shared office.

“Hmm?” His mate didn’t move an inch, responding with an air of sleepiness. The water of the river was glinting with the summer’s dwindling evening sun, which bathed the room in warm light tinted various pastel shades. Carmine sat back to admire how it fell across the lounging body of his mate. The male’s wings twitched as he shifted to wrap his arms around the purple decorative pillow that had assumed the very functional role of supporting his head. Carmine smiled at the sight.

”Do you want to go to bed? We were up early for the opening of the art exhibit. I’m sure you’re exhausted.”

”No, no,” his mate grumbled, turning over again and rubbing his eyes. “I’m up, darling. I want to be here while you write this.”

Carmine couldn’t help but chuckle, spinning his chair to face him fully. “My love. You’re here, but you’re falling asleep, which means you actually aren’t. We are also much too old to be carrying each other to bed.”

The answering smirk was as much a challenge as it was a wry acknowledgement of the truth. “I don’t want to leave you. This is a big moment.”

”Alright,” Carmine sighed, smiling. “I won’t push you out.”

”You’d better not,” was the only reply.

”I wouldn’t dare.”

Carmine returned to his still very blank paper. How could he thank them, for all that they did? His fathers, long since passed, had made it possible for him to have this love with his mate, openly and happily. His fathers had struggled through the years so that he could have this domestic bliss.

He wouldn’t trade it for anything. The love he had for the male who shared his bed, and had for centuries, was unmatched, except by the love which Carmine received from him in return.

How could he not acknowledge that, all of that, in this letter? He needed ten pages for this. This introduction was everything. This was the book which had set him on his way to where he was now. He had researched and written hundreds of books. He had told the stories of great loves, some fully romantic from start to finish, others tragic in ending. His own wasn’t over. But his fathers’…

Eris and Azriel. The love they had shared had changed a fair few things for Carmine and he knew it. This would be the best thank you he could offer them, the best hope he had to acknowledge the work they had done simply by loving one another.

Carmine’s gaze drifted as he leaned back, considering what words could come close to expressing that sort of gratitude. And there were others to thank, as well. Aunt Elain needed thanking most of all, for gathering the letters in the first place. Azriel had apparently been near fury at first, until he realized that all the letters were pieces of their hearts that they had shared. Elain had sworn to him she had a reason. Looking back, Carmine could see those pieces scattered in the other letters she had assembled. Even the smallest note held a hint of love. Every word mattered.

It was Eris who had asked Carmine to bring him the letters when he realized he was dying. Carmine hadn’t even known they existed. And yet, as Carmine found himself watching his Father walk unfaltering toward the end of his life, he began to understand more clearly the start of that great love that had torn Eris’ heart from his chest as his Azriel, Carmine’s Papa, left the living behind.

Carmine had known they had loved each other. He had seen it daily as a youth, and most days since. But to read their beginnings, in their words, was the closest Carmine had ever come to fully understanding that all-consuming fire that wove his parents' hearts into one.

He did as his Father asked. He assembled the letters in chronological order. He put them together in a binding that wouldn’t damage them, a new technology which allowed him to slip them into clear sleeves where they could still be read without being damaged by contact with the world. He took it to his father, and watched as his father’s tears fell while rereading the many words he had once written and received.

Tears fell. Carmine was startled suddenly by the splashing of water against his hand, finding that he was, in fact, crying.

This book was everything to him. After Father’s death, the letters were reproduced, copied onto paper and bound into books for the family. Flora had a copy that had been her mother’s, a thank you Carmine had given to the seer without whom the book couldn’t exist at all. Carmine had his own copy, and the copy that had once been the possession of his brother, Ash. Between him and his mate, they had six extra copies. Carmine had gifted one to the male (who had fallen back asleep on the couch) for the Autumnal Equinox the year after Eris had passed.

The five others were advance copies of the first edition to be published, without, of course, the introduction that Carmine was neglecting to write. One was to be sent to Autumn for his sister. Two were for Carmine’s own home. He would dedicate the one intended for his mate another day.

One was for Flora, for her help in research and for her undertaking of the work her mother had begun centuries ago to preserve and protect the original letters. One would be buried at Aunt Elain’s grave, one last thank you to the High Lady who had seen what no one else did, and who had done what she could to make that future possible.

The last would be buried at the graves of his fathers, between where their bodies lay. It had been their wish that they not be separated, even in death. Now, they would be joined at their end by the words which marked their beginning.

“Darling?” The sound of his mate roused Carmine from his nostalgic sorrow. “Yes?”

The male came to stand before him, reaching to tilt his chin up. Carmine smiled up at him, even as a tear dropped from his chin.

”Are you alright?”

”I am.”

”Shall I help you?”

”There’s no need,” Carmine sighed, letting the male brush away the stray tears with the softest of touches. “I know what I want to write. The issue is there’s so much I wish to say that I could write an entire volume of how this book even came to be.”

His mate hummed, running a hand through Carmine’s short red hair, now streaked with silver. “Well. You could start by saying that.”

Carmine just nodded.

“In the meantime, maybe we should go to bed?” The male suggested, running his hand firmly and steadily down Carmine’s neck and arm to his wrist. Carmine sent the wave of love the comforting gesture brought up barreling down the bond. He didn’t hesitate to share those things with his mate, not when time was so short and there was love to be had. His mate said nothing, tracing circles against the skin of Carmine’s wrist with gentle fingers.

”I suppose I could get up in the morning to work on it. I think I can make it work,” Carmine said slowly.

His mate bent to kiss him on the forehead. “I’ll go turn down the covers.”

Carmine watched him go, the wings folded against his back, the greying, dark hair which curled slightly at the nape of his tan neck, the arms which bore too many scars for Carmine’s liking, though of course he loved them all the same.

“Nyx,” he called.

Nyx spun to face him with an eyebrow raised, his sensual gaze tempered only by the pure exhaustion which lay within. “Darling.”

”I love you.”

A smile graced his mate’s tan face, the corners at his blue eyes crinkling. “I love you too, Carmine.”

***

A/N Part 2: Dear friends, Let me know if you want on (or off!) the taglist (or if you want to jump from a fic list to the permanent list!)! I only want to be in your notifications if you want me there. All my love! Hope you enjoyed it!

Letters of Love Universe Taglist: @c-starstuff-man0 @talibunny30 @jir67

Permanent Taglist: @ninthcircleofprythian

[podracerbarrelroll]

One of the things that gets me about Interview with the Vampire is Anne Rice’s take on the downside of immortality. I’m especially thinking about this after reading Dracula Daily, currently reading Carmilla Weekly, and considering other vampire media. The vampire should both horrify and fascinate you, and so there should be enough of a tradeoff between a normal, human life and vampirism to make you question if you’d really want that immortality if it was offered to you.

I say if you could choose to be any type of vampire, you’d want to be a Twilight vampire. It’s literally impossible for a human to kill one. Sure, you maybe can’t go out in daylight all the time because your skin sparkles, but that doesn’t mean you can never see the sun again. You’re also fast enough to catch and kill any human unlucky enough to see you out in the middle of the woods or wherever you risked going out during the day. And as long as word doesn’t get out, the Volturi won’t come after you. Twilight also goes very easy on the obvious drawback of watching everyone you love get old and die. I don’t remember the backstory of every single Cullen, but Edward was dying, Alice literally has no memory of her previous life, and Rosalie was brutalized and left for dead by her fiance. They had no life to go back to. Bella might lose her parents eventually, but children ideally should be the ones to outlive their parents. She didn’t have any other close relatives or friends. In giving up her human life, she gets to marry someone she loves and a new family. They can also live just fine on animal blood, so you don’t have to deal with the moral implications of killing humans. And you get your own superpower! Twilight vampires don’t even have to sleep.

Compare this to earlier vampire stories. The vampires in Dracula and Carmilla lose their connection to God--which was a much bigger deal to the Irishmen writing these stories in the late 1800s than it is to a modern audience. Dracula vampires also lose their humanity and have the significant weakness of needing to return to their coffin to sleep during the day and being vulnerable while doing so. They also can be warded off by garlic and have their sanctuaries destroyed by Eucharist wafers. Dracula couldn’t even move his own coffins--he had to pay other people to do it for him, and that meant he had to leave very quickly when the poly band started destroying them. Carmilla/Mircalla/Millarca is restricted by only being able to use different spellings of her name. Her eating habits raise suspicion in any area she stays in for too long, with so many people dying of a strange “fever”, and she also has trouble going out in the daylight. 

Buffy vampires lose their souls, burn up dramatically in sunlight, and have a vampire slayer (or, by the end of the series, many vampire slayers) gunning for them. Most of the vampires in From Dusk Till Dawn are stuck in an eternal position of slavery or servitude and also burn up in the sunlight, essentially forced into a new society where they have very little power and any disobedience would be punished by death. Vampires in Supernatural can survive sunlight, even if it hurts, but they have hunters to contend with, many of which won’t hesitate to cut their heads off even if they stick to animal blood and mind their own business. Increased speed and strength and eternal life might be nice, but you either become an evil, blood-hunting animal or you get to spend that eternity living in fear.

The drawbacks of vampirism per Interview with the Vampire differ a little between the book and the 1994 movie, and a lot between both of those and the 2022 television series. In the book, and save one scene in the movie where Claudia gets out of her coffin during the day to join Louis in his, Anne Rice’s vampires literally cannot be awake during the day. As they age, sunlight does lose its power over them as Armand says in the series, but they cannot be awake to experience it. New vampires are burnt to ash by the sun, older vampires are only burned by it, and the oldest and most powerful can sleep in the sun all day and come out with a nice tan. The movie does a good job of showing this with Louis, holding his lantern close to the waters of the Mediterranean at night because he wants to see it as blue as he’s always heard about. But his light isn’t enough, and the water stays black. It’s a significant drawback of vampirism that the show loses: the sun may eventually lose its ability to hurt you, but you will never experience sunlight or what the world looks like in the daytime again.

One thing the Interview with the Vampire series does keep and did do well with in the first season is showing how vampires are incapable of change. Not only that their bodies are the same forever and that Claudia will never grow up, but that they have essentially lost the human ability to grow and change as people. In the book/movie, Louis was in his early twenties and had already lost his brother (book) or wife and buried his newborn child (movie). Alone in the world save for the slaves he owned at his plantation--who rightfully hated him. He wanted to die, and Lestat jumped him and gave him what he wanted, but he also preserved Louis like that forever. He is and always will be suicidally depressed--he is both dead and wanting to die, existing in limbo. In the series, Louis will always be exactly who he was when Louis turned him. Alienated from his family, but feeling an obligation to support them. Hating the life he leads and the way he earns his money while also viciously defending it. Paying someone to sit in a room and listen to him talk, whether that person is a prostitute or reporter. Louis is stuck as who he was in his weakest moment, when he gave into Lestat, which is why he will always give into Lestat, which is why, after more than a century, he is still whining!

It’s also why aging up the reporter is a great move, because over the course of fifty years, Daniel went from a young addict to a world-renowned reporter, from an idealistic idiot to a cynical asshole. This means he’s done the one thing Louis can’t (besides go out in sunlight): he’s grown and changed as a person. That’s why Louis is fascinated by him, and why he called him decades later to complete their interview. It also calls into question if you, the viewer, would want the “dark gift” Louis offers him. Twenty-year-old Daniel, like most people that age, had no idea how much life can change you, and had no idea what he might be losing to ask for Louis to turn him at that age. Seventy-year-old Daniel knows very well what he would have lost and what he still very well might lose by letting Louis turn him, even as Parkinson’s slowly starts to take its toll on his body. Would you want to live as who you are right now, forever? Do you like who you are enough that you would give up your ability to change, to know who you might become? Would you always want to be that person who, when the vampire bared his teeth and made his offer, gave into a moment of weakness and said yes?

[regret-roulette]

hi deva! may i request a headcannon of reader having a bad day on their birthday? and genshin men goes to comfort them? like angst to fluff hehe >.< i dont have any charac in mind so you can choose it yourself, thank you!

p.s today is my birthday 🥳

Notes: 🎉 Happy Birthday Anon! 🎉 I hope you have a wonderful one! I was thinking of who to pick when I realized I never wrote anything for Ayato ever since the man was introduced and that’s a crime I had to fix. So, what better way than for your birthday? I hope you enjoy it! I did a few headcanons and a short one shot! (I’m still trying to get better at writing headcanons so I added a oneshot to make up for it, it's even light on the angst) I hope you enjoy it, and happy birthday!

Pairing: Ayato x Reader WC: 1097 CW: None. Light angst with fluff.

You were the head of a dying clan that was and always had been loyal to the Kamisato Clan. Of course, your clan wasn’t nearly as prominent as one of the Tri-Commission Clans but, Inazuma was made up of many clans which all had a role to play.

Unfortunately, your clan’s alliance with the Yashiro meant your family and people suffered dearly during its downfall. Though you never turned your back on them and, with whatever dwindling power your clan held, still continued to remain on good terms with them.

Ayato was acutely aware of your clan’s status and your current position. He liked to drop in on the smaller clan meetings from time to time to listen to the current state of affairs that your clans dealt with.    

Which meant he was privy to hearing all the scalding comments directed your way, especially on your birthday.

Degrading comments meant to get under your skin and make a fool of yourself.

They were tactics Ayato was intimately familiar with given how the other commission clans treated him when he first took over as head of his clan.

Truthfully, he liked you and it was one of the main reasons he stopped in on these meetings. Despite your predicament you were dedicated, had working, and never let them see you falter.

And oh the scalding comments you ripped into the other clan heads was always a sight to see!

He loved to watch them all squirm beneath your ruthless words.

But today was your birthday and he didn’t expect to go to your modest estate and find that you were in another meeting with the other clan heads once again. He should’ve known, you were like him in that your own affairs came second and birthdays were nice but not excuses for days off. Nonetheless, he was determined to give this to you in person and so headed straight for where the meeting was today.

“When are you going to get married? You aren’t a child anymore! Your clan might not say anything to your face but we hear their whispers about how they worry.”

“Indeed. Just the other day I overheard one of your maids stating they were concerned for their own family. What would they do if your clan goes under?”

“That’s right, that’s right. Have you considered an arranged marriage? My nephew would be a suitable candidate and we have connections to the Tenryou Commission!”

Your head hurt. A dull throb against your temple that made it hard to focus. Today was a shit day just as any other day with a meeting of these fools. You hated meetings with them and even more so when they threw this stuff in your face.

Your clan was failing.

Your people were scared and nervous about the future.

You had no heir, no family to rely on. What were the people to think? What were your people to do?

It wasn’t anything new for them to throw your biggest concerns in your face, but today—today you just wanted a break. You wanted to breathe. To think and figure out how to go forward because even though you filled up the holes in the metaphorical ship, the water it was filled with wasn’t going to go away overnight.

But you just sold the last valuable thing you had left of your mother to continue to pay your people and you wanted nothing more than to mourn that. To shut the doors to your room under the guise of the never-ending work and mourn that you had nothing left of your parents and that you were tired.

Gods, you were so tired of this. Would it be wrong to just let everything including yourself sink? To give it up? Why were you working so hard?

“Hm? Nothing to say? Perhaps, if you ask nicely, I would be interested in marrying my son off to you.” The elder’s laughter sparked laughter amongst all of them at the table.

You stared down at the teacup in your hand and squeezed it. Fine cracks like spiderwebs danced across it and you let go. Saying you were tired of this felt like an exhausting mantra. You were fed up with the mockery and the humiliation of these old fools trying to sell you off to their promiscuous family members. Knowing they would never be able to marry otherwise due to how they were. But they cleverly thought, why not lock you into a marriage with them? It hit two birds with one stone.

You felt tears sting against your eyes and opened your mouth to tell them off in the foulest way you could imagine. Maybe you’d even throw your tea at one of them to make yourself feel better. But the moment you lifted your head, someone cleared their throat and placed their hand gently on your back.

“There you are,” Ayato’s voice cut through everything and you snapped your head up to him, surprised, as well as the others at the table. “I was wondering where you snuck off so early this morning. Never a dull day with them, right?” He hummed, smiling.

Your mouth felt dry.

“Ayato!” One head scrambled to sit straight and more respectfully. “What brings you here? We hadn’t heard you were going to attend today’s meeting.” They chuckled.

“Hoh?” Ayato smiled, but there was something about it that made everyone nervous. “As far as I was aware there wasn’t a meeting today. So I can only assume you were all trying to back them into marrying your trouble-making children. Who might not see marriage otherwise.”

“Why you—”

“That’s unfair Ayato. We are concerned for the well-being of their clan. Just today one of their retainers came asking us to take them in. It was alarming to see them trying to find a place elsewhere so I called this meeting.”

“That’s right!” Another jumped in.

Murmurs of agreement broke out around the table. You felt sick.

“Is that so? As far as I’m aware you sent someone to bribe their retainers and they declined. So where did you get that from?” Ayato asked.

“Well—”

He waved them off and turned his attention to you.

“Shall we go?” He held his hand out to you.

You gaped for a moment then shut your mouth and took his hand and let him help you to your feet. Your face felt hot under all the people in the room staring at your back.

“And where do you think you’re taking them? We are in a meeting!” One of the elders shouted.

“An unscheduled one that they are not required to attend and it is their birthday. What kind of boyfriend would I be if I didn’t take them out?”

You gasped and snapped your attention up to Ayato who smiled down at you. Thankfully, everyone else in the room was just as surprised, and outraged, at the declaration that nobody paid any attention to how surprised you looked.

“Let’s go.” He urged you forward and held your hand the whole time until the two of you were out and well enough away from the meeting.

“Uhm, Ayato? I appreciate what you did but that was unnecessary and lying like that will start rumors.” Which would just make you look worse.

“I wasn’t lying.” He said without missing a beat.

“What?” you asked, surprised.

He chuckled and pulled something from the fold of his sleeve and held it out for you. A small box with your name written across the top. When you popped it open, you almost dropped it.

Inside was your mother’s bracelet, the same one you sold to pay for your sinking wages.

“What—but how?” Your chest felt tight and you felt the tears start before you could try to stop them.

“Easily,” Ayato said without offering a single explanation. Both hands cradling your face to wipe away the tears. “Now, shall we go?”

“Go? Go where?” You sniffled, clinging to the last keepsake you had of your mother. The one you thought you’d never see again.

“To the reservations at the restaurant I made to celebrate your birthday.”

Wait, what?

“Why?” You were so confused by this man who simply chuckled and took one of your hands.

He pressed a kiss to the top of your head and tugged you along once again.

“To court you of course.” He said nonchalantly.

The absurdity of the situation hit, and you couldn’t help but laugh while clutching your mother’s bracelet to you. Ayato truly was a man that did as he pleased and you couldn’t be more thankful for it.

[booklove22]

Ok, thinking about a few scenarios/theories about the rest of the season.

4x07 really seemed to set the stage for Ace and Nancy not being able to “get over” each other. And while I’ve seen a lot of people assume Ace will come to his senses and change his mind about trying to break the curse, I think that lacks the dramatic WTF-ery the Drew Crew writers are known for.

So in asking myself WWTDCWDTHU? (What would the drew crew writers do to hurt us?), below are some (very rough) theories I’ve come up with:

Ace fully realizes there is no getting over Nancy. But he’s also still unwilling to risk Nancy’s life to break the curse. They can’t go back. They can’t go forward. And every interaction they have in this weird stasis they are in just reopens the wound (see: breakups 1-4). And wouldn’t you know it? There is this handy plot about a Black Door and selective memory rewriting. And doesn’t that just conveniently provide an option for “going back” where no other option exists? If he doesn’t remember that Nancy has feelings for him, Nancy can move forward and he can go on believing they are just friends and that his crush is one sided. I imagine him writing a letter to Nancy to explain what he’s doing and why. Which she would find in some horribly dramatic moment where she’d have to race to save/stop him.

I could also see the flip side of this happening. While I think its more likely that Ace would be the one to take the black door route, it could also be Nancy making that call and Ace racing to save/stop her. Especially if he’s just changed his mind about breaking the curse and she’s about to lose all memories of loving him.

A third possibility is that they make this decision together. Where they both attempt to go to the black door together. And while that is super romantic (imagine the conversations!!), its also a bit flawed. One of them needs to remember they have a death curse. Otherwise they risk falling in love with each other all over again and triggering a curse they didn’t even know/remember existed.

The other track I’m considering is that either Nancy or Ace is the one to shoot Tristan with a crossbow and his death (Could he be dying? And as soon as 4x09??) contributes heavily to one of the options above. Like where the guilt of his death and heartache of the curse combine to be too much for one of them.

If any of these things happen, I feel like the obvious solution (drinking tainted sludge water = memories returned ) would have to no longer be an option so that there would be more at stake if anyones memories were successfully rewritten.

And if thats the case, how would the person remember? Lets say its Ace. And Nancy wants/needs to make him remember but no sludge water option exists. How do you fix that? Maybe a memory weave? Or something sort of like it? Nancy is seen in the trailer blowing some red dust into the camera. What if she gets Ace to remember by walking him through her own memories of them? Actual memories, hallucination memories, etc. I mean, would I die? Yes, I think I would.

Anyway, I don’t know how deeply I believe any of these options…its more that I believe the two big stories of this season (the curse, the black door) are meant to converge at some point rather than be fully separate threads and I’m trying to make sense of how that happens.

[letters-from-the-4077]

2x06: Kim

Dear Dad,

There are very few things in Korea that I could ever consider missing. Ironically, those few things are probably the only ones that aren’t going to come back to haunt me in nightmares for the rest of my life. 

We see bloodshed and dying kids and shrapnel on the good days, and send off boys with white sheets over their heads on the bad days. Or we would, if the army could afford to lose a few sheets. More often than not, the deceased go away on the same buses filled with the guys that managed to make it out.

Thousands of Korean civilians are getting caught up in this war. This Police Action. Which you’d think would make sense seeing as how it’s taking place in Korea, but nobody’s fooled by that. This isn’t a Korean War so much as it is a war taking place in Korea by chance. Sorry, Police Action. It gets me every time, you know that?

My point is, there’s very little to look forward to. Your letters are one of them, and the supply closet with rotating guests after an OR session is another. Especially now that I’ve managed to consistently sleep again. Consistent is a strong word, actually, but that’s neither here nor there.

I write to you today with almost good news! What a first, right? I can bet you that you weren’t expecting that one. So rarely is there a day that the sun actually feels like it’s shining down in a way that isn’t gunning to give us all horrendous sunburns. Even less so when children are involved, but for once, someone seemed to have taken pity on us for more than a single minute.

A kid came in, no older than eight years old, orphaned, ill, and unable to speak a lick of English. Now now, stick with me, I assure you this isn’t going to be as grim as it sounds. At first we tried to get Henry to track down his parents, and then Radar because we all know that kid’s got some uncanny power to find these things out, but nada. We came out blank.

Again, stick with me.

First of all, this kid was probably the most spoiled one in all of Korea for as long as we had him. The nurses adored him, and hell, even Margaret cooled down that fiery breath of her and showed her maternal side. Frank wasn’t quite as much of an imbecile as he always manages to be, and it’s like every single person in this whole damn camp knew that this kid was the most important thing in the world.

Kim, by the way. I realize I haven’t actually told you his name. A kid named Kim. But it’s not like we’re set up for keeping a kid at the 4077th, and we certainly aren’t authorized for it, so after we couldn't find his parents, the orphanage was the next on the list.

Which is just plain shit. It’s shit, dad. 

And clearly I was not the only one who felt that way, ’cause Trap barely hesitated a second before admitting that he’d like nothing more than to take Kim home and raise him with his daughters. As much as that guy hates being sincere—almost as much as I do—you could just tell he meant it.

Trapper’s a good dad. Not as good as you, don’t start getting insecure on me, but he’s a good dad. Stuck in a place about 9000 miles away from his girls, and yet he still manages to be paternalistic like he never left. It’s the kind of guy that a girl would love to settle down with, you know? 

Anyway, it all went by so fast. Confirmation from Louise (that’s his wife, I’m fairly sure I’ve told you about her before), excitement all around. 

For just a couple of moments, it actually seemed like something good could’ve come out of this war. No no, police action. I’ll get myself there, yet.

Of course, this damn place turns everything rotten in some way or another. Optimism, I’ve found it, is more of an enemy than the guys shooting at us. At least we always know what to expect from the North Koreans. 

That’s not to say it was all fun and dandy. There was a certain trip to a minefield that I don’t think I’m ever going to be able to forget, and if the past two nights have been any indication, I’m sure the nightmares of Trap’s limbs landing on my table aren’t going away any time soon either.

But things were supposed to work out.

Trap and Kim were safe in the end, and everything was supposed to fucking work out. It all was. It actually seemed like it was going to, and I think that’s the worst fucking part about it all.

It’s crazy just how quickly something good can be taken away from you. For a lot of people out here it’s their lives, their brothers, their sons. In this unit specifically, it’d take both of my hands to list the number of daughters that fathers have had to leave behind.

You could snap your fingers and in a fraction of the time for the sound to reach your ears, you could lose everything. Korea keeps humbling us, dad.

And even though I know it could’ve ended so much worse, it still feels like a punch in the gut for Kim to not be on a plane to Trap’s family. Finding Kim’s mother was nothing short of a miracle. It’s a goddamn happy ending if there’s ever been one, and yet I still find myself, selfishly, thinking about the McIntyre’s having a third kiddo running around.

How could such a crummy place give us so much hope? More importantly, how come we keep falling for it? Sometimes I think that’s the most cruel part of it of all.

I’m sorry if I was ever a difficult kid to raise. I’ve always known I got lucky, even with the whole dead mom thing, but seeing the shit out here really makes me wish I could go back in time and slap myself and tell me to appreciate every last thing in Crabapple Cove. Especially you.

I love you. I don’t think I say it enough. I love you, dad.

Hawk

Previous | Next

[pilots-and-protons]

I really want to talk about how disappointing it is when Star Trek writers end up doing some character/s a disservice in trying to write plots for other characters.

Specifically, I'm talking about the episode “Gravity”.

Obviously this episode is a character piece for Tuvok - we get his backstory as a young and somewhat volatile Vulcan, his unusual relationship with Noss, etc. But my problem is with the writers deciding that they need some human influence to get their intentions and ideas across to the audience - and who better than resident rebel and emotional mess, Tom Paris?

Except it feels like such a disservice to Tom's character. We get such a sweet scene where he's talking about missing B'Elanna, we get Noss asking if he "loves her very much" and he says yeah he does - yet we're supposed to believe that at this point, Tom is still the type of man to tell someone that’s married to give up on getting home and just find someone new?

I get it to a certain degree - as a viewer I can even rationalize it in a roundabout way (because I have to, because the writers give us nothing). Tom is probably projecting a lot, missing B’Elanna, believing he will never see her or Voyager again, wishing he had some shred of comfort out in the middle of nowhere. Though it’s not something ever really pointed out, I find it really notable that Tom is stuck with the two least emotionally comforting people he knows (Tuvok and the Doctor). Considering the Silverblood Tom’s reaction to B’Elanna dying and finding out they’re copies (denial, anger, depression/apathy), the alternate reality Tom from “Before and After” telling Kes that when B’Elanna died he “wanted to die too”, and how he seemed to react to 30 days of solitary confinement - I can’t imagine Tom would have taken it well if he’d actually been stranded permanently with only the Doctor, Tuvok, and Noss for company.

(And despite the "two months" mentioned at the end, other references within the episode imply that it's been far longer than that - especially the time differential ratio, which would factor out to more like 8 months).

So there’s months of being stranded with no sign of rescue, constantly scavenging and fighting to stay alive, very little interpersonal contact or relationships, and Tom pining after the love he’s lost. The writers could have given us insight into how Tom was feeling during this whole ordeal - probably frustrated, lonely, grieving for the loss of B’Elanna and his found-family on Voyager. If that had been explored, I believe it would have made more sense for Tom to see Noss (hurting, pining for romantic companionship) and Tuvok (likely stranded for the rest of his life, but refusing to consider her offer of companionship), and want to try and play matchmaker - to give someone else the happiness that he probably thinks he’ll never have again.

The one good thing is that initially Tom does apologize to Tuvok, which honestly feels closer to his real character. It’s more believable to me that he might let his own feelings of loneliness and distress cloud his judgment and talk without thinking, but then come to his senses after some time and try to make amends.

Except because the writers needed their plot, needed to have a Tuvok romance episode despite him being steadfastly married, Tom jumps right back into trying to convince Tuvok to reciprocate Noss’s feelings. It felt forced and like a slap in the face for Tom’s character, who had been changing and growing over five seasons.

Though I wouldn’t necessarily want to take the spotlight off of Tuvok for the episode, I think “Gravity” could have given us a very interesting character piece between both Tuvok and Tom (and their very different relationship), if the writers hadn’t just used Tom as a plot device. Even the confrontation on the rocks could have been a chance to explore their differing viewpoints - Tuvok’s explanation of how his own emotions nearly destroyed him in his youth, how important self-control really is for Vulcans, while Tom finally admits how much he has given up hope of rescue, how crippling that is for him to deal with emotionally because he can’t just repress everything, and how he thought that at least someone deserved to find some happiness. 

So yeah, I really like the episode “Gravity” but I hate the character assassination of Tom Paris that seems, to me, like it was only born out of the writer’s need to give Tuvok a romance story and a character foil.

Anyway thanks for coming to my TedTalk.

[pinkafropuff]

"no more heroes"

They loved heroes. They loved to hear tales of triumph with crowds cheering in the background, loved the indomitable fortress of justice and truth. Love the fun sounding stuff. The lies, mostly. The embellishments, often. 

The truth? Almost never.

She could have said that they vanquished the Ascian on the First, that his cruel plan had come to an end with one final, dying grasp. She could say he deserved it. Aye, that was true. Technically. But she couldn’t say what she really thought about it, about the grief he carried with him, the life he lived, the city filled to the brim with ghosts, built and rebuilt by his very hands. 

Dear mom and dad,

It was stiff. It always felt stiff when she started, considering which parts to keep and which to omit, but this time she just sat there, quill hovering over parchment as all of her thoughts drew a complete blank.

“...they’ll worry…” Soft and secret. A reminder to temper herself. They would anyway, if she didn’t send another letter soon. When was the last time? The Steppe, probably. She’d sent back some fresh herbs too, with blessings from the mothers in that community, during her time as the Khatun. ‘Cousins’, her people called them, the Au Ra that were not dragons, as they were all from the same ancestors, anyway, so what use was fighting? 

With difficulty, she tried again. Dear mom and dad, did you know I’m a big deal now? 

No, that wasn’t…that wasn’t right. It was too impersonal. It felt like snapping back at them for all the years she’d been under their tender care, carefully gathering strength until she struck out into the world on her own. 

What about something simple? Like, ‘I have a lover now’? Ugh, but her parents wouldn’t let her hear the end of it. Or worse, think she was lying! Besides, telling them about that, when her dad would read it…ew! She scribbled all over the paper in frustration and tossed it on the ground. 

“Figuring out what lies to tell, eh?” 

Aran’s head snapped up- though not before her shoulders shook in distress. A hiss escaped her, hackles raised. “Ugh, Stinny! Stop reading my letters!” 

The dragoon did not laugh or smile as she expected him to. Instead he shrugged. “I don’t.” 

Something within her roiled in discomfort. Instead of thinking of a snappy rebuttal, she turned her head, sighing as she laid it on the table. “...sorry.” Teeth clenched to nearly grind against one another, she closed her eyes in thought. The word hung there for a long while, neither of them saying any others, before Estinien crossed the threshold into the room and stood over her, as though waiting for something. With some effort, she was able to ignore him looming over her for exactly two minutes- after which her head flopped over to the other side so she could see him better, horn knocking on the wood of the table like the world’s saddest drum. 

“You need not write a novel on your endeavors,” he offered. “‘I yet live’ would suffice.”

Somehow, that made her feel more sickly than before. A thousand thoughts flew into her head, each with less sense within them than the last- then her answer was the softest sigh, before a low and crackling, “No.”

He gave a half shrug, as though he’d given it his best shot and would try no more, then pulled up a chair. In the silence she found it best not to do anything but lay there, letting regret wash over her. 

“I’m sorry.” 

She understood Raha now. The words did little to soothe, but took the place of many more pressing matters, any deeper issues that they barely scratched the surface with. What was there to be sorry for when there were no wrongs? What wasn’t there, when the wrongs were also the rights?

“Tried.” She continued. “But can only be one thing.” Pitifully, she picked her head up, then the quill and parchment, an offering of desperation. “Write for me?”

He shook his head, the spill of white hair only making his disapproval more evident. Arms draped over the back of his chair, he took a deep breath, eyes searching the ceiling of the little cabin for a moment before then settled on her. “I would not take such a pleasure from you. ‘Tis a rare thing among the Scions.”

A low blow. She wouldn’t soon forget that he’d lost his own birth parents and brother to the Dragonsong War. To the Calamity. On the contrary, her family was relatively safe- as far as she knew. Her parents, clan, and six siblings were none the worse for wear, according to the letters Tataru had delivered to her herself. Still, it was good to remember that. To remember those loved and lost, and those who had no idea of what she’d been through. 

Remember us. Remember that we lived.

She closed her eyes. Were she waiting on her eldest to send word of her travels, what would she want to hear? Eyelashes fluttering, she put quill to parchment again and began to write.

After a little while, Estinien stood from where he sat, pushing the chair back into its place at the table. On his way out he carelessly waved a hand on his departure, footsteps slow as he headed out the door. Hearing them, she lifted her head, tongue sticking out as her thoughts were stuck mid-sentence. 

“Will you take it for me?” It was mostly gibberish to her, but she said it anyway. It was harder now, to just say things outright. Like ‘thank you’ or ‘you’re my family too’ or ‘I’ll make you something for this later’.

“You need not ask.” Was his response, and he left her to her thoughts.

*

Dear mom and dad,

Stinny told me to keep this letter simple. It’s hard for me. I remember when you wouldn’t let me go play with the other kids, for fear of me breaking something, ‘cuz I played too rough and I didn’t have enough strength to bear the weight of it. I get it now. I know why you did that. 

Maybe you went through things like this too. Where you go through something that everyone says is heroic, or do something everyone makes speeches about and gives you medals for. But you come up empty. You don’t say anything about the way your horns burn near your face because you got poisoned, or how your knee hurts sometimes just by standing for too long now. You just kind of smile and let them cheer. They don’t know the strain and they shouldn’t. Not until they’re ready to.

I have both of my hands and feet, both my legs and arms. I have both of my eyes and horns and tail, and all of my fingers and toes. I have friends who love me and I love them, and my clothes are really nice and expensive. I have a lover now (soon my mate, if he says yes this time!) and he’s the kindest, strongest man I’ve ever met. I think you’ll both like him. He really wants to taste our traditional foods, and I think that’s a good sign. There’s this thing called Archon Loaf and it sucks. Apparently all of my friends have had it before to survive their studies at the place they're from. I tried some. I can’t believe they put that in their bodies! By Nhaama if I never taste it again, it’ll be too soon!

The twins are fine. Alphinaud (blue!) has grown up well and even protected me once on our adventures. Isn’t that crazy? Alisaie (red!) has grown into such a lady that she offered to buy me deserts at a shop she knows in Sharlayan. Thancred and Urianger are the same as always, as is Y’shtola. I think Thancred and Urianger are married? But Thancred keeps dancing around it. Whatever. That’s their business. Y’shtola tried to sacrifice herself again. I’m still angry about it, but I won’t tell her. She’s strong, but I know what kind of strong now. I’ll be around for her to lean on soon enough. 

I’m sorry this is late. I’ve had a rough time, but I don’t want you to think

I yet live. Are you proud? I miss you all.

Aran ✨

[atinystraykid]

I recently found out that I have a congenital muscle issue (which didn’t cause physical pain until adulthood) and it led me to finding out more about my birth and infancy - specifically that I was both a “miracle baby” and a “Changeling” - and I want to write it down somewhere, so… here we go! 

My mom went through a complicated pregnancy and birth with me. She was almost 40 and was excited to be able to have another kid at that age - only to be informed by her doctor that I’d be so severely disabled that I won’t make it to my first birthday. They urged her to have an abortion, telling her that carrying me to term would be an unnecessary risk to her own health. She refused. She was determined to give me a shot at life, even if only for a few short months.

The birth was dramatic: despite being born full-term (number-wise), my body wasn’t as developed as it should be. My bones and muscles were not as strong as needed for survival. More urgently, I wasn’t able to breathe on my own. An emergency attempt to get me breathing resulted in broken bones. I had to undergo multiple surgeries within hours of my birth (which my dad refused to give his consent to because apparently he wasn’t as determined to give me a shot at life as my mom was, but that’s a whole other topic).

But I survived this rocky start into life and surprised everyone: yes, I had to stay in the intensive care unit for a while, but I “just” showed the typical issues of a prematurely born baby. I wasn’t dying. After a few weeks, I was allowed to go home - and I was at a healthy weight, I was loud and energetic and happy, I didn’t seem sickly at all and developed at a normal pace. My mom lovingly called me her miracle baby. 

The doctors said they couldn’t make any promises regarding my long-term development, there was still a chance I would never learn how to roll over, lift my head, sit up, stand, crawl… and I beat every single of these predictions. I hit all the milestones. 

Until I didn’t. 

I was a very sweet baby. People were always saying how friendly I was. I babbled and waved and laughed, I loved to be held and cuddled. One night, my mom put this sweet angel to bed - and woke up to a completely different baby. I looked the same but I didn’t interact with her. Or with anyone else. I didn’t react when people talked to me. Things that used to amuse me - like tickles or funny noises - now made me cry. When I didn’t cry, I was unnervingly quiet. But it didn’t seem like I was sick or distressed, I was just different. Now I was a baby who was happiest in his own head, a baby who wanted to be left alone and got upset when people pulled him out of his own little world. 

My mom took me to the doctors again and they basically laughed at her. As long as I keep hitting milestones, what does it matter? I’m probably just going through a growth spurt anyway, or I’m just having stranger’s anxiety like many babies do, it’ll go away. 

It didn’t. The unnervingly quiet baby who didn’t react to people and cried over things other babies would enjoy turned into an unnervingly quiet kid who didn’t interact with other kids and had meltdowns over things other kids would enjoy. I kept hitting the physical milestones but steered more and more off course on the social/emotional ones. Weirdly, considering the fact that I was already predicted to be severely disabled before I was even born, it took years until this was taken serious as a sign of a developmental disability. 

[eveningspirit]

Last episode of The peripheral was amazing! What was your favorite part? And are you perchance feeling inspired to write some more lovley fanfic? ;)

Yeah, yes I think I am slightly inspired. :) And it is by the scene which was my favorite part, actually, but I’ll get to it in a moment.

First, I want to say that all the worldbuilding stuff in this show is unbelievably well done. It’s so complex and yet presented in such a clear, concise and consistent way. Discovering layers, under layers, under layers of this story, with each new episode, is incredibly stimulating. So that counts among my favorite things, but…

Hyperfixation wins though, and my favorite is everything Burton Fisher. ;) From the moment during Flynne’s test, when he was holding her hand, through that insanity on the bridge, and his difficulty trusting Billy Ann (come on, she’s a good pea! and badass to boot) to everything that happened back at home.

I’m on the fence between that short convo in the kitchen and the whole scene with Mama.

Now, a digression. Acting on this show is brilliant all across the board. Chloe Grace Moretz blows my mind every time, T’Nia Miller gives me chills, Cahrlotte Reiley has my heart, eFFing JJ Field… Frell! I hate him so much! Adelind Horan, Julian Moore-Cook, Katie Leung. Eli Goree! Sheeesh I went to check their names because they deserve all the mentions.

Jack Reynor’s performance among all this doesn’t shine, perhaps, but I love such subtle acting, when done well. Of course, I went and tried to watch some of his earlier roles. Tried, because, let’s be honest, Transformers is… what it is. But that little episode of that show based on Philip K. Dick’s stories? Amazing! Again, subtle. And I realized he doesn’t act so much with his face, as with his whole body, and with his voice. Oh, gads, his voice.

And this too long digression brings me to that small convo in the kitchen. The way he says it, “Tommy and his sheriff’s badge ain’t the solution” – I’m seriously hung up on how his voice breaks there, a little. He’s tired. A little lost, maybe. It’s too much, but he can’t really show weakness. Flynne depends on him.

Then, the scene with Mama shed a whole new light on what kind of person that woman is. She was sick, dying, in the first episodes. But now that she’s well? We can see she’s smart, she’s observant. She won’t take no bullshit and won’t beat around the bush. When she has an opinion, she voices it. She respects that her kids are grown-ups, but still, she asserts her control, because she knows her life experience still trumps theirs.

And here, I think Burton allowed himself a moment of vulnerability. He knows she’s right, he knows they are in over their head – which Flynne doesn’t seem to realize yet – and for the first time he feels there is someone who he may, perhaps, relay on. Not for the protection, the military tactics or any physical purposes. But the long-term strategy? Yes, Ella Fisher can be a good advisor.

Some viewers (and Flynne) were upset that Burton didn’t consult with his sister about some decisions he’s made. But the truth is, she’s young, and she doesn’t have any experience in real world conflicts. She’s the only one who’s seen 2100, alright, but she’s already made so many mistakes, missed so many clues (we aren’t paying them anything? Really, Flynne?). Burton doesn’t consider her an equal decision-making partner, and for a reason. But he needs someone he could ask for advice. Conner could be that person (but Burton can’t show weakness in front of him either). And now Mama as well.

The fic I’m tempted to write, would expand on that relationship with Mama, but not in a big-picture kind of way. I want to dig into something softer, more personal. We’ll see how that goes. :)

[megamindsupremacy]

Hawkeye(s) fic recs

Killshot by arrowsandbows

When Clint abandons Kate, Kate finds a new sidekick.

On second thought, Yelena would probably have an issue with the word 'sidekick.'

-

Of arrows and soulmates by FluffyLlamacorn

The timer on Kate's arm only has a couple of hours left, which is just bad timing. There had been months left when they planned the date, then a couple of hours ago it jumped.

Kate isn't entirely sure, but meeting your soulmate while on a date with someone else is probably considered rude? When she meets him, her actual soulmate, aren't they supposed to start dating ASAP? That's what's supposed to happen to people with just the one timer: You've found the one, so you can trust fate and let yourself fall in love.

Kate isn't even sure she knows how that feels.

-

Backup by thebroadcast

She gets the text at two pm on a Tuesday.

KIDNAPPED NINJAS WARWICK HOTEL BRING BACKUP BATTERY DYING CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS SHIT

-

In which clint Barton is not the most well-adjusted avenger by cosmicocean

Clint gets the door open. The apartment is medium sized, with clothes and things strewn haphazardly all over the place.

“Honey, I’m home!” he yells.

“Don’t give me that shit!” A woman yells back. “You are in so much trouble.”

In which Clint takes them somewhere off the radar, where SHIELD won't find them.

(Short Ultron AU)

-

Cuddles by tonytones

Basically a bunch of small, happy fics about asexual soulmates Clint Barton and Kate Bishop. I want to mention that all my soulmark fics were inspired by tumblr and amusewithaview, who writes the best soulmark fics. There are going to be a lot of loving, platonic, cuddly superheroes in this.

-

My life in retirement by cuupid

Clint Barton has been a man of many different names

He has been Barney's Baby Brother. He has been the vigilante and superhero Hawkeye. He has been Agent Barton of SHIELD.

And now he's ready to be Clint Barton... thirty-seven year old retiree?

EDIT: ROUND TWO ADDITION

A Good Feeling by dentalfloss

“You work for SHIELD” Barton spat the agencies title at Coulson as though it were the nastiest cuss he knew. “We have nothing more to talk about.” Which was all good and fine, except-

“I have some things to discuss with you, actually,” Tony said and Clint’s bruised and swollen gaze turned towards him. “Many things. Nice things,” he tagged on when Clint’s gaze narrowed darkly. The kid might be passing out in slow motion before them but Tony was well aware he was still a threat and he made no move to approach. “Let me help,” he insisted anyway.

Or: the one where Clint may be a pretty formidable assassin for hire, but he was broke and his brother needed help he couldn’t afford so he needed a legitimate job for a little while. How fortunate Stark Tower was hiring.

-

Wiping off the Dust by dentalfloss

Teenaged Clint, it turns out, is a little shit.

Naturally this makes him Tony’s new favourite person.

-

what's my age again by verity

A for effort, H-A-W-K-E-Y-E, Kate says as soon as she frees herself from her harness. They really need to come up with a real sign instead of just fingerspelling all the time. Maybe miming drawing a bow, then pointing to the eyes. Something cool. You have to get over your boner for that boomerang arrow.

"Did you just sign 'angry penis'?" Sam says, distracted from his unresolved sexual tension with Natasha.

"Whatever," Kate says. She flips her hair. "I'm learning."

[toby-determined]

Day 5: Family Ties One-Shot

TW: mentions of blood, stitches, getting stiches, getting konked in the head, head injury

“He what?”

“Amanda-”

“I’m on my way, Jesus fu-”

“Amanda!”

“Sorry, mum,” she winced to herself. Whoops. Usually she was pretty good about censoring herself in front of the woman, but as the years went on and her mother’s authority over her waned, she started to care less and less about it. What was she going to do? It wasn’t like she could ground her or take away her phone anymore. Sure, a little respect was lost along the way but Amanda could live with that for a dip into the swear jar.

Also it was shit-o-clock in the morning. Excuse her for not having her head on straight quite yet. “Wait, which hospital?” 

“Box Hill.”

“Oh for- he couldn’t have almost died somewhere closer?” she griped, having to press the phone against her cheek with her shoulder in order to hear. It didn’t occur to her that she could have just set it down and put it on speaker, freeing all of her body in order to gather her belongings and put her shoes on. She hopped around on one foot, trying to uncurl the heel of the shoe from under hers. 

“He’s not dying-”

“I know, I know. I’m just-” she let out a frustrated sound, stomping her foot down and collapsing to the floor in order to yank her shoe off and put it on properly. It was so fucking annoying how doing things slow and without haste was always the right way, since it was less likely to fuck up and she wouldn’ have to do it over again. Why couldn’t she just go fast and everything be done the way she wanted it to? Didn’t her stupid fucking shoes know she had to go see her brother? 

“Amanda,” came her mother’s voice in her ear and she sighed. She was using that soft, soothing tone of hers that she always did when her daughter got too hot headed. “It’s going to be okay.”

“You don’t know that,” she sniffed, getting back up to her feet to pocket her keys and wallet. “I honestly can’t believe he hasn’t had something like this happen sooner considering all the other stuff that’s happened. God- he’s- he’s supposed to be writing about dogs with three legs who finally get adopted to a nice home or who can surf! Not about the fucking politicians or gambling problem in the state or the- I mean someone has to do it, by why him?” 

She slammed her door behind her, starting down the walk toward her car only to have to turn right back around and fish her keys out from her pocket to lock the stupid fucking door. 

“I know,” her mum sighed. “I’m proud of him but I can’t help but to feel the same way.” 

“We can boo hoo together when I get there,” Amanda said, hopping into her car and shutting the door behind her. She waited to turn it on, not wanting to deal with her phone turning over to the car’s bluetooth and the confusion of the conversation being lost for those few seconds. There was already too much annoyance flowing through her veins, the last thing she needed was to snap at her poor mum. She also didn’t want to continue this conversation on the road when she knew she needed to be driving. “Do you guys need anything?” 

“No. No, we should be okay for now. Just need to see your face.” 

Amanda rolled her eyes, “See you in a minute.” 

“I love you.” 

Her mother always ended their conversations with that sentence and every time Amanda knew she meant it. Usually she would say something stupid or snarky to make the older woman laugh, or just roll her eyes and say a meaningful Ta! But today she said, “Love you, too, mum.” 

They hung up and Amanda turned on the car. She didn’t change the volume of the radio as her music blared through the speakers. Usually she would sing along, on this drive she just let the music tune out her thoughts, keeping her brain blank aside from thinking about the directions to the hospital. 

When she got there it was a bit of a maze trying to find her parents, but she got to them eventually. They were seated together in a hallway on a long bench, backs pressed against the wall behind them, hands linked together while her mother cradled them in her lap with her other hand. 

“What’s the damage?” she asked as she walked over, plopping herself down in the open spot beside her dad. He turned his head to look down at her, using his free hand to pat her knee. 

“They said he’ll be alright. Aside from the concussion, everything on the inside looks okay. He’s just getting stitches and prescription since there’s no healing Magicks or fairies on duty tonight. They’re letting him leave as soon as it’s all sorted. He’ll come back tomorrow when someone’s in to get him all sorted.” 

“Seems like a scheduling oversight,” she huffed. “And did they say what he said happened?” 

“He told them he fell down the stairs of his office building. “

“Idiot,” Amanda rolled her eyes. “What a load of absolute shit.” 

“Amanda,” her mother warned her, eyes darting over to the other people waiting around. 

“Come on, he’s a bit of a klutz, but you don’t believe-”

“Of course she doesn’t,” said her dad. “We haven’t talked to him yet. We don’t know what happened. We’re just telling you what we know.” 

“Sorry,” she frowned, sliding a few inches down the wall. 

“How was your day?” he asked, nudging her arm with his elbow. She indulged him, despite thinking it was stupid to talk about nothing when Toby was getting who knew what stitched up somewhere else in the building. They saw one another everyday, he knew how hers had been because they worked together, but he had asked so she told him, filling him in on the last few hours since he’d left for the day. 

“Hey guys,” said the man they’d all come down their for about an hour later. His signature white dress shirt was stained with blood on the collar and shoulder, presumably from the large line that was running from his hairline into his temple. His glasses were crooked on his face, the side where he had the stitches not sitting behind the ear but in front of it. His hair was also matted down from dried blood and water where someone had tried to wash it out but hadn’t gotten everything. 

“It- it looks worse than it is,” he said, trudging a few more steps forward. Amanda glanced sideways to look at their parents. Her mum looked horrified, both of her hands free to cup over his mouth and nose. Her dad looked sympathetic, eyebrows creased upward and mouth tightened to a thin line. Toby pointed to the line of stitches. “They said head wounds bleed a lot. Even when they aren’t deep.” 

“Does it hurt?” asked their mum, who was standing to go inspect him. 

“It did. They stuck me with something to numb it while they stitched it, so, until that wears off I feel right as rain.” 

“They said they were going to give you a prescription?” 

“Oh, yeah, it was for a painkiller. Nothing drastic. I think I’ll be fine until tomorrow since since our pharmacy’s closed tonight,” he said, lifting up the little packet of paper in his hand they’d given him for at home care and the follow up. Amanda watched him look from their mum to their dad and then to her before smiling, “Come on, you lot, it’s not that bad.” 

Amanda snorted but, unable to take this anymore, stood and smiled with malice at her older brother. “Let’s get home. I’ll drive you.” 

They said bye to their parents in the parking lot, the two pairs of Determind’s separating. 

She turned the car on, quickly turning the dial down on the radio before her music could come blaring through. As soon as Toby was sitting in her passenger seat, belt on, doors locked, and without the presence of their parents to walk on eggshells around, Amanda asked, “So what the fuck happened to you?” 

Toby sighed. Obviously he didn’t want to have this conversation. She couldn’t blame him, considering, but that was too fucking bad. He should have thought about this moment when he decided to put himself in the crosshairs of shady people. He opened his mouth but she shook her head. 

She pulled out of the parking garage and onto the street. 

“Uh uh, I’m not some nurse whose scent you have to throw off to save face or whatever. Don’t make up some story, tell me what happened.” 

“I got hit in the head.”

“By what?” 

“I don’t know,” he shrugged, the movement visible in her peripheral vision. “I didn’t see it. But it was solid. I think my ears are still ringing.” 

“By who?” 

“Don’t know that either.”

“So, what?” she gripped the steering wheel tighter. “They just hit you and ran away?” 

“Pretty much, yeah. I was coming home, on the phone with my editor, and then bam. They had a good arm, I’ll give them that. But um, when I came around, I’d bled a lot so I walked up to my flat-”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Amanda interrupted. They stopped at a traffic light, so she could turn to pin him down with an incredulous look. “You mean you didn’t call the police right away?” 

“They wouldn’t help.”

No, she guessed that was true considering what big help they’d been every other time some fucked up thing happened to her brother. “Okay, go on.”

“I thought I could just clean it and wrap it up but then my skin just started to-”

“Stop, stop, stop-” Amanda shook her head, waving a hand at him. “Fast forward.” 

“I took the bus over to the hospital-”

“You can’t be fucking serious,” she said after she had gotten passed the feeling of wanting to gag. “They let you on the bus looking like that?”

“Well, I had a towel up against it.”

“Right, because I’m sure that made you look far less fucking durranged.” 

“Anyway, I got to the hospital. Walked in, got admitted, and now here we are.” 

Amanda waited then scoffed, “Jesus, and they pay you to write?” 

“Give me a break. I wrote 15,000 words today and got bonked in the head, I don’t think I’ll be spinning any words of poetry any time soon,” he said. She let him sit in silence for a few minutes as they drove. 

“Is this worth it?” she found herself asking. She had been thinking about the question a lot lately. Ever since he had told them about that letter that had been sent to his office about him. It had only been growing in urgency, her thoughts turning to it every time she heard her parents talking about how worried they were about him and every time he canceled on plans because he had to work on a deadline or because he had been too busy chasing down a lead. 

“Of course it is,” he said. “I’m getting the truth out there. People are reading it. That’s all that matters.” 

“Right,” Amanda said with a shake of her head. “And what about us?” 

“Who?” 

“Us! Me! Mum and dad! The ones that actually show up to come get you from the hospital when you’ve have your nut cracked. What about us?” 

“I…I don’t think they’d come after-”

“I’m not talking about that. Jesus, I mean, do we matter to you?” 

“How can you even ask me that?” 

“Because you said the only thing that matters are the stories! What happens when you take it too far and something bad happens to you? Don’t we matter in that scenario?” 

Toby went quiet for a few seconds. Then, “I won’t let it get that far.” 

“You better not.” 

Amanda pulled up to their parent’s house. They waited in the car until the older Determind’s got home to let them in. Everyone lingered in the kitchen, their mother fussing over Toby while Amanda and their dad watched and snacked on food before everyone went to go sit in the living room. Amanda turned on the TV and they watched until one by one, everyone fell asleep. 

Except Amanda, who stayed awake the whole night, brain too busy thinking to let her sleep.