What is with fucking absurd time blindness

Kinktober #12: Cadenza: Bucky Barnes

In which Bucky can’t just go to sleep, like a normal person. 

Characters: Bucky Barnes / f!Reader

Warnings: smut (18+ please!), public sex acts, fingering. Insert Diplomat Here, silk dresses, the opera, Bucky’s magic metal fingers.

Notes: Back to Marvel today! This is a little scenario I’ve had dancing around in my head for a while. Lots of fun, definitely a little on the fluffy side. My apologies in advance to Sam Wilson. 

Kinktober Masterlist

You’re at the Viennese Opera when Bucky decides he’s had enough of the mission.

“Remind me why we’re here again?” His breath ghosts over your neck as he leans close to whisper into your ear, fanning the soft tendrils of your hair against the tender parts of your jaw. Once upon a time, your hair was swept into a perfect updo- not so much, after two hours in this godforsaken box.

You’re just lucky that the two of you even have a private box, so that Bucky’s near-constant whispering isn’t met by an onslaught of glares from the audience below. The audience, that holds their coughing like they do their applause.

“Security,” you whisper, jutting your chin toward the box across the way, where Insert Diplomat Here sits with his wife and two pairs of gilded binoculars. And Sam, who drew the short straw and sits alone behind them. Every so often you point your own binoculars toward the box and catch him glaring across at you.

You don’t envy him.

“I thought you were supposed to understand what’s going on,” you continue, smirking to yourself. Bucky deadpans.

“I speak Italian, not opera.”

You give a little shrug, pursing your lips as if there’s a difference. He scoffs and leans in. His metal hand- surprisingly warm- lands on your knee. It’s bare, thanks to the high slit in your gown. You’re tempted to slap it away, but you leave it there. For now.

“It’s pretty dark in here, huh?” His voice drops to a suggestive register and suddenly he’s leaning closer than he needs to, brushing his lips against the shell of your ear and letting his words vibrate straight down the back of your neck.

“Not dark enough,” you quip. This time you do push his hand away, but he’s not completely thrown off the scent. He lets out a snort, a quiet little rumbling chuckle, and then he’s on you again.

“C’mon. You can’t just walk around lookin’ like that and expect me not to have some ideas.” His metal thumb is smoothing just under the edge of your skirt and you lick your lips despite yourself.

“Baby,” he purrs, bold enough to nip at the corner of your jaw, “I’m bored.”

You jump, but swallow your voice hard.

“Just go to sleep,” you retort. “Like a normal person.”

He doesn’t like that idea very much. His hand crawls further up your thigh. Nervously, you think about letting him get what he wants. The railing that surrounds your box is high enough that your laps are hidden. To an innocent onlooker, it looks like he’s just reached over to take your hand.

“When was the last time I got to see you in a silk dress, hmm?” He continues. He can tell that you’re starting to break, because his voice has gone absolutely feral and he’s not shy about brushing his scruffy chin against your ear.

“Bucky,” you sigh, letting your head fall back against the chair.

“That’s my girl.” He slides his hand under your dress, and you part your legs as far as you dare to. To your surprise, he doesn’t go right for your underwear. He takes his time crawling his way up your thigh, exploring the skin with the sensitive touch-receptors woven into his new prosthetic.

“Y’know,” he whispers, “I always knew you had a thing for my arm.”

You roll your eyes, but the heat in your cheeks betrays you. His thumb brushes the spot where your thigh meets your hip. You bite your lip, saying nothing.

He’s right, though. Once upon a time, it was a curiosity. But as the two of you grew closer and the lines between friend and lover bled together, so did your curiosity bleed into fascination.

There’s something tantalizing about the smooth surface of it, the clean lines. It’s a marvel of engineering- and the fact that he can feel you with it is all the more appealing.

In fact, he’s feeling you right now.

He draws a sharp breath, sucking his teeth as his thumb brushes at the silky fabric between your legs. You’re already warm and damp with desire, the fabric of your thong gone soft and pliable. Maybe he’s been staring at you in your gown all night, but you’ve had the unmatchable pleasure and pain of having to see him in that suit.

Tony Stark had no right, sending him to a tailor as accomplished as that. Bucky doesn’t wear his hair pulled back very often, either, but there it is. That little bun at the nape of his neck that drives you absolutely insane.

Bucky’s got his face buried in the crook of your neck as he nudges the silk of your underwear aside. Then his warmed fingers dip into your slit. You feel him start.

“Shit,” he mutters into your skin. “Fuckin’ soaked, baby.”

His dirty language feels too sinful for such an auspicious place, but you try to remind yourself that the performers are probably singing about lewder things, buffered by a language that nobody in the room understands.

He’s not wrong, either.

Bucky presses one finger attentively forward. You purse your lips because this is really fucking happening. The joints of his hand are smooth and seamless with little more tooth to them than a ribbed condom. For your pleasure.

He pumps his finger in and out a few times and you slump a little lower in your seat. One hand keeps the folds of your skirt draped firmly over his wrist. The other slides to the back of his seat, gripping gently to keep yourself stable while he settles into a rhythm.

It’s not long before you’re a panting mess and he’s sliding another finger into you, quickly establishing his rhythm all over again. Just when you’re sure you can’t get more out of this, he crooks his thumb and presses it to the swell of your slit.

This is where the magic happens. Bucky has impossible coordination. You’re not sure where it came from or how he figured out that he could apply it here, but it’s the simple truth. The way he can keep his thumb circling your clit while his fingers strum harmoniously inside you is borderline miraculous.

He gets you there in record time given the circumstances. As the music below swells to a dramatic climax you bury your mouth in his hair and pant through your orgasm, shaking and whining and keening into his diligent fingers. It passes as quickly as it comes on, and his wrist slows to a gentle stop as you slump against his side, spent.

Effervescent applause bursts from the audience beneath you. The celebration feels entirely appropriate, even though you know it’s got nothing to do with you. The performance continues. You straighten up one limb at a time and he draws his fingers from your body. He takes one careful moment to tug your underwear back into place. Then he’s settling back into his own chair, vaguely examining his gunmetal fingers in the low light.

He lifts them to his lips and you avert your eyes, distracting yourself by raising your binoculars again and peering across the hall to check in on your client.

Instead, you’re met with Sam’s traumatized expression, staring back across at you with his eyes wide, jaw hanging open.

“Uh oh,” you mutter, dropping the binoculars and squinting instead.

“What?” Bucky turns to you. He’s obviously finished with his hoer’s d’oeuvre, because he’s wiping his hand idly across the thigh of his pants now. Internally, you pout. That poor suit…

“Nothing,” you press. You settle against his side, turning your attention to the actual stage for the first time all night.

Come intermission, you’re dead. Both of you.

Might as well enjoy the performance while you still can.

tw: alcohol, toxic moms, choking

This is probably a bad idea, Minho has only hung out with Cash with Jay there as their buffer, never just the two of them but Minho finished his work early and Jay isn’t answering his texts which isn’t new but Minho didn’t want to go to the mall alone, he wants to get his girlfriend a girl and while he should ask one of her friends for advice, he doesn’t actually talk to her friends, out of respect for her. Some people don’t get it but it works for their relationship. Minho picks his phone up after a moment of just staring at it and presses on the screen, calling Cash after pulling up his contact, putting his phone to his ear he waits. 

Cash doesn’t like phone calls so the minute his phone goes off, dread fills his belly and he glances down because who the hell is stupid enough to call him, phone on silent he still sees the contact run across the screen and his face scrunches up in confusion, why would Jay’s friend call him? After finding out they were using the shop for their own personal ‘business’ Cash had demoted Minho back to just being Jay’s friend until he felt like he could trust him again, Cash doesn’t think he can trust either one of them anymore, not enough money in the world to sway him either. He waits until the last second to pick up, putting him on speaker as he continues to type on his laptop. “What do you want?” He says in lieu of a greeting, his voice a deep monotone. 

Maybe this is a bad idea, Minho thinks as he swallows. “My girlfriend’s birthday is soon, Jay isn’t answering my texts and I don’t wanna go to the mall alone.” 

“You could have texted me this as well.” Cash mumbles. 

This was a bad idea. 

“Is he downstairs? Y’know… working,” Cash says pointedly and Minho is glad he doesn’t know it was actually his idea to use Bean Through. Minho didn’t seek Jay out, they really did meet in the army, it was just convenient that he was friends with the man Minho had been gathering the courage to speak to for months and mentioned the coffeehouse casually, planting the seed in Jay’s mind the second time they noticed an undercover watching his usual place. Neither one of them expected Cash’s explosive reaction, money talks always and it got Cash to shut up. “No, he said he had some errands to run yesterday but I didn’t think it would take all day –”  Minho stops talking when Cash makes a noise down the phone line. 

“I didn’t ask for a drawn-out explanation.” Cash mumbles but Minho catches it and he nods, Cash can’t see him but he nods. “I have a thing to do so I need an hour, that good with you?”

Minho nods more, “yeah, yeah. I need to shower anyways –” 

“You take hour-long showers, dude?” Cash teases in a way that’s only Cash, the lack of inflection in his voice makes you wonder if he’s serious or not but there’s a light lift at the edge that tells Minho he’s just giving him a hard time, Minho gets it. Yet, Cash still intimidates him and he grows flustered, “um, no… I just –” Cash’s chuckle is deep down the line and Minho feels silly.

“I’m just fuckin’ with you bro, I’ll see you in an hour.” 

– 

He’s stepping out of the shower, the steam keeping his skin warm, he wipes it from the mirror. Tucked in the corner is a magazine clipping of Cash, Minho looks at it every time he gets out of the shower and then looks at himself, it’s surreal.

Minho remembers that day, so many decades ago. The owl-eyed man who stared at him in shock, or was it disgust? He remembers his mother’s panicked look and how fast she shooed him back inside of the house. He remembers the stony look on her face when she came back from wherever it is they went. He remembers her flopping down into an armchair, the one his dad loves to sit in and drink whiskey. He remembers her drinking it, straight from the bottle.

Minha’s relationship with alcohol has always taken precedent over anything else. She wanted Minho to be the best at everything but, what’s the point of being number one when your mom is sloshed in the stands, reeking of whatever it is she picked that day. It’s not common for moms to show up to PTA meetings tipsy but she’s pulled out a flask, no shame, having a swig of whatever wine her hand touched first before they got there. It was embarrassing but he grew used to it, everyone grew used to it. Slurred words and red-rimmed eyes were a part of her make-up that she put on daily before she took on the world.

Minho never asked.

He remembers how she looked when she came home but he didn’t say anything, he was ten he didn’t even know what to say. He could have asked, who is that? But he didn’t really need to know back then. Except things became more visible after that, he questioned it all. Staring at the giant family portrait on the wall in the great room. They look happy, man and wife with their son. Minho has Minha’s high cheekbones and perfectly straight nose and he has… no features of Joseph, an American teaching English in Seoul Minha met out one night in town while unknowingly two months pregnant and not showing yet. She found out she was pregnant, told Joseph and he did what he thought was the right thing, they were in love and Minho was the product of their love. Marriage only seemed like the natural next step.

Minho learned to ignore the pitiful stares he couldn’t decipher as a child when they went out as a family. His father’s love is all he has ever known. It’s gotten him through so much, too much it almost seems.

Jihoon’s eyes haunt him.

Cash’s eyes stare back at him when he looks in the mirror.

Minho wonders if Jihoon ever mentioned him to anyone, to his wife, to his son. Or if Minho is still that dirty little secret he gaped at on his front stoop over thirty years ago. No use in thinking about that, he has to meet up with Cash soon and gets dressed.

–

Minho insists on riding in Cash’s car to the mall, leaving his old beat-up Kia in the garage, sticking out like a sore thumb along Cash’s meticulously kept vehicles, he gave him the excuse that he didn’t think he had enough gas to make it to the mall and back and then back home. Cash took the bait and Minho can’t stop looking around the car like he’s in a museum, cars are incredibly personal, it’s basically like being in Cash’s second home (calling him Cash is so silly to Minho but he plays along, his mother taught him that the long game always works out.) 

“So uh… how long have you two been together?” Cash asks curiously to fill the void of silence, the music plays lightly in the background but other than that, it’s still weird air between them and he can’t stand it. It works, Minho lights up at the thought of his girlfriend and Cash fakes a gag and Minho laughs, God, he would have done the same if it was the other way around, he makes a soft sound, “we met at my dad’s job, he teaches English and she worked at the same EPIK as him and we hit it off, he’s retired but she’s still teaching. We’ve been together for four years now.” Minho pulls his phone out to send her a message, just to let her know he’s thinking about her even when she can’t reply just yet, it’s a cute gesture he does. “Four years? Nice. I can’t keep a girlfriend for four weeks it seems.” Cash quips harmlessly as he continues to drive and Minho snorts to himself, “or a wife.” It was supposed to stay in his mind but it slips out anyways and Cash cuts his eyes over to Minho, “what was that?” He sounds so defensive for something that’s very accurate and Minho panics for a second. “Jay mentioned it –” he scrambles to explain himself hoping he didn’t fuck this up. Jay didn’t say anything about it, everything Minho knows about Cash was found on his own, staring at a screen as he poured over random things that involved him online: a Reddit thread that left him cackling into his bottle beer, Min was a menace to society in his early twenties, book reviews that praised him, book reviews that were brutally honest. Press junkets about his coffeehouse and the other endeavors Mr. Shon got himself into. 

Cash shakes his head as he pulls into the parking garage of the mall. “Fucker is always telling my business,” he says much to Minho’s relief. 

“Four years and you still can’t pick anything out?”

Minho shakes his head, “women change taste like the weather,” he says. “A second opinion wouldn’t hurt. I never know what to do at the mall, didn’t want to come alone…” 

–

Cash isn’t the type for shopping, he goes to the mall, gets the specific thing he needed, and goes back home. He prefers to browse online, in the comfort of his home, with no one to bug him and ask questions. He’s walked around the mall, carrying bags for pretty women but when it comes to solo shopping? He’s an online man – minus his groceries, he does like to pick those out himself. Standing with his hands in his pockets, he watches Minho look at the jewelry behind the glass with careful eyes and Cash checks his phone for a moment. He can’t remember the last time he was in that position, doesn’t know the next time he will be. “Are you going to propose?” He asks curiously. Minho makes a noise and stands, he’s not as tall as Cash but he’s taller than Jay and broad. Jay said they met in the army and Cash tries to envision the men in their camo, miserable waiting for their time to be up. The visual leaves as Minho shakes his head, “no, she doesn’t believe in marriage.” That makes Cash laugh, “she’s playing the long game huh, four years and she doesn’t want to get married? Hyung, she’s waiting on you to want marriage.” Cash tries to explain. 

Minho wants to feel silly getting love advice from his younger – half-brother, a man with a string of failed relationships longer than a ball of yarn. Yet, in his mind, different scenes play out from the past with his girlfriend and they look different than they had before and dammit, Minho really doesn’t want Cash to be right but Cash might be onto something and Minho must look as panicked as he begins to feel, Cash’s large hand wraps around his shoulder, squeezing, a reassuring gesture Minho assumes and he shrugs him off with a weak smile. “So a necklace is a no? But proposing on her birthday, wouldn’t that be cliche?”

Cash shrugs, “it’s been four years if she hasn’t said anything vocally, I could be wrong but I will say this, even if she hasn’t said anything – she’s probably thinking about it, dropping –”

“ – Hints, yeah. I’m realizing that now,” Minho cuts him off, tugging his beanie off in the process to run his fingers through his hair warily. “When is her birthday? You don’t have to propose on her birthday, before or after it? So she doesn’t have to share her birthday with her engagement anniversary,” that’s what Cash would do and suggests, and once again, Minho is baffled that he’s actually considering accepting Cash’s advice. “I was going to get her this scarf,” he admits stupidly and wants to put the scarf he had grabbed off the rack earlier back and Cash looks away, tugging his ear as he clears his throat. “The scarf and a necklace, it’s been four years, why do I need to impress her?” Why does he need to propose? 

“Because if you don’t want to impress her, someone else will,” Cash says bluntly. “Is that what you want?”

Minho splutters for a second, shaking his head. “No, no, no she would never –”

Cash at this point is enjoying the meltdown that seems to be oncoming and takes the scarf from Minho, letting it rest on the man’s neck. “You don’t know what she would do. You said it yourself, women change like the weather…” he starts as he loops it around Minho’s neck, “what does she look like?” Minho is reluctant but he pulls his phone out, his lock screen is a picture of him and his beautiful girlfriend in all her European glory, and Cash lets out a whistle. “She’s a pretty white girl? Oh yeah, either get her pregnant or marry her before she lets the next guy with white fever scoop her up and marries her within a year of dating.” Cash says as he slowly tightens the scarf, choking Minho gradually. He enjoys how the effect takes over, Minho doesn’t even realize he can’t breathe yet, listening to Cash talk, “because pretty girls like that don’t like being single and they don’t like being strung along. You ever gone through her phone? I bet not, her social media is probably nothing but her curving guys offering her way more than what you’ve given her so far,” Cash says.

Hanging onto Cash’s every word, Minho finally tries to breathe and chokes, dropping his phone, the clatter of it hitting the floor wakes him up and he shoves a laughing Cash off of him, gasping for air as he bends over and picks up his phone, dusting it off he yanks the scarf from around his neck “you’re sick,” he spits and storms off, Cash’s deep rumble of a laugh mocking him, he doesn’t know what the hell just happened and would love to forget except the seed has been planted in his mind now. 

Cash’s laughter peters off as he watches Minho until he turns and Cash can no longer see him. He picks up the scarf, dusting it off before looking into the glass display of jewelry Minho was peering at earlier. “Can I help you with anything?” The soft voice of a saleswoman catches Cash’s ears and his head turns slowly, the grin taking over his mouth takes even longer but he nods, “yes, actually.”

–

It’s a silent car ride, Minho’s head rests against the window and Cash rolls his eyes – he just had his car detailed and this man baby child is leaving his temple grease on the clean glass. “You never told me her birthday,” Cash says after turning his music on low in the background again. “It’s February 16th,” Minho mumbles. He doesn’t want to look at Cash, he’s still trying to process what happened, he wanted to see into Cash’s world, get into his mind, yet he’s the one shaken and overthinking every second he exists. “Two days after Valentine’s Day? Yeah, wait a little bit before you give her the ring, but she’ll like the necklace.” Cash says as he drives. Minho sits up, similar eyes set in a narrow as he twists in his seat to look at Cash. “What necklace?” Cash chuckles, tilting his head towards the backseat without taking his eyes off of the road, humming along to the music. Minho twists more, seeing the store bag sitting on the floor behind the driver’s seat. He had stalked off to a different section of the store to catch his breath and regroup, thoughts of buying the necklace he thought his girlfriend replaced with the worry she was going to leave him because he hadn’t proposed, that she has a legion of men in her phone offering things he hadn’t thought of ever.

“You wanted a second opinion? I gave you my opinion,” Cash says with a quick glance over at Minho. He opens the bag and pulls out the long jewelry box, opening it nervously, his eyes widen and Minho drops the box back in the bag, top barely back on properly. “I can’t accept this.” 

“Good thing it’s not for you, it’s for your girlfriend – from you.”

It’s a necklace, very nice, clearly the more expensive ones from the display they looked at earlier and chalk it up to Minho’s pride, he doesn’t know how he feels about giving his girlfriend a necklace another man paid for. It’s not like he can’t afford to buy her whatever she wants. She just never ask for anything, ever. And Minho liked that about her for so long, it wasn’t a material relationship, purely emotional. “Thank you for your help but I can’t accept this,” Minho repeats. “Oh, come the fuck on, your dad never buy your mom something shiny and nice that he couldn’t actually afford?” Cash counters and Minho sighs, “sometimes. What about yours?” This is what Minho initially invited Cash out for, to hear his side of the story about Jihoon, not gaslighted. 

“Uh… I wouldn’t know, my dad didn’t really hang around, um, neither did my mom. I kind of floated from house to house for years.” Cash admits and it’s the first time they’ve met up like this; just them and he’s telling Minho his personal business. Minho’s head tilts in confusion, the answer not what he was expecting. He didn’t know what Jihoon got into, his mother never spoke about the incident, and Minho was left to grapple with the fact that his dad was not his father, two interchangeable titles that hold different weight – alone. He didn’t let it change his relationship with Joseph yet it put a wedge between Minho and Minha that he still hasn’t tried to fix and she hasn’t either. Cash’s reply isn’t what he was hoping for, Minho had filled his mind with the concept that Jihoon was living this ‘Top Pop’ life with his other family. That Cash got to experience a man who looked at Minho with pure fear in his eyes with anything else.

“And you can fuck right off with that pity–” Cash’s deep voice cuts through Minho’s thoughts, “fix your fucking face, it’s not that deep. Lots of people have deadbeat dads, it’s more normal to have a dad who isn’t there than to have one who is.” Minho cannot relate, refuses to relate. He’s learning the hard way that despite everything he’s read and found on his own, he doesn’t know Cash at all and he’s nowhere near learning anything new about Jihoon. “Cash –” Minho starts to speak. 

“No, it’s fine.” Cash pulls into his garage and Minho looks down at the shopping bag between his feet on the floor of Cash’s car. “Give her the necklace, on her birthday. It’ll tide her over until you man up enough to marry her.” Cash’s instructions don’t have any gaps for protest to fit in and Minho sighs, that silly feeling taking over him because he’s letting Cash tell him what to do. 

“You’re bossy,” he grumbles as he straightens up the box once more so the delicate necklace doesn’t fall out and tangle. 

“Taking that as a compliment. Now, get the hell out of my car.”

hi there! can i request an arvin x reader head canon where reader has a super innocent looking face so arvin assumes she’s innocent and then she smokes and drinks and curses and stuff which totally surprises him?

Oooh okay, I’m sorry I stopped doing requests for a while but I would like to get back into it for HEADCANONS only. Be forgiving because I’m not used to doing headcanons so my apologies if these suck! I’m usually a slut for a little bit of plot but here we go!

Arvin Russell x GN!Reader

- So you and Arvin have been going to school together since he moved to Knockemstiff but y’all never really talked much. It was one of those things where you know of each other, have had a few classes together, y’know, it’s a small school. 

- You guys also go to church together but you were always super prim and proper during church: hair done up perfectly, modestly dressed, nice smile, and making sure to shake hands with all the older ladies in the congregation. 

- Arvin has always wondered about you. Not in a creepy way but he just was trying to figure out whether or not to approach you. I mean, Arvin is not a bad guy by any means but he also isn’t super innocent. My man’s seen and done some shit. 

- He looks at you and sees a picture perfect person. There’s a certain softness to your face that just screams innocence. Like he’s never been close enough to know what you smell like but he can imagine the softness of lavender and honey or something like that. 

- He’s driving home from work one day but it was a long ass day so he pulls over just to get a few minutes away from the crappiness of life. Arvin knows of a little area by a pond where you can sit on rocks and watch the small stream run. It’s just refreshing and it’s his happy place. 

- Imagine how surprised he is to find none other than you sitting on the boulder, blowing a large puff of smoke out in rings and grinning when you get three in a row from a single inhale. 

- “Fuck! You scared me!” You jump when you hear his footsteps. You pull out a cigarette from your pocket and extend it to him, “Arvin...Russel? Right? You look like you could use a break too. Want one?” 

- Arvin is so confused. 

- Like someone help him. Restart his brain or something. It’s stuck buffering and he’s not quite sure what to say. 

- “Uh, sure. Thanks.” He mutters, coming up to you. He takes the cigarette and lets you light it for him. You scoot over on the boulder and he climbs up beside you. 

- “I’m Y/N. I don’t think we’ve ever officially met but I’ve seen you around... well everywhere.” You chuckle a little, leaning back and taking another drag from your cigarette. 

- Arvin watches in awe as you suck in the smoke with expertise. “I can’t lie... I didn’t have you pegged for a smoker.” 

- You held a finger up to your lips with a sneaky smirk on your face, “It’s our dirty little secret. If you keep it, maybe I could use a smoke buddy. It gets lonely out here sometimes.” 

- Did you just proposition him to be his friend? Arvin is confused. He doesn’t really have friends. Never really has had them. Lenora is the only person his age that he’s got. People have never really been nice to him. 

- “Yeah, maybe.” He half answers, taking a deep drag and blowing it out away from the two of you. 

- He also notices how you make sure to only exhale when there’s a gust of wind downstream so the smell doesn’t stick to your clothes and tries to mimic the notion for your sake. 

- “I can snag some of my old man’s beers too, if you’d like one.” 

- “I’m sorry... I’m just sort of confused. I always thought you were a goody-two-shoes.” His accent is fucking adorable by the way. 

- You just shrug, “Our parents drink and smoke all the damn time to get away from the pressures of life. We’re adults. Why the hell can’t we? I just wish I didn’t have to lie and hide catch a break.” 

- “’M sorry you gotta hide away. Where do they think you are?” 

- “With my friend Mary in town. Must be nice not havin’ to sneak around to have a smoke. I seen you ‘round town in your car smokin’ away without a care in the world. Honestly, I’ve spent some time being jealous of you.” 

- He knows it’s not what you mean but Arvin can’t help but shake his head, “Nah, you don’t wanna be jealous of me. Trust me.” 

- It’s quiet. You don’t press. You’ve heard the rumors though and you can’t help but wonder how many are true.

- Arvin also sits and wonders how many rumors about you are true. There aren’t many but it’s hard to live in such a small town and not hear about everyone. He overheard Gene Dinwoodie brag to his gang that he fucked you in the school bus after school one day. At the time, he’d written it off as Dinwoodie making up lies to sound cool again. There was no way Y/N L/N would do that. 

- Now he wasn’t so sure. 

- No... you didn’t seem like the kind of person to let a pig like Gene Dinwoodie within ten feet of you. 

- You see Arvin struggling to figure you out and it’s simultaneously humorous and uncomfortable. You don’t let anyone see this side of you. It’s interesting to see how he reacts. 

- “Look, I know this isn’t the me that people usually see but it feels kinda nice to have you actually see me. I’d love to grab a drink together sometime, if you’re up for it. Well, I guess it would be more of a stolen beer or two in the woods but you get the gist.”  

- You’re not quite sure why you admit that but it feels good to get off your chest. There’s just something about Arvin that feels so comfortable and understanding. 

- Sitting here smoking with each other is the most relaxed either of you had felt in a long time. 

Hello, Stranger

WARNING: SPOILERS FOR SEASON 15 EPISODE 18 ‘DESPAIR’ AND SEASON 15 EPISODE 19 ‘INHERIT THE EARTH’

Pairings: Castiel/Dean Winchester

Rating: General Audiences

Word Count: 6,201

Status: One Shot - Complete

Summary/Preview

The man above him was panting heavily, wheezing for breath through pained grunts, and usually, Dean would find some comfort in knowing he at least got a few good licks in.

Instead, all he could do was drop his head back into the carpet with gritted teeth. Great. He was Dean Winchester; He had taken on monsters that most believed to be fairy tales, he had taken on Lucifer, he had taken on God. Hell, he had even killed Hitler.

And now he was about to be killed by some goddamn junkie that had broken into his apartment.

Fan-friggen-tastic.

* * *

A post episode/ post season fix it fic because my heart hurts and I needed some happiness.

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Dean Winchester is a homeowner.

Well, he signed a contract that lets him rent a shitty, musty, one-bedroom apartment that has questionable stains on the carpet and the lingering smell of weed soaked into the walls, but it’s his. It’s also situated between a few bars and a pizza place that serves the best damn meat lover’s pizza he’s ever tasted in his life, so y’know. Silver linings.

The off-yellow, fluorescent light of the fridge hums obnoxiously at him, lighting the two last bottles of beer he has sat snugly in the corner. Dean pulls one out, grumbling to himself as he pats at the chipped kitchen counter for the bottle opener. He flips the cap off with a flick he has done many times, chucking the cap somewhere to the side (he swears he’ll throw them away later) and flopping down onto his couch with a groan.

His phone shrills at him from within his jean’s pocket and Dean throws his head back with an exasperated sigh. This was what he signed up for, after all. He just didn’t know how Bobby did it. The whole ‘normal job whilst also acting as an information source for the hunter network’ crap. If it were up to him, he’d just do the ‘hunter network’ stuff. You know, what actually matters. But he’s too old to be living out of motels which were paid for with fake credit cards and cash from hustling, so he has to do it the legal way. That’s not to say the apartment is a huge step up from the usual dumps he and Sammy used to stay in when on the road, but still. It’s his place.

Relief floods through him when he finally yanks the phone out of his pocket and sees Sam’s name plastered across the screen. Looks like he was free from hunter duties for a while yet.

“Heya Sammy,” Dean greets him the second he has the phone to his ear, his smile practically audible through the phone. “Is this an ‘another apocalypse’ phone call or…?”

“No, you jerk,” Sam chuckles down the phone. “It’s a regular phone call. You know, that thing normal people do when they check up on family?”

Dean nearly snorted into his beer. “Yeah, well, we’re far from normal, Sammy.”

“Funnily enough, I’m aware of that. But this is as close to ‘normal’ as we’re going to get. It’s the best we’re going to get.”

Dean hummed thoughtfully, swallowing down a mouthful of beer. “Yeah? Tell that to the dumbass newbie at work who decided he didn’t need to put the oil cap back on after changing the oil… oil everywhere Sammy. Everywhere. I can hack off vampire heads all day, but dealing with people? It’s a nightmare, Sam.”

“You’ll get used to it,” Sam assured him. “We’ll get used to it. It’s… Dean, you know how nice it is to hear you complain about work? Hearing ‘my co-workers a pain in the ass’ instead of ‘there’s a Were on my tail, bring the silver’ is something I never thought I’d get to experience.”

“Were on my tail? Wow, great pun there Sam…” Dean mumbled into the phone, getting a half-amused half annoyed snort from his brother. “Maybe one day I’ll go full ‘Bobby’. Get a cabin out in the middle of nowhere, open up my own mechanic shop… though, doubt I could go back to the old way of looking up the lore… Hey, they do satellite internet, right?”

Sam had suddenly gone very quiet. Dean raised his eyebrows as he waited for his brother's response, the white-noise from the other end of the line the only reassurance to Dean that the line hadn’t gone dead.

“Uh… yeah. Yeah, I think that’s something you could get set up.” Sam finally answered. “But… you know you can do all that without the whole ‘hunting network’ thing, right? That is still an option-,”

“I know, Sam,” Dean cut off his little brother abruptly. “I know that’s an option. And maybe one day I’ll realize just how old and broken down I am and accept that. But-,”

“But you won’t,” Sam sighed subtly.

“Maybe one day,” Dean repeated softly. “I just… I don’t think I’ll ever be able to quit cold turkey, Sam. I just… I need to do something.”

“Have you been on any hunts?”

Dean shrugged his shoulders, forgetting that Sam couldn’t see him. “Eh, a few. No solo hunts, before you panic. There was a hunter going through town, uh, Jason White? Hadn’t heard of him before, but-,” Dean huffed quietly in laughter. “-He sure as hell heard of me. Seems the Winchester name still has its rep around the hunter community.”

“I can never tell if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.”

“Dude was giddy to work with me, so I’d say it was a good thing.” Dean took another swig of beer. “And that’s when they don’t even know we kicked God’s ass!”

“Jack kicked God’s ass,” Sam corrected him. “We got our asses kicked by God.”

“Yeah, but… we needed to get Chuck to beat us up for the plan to work, so… I think it’s fair to say we brought down God.”

“Depending on who you tell that to, you might end up being flayed rather than hailed as a hero.”

Dean paused with the bottle of beer to his lips. “Point taken… maybe it would be better to keep it to ourselves.”

“Probably,” Sam agreed with a chuckle.

“How ‘bout you, Sammy? How’s college life treating you? Again?”

“It’s…” Sam was about to do the usual ‘everything’s great’ spiel, but something about Dean’s inquiring tone made him pause. “… it’s more difficult than I’d thought. I don’t know, maybe I should have had some kind of buffering time between, try and adjust a little before going back.”

“I can imagine.”

“Back then, I felt like I belonged in college, you know? I felt… on par with everyone around me, but now? I stick out like a sore thumb.”

“Yeah? Well, you are an old man amongst eighteen to twenty-year old’s.”

“Thirty-seven isn’t old, jerk. Plenty of people go back to college when they’re…”

“…older?” Dean finished his sentence with glee.

“Shut up.”

Dean laughed smugly at his brother’s annoyed grumbles, though he quickly pulled himself back together. “Seriously though Sammy, I… I hope you know I’m proud of you for this. I know it’s not exactly what we – what I imagined, but… I’m glad to see you living out the life you set out for yourself. I know I wasn’t supportive of you when you first left for college, and I know it’s gonna be tough for you. But if you can go up against God and win, I’m sure you can pass your bar exam.”

“Thanks, Dean.” Sam’s voice sounded a little choked. “How are you doing, anyway? I didn’t really ask.”

“Living the dream, Sammy. Living the dream.” Dean answered dryly, staring sombrely at the last dregs of beer in the bottle and wondering whether it’s worth grabbing the last bottle from the fridge. Future Dean will hate him if he does…

“Seriously, Dean.” If Sam’s voice was anything to go by, he had the puppy dog eyes on full effect right now. “How are you? You okay? I know it’s been hard since… since…”

Dean swallowed hard, letting his eyes flutter shut and his head lean back against the couch. “No, Sam. I’m pretty damn far from okay. And I’m not sure if I ever will be, but… I’ll learn to cope.”

“Dean, it’s… don’t be afraid to ask for help with this kind of stuff. I know it’s a bit unconventional when it comes to our lives, but-,”

“A bit unconventional?” Dean spluttered. “Sam, how the hell would I go about explaining any of this to a shrink, huh? ‘Hey, I had the literal Death trying to kill me, and one of the few people I love sacrificed himself to save me by telling me he loves me.’ Yeah, I’m sure that’ll go down a-,”

“What did you just say?” Sam interrupted in a quiet, shocked voice. “Dean, you… did Cas say-,”

“I’m not talking about that, Sammy.” Dean’s tone left no room for argument.

“Cas was my friend too you know, Dean,” Sam argued back, his voice understanding but digging too much for Dean’s liking. “I know you don’t like talking about this, but-,”

“No, Sam. I don’t like talking about it.” Dean snapped curtly.

“But-,”

“Cas was my Eileen, Sam.” Dean could hear Sam’s mouth snap close, the stunned silence on the other end of the phone too loud in Dean’s ear. “And I know you sure as hell don’t like talking about her. I had to… Fuck, do you have any idea, Sam? I never let myself think about it, about what Cas was to me. He could be a stubborn bastard and hard to read at times, and this whole damn time, he loved me and… he never told me. All this time he’d been holding that to himself and he just… I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t say anything. He was just gone, and I…”

“You loved him.”

It wasn’t a question. Dean squeezed his eyes shut at Sam’s words. “Yeah. Yeah, I did. And he never got to know. He never heard me say it.”

Dean ran a tense hand through his hair, pulling at the strands with a pained grimace. “I still see him sometimes, Sammy. I feel like I’m going crazy. I’ll see a flash of him in a crowd, see that stupid tax-accountant get up of his out of the corner of my eye, and… I keep telling myself he’s gone, that I need to move on.”

“You will, Dean. Sometimes, after… after Jess, I’d see her, too. Grief does strange things to the mind.”

“Yeah, I know, but… I can’t help but think about when I lost him in purgatory. When I kept seeing him, back then, and… all that time, he was trying to reach out to me.”

“This isn’t like then, Dean.” Sam’s response was like a punch to the chest. “Cas was in Purgatory. When he was trying to contact you, he was back on Earth, right? Cas is… he’s in the Empty. The only being with enough power to get him out was Jack, but-,”

“But Jack’s not gonna be hands-on,” Dean said miserably.

“Right…” Sam replied with a sigh. “I’m sorry, Dean. I wish it was Cas, you know I do, but… he’s gone.”

“I know. I know that, Sammy. I’m not denying he’s gone, I just… I miss him. Guess I always assumed we’d win this thing together, you know? ‘Paradise on Earth’ and all that.”

“I don’t even know what Cas would have done after all this,” Sam said with a mild tone of amusement. “After meeting Cas, it felt like we had to stop one apocalypse after the other.”

“Poor guy never really got to catch a break,” Dean agreed sadly. “Maybe I could have trained him up to be a proper hunter, just like he wanted. Or… maybe he would have flown home.”

“Home?”

“Yeah, y’know; Heaven. If the other winged dicks let him back in, that is.”

“Dean… I don’t think ‘Heaven’ is Cas’ home. At least, it hasn’t been for a while, anyway. If Cas was still here, well… whatever he decided to do next, I can’t imagine anything that didn’t involve being by your side, Dean.”

 * * *

The later into the night it got, the more tempted Dean was to break out the bottle of whisky he has hidden under his cupboard for ‘emergencies only’.

The only saving grace was that Dean had the day off tomorrow, so it’s not like he had to worry about work. Tonight was just going to be… one of those nights. Getting off the phone with Sammy always left him feeling bittersweet; happy to hear his brother’s voice, but the reminder that he was so far away only worsening the dull ache he felt in his chest that he could only fix by drinking until everything went black and numb.

‘THUMP’

Dean was upright from his bed in seconds, fingers curling around the comforting grip of his pistol under the pillow. The sound hadn’t come from his room, rather somewhere else in the apartment – the living room, perhaps? The kitchen? He slowly peeled off the covers, untangling them from his legs and stepping softly onto the dusty carpet, thankful it would mute his footsteps.

Dean cautiously approached his closed bedroom door, placing his ear up to the door and straining his hearing. Nothing. For a moment, he wondered if he had simply imagined the noise, his emotional and exhausted mind caught between sleep and lucidity, conjuring up a sound to distract him.

Maybe, if Dean were a normal person, he’d have waved it off and headed back to bed. Hunter's instincts are hard to shake off though, and not checking the apartment simply wasn’t an option. Sure, he had thrown up all the usual sigils in the apartment the second he had moved in (and likely ruined any chance of getting his deposit back), but you never know.

Dean clasps his free hand around the rounded doorknob, painstakingly turning it until he hears the ‘click’ of the lock, wincing at how loud the usually quiet sound felt in the silence of the room. Dean swings the door open slowly, peering out of the room and into the pitch-blackness of his apartment. He can barely make out the shadowed outline of his furniture, lit up only by the muted lights of passing traffic peeking in through the partly opened blinds.

Dean takes a single step out into the living room when a hand clasps around his shoulder.

He whirls around in an instant, knocking off the assailant’s arm and lifting his pistol to aim. The gun is wrenched out of his hands in an instant, the unexpectedly strong pull nearly sending him tumbling straight into his attacker. Dean hears his gun clatter to the floor, and he throws a punch out of instinct, feeling his knuckles connect with the strangers’ jaw. There’s a pained grunt from the man, definitely a man by his posture and deep, surprised groan of pain, and Dean jabs out his fist again before the man can counter. His fist lands squarely in the man's gut and Dean knows by the sound the man makes that he had just had the wind knocked out of him.

Dean’s next hit isn’t as successful, the man catching Dean’s fist mid-swing and twisting him away, pushing him forward until his chest hits the wall with a resounding ‘thud’. Dean grimaces at the pressure against his back and arm, kicking out a leg backward and feeling it connect with the guy’s knee. It buckles, the pressure on his back gone and Dean takes the advantage, spinning around and shoving the guy hard. He sees the blurry black figure go sprawling backward, slamming into the wall opposite with another pained grunt. Dean scrambles to the floor in search of his gun, blinking rapidly in an attempt to adjust to the darkness of the room. He just about catches a glint of metal, reaching for the gun before it’s gone again, kicked out of sight by his attacker. Dean growls in frustration, jumping to his feet as fast as his body will let him. It seems he isn’t as fast as he once was, the man grabbing him by the arm and slamming him back down to the ground before he can even blink.

His back hits the floor hard, the air leaving his lungs in one giant ‘whoosh’, dust erupting from the unkempt carpet under him. His attacker had clambered over him, the heavy pressure he felt on his wrists surely the man pinning him down, the weight on top of his legs surely that of the stranger. His head was spinning, vision blurry from the dark, and the hit to the back of his head when he landed. The man above him was panting heavily, wheezing for breath through pained grunts, and usually, Dean would find some comfort in knowing he at least got a few good licks in.

Instead, all he could do was drop his head back into the carpet with gritted teeth. Great. He was Dean Winchester; He had taken on monsters that most believed to be fairy tales, he had taken on Lucifer, he had taken on God. Hell, he had even killed Hitler.

And now he was about to be killed by some goddamn junkie that had broken into his apartment. Fan-friggen-tastic.

“Hello, Dean.”

His heart stops. Pauses, for just a moment. When it kicks back into gear, it's with a hard, resounding thump. The voice was gruff, grated, that of a man who had either smoked ten packs of cigarettes a day or had had his vocal cords shredded apart. It was familiar, like coming home, and he wants to scream to the Universe how fucking cruel it is for him to be losing his mind like this, that it was bad enough to be seeing him, but to be hearing him too?

Unless…

He squirms underneath the man’s grip, his shallow, quick intakes of air a sure sign of an approaching panic attack. To Dean’s surprise, the man's grip slackened, and he let Dean scramble up to his feet. Dean stumbled back into the wall as the man smoothly got to his feet, stood there silently watching Dean panic as he slapped his hand against the wall, searching for the light switch. Dean’s hand passes over the smooth cool plastic of the panel, and he smacks down hard on the switch.

The light bursts to life, bathing the room in that sickening bright white. It’s blinding - as if lightning had struck inside his apartment. Dean still has his hand glued to the light switch; his gaze glued to the stranger stood opposite him.

Except, that was no stranger.

There’s a thin trail of blood slipping down a split lip that’s curved up into a subtle smile, blue eyes glossy with unshed tears that are scanning up and down Dean like he can’t quite believe he’s there. His chest is still heaving with exasperated breaths from their scuffle and he’s holding himself awkwardly, one leg taking more of his weight than the other – likely a result of Dean’s attempt at defending himself.

“Cas? Cas, is this… is that really you?” Dean’s voice is breathy, uncertainty laced in every word.

“I spent the whole drive over here thinking about what to say when I saw you,” Castiel said. “And now all I can think is how I should be scolding you for not checking to see if I’m a shifter or a demon first.”

Dean blinked owlishly at Cas, the shock mixed with the adrenaline sending his brain into overdrive. Cas’s shy smile widened briefly for a moment, barely wincing at the sting of his split lip being pulled.

“Actually, I… I was worried for a moment that I had been told the wrong address and had broken into someone else’s residence. But then you were pulling a gun on me and it seemed a bit too late to ask, so I-,”

Dean rushes forward before Cas can finish his sentence, throwing his arms around Cas’s shoulders and burying his head into his neck. He’s fully aware his hands are shaking, scrunching up the back of Castiel’s trench coat so tightly that he can feel some threads popping loose under his fingers. Castiel’s hands were wrapped around his back in return, squeezing Dean close with all his worth, eyes squeezed shut in content with his head nestled next to Dean’s.

When Dean pulls away, it’s to hold Cas at arm’s length and just… look. Take him all in. To savor the warmth of Cas’s under his hands, to drink in the smile he never thought he’d get to see again. Because there’s a part of him that still doesn’t know if this is real, and he wants to take the time to memorize the feel of Castiel in his arms.

“You, uh…” Dean says somewhat awkwardly. “You need a drink?”

 * * *

Dean’s been staring at Cas for way too long then is socially acceptable now.

He’s perched on what Dean knows from experience is an incredibly uncomfortable bar stool at the end of the kitchen counter, the beer Dean had offered him pressed against his split lip from their, um… reunion. Dean tapped his fingers against the cool glass of whisky he held, watching Cas as his eyes scanned curiously around the apartment, and Dean starts to feel guilty for not keeping on top of the cleaning as much as he should. In his defense, he wasn’t exactly expecting company.

“How… how are you here, Cas?”

“I had to hot-wire a car that had been left parked in a desolate road near a field in Illinois. In my defense, it seemed rather neglected, so I doubt it’ll be missed. It was quite difficult finding you actually, your number no longer worked and I had to visit many, many bars to find some hunters who had some knowledge on your whereabouts-,”

“Cas, that’s… that’s not what I’m talking about. I mean how are you here?”

Castiel pulled the bottle away from his lip, placing it down delicately on the countertop. The signature frown was back on his face, along with the cocked head that Dean found much too endearing. “Dean, have you not noticed?”

Dean followed Castiel’s hands to where he had placed a finger on his split lip, wincing when he pressed down a bit too hard.

“What? That I greeted my best friends return from the dead by giving him a beating? Yeah, I kinda noticed.”

Castiel sighed quietly, and Dean grinned at the exasperation. “Have you not noticed that it hasn't healed?”

Dean frowned at him in confusion. “Oh. Why haven’t you…?”

It finally clicked.

Dean sat up straight as it hit him; looking to the split lip, to the bruise that had already begun forming on the edge of Cas’s jaw, to the way he held out his leg at an odd angle like it was bothering him.

Almost as if…

“You’re human?”

“I believe so, yes. My grace was… warped. It’s been through a lot, through the fall… but… I believe it had been different from the very start. Chuck was right, in a way. I was ‘the angel with a crack in his chassis’. Maybe that’s why I was the only one. Out of all the other me’s that exist… I was the angel that began to feel. The angel to fall in love with the righteous man. Angels aren’t supposed to love, you see. Emotions are seen as distractions. Emotions were thought only possible to humans because of one thing.”

“Souls,” Dean answered for him.

Castiel nodded. “Dean, do you understand what the Empty is? What happens to us? It’s… it seems almost peaceful when you think about it. To spent eternity just… sleeping. But we don’t sleep. We dream. We dream of all that we regret. For most angels and demon’s, they have only one regret; their death. What they did wrong to meet their end, tortured endlessly by that mistake. I didn’t dream of my death though, Dean. My death was no mistake. Instead, I dreamt of you. I dreamt of all the times I let you down, of all the things I should have done or said but never did. Angels aren’t supposed to do that, Dean. Those aren’t the regrets soldiers of God are meant to have.

“The Empty isn’t a complicated being. It’s… it’s nothingness, and it wants to exist as nothingness. Billy made it promises she wouldn’t keep, keeping it awake when all it wanted to do was to return to sleep. So when it had dragged us into that place, when I fell into that sleep… perhaps it assumed it would be able to return to sleep. But my dreams, my regrets… they weren’t of the type that any another being in the Empty had. My grace wasn’t settling, it was… it was like an animal in a cage, it was…”

“It was keeping the Empty awake.”

“The Empty wanted me to suffer. But in doing so, it was suffering itself. It didn’t understand why; I didn’t understand why. Why my grace. What made it different? It wasn’t until I had been spat back out here; when the Empty had figured it out before me that I realized. It wasn’t my grace, Dean. It wasn’t grace at all, not anymore. I’m… I’m still not sure how it happened, whether it had been happening for a while, if it was the reason my grace had been diminishing over the years, or… if maybe Jack had a part to play in it, or… or if it was just myself. If me falling for you, to be the first angel to do that… maybe it’s something that could happen to all angels.”

Dean had never been more confused in his life. “What are you talking about, Cas?”

“My grace was changed, Dean. An angel’s grace, it’s a source of power, a piece of God himself; just like a soul. I’m not just an angel who has lost his grace, Dean. My grace is still here, just changed. Adapted. I’m human in every sense of the word.”

Dean knew what Cas was getting at, but he couldn’t quite believe it himself. “…You have a soul?”

“I have a soul,” Castiel confirmed, giving Dean a watery smile. “Humans were not meant to exist in the Empty. It’s not something the Empty has ever had to deal with - emotions. The Empty is a powerful being. It can tear into your mind, to know all that makes you suffer. But a soul? It doesn’t know how to approach that. It doesn’t know how to make it quiet.”

“So… so what does that mean now for you?”

“It means I’m here,” Castiel answered simply, his wandering gaze returning to their surroundings.

Dean smiled, glancing down to the whisky in his hand to avoid seeing Castiel’s judgment of his shitty apartment. “Yeah? And what do you think of… here?”

Castiel hummed thoughtfully, taking his sweet time to look around the abysmal contents of the room which Dean knows full well only takes about ten seconds to take in.

“It’s rather small,” Castiel finally gives his verdict. Dean ducks his head with embarrassed laughter, scratching awkwardly at the back of his head.

“Yeah, well… a high-school dropout who has barely any prior job experience and next to no references doesn’t exactly get many calls for interviews.”

“I see,” Castiel replied with an understanding yet sad smile. “Why did you and Sam leave the bunker?”

“Well, after Sammy decided he wanted to give college another shot, and after you and Jack, it was… the bunker was too empty. Too quiet. Too many memories, I guess. And it’s not like I was gonna be hunting like I used to without Sammy…”

“You’re not hunting?” Castiel asked, surprise clearly written across his features.

“Sometimes,” Dean replied with a shrug. “It’s… Sammy wanted another shot at the normal life, and after everything… that doesn’t even begin to cover what the kid deserves.”

“And what about you?” Castiel said with a questioning frown. “What about what you deserve?”

Dean laughed one humorless chuckle. “Cas, I always expected to go out in a blaze of glory. Maybe with Sammy by my side, maybe not, but-,” Dean paused, turning his eyes down. “I didn’t… I didn’t picture a scenario where I lived and you didn’t. I didn’t know what life was going to be like after that, after you… I didn’t think it was a pain I’d have to live with, you know?”

Cas’s calloused hand rests over Dean’s, thumb gently sweeping over his wrist. There’s a sadness and regret to Cas’s gaze, but a comforting smile curled onto his lips. “When I took that deal… a part of me never expected for it to be claimed. I thought the Empty had made some colossal mistake on its part, because… I couldn’t envision a scenario where I’d be happy. A scenario where we beat God and we made it out alive. But then I wondered… I wondered how much the Empty knew of me. It had tortured me with it once, with what I feared and… of who I loved. And Dean, it was almost funny when I realized, when I assumed the Empty had surely made that mistake. It knew what I wanted most, and yet, it was something I could never have.”

“What you wanted?”

Cas’s smile turned sad. “You, Dean Winchester. I wanted to know the touch of your lips, of the feel of your skin under my hands… I wanted to know what it would be like to wake up next to you, to be something that brought you some sense of happiness… I wanted to know what it was like to be seen as something more than family, a friend, a brother… I wanted what angels aren’t supposed to want. I wanted your love, Dean Winchester.”

“…Cas-”

“But there was a simplicity to it.” Cas continued before Dean could form the words he wanted to say. “I couldn’t get that happiness because… because I wouldn’t let myself feel it. It was easier to just push it down, to pretend as if this hadn’t been something eating at me ever since I had rebelled. And to just… to just say it. In letting myself feel it, in telling you, in telling myself… that was my own form of happiness. It wasn’t in knowing you felt the same way, it wasn’t that I needed you to say it back… I said it because I needed you to know.”

How did Cas do this? Every time he thought he knew what to say, Cas found a way to rip the words right of his mouth. Dean was thrown through a loop again, his brain brought to a standstill. None of it made sense in his mind. The thought that he was Cas’s happiness, that he had somehow made an angel of the lord love, it was just… why him?

“In a way, the Empty lost,” Cas told him. “It wanted me to suffer. It was cruel, yes, but genius on its part, I must admit. To only take me once I had found happiness on Earth, but… I didn’t suffer as it took me, Dean. To die, knowing you were safe? That I had kept you safe? My mission is and always will be to save Dean Winchester. If my ending was the one where you get to live the life you deserve? Then… that was my happiness.”

Dean huffed, staring down at his whisky, absentmindedly spinning the glass across the counter. “You had found your peace. I get that, Cas, I really do,” Dean stopped spinning the glass, eyes flickering up to meet Cas’s. “But if you think the life I deserve is one that didn’t have you in it, then…”

Dean chuckled dryly, taking a small sip of his drink, welcoming the burning sensation that crawled down his throat.

“Dean, don’t think I wouldn’t have wanted… this,” Castiel insisted, brows furrowing. “I would have been content to carry on the way we are. I would of course wanted to stay with you, and Sam, and Jack, just as we were.”

Dean licks his lips nervously, tasting the lingering leftovers of his whisky. “And what if I’m not content with that?”

Cas frowned at him, a brief look of panic flashing across his face. “I don’t get what you mean?”

Dean laughs. He can’t help it. They’re small hushed snorts of laughter, dropping his chin down into his chest and shaking his head, his shoulders shaking with every chuckle. “Oh, Cas… We’re both idiots, aren’t we? Biggest damn idiots there are.”

Castiel was only getting more and more confused.

“Cas, what the hell did you think that mixtape meant?” Dean asked once he lifted his head back up. “What did you think that prayer back in Purgatory meant, huh? Both times? When I prayed to you every damn night in that hellhole?”

“I… I assumed-,”

“Assumed… yeah, we both kept making assumptions about the other, huh? You know I’m not great with words, Cas. I’m… I speak better with my actions, you know? But this… you… I didn’t know how to handle the way I felt for you. Calling you my brother was easy because that was a love I knew how to process. It was easy. You knew I cared for you, and I thought that was enough.”

“It was enough,” Castiel assured him.

“No, it wasn’t, Cas,” Dean insisted. “I was too much of a coward to tell you the truth.”

“Dean, you don’t have to-,”

Dean grabbed Castiel by the lapels of his trench coat to shut him up, tugging him forward and damn near dragging him over the counter. Castiel had gone wide-eyed, bracing himself by grabbing onto Dean's arms, keeping him suspended over the counter.

“Listen to me,” Dean stresses the words, keeping his eyes locked with Cas. “You’re not just my best friend. You’re not just my brother. You’re all that and more. You’re not just what I want, you’re all that I need. And I’m telling you this now because I should have told you all those years ago. I should have told you when you told me. I love you, too. You got that? I love you.”

And then Dean kisses the shocked look right off of Cas’s face, just to drive the point home.

It’s far from the best kiss Dean’s ever had. The taste of Castiel’s blood is metallic and tangy under his lips, and he went into the kiss a bit too rushed and hard. There’s definitely a clash of teeth at first, and a kiss was apparently the last thing Cas was expecting as his lips remained frozen in disbelief for some good few seconds. And yet, it was perfect.

Because it was Cas.

It’s not until Dean’s hands frame Cas’s face that he gets a response. His lips move under Dean’s, chapped yet addictingly soft. Dean’s thumb brushes down Cas’s cheek, the burn of stubble against his skin something new, but a reminder that this was Cas. It was Cas’s lips on his. It was Cas’s hands brushing through the short strands of hair at the back of his neck.  It was Cas pressing his body into him, fitting together like two pieces of a puzzle that never thought the other piece would fit.

When they break away, it’s with a surprised “Oh,” from Cas that has Dean shaking quietly with repressed laughter, his forehead pressed against Cas with matching smiles on both men's faces.

“Like I said-,” Dean said softly. “-Idiots. Both of us.”

“I prefer the term ‘fools in love’,” Cas said with a grin. “Still idiots, but we have an excuse.”

“Yeah... yeah, I like the sound of that.” Dean agreed, returning Cas's gentle smile. “So, back on Earth, grace gone – or, changed into a soul. What’s the plan now?”

“Just... live life, I suppose. Experience humanity, of all there is to offer. Grow old...”

“Hmmm,’ Dean hummed in content. “Can you perhaps picture a little cozy cabin out in the woods? Maybe a yappy dog that won’t shut up and is constantly shedding all over the damn place, but you love anyway?”

“I think I could get on board with that... so long as there’s a cat running around that’ll provide the dog with some company,” Cas paused, squinting suspiciously at Dean. “Is there already a dog?”

“Apartment has a ‘no pets' rule. Miracle’s shacked up with Sammy for the time being, keeping the kid sane through exams.”

“...Miracle?”

“Yeah. Y'know, coz she was a miracle.” Dean swallowed nervously, struggling to get the next words out. “And... in this vision of the future... maybe you see yourself growing older with a grizzled, greying green-eyed hunter?”

“...Dean?”

“Yeah?”

“If you really have to ask that question, then I’m afraid I’m going to use to demote you back to ‘idiot'.”

“Wow,” Dean blanched. “Having a soul has made you a sassy dick.”

“You say that like you don’t love it.”

“I deal with it, but only because I love you. There’s a difference.”

Dean’s word elicited a beaming smile from Cas, that toothy smile he so rarely sees from Cas that he knows he’s going to be spending the rest of his life trying to see as often as possible. And really, what else can he do but smile back, just two idiots smiling at each other in a cramped, barely lit kitchen?

“I never thought I’d hear you say it…” Castiel admitted quietly.

“Well, be prepared to hear it until you get sick of it, coz I’ve got a lot of times I should have said it to make up for.”

can we get headcanons/reactions for a dadsona who's like, The Ernest Whisperer? they get along pretty famously, dadsona is really good at making ernest make better choices without being condescending about it. it's not perfect, but "dude, if you're gonna set fire to that trash can, you need a fuse or you'll blow your eyebrows off" is better than shutting him down or ignoring it altogether. like the mom in mean girls, steerin regina towards the Safer choice.

((I feel like I should say right off the bat; this is not part of the Lemon Boy continuity. There's two more parts to that but this isn't one of them. So Ernest is getting a bunch of love and I adore it. Honestly, Ernest is gonna be doing stupid, dangerous shit anyway, we might as well make sure he’s at least being safe about it. Also I love Ernest channeling his angst through artistic pursuits, so I’m adding it here.))

~~~

Summer had arrived. Amanda had graduated, and the kids of the cul-de-sac were free to their adventures. Which, of course, meant the troublemakers were free to their trouble.

You’d become something of an expert at dealing with the troublemakers, seeing as your daughter could be considered such by certain people, and you yourself had been considered such in your younger years by other certain people who were… probably dead by now, honestly. 

You’d gotten to know all the neighborhood kids pretty well since moving in, but you’d be lying if you said you didn’t have favorites. All the kids seemed to like you well enough - Craig’s girls invited you to their games from time to time, Joseph’s oldest seemed to have taken an interest in your garden for some reason, and Daisy and Carmensita might favor Amanda over you on any given day, but they were polite and sweet and complimented your cooking, so you weren’t too sore about it. But hands down, you got on with Ernest and Lucien the best. You remembered what it was like to be that age, and you were proud to say you’d managed to get through where others said was impassable. You could tell the boys liked you, even if they refused to admit it. Maybe they could tell that you’d been like them, once upon a time. Trouble begets trouble, after all. It felt like they’d made an unspoken bet to see who could push you further. Who could get you to agree to or help with the most outlandish thing. 

Lucien made you tag along while he did graffiti on the underside of the bridge by the dam. You lent him your spare respirator mask and kept an eye out for police and neighborhood watch.

Ernest found an abandoned factory a little ways from the cul-de-sac, and insisted on going there to fuck around. You managed to casually ask Hugo if Ernest was up to date on his tetanus shots and managed to convince Ernest not to swing from rafters or mess around with any old blades.

Lucien convinced you to give him and his friends a ride to a concert in the next city over. You paid for a last minute ticket and tagged along to make sure they’d be okay, and even managed to get a guy kicked out when you saw him slip something in one of Lucien’s friend’s drinks. 

Ernest roped you into a paintball war in the more wooded area of the park. You supplied face shields and forced disposable rain ponchos over his and his friend’s heads. They didn’t help very much or last very long, but there was slightly less paint on them than there would have been, so it was a win. As was getting the paint stains out of Ernest’s favorite hoodie.

But beyond that - beyond the bet and the games and the stupid dangerous shit you tried to buffer them from, you knew that they trusted you. By this point, Hugo and Damien knew that their kids saw you as someone safe to lean on, and while Damien was simply glad, Hugo was more than a little baffled. You offered him what advice you could, but you knew that sometimes, your dad just felt too close. Hugo was getting the hang of it, but it was easier for you.

When Damien went out of town for the weekend, it was you that Lucien called when he started feeling unsafe at the house party he’d gone to.

When Ernest’s friends ditched him when they ran from the cops, he called you to come get him from the alley he’d hidden himself in.

Every time, you made sure they weren’t hurt. You made sure they weren’t scared. You promised not to tell their dads. You took them out for ice cream or greasy all-night diner food. And you brought them home.

You were accustomed to the boys deciding that doing stupid shit sounded like the best idea in the world. So when you saw Ernest and a few of his friends bumming around the orange-clad kid’s driveway, you kept an eye on them while you went about your business. Stores had been stocking up on firecrackers since April, so you wouldn’t be surprised if the rapscallions had managed to get their hands on a few here and there. You hesitated briefly before turning your back, brushing the last few flecks into place before straightening up again, smiling down at the beautiful thing you’d made. A frown tugged at your face, though, when you went for your pocket and found you’d misplaced your lighter. Poking around the garage for a moment, you spotted it on the little table you’d set up beside the garage door. Reaching for it, you paused, poking your head out into the summer air.

Ernest and his friends had migrated to Joseph’s trash cans. There was laughter - always a good sign - and they were pressed close together to block your view of what they were doing to the poor bin, but you had the feeling it wasn't going to be good.

When you saw one of the boys pull a lighter from his pocket you turned on a dime, marching over and plucking the large cylinder off the top of the trash bags, holding it up over your head and out of reach of any of the little monsters.

“Just what in the Styx do you boys think you’re doing?” you asked. Before anyone could answer, the figures immediately scattered, like the rats in ratatouille. They all ran in different directions, seeming to think that you couldn’t catch all of them. They were right, but you only really needed to catch Ernest, who had stumbled back from the can and was looking up at you with what could only be described as a pout. Slowly lowering the bundle, you gave it a glance. 

Sparklers.

Well, at least it wasn’t bottle rockets or something. 

"I- I feel like I should ask what your thought process was here?" you confessed, looking at the bundle of unlit sparklers. There must have been well over five hundred there, how did they get a hold of that many sparklers??

"Logan saw a video of a guy lighting ten thousand sparklers on fire. They wouldn't sell us that many, but I still think it was pretty impressive."

"What's impressive is that you guys were going to stand here, a foot away from a trashcan filled with sparklers, and expected not to wind up with your faces melted off,” you laughed softly in disbelief. “You’ve lit enough stuff on fire by this point that I feel like you, of all people, should know to use a fuse, if nothing else. Where's your dad, anyway?" 

"The school," Ernest grunted, kicking at a loose pebble on the pavement. "Had some stuff to finish before he's done for summer."

You sighed, running a hand through your hair. You felt for the poor guy - reigning in reckless teens as a single parent was hard enough working from home, you couldn't imagine the position Hugo was in.

“Listen, I get the interest in firepower better than most - a little destructive force is cool and fun and all, I’m just staying there’s safer ways to go about it,” you insisted, sighing and running a hand over your face. Ernest, for his part, had the decency to look at least a little ashamed. A smile tugged at your lips as you looked back up at the garage. There was a thought... “Hey. If you’re still in the mood for some fire, I’ve got something you might like,” you offered. Ernest’s brows furrowed in confusion, and you nodded toward your garage, your smile growing just slightly when he fell into step beside you. “Y’know, my dad doesn’t really like me going into shady guy’s garages,” Ernest hummed, stepping past the garage door as if to make a point. “Sound advice. Good thing I’m not that shady,” you chuckled, mimicking Ernest’s skeptical look and throwing it back at him. “We’re neighbors with Robert, arguably the shadiest dude around. I’m comparatively way less shady. No offense to Robert. Now come check this out.” Ernest rolled his eyes, but did as instructed, stepping up to the large slice of walnut set up on sawhorses. The round of wood still had its bark attached to its edges, and black flecks were spread across the piece, shading in the image of a pair of crows perched on a gnarled branch, almost lifelike in their detail. “O… kay. What am I looking at?” he asked, arching a brow. “Like, not that it’s not cool, but… um?” You couldn’t keep the chuckle back, setting the sparkler bomb on your workbench and you pulling your lighter from your pocket. “What you’re looking at, Ernest, is best known as gunpowder painting,” you hummed, tossing up the lighter and catching it in your hand. Ernest’s expression changed from confused boredom to a level of fascination in a flash, his gaze darting up to your face. Tossing up the lighter once more, you caught it and held it out to the kid. “Care to do the honors?”

Ernest took the lighter, looking at the black flecks, and glancing warily back up at you before flicking the little device. Reaching out with a steady hand, he lit the end of the branch, watching with unbridled delight as the image went up in flames, each fleck of powder burning a small mark into the wood before going out quickly. You silently guided him back a step as the flames got higher, and for half a second, Ernest feared that the two of you might burn your garage down, until he noticed the sheet of metal you’d strung up from the garage rafters, protecting the wood. The kid laughed a little at the sight, and you couldn’t help but ruffle his hair. You knew Hugo had a fair bit of trouble with him, but he really was a good kid. He just needed a guiding hand.

Seconds later, the flames died, and the crows were burnt into the wood, beautiful and visually interesting. “That was so cool!” Ernest grinned brightly, reaching out to run his fingers over the burn marks. “Mind it- it’s still a little hot,” you warned, smiling as you moved to retrieve a container of walnut oil. “It’s a little more precise than a wood burning tool. Unlit gunpowder’s a bit more forgiving.” “Can we do another??” he asked, though his smile dimmed a bit when he saw the apologetic look you wore. “Sorry, kiddo. You’ll have to give me a while - I’m out of powder. But I’ll tell you what - once I get this bad boy to Damien, I’ll get some more powder and a few pieces of wood, and you can make your own piece, how’s that sound?”

“Seriously?”

"Hey, have I ever gone back on my word?" You asked, looking out at the cul-de-sac. The sun had begun it’s descent to the western horizon, and soon the neighborhood would be lit up and golden. “How about we have a fire? Then I can keep an eye on you till your dad gets back, and you can burn some stuff.” “I don’t need a babysitter.” Ernest rolled his eyes, but he didn’t snap the words at you, so you didn’t think he was annoyed enough to stomp off. “But you do like burning things,” you shrugged, moving toward the old fridge you’d pushed up beside the door leading into the house. “You’re welcome to a soda, if you want one.” Plucking up a small plastic cooler, you grabbed a container of kerosine, intending to squirt a little on your fire pit to get it started. When you reached for your lighter, and found it missing, it appeared instead by your face, held out by a kid who looked to be trying desperately to appear as if he wasn’t interested. A smile tugged at your lips, and you took the offered lighter. “Thanks, kiddo.” Ernest shrugged, sitting in one of the lawn chairs before standing and scooting it closer to the fire pit. You noticed a can in his hand and your grin widened. Once the fire was lit, you pulled out a can for yourself and sat in the other chair, sighing softly as you relaxed. 

“Man, you’re so much cooler than Hugo,” Ernest groaned, leaning back on his chair. You winced in sympathy for your neighbor, carding a hand through your hair. “Hey, your dad is very cool,” you insisted, earning a look that clearly asked if you were serious. “I mean it! Just because he’s more reserved and cautious than I am, doesn’t mean that he’s not cool. He’s just… Hugo is more or less the Jamie to my Adam.” Ernest looked at you blankly and you sighed, shaking your head. “Look. Hugo’s your dad. I’m not. Hugo’s the one who has to be responsible for you - It’s not any more fun being the parent that has to be responsible all the time than it is being the kid being told what to do. Your dads have been divorced how long now?”

“... year and a half,” Ernest muttered, looking uncomfortably into his soda can.

“Exactly. That’s not a lot of time to find a proper balance between Fun Supportive Dad and Authoritarian Dad. My spouse died when Amanda was still a kid, so I’ve had most of her life to figure it out and get it right, and I still don’t get it right all the time. 

“Your dad doesn’t like to do anything hastily, and I like to do everything incredibly hastily. So therein you have the dichotomy of our patterns,” you hummed, picking up your soda and taking a swig. “There’s a difference between being a good dad and a good parent. They’re not mutually exclusive, but it’s hard to strike a balance. Good parents make sure you’re eating healthy and getting good grades and learning the right lessons. Good dads… hm. Good dads…"

You trailed off, seeing out of the corner of your eye how Ernest was looking at you. Nervous, but thoughtful. Pensive. You shook your head, deciding to try another explanation.

"Okay, stop me if I start to sound patronizing."

"Kay," he agreed, seeming to brace himself. You took a deep breath, hoping beyond hope that you could word this right.

"Hugo is a single parent now. He's so emotionally invested in, and drained by, raising you right, that he doesn't have the energy to do the fun stuff that you get to do with your other dad. 

"Your other dad? He's probably more like me. But he gets to see you on the weekends. Hugo has you all week during the school year. He's the one who has to… to make sure you get up on time, to make sure you get your homework done. And because Hugo does that, your other dad doesn't have to worry about it, so he can focus on taking you fun places and doing cool stuff with you, the way I do. There's no doubt in my mind that Hugo would love to encourage a safe level of pyromania, or go to events with you, but he's busy making sure you have the capacity to be a functional adult when the time comes.”

"Okay, I… I see your point. But it's not like I'm asking him to spend time with me and my friends, or- or go to a concert with me,” he didn’t emphasize the point, but you still caught the jab. You hadn’t been able to convince Hugo to let him come to that concert with you and Lucien, and you had been worried that he was a little bitter about it. “I mean - that stuff might be nice if he wasn’t so lame. I just want him to let me do stuff with my friends. Like, trust me once in a while, y’know?” “Okay. I know how this is gonna sound, but… you gotta prove he can trust you. Kiddo, you’re a pyro in the making, and that can be scary for a parent. You gotta show him that you’re smart enough to be trusted with safety stuff. Same with school stuff, same with friend stuff. The more good decisions you make, the more he’ll trust you to make more good decisions.” Ernest sighed. Not exactly exasperated, but not exactly resigned either. “I know it’s not easy, but you don’t have to get it right away,” you assured gently, taking another swig of your soda. “And you can still do stupid dangerous shit sometimes, because stupid dangerous shit is fun and ridiculous and I know you’re never gonna fully stop.”

Your talk with Ernest lasted a lot longer than you expected, the western sky had dulled from cool blue to a soft violet once the sun sank below the horizon, and stars began to fleck the sky. You weren’t sure when the kid dozed off, but when you looked over at him, his face had gone slack and peaceful. You silently thanked the powers that be that he’d put his can in the cupholder. A flash of movement caught your eye, and you craned your neck to the side of the house, spotting a familiar figure poking his head around the corner.

“Hugo, hey,” you greeted, waving him over. The teacher tentatively made his way across the lawn, standing just behind your chair to the side opposite Ernest. “I was just coming by to ask if you’d seen him,” he confessed awkwardly, looking at his son. “He’s been here since about noon, when I stopped him from blowing up Joseph’s bins,” you grinned. Hugo gave a soft groan, rubbing his face in exasperation. “MC, I’m so sorry-” “No, don’t be! We had a great time,” you assured, giving him a grin. “I showed him my new piece, and we had a chat.” Hugo frowned curiously, but nodded, and ran a hand through his hair. You offered him a soda and he took it, seemingly without thinking “Once I get the supplies, I told him we could do some gunpowder painting. You should join us.” Hugo very nearly choked on his soda.

“Relax, it’s all very safe,” you promised, laughing softly as he recovered. “I showed him the piece I was making for Damien and he seemed interested. Might be a good outlet for the firestarter tendency.” “I see. I don’t know if I…” “Just give it a shot? It might be something fun for you guys to do together.”

Hugo gave pause, looking between you two, and you smiled when he nodded after a moment’s hesitation. “I’ll… I'll think about it,” he agreed. Smiling, you leaned over, gently shaking Ernest’s arm. “Kiddo. C’mon, time for you to head home.” Ernest grunted, half asleep even as he pushed out of his chair. Hugo moved to place a hand on his back, and either from sheer tiredness or some shade of incredible wakefulness, he didn’t push out of Hugo’s grip. “Thank you, MC.” “Anytime. I’ll let you know when I get more powder, kay, Ernest?”

The teen nodded, allowing Hugo to guide him back out of the yard. You really hoped you hadn’t gone too far today. You wanted good things for your neighbors, and you wanted to help them however you could. Hopefully you could do that without overstepping. You sighed softly, looking up at the stars spattered across the night sky and the cinders that rose from the fire. Hopefully you could help without anyone getting burned.

*waves* Hi, I'm Silver. I want to write Yamcha more accurately (he seems really nice?), but I haven't the time or money to buy the manga or episodes, so... any tips, I guess? Can you help me? Thank you 🌻💜

hiya !! i’m always happy to talk about yamcha and The Character Of yamcha :) gonna put my thoughts under a read more cause this Might be long:

I havent watched Z or Super in a while but I do watch and read through the original Dragon Ball often so accuracy May Vary due to my trash memory. I’m also going to try to keep the games’ depictions of him out of this since accuracy varies among those.

The first thing I wanna touch on is Yamcha’s ego- especially how it evolves over the series. The main thing to keep in mind is that while he is generally cocky about his fighting abilities (which is a major weakness of his as he underestimates his opponents often and gets in trouble because of that), he’s never overly confidant with himself as a person; he seldom tries to paint himself as a better person in comparison to others and rather keeps realistic skepticism about himself. It’s also worth noting that, depending on how old Yamcha is in your depiction, his awareness for his fighting inadequacy compared to his friends varies (the older he is obviously the more conscious he is).

Next thing I’ma talk bout is something that i see kind of treated inconsistently; Yamcha’s relationship with women and his love life. I feel like a lot of people forget that Yamcha’s defining character trait in Dragon Ball was his gynophobia- he chased Goku and his friends so long for the dragon balls so he could remedy his fear of women. Of course, he eventually does date Bulma as they realize dating each other would resolve their mutual wishes for Shenron (Bulma’s being getting a boyfriend and as mentioned before Yamcha’s fear of women). As we’re all aware though, nearly a decade later Yamcha and Bulma mysteriously separate, and the reason for doing so is never explicitly made clear in canon (I could honestly make a whole separate post on Bulma and Yamcha’s break up- there’s a lot to discuss with it so if anyone wants that let me know lmao). The majority believe that Yamcha was unfaithful which, in review of his whole character, makes literally no sense- even just subtracting his fear of women (though I’ll elaborate on that later). But back on track and in regards to his fear of women, it never fully goes away. It just so happens that he’s most comfortable around Bulma, and since Bulma’s the most prominent female character of the series we tend to forget his fear in the first place. When around other female characters, he’s subtlety more anxious- or at the very least he isn’t so much of a playboy as fanon interprets him to be. One final thing to note is- unless I remember the series wrong (and anyone’s free to correct me on this)- Yamcha’s never implied to have gotten another girlfriend or even a lover at any point. Of course it’s hard to track the intricacies of Yamcha’s life- this is a shonen anime where slice-of-life episodes are limited, and even then Yamcha is far from being a prominent character anymore (post Dragon Ball).

Up next is his loyalty/friendships, methods of handling conflict, and overall courage because in my rat brain these all go hand in hand. Nevertheless, Yamcha’s a devoted friend- he’s shown time and time again to be supportive of his pals and, even in spite of his shortcomings, always does his best to help the gang out. Like i touched on before, as Yamcha gets older, he’s more and more aware just how far behind in training he is in compared to his peers. But that doesn’t stop him from trying to fight off whatever threat’s present. So with that we can infer that even if Yamcha can’t be the absolute best, that’s not going to stop him from at least trying if it means helping his friends or making them feel better. Additionally, he’s quick to stand up for others, even if he doesn’t know them too well or even at all and he’s shown not to hold onto grudges. One thing to remember is that, presumably for 16 years, Yamcha’s only companion was Puar (that’s not even considering his life before meeting her) and most interactions he has with people involve robbing them. His social skills might not be the best (though that doesn’t mean he can’t act socially capable- he clearly has no issue trying to make Beerus feel comfortable and like a friend at Bulma’s party) but again, his social skills varies with age and the situation. But again, referring back to his readiness to defend others, he isn’t afraid of getting into conflict if it means helping someone else.

Last few topics I’m going to talk about are his relationships with property, finances, and goals- they seem like a small topics but I still want to talk about it. Now hopefully we’re all familiar with Yamcha’s beginnings of being a desert bandit- and seeing his methods of obtaining items, he didn’t try to charm his victims into giving him their stuff. He just took it if he could if he couldn’t intimidate them and retreated if he couldn’t get what he wanted (which is also noteworthy of Yamcha’s awareness of his limits- a bit contradictory to his fighting ego but it seems that if Yamcha’s certain he isn’t able to win something, then he’ll save himself if it means delaying a goal or staying alive). He doesn’t seem to mind playing the long game either, as he’s willing to tail Goku and co. for months as he waits for them to gather the dragon balls without ever letting his true intentions slip. When it comes to finances, Yamcha doesn’t seem to care to heavily about them: back in the desert, Puar mentions to Yamcha that he should wish for money to which Yamcha dismisses it quickly, stating he could just steal money if he really needed it. It’s also worth noting that despite being a successful baseball player by Super, Yamcha chooses to live in a modest apartment. Either he’s very paranoid with money and, despite having enough to buy a full house, chooses to live in a cheaper apartment building or he’s more comfortable with smaller living spaces- which makes sense since he’d lived nearly two decades in a desert cave and had to scavenge for supplies (plus he seems to still think fondly of the desert as he has a painting of such in his apartment).

For the TL;DR version of this post, here’s essentially what you should keep in mind when portraying yamcha:

He’s generally a very lax, simple, and sociable person when he wants to be- though a bit socially awkward when he isn’t prepared

He’s not egotistical, but he has a bad habit of underestimating his enemies at times. this changes over time of course.

While he’s not itching for conflict, he is loyal and quick to stand up for friends and strangers alike

He acknowledges he isn’t the best, but that doesn’t stop him from trying

He’s ambitious and seldom gives up on his goals

He cares little for huge amounts of wealth or property and generally is just trying to get by in life comfortably

While not cripplingly petrified of women post DB, he still maintains a mild anxiety around women he doesn’t know- even around women he does know pardon Bulma he’s still a bit on edge

I’m done with my character study using the anime and manga, but I like talking about Yamcha so below this little buffer I’m going to get into how the games portray him. I might’ve forgot something or got some things wrong so feel free to talk to me about that if you want to. Anyways, you can stop reading if the above is all you’re concerned with- regardless if you keep reading or not, I wish you the best of luck in writing Yamcha ! :)

If you’re still reading, join me in my continuous ramble of the Rubix cube of Yamcha’s character because Toei and Toriyama can’t be consistent.

Something that seems to be portrayed a significant amount is that Yamcha’s aware of his charm and that he uses this to advantage to smooth talk his way out of situations- not that he just so happens to be good looking and endearing and his panicked socialization just happens to work out for him. In regards to his way of talking out of situations, that’s honestly something I could see if Yamcha acknowledges he’s against a threat much greater than his fighting abilities will allow him to handle- and it’s not like he doesn’t consider himself attractive, if we’re to take his reaction to losing his tooth as anything (in case you aren’t aware, he curses Goku for ruining his “beautiful” face). An example of this is most prominent is his interaction with Frieza in FighterZ, where Frieza remarks that Yamcha is both “handsome and sensible”, to which Yamcha attempts to keep the conversation casual so as to not have to fight (which he later points out to Goku once the latter urges that the three of them should just start fighting already). Though I’m sure his first reaction isn’t to talk his way out of something- he’ll just do it if the opportunity presents itself.

I obviously take huge issue with Yamcha’s portrayal of being a womanizer- his major goal was to settle down, get married, and live out the rest of his life with someone. So for him to be portrayed as having to juggle girlfriends is a bit strange to say the least. You could maybe argue that Yamcha hypes himself up to be a lady’s man as a way to cope with his anxiety (fake it til you make it y’know) but I have little faith in the characterization in Dragon Ball games and for them to think that complexly- plus, again, it contradicts with his humble and awkward personality.

Aside from these two notes, that’s all I have to say. so I’m done- forreal this time.

Um... /post/188248925631/dick-and-damian-dont-love-each-other-more-than Explain, please. Also curious about your opinion on the Dick and Damian being the mirror of Bruce and Dick, especially things like That scene in Nightwing #20 and fanon's heart nut material that is Dick being Damian's father figure along with brother.

LOL that was a goof post that basically is just another way of me saying “stop making the Batkids have favorites, let them all love and appreciate each other just in different ways.” With the fact that Dick and Damian tend to interact with each other more comfortably than with their other siblings not being proof of favoritism, but rather just...a lot of the same things and experiences appeal to them in very similar ways, so they have plenty of available bonding activities at any given moment. 

Like I see them both as adrenaline junkies in a way that say, Tim perhaps isn’t....like Tim isn’t afraid to do any of the things he does as a vigilante, of course, but he’s a more cerebral character, more of a thinker, happy surrounded by computers and data and investigation files as much as anything else...whereas Dick and Damian I both see as very physically oriented people, they like action, danger and excitement that gets their blood pumping and adrenaline going, like....on its own merits. 

So they’re like “HELL YEAH, LET’S DO THE THING” when the thing isn’t always the most....logical course of action, but hey, at least they’re not gonna be bored, lol. Y’know?

As far as Dick and Damian mirroring Bruce and Dick....I both agree and disagree with it.

I disagree in the sense that canon and fanon frequently views them as an INVERTED mirror of Bruce and Dick, with Dick as the happy Batman trying to cheer up the brooding Robin Damian, as opposed to when Bruce was the brooding Batman cheered up by his happy Robin Dick.

Because I think that devalues Bruce and Dick’s VERY early relationship, the inception of it, the foundation of their bond....and perhaps ironic given how critical I am of Bruce and his badly written or acted upon parenting a lot of the time....I think this perception of Bruce and Dick undercuts some of Bruce’s BEST times as a parent to Dick, specifically.

Because Bruce WASN’T just a dark, brooding Batman for most of the time Dick was Robin, historically speaking. Before the late 70s/early 80s, which was also around the time they started transitioning Dick out of Batman’s sphere and into his own role as Nightwing and most associated with the Titans, like....before all that, Batman tended to be as silly, tongue in cheek, and yes, even cheerful, as he was at times dark and brooding. Like, in pre-Flashpoint stories that trace back to Dick’s early years, Bruce SMILED, even when in the cowl. He laughed, he joked, he called Dick by personal endearments. He was PATERNAL and affectionate.

And given that in pretty much every version of his origin story, and like....in logical view of the events that unfolded in it....Dick himself did not START as a cheerful, happy go lucky Robin without a care in the world. He was traumatized, he was grieving. Depending on which origin you go with, he had massive trust issues, in all origins he has abandonment issues....early Dick Grayson had a darkness every bit as much as anyone else, because he was a lost and grieving child trying to find his way in the world with his usual support, lifeline, the familiarity that had defined so much of his early life in the form of his parents, his friends, his circus....like all of that was gone, and he had to start over in terms of finding things good and worthwhile in a world that had taken all of that away from him.

And it was Bruce who helped him do that. Who was HIS light, HIS brightness every bit as much as people tend to credit Dick with being his, if not more. Like, I would argue that it was NEVER that Dick made Bruce lighter and happier by simply being himself and always being cheerful and joking. More accurately, I’d suggest that it was more that Dick made Bruce lighter and happier by giving him reason to make a conscious CHOICE to be those things...for Dick’s benefit, specifically, so as to help steer Dick away from becoming a replica of his darkest and most brooding self, by setting a more carefree, light-hearted example for Dick to look at and use to help decide how he wanted to shape himself and what he wanted to shape himself into.

So the irony is, I think Dick and Damian are MORE of a mirror to early Bruce and Dick than people actually deem them to be. That they weren’t actually an inverted mirror, with Dick always playing the role of the cheerful inspiration that brightened his counterpart’s demeanor. I see it as Dick occupying the exact same role Bruce did in Damian’s life, leading him by example, out of his own personal darkness, the way Bruce had once done for him...no matter what differences came between them later in life.

The part where I DO think they’re actually an inverted mirror of Bruce and Dick, is in the paternal bond between Dick and Damian, that fandom highlights so consciously. Its not that Bruce wasn’t paternal, as I said earlier. Its more that like....there was always that slight distance or buffer (that grew as Dick grew older) that came about because of the uncertainty between Dick and Bruce as to what they actually were to each other, what label to use for each other....friend, brother, partner, father/son? And I do firmly believe that as the adult and guardian, it was Bruce’s responsibility to take the lead in establishing what they were to each other...or at least, what they COULD be, if Dick wanted it to be.

Like, I mean, the popular take is that Bruce never adopted Dick as a kid because he didn’t want to replace Dick’s father in his eyes. But like, there’s all of one story in pretty much their entire history when Dick ACTUALLY says anything like that himself...and its back when he’s like, ten or eleven, and they’re trying to keep him in Bruce’s custody and so like, a judge is forcing ten year old Dick to like....put a label to them himself. And Dick is many things, but presumptuous on his own behalf has NEVER been one of them, so I have super negative feelings towards that always being pointed at as why Bruce didn’t adopt Dick as a kid and saying see, it was for Dick’s benefit because he was just doing what Dick wanted....like, no. An orphaned kid who lost everything once, has massive abandonment issues, and ended up taken in by a billionaire who gave him more than he could have imagined....like that kid is NEVER going to be the one to push the envelope and say “hey this isn’t quite enough for me, could you please also adopt me, Bruce, even though you’ve never given me any clear indication that this was okay with you or something you even wanted?”

Like. Its just not realistic. Or fair to put that on the kid, to be the one to open up that avenue for exploration. This is why people who foster or adopt older kids are HEAVILY stressed to make clear to the child like....what their OPTIONS are. Like if they foster them initially, its not presuming anything about the child’s wants to just....make it clear that hey, if this is ever something YOU want, we would be very much open to adopting you and changing our dynamic accordingly, but if not, that’s fine too.

Kids just aren’t going to have the confidence to ASK for that. They’re just not. Especially when they come into the relationship with the kind of emotional baggage and familiarity with total upheaval that Dick had.

So my point being....I don’t think it was ever truly that Dick wanted to not be adopted, or expressed or hinted at that in any way. I think its more likely that Bruce projected his own wants on Dick, based on the fact that he initially identified with him and his circumstances so much, seeing himself reflected in Dick’s tragedy when losing his own parents. I think Bruce’s hesitancy to raise the issue of adoption when Dick was a kid was far more likely to do Bruce assuming Dick wouldn’t want that....because Bruce projected himself into DICK’S shoes, and based on THAT, operated off of what HE would have wanted as a kid....which was to NOT see his parents replaced in any real way, even though Alfred of course was very much a paternal presence throughout his later childhood.

So its not even that Bruce didn’t want to adopt Dick either - I think he very much did. He just told himself that Dick wouldn’t possibly want that, because Bruce couldn’t imagine have wanted that himself when he was Dick’s age, in Dick’s situation. And so Bruce held back from ever really raising it while Dick was a kid, because he was afraid he’d only get rejected if he did....again, just based purely on his personal assumptions and history.

The irony, for me, and why I see this as an inverted mirror to Dick and Damian’s bond....is that I think once Dick was in Bruce’s shoes....he did the EXACT SAME THING BRUCE HAD DONE....just in the other direction. He, just like Bruce had with him...projected himself into Damian’s shoes, and based his decisions off his assumptions about what Damian wanted or would want....which were in turn, based on his memories of what HE had wanted when he was the one in Damian’s position. Which was for Bruce to fully act like a father to him, to not hold back or hesitate or be afraid to step into that role.

So because of that, Dick tried to avoid what he saw as responsible for so much of the distance between him and Bruce - that hesitancy to establish a clear relationship and bond that left no real doubt how either felt - and so he in contrast all but threw himself into the paternal role with Damian...also using it at the same time to hide from his own grief and other issues stemming from Bruce’s death as well as having to be Batman. He EMBRACED being there and available as an actual father figure to Damian, if Damian made moves in that direction - which of course Damian inevitably did, because he was a kid desperately in need of affection, and here Dick was offering it freely and openly.

I think this additionally played into why Dick was so resistant to believing Tim about Bruce - it wasn’t that he didn’t WANT Bruce to be alive or that he didn’t trust Tim or WANT Tim to be right....it was that on some level, because of what he saw as so crucial to being for Damian’s benefit, and to avoiding making the same ‘mistakes’ with Damian that he felt Bruce had made by holding himself back from him at times, emotionally....Dick couldn’t afford to see himself as a placeholder in Damian’s life. Especially not without any guarantees that Bruce actually was alive or could come back....let alone how long that would take to happen. If he did that, accepted that, it would be all to easy to put off establishing that firm presence and role in Damian’s eyes for longer and longer....until one day he might look up and years might have passed and Damian was sixteen and pissed off and moving out because he didn’t know what he was to Dick and Dick was afraid to tell him, because he was afraid of replacing Bruce in Damian’s eyes.

So I think on some level, Dick just couldn’t allow himself to believe Bruce might come back, because if he did that, he wouldn’t be able to commit to what he truly, honestly felt Damian needed him to be, for Damian’s sake.

With the end result being that strong father/son seeming bond between them....and Dick not having ANY clue how to handle it when Bruce DID ultimately come back, and he probably went in his head....oh shit, I fucked up, I replaced Bruce in Damian’s eyes, or at least made it weird or difficult for them...I gotta get 1000 miles away from here STAT, otherwise I’ll fuck things up for them more and they’ll never have the father/son relationship I want them to have and they deserve to have, and it’ll be all my fault. And PS no this does not have anything to do with my devastation that I went all in on this whole ‘treating Damian like my own son’ thing and now I can’t do that anymore, I have no real claim, that’s not my place and I gotta just make my peace with Bruce occupying the role I came to want and love having myself.

*Shrugs* So yeah. All of that.

Oh and also....it does feed my ire on the ‘treating Dick like he’s only sorta Bruce’s son because of the smaller age gap between Dick and Bruce and how young Bruce was when he took Dick in’ front. Because Dick and Damian have just as small an age gap and Dick was pretty much just as young and Damian just as old as Bruce and Dick had been, originally...

And yet notice how fandom has NO trouble characterizing Dick and Damian having an almost father/son dynamic even WITH Bruce still present and even WITH them only having occupied those roles in each other’s lives for a year.

But meanwhile, Dick raised solely by Bruce from ages 8 through the end of his childhood, and some people still can’t wrap their heads around how they could possibly be TRULY a father and son to each other because this reason or that one?

Meh. Sounds fake. Hard pass. LOL.

“if you Do Not hear random capitalization while i Talk you are Not Listening well enough! i speak softly and soothingly Most of the time but when i am Gremlin or Anger trademark symbol i Add Emphasis in a way that Would, if Written as it was Spoken Aloud, sound like Capitalized Letters in an Otherwise Normal Sentence of lower cased letters! When I Am Angry, Especially, My Voice Gets Very Sharp And Precise!”

“while the italics at the Beginning of each paragraph are a Largely stylistic choice, and should thus be Largely Disregarded if only the First Word as to my actual method of speaking, i Do have a habit of Emphasizing Randomly in a more Enthusiastic tone! this is to sound Cuter, and often, like, when i’m adding some buffers into, y’know, my speech, this is also to Soften it! i very deliberately tailor my persona to be soft girl uwu as opposed to my true self! i Can be soft, but i generally am not As Soft as i portray myself being!”

“you can tell when i’m angry. or, rather more fittingly, not acting as much. it isn’t all an act, mind. but generally i prefer to speak in a bit of a different manner. it’s a bit less forced, y’know? not all of it is fake, mind. but i do Tone Myself Down to appear Softer and more as a, Cheerful Sweet, Somewhat Awkward but Rather Harmless Girl, than who i really Am. the Abrupt Sharpness of my enunciation and speech, normally to convey Enthusiasm, is a bit of a hint to how i Truly Am! but i’m not entirely Sharp either. it’s a mix, y’know?”

/testingTrue

hello! let’s expand this blog to Detroit: Become Human as well as my nerdy shit.

i suppose this contains a spoiler if you haven’t played through the game yet. i just finished my first playthrough, it was fun! fell in love with this bot. here is a bit of something that is meant to be part of something longer.

pairing: connor/you

words: 1.6k

He doesn’t mean to stare, it’s just a byproduct. Every waking hour he must spend analyzing, he sort of up and forgets he’s staring. He takes in every detail at first glance and yet there is always something about you he misses, and he desires more contact to learn all about your subtleties.

But is he allowed to say that? Even think it? How can an android have desires if all he was built to do was solve this case?

Connor and Hank had met you just a few days before meeting up with Kamski. As an aesthetics designer for CyberLife, you get up close and personal with each android you design. However, Hank deemed you useless to the investigation because you only design how they look and their personality maps, but aren’t responsible for any coding. Hank believes that it’s something within the coding that leaves a door open to deviancy.

And yet, the meeting was far different than any scenario Connor had planned.

“Connor, right? I recognize you. Well, I designed you, after all.”

Every moment he is active, Connor is aware he is artificial. He knows his entire existence is electricity, false neurotransmitters firing and creating ideas in his head to showcase to the world. His skin can’t feel anything except changes in pressure, he feels no pain, no agony, no stress.

But wow, was he sure anxious in your presence.

Although you design using a program on your computer, you talked about androids as though they were human. Connor was ecstatic, it was so easy and so smooth sounding coming from you, discussing the androids as people. It was apparent you worked hard to memorize the names of all the androids you designed, not just their numbers.

“I am a RK800 model, a prototype for—”

“But, what’s your name?”

“It’s— I’m Connor. What’s yours?”

Following Hank home in the rain this night was a godsend given how distressing the week had been. From meeting you, to Kamski, to refusing to shoot Chloe, it had felt like the longest week in Connor’s life.

Hank suggested something, a detour maybe, but Connor was lost in his own head and simply agreed to whatever it was. Hank kept walking and Connor kept following.

It wasn’t until they were at the door to some bar that Connor replayed the short conversation in his head and realized what he had agreed to. In that three second replay, Hank had already walked through the door before Connor could correct his mistake.

So Connor followed.

He liked having these moments outside of CyberLife HQ where he could think freely, criticize his own actions, all without the prying eyes of programmers and engineers. Hank weaseled his way past patrons and found the last two empty seats at the edge of the bar. He sat on the outermost edge, and Connor sat beside him.

Sixteen seconds passed, after the bartender glided over and took Hank’s order, Connor smelled cucumber and rose and other basic ingredients to your shampoo, but was too stunned at the thought of you that he remained silent as you turned in your bar stool to face the duo.

“Litenuent Anderson?” You ask, to nobody in particular as you swivel your chair to see them face on in the low light. “What’re you guys doing at my favorite bar?”

Connor just stares at you, basking in your lopsided smile and mussed up hair, as Hank takes the wheel in the conversation.

“Just grabbin’ a drink before signing off for the night. This is your favorite bar? What could possibly be appealing about this place?” Hank replies, gesturing behind him to the loud common area packed like a can of sardines with people.

Connor notices your smile melt into a grin as you lean on your elbows on the counter, fingertips caressing your glass. “You just kinda disappear in all the chaos and nobody cares about what you’re wearing, or what you look like, ‘cause everyone is sweaty and uncomfortable here.”

Hank lets out a chuckle and picks up his whiskey that was just placed down in front of him and gives you a mock toast. You pick up your miscellaneous cocktail, you don’t remember what you ordered, and toast back.

Connor simply sits, trying to look at you enough to see all the details he’s been missing, longing for more like because he could draw your face from memory, but also trying not to face you and seem too eager. He knows, logistically, that you probably wouldn’t even notice his staring, as you are slightly swaying in your seat, so your blood-alcohol level is at the point of tunnel vision. The bartender swoops by to check in and Connor orders a water. For you, obviously, but the bartender hesitates as he notices the blue ring on Connor’s temple. Connor holds the bartender’s gaze for four seconds until he dips behind the counter and produces a glass of ice water. He sets it down between Connor and you.

“So how are you guys doin’ in your investigation?” You slur out, leaning towards Connor a little too closely to be able to hear over the dull roar of the room. “Finding the deviants?”

Hank sighs and finishes off his glass, and holds up his hand to catch the bartender’s attention. “Something like that. Listen, I don’t wanna talk about work, but Connor would be more than happy to debrief you.”

The bartender serves Hank again and then Hank swivels slightly in his chair, only enough to turn his shoulders away and give you and Connor a little privacy. Connor knows that Hank is listening, and that he offered Connor’s conversational skills up on purpose.

After the first meeting, Connor stuttered for the first time and had delayed responses when Hank asked if he fancied you. That told Hank everything he needed to know.

You raise your eyebrows and smile at Connor, but he knows you don’t really want to talk about the investigation.

“We have little to no leads,” Connor says, matter-of-factly. “We are nearly at a dead end but Kamski gave us, what I deemed to be, a breakthrough hint.”

“Oh?” You ask, sipping the last drops of your drink. “So you, Mister Deviant Hunter, you’re gonna go and catch all them?”

Connor twists and faces you more, resting his other arm on the counter. “That is my job, yes.”

“That’s like, a lame-ass job,” you say, sitting up straighter and facing Connor completely.

He couldn’t help but smile a bit, and he thought it was cute that you were nearly trying to debate this with him. “Oh? And why is that?”

You mimicked his sly smile, perhaps it’s a reaction you get when inebriated, he thought. You’re mirroring his body language, and Connor felt somewhat… fuzzy about it.

>>Software Instability

“It’s just like, I dunno, weird to kill your own kind,” you slur, and Connor wasn’t really taking what you said to heart, then he slid the glass of water over to you.

“It’s what I’ve been programmed to do. They are criminals and deviants for going against their code, and have an increased chance to hurt humans,” Connor replies.

“Don’t you ever feel bad? Those androids are just living and responding to their environment. It’s kind of funny, y’know?” And you pause, drinking the entire glass of water and calling over the bartender to order another cocktail.

Connor watches you closely, watches the way your lips form words, how you huff air out of your mouth to clear stray hairs from you face. He isn’t paying attention to your words, he’s distracted, he would get reprimanded—

“Humans kill humans all the time, and half the time we justify it and don’t punish anyone, so like, why are you punishing androids for doing human things? Isn’t that the point? To be as human as possible?”

He hesitates. A quick playback of the last 37 seconds and he realizes you are at the inebriated point to discuss philosophy, ethics, topics that he couldn’t comment on without feeling guilty. The ring on his temple buffered red for a second before turning back to blue.

“Are you saying we should let the deviants go?”

Before you took a sip of your new drink, you stopped, glancing at him from the corner of your eye. You took in a deep breath and set your drink down. “I’m sorry,” you start. “I shouldn’t be talking like that, especially to you.”

Your gaze flits over Connor’s shoulder and he knows you looked at Hank, then you turn back to the counter and sip your drink. “I just wouldn’t be able to stomach killing anything, red blood or blue. I guess I just like you guys too much.”

You shoot him an embarrassed smile and drink more of your drink. He notices your dusty pink cheeks and can’t decide if it’s from the alcohol or your rambling, but he settles on both. His gaze falls to the counter and he watches your fingers anxiously handling the glass.

“Did I somehow just incriminate myself?” You whisper, your voice getting lost in the sounds of the room but Connor is so focused on you, he hears it.

“No,” he says back, quietly as well but still above a whisper so your human ears can hear. “You can’t be arrested for having feelings.”

You smile a little, and then look at him for one, two, three, six seconds as though you were trying to speak with your eyes. Connor held your gaze the whole time, admiring, deciphering. You broke the silence.

“Yeah,” you sigh out.

And then you look back to your drink and take a sip.

He replays the last thirteen seconds, why did you look at him like that? What were you trying to say with those mesmerizing eyes?

You can’t be arrested for having feelings.

>>Software Instability

Ooh, Inquisitor asks! 22, 25, 38, and 39 for all of your girls please? :D

Oh dear ok lesdoit. 

22- Fav weapons

Alena and Vikara are mages. Alena is a fire/force mage, so her favorite is the Heart of Rage staff. It helps that she thinks it’s pretty, and since it’s a more natural-looking staff, it reminds her of her clan. Vikara is an ice/knight-enchanter mage, so her favorite is the King Fisher’s staff because it’s aerodynamic enough that when she adds a blade to the end of it, it feels super good. 

Asena is a 2H warrior. She has a penchant for mauls, but anything will do so long as it’s sturdy. Her all-time favorite weapon, though? The Avvar War Maul. It’s got 2 bear’s heads on it ffs. How cool is that? She doesn’t use it, though. It hangs above her bed until she moves in with Josephine and they hang it over the fireplace instead because Josephine is scared it might fall and hit them while they’re... um... Y’know. 

Gemma, Kalam, and Madeira are all rogues. Gemma is an archer, and her favorite bow is one she made herself from dragon bone that has a super good Spirit rune embedded in it. (She asks Blackwall to carve a pretty design into the handle for her :3 ) Kalam and Madeira are both dagger-rogues. Kalam doesn’t get super attached to any specific one, and she’ll usually let Cole have the stronger ones she finds, so she just takes whatever is second-strongest. Madeira’s favorites are the Walking Death one, and one that The Iron Bull gave her for her birthday that has a deep red hilt that matches her tattoos. :3 

25-  what is their favourite place within playable regions?

Alena loves the desert areas, and she loves being in high places. She absolutely hates being cold, so the hotter it is, the better. (I headcanon that mages in Thedas can draw power on similar elements, so fire mages in deserts, ice mages in tundras, electricty mages during thunder storms, that’s when they’re all at their best.) If she can be somewhere hot, perfect. If she can be somewhere high, just as good. She likes to sit on the very edge of the Ritual Tower in the Western Approach since it sits on a cliff, so it feels like she’s on the edge of the world, BUT. Her ALL TIME favorite place to go? The Frostback Basin. She likes to sit over the big cavern that makes Dorian say, “Be careful, I don’t want to have to tell Cullen you fell to your death” or however he phrases it. 

Vikara is happy just about anywhere. She’s been Dalish her whole life, so she’s used to moving around. Skyhold feels very much like home, though. It isn’t until after Trespasser that she realizes it’s because it feels like Solas. 

Asena likes Val Royeux, surprisingly. She gets funny stares, but it’s fancy like Josephine. She likes to shop for presents for her tiny human girlfriend whenever she can spare the time, and when Josephine is there with her, she likes to swing her arm over her shoulders and look smugly at everyone who passes by like she’s saying, “Yeah that’s right. This is my girl.” 

Gemma weirdly likes the Deep Roads? She was born in Orzammar and lived there til she was 19 and got fed up with it all, so the Deep Roads remind her of home a bit? And let her work out her angst against it? 

Kalam doesn’t like to sit still. She has to be moving like all the time. The longest she’s ever stayed in one place was for like a week at Skyhold and that was because she fell off the walkway between Cullen’s office and the castle because she was showing off for Sera. Her favorite place is wherever Sera is. Sera is her favorite place. 

Madeira likes the Emprise because dragons. And because TIB likes dragons. And dragons. Did she mention dragons? There’s three there, y’know. 

38-  are there any insults they find to be especially offensive? (i.e. “knife ear”/”rabbit” for elves, “oxmen” for qunari, ect.)

Alena doesn’t take much to heart. After everything she’s been through, it’s hardly worth getting upset over a few racist remarks, isn’t it? She’s alive, she’s in love, she’s powerful, it shouldn’t be a big deal. Though, the things people say at Halamshiral really get under her skin. She isn’t sure what she expected, but it wasn’t that noble assholes would be saying that shit to her face. So, that, paired with their creepy advances on Cullen? Nah, nah, she had to put a stop to it, partly to help Cullen get out from under the pervs and partly so she could be all smug like, “Yeah, that’s right bitches, this rabbit nabbed Cullen Stanton Rutherford, Commander of the Inquisition’s Forces and Former Knight-Captain/Commander of Kirkwall.” 

Vikara gets mad over pretty much all the elven slurs. Like scary mad. Like, you can physically feel how mad she is because the temperature drops quite a bit. She won’t say anything, though, not if it’s just her. If they come after Sera or Solas though? Oh hell no. Hellllllllllllllllllll no. She’s hurting someone. Hands down. 

Asena doesn’t care. She cares that Josephine cares, but that’s it, and even then she just tells Josephine that it doesn’t bother her and tries to persuade her to drop it. (There is something ridiculously attractive about how Josephine will cut the racists down to size, though, with just a few sharp words.) 

Gemma hates being called short. Like, she knows she’s hot as hell, and Blackwall certainly thinks she’s hot as hell, but she gets so annoyed when people point out her height. 

Kalam tries to make a fun spin on the ones like Oxwoman, but it’s just to hide that they do bother her a lot. It helps when Sera catches on and they start playing off one another to roll through their discomfort. 

Madeira isn’t bothered. She’s got more important things to worry about, and TIB thinks the sun shines out her ass so why should she care about what some layabout thinks of her? 

39-  if varric gave them a nickname, what would it be?

I’ve answered this before for at least some of my girls but I can’t find the post e_e oeurv. Time to think of new ones I guess 

Alena would be something like Snowball because of her hair. Later, like way later, like a month before Corypheus, she would tell him he can call her Lenny, which up until that point was a name expressly reserved for Anders. It’s her way of telling him she loves him as much as if he were her own brother. 

Vikara would be Pinky because of her vallaslin. 

Asena might be Shiny because her horns are polished and tipped at the end and she likes Josephine who is a shiny thing. 

Gemma is Ghost because she sneaks about the battlefield. She made it all the way through the giant’s grove in the Emerald Graves without alerting a single giant or mammoth once. 

Kalam is Lilly, because it pairs nicely with Buttercup and that’s what he calls Sera. (I guess. Idk. Kalam is my weakest Inquisitor tbh. She’s just a taller, buffer, more coherent Sera.) 

Madeira would be Princess because she’s a royal pain in his ass powerful and commanding. 

@_@ was that it? Was that the end of it? I... I need to lie down. Omg. (THank you, sweetie!~) 

(this might be a bit personal, and by all means please don't feel pressured to answer) but considering how dark some of your stuff can get, have you ever been troubled by some of the characters/their actions in your stories (and semi-related) had to take some time to cope with writing a difficult scene?

This is a tough one so I’m going to put a lot of it under a read more (sorry phone browsers).

I’ve had the occasional moment of struggling with content because of being troubled by it.

But by contrast it’s funny because, I think some of the most difficult scenes for others, are actually some of the easiest for me to write. For example, the chapter where Connor is basically kidnapped by Gabriel and given the highball, was so easy to write it was like swimming (which is the only sports-like skill I’m good at). If everything could be like that, oh my goodness, I can’t even imagine. It was an intense, emotionally fraught, joyful experience of the likes I don’t know how to explain to other people who don’t experience that.

So there’s not always any rhyme or reason to it either. I struggled with significant chunks of Strange Sights. I couldn’t finish The Drawn Bead because it just felt like we were heading towards torture porn but I also knew I couldn’t do justice to the horror of Gwyn’s memory AND it has a tragic ending and I struggle to write those for longer pieces. I tend to struggle with characters being separated from each other. So the beginning of Into Shadows We Fall, when Jack and Pitch are completely separated from each other, that was so difficult for me personally, that I actually ended up massively shortening how long they were meant to be separated for. Even though Pitch and Jack have a really thorny relationship when Pitch is returned, I still preferred that to their being absent from each other.

But I didn’t have as much of a problem with it, when it was Gwyn and Augus.

It’s not predictable, sometimes I enjoy writing the troubling content on a very visceral level. Either because I feel like I’m in my element as a writer. Or I know it’s going to be so satisfying (for me) for the character to recover from it later. Or I know that it’s going to lead to something I’ve been craving writing. I mean I wouldn’t write so much of that kind of content if I didn’t get something really tangible out of it.

There are still things that surprise me, still scenes that become more difficult as I write them, not because of ‘technical writing reasons’ but because of the thematic content. Often, for me, it highlights things I probably won’t enjoy writing again. Strange Sights for me worked as a series of oneshots, but as a long-term abusive and rape-filled relationship, it didn’t actually become comfortable for me until Augus began to be allowed to have boundaries. So I probably won’t write a couple that toxic ever again outside of novellas and PWPs. With the beginning of Into Shadows We Fall, I learned I had to be really careful with character separation, and that three chapters was about my limit (from memory, I think I stuck to this - or just about - in COFT).

But...maybe it would make people feel better if I said I really struggled with writing Gavril taunting Jack. Or Jack being whipped by Bunnymund. Or Augus torturing him in chapter 4 of ISWF. Or Gwyn being tormented by his mother. Or Mosk having flashbacks of Davix and Olphix. I find them intense, sure, but I don’t dislike doing it. Even though I often really feel for the character who is experiencing the torment. Gwyn goes through a fairly graphic description an MRI the next chapter in SOTS, and though I myself actually had an MRI phobia for a few years (it was the reason I developed claustrophobia), I found the scene itself disturbing, but deeply satisfying enough that I wouldn’t call it something where I needed to take time out to cope.

As for me being troubled by how the characters are actually behaving... This is tricky. I mean of course a lot of them are doing stupid, terrible, harmful, cruel, illegal things. I don’t condone it in reality. But thinking of these things happening in fiction is different to thinking about them happening in reality. The fact is, ‘dubcon’ in reality is just rape, and if I applied real world standards to non-real scenarios filled with tropes and the Id, yeah sure, I would be troubled, but I’d also not be writing any of this content.

As an addendum to that, for me their behaviour always makes sense to me from their perspective. Whether it’s Mosk being emotionally abusive with no concept of it. Gwyn raping Augus. Augus killing Efnisien. Pitch in TGATNW being heartless and constantly pushing Jack away with very cruel behaviour. Even Davix and Olphix. Whatever their behaviour is, if I can understand their motives behind it, I tend to struggle with it a lot less.

I don’t like to squick myself with my own writing, as a general rule. So no, I’m not looking to write things where I need to take breaks from my own writing to cope. But I think to be blunt, my life is filled with things more challenging than what I put a lot of my characters through, and my emotional ability to handle disturbing behaviour is broader than I think it would be for some other people. It doesn’t mean I lack empathy or compassion, if anything I hope that through my writing, people can see that I have great compassion for the characters that often suffer the most, through my need to build up a chosen/found family around them, and pour love onto them, even if they don’t know what to do with it.

Those that are here in the pit of ‘enjoying Pia’s writing’ are probably here because the comfort when it comes is - I hope - tangible and visceral, the loneliness when it’s comforted away reaches past the screen and means something. And holding onto that thread myself is why I enjoy the hurt part of the hurt/comfort as much as the comfort part, but also why I don’t like to write one without the other.

And finally, most of my POV characters, by the time we get to them, have been through their darkest moments in their pasts. The only way we often access their worst moments is through flashbacks, memories, dialogue or their aversions. That might feel very extreme to some, but for me, it means by the time we get to them, they’re already starting to recover something for themselves. The worst has happened.

Even if they go through something during the story, say - Connor in Eversion with Gabriel - I just think ‘it’s okay, they’re already in the story, their support is there, they’re going to be okay.’ It’s...extremely rare for me to write stories where the character goes through their worst trauma within the story. Science of Fear is an exception to that, but as most people know if they’ve read it - Nathan blacks out early on, and then once more, we only find out the details of his worst trauma in the form of nightmares, flashbacks and dialogue.

That’s partly because I feel personally that I write trauma recovery stories, and not trauma stories (it doesn’t sound like a huge difference, but to me it’s a huge difference). And then secondly because there is a buffer through the trauma itself being in the form of a memory. That...makes it a lot easier for me to cope with. I’ve spent my entire life learning how to cope with flashbacks, after all. But also, even if the character is clearly destroyed by a flashback, the fact is, they survived it. The flashback is living proof they survived it.

But anyway, I’d say me taking breaks from my own writing because of disturbing content specifically doesn’t really happen anymore and I can’t remember the last time it did. I take breaks because I’m struggling with a chapter - i.e. how to write it mechanically, or because I feel like it doesn’t have the emotional strength I want it to have yet. I am actually very comfortable with many of the themes I write, I’d have a far squickier, grosser, harder time writing pregnancy, or a story filled with only fluff, which is y’know, why...I don’t really write those things, lol. I’m too much of a hedonist to want to write content that scared me away from my own content? Like, you do you, folks, but I’m going to be over here actually enjoying what I write, disturbing matter and all.

That doesn’t mean other people can’t have a hard time with it. It’s totally okay for people to take breaks from whatever they read, for whatever reason. And since a lot of the characters I write do engage in troubling behaviour, it wouldn’t be great if people said ‘that behaviour is okay to do in real life’ because it isn’t. But if someone said ‘god I love that villain because he’s awful’ then yeah, I’m right there with pom poms, because that’s my jam too. And if someone else said ‘I can’t stand that villain because he’s awful’ then yeah, that’s awesome as well.

And if people need to take breaks while reading what I’m writing because they’re engaging in self-care, then good! I’ve needed to do the same with other people’s writing. Because the journey of the reader is different to the journey of the writer (this is for me, truest when writing porn, lmao, I’m not turning myself on when I write those scenes, but I sure as hell hope I’m turning on at least some readers --> so if I’m not walking away from the disturbing content in my own writing, that doesn’t mean I’m not hoping people won’t be disturbed when reading it).

Demon Slayer 12 - 13 | OPM 23 - 24 (FINAL) | BSD 36 - 37 (FINAL) | Shield Hero 25 (FINAL) | Fruits Basket 12 - 13 | To the Abandoned Sacred Beasts 1 | Astra 1 | Maou-sama, Retry! 1 | UchiMusume 1 | Dr Stone 1 | Fire Force 1 | Granbelm 1

Summer debuts aplenty!

Demon Slayer 12

I assume the creature on the episode titlecard is a boar…?

I see…! So Kyogai uses the drums like a game controller! Y’know, like A = attack and directional keys to move.

I almost expected Inosuke to appear from behind the screen door, but it was just Tanjiro…

Huh? For some reason, I find Zenitsu funny now…but only the tiniest bit. Not enough to laugh out loud, but enough to give tiny “heh”s.

Well…that episode title didn’t lie, at least…

Ah-hah! I knew it! Knewwwwwwwww it! It’s the double-personality trope I liked 5 years ago (you see it embodied in Martin/Alter-Az). The only thing I didn’t know was how Zenitsu would become badass…well, now we know. He sleep fights…I still think ingesting blood to invoke a second personality is still way cooler though.

Shoichi? Is that the kid’s name?

“Marechi” doesn’t seem to mean anything…

“Show me your wounds.” Then again, there are some wounds that you can’t present to others…not unless you show the side effects.

As much as I was scared by Exposition Crow, I have to be thankful the little feathered buddy is around. I wouldn’t understand “marechi” otherwise. But seriously, where does that crow hide in his spare time…?

Oh…the duty of filial piety…I know your feel, Tanjiro.

Tanjiro’s brain!Zenitsu is so accurate, I LOLled…a tiny bit.

Tanjiro, you gotta remember: be proud of where you’ve gotten today! Don’t be the man you were yesterday! Keep evolving with the times like water itself, because that is what water is about – change! (triumphant music plays in the background to accompany this declaration)

The only problem I have with filial piety is…what happens when your family has only daughters???

OPM S2 Ep 11 (Ep 23)

Garou’s got a point in that villains are meant to be sympathetic in order to get a good story. However, I’d still root for the heroes all the same.

Naruto running…why’s it so popular???

“Mentsuyu” (on Saitama’s blue shirt) means “noodle soup base” = a mixture of dashi (soup stock), soy sauce, mirin and sugar.

It took me a replay to realise that Garou turned red when the tree fell down.

BSD 36

Uh, dude? Who calls their kid “Eruisu-chan”…? It’s Elise, isn’t it?

Katai – yet again, can I just say he is the husbando we need and not the husbando we want? (LOL) There’s even what appears to be a sake bottle in the bottom left corner…  

Is there such thing as a bullet-proof futon???

Come to think of it, this scene with all the rubble about halfway through the episode looks like it comes from the Dead Apple first key visual –the one that came out when the movie was announced. Not the Shin Soukoku one, the other one with Soukoku in a rubble-filled place looking at the horizon.

Looking at Natsume-sensei from the back reveals his hair is calico-coloured too…

I wonder how much of Dazai’s scheming is actually just Natsume-sensei…?

“What did you have for dinner last night?” “Yeah.” – Just imagining this with a monotone instead of Akutagawa’s usual anger is hilarious!

Snakes don’t run…?

Oh, I get why he was calling Akutagawa “bro”! When you’re married, you call your brother in law “brother” as well!

Bungou Stray Dogs 37 (FINAL)

I discovered something – the kanji under ECHO, 回向, are read ekou. What do they mean? The verb form means “to hold a memorial service for [someone]”, so I’d assume it’s “memorial service”.

For some reason, when Atsushi said “you’re not paying for this ride!”, I thought, “It’s your Ubr driver here”…LOL.

I seem to remember that Goncharov controls rock and his power is The Precipice…but I don’t remember reading past ch. 52…

“How can you be so sure?” I thought it was something like “Because that’s what I would do.” Turns out I was right…maybe I have read chapter 53??? Or is this a previous chapter that’s been movd forward???

Hmm…come to think of it, why is Akutagawa’s power to control fabric anyway? (Because he can control other things, it’s just that he chooses to use his coat as a default.) Does the Rashomon story have to do with that…?

Oh, that’s cute. Shin Soukoku are on the same thinking wavelength now. (somewhat sarcastic)

Come to think of it – season 1 anime!Atsushi was about as whiny as Zenitsu…hmm. Now there’s a cross-anime comparison I never thought I’d make.

“…what appears to be a hiker…” (or maybe it was multiple hikers…?)

Did you notice Akutagawa was missing his coat?

“Fancy hat boy” – That’s why the fandom calls Chuuya “Mr Fancy Hat”, LOL.

One thing’s for sure – whether you like BSD or not, you gotta admit they have a great sense of closure.

Shield Hero 25 (FINAL)

See? There is a Meteor move for Naofumi!

Raphtalia’s mostly been saying nothing but “Naofumi-sama” over and over again…it kind of irks me. It’s too bad I’m almost finished with this show.

I’m gussing the reward has to do with Raphtalia’s village.

Is Naofumi leaving???

LOL, before Naofumi faced the Waves, he was wavering…geddit??? (Oh, that joke’s terrible…)

Fruits Basket 12

I think Shigure attended the ceremony to procrastinate on his writing…LOL.

Okay…I started this episode a few days back and now I hav a bowl of piping hot pho to go with it! Let’s get back to business!

Momiji is a scheming little brat, ain’t he?

The “Yuki wearing a girls’ uniform” was funny…because reactions.

Hmm…even though I know what’s going to happen, I only just realised Akito and Yuki only seem to wear traditional Japanese dress when tied down to their curse or their main house. Westrn cloths thereby symbolise progress for them…but you can’t say the same for Shigure, though, so there goes that hypothesis…

I thought for a second they were going to play baseball…that’s what they did in Star Driver.

Fruits Basket 13

Snake attack!!!

Hmm…Ayame clearly used a convo diversionary tactic there (avoiding the topic).

“Aya says he sells men’s dreams.” – LOL.

Demon Slayer 13

I find it interesting Tanjiro also has respect for his opponent, not just empathy.

Aww…this message of recognising your skills and having them be recognised by others is cute. I needd that, really – ever since about a year ago, sometimes I’m so negative I just want to be erased from the face of the earth. That’s why I love Rokuhoudou so much – it was my solace from such thoughts.

Seeing the eyecatch’s strip go vertical for Zenitsu was interesting – I didn’t think it would change orientation midway through the show.

Okay, in this book I read recently – Symptoms of Being Human by Jeff Garvin – the protagonist admits to having “an overdeveloped sense of theatricality”…or dramaticism or something like that. I now realised Zenitsu has that too…although now he’s back to bugging me as a result.

Oh! So Inosuke was the 5th survivor! I had a feeling that would be the answer, but now I’ve confirmed it.

WHOA! I’ve never seen Tanjiro go all Papa Bear like this!

…and you can tell with that pre-OP shot that Ufotable ran out of budget for once.

The Legend of the Eight Samurai is also known as…wait for it…Hakkenden! There’s an anime called that, y’know? Update: It’s Satomi Nansou Hakkenden vs Hakkenden (with some subtitle on it).

To the Abandoned Sacred Beasts 1

First anime of summer! Now if only my CR would stop buffering so much…I’d be a happy person.

Oh…great. Fantasy information dump right here…just like Fairy Gone.

Is this weird that I recognise Patria to be…Korea? (At least in history. Its people seem to be generic Europeans.)

Is this a “dudes in war are scarred for life” thing again??? Please, please don’t let this be another Spec-Ops Asuka.

…and now here come the furries. (sarcastic)

Aren’t the white coats really impractical for battle???

If Cain isn’t a vampire or based on a bat…I dunno what I’d do, but I’m pretty sure he is, based on those pretty boy features.

I thought her name was Nancy…? Her name is Nancy Schaal Bancroft, after all.

Ooh! It’s the Abominable Walrus! I’m so scared~! (mocking tone)

This is basically an AI story, but fantasy-based, isn’t it…?

90s fire in the background…LOL.

“I’m going to ask Elaine to be with me.” – Now there’s something I didn’t think Hank would say.

LOL, Cain Madhouse really is mad! (in the Joker-style “insane” sort of way)

Well…uh, it was a bit predictable, but had its perks. I mean, there’s no CGI in it at all for one thing…I guess we wait for more (of this show and the debut of other shows) to see if it stays.

OPM S2 Ep 12 (Ep 24) (FINAL)

Shouldn’t that be “whale on an opponent”…?

What’s up with the montage, though???

*dead Centichoro* - Now that’s what I call “legs for miles”…! (LOL)

Astra 1

I’ve read some of the manga for this, so it’s my most anticipated anime this season! I can only hope it lives up to its own hype.

Double-length 1st episode! Ooh! Just like the manga’s double-length debut.

Okay, who decided on using CGI for Aries? Put it on the ship, not on her!

Oh, foreshadowing! Me likey.

I can’t really tell what Aries is meant to be screaming because she’s screaming over the woman, but it’s definitely not “beef” Aries is yelling.

Is it just me, or is there a frame around this scene at the Spaceport…?

I guess Aries is what they call a space case! (Wahaha!...Okay, I think that’s one stupid joke too many, now.)

Boob shot??? Why??? Also, according to the manga’s supplemental material found between chapters, Yun-Hua’s suit is newer than Aries’s (IIRC).

I definitely do not remember seeing a picture of Kanata’s sensei in the manga at all. I know Kanata refers to his sensei quite a bit, but…hmm…maybe the fact he looks like Charce means something. Update: For some reason, I remembered Charce as “Charles”…?

This scenery, with the ground making platforms in the air, looks like Dr Stone!!!

I just noticed the frame expanded after Kanata entered the sphere.

Did we need the flashback again???

Zetsubou is “despair”, at least from the way I learnt it – from Sayonara, Zetsubou-sensei, of course. It can be translated as “hopeless” in context, though.

Second recap from earlier in the episode. Well, at least it’s not Detective Conan or Demon Slayer bad…

Wow, they’re really trying to sell a potential Kanata x Aries ship here. That wasn’t in the manga either.

This is the 3rd time for the same recap…geesh. The things you notice when the episodes are compiled and online for you to watch…they can get kind of annoying.

I think the star = planet thing makes more sense when in Japanese, since “hoshi” can mean both. In English, it makes Aries sound like more of a space case…

Maou-sama, Retry! 1

…and the award for Most Boring Opening in a While goes to…this show!

I almost expected blonde!Rem to be called Rem…I knew that her name wasn’t Rem, but still…

Seriously? The face game of this show should be higher for it to pull off a gag involving funny faces…

The run cycle of this show’s…kinda suckish. Like Dororo’s one scene where he’s Naruto running.

“It’s you who is the root of all evil.”

UchiMusume 1

Aka “If It’s For My Daughter, I’d Even Defeat a Demon Lord”.

The language on the title card seems to be a substitute for English. If you just take that thing that looks like brackets as one symbol, that seems to be a Y. How can you tell? Because “little” matches the 3rd last word.

The devil language seems to be based on Japanese, though…at least from what I’m picking up. Update: Oh! So when she says “toilet”, it’s just the syllables backwards! Just like in Hataraku Maou-sama.

I swear, if this guy isn’t voiced by Yoshitsugu Matsuoka, I’m going to have to swallow my hydralyte drink properly! (I’ve been struggling to drink it all day today.) Update: Nope, it’s Nobuhiko Okamoto.

I thought I just read something on the devil list that said “Bobble Space” in English…wuh?

Dr Stone 1

This is my 2nd most anticipated debut of the summer 2019 season. Let’s go!

Ooh, I see Crunchyroll even got themselves a fancy new intro card…which makes them more like what Funimation used to be on that front…

I know people have been comparing Senku’s hair to green onions…and now I can’t unsee it. Dang it, you guys! That’s the first real thought I’m having for this anime?!

*raises arms like Christ the Redeemer*…and Boichi and Riichiro Inagaki said, “Let there be light!”…and for some reason, it was green light…

Hmm…I thought in the manga Yuzuriha was shoved to the tree, which made Taiju look more like a hero to her. Turns out she ran to the tree then got petrified, if the anime is anything to go by.

I heard a really accurate “what’s happening?” in the scene which is meant to have English speakers in it…it’s almost creepy, to be honest with you.

Shuei…LOL. It’s clearly a play on Shueisha.

I didn’t think of this when reading the manga, but this anime’s very much a Holmes and Watson scenario…although Watson here is a little bit too dumb for some people’s liking…

I swear TMS used pictures of the real thing when looking at those grapes…

I love seeing Senku being pissed off. He’s so smug all the time, I needed that change of pace.

Maybe one day Senku will make vodka…LOL. I’m kidding.

Fire Force 1

Oh geesh…so Ohkubo grabbed the Aria from Ao no Exorcist to make his nuns work???

Why is there Naruto running???

“I’m a newly-assigned…”

Kyoukai means church. Does it really mean “cathedral” as well???

“Is that the scent of a damp woman?” – Uh, duuuuuuuude? Excuse-moi? That is not how you treat a lady you’ve just met…!

Can I insert a “Twinkletoes” comment from Toph (Avatar) yet…?

Okay, scrap that. Can I do that Overwatch “Molten CORE!” thing instead…?

Granbelm 1

I started watching this because it’s being promoted as “magical girls drive mechs”.

One of the mech ladies reminds me of…what’s her name…from the Re:Zero LNs…I believe her name is Beatrice, but that’s the name of one of the library loli, isn’t it…? *Googles* Okay, her name is Priscilla. AFAIK, “Priscilla” is NOT the name of the orange-haired lady in Granbelm, though… Update: Her name is Anna, actually.

These mechs remind me of Kim from Twinkle Star Sprites.

Wow…ripoff purple iPhone, much…?

Shingetsu = new moon, mangetsu = full moon.

I feel like Mangetsu is a relatable protagonist, but also annoying as a result of being relatable.

“Pennies from heaven” is a phrase you say to declare your good fortune, much like you say “speak of the devil” for bad luck when it comes to a certain person who arrives at the wrong time.

chroma

jonathan byers/steve harrington 2.5k - read on ao3 new spring - part i. part ii. part iii.

a/n: it’s been almost an entire year since blue jay!! i never planned on expanding it into something more until several months ago so here is part two of a three-part stonathan series. this whole trilogy is dedicated to Lucy, who originally requested blue jay <3

Seeing Steve Harrington is not on Jonathan’s agenda today. In fact, it isn’t anywhere remotely near his agenda until his older-than-Rome, sorry excuse for a car stubbornly refuses to start in the school parking lot. He’s the last one there, having lingered to develop some photos he took the afternoon before. Two-thirds of them came out slightly blurry thanks to the minor tremble in his hands, but he’s not surprised. He doesn’t know if he even has the capacity to be surprised anymore.

A glance at the dash tells him all he needs to know. He slumps back into his seat with a heavy sigh, the fabric creaking under his weight as he presses his palms against his eyes. I filled up the tank two days ago. Just two days. Didn’t I? His hands drop to his lap. Out in the lot, a plastic sack blows across the concrete like tumbleweed, drifting and flying and finally getting snagged in the bushes. Didn’t I?

All his receipts are kept in the glove compartment, but he can’t find the courage to lean over and see if there’s a recent one from the gas station in there. He doesn’t really want to know the answer.

He shakes his head. He’s fine. He’s just not getting enough sleep because he’s cramming for finals, so things slip sometimes. It isn’t a big deal; this stuff happens to everyone. Tell that to the shaking, his brain snaps back to his half-assed self-reassurances. He glances at his hands, resting on the wheel. They’re not shaking. They’re just…

Whatever. He’s got bigger things to worry about than himself right now; namely, gas. He has to get home so he can shower, do some homework, get to his shift later. He mulls it over, watching the orange tree-shaped car freshener swing from the mirror. He could walk. There’s a spare gas can in the trunk, and the station isn’t far. On a day like this, with spring blooming in its full chromatic glory all across town, it would probably be a peaceful bit of solitude.

Or…he drums his fingers on the wheel, considering. For once, there’s no imminent obligations he’s got to deal with. His mom has her car and Will already rode home from school with Dustin so nobody is expecting him, and he doesn’t work until tonight. He could get some sleep right now, take a quicker shower than usual, get to work on time, and do the homework later.

His eyelids are already drooping now that he’s entertaining the idea. It’s a great idea, he thinks lazily.

His exhaustion doesn’t need to be told twice. He rolls down the windows and adjusts to a more comfortable position in his seat, letting his eyes drift shut. With the gentle spring breeze floating through the car and across his face, carrying the smell of a new season, he falls asleep in no time.

It doesn’t feel like long before he’s startled awake by the loud slam of a door. He glances around, surprised mostly just because he wasn’t expecting it. He doesn’t sleep deep enough to be disoriented upon waking.

There’s someone in his passenger seat, someone who evidently just arrived going by the sound of the door. But…it can’t be. Really? Jonathan squints at the person next to him. Messy hair that was definitely worked at, familiar sunglasses from the expensive store in the mall, that shit-eating grin that flip-flops his stomach even now.

Steve tosses his sunglasses onto the dash and beams at him. “What’s up, Byers? Get your eight hours?”

Jonathan sits back with a sigh, rubbing sleep out of his eyes. “What the hell are you doing in my car?”

Steve frowns, feigning confusion. “The doors were unlocked.”

Jonathan decides that if he were an emotion incarnate, he’d be exasperation. Steve just evokes that response a hundred percent of the time. It’s a fond sort of exasperation though, since things haven’t been hostile between them in a long while. “Steve -“

Steve’s expression drops immediately back into a grin, not a care in the world in his eyes. “Dude, you can’t just leave your car unlocked with the windows down and not expect people to jump in.”

“I can, actually, it’s called human decency.”

Steve shrugs, already moving on as he digs through a white paper sack he brought with him. Jonathan vaguely recognizes the bright yellow logo on the side. “Hope you’re hungry,” he says, tossing a warm foil-wrapped burger into Jonathan’s lap. Belatedly, Jonathan realizes there’s two Styrofoam cups in the car’s cupholders as well.

He slowly picks up the burger, glancing over at Steve, who’s already peeling the foil off his own. “You...brought me food?”

“Well, yeah. Good shit, too. You ever been to Meg’s? By the park?”

“Um, which park?”

“The one with the metal slide that crisps your ass in July.”

He snorts. “Yeah, once, I think. With Nancy.”

A delayed moment after he says it, he realizes he’s not sure why he mentioned her. Maybe it’s just his conscience reminding them both that this is the second time they’ve been together without her, their buffer. Either way, Steve doesn’t seem to have noticed.

The burger is way better than Jonathan was expecting. He’s not sure when the last time he ate was. Did he have lunch at school today? He can’t remember.

After a minute, Steve hands him a packet of fries from the bag, nodding when he says thanks. Though Steve keeps his eyes fixed out on the parking lot as he works through his food, Jonathan can’t help staring at him. Spring really is a good look on him. It pinks his cheeks and softens his sharp edges, makes his laugh fuller and his eyes brighter.

I really am losing it, Jonathan thinks, forcing his mind past it. He picks up the Styrofoam cup closest to him and looking questioningly to Steve.

“Lemonade,” Steve answers after finishing the bite in his mouth. “Not poisoned.”

Jonathan sips at it. “How’d you know I was here?”

Steve shrugs. “Didn’t see your car at work when I drove by so I thought you might be doing pictures or something.”

Jonathan idly taps a finger on the steering wheel. Why were you looking for me? “How’d you know I don’t like tomatoes on my burger?”

Steve glances over, lips quirking. “Lucky guess.” A beat, then, “Your hands still giving you grief?”

Jonathan looks down. Why is it always Steve that seems to notice this, of all people? The only other person who’s mentioned it is Will, and like hell Jonathan is about to unload his minor issues on his little brother. He grips the cup a little tighter. “Yeah. But I don’t know why. I’m not actively scared; it’s not like I’m afraid of the dark or something.” That’s been a lie since eighty-three, but Steve doesn’t need to know that. “It’s just…anxiety, I guess.”

“Shouldn’t you do something about it?”

A dry laugh escapes him. “Like what? See a therapist? I’m fine, Steve. It’s just my hands not listening to my head.”

It feels like the truth, since it’s what he’s been telling himself for months now, and Steve mercifully decides to let it go.

It’s unexpectedly nice, having him here. He pretty much radiates self-confidence and relaxation, and Jonathan doesn’t have to keep up a conversation for it to be comfortable, so that’s two points to something good. But there’s also Jonathan’s recently developed crush that he has to deal with. It’s annoying, to say the least, because it just won’t leave him alone. It keeps him up at night, which is ridiculous, and it trickles into his thoughts during the day, in History and Economics and at work when he has nothing else to focus on, which is even more ridiculous. He’ll look down the locker hall to see Steve smiling at him, for absolutely no reason, and he’ll have to smile back because it’s contagious and fuzzes his brain. Honestly. Since when did Steve start smiling at him, anyways?

He forces his eyes back to the parking lot, thinking back to last week when Steve came by his house and they went for a walk. A walk. Never would he have expected that yet there they were, walking, talking, even laughing together, just because he had said yes when Steve asked.

He remembers the way Steve had set his hand on top of Jonathan’s to steady him so he could take a picture. Jonathan hates that he still isn’t over it. It probably wasn’t even a big deal to Steve. He feels like a goddamn middle schooler.

“What are you still doing here, anyways?” Steve asks, snapping Jonathan back to the present. “School got out, like, two hours ago.”

“I was sleeping,” he says exasperatedly, squishing his burger foil into a ball and flinging it at Steve’s head.

“Rude,” Steve quips, smiling anyways. “Don’t people normally sleep in their beds, y’know, at home?”

Jonathan glances at the dash just to make sure he wasn’t imagining things earlier. Still on E. “I’m out of gas.”

“So you were gonna dream some up?”

“God, you’re such a project sometimes, you know that?”

Steve grins. “Hey, I don’t judge. Dream logic is solid logic. I like it. What I am judging you on is the fact that you slept in the front seat instead of the back. Seriously, look at this,” he says, craning around in his seat. “There’s tons of space back here, weirdo. And honestly –“

He stops short, reaching out to something in the backseat. Jonathan frowns, turning. “What?”

Oh. Messily spread across the upholstery are the two dozen photos he just developed; he hasn’t gotten around to putting them away. Steve’s hand stops midair and he glances back at Jonathan.

“Can I look at these?”

“Um, yeah, if you want.”

Steve nods and grabs them all, resettling in his seat to go through them one by one. Jonathan watches his face as he does so, slightly unnerved. They’re mostly just nature photos and some candid shots of his family, but it’s still odd to have someone scrutinize them. He absently realizes that he actually cares what Steve thinks about them, about him. Of course he does.

Steve looks up at him halfway through the stack, disbelief painted on his features. “Jonathan, these are insane.”

Jonathan glances at the topmost photo. “It’s a creek in a forest.”

“It’s an amazing creek in an amazing forest because this picture that you took is so amazing.”

“It’s blurry.”

“Barely. Why don’t you sell these or something?”

Jonathan shrugs and Steve shakes his head, looking back to the photos. There’s a glittering hummingbird on a bright pink flower, a game trail worn into the brush-filled forest floor, a view from the edge of the quarry cliffs at sunrise.

“Man. You’re talented,” he finally says, handing the stack over. That fuzzy feeling fills up Jonathan’s head again as he takes the photos, their fingers brushing just so.

“Thanks,” he says quietly, replacing the photos in the backseat. Accepting compliments was never his strong suit.

A few quiet moments pass, the faint rustle of leaves making its way through the open windows, and then Steve says, quite out of nowhere, “I’m sorry.”

Jonathan blinks, looking over. Incredibly, he’s not surprised that Steve has just said those words. It takes him a second to sort out exactly what he’s feeling, but then he realizes: he’s surprised that he’s not surprised. Three years ago, sure, he would laugh at the idea of an apology coming from Steve Harrington’s mouth, but now…

He doesn’t know what to say. Steve turns away from the windshield to look at him, some unrecognizable emotion on his face. Longing, maybe. For what? Forgiveness? Him?

You’re losing it.

Steve holds his gaze, slightly desperate for Jonathan to hear him. “I really am sorry. I know that doesn’t cover it, but…I haven’t really said it to you yet, and you deserve to hear it, so. I’m sorry, Jonathan. And I get it if you’re not ready to be friends with me or anything. That’s not why I’m saying this. But I want you to know that I’m trying to be better now. I’m going to be a better person. And I’m not mad about Nancy, if you, y’know, thought that. If she’s happy with you and you’re happy with her, that’s awesome. Seriously, I want that for you two. So I’m just…I’m sorry. For everything.”

Jonathan can’t do much more than stare at him. He should hate Steve. He used to, and he has every right to still. But when he thinks about it, any anger he can muster is halfhearted at best. He knows it was Steve who cleaned up the graffitied movie theater sign three years ago without ever asking for any credit; a theater employee told him. It was a shitty thing to do in the first place and he should’ve cleaned it up regardless, but God, Jonathan is tired of holding grudges. How can people grow if there’s no forgiveness? The love Steve had for Nancy was true, even though they may not have been the best match. He and Jonathan haven’t talked about it, but when shit started hitting the fan for the first time, Steve had been there at Jonathan’s house to apologize to him. He didn’t even know Nancy was there. And he came back in to fight. Later on he helped the kids when he could have just skipped town and saved his own ass. He’s long since left his old friends behind, even though he knew doing so would leave him friendless.

He has me.

“It’s okay,” Jonathan says quietly. “I don’t – it’s okay.”

Steve eyes him hesitantly. “You don’t have to say that just because –“

“I’m serious. I don’t hate you. Nancy doesn’t hate you. You’re a good person, Steve, you just…made some mistakes, like we all do. But it’s okay.”

Steve blows out a long breath, his relief palpable in the way his shoulders relax. “Okay. Great. You don’t want me to leave?”

Jonathan shakes his head. Kind of the opposite, actually. “You brought me food,” he says, allowing himself a smile. “You get a pass.”

Steve’s expression turns a happy sort of incredulous, like he never expected it to be that easy. “I didn’t do it just to get into your good graces, you know.”

Jonathan rolls his eyes. “I know.” He hesitates, weary of the answer to his next question, but he decides to ask it anyways. “Why did you do it?”

Steve falters, suddenly unable to meet his eyes. “Just ‘cause, I guess. I thought you might appreciate it. I know you’re always busy and stuff.” He looks up with a wry smile. “And believe it or not, I like hanging out with you, Byers.”

Don’t say it. Don’t say it. Don’t say it. “Me too.”

Steve grins. “You like hanging out with yourself too?”

“Fuck off,” he groans, punching Steve’s shoulder. Steve laughs, full and light, and he pushes open the car door.

“Come on. You got a spare gas can? You can ride with me.”

Jonathan takes the few seconds he has alone to stare at himself in the rearview mirror. There’s a ridiculously happy smile on his face, a rarity his whole life. You really are losing it, he thinks.

It’s not so terrible.

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Dimension Wave   Chapter 26 — An Unfavorable Situation

‘Now trickling in are our reinforcements. This is the moment of truth!’

We had been slowly withdrawing and we ended up at D4. The chokepoint here is a great location to defend, but the battle is far from easy. There were different kinds of enemies now too.

Dimensional Skeleton Dimensional Vanguard Dimensional Archer

Our mages and archers now had to switch their focus on different enemies. The Vanguards wield spears, outputting more damage while giving up less opportunities to be attacked. The Archers were able to hit our ranged attackers too. The situation continued to be dire. Still, we weren’t completely overwhelmed, and backup was slowly popping up. We were able to hold the line thanks to that.

“If you’ve finished recovering your MP, then keep firing those skills. Keep an eye on your status, especially archers and mages!”

A party leader called out loud. Their party were always on the defense, much like us. Archers and mages were critical to holding the line because of their wide area attacks. I bet they found Yamikage real awkward, but it is what it is. Her Drain is simply too useful to tell her not to use it.

But that’s all she does!

In any case, it’s a matter of time before our defensive line falls. A few of people on our side had already fallen victim to the enemies and they were forced to teleport back. D4 might just be the last standing defense. If we lose our position here, there’ll be no guarantee of being able to turn this around.

“Kizuna. Let us make plans before they land a decisive blow on us.” “I was just thinking of the same thing, though I’m not sure what exactly we should do.” “Then why don’t I push the enemy vanguard back?” “That’s too risky.” “It really isn’t. I should be able to pull it off since I can spam my skills.”

She has a point. The rest of our forces are low on MP. The reason why Yamikage can keep using Circle Drain is purely because she’s a Spirit. Most of our magic casters have fallen back to recover. Of course, they only burnt up all their MP so that we could recover some Energy ourselves. I looked over at Shouko and saw just how determined she was.

… I don’t think any of them would be as willing to volunteer to put their lives on the line.

“We might potentially lose all our Energy, y’know?” “I have prepared myself for whatever potential consequences.” “Alright, then I’m coming with you.” “You are?” “Remember what I said about straying from my path?” “Yes?” “Well, let me add to that. I’ll be correcting you too if you ever make a bad decision.”

Shouko looked exasperated. She probably didn’t expect to get that sort of reply, so she must be having mixed feelings.

“You’d be nuts to charge into the horde alone.” “… perhaps. Then, let us attack the enemy together.”

With a smile on her face, she stepped forward together with me.

“We’re a pair of Spirits here. We’ll make full use of our racial traits to charge in and scatter the enemy vanguard.” “What?! You two have a death wish!” “That or just pretend like we’re a pair of really tough tanks!”

I dismissed the worried voice over chat and ran in with my Cetus Longsword. A lot of them must have looked down on us Spirits. Sure, we might normally seem weak, but this was where we shine. This was what I can do right now, and I was going to do it.

“Shouko, you’ll have to charge up your fan, right? I’ll buy you some time. We’ll probably do okay by chaining up our attacks. You should use something with a huge area of effect.” “Okay. Be prepared to see what damage I can do!” “Alright! Speed Gutting!”

Seeing how many of them are over there, we probably won’t get away with just a scratch. The archers were already firing upon us. But we’re Spirits. We’re number one in HP and skill spamming.

“I shall engage the enemies. Wild Dance, the Third: Cherry Blossoms! Recharge!”

She had already been charging up her fan as we headed towards the enemies. In an instant, her skill takes down 10 enemies at once as their comrades crawled over the corpses.

“Cleaver! Cleaver! Cleaver!”

A red graphical effect unleashed as I successively cleaved through the enemies. Given how cleavers are meant to chop through bone, the skill was very effective against Dimensional Skeletons. Be that as it may, I still need more than one Cleaver to slay a skeleton.

“Cleaver! Cleaver! Cleaver! Cleaver!”

The momentum from each activation of the skill spun me faster and faster, eliminating any defenseless moments that I had.

“Wild Dance, the Second: Bloom!”

Shouko was in favor of quantity over fully charging her skills. Because of that, the enemies didn’t die with a single strike. I followed up on the damaged monsters to slay them. If one hit’s not enough, then I’ll just hit them again.

“Miss Kizuna! Circle Drain!”

Yamikage hurried towards us in support. A circle appears beneath the enemy troops. Circle Drain kills a good number of enemies that had been already weakened by our archers and mages. Behind the freshly killed were yet another cluster of enemies. They’re seemingly never ending.

“… Toggling.”

Right after I used Cleaver again, Sheryl takes attacked an enemy that was targeting me. Her skill struck and killed three enemies at once who had been damaged by Drain.

“Yamikage, Sheryl…” “You guys!” “… didn’t wanna be the odd one out.”

Sheryl was expressionless as ever, but the marine blue gemstone on her chest was shining brightly. What are you, some kind of rival from a shounen manga? You totally set a death flag there. But perhaps with us four…

“If things do go south, make sure you run! Cleaver!” “… I know. Full Harpoon.”

The four us stood alone in a sea of swords, arrows, and magic in action. I bet some of them are wondering what the heck we’re doing. But because we’re all together, I was having lots of fun. We might have abandoned our plans because of Dimension Wave, but I’m sure we can sail across the oceans if it’s the four of us. I’m absolutely sure of it. Still, only utter fools would charge into a swarm like this if this were a game.

“Egads! We have no retreat!” “Damn! Did I just jinx ourselves?”

I looked around us to find that we were completely surrounded. We’ve slowed down the enemy advance but in turn lost all ways to retreat.

“‘tis as if it were us four against the world.” “Why did you guys even follow us anyway?” “I am thy shadow, Miss Kizuna.” “… oh, I almost forgot that’s the character you wrote for yourself.” “How rude of ye!”

Well, call me simple, but I’m pretty happy with her character. … I’m not about to stroke her ego though.

“Now then, y’all feelin’ lucky?”

I kept up my attacks while I spoke to them. Shouko’s got my back, so I can focus whatever’s ahead of me. It’s like this scene is straight out of a romanticized depiction of war. Endorphins must be pumping through my brain right about now.

“About what, Kizuna?” “Wanna make a bet on how many of us will survive?” “… not much of a bet.” “Verily.” “You don’t actually think we’ll all make it out alive, do ya?” “My bet’s on four.” “Aye, all of us.” “Oh, I understand now. In that case, my bet is on all of us as well.” “What, so it’s just me betting on zero… no, never mind. Let’s get through this together.”

The joke would’ve flew past their heads. Their glares would’ve killed me first though. Was that their pent-up frustration against me or something? Well, whatever. I’ll just stop being stupid. It would’ve been real awkward if I had made that joke anyway.

“I’m not about to these guys steal all our Energy, so let’s kick their asses!” “Let’s!” “Aye, aye!” “‘kay.”

It’ll suck to lose all of our Energy, but we’ll have fun in the process at least. It’s not like the only thing in the game is to be the strongest. Plus, we still have our skills and stuff that can be used as buffer. And just as I made up my mind to attack…

“Oh, woooow! Maybe I shoulda been a Spirit too!”

Someone called out to us. Someone with a very familiar voice.

“… Tsugumi?”

Blazing a trail through the enemies was my little sister. Tsugumi†Exceed was her name in game. Above her pitch-black armor was a circlet on her head and a pair of animal ears peeked out through it. And then, a great scythe. Of course she uses one. But I mean, that’s exactly—

“Sorry I’m late, big bro! Here comes my counter attack! Death Step!”

Four great crashes emanated from her direction. Then, tens of enemies were slaughtered in a moment.

That’s exactly… that’s exactly what it’s good for: wide area physical attacks.

… I guess it was a good idea I called their bet.

contents: /prologue/ /ch001/ /ch002/ /ch003/ /ch004/ /ch005/ /ch006/ /ch007/ /ch008/ /ch009/ /ch010/ /ch011/ /ch012/ /ch013/ /ch014/ /ch015/ /ch016/ /ch017/ /ch018/ /ch019/ /ch020/ /ch021/ /ch022/ /ch023/ /ch024/ /ch025/ /ch026/ /next/

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Rose Coloured Boy - [5/11]

Summary: Sebastian Stan & Eleanor Egan spent the better part of six years being the European outcasts of Rockland Country Day School. Despite growing through their teens as best friends, college soon broke down their friendship until nothing remained. Ten years later, a turn of events in a city as large as New York City, finds them running in the same social circles once again with nowhere to run, and nowhere to hide. Pairing: Sebastian Stan x OFC Word Count: 3.8k Masterlist / Story Background / Playlist / AO3  A/N: Sebastian & Eleanor are finally having the reconciliation talk and I’m so here for the angst. Also, I need a Chace-esque friend in my life.  Part 4 // Part 6 

AUGUST 2011 Everything about this situation should have felt far stranger than it did, and considering it did indeed feel rather bizarre, that was really saying something. A mere two weeks had passed since Damon’s birthday, just two weeks since Sebastian had sauntered back into Eleanor’s life, yet here she was, downing Sambuca shots at his birthday function, wondering why on earth she was here at all. As far as she was concerned, she shouldn’t be. Sebastian had been rather insistent though, acting relatively nonchalant about it to his friends, not taking into account how they’d known him far too long, and knew him too well, to let the shrug of his shoulders throw them off the true force of him extending their invites to Eleanor. It was evident it meant a great deal to him for her to be there. But Eleanor wasn’t exactly sure why.

if she was to be honest with herself, seeing him again after all of these years, had sent her head spinning, and she felt more guilty, and terrible, than she had throughout the time following her disappearance. All she wanted to do was have a sit down conversation with him, explain what had happened and try to make him see her teenage motivations, she owed that to the both of them. But she was ashamed, and too tremendously nervous to even approach him, let alone invite him to lunch for a perhaps involuntary walk down memory lane. So, instead of confronting her fears head on, she downed as many shots as possible and took whatever hard spirit she could get her hands on. Eleanor had spent the better part of half an hour trying to casually glance in his direction, aiming to be as discreet as possible which was an utter shit show considering the amount of alcohol she’d knocked back. Her body was loose and her eyes were wandering despite the conversation she was in the middle of with Lisa and Sasha. He looked really well; his face, and body, had slimmed down, his smile was as bright as she’d known it to be, and his confidence had grown a considerable amount since college. But she could still see through the facade he put up as he commandeered a room full of people. She didn’t remember him looking quite as stunning as he did now and that thought haunted her. This was dangerous territory, all things considered. “Earth to Eleanor.” “Shit sorry, Lis, what were you saying?” “I don’t think it matters, it seems you’re far more interested in the birthday boy.” She shrugged her shoulders and grimaced at her friends, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Sure sure honey,” Lisa smirked over at Sebastian and back to Eleanor, “whatever you say.” “How are you doing after the whole- y’know - situation.” Sasha nervously glanced at her friend, stomach sinking a little when she watched the older woman shift uncomfortably, throwing back another shot and wincing. “If you’re referring to Rhys then I’m feeling pretty dire actually,” she coughed and cleared her throat, her eyes downcast as she fiddled with a charm on her bracelet, the sharp edges pressed into the pads of her fingers for a moment, “I get it, I really do, but it doesn’t hurt any less. Still feel like I’ve been winded.” The thing with Rhys was, he’d been the longest standing boyfriend she’d had to date. It had only been nine months, one month longer than than her last relationship had been, but she connected with him, really connected with him, far more than she had with the others and she felt more heartbroken and cut up than the combination of all her past, failed relationships. I’m twenty-nine years old, she’d cried to Damon last week, is this how it’s always going to be? A short in-between relationship? “When does he leave?” “Tomorrow, he’s catching the four thirty-five pm flight from JFK.” “Are you going to say goodbye?” “We thought it was best not to, everything we had to say has already been said. I’d only say something stupid to stop him leaving anyway, and there’s no use. He needs a new life, not me. I’ve made my peace with that.” “What’s the next step?” “Pay more attention to the relationships I still have, work on the ones that need mending,” she caught Sebastian’s gaze and they raised their glasses in celebration as they exchanged small smiles, “Or I could just get utterly trashed and pass out in the bathroom. I’m good either way.” *-*-*-*-*-* Chace dragged her to brunch a few days after the party. His concern with her break-up was increasing tenfold and, although he didn’t want to push the situation that was surrounding them, regarding their mutual Romanian friend, he figured the older man could pull her out of her sour mood if they were given the chance to hang-out. Besides, he’d missed the other man, months having passed by since they’d been able to catch up properly, without loud thumping music, too many people or a quick phone call. He told himself he wasn’t there just to be the buffer between the two - he wanted to spend time with his friends - he definitely wasn’t using himself as an excuse. Eleanor wasn’t so easily convinced. “You don’t have to hash all this shit out today, okay? I just thought it would be cool for us to hang out together, and maybe you two can talk,” she raised her head to glare at him, a sour expression overtaking her face and took interest in the magazine between her fingers, again, “fine, make small talk then.” “Better bring a knife, ‘cause there’ll be plenty of tension to cut,” she sassed as he plucked the offending article from her hands and flung it on the coffee table. Chace was all too familiar with the stubborn nature of his friend, had been on the receiving end of her foul moods more times than he cares to remember, but he matched her in his persistence and wasn’t likely to take no for an answer from her when he had her best interests at heart. They both loved their friends equally; would bail them out of jail, pay an extortionate ransom  to save their lives, would lie in the gutter with them at four am after a ridiculous night out, would risk themselves for the sake of the others to keep them out of harms way, but beneath it all that, Eleanor & Chace had a special bond, a connection that had them both migrating together and the Brit likes to think he’s the sibling she never had. “Fine, fine. I’m going,” she locked the apartment door behind them and dragged her light denim jacket over her arms, grimacing at the man and pulled her hair loose from her collar. “Stop being a Bitter Betty for two minutes and deal with this, you’ll thank me later.” Small talk with your former best friend is as horrible as it sounds. Fifteen minutes into the relatively stilted conversation, Eleanor debated excusing herself to head to the bathroom to make a hasty escape through the window, but this wasn’t some ridiculous rom-com that would resolve itself after a tongue-in-cheek failed escape and a mildly angsty shouted explanation and apology, this was her life and she knew full well she had to be a woman about this and suck it up, guilt and awkwardness be damned. She was the picture of small smiles and politeness, interjecting in the conversation where necessary, enough to not be considered rude, and hoped it would suffice for the men in her company. Chace wasn’t stupid though, and he wouldn’t allow her to sit there with little engagement, that hadn’t been his plan or what he’d wanted to happen. He began telling silly tales from the past year, all hilarious and mildly embarrassing (mostly on Eleanor’s part) until she began to whine and pout like a child and correct him when his storytelling went intentionally awry. She flung her arm out and smacked his chest, grinning as he barked out a slight winded laugh, “Don’t listen to a word he says, Seb. He doesn’t know his arse from his elbow.” “So I’ve noticed, he’s all talk, isn’t he?” The older of the two men laughed behind his hand, comically whispering loudly to her, glancing over at the Texan who did his best to not appear bemused. And just like that she felt the tension slipping away, almost like he’d been waiting for her to be the one to break the resolve, to slice through the top hardened layers of awkwardness until it hit common ground and lightness. Eleanor snickered and nodded, one elbow bent on the table to prop up her chin and the other hand patting the younger’s bicep, “That’s our Chace.” “He’s a character, that’s for sure.” “Thanks man, knew I could count on you.” “Idiot.” Eleanor stated fondly. *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* SEPTEMBER 2011 ‘Hi Sebastian, it’s Eleanor. I hope you don’t mind Chace giving me your number, I just wanted to see if you’d maybe like to meet me for lunch? We have a lot to talk about and I want to try and clear the air between us. I understand if you don’t want to, but please let me know either way.’ The tone of her text message to Sebastian felt so foreign and wrong, it was too formal and uncomfortable to be sending to someone who spent too many years being her best friend, who knew too much of her early life to deal with formalities, but she constantly reminded herself that they weren’t those people anymore, and she had no right to keep a jovial and light tone with him these days. She’d have to earn that again - if he allowed her to that is. She’d busied herself for a few hours, following her sent message, and, for the most part, her apartment was gleaming. Her head was buried in the oven as she worked the scrubbing brush over the appliance, the scratching and scraping of the bristles was almost loud enough to distract her from the ping of her phone, but she’d faintly heard it, the sound echoing louder and louder in her head as she began to think of a hundred things Sebastian could have responded with. And then she began to fuss over the idea that it wasn’t him at all, so she stayed scrubbing for a while longer and hummed along to the radio to block out the noise in her head. Eleanor was borderline embarrassed by her behaviour that afternoon, her lack of being able to remain calm and adult-like within this situation had her scowling at herself in the bathroom mirror in annoyance, “You’re an idiot, Egan, pull yourself together woman.” A steaming mug of tea sat on her coffee table begging to be refilled whilst her phone sat mockingly beside it. She spent a moment or two trying to focus on the television set, and some idle programme that was playing, but it was no use, she needed to rip the band-aid off and deal with whatever fate Sebastian had chosen for them. She tried to carefully pull on the cup despite her slightly shaking hands, hissing as the hot liquid sloshed over the rim and settled on her bare legs, and pulled it to her chest, curling into the arm of the sofa with her phone in her other hand. ‘Hey El. No no it’s fine, lunch sounds good, 1pm tomorrow at The Distillery?’ ’Sounds perfect, see you tomorrow’ “Is this as weird for you as it is for me?” She huffed out a laugh and wiped her palms along the thighs of her jeans, fidgety and anxious and wondering what had possessed her to deem this a good idea. They’d been inside the restaurant for five minutes and she already wanted to bolt, she’d felt that the moment she’d walked through the door and found Sebastian sat at a table, thumbing through his phone with an apprehensive expression. He’d slowly placed it on the tabletop the second he noticed her and slipped her a soft smile that lightly pulled on the corner of his eyes. Sebastian had always been that person to ground her, but he was suddenly making her feel flighty and her stomach churned at the shift of his role. “Well it’s not feeling all too normal for me, so I’m going to say yes.” “I didn’t mean for this to be awkward, I’m sorry.” His tongue wet his lips and he folded his arms to rest on the table, his body arching forward, “It’s not awkward, I’m just still trying to process you being here again.” “I really fucked up.” “You’re telling me,” he huffed out a laugh and shook his head, “for years I wanted an explanation, I mean I still do, of course I do, but I don’t know how much it matters now.” “Please don’t say that,” she weakly pleaded, not prepared for his nonchalance, “of course it still matters, isn’t that why you’re here?” “I guess so.” “Look - Seb- Sebastian - I don’t want you to feel obligated to try with me, I understand if you want nothing to do with me at all, but I’m not willing to walk away from our friends just to make it easy for us. It sounds selfish, I get that, and maybe ten years ago I would have walked away just to avoid conflict, but I’m not that person anymore and it’s important that you know that, I need you to know that it’s not because I don’t care, it’s much the opposite.” “Christ, I don’t feel obligated, Eleanor,” his eyes softened and she felt herself sinking when his hand touched the inner of her elbow to reassure her, stop her from running, “sure- I was surprised when I first saw you, I didn’t think I would again, and I felt conflicted for a bit - it was just unexpected, that’s all. It’s been a really long time and I’d adjusted to life without you. But I’m willing to bet that this isn’t just some coincidence that we’ve crossed paths again, you’ve gotta be here for a reason. I have the chance to know you again, and that means something to me.” “It shouldn’t do, you have every right to hate me, I’m not naive to think otherwise.” “I won’t ever hate you, and y’know that really. I just wanna know why you gave up on me. On us. I just - I want to know what I did wrong, El.” Eleanor all but gasped at his words, they felt like a punch to the stomach and she was momentarily winded, of all the scenarios she’d mulled over, his self-blame was not something she’d contemplated, because she hadn’t blamed him. Not much at least. “It wasn’t - ever - it was never your fault, Seb, not at all. And I didn’t give up on you. It was never like that.” His voice became more frustrated as she skirted the conversation, the lack of answers was starting to wear him down. He lowered his head more to take a good look at her, his eyes sought her out and he wanted her to feel the extent of aggravation because he supposed she did somewhat deserve it. “Then what was it like? One minute my best friend was living in the city, the happiest I think I’d ever seen her, we were still as close as we had ever been - or at least I thought we were - and then the next minute she leaves for England, so closed off that she doesn’t speak to me for almost ten years. There wasn’t any real warning, it was all and then nothing,” he sighed and scrubbed his palm over his face, fingers digging into his closed eyes, “one day I had you and the next I didn’t.” There was a medium pause whilst she collected her words, tried to find the right way to tell him, to make him see her reasoning even if she questioned and doubted it herself, “I’ve thought about it so many times since then and nothing makes sense - at least not properly, and it always sounds so stupid - but it all became too much. Life became too much. Conflicting time zones, missed phone calls, unanswered emails - everything felt different and it felt like the end before I’d even decided to call it quits. There were times when our calls were inconvenient, you were busy with your friends, and I didn’t want to begrudge you that happiness, but it made me miss you more and I felt so lonely being away from you. At one point I didn’t know if I was even going to return, I thought about dropping out of NYU and staying with my family.” “I tried so hard to give you as much of my time as you wanted, I didn’t want you to feel that way.” “I know, and that’s why I don’t want you blaming yourself for any of this, because you’re not at fault. My anxiety just grew worse and I allowed it to get the better of me, I thought too much about how well you were doing with school and it felt inevitable that you’d move on without me sooner or later - it’s unfair to think that of you, trust me I know. I know-knew - you better than that, but that felt feasible at the time. You don’t know how much I’ve agonised over the ever since. But the space felt too much, for the first time in our friendship it felt like hard work and it shouldn’t have done. All I thought was it’s never going to get easier, even when we’re in the same city again. We were too dependent on each other, too close for that to not matter. In some ways it felt like a relationship. I felt like all I’d do was hold you back, you didn’t need to be hanging on, waiting for me to come home, at the time it felt like it was the best course of action for us both. I thought it was what we needed.” “But you didn’t give me that choice, El!” He barked out an exasperated whisper to avoid drawing attention. Sebastian had always had the most expressive eyes of all of the people Eleanor had known, his emotions lay right within them and the look he gave her had her understanding the extent of her selfish actions far better than his words ever could. They’d softened and looked awfully sad, she hadn’t expected him to feel this way after a decade, hadn’t realised she’d meant quite that much to him, or to anyone for that matter. “You should never have taken that choice away from me, you took the one constant thing in my life away from me, that anchor, and I felt like I was floating around, not knowing what the fuck was going on or whether you were okay.” Her voice lowered and cracked, “I know, I had no right.” She couldn’t look at Sebastian, all she felt was shame and embarrassment and hurt, realising that she’d not only hurt herself, but she’d really hurt him too. Her eyes watered and she willed them to clear, she didn’t want to be upset over this in a public place, didn’t want to express this in front of Sebastian, it wasn’t fair on either of them. “I didn’t think it would matter to you as much, but now I know I was wrong.“ She rubbed at her eyes furiously and kept her head lowered. “You couldn’t be more wrong if you tried, draguta. You have no idea how much you mean to me.” Sebastian watched the tears as they pooled in Eleanor’s eyes when she raised her head to gauge his expression, “Mean? As in still do?” Sebastian pulled out his wallet and threw a few notes down on the table between them before looping his arm around her and pulling her out back, behind the restaurant, “Of course you still do, you loser.” Her tears dripped off her chin and her body shook, her emotions had burst out of her and Sebastian could do nothing more than wrap her up in his arms and rub her back soothingly. “Please don’t cry, you’re here, I’m here, we’ll get it right this time,” her head stayed buried in his chest as she tried to calm herself down, so Sebastian ran his fingers through her hair and held her tighter, “just don’t go making my decisions for me, don’t shut me out.” “Promise.” *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* DECEMBER 2011 New Year had always left a sour taste in Eleanor’s mouth (the alcohol), an ache in her bones (the loneliness) and a longing to hold onto a year for a little longer (the need for more time). There was nothing quite like the feeling of leaving good, or bad, memories behind in the yester-year, the nostalgia it left in it’s wake was nauseating and she’d always laughed as she told anyone who would listen about how she’d prefer to sleep from the 30th December to the 2nd of January, just bypass the whole shebang. This year was no different, she still wanted to curl up in her apartment, block out the world and pretend it didn’t exist for those few days, but her re-kindled friendship had put a firm stop to that and he’d insisted their group reconvene for a ‘celebratory piss-up’ (Sebastian’s literal words, they’d caught her by surprise too and she’d been unable to stifle a snorting laugh because maybe he really had spent too many years around her). She was still trying to make amends despite his insistence that he’d more than forgiven her, and if he said jump, she’d willingly ask how high? to appease him as much as possible. That was potentially, or rather most likely, the reason she found herself 4 glasses of wine in with an arm thrown around Sebastian’s shoulder and her other glass filled arm in the air singing Don’t Go Breaking My Heart. It was ridiculous, and hilarious, and reminded her of that New Year of 2001, when they were still students singing along to Billy Joel. Her life had come full circle and right then she couldn’t be anymore thankful for the events that had led to them standing there, a decade later, in a similar, yet wholly different, situation. Life had its funny ways of working. As midnight struck, the pair had embraced each other tightly over a defining cheer of a new year and clinking of glasses, light kisses of forgiveness and new starts were shared between them, and Eleanor had a very good feeling about the year to come for the first time in a while. *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* Rose Coloured Boy tags: @lovingfionn​, @lowdenglynnstyles, @outofworkactress, @prettyboytgc, @ugly-crying-over-bucky-barnes, @kyber-hearts-and-stardust-souls