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sofreddie · 3 years

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Serendipitous Souls (Part 3)

Summary: Y/N reveals a bit more about herself as the clock winds down to midnight.

Characters: Dean x OC!Reader, Sam

Warnings: Angst, Fluff

Word Count: 1,581

A/N: Here's where some of the OC comes into play. Were working to the smut, I promise.

"Two hours," she heard Sam whisper to Dean as Sam glanced at his watch, "I think I'm gonna go lay down," he announced louder to the room, "Chuck twisting my insides really took it out of me," he chuckled, rising from his seat and tucking in the chair. Dean nodded in response, his mind too preoccupied with his own situation.

"And, Y/N?" Sam said, stopping and turning his attention to her with a genuine smile, "Thank you. For saving my life," he said with all sincerity and it made her heart clench. She didn't feel like she had done anything. But in retrospect, she supposed she had.

"You're welcome," she responded with her own soft smile. Sam nodded before heading to his room, leaving the pair in awkward silence.

Y/N sighed, her gaze falling to her hands as she fidgeted with the new ring on her finger.

"Have you ever been married before?" Dean asks.

"I have," she nodded, "Didn't end well though."

"I'm sorry," Dean responded. She merely shrugged in response, "Any kids?"

"Uh, no," she said, meeting his eyes as she flashed him a small smile, "He left because we had trouble conceiving," she huffed a laugh, "But I guess that's not going to be an issue now."

"I feel like everything I say is the wrong thing," Dean confessed defeatedly.

"No, it's fine, really," she finally relaxed, shifting back into her chair like she was ready to settle into the conversation, "They're standard 'get-to-know-you' questions. I just have shitty answers," she smirked at him.

"Mine aren't much better."

"I know."

"Yeah, I guess you do," Dean said with a furrowed brow, remembering she's a fan, of the TV show, about their lives. He shifted in his seat, a look of deep thought crossing his features, "So then I guess you know a lot about us then, right? What we do, how we live, who we are?"

"Well, tell me about you then," Dean shook it off and decided that regardless of how he felt about that information, he couldn't be upset about it. She may be a fan, but she wasn't like Becky, which he was grateful for. For starters, she wasn't squealing with excitement or trying to rub all up on either of them. If anything she was distant and trying to avoid or pull away from touch as much as possible. He supposed she still could be like that. But he just didn't feel like she was.

"Uh, well," she laughs and blushes and Dean thinks he likes the sound and look of that. It's such a stark contrast to the somber mood they've been experiencing, "Actually, it's kinda of funny-not-funny, but, uh," she chuckles again, this time seemingly embarrassed and Dean's chest feels warm, "I always felt that your existence-slash-nonexistence was like some big cosmic joke. A-and it turns out it really is!"

She's full-on laughing now and Dean's pretty sure it's a mix of the alcohol and a few hysterics. He reaches a hand across the table, resting it atop one of hers in an attempt to ground her.

"Why is it a joke?" Of all the things she could've said, that's certainly not one he expected. A joke? How could it possibly be a joke?! He remains calm and holds her gaze when she raises her head to meet his eyes. She sighs heavily and pouts and his eyes flit to her lips before quickly going back to her eyes.

"Because," she half-groans, half-whines, slumping back into her chair and removing herself from his touch. He kind of misses the feel of her already. She groans and a series of expressions cross her face and Dean realizes he can read that look. That look says 'let's rip off this bandaid and get it over with'.

"Because, my whole life I've felt so alone, so misunderstood, so out of place," she began. And all Dean can think is, 'Yeah, 'cause you were supposed to be with me'. "I'm the oldest sibling," she starts and Dean thinks he sees where this is going, "My sister? Is four years younger than me. Just like Sam is to you. And me too, by the way. I was born about seven months after Sam," she says with a light blush and a shake of her head, getting herself back on track as she rambles. Dean thinks he likes listening to her talk, even if she is rambling. She's so animated and he's enjoying just quietly taking her all in.

"I also have a younger brother, who's a year younger than my sister," she took a deep breath and Dean's eyes trailed down her neck and to her heaving collarbone peeking out from the top of her shirt. He decided she had a very nice collarbone.

"Both my parents worked all the time, demanding jobs with long hours just to pay the bills. So I was left in charge of my siblings," Dean's eyes snapped to hers and he felt a deep empathy. That was a life experience he was all too familiar with. "I had to cook and clean and do chores and walk them to school and home again. I was this weird third parent to my siblings and this sort of peer to my parents. It was a weird in-between to live in," she complained with a pained expression. Dean wanted to smooth away the crease in her brow.

"There's life experiences that are so precise and unusual, but somehow we share those things in common. When I first watched the show and discovered you," she shook her head, that embarrassed blush returning and Dean realized it kissed her collarbone. He wondered how far it went. "I didn't like you at first," Dean frowned at that, "You were too pretty, too cocky, too 'devil-may-care'," she smirked, "But after you came back from-" she hesitated with a wary glance, "-you know- you were different. And I saw you different. There was somehow more to you, more revealed. So I watched more," she explained.

"And then I quickly realized: here's this person - who has been through the same things as me, the same unusual things that make me so different, so difficult to understand. Here's someone I've been looking for my whole life. Finally! Someone who could truly understand me," she smiled but it wasn't happy as her eyes were filled with tears, "A-and he's a fictional character. It was the most painful cosmic joke ever!"

Several tears fell from her eyes and trailed down her cheeks, dripping off her jaw and chin. She shook her head to come to her senses, quickly and roughly cleaning up her face with her hands and shirt.

He froze, processing her words and how broken she looked over the whole thing. For the life of him, he could only think to say one thing.

"Y/N," he rose from his chair and walked over to her, swinging her chair sideways and crouching in front of her, "I'm right here."

"What?" she mumbled, sniffing away the last of her tears as she looked down at him in confusion.

He shifted, kneeling between her parted legs and resting his hands on her knees.

"I get where you're coming from. And I know how you feel. I get it," he emphasized, squeezing her knees, "I don't know how all this is gonna go or play out," he sighed, shaking his head, "But I know we're in this together, forever," he held up his hand to show his ring before placing it back on her knee, "But if you feel like you need me, for whatever reason…I'm right here. I can be that for you."

"You don't have to," she tried to backtrack and Dean shook his head, moving closer into her and moving his hands to her lower back, keeping her close and focused on him.

"Beyond tonight, we don't have to be anything if that's what you really want," he offered, "But I figure, if we're in this anyway, then why not try?" he shrugged, "Maybe it'll work out and we can be happy. Maybe it won't and we find we're better as friends. I don't know. But I'm willing to find out."

"Just like that?" she was skeptical, but wishful all the same. He was a million times more attractive and distracting at close proximity. His eyes. They were a force of nature all their own and she knew - especially as a fangirl - that she should've seen it coming. But somehow - despite the comments from others who had gone to conventions or the fans who wrote fic after fic about his eyes in painstaking detail - she was not prepared for the depth and captivity of those intense eyes.

"You and I," he said, gesturing between them with one hand while the other remained on her back, "We literally share a soul. We are literally two pieces that make a whole," he chuckled and shook his head, a broad smile adorning his face and she felt her heart stutter and damn near stop for a few beats, "I have to believe that means something. I feel like it does. So I'll trust in that and see where it takes us."

She was surprised and amazed at his confidence, the surety of his statements and confessions. How could he be so okay with it? He so quickly resigned to this 'fate'.

She swallowed hard, very aware of his hands on her - respectfully, but still there.

Forevers:

@sis-tafics

@lyarr24

@calaofnoldor

@hobby27

@spnbaby-67

Dean Winchester:

@akshi8278

@jerkbitchidjitassbutt

Serendipitous Souls:

@brilovesdeanwinchester

@xhannahbananax03

@440mxs-wife

@crist1216

#serendipitous souls #dean x reader #dean winchester #reader-insert #oc!reader #supernatural #spn

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silverinia · 3 years

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I came for Baranski, I stayed for Baranski - a quick Christmas On The Square review someone* actually asked for

(* thank you, anon)

Disclaimer: I am in no way a professional of any sorts when it comes to film and I'm not a journalist either. The last movie review I've written was probably for a school assignment in eighth grade. I didn't do research for this and I've watched the movie exactly one time, so this is just for fun.

It was a Sunday, Sunday the 22nd of November, nearing the end of the train wreck of a year that is 2020. I woke up on an air mattress around seven am, my head aching, my throat itching with pyrosis and light nausea, it was still dark outside behind the closed blinds in front of the windows, when I slowly realised where I was, one of my best girlfriends sleeping next to me in her bed. I had crashed at her place after a warm, fuzzy evening of mulled wine, tacky Christmas movies I would never watch alone (Christmas Chronicles and Holiday Calendar, which I quite honestly didn't enjoy at all, but the company made it fun anyway), doing our nails, wearing the fun kind of face masks for a change and smoking too many cigarettes, as the soft pain in my head informed me right now. She woke up an hour later and the morning went by with coffee and reheated pizza for breakfast, when we decided to watch another movie and I realised that it was THE Sunday I'd been waiting for through Zoom interviews and Dolly Parton twitter memes and the infamous wig gate that will be briefly discussed in the following, and so we clicked on the small icon in the Netflix menu that said "Christmas On The Square".

And oh boy, was it a ride.

To start off, I should mention that I have a hard time watching most modern day American Christmas movies, as I noticed quite vividly again when I watched the two aforementioned Netflix productions last night. The character development is always foreseeable to say the least, the plot lines are plain clichés hunting each other like they're the kids in The Hunger Games, and the writing is generally so bad that you can join the actors in reciting the entire scripts on your first watch. I watch How the Grinch Stole Christmas once a year while I'm gift wrapping and pause every fifteen minutes to shamelessly stare at forties Christine Baranski (I think we should all turn away from the birth of Jesus and instead count our years based on Christine Baranski's date of birth) in flamboyant nightgowns and short Christmas themed dresses, looking so fabulous that every interpreter of Santa Baby ever could only dream of it, I watch Love Actually at least five times a year to lust over Hugh Grant, cry with Emma Thompson and miss Alan Rickman, I enjoy Bridget Jones, which I would definitely consider a Christmas movie, and that's it. That's my yearly Christmas time entertainment routine and I can barely tolerate anything beyond, because I'm still traumatised from the time when I was around five years old and on a holiday family visit where had to sit through National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, the dumbest movie I have ever seen (my apologies if you like it but also, who hurt you?), with my cousins. I hated it. I hated every minute of it. And it scarred me for life.

But this was a Christine Baranski movie, I knew she was going to play the lead and so I was pretty much as excited about this as I could. And the fact that Dolly Parton wrote the whole thing didn't hurt either. As I said earlier to my friend I was watching it with, I have the pop cultural taste of a fifty year old gay man, a quality I am most proud of, and this simply ticked off all my boxes.

I expected something similar to a Mamma Mia experience that wouldn't cause me to crave packing my bags, give Covid the finger and run off to Greece. Light-hearted entertainment, easy to stomach, uplifting music and so little plot that the simplicity feels like a creative choice. That's what my pained, hungover brain knew it could cope with and that's not what I got.

The movie started and I was immediately in the zone. I saw Christine Baranski's name in the front credits (an experience that never fails to make me scream "Yass Queen" at the screen, regardless of where I am and who I'm with, as if I'm the sobering result that pops out of the package when you order Jonathan Van Ness on Wish), the setting was wonderfully corny (I grew up watching Gilmore Girls once a week, so give me warm fairy lights and a gazebo and I'm perfectly happy) and as my friend wondered whether Dolly Parton, in her exaggerated homeless attire that didn't make her look shabby at all, was green-screened into the setting because she stood out so much (which she was because the background dancers were dancing in slow motion, but to be fair, we were probably still a little too drunk to notice that from the start) and I told her I thought that it was just the natural glow someone who's Dolly Parton simply carries with them everywhere they go, I was happy. This was the movie I was prepared for. A movie in which the most problematic thing would be stereotypical characters and the wig they hid Christine's real, flawlessly handmade by God herself hair under.

And then, around five minutes in, Christine Baranski's childhood love interest was revealed as she pressed her perfect pointy nose against the window of his shop and sang about her unrequited love.

And suddenly, things started taking turns at a pace I was still way too sleep-deprived for.

Suddenly, in the middle of my general amazement at seeing Christine Baranski do literally anything and laughing loud at her impeccable comedic delivery, there were unresolved daddy issues, hanging prominently at the wall in her marvellously designed house (she literally says "Daddy" at one point and I couldn't help but think that only someone with her vocal skills could keep from making it sound cringe-worthily kinky). One moment, I was clutching my chest above my heart while she was bonding with little bartender Violet and munching on pretzels while downing some whiskey in that elegant way only Christine Baranski can bond with ten year olds who had it rough, eat pretzels and down whiskey, and the next she felt responsible for said girl's mother's death (which she kinda was too, but I'm not the boss of her). I was still busy making fun of how the very annoyingly, but when you're snacking on pizza with extra cheese at nine in the morning also highly funny, slow talking pastor's name was Christian, and suddenly there was a cancer scare.

It was a lot, a hasty sprint from major issue to major issue with a hint of comedic relief every now and then, and it didn't get any less until the very, rather poorly resolved, end.

The entire, constant up and down was followed by the movie's peak of suspense, the near death of precious Violet, something I couldn't even get too invested in because I was still so busy worrying about Christine's MRT results (I was truly fucking worried), not to mention that I hadn't even started to really process the sudden revelation of the love child and how it had affected her character's actions until this point. Was her constant tendency of pushing people away, as we've seen most clearly with her angel in training assistant who's name I cannot recall right now, the result of her broken trust in her father who practically ripped her son away from her after she had just given birth to him? Was it a result of her never getting the closure she needed with plaid flannel wearing Carl she was clearly still in love with? Maybe both? And what of the many issues was it that made her so incredibly shaken up when Violet blamed herself for her mother's death? Was it 'just' due to the fact that the closed pharmacy was on her, or was there more to it? Was it because she had grown up without a mother herself? Or did I miss a major piece of information because I was momentarily distracted, dumbfoundedly staring at Christine's very blue eyes? No time to ponder on that, little Silverinia, because here comes unconscious Violet in an ambulance, WEE WOO WEE WOO WEE WOO!

I'm not going to go in depth about what plot lines I thought were especially carelessly handled and why, real standouts were the sudden forgiveness towards her father who had still acted like a shitty asshole even though he might have had his reasons, because giving the baby up for adoption just wasn't his choice to make, and the fact that I kind of didn't buy how quickly Regina managed to forgive herself, especially for Violet's mother's passing, considering how deeply her tall, slim, dare I say angelic and entrancing figure was buried beneath the weight of all her issues. It felt rushed and incomplete, but that's as detailed as it gets because my major point is something else.

I think this movie made the great mistake of trying to be more than your average, flat, happy ending Christmas movie. I think no one involved thought it was possible to make it a big hit if the only real plot would've been great Dolly Parton music, fun ensemble dance choreographies, Christine Baranski's outstanding acting skills, fun settings and costumes and a redemption arch with as little plot as it could possibly take to make Christine likable to those who aren't already lost forever in the rabbit hole of being obsessed with her (poor fuckers, can't relate). They didn't notice that with the legends that were involved, they could've easily gone the Mamma Mia way. And I think that's why they tried to include heavier plot lines than most creators would've chosen, experiencing loss at an early age, struggling to find closure, dealing with sickness, teenage pregnancy, parents forcing their choices on their children when they affect their childrens' lives first, adoption, and the fear of losing your kid.

It was a lot and I don't want to say that it didn't work because my friend was crying, like, pretty hard and I questioned my entire existence all through the movie in not the worst way, and I did enjoy it a lot while watching. The "grief is love with nowhere to go" line was a real standout, for example, where the attempt of complexity DID work. It positively gave me fleabag season two, "I don't know what to do with it now, with all the love I have for her." - "I'll take it. It sounds lovely. You have to give it to me." feels, and that's about the biggest praise I can come up with. BUT (and this is written in capital letters because it's the big but) I'm also totally convinced that I wouldn't have enjoyed it if they hadn't cast Christine Baranski for the lead role. In my humble opinion, the hasty, not really at all resolved plot of this movie only worked because Christine Baranski is just a fantastic actress. She quirks a mocking eyebrow and you laugh. She parts her perfectly painted red lips and you immediately hang on them because you don't want to miss a single breath she, a literal goddess, graces us mere peasants of people with. She smiles and you're happy. She laughs and even while she's still laughing, you can't wait to hear her do it again. Her eyes fill with tears and you feel goosebumps on your arms, her voice slightly trembles, a breath hitches in her throat and you feel your heart shattering to pieces. As Chuck Lorre once said, this woman could read you the phone book and you would end up laughing tears because she just gets the job done. She knows what she's doing, she's an absolute pro in her game, and it doesn't matter, not even a little bit, what she's working with, because the work she eventually delivers with it is always at a minimum of 200%. I forced my friend to watch this movie with me because I adore this woman, and I felt for this movie because I felt for her. It wasn't the plot that sadly brutally overestimated itself, it wasn't the songs that I obviously enjoyed, nor the comedic elements that truly made me laugh a lot, it was all her. I came for Baranski, and I stayed for Baranski. This woman can do anything. She can even look graceful in a terrible wig job.

(side note / unpopular opinion: I actually didn't think the wig was all too bad. It wasn't good, actually far from good, but for me, nothing can match the awful wig game of Mamma Mia 2. I loathed that wig, I absolutely cannot stand it. So this didn't feel all that terrible. It definitely wasn't the most problematic part about the movie.)

I enjoyed watching this. It was a nice distraction from all the bullshit in the world. Watching it today was the first thing this year that actually brought me something close to excitement about the holiday season, even though everything will be very different and probably not quite as jolly this year. But it just gave me good vibes and as someone who did not watch this as a film reviewer, that's the biggest part of what leads me to enjoy a movie.

Will I watch this again? For sure. Will I enjoy it when I'm not hungover, having freshly done nails and munching delicious pizza for breakfast? Probably not as much, but it'll still have Christine Baranski in it. Would I recommend watching this? If you share my obsession with Queen B, one hundo. If you don't, probably not.

#Christine Baranski #Christmas On The Square #dolly parton #shitty movie reviews by yours truly

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