#and those three or so folks who leave comments are worth their weight in gold and more

[phantomwarrior12]

Intensify

Prompt: Confronting Chuck

Word Count: 2,157

Warnings: Blood, swearing, creepy vibes, and some fluff at the wayyyy end

Summary: Confronting God himself isn’t easy, but one must be bold for that which they hold dear.

A/N: Hey folks!

Ah yes, finally finished this one from a lovely anon. This chapter was prompted by @gabriel-spn-bingo​‘s square: Confronting Chuck. It was also partially inspired by @idabbleincrazy​‘s recent challenge and the mood board I was given, so thanks for that, hon! :)

Please leave a like/comment to let me know your thoughts! Also, I am open to prompts (especially the ones up on the bingo card), so send me prompts if you’d like to see one of these!

Enjoy!

~Phantom

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You've been careful, systematically procuring the ingredients needed for the spell. You tell him they're to help ward the cabin, to make sure Castiel couldn't get in again--some spells you'd picked up from Rowena.

He's not entirely convinced, but he's just hopeful enough to indulge you. It goes on for another few months and all the while, things grow more complicated on Earth. He hasn't taken over, merely allowing his ghost army to run wild and unchecked throughout the states. All this time, he's been more concerned with winning your adoration to care about furthering his plans for humanity. Even after Rowena closed up hell and took away his army, he was unbothered. It's that, more than anything, that grants you hope--a fleeting prayer that your archangel is still in there somewhere and you can still get him out.

A prayer that all but vanishes when Chuck makes his presence known, tracking Gabriel on one of his escapades back to Earth and rather firmly reminds him of his duty. Gabriel had argued, Chuck hadn't approved and the archangel was beaten until his Father realized his unwillingness to unleash chaos. It became clear just how intent Gabriel was to regain the touch he aches for. In a fit of frustration, the Creator had chosen to threaten you.

From there, things had escalated. Somehow, it'd all led to this. Somehow, you're kneeling over Gabriel. Somehow, Castiel and Balthazar had come to your aid but--

"What are you waiting for?" Questions the voice behind you. Patronizing. Expectant. Insistent.

Crimson seeps from the wound in Gabriel's shoulder, cascading down the cool metal of the archangel blade your hand is wound around and you're inches away from brilliant whiskey. There was a time you'd lose yourself to the honey flecks, the glimmering gold that stared back at you with a warmth that bore into your very soul.

But not now.

Now he's battered and slouched against the wall with nothing but defeated hatred in his eyes. To your right, Castiel is slowly coming around from the beating he's taken from the archangel. To your left, Balthazar is splayed across the floor in an unconscious state.

And behind you, you hear God himself applauding in a slow, rhythmic clap that sets ever nerve on end. You steal a glance over your shoulder, almost afraid to meet his gaze as he paces closer.

"Archangel blade to the shoulder? The way you slashed his thigh and side to rescue dear, poor Castiel? Oh, I couldn't have written that final showdown better myself. A divine romance ending in a tragic act of self-preservation. I'm so proud, I could cry." He stops just beside you and your gaze shifts to Gabriel's limp form, whiskey darting between his Father and your uncertain eyes as Chuck continues, "Don't stop now, Y/N. It's the climax! You gotta finish it once and for all."

"I won't kill him."

"You don't have a choice. He's nearly killed Castiel and, oh, Balthazar is close to his second death. He's out of control, a menace. He's corrupted. You want to save them, don't you?"

"Not like this," you whisper, staring at Gabriel with a mixture of apprehension and fear.

Chuck's shoulders sag in a show of exaggerated dramatics as he rolls his eyes and kneels beside you, inspecting your tense frame, "You really are like those boys, aren't you? Sam's pitying nature, Dean's stubborn defiance, you're like a mini-Winchester." He heaves a sigh and shifts his gaze to your trembling hand on the archangel blade, watching the red liquid stain Gabriel's clothes before he looks at the youngest archangel, "Oh, Gabe, Gabe, Gabe...how's that corrupt grace working out for you?"

"Fine," Gabriel returns shortly, scowling up at his father with nothing short of contempt.

"Thought that might make for a good plot twist. Couple of angels get to come back from the dead, but surprise, the strongest isn't on your side." Chuck grins, gaze darting between you and Gabriel for a reaction. When your features don't shift beyond a glare, the grin falters with a resigned sigh as he stands, "What do I have to do to get a dramatic conclusion around here? Come on, Y/N! You're making this ending anti-climactic."

"We're not done," you bite back, fingers falling away from the blade and you can feel Gabriel's eyes on you in confusion.

Chuck scoffs, "Not done? Did you forget who you're talking to? Alpha, Omega, all that jazz? This is the end. I decide the ending, Y/N, that's part of being God."

"What kind of God puts his creations through something like this? You're not God. You're a cosmic asshole looking for cheap entertainment because you've lost the capacity to recognize the value of life. How many worlds have you done this to? Hundreds? Thousands? You got so wrapped up in your ability to create and destroy life that you never stopped to consider if you should."

Chuck doesn't appear fazed by your tirade, merely tilting his head with another overzealous shoulder sag, "Are you done? Because, great appeal for humanity, very touching. Very free-will-esque. But it doesn't change the ending to this story." The amusement fades and you shy away as he leans down, "You. Sam. Dean. Your angels and corrupted celestial pet are doomed. I could snap you all away without a second's hesitation, but I want this final battle to be worth all the sniveling and whining I've had to endure from you people. Though, I'm afraid you won't be around to see it. You see, if you won't finish off Gabriel, you can die together."

Chuck raises his hand to snap, cut short only by a cry from Gabriel, "No!"

A rush of air and suddenly you're kneeling over Gabriel in the beach house he'd trapped you in all these months. One breath. A second. A short third before you look down at Gabriel as he jerks the blade out of his shoulder and looks up at you.

"What--what happened?" You look around in confusion, chest heaving, heart pounding in a steady thrum echoing in your ears.

He tosses the blade to the side and gently pushes you off of him so he can stand on uncertain legs. You stare at him, noting the twinge of pain flashing across ordinarily veiled expressions.

"Gabriel?"

"What?"

"Are you okay?"

"Now you're worried about my well-being? You stabbed me, Y/N. Three times."

"You were going to kill Cas. What did you expect me to do?"

He narrows his eyes and starts towards the door. You could swear you notice a faint glow along his thigh, torso and shoulder, but a glimpse is all you catch before your mind shifts back to the more pressing issue. "Why doesn't he just smite us all? It'd be faster and he can't lose--"

"He can't." Gabriel secures the door and rifles through one of the book case drawers, "Despite what he claims, he's not strong enough. Whatever tweedledee and tweedledum did to him, he's weakened. He has to do this the old fashioned way." He locates the chalk and sets to work on warding sigils - not that they'll do much against God himself, but it's something.

A shadow of a smile tugs at the corner of your lips at the fragment of familiarity: what you'd call his terms of endearment for the Winchesters. It sparks hope. It sparks a warmth you haven't felt around him since before he died. "Gabe?"

He doesn't answer, moving to another wall in a whirlwind of concentration and panic.

"Gabriel?"

Still no response and you shift to your knees, summoning what strength you have left to lift yourself from the floor, "Gabe--"

"What?" He bites back, throwing his hands up and turns to face you, "What's so damned important you're interrupting my efforts to save both of our asses?"

Some part of you cowers, the rest clings to the shards of his former self. But when you open your mouth, you can't speak. The fear you've fought to ward off nags like a heavy weight in your chest and your eyes drop to the space between you, "Never mind. I'm sorry."

"You damn well should be. I can't protect you if you won't let me."

"Why do you want to protect me?" A spark of indignation forces you to gather your courage, lifting your head and staring back at him with a flame you'd thought you'd lost, "Why am I so damned important that you risk everything to save me?"

"Isn't it obvious? I've made it as obvious as I can by now." He turns back to the wall, sketching another sigil and you lean on the arm of the couch.

"All you tell me is--" Your fingers touch your ribs gingerly, "For my own safety. Important, emotionally attached, protect--" you look up at him, "It was never about being queen. I'm your last tie. I die and you're doomed to darkness. That's why you brought me here. That's what you couldn't tell me."

"What? No."

"It is." You slide off the arm of the couch, slowly making your way towards him, "Subconsciously, you hate what you've become. You knew I was the last tie and you couldn't lose me. That's why you hid me here--no enemies, Chuck couldn't find me."

"Stop it." He warns, fingers bearing down on fragile chalk until it snaps in his hand.

"Gabriel--"

He wheels and grabs your shoulders, "I said enough."

Your eyes lock with sharp whiskey, "I'm not afraid of you, Gabriel. Not anymore. I finally know what this is all about and I," y/e/c searches glittering gold, "I finally understand."

There's a flare of surprise in his eyes as your hand lifts, cautiously pressing your palm again his cheek, cradling his cheek with a warmth he's ached for all this time. The fury fades and his eyes sag shut, inclining his head into your touch.

"I know," you whisper, the pad of your thumb stroking his skin softly, "I'm here. I understand. You wanted a way out, but you couldn't do it on your own."

"I never meant--" he stops himself, jaw flexing for a brief moment before his eyes open and lock with yours. "I'm sorry."

Your nod is slight, a subtle downward tilt of your head as you offer a warm smile. "It's all right. I'm here. I'm not going anywhere."

He's cautious in his movements, hands ghosting over your waist before one ventures to your jaw, "You better not. I can't...you're the key, sugar. I can't do this alone."

"And you won't. We'll find Sam and Dean, they'll help us--"

"No. Not them. After everything I've done - no."

"I can talk to them. It'll be okay, Gabe.  When this is all over, we can cleanse your grace." Your fingers smooth over his hair, tucking golden locks behind his ear.

"And if you can't?"

"We'll find a way. I found a spell and after we beat Chuck? You'll be back to your old Trickster self." You assure him with a stern look, forcing the concern and apprehension from your gaze. Every nerve ignites beneath his touch, endings firing in a way that isn't wholly relief nor entirely fear. Somewhere, there's a faint alarm and yet a looming sense of comfort that strives to silence blaring crimson lights in the back of his mind. His touch is tender, his eyes mesmerizing and every ounce begs to remain in his embrace.

Is this real? Is he real?

With Chuck pulling so many strings - how many Gabriels, how many yous? How many times have you done this dance? You used to believe your celestial relationship was unique - unheard of entirely - but now? Are the two of you Chuck's 'favorite couple' now? You always find your way back to one another, not even death can part you.

So is it real?

You half expect him to speak, to disregard boundaries as he had before and know your every thought. You half expect a spiel about how all of this is real - the affection, his touch - but judging the conflict consuming whiskey, you know the same questions plague his mind.

After all of this, is it all worth it if you don't know if it's real?

It's a question you'll have to answer on your own when all is said and done. For now, now you find the Winchesters and plan your next move. For now, you allow your head to rest on the corrupted archangel's shoulder for the first time since his return and he gathers you close, cradling your frame with a tenderness you've missed.

It may not be entirely him, but he is Gabriel and that, in and of itself, inspires more hope than you could have ever imagined. Maybe, just maybe, you can have your angel back.

So, it's time to go home.

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[janeykath318]

#my fics #kircus #Jim Kirk x Carol Marcus #Cinderella AU #Jim x Carol

[topicprinter]

Hi /r/Entrepreneur, it's Pat from Starter Story again, where I do interviews with successful e-commerce entrepreneurs.Here is my interview with Adam, the founder of Dick At Your Door, an e-commerce store that sells gag gifts such as a large, dong-shaped piece of chocolate that comes in a cute box.Adam is grossing $25k/month and recently quit his job to go full-time on the business.Background.My name is Adam Elliot, and I started Dick At Your Door, an e-commerce shop for people who like to gift pranks, gags, and funny novelties to their friends and family.Our main product is an anonymous prank you can send people in the mail. When they open the package, it looks like a fancy box or expensive present. However, when they actually open the package, it’s a 5oz. solid chocolate penis.Yes, you read that correctly... Dick At Your Door sells chocolate penises you can send as a fun prank to friends and family.How the idea came about.I grew up on a farm in Southwest Iowa. Being from a small town, there aren’t many things to keep you busy, so you had to be creative. This always led to drinking cheap beer you stole from someone’s parents, ramping old cars on the dirt road bridges, and sometimes... prank wars. I guess that’s where I started thinking gag gifts were funny.After art school, I moved out to California to be a photographer full time. I failed. Failed miserably. After one year on the west coast, I hated photography, I was broke, and had taken a job as a telemarketer. It was the worst.Before launching e-commerce storefronts, I worked in sales and as a sales consultant for startups in Southern California. That’s a fancy way of saying, I spent a lot of time pitching new ideas and products to people who didn’t necessarily want them. I’ve always enjoyed talking to people, so it was natural to start getting into sales after my failed art career. I discovered that I was pretty good at understanding what people wanted.Dick At Your Door started when a buddy found a silicone penis mold at a random sex shop on a cross-country drive (thank you Lincoln, Nebraska). My buddy and I thought it would be hilarious to send molds of this in the mail to our friends. Disclaimer: It was hilarious.We eventually threw up a website as a joke to continue the prank and people started reaching out that weren’t our friends. That was the lightbulb moment for us. From there it was perfecting the molding process, finding a real chocolatier (and eventually becoming chocolatiers ourselves), building a secure website that was legit and going forth into the world of dicks and candy making.Creating the product and starting up the business.What started as a joke quickly became a viable business with real opportunity.When we first created our product, it was down and dirty. Just a couple of dudes in the garage melting Hershey chocolate and pouring it into a cheaply made silicon mold of a penis. Looking back to those first days, it was never even in our mind to create a business around chocolate, let alone chocolate dongs. It was always just a funny prank to pull on our friends.Slowly, sales started building. In the beginning, it was a very crude design. A straight black box, a stamp we had custom made, some paper mache to avoid broken chocolate, and a handheld plastic melter to wrap the box.I remember the first time we had 10 orders to fulfill at once. It was a disaster. Took almost 4 hours. It was frustrating and very much not worth our time. Nowadays, we can package and mail 500 orders in the same amount of time. The boxes are custom and ordered in bulk, and we are officially professional chocolatiers. It’s been a long road, and to be honest, I don’t know why we stuck with it. Call it a fun experiment I guess?To add to that, the biggest hurdles were, and have been, finding trustworthy manufacturers who can provide quality packaging at a reasonable. It’s all been trial and error for us, which I wish wasn’t the case. Ultimately, we found that spending the necessary money to find a quality manufacturer for our products have been worth its weight in gold. You pay for what you get.Attracting new customers and growing.It took a long time to get to the point where we were getting one order per day and even longer to hit five a day. To be honest, it wasn’t until I was laid off from my corporate job and committing a lot of time to building the brand that we began seeing any type of marketable success. Getting canned was the best thing to happen in my professional life. Funny how that works.We are lucky in the fact that we have a shareable product that is viral in nature. When we launched our website, we pushed a bunch of social media to build awareness. People love to share our Facebook, Instagram, etc with each other. That’s where we spend most of our time. Everyone loves a good meme and we have found our niche there. Comedy and dicks sell. We are always working towards that next viral post. Valentine’s Day is prime right now.Of course, all arms of marketing are going to be important (SEO, Content, Adsense, Adwords, Facebook Advertising, sharing, interviews, etc). We don’t want to have all of your eggs in one basket. However, social media has provided us with the most immediate and trackable metrics.These are the three of the most important takeaways I've found in regards to growing sales:Content is kingDon’t oversaturate your followers with product posts. 80/20 rule(80% non-product / 20% product marketing)Build an email listWhere I'm at now, and plans for the future.About eight months ago, I decided it was time to dedicate my full-time hours to the business. Since then, the business has grown almost 10x. It’s been a total grind with no real time off, but it’s been the most fulfilling professional step I have ever taken. I am excited about all that I have learned and all I have left to learn. I know that corny, but I don’t care. I love selling chocolate dicks.Short term goals:Growth and systems. We would like to be able to start stepping away from the nitty gritty more this year. That means taking on a more administrative role, rather than chocolate maker, shipper, marketer, owner, etc. With the correct operational systems in place, that transition will be much easier. Automation plus smart people in the right places will help us grow while taking some of the pressure off of ourselves.Long term goals:Build the brand to something outside of dicks. Who knows, really. If this venture has taught me anything, it’s that you can succeed in anything if you can execute with good systems and are willing to get through the really terrible times.Online/e-commerce tools I use.WooCommerceStamps.comInstagramFacebookCanva.comGoogle CloudSlackDropboxSendInBlue Email MarketingWordpressPodcasts, online resources, and books I recommend.Podcasts & online resources:Tim Ferris Podcast - Don’t listen much anymore, but that was a great motivator to get me confident about starting my own companyHow I Built This podcast.Calm App - life is stressful and crazy. Mindfulness meditation has helped me so much in how I manage that stress.Reddit - /r/entrepreneur // /r/smallbusiness // many others - Reddit is a great community where you can learn new ideas, methods, systems, and meet like-minded folks who are doing the same thing as you. It can be kind of lonely when no one around you is doing what you’re doing. Reddit helps give you a network to learn from.Books:Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience - You know when you get so immersed in a project that hours go by and you don’t even notice? That’s flow. This book is about how you can train your mind and body to have a better/easier way to fall into that and become more productive.Who Moved My Cheese - Dealing with change in your life.How to Win Friends and Influence People - Staple of the entrepreneur handbook.Anything Malcolm Gladwell - He has a great way of presenting ideas and methodology that translate well into my business.Advice for others just starting out.E-commerce is all about finding the right niche and understanding the people in that niche. For our products (and my other companies), I have never tried to be the most successful out of the gates. It is too big a mountain to climb and will leave an entrepreneur jaded. Most niches have enough opportunity in it to carve out your own little piece and grow from there. That’s what we have done.That being said, a website owner must concentrate on always having solid content for readers, customers, and especially Google to take note of. SEO is the long game and it’s not exciting, but without a long-term strategy, you could be up shit creek. What happens when social media changes? New Algorithms are released several times a year on these platforms. Those updates have a high chance of screwing up your old methods. Having multiple strategies and back up plans will save you time and money in the long run.Network. I am lucky to live in a metropolis. There are incredibly smart people who can offer great insight into growth. They can help avoid potential pitfalls.Just start. You may fail, but holy shit it will be fun. If you are laying in bed at night dreaming about building something on your own, do it. You will be ahead of 99% of the population by just starting. As stupid as it sounds, just doing the things you need to do when you know you need to do them will help you succeed.When your current project blows up in your face, that means you know understand how not to do something in the future.“The master has failed more times than the student has even tried.”“Sucking at something is the first step to being really good at something.”It will be embarrassing to suck and be new, but don’t let that get you down. People will think what you’re doing is stupid and you’ll feel stupid sometimes. That’s the way of it. If you can get past that part, you’ll be in a good spot. The way I used to get through it was imagining myself six months from that moment laughing at how much I didn’t know back then and how much I had learned. It's always exciting to learn.

#/r/entrepreneur #reddit