#being the one to bring people to Sam's side as opposed to people just having empathy and inherently caring about Sam. am i articulate? no | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

come-on-darling-honey · 11 months

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colourblind [paul lahote x reader]

AN:// this pushes all of the wolves and new moon plot to summer.

summary: based on this post of how the shift Paul and the others experience would give them physical attributes akin to a wolf, which is being colourblind. Which Paul finds himself in, until of course, he sees you for the first time in months on the first day of summer.

warnings- mature language and themes. one suggestive scene. 18+ word count 10k.

“La Push baby! Its LaPush!”

“Do you have to say that every time we go to LaPush?” I asked, staring at the back of Mike and Eric’s heads in the van. They were singing and screaming into the warm air as we drove down to First Beach.

“He said that to me when I first came to LaPush,” Bella added, meekly. I laughed, lightly pushing against her. She was wearing a white blouse and tan shorts, opposing my dark shorts and tight blue shirt, Angela had gotten me it when she went to the Grand Canyon with her family. It read “visit the Grand Canyon today!” on the back, so ugly I loved it.

“He’s been saying it since we were five and our parents would carpool us in the summer.” I whispered to Bella; we were both laughing at the terrifying attempt from Mike to sing ‘Wanna Be’ by Spice Girls. Butchering the lines didn’t matter to Mike, it was summer. First day of it. Bella was finally out of the pit she had found herself in.

I’d spent almost every Friday and Saturday night of the past seven months sleeping over at the Swan house, waiting for Bella to come through. At first it was scary, the screaming and the vacancy of her mind, but she’s better now. At least I hope she is, Charlie thinks so, but I’m worried she’s becoming dependent on our friend Jacob. Coming to First Beach did mean a far chance we could run into Jacob, but it also means she’s surrounded by other people, and as annoying as Mikes singing is, I can tell she’s enjoying it.

“Are you okay?” I heard Bella say, we’d parked, and the boys were getting their surfing gear on. I hadn’t even noticed; Bella was wide eyed like a little deer and grasping onto my shoulder. “Is it to do with Paul?”

“No,” I laughed uncomfortably shaking her off as I got out of the seat into the back, taking of my clothes to reveal my favourite bikini underneath. “Not even thinking about him.” Which was true, to an extent. I had been thinking about Paul Lahote all morning and all last night and the day before, and every day since three weeks ago but that wasn’t in this moment. So technically… not a lie!

She watched me in clear disbelief but didn’t push it. She knew some rumours about Paul from Jacob, not kind ones but as the days go on, I’m starting to believe them myself. Hall monitors on steroids. “What book are you bringing?” Bella asked, changing the subject.

“The Metamorphosis by Kafka, are you rereading Austen again?” I said, searching through my bag for suncream. The only way id gotten Bella to agree to coming today was to promise I’d stay by her side all day and we can just read on the beach. Which worked out well for me, I always hated getting changed after leaving the ocean, everything stuck to you; clothes, sand, everything. She nodded and sheepishly pulled Persuasion out of her bag. Bella grabbed the towels we were going to lay on as I surveyed the beach for the best spot, there were a lot more people than usual but it’s what I expected. The remote spot in the south corner seemed perfect. Setting down camp, I heard laughter and colliding footsteps coming towards us, Mike, Eric and now Tyler ran to our spot, and all jumped over one another to lay on the sand. Not a single cloud in the sky, not that the boys noticed, too busy apologising to Bella for covering her towel with sand. Laughing it off quietly she shook the towel and threw all the sand on the boys. She stopped laughing as she looked over my shoulder. Standing up I saw, Sam Uley talking with Jared, Paul and Embry? But Embry was huge and at least half a foot taller than when I last saw him. They began kicking a ball around until Paul suddenly turned in my direction. Swivelling quickly, I stared into the sea. Sitting down on my towel that I was apparently sharing with Jess, I looked over at Bella. Giving me a comforting smile, she nodded towards our books that sat in the bag at the foot of her towel.

A few hours had passed when Jacob and Quil had made their way over to us, Jess, Angela, and the boys had all decided to go on an impromptu adventure leaving Bella and I in peace, that is until Quil collapsed on my towel and Jacob calmly sat next to Bella.

“See how normal Jake is?” I asked kicking Quil with my foot, “Be more like Jake.” They all laughed as the fiend on my towel rolled over.

“Figured you needed protecting.” He said, puffing his chest put lightly with a boyish smile.

“From what?” Bella laughed.

“Lahote’s been staring at you for a while,” Jacob said staring at me. Turning around I saw Paul from a distance, I could barely make out his face but saw that he definitely wasn’t happy.

“Well thank you gentlemen, but we can handle ourselves.” I said, laughing when Quil got hit with a rouge baseball.

We spoke for a while, making jokes at each other’s expense and avoiding the subject of Embry completely. Bella and I had come to an unspoken agreement that if they wanted to talk about it, they would. I looked around the beach and saw a stall on the pavement beyond the pavilion, an old lady selling handmade jewellery. I told Bella, Jake, and Quil that I was going to see what she was selling and grabbed my purse from my bag. Making my way over across the hot sand I regretted not grabbing a shirt from Quil or Jake or even making a detour to the van, so many people were looking at me, even if they were wearing the same thing, I felt so exposed.

“Hello dear, having a good day?” The lady asked as I finally reached her stand. We spoke about the weather and then about her creations, one with a beautiful orange crystal in the middle had caught my eye. “Citrine, they bring positivity and happiness” she winked once she caught where I was looking. I grabbed my purse but before I could hand over the $5 someone else passed it to her. Following the tan hand, I saw Paul; he was looking at the lady and explained he’d buy it for me. She smiled and accepted the money, handing him the necklace over. Paul looked at the necklace in his hand and squinted, looking oddly heartbroken.

“I can buy it myself.” I said as he walked a few steps out of earshot of the old lady. He still hadn’t actually looked me in the eye yet. It was infuriating. “You know its super fucking rude of you to ignore me for weeks, replace me with new friends, act like I don’t exist and then pretend like nothings happened.” He tensed at this; I kept going. “And now you won’t even look me in the eye!” I laughed, his large shoulders straightened, God when did he get so big.

As he turned around something shifted, I’m not sure what but it was definitely something. He stared at me wide eyed, speechless and I saw tension fall from him. But I had no patience for him.

“Are you going to give me the necklace or should I just go and buy one for myself.” This seemed to snap him out of it, he passed me the necklace and kept looking at me. Not staring anymore, more of a gaze. Not voyeuristic as the other gazes from men on the beach but an intimate one, one I wanted to avoid. His eyes are a stunning brown, I think to my painting at home, I’d made him sit for hours, waiting for the result when I’d spent twenty minutes alone painting half an eye, he waited.

Tearing myself away from him I look down at the necklace, it was beautiful. I had to not owe him this. I took the $5 out of my purse and pressed it to his chest. He finally caught on and gently pushed my hand away.

“Take it.” I demanded.

“It’s a gift.” He whispered, the way he used to.

“Please take it.” I begged lightly; I couldn’t owe him for this.

“What is going on?” A harsh voice interrupted us. Quil had stood in front of my right shoulder, not hiding me completely but being a clear attempt to shield me. He didn’t know any of the details of what happened between Paul and I, but honestly, I didn’t either. He just knew how broken I was, crying to him when Bella, Jake, and Embry weren’t around. Knowing I couldn’t handle their silent looks.

“None of your fucking business, Ateara.” Paul snapped, his body tightening. Quil pushed him, suddenly Jared was holding Paul back and Sam had appeared in front of us. He had whispered something to Paul that I couldn’t catch but it looked more like a demand. One I wasn’t entirely sure was in Quil and I’s favour or not.

Jacob had arrived by this point, staring at Embry in disbelief who had told Quil to ‘back off’, Embry was normally so sweet and quiet. The way he was acting as he was influenced by the others was a clear sign to the mentality that I didn’t want anything to do with. Paul had caught my eye from over Sam’s shoulder, a pleading sense to him. I looked away, staring at Quil’s back. I couldn’t do this, get caught up in whatever teenage boy bullshit was going on. I was 18, Paul 19, Quil 17. I had no fucking interest. Ignoring the yells of my name I walked back to Bella who had watched the whole affair in bewilderment. I walked back to Bella in more confidence then when I had left, I couldn’t explain it, but I knew the people looking know, weren’t looking at me and if they were it, was a good thing. Sitting on the towel I thanked Bella for staying with the stuff and picked up my book. Not before placing the Citrine necklace in my bag. She watched me as I lied back down but I couldn’t care, knowing I’d have to tell her every detail later anyway. Jess practically ran to us, monopolising my towel once again and demanding to know what she had seen from across the beach.

“I mean not only was he completely eye-fucking you but who were all his friends?!” She practically screamed, I hit her shoulder lightly with my book for ‘eye-fucking’ as Bella blushed, but explained who the boys were.

“Oh, they’re coming over!” Jess said, elated with the drama unfolding right in front of her. My legs slid over Jess so she wouldn’t leave and who ever was coming wouldn’t stay, which thankfully she understood as she grabbed my legs lightly with a comforting rub.

“Can you believe the nerve of Embry?” I heard Jake yell as he was approaching us, Bella’s cheeks were as pink as Jess’ bikini. Jess’ jaw dropped as she ate up Quil and Jake’s physique, I watched her over my book, smirking as she stared at the long haired boys.

Quil called my name, and I looked up, with my head laid down I saw him as a giant, which made me laugh.

“What the fuck was he saying to you.” Quil demanded, staring at me.

“It’s over, don’t worry about it.” I said calmly.

“Don’t worry? He’s a fucked-up dude! Literally almost exploded on me, again!” he gave Jess context, that Paul had almost ‘attacked’ Quil in a convenience store a few weeks ago. She looked down at me in surprise. I still read my book.

“As hot as he is,” Jess said with Quil and Jake protesting as she ignored them, “no boy is worth it if he has anger like that.” She said with the older sister tone she normally used on her younger siblings. Quil and Jake agreed with her, but Bella stayed silent, I looked at her from the corner of my eye and saw her staring at the pavilion.

“Honestly, if you go back to him, I can’t be your fucking friend.” I caught Quil saying. I stood up so quick I dropped my book on the towel, loosing the page. Where did this come from? Bella, Jake and even Jess went quiet. Quil had snapped, he never snapped at me.

“First of all, that would be my decision, second, I wasn’t ‘with’ him in the first place and thirdly you don’t get to be so fucking rude to me.” I snapped, pointing a finger at his chest.

“He’s a bad fucking person and you know it.” His eyes stared into mine, harsh and true.

“You don’t know him how I know him.” I defended Paul, for some unknown reason. I didn’t even fully believe myself I was just so hurt with how Quil was acting everything was blurring out of anger.

“After everything he did, you’re defending him!” Quil yelled, desperation in his eyes, he was looking at me as if I was crazy, which I was beginning to feel.

“You don’t fucking care about me.” I yelled back. Storming away, grabbing only my bag and purse, leaving my book and towel. All but Quil yelled after me.

Opening the van, Mike was sat in the back struggling to get the sand of his feet. “Pass me my clothes.” I said, I couldn’t hear myself due to the anger raising and blurring everything, but I could tell I was being rude, Mike’s smile dropped into a worried expression as he gave me my clothes. I dressed in silence as he asked me if someone did something, like the protective older brother he always acted like. I shook my head, unable to fathom words that weren’t a string of swears. Did Quil really think that lowly of me? Did he think he could just give me an ultimatum like that, and I’d accept it? Fuck this and fuck him.

I told Mike I was going home and as he asked if I wanted a lift, I slammed the door of the van shut too hard and made my way to the back streets of first beach. I knew if I got to the centre of LaPush that I could find the bus stops I used to use when I’d hang out with Paul. Led hit me over the head when I thought about him. I suddenly had an urge to sit by his side unlike the recent weeks where id sworn him off and cried and cried.

A truck pulled up beside me, old and worn I recognised it as Sam Uley’s. I looked over to see him sat in the driver’s seat looking at me.

“I’ll give you a ride.” He said, in a way I felt oddly comforted by as I got in. Normally, I would’ve told him to fuck off, but I felt way too emotional to walk the twenty minute walk to the centre of town. We sat in silence for ten minuets after I’d told him my address. I wanted to ask him about Paul, even about Emily and Leah but it didn’t feel right. This would be the fifth time I’d been near him let alone speak to him, so it just felt wrong. But he must’ve been thinking the same thing.

“It’s not Paul’s fault.”

“What?” I asked, looking at him. He was staring intensely into the road, it was weird, it felt like Sam was effortlessly the comforting older brother figure Mike had tried to be. Yet he seemed guilty like he’d made a mistake, not know but before.

“I told him to stay away from you, it was my fault. He had no choice.” I decided to listen, to make sense of what he was saying. “There’s somethings you need to know, do you remember Emily?” I nodded, unable to speak in fear he’d stop speaking. “I’ll write her address down for you, visit any time and she’ll help you.” How cryptic could one person be.

“Why did Paul listen to you?” I questioned, staring at him. His dark brown hair was swooped back so he could see the road.

“He had no choice, you’ll understand.”

“I don’t understand anything.” He laughed.

“You will.” He pulled over and stopped driving, we’d reached my house. He pulled a notebook from the glove compartment. “Here’s her address and my number if you need a ride.”

“I can get Bella to drive me.”

“No, Bella can’t know about this, it doesn’t involve her. I’m sorry but you must trust me.”

“I tell Bella everything.” I said, taking the sheet of paper from him.

“But does she tell you everything?” he asked, his tone wasn’t accusatory like Quil’s had been, no Sam asked me like he was genuinely worried about me. He was right, I knew Bella wasn’t telling me something. I couldn’t ask, hoping she’d finally tell me.

“I guess this means don’t tell Jake or… Quil.” He nodded, I got out of the truck, thanking him for the ride.

“You hike a lot, right?” It was my turn to nod. “Take a break for a while, with all those attacks it really isn’t safe.” I agreed, sadly, and went inside, after thanking him again for the ride. “Ever need a lift, just let me know, I’ll sort one out for you.”

I was glad it was summer break. All my free time had been spent on art, painting, sketching, and avoiding literally everything else. I’d been missing all of Bella’s calls and thankfully when she came over to my house I was working. Sam had been giving me lifts to work since I normally did a small hike there. I worked on the other side of Forks at a plant shop and nowhere near Bella. Whatever she was hiding from me had been eating away at me for a while. Summer break had also given me an escape from running into Jess, I loved her, but I had literally no answers for her. And the theories I had were so bat-shit crazy I had feeling no one would believe them.

Quil had called seventeen times. I couldn’t call him back, still angry at the way he spoke to me. Maybe he was right about Paul, but a small voice in the back of my head I’d nicknamed ‘stupid consciousness’ told me I should give Paul a fair chance and listen to Sam. Maybe it was some crazy mastermind ploy to pull down my defences, but id started to befriend Sam, and Emily as she’d joined him a few times to take me to work. I couldn’t figure out why they’d decided to help me out suddenly, but I decided to just go with it, I felt safer, loved and they never brought up Paul.

8:30am on a Tuesday morning I sat in the garden waiting for Sam. My headphones blasting Noah Kahan’s new album. It was chiller then it would be for this time of year, so a loose fleece hung around my body. We had another month of beautiful sun until the constant hood of clouds and rain returned to Forks. I had started worrying this morning that Sam driving me to and from work was an inconvenience, I hadn’t been insecure about this before, but it was daunting on me now. What if I was just pushing him out of his way and annoying him? Annoying Emily? I felt suddenly sick. But the truck in front of me pulled me out of the haze. Sam’s brotherly grin made me smile, my older brother was away at college, and I missed him. He opened my door form his side and I got in, the fear of inconvenience looming over me. Taking off my headphones I heard the soft folk music playing form the old truck. It was a twenty-minute drive to my work; we made nice conversation till Sam said something that struck me.

“Come to Ems tonight, I’ll finally explain it to you.” Weeks had passed since Sam initially asked me, it was clear I didn’t want to ask, so he’d decided to tell me. I nodded, silently looking out the window. Five minutes till we got there.

“Will he be there?”

“Yes.” He was short, sweet, and blunt. I knew I couldn’t hide from this, so I decided to ask what had been looming over me all morning.

“Why do you drive me? You work on the res; this is completely out of your way.” I still held my gaze out of the window. But I heard him grin as he told me.

“Well, I like your company, I always wanted a baby sister,” I scoffed at ‘baby’ which he caught and laughed, “plus it really is not safe if you walk to work, you walk through the bush, it isn’t safe.” His tone was serious at the end. I knew he was telling the truth. When we arrived, he looked over at me, smiling he passed me a brown bag. Holding back a laugh he told me “Em’s worried you aren’t eating enough”.

“She does know I’m an adult right?” I laughed, taking the bag.

“Well do you have any lunch today?” the silence from me made him laugh as I clearly did not, infact, have lunch. I threw a piece of card from the car door at him as I mumbled in protest.

“Pick me up at four?” I asked, putting the brown bag in my own. He nodded, as he drove away, I realised how long today was going to be.

I was right. So annoyingly, right. The day dragged, it felt that five hours had passed when in fact it was only two and I couldn’t even go for my lunch yet. If one more old lady asked me to point her in the direction of the roses, I was going to lose my mind. Not only was it weird that roses were extremely popular among old ladies but that they couldn’t see that the roses were at the front of the store, they were the first things you saw as you walked in.

At 1:25pm I heard a familiar gruff voice echo in the small shop. Charlie Swan. I was praying he was talking to a friend, or that there had been a horrible crime and the shop was under investigation. But as I heard a small, feminine voice I knew I wouldn’t have such luck. Of course, when I was working Chief Swan would decide to finally re-do his front garden. My lunch break was in five minutes if I could just hide here then my 60-year-old co-worker Henry would serve them. Henry was a true one, he’d help me in my hour of need. I hid behind the seeds, staring at Iris in its many forms as I heard Bella ask Henry if I was working too, I wasn’t sure if Henry and I had some super cool intuition or if he had genuinely forgotten I was working as he told her I wasn’t today. As I snuck away for my lunch break, I internally praised Henry for being the best co-worker that has ever lived.

Checking my phone, I noticed a missed call from Sam and a text.

“Can’t pick you up, Em is going to, she’ll be using her truck- its blue same make as Bella’s. Will be there when you arrive. Sorry.”

As weird as that was, I was just thankful I had a ride, I didn’t trust Henry behind the wheel.

The afternoon had passed quicker than the morning, the lunch Emily had made me was embarrassingly good and oddly comforting. As I finished my shift I gave Henry a fist bump, he laughed the way old people do, as a reflex showing that they’ve been laughing all their life. Emily’s blue truck pulled up; it was in a better paint job then Sam’s but I had a feeling Sam worked on her truck more than his own.

“How was your day?” Em gleamed as I got into the car.

“Dull but the lunch was amazing, thank you.” I laughed as she grinned like a fool.

“I knew you’d like it! Paul told me you were vegetarian, and I’ve been dying to pull out those veggie cookbooks! The boys always avoid vegetables, it’s ridiculous!” she laughed as I wound the window down, warm air sifting through. My fleece cocooned in my bag form this morning, abandoned in the heat. I smiled, feeling warm at the casual mentioning of Paul. I’d assumed Sam’s business was something to do with work and that it wasn’t my business but at Em’s odd avoidance of it, something felt different.

I’d told her about Henry and Bella, talking more about Henry then Bella, Em laughed so hard she coughed. Pulling up to her house, I was shocked. It was beautiful. When we got out, I stared at the cabin, two stories and covered in flowers and plants. Wooden furniture, big windows, and open doors. It was beautiful. Em pulled me in, it was even more perfect inside. Bright colours and paintings everywhere. Sitting at a round, wooden table Em beckoned me to join her.

“Your home is… wow just amazing,” I was still looking at everything, the open kitchen and dining room was so homely and comforting. She smiled and grabbed my hand.

Emily was one of the most beautiful people I had ever seen. The scar on her face to her arm didn’t change that. She was even more beautiful; she wore it proudly. When she smiled part of the scar creased at her eye. Her long black hair hung over her shoulders, bangs perfectly trimmed. My hair was almost as long as hers, but she had a few inches on me.

“How are you feeling?” her caring tone standing through.

“Nervous, I have no idea what is about to happen.”

She nodded, squeezing my hand. “I’ll be here the whole time, if you don’t want to be here at any moment just say and we’ll go, no questions asked.” She must’ve noticed the apprehension in my face. “Nothings going to hurt you, Sam and Paul have made sure of that.” I trusted her, more than I trusted the people I grew up with. I knew for certain there was something going on, that involved Paul and Sam, probably Jared and Embry too. Whatever it was I hoped it didn’t involve Quil and Jake too.

Voices came through the door behind us that led out to Emily’s extensive garden. Sam and Paul came in. Both shirtless and only wearing shorts. Which was weird but I guess they felt the heat more than Emily and I, Emily was wearing a stunning white sundress and I white pants and black shirt, my apron from work stuffed in my bag along side the fleece.

Paul looked at me, he looked horrible, dark bags under his eyes, and it looked as if he had to hold himself back from me. Not in a threatening way, not the relief in his eyes told me this was good, that I was safe. Sam rubbed my shoulder as he passed me to Emily. As they hugged and kissed, I saw Paul still watching me, turning back to him I saw the weight in his eyes.

“Are you joining us?” I asked him, an olive branch being thrown in his direction.

He took a moment to process what I asked then silently nodded and sat a chair away from me, which did hurt. But I ignored it and looked to Sam and Emily who had both sat back down. Emily’s hand was once again in mine, Paul looked with an odd… jealousy? Till his eyes trailed up my arm to my neck, where the necklace laid. I’d worn it every day since the beach that I didn’t even think about it anymore.

“So,” Sam started, “there are some things we have to tell you, but I think it’ll be easier if we show you then explain.” Emily’s head snapped to him as Pauls hung in shame. He smiled at her reassuringly and guided us all to the garden where Jared and Embry were talking. They both greeted me with a relaxed voice I was deeply confused as to what was going to happen.

Sam and Paul stood slightly in front of me, Emily’s grip tightened as she held onto my arm. Without warning Jared had… disappeared? And there was a wolf in his place. I looked in frozen shock to Embry who was grinning ear to ear and then his body contorted itself into another oversized wolf. Both started chasing each other and I couldn’t find it in myself to be scared. Instead, I found it hilarious, two boys had just turned into great big wolves, and I was worried about my friend not liking me anymore! All my problems felt so small as I watched them both. Emily pinched me, whipping my head to her in pain I asked her what’s wrong.

“What is wrong? What is wrong! They just shifted into wolves and you’re acting like it’s the most normal thing in the world!” She yelled, trying to grasp anything from me.

“Let’s go inside.” Sam said, leaving Embry and Jared to playfight in the garden. Emily dragged me in, I couldn’t stop watching them. Enamoured by how small it made my problems feel. Everything had been feeling so all-consuming as I experienced every little emotion, it was awesome to feel so insignificant.

“How familiar are you with the tribe’s history?” Sam asked, trying to read me as we sat back in Emily’s kitchen. I finally turned away from the wolves in the garden to face him.

It all hit me, everything Paul had told me growing up and Quil had been telling me before the beach. About the vampires, about the three bloodlines that became protectors. Quil was in that bloodline. So was Jake. Fuck.

“I know a fair bit.” I said. The next ten minutes were spent by Sam monologuing everything they knew so far but I could tell he was leaving something out. Something I knew that I knew. Paul or Quil must have mentioned it. After he had finished, I sat processing, knowing there was something else. The leaches. Was it just the one Sam had mentioned. Oh god. I dropped the glass of water I was holding, Paul caught it.

“The Cullen’s.” I breathed, looking at Sam and Paul in horror.

“You caught that quicker than I thought you would,” Sam laughed, “the treaty doesn’t allow us to tell people what they are.”

“I sat next to them in classes… Bella dated one!” silence. “She knew?” I was bewildered. She knew that Edward Cullen was an ancient old man murderer and dated him? What is wrong with her. I can’t judge her completely, as gross and weirdly necrophiliac as that is, I didn’t know her story. I’m glad Sam warned me that she wasn’t telling me everything.

“Does she know about you guys?” Sam shook his head.

“Only the people in this room, Jared and Embry and the tribe’s elders know. Its safer that way.” I nodded. Embry was 17. He must’ve been so scared.

Suddenly it hit me how cruel I’ve been to Paul; Sam had explained the gag order he’d put on Paul. Thinking about him, I knew there was something else, but I couldn’t help but just feel horrible for how I acted. The way I spoke about him to Quil, not meaning a single word but loving how good it made me feel. Without looking at him I let go of Emily’s hand and held his. He squeezed in and I could practically feel the smile radiating of him. I knew I shouldn’t feel too bad for how I acted; I didn’t know. But I wish I did. Sam explained lightly how his transformation was, how painful and terrified he was. I didn’t want to imagine a similar story leaving Paul’s mouth.

“I’m thankful you told me but why exactly are you telling me?” I asked, Paul stiffened, my thumb absent and idly ran circles around the back of hand as I stared at Sam. He shifted uneasily under my gaze. Which felt wrong, Sam was never uncomfortable. What was he avoiding? What am I forgetting?

A ring ran through the silent kitchen, and I dropped Paul’s hand to look at my phone. Jakes name read across the screen, which was weird. Jake never called me. He texted me when he was picking me up to come hang out and that was it. It’d been radio silence on both ends since I had that argument with Quil.

“Erm, I’m gonna get this.” I went outside to Emily’s front porch rather than the open garden.

“Jake?” I asked to the empty phone line.

“Hello?” He panted; his breaths disjointed.

“Jake what’s wrong?”

“I don’t know, something-” he was cut of by a pained groan. “Somethings wrong.” He sounded like a child, one who couldn’t understand the pain of a broken arm or where a relative had gone and why they wouldn’t come back.

“Jake? Is Quil there?”

“No, I just got back from the movies with Bella.” He screamed again. Then began pleading with me. I didn’t know what to do. Suddenly two wolves ran past me into the Woodline, I turned back to see Sam telling Paul and Emily something as he shifted into the clearly biggest wolf.

“Listen to me okay. Deep breaths Jake, help is coming. You just gotta keep calm. Please, okay?” I asked, figuring out what was going on. Jake was shifting. I was panicking and felt like crying at his screams of pain.

“How are you feeling?” a pained yell was all I got in reply, Emily came to the porch behind me and put a hand to my back, ‘keep going’ she mouthed.

“Focus on- Bella! Think of her okay. Bella she’s going to be an anchor for you. Think about her okay. What shirt was she wearing today?” I asked keeping my voice as calm and steady as I could.

“She was wearing-” another scream through gritted teeth.

“Focus.”

“a green jacket, and a white blouse.” I heard crashing through the call, Sam’s voice, more screaming. I hung up the phone. This was too much. Too soon. Emily’s hand ran up and down my back, I was breathing heavily. I only found out about this an hour ago, how was this happening to Jake? Bella had once called him “earthbound sun” and now all I was hearing was his screams of pain playing on repeat.

“Everything will be okay.” She whispered, taking me upstairs into a bedroom. The walls were wooden, and the large bed was plush, and it smelt of lavender when I sat on it. Emily leant in front of me, both my hands in hers as we breathed together, she must’ve gone threw this a few times now. I couldn’t even pinpoint why I was so worried. The idea of Jake or any of them making a mistake and Paul getting hurt was eating me up. As my eyes fell into Emily’s and my breathing matched hers, I remembered the last bit of the story Paul told me years ago.

We were 15, sat cross legged on his lawn. I was making daisy chains as he told the legends to me. He blushed as he mentioned imprinting. The two souls who were destined to meet brought together by fate. How the shifter devotes themselves to their imprint even at the cost of themselves. At the time we both couldn’t comprehend the power of it, we thought it was ludicrous. And it was, a complete lack of agency. But in a selfish way, it was fantastical. My breathing was normal, and Emily sat next to me.

“Did Paul… did he imprint on me?” I asked quietly, scared if I said it any louder id be ridiculed. Emily didn’t say anything, she just squeezed my hands gently.

“Why don’t you stay here tonight? I have some spare pyjamas; I can wash your uniform for tomorrow.” She asked, eyes searching my own. Nodding I waited as she left the room. She told me to start getting changed as she left, stripping down to my underwear I became oddly aware of how insane this was, but I trusted Emily. And I knew now, I was safe. She came in holding a brown tank top and white shorts, they were so soft as I put them on. I was still dazed as the panic left my system; every movement was a cloud in my mind.

“Would you like to join me?” she asked, as I lifted my head up in confusion she continued “I’m going to watch a film, we can watch it together, if you’d like.”

“I’d like that.” I replied, Emily put my clothes in the wash with some of her own and we got comfy on the sofa, I’d learnt the room with the lavender smelling bed was a guest room, and I was welcome to stay over whenever. Emily’s room was just down the hall. Her Gran had left her this house and she spent two years renovating it. She always made sure anyone was welcome here. I texted my parents to let them know I wouldn’t be home tonight, they told me to stay safe and call them if something is wrong. I was an adult, and I knew they liked knowing I was okay.

“Paul stays over most nights,” she said, braiding my hair, “but he sleeps on the couch. I can’t get him to take a room.” I was laying half on her chest half on her the sofa. I felt like a child. It was the most comforting experience of my life. We watched 2005 Pride and Prejudice. Laughing and swooning the whole time. We cried at the love in the film, the hand moments making us kick our feet, giggling. It was relaxing, to be with a friend. One that wasn’t hiding anything. I guess I would be the friend that was hiding something now to all my friends, to Jess, Bella, and Angela. But I couldn’t dwell on that. I told Emily about how I was feeling with Bella, and she told me about Leah, my stomach dropped when she told me Sam gave her that scar.

“I couldn’t be angry at him, what happened to him, to all the boys, it takes away their agency in emotional moments. I forgive him.” She told me, watching the film. Like this was second nature. Merely an afterthought. I knew I was safe here but was that just hysterics? Was I in danger and too naive to notice? No. Sam and Paul care for me. But Sam loves Emily? No. I reassure myself as I fall into a drowsy slumber as Emily ran her fingers through my hair. Sam can control it, so can Paul and Jared and Embry and Jake will be able to.

Warm arms lifted me, I felt the soft plush of the bed beneath me. I wanted to grab onto to the body holding me, my eyes wouldn’t open but I tried. A light chuckle sifted through the air as I finally let go.

A pink sunrise fell over me. I was drenched in the colours. Walking through the house I saw Paul, asleep on the sofa. The pink and purple began to fall onto him, he shifted awake as I made my way to the kitchen.

“Did I wake you?” I froze, looking at him through sleep festered eyes. He shook his head, smiling. We made coffee and cereal in silence, I the coffee and Paul the cereal. As we ate, I asked about Jake.

“He’s better now, the first shift is always the worst. What you did on the phone really helped.”

“All I did was keep him talking till you guys got there,” I said, finishing my cereal.

“He mentioned you called Bella an anchor, that helps more than you know.” He was looking at me intently. Suddenly I remembered my conversation with Emily last night.

“Paul…” Emily and Sam walked in, laughing with each other. I didn’t want to ask Paul with others around. He seemed brighter though, maybe he’d finally had a full night of sleep. Sleep, id fallen asleep with Emily on the couch and woken up in bed. Looking back at Paul, he was already watching me, waiting. “Did you take me to bed last night? You could’ve just woken me.” I laughed, trying to play off my feelings.

Sam laughed, sitting down with a coffee, “You were both sound asleep when we got back, no use waking you.” Emily looked at me, asking if id said anything, lightly shaking my head I pulled myself away from the conversation as they updated Emily on Jacob. From the window I saw the orange sun dance across the green summer leaves, sway through the crisp morning grass. The sun had risen by now, but the early morning was still prevalent in its colourful glory.

Sam called my name, pulling me out of my thoughts. “When do you start work?”

“9am,” I lied. Well, it wasn’t an actual lie, but I had decided. I wasn’t going to go to work today, Henry had been telling me I need to take advantage of the paid sick days we get, so today I will. I need to process what the hell just happened. Alone. As much as I want to be here, I don’t know how much more I can handle. Sam had told us he hadn’t expected Jake to shift so soon and Quil’s grandfather has noticed he has a fever. It’s happening too fast and is still don’t really know why I am involved. Expect I do, which makes it so much worse. I would get dropped of at work, and then catch a bus to First Beach, which yes was counter intuitive, but it felt wrong to tell the people who immediately accepted me I didn’t want to be around them right now. I’d tell them id get a ride home from Henry and just walk back home. No, I shouldn’t walk. I promised Sam I wouldn’t walk. I’ll get the bus home or ask Bella as awkward as it might be.

Paul eyed me, brow furrowing. Sam and Emily didn’t notice but I couldn’t help feeling like Paul could read my mind. It feels weird being known so well. I sat with them for an hour or so before going to get a shower and then get dressed, Emily had layed my clothes on my bed while I was in the shower, and I suddenly felt insanely sick at the thought of lying to her.

Wandering back into the kitchen I saw Paul wearing worker pants that were just wow. I looked away before he caught my gaze. My heart beating in my throat.

“Where are you working?” I asked, he was looking for a job before all of this.

“Sam’s construction, he let Jared and I join after we shifted, he runs the business you know?” he said looking at my clothes. Wide legged white pants and black shirt, I was holding my apron, the ugly thing.

“Actually, Sam’s gone in early, so can I drive you to work?”

I nod, grabbing my bag and kissing Emily’s cheek goodbye as she started working on a wooden chair. Emily sold wooden furniture, I made sure to make note of that since my parents were looking at getting a new kitchen done. As we left, I noticed Sam had taken Emily’s truck and left his own for Paul. Fuckers had planned this.

“you’re a horrible liar, you know.” Paul said as we drove away from Emily’s. Is he psychic? “Sam told me you normally finish early on Wednesday’s, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Me too. I finish at 12, ill pick you up and explain everything.” I decided to play dumb.

“I thought you explained everything?” his laugh echoed in the car.

“We both know you’re too smart to think that.” The conversation ended, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. Not the same feeling as when Sam drove me, this was new.

“You can meet Henry when you pick me up.” I added, laughing at the thought.

“Who?” Paul said, the familiar jealousy peaking in his voice.

“Oh, he’s a real catch, total ladies’ man. I have a conspiracy that we’re psychically linked.” I said nonchalantly, absolutely doing it on purpose.

“That’s cool.” He said, sharply. These three hours were gonna go smoothly.

And they did. I was so excited for Paul to come pick me up I was practically jumping the whole three-hour shift. Henry had been side eyeing me all day, possibly worried I was on drugs or something.

“So, Paul’s going to pick me up and I’d like for you to meet him.” I told Henry as we stocked the shelves, or as I stocked them, and he micromanaged me.

“Eh okay.” He grumbled, I smiled, excited.

As 12 came I was practically glued to the window. Seeing Sam’s truck pull up my chest had a weight lifted off that I didn’t know was there. Pauls stocky figure walked up to the front door, and I beckoned him over to where I stood.

“Where’s this Henry then?” he asked, trying to seem calm.

“This way!” he must’ve been taken back by my excitement as he gasped slightly as I dragged him to the back of the store. “Henry! This is Paul.”

I watched as Pauls deflated face turned quickly into annoyance and relief as he saw Henry, who looked him up and down, grumbled and asked him if he could pick up some boxes for him. Paul agreed, but it didn’t feel like he had much choice in the matter. After ten minutes of Paul moving boxes around for Henry, I finally got him away, saying goodbye we left the store.

“You minx.” He laughed, opening my door for me.

Laughing I asked him what he was talking about.

“All morning. All morning! I spent worrying some hot bachelor called Henry had stolen your heart! Jared was getting annoyed at how pissy I was acting!” he whined, driving to LaPush.

We made it to first beach without Paul ripping my head off from annoyance. I tried not to dwell too hard on his blatant admission to his jealousy. But it made my head spin.

But he went silent as we walked to the rocks on the southside of the beach. Whatever he was about to tell me was very serious, and I was ready to hear. As we sat down, he looked at the necklace I was wearing, the citrine he bought me.

“You know when I bought you that necklace, I had no idea how beautiful it was.” He said, slowly looking up into my eyes.

“What do you mean? The lady handed it to you, I saw you look down at it.” I asked, searching his eyes for whatever he was trying to tell me.

“What do you remember about imprinting?” he asked, his hand lightly holding onto mine, the other splayed against the rocks. He took me off guard which must be visible on my face as he laughed at my expression.

“I remember you telling me about the imprint who saved the tribe from the vampires by sacrificing herself.” It was a harrowing tale, one that even as children Paul and I treaded on lightly.

“Uh huh, anything else?” he probed.

“I know how the elders described the imprint to feel.” At his silence I continued “that the universe centres around them,” I was whispering to him now, “that it is a love of the souls, bonded and combined.” He nodded.

“Anything else?”

“Paul why are you asking me this?” dread filled me, what if he had imprinted on someone else, I would respect it and understand but telling me like this had to be some form of torture. Deep down I knew that wasn’t the case.

“I imprinted on you.” My head whirled. Everything else became singular as I looked at Paul Lahote who became a multitude. “I was scared I’d imprint on someone else, and it’d be me loosing my agency in life you know,” I did, it was what I was worried about. “But I imprinted on you, at the beach. And I’ve always been in love with you. When we were kids and you would always climb the highest tree, never scared if you fell. When we’d braid each other’s hair. It’s always been you, even the fates agree.” The wind was knocked out of his lungs as I practically jumped onto him. My arms around his neck, his around my waist.

I pulled away. Remembering how this conversation started. “What did you mean, when you said you didn’t know how beautiful the necklace was?”

“That’s the other thing, turns out when we shift for the first time, we go colourblind.”

“What?”

“Wolves, they are naturally colourblind, Sam thinks that’s why we lose it, Jared and I used to think it was just another way the fates could steal life from us.” I listened intently. “That was until Sam imprinted on Emily. He said it was the most overwhelming experience of his life, not only because of the horrible family drama but because it was the first time in months, he had seen colour. We realised then that the only way we could see truly again was when we imprinted. You have to understand how terrifying it was after we’d first shifted, I thought I was dying” He took a deep, steadying breath. “After I first shifted you sent me a picture, do you remember?”

“Not really.” I admitted.

“It was of that cloud with the colours on it.” I nodded, remembering. It was a pileus cloud I’d seen in my back garden; he pulled out his phone. Scrolling sheepishly past the texts from him asking to talk to me and then texts from me, begging for an answer. He landed on a picture I sent, on the pileus cloud, they have colours sitting on them, rainbows laying on the soft clouds of the sky. Had I been taking my sight for granted? Spending my whole life gazing while he had it stolen from him?

“I cried for hours when you sent me this, I couldn’t see it, Sam had told me to cut off all contact with you and all I needed was you to- I don’t know- explain the colours to me since I couldn’t see them.” He breathed heavily; I could see the anger weighing on his shoulders once more. I didn’t interrupt him, just placed a hand on his thigh as an attempt to soothe. He smiled gently at this, still looking at the cloud. “It was two days after I’d shifted for the first time, and I was always so overwhelmed. I kept snapping and shifting in a fit of rage.”

As he waited for a response from me, I finally formed a semi-coherent sentence.

“I would’ve done the same. I can’t imagine how it- losing that- I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be. If it’s anyone’s fault it’s those bloodsuckers.” He laughed. Smiling at me. We spoke for what felt like hours, it probably was but I didn’t mind. “I’m sorry to unload all of this onto you. I didn’t want to drag you into it, but you have to realise you call the shots, all you.”

“Is this why Sam didn’t pick me up yesterday?” I asked, remembering the hasty text Sam had sent me yesterday afternoon.

“Yeah,” he blushed, “I got angry at him, and he spent the whole day trying to convince me.”

“Couldn’t he just demand it?” the authority Sam had over the boys couldn’t be questioned, but it was a natural thing to him I felt it too.

“Yeah, but I know that he wanted me to make the choice, you’re my imprint after all.” He smiled, putting a hair behind my ear.

The sun had begun to set when Paul and I stopped talking, we’d spoke for hours. Catching up on each other’s lives, I told him about my fight with Quil and how I was feeling about Bella, and he listened. He told me about his dad, who’d decided to go work down south for a few months, leaving Paul the house to himself. That even though he gets the entire one-story building to himself he prefers to stay at Emily’s, he’d always hated being alone. He watched the sun set and I watched him. How it reflected on his clear skin, how his short hair was growing back. He’d explained that they’d all cut their hair after their first shift as to now only be practical but because they were grieving, grieving themselves. Paul was growing his hair again, determined to have a piece of himself back again, the hair length only mattered on the first few shifts. No one was sure why.

Going back to Sam’s truck I hold onto Paul’s hand, pulling him to a stop halfway across the beach. Getting closer to him I felt the warmth radiate from him, he couldn’t help but become the sun. The confused look on his face amused me, as I pulled him in and kissed him. His hand let go of mine as he wove his arms around my waist. My hands going to his back and his hair. He didn’t drive back to Emily’s. We spent the night in his house, the blue walls of his bedroom were known better than my own. Making out on his bed I sat on his lap, pulling his shirt of and then my own he grinned up at me.

“You’re so beautiful.” I didn’t say anything as I unhooked my bra, his jaw dropped slightly, and I blushed. He pulled his own jeans off and then switched our positions, so I was on my back as he took my white trousers of, discarding them somewhere in the room. I felt his lips on mine again which stopped me from staring at his well-defined chest, my hands felt him completely. I reached into his boxers as he whined slightly into my mouth at my slow and teasing actions.

“Don’t play with me.” He whispered into my ears as he ripped his boxers off, slowly taking my underwear off. As I felt him align himself, I looked into his eyes, seeing nothing but love.

Three weeks had passed since I found out about Paul’s imprint. Summer had begun to spread itself thinly and form into fall. I’d spoken to Quil, but he could tell I was hiding something. Especially since Jake had abandoned him without word and so did I. I knew he wanted to be apart of whatever was going on, but we all hoped he would never have to know, never feel the pain they all went through.

I spent most nights at Emily’s and some at Pauls but few and few at home. I wasn’t sure why my parents trusted my choices so much, but I figured they trusted Paul and I’d been a well-behaved teen. They did, however, begin to question why Bella Swan was constantly coming over asking for me. I couldn’t tell her. I still wasn’t over her not telling me anything. But Jake had ghosted her, just after I did. After the Cullen did. She had other friends, but it felt like a really shitty thing to do, I knew if I saw her, I’d just tell her everything. Even if she wouldn’t do the same for me.

I was at Emily’s when Embry, Jared, and Bella Swan herself came into the kitchen. She looked at me in shock and I gestured to the seat beside me, she shook her head. As Emily and I were informed on how Bella found herself in this predicament I laughed at the thought of Jake and Paul fighting, it didn’t surprise me. But I was shocked at Bella slapping him, she defended herself explaining she was angry and didn’t know we’d made up at this point. She didn’t know much. Jared told her that the pack was faster and better than the leaches, Bella seemed to feel more comfortable.

Sam, Jake, and Paul came into the house, Bella seemed to stow herself away in the corner. Her face went bright red after Paul apologised to her and kissed me, Sam complimented how well she took seeing two men turn into wolves in front of her and she laughed it off.

“How are you feeling?” Paul asked as I climbed into bed beside him.

“Tired, Bella gave me a hard time about me ignoring her, she’s right I guess.” Facing him in bed I tried to savour how the moon bounced off him. How he seemed to glow in the blue moonlight. He disagreed, but I knew Paul was biased he’d never really trusted Bella.

“What about Quil have you made up your mind on what you’re going to do?” He asked, kissing my nose as he pulled me to his chest.

“I’m going to go to his house tomorrow. I can’t tell him anything, but I need him to know I’m still his friend and I still love him. He’s one of my closest friends, his love is tough but its true you know?”

“I know.”

“How are you feeling?”

“everything’s getting calmer, but the red leech is still circling, these hikers need to learn to stay on the trail for their own sake.” He laughed; it wasn’t a happy laugh but an exhausted one. “Plus, Quil really might shift soon, I’m not sure how I feel about you going to see him in person.”

“I’ll be okay.”

“Doesn’t make me worry any less.” He was holding me so close, our legs intertwined.

“He knows me better than anyone, which is scary but I won’t talk to him about the fight it doesn’t matter to me anymore. I can’t not have him in my life, it feels so good to be known so well. And not in the way you know me,” I clarified, “he knows me in a way that is tried and true, its not as intimate as how you know me, Quil challenges me, I challenge him. I can’t stand ignoring him.”

Paul nodded, he understood. He just hoped he didn’t shift in front of me.

“I love you.” He whispered into my hair.

“I love you more.” I whispered back, falling into a perfect sleep.

“Are you happy being with Paul?” Quil asked, grey hoodie swamping his tall figure.

“Yes.” I replied, arms crossed over my chest.

“I’m not surprised.” He sighed. Then, crossing the front room he looked out of his front window. “You really hurt me, you know.”

“I know.”

“And you can’t even tell me why!”

“I’m sorry.”

“You, Embry and Jake can’t tell me a single thing!” he yelled, still not looking at me. I had prepared for this, for him to hate me. I just didn’t expect it to feel so horrible.

“I’m sorry, Quil, I really am.” He looked at me, eyes desperate.

“I’ve missed you.” He whispered. Tears in my eyes I ran to him, colliding with his chest we both cried on each other. “Remember we’re not keeping score, no arguments-”

“No winners.” I finished; we didn’t keep score.

As he pulled away, we both wiped at the tears streaming down our faces.

“Lahote? Really?” he laughed; I punched him in the arm. “Ow! Okay, okay.”

For now, everything was okay. I could handle okay.

pauls pinterest board

an:// i hoped you all loved reading this as much as i loved writing it! you can see why its taken me so long to actually write this :') Tumblr always gets rid of my paragraph spacing it kills me:( the word doc for this fic is 19 pages long! this is the longest fic i've written, im very proud of it!! requests are open, take care of yourself. i love you- em x

@ribbons-in-your-hair @notperfect-justme @thebestrouge [you guys asked me to tag you if i wrote anything about this headcannon! i hope you enjoy it!]

#twilight #twilight saga #x reader #x you #twilight revival #paul lahote #new moon twilight #x y/n #twilight renaissance #twilight imagine #paul lahote imagine #twilight paul #twilight wolf pack #twilight wolves #paul lahote x reader #twilight fanfiction #uley pack

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wellofdean · 23 days

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Just breaking up this post before it just gets out of hand, but want to reply to these notes from @ironworked :

#I was reading the transcript of a panel Kripke did in 2008#he gets asked about Jo and at the end says they 'don't have any plans to bring her back'#and then: ''(audience cheers)''#then they cheer *for* Ellen#The impression I get is that a large portion of the fandom only ever cared about female characters that weren't 'a threat' to a ship#but who still were there for Dean and Sam#This show had its fumbles and mistakes and iffy stuff with female characters but I'm with Ilarual here - fandom has been significantly wors#the reactions to Mary and Amara are particularly interesting because they're pretty much exactly#the kind of nuanced female character fans *say* they want#and yet they get trashed and misrepresented regularly#funny that#Tv: Supernatural

Ugh. So gross. And to be clear, I am also with @ilarual : there is plenty of misogyny in Supernatural that's there just because it's the air we all breathe, but a lot of it is in the way if someone wants to belittle Dean in some way, they ALWAYS impugn his masculinity, and the way he is supposed to be ashamed of being the one who just wants to keep his family together, and the way he is unable to experience a tender emotion without embarrassment, or the way he can't say "I love you" so he says "I did not leave you!" and "Don't do anything stupid!" angrily instead. Or, the way Sam (soulless) and grandpa Samuel make fun of his nice house with Lisa, and he feels the need to defend himself by saying "Go ahead, call me a soccer mom!" as if the worst possible thing he could be is a feminized, domesticated man who's been tamed by a woman who reads girl magazines. THAT'S misogyny, but fellas, I think the show is attempting to point a thing out with that? All of those things are depictions of misogyny in a show that's about the way terrible patriarchal relationships fuck men up.

Dean's so-called misogyny is cartoonish and ridiculous and clearly a triggered performative response to stereotypical representations of performative femininity, because when Dean is called upon to respond to a woman as a human being, he is well able to do that, even in season 1.

Women who threaten the big ship are always hated in fandom after fandom. Personally, I loved Jo. I loved her crush on Dean, and his big brother act hiding a crush on her. I loved Amara because GOD'S SISTER? Dean's dark female soul image? The way their weird, skeevy connection resolved in mutual empathy, one caged thing to another, and also in giving each other what they most needed? Mary coming back to show Dean that his fantasy of a lost ideal family was just that? A fantasy?

Like, that is just rich storytelling and I am here for it.

I get why people didn't like Amara -- she is an antagonist and I cringed every time she touched Dean's face. She was a threat to Dean, but also? I fucking LOVED that she was there, making me super uncomfortable and fucking EATING, and against Chuck? I wanted her to win. Fuck that guy! I love the idea that a controlling author/father/god who locked his sister and feminine equal up so he could play with his boytoys and make them kill each other. I love that Amara is symbolic of nothingness as opposed to Chuck's being because I think there is a fundamental way in which we struggle to imagine ourselves, AS A CULTURE, without patriarchy.

I also get why people are mad at Mary. We love Dean! We want him to have what he wants! We want him to have fluffy mom-time to make up for all his years of pain. But, can we all just ask ourselves the important question of whether or not a grown-ass man should get what he wants at his mother's expense? Like, are mothers actual human beings with desires, needs and exigencies of their own, or are they slaves to their men and their offspring?*

*Side note: I feel like there are a lot of young people who are mad at their moms on tumblr, and yeah, not all parents live up to their responsibilities and that sucks, but yo: moms are people they make mistakes and have needs.

And, as story devices, which is what they ultimately are, Dean's weird feelings about Amara in a season that is all about Dean thinking about what his heart wants, really only supports the ship we all want to see sail. As for Mary, her death was the inciting incident and her return (and John's) was about healing by letting painful things be painful, and seeing that what you have is pretty fucking good, actually ("I have a family"), and then her second death tests Dean's commitment to holding his family together. Like, our heroes have to be put in situations so we can see their mettle! That's what stories do!

I dunno man. The other day someone I know in meatspace was like: "Oooh! I love Supernatural! Let's talk!" And I was like: "Oh! Cool! Yeah!" and then she says: "Sometimes it sucked though, especially in the later seasons, like when they brought Mary back," and I was like........."Actually, let's not talk."

#supernatural #mary winchester #misogyny: depicting it and rubber-stamping it are two different things #spn screeds!#sorrry everyone

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firstelevens · 3 months

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we can follow the sparks, I'll drive

sam/bucky | au | rated t | 2k words

An extremely fluffy alternate epilogue to the Sam/Bucky Formula One AU, midnight driving with the windows down.

( also on AO3 )

Back when he and Steve were still at the racing academy, one of the trainers used to say that most of Bucky’s mid-race overtakes happened because he was such an annoying presence on the track that other drivers would fall back just to get away from him.

He eventually figured out more effective maneuvers than pure persistent irritation, but he’s never been opposed to bringing back a classic, which explains how he’s chosen to spend his morning.

“Barnes,” growls Sam, for the third or fourth time, and Bucky feels it rumble through his chest where it’s pressed against Sam’s side.

“Sorry, did you need something?” he asks, as mildly as possible. (It’s a little muffled: when he opted to flop down on Sam and go fully boneless, he ended up with a face full of Sam’s pecs, and turning his head hasn’t fully solved that problem.)

“What I needed,” says Sam, “is to have left this hotel room twenty minutes ago, but I was stopped by an overgrown toddler.”

Bucky would feel bad, except that in spite of his complaints, Sam has made absolutely no effort to extricate himself from Bucky’s hold. He’s been idly playing with Bucky’s hair for at least the last ten minutes, and it feels so good that Bucky’s regretting all the years that he kept his hair short and missed out on the way Sam’s fingers feel running through it.

“You’re the one who got back in bed,” he says. “It’s almost like you didn’t even want to go to that brunch where you can’t eat anything and you just have to smile awkwardly in selfies with celebrities until you feel like your face is gonna get stuck that way.”

“I literally just sat down to put my watch on.”

“Who puts on their watch before they put on a shirt, Wilson?”

“People whose partners have no concept of getting places on time, that’s who.”

Bucky snorts. “You were already late before you ended up here.”

“And whose fault was that?” asks Sam drily.

“I guess we’ll never know,” says Bucky, whose first instinct when Sam’s alarm went off at six this morning was to say, ‘Absolutely fucking not,’ and shut the phone inside a drawer.

He can feel the slightest tremor of Sam’s shoulder as he tries not to laugh, but Bucky doesn’t bother to bite back his own giddy smile when Sam turns and presses a kiss to his hairline. “I guess we won’t.”

“Anyway,” says Bucky, “there’s no point in going down there now. All those Hollywood people? You know that pressed juice line is going to be a nightmare, and how are you going to start your day without a pineapple-tumeric-ginger juice?”

“And is being trapped here in this bed somehow an effective alternative to that?”

“It is if your favorite person ordered your juice from room service.”

“Man, I can’t believe Steve went and ordered me room service, and from a hotel he’s not even staying at,” says Sam. “What a great guy.”

Bucky pushes away from Sam so he can level a glare at him. “You’re not as funny as you think you- hey!”

There’s maybe a reason why Sam is famous for his maneuvering around tight corners. The second that Bucky pulls away even a little bit, he wriggles out from underneath him, disentangling their legs and smoothly rolling off the bed in a single motion.

“That was a dirty play,” Bucky says, slumping against the pillows and frowning.

Sam just grins at him, triumphant. “Three months out of the game and you’re already losing your edge, huh, Barnes?”

Bucky doesn’t have a response, mostly because Sam always looks stupid attractive when he’s like this, all cocky and teasing, and it doesn’t help that those tailored linen pants fit him like a dream. He’s saved from being called out for gawping when there’s a knock at the door and Sam moves to answer it.

He can hear Sam chatting with whoever stopped by, so he grabs his phone off the charger and checks his notifications, heart-ing the photos that Steve just sent of Ellie and the new baby and sending off a text to Olivia to tell her how much he approves of Sam’s outfit today. Then he swipes over to the group chat where he’s got more than fifty notifications and scrolls all the way back to where he last left off, reading through the messages like he’s skimming the headlines.

He’s still catching up when Sam comes in wheeling the room service cart—a good call, given that Bucky is neither dressed nor technically supposed to be in here—and subsequently steals a strawberry off of Bucky’s waffles.

“I’m going to let that slide because I know strawberries are the closest you’re getting to dessert until this race is over,” says Bucky, only glancing up before turning back to his texts. “No Rihanna at the brunch, by the way. Just a bunch of TikTok stars and actors from CW shows. Are you sure you want to go to this?”

Sam raises an eyebrow as he pours a cup of coffee. “What are you, running surveillance on the dining room?”

Bucky holds up his phone. “Hope said she didn’t recognize anyone there, and then Tandy was keeping an eye out for Rihanna but apparently she’s not making an appearance because it would be too busy with the press, so-”

“Hang on,” says Sam. “You’re in a group chat with Hope and Tandy? Why?”

“Not just Hope and Tandy,” says Bucky. “Colleen, too, obviously, and Gert, and Olivia Walker, and–”

“Are you talking about the WAGs? You’re part of that chat?”

He nods. “Colleen said the invite was my retirement present.”

“But…why?”

“It’s for the partners of active Formula One drivers,” says Bucky, shrugging. “And last I checked, I was the partner of an active Formula One driver, unless this is your way of breaking up with me for making you late to brunch.”

“Yeah, I’m real upset that I missed my chance to let all my food go cold while I pose for selfies with a bunch of actors I’ve never heard of,” says Sam, his voice flat. He steals another strawberry and furrows his eyebrows after he takes his first bite. “Wait, is this group chat where you get all that insider gossip that you’ve been sharing? Like Quill retiring? Or the new merch releases?”

“Obviously,” Bucky says, moving to the end of the bed and pulling the plate of waffles closer to himself. “You think they’d just give that kind of information to a retired driver?”

Sam snorts. “I should have known. Back when I was dating Leila, I swear she knew about every one of the FIA’s moves weeks before it was going to happen. Sometimes I think she was more in the know than Rhodey was.”

“Dot was the same way when we were together,” says Bucky. The waffle is proving a little stubborn to cut one-handed and he wishes he’d just ordered pancakes instead. “I should have listened to her more, honestly. I didn’t realize how good the intel was.”

“What about the year that you and Steve started racing together again? At Scuda? I met some of those models you dated; they knew everyone worth knowing at the FIA. Tell me they didn’t have insider knowledge.”

Bucky looks up from his breakfast with a smirk. “We weren’t exactly talking race strategy all night.”

“Too bad for them.” Sam grins back at him, wolfish now. “They never saw you get all worked up about speed control on hairpin turns.”

Sam’s been making Bucky blush long enough that he knows there’s only more teasing around the corner, but this time around, he’s armed with the perfect distraction. He holds his carefully-assembled forkful of waffle and strawberry and whipped ricotta in front of Sam’s mouth, giving the fork a little wiggle like he’s trying to entice a three year old and not a whole adult.

There’s a beat where Bucky assumes that Sam is weighing his options, and then he opens his mouth and takes the bite.

While Sam is busy chewing, Bucky seizes the opportunity for a counter-argument: “You’re the only person in the world who thinks that’s attractive, you know.”

His only answer is an unimpressed look, made a lot less intimidating by the slight chipmunk face that Sam has going on at the moment. Bucky just laughs.

“One,” says Sam, after some furious chewing, “there are thousands of thirsty instagram comments about you that prove otherwise.”

Bucky opens his mouth to protest, but finds that he doesn’t really have anything to say to contradict that.

Sam looks satisfied as he moves around to the closet and opens the door, disappearing from Bucky’s line of sight. “And two,” he calls out, “none of those matter anyway, because I saw you first.”

He feels his face go hot again, and suddenly all Bucky can think of is the first time that he saw Sam: not in race footage or in a crowded room, but out by the track at one of Bucky’s first races out of the academy. He’d had his helmet under one arm, head thrown back with laughter at something Steve said, and Bucky had taken one look at how fucking pretty he was and felt every last brain cell fizzle out.

Maybe that should’ve been a sign, but Bucky had resolutely ignored it, made his way over to the cute boy who was hanging out with his best friend, and immediately said something snotty about getting cozy with the competition. It had ended up completely backfiring, he remembers. Steve had looked absolutely appalled and Sam had just given Bucky an appraising once-over, then turned that maddening grin on him and said, “I mean, if you want to call yourself competition.”

He’d walked away before Bucky could think of any sort of comeback, and an infuriated Bucky had spent the entire subsequent race chasing him.

It only took twenty years to catch up, he thinks, and has to hide his dopey grin behind his coffee mug when he hears the closet door click shut.

When Sam comes back around the corner, he’s still bare-chested, but he’s swapped the tailored linen trousers for what Bucky recognizes as his favorite of Sam’s many pairs of sweatpants.

Bucky only processes what that means when Sam drops onto the bed beside him and plucks the coffee out of his hands. “You’re not going?”

Sam shrugs, taking a sip of Bucky’s coffee when he’s got his own cup literally six inches away. “Couldn’t let that pressed juice go to waste, could I? Not when my favorite person ordered it for me.”

Just to have something to do that isn’t grinning at his boyfriend like a fool, Bucky turns and reaches for his Nets hoodie, dragging it over to them from where it was balled up by their pillows.

He’s expecting Sam to protest that he’s fine—he’s not; Bucky can already see the goosebumps on his arms—or crack some kind of joke about Bucky not wanting to warm Sam up himself.

What he’s not expecting is to turn back and find Sam’s face caught between interest and alarm, staring fixedly at Bucky’s thighs.

“What?” asks Bucky, following the line of Sam’s gaze to his new boxers, down to where the number 25 is printed just above the hem. “What’s wrong?”

Sam is quiet for a long moment. Then, with an impressive amount of gravitas for such an absurd question, he asks, “Am I hallucinating, or do your boxers have my name printed across the ass?”

Bucky’s eyes go wide with understanding. “Oh, right. About that…”

“About what?”

“So you know the new merch release that the other WAGs told me about so I could impress you with all my insider knowledge?”

“Oh my God,” says Sam.

“Yeah.”

“They’re selling boxers with my name on the ass.”

“They’re pretty comfortable, for what it’s worth,” laughs Bucky, letting Sam pull him in close and peer over his shoulder to get a better look at the lettering.

“I’m gonna kill Parker.”

“Could you at least wait until next month? Because he promised to get me some of the pairs from the other teams’ merch stores, and I feel like the Leone colors would look pretty good on—”

“Absolutely fucking not,” Sam all but growls, just like Bucky did earlier, and tackles him to the bed to prove exactly why Bucky won’t be wearing any colors that aren’t Sam’s.

(The pressed juice, regrettably, does go to waste.)

#sambucky #sambucky f1 au #this is just So Silly there's zero plot but I do think they're cute all the same #a total of three people expressed the vaguest interest and I was like WELP IT'S WHAT THE PEOPLE WANT #this is a little rough but to be fair that's why it's not the official epilogue #'hey zainab did you spend time polishing this instead of working on your valentine's day fic' no comment #my fic

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dyed-red · 2 years

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there was a post on my dash a few days ago about an interview with jensen about the prequel. he talks about casting, and about how the actor they hired for john had both sam (1) and dean (1) in him, and the actress they hired for mary had dean (2) energy (that none of the other actresses were serving, apparently). and the post rightfully pointed out that dean himself is there (3). so three deans to one sam, they noticed.

(edit: here is the link for anyone interested)

and looking at the reviews about how bland the pilot is, i can’t help but think that’s part of why?

the thing that is magic about supernatural is the gravitational push and pull between sam and dean and the forces that are so much bigger than them.

you could have that in the prequel. the gravitational push and pull between john and mary and the forces that are so much bigger than them.

it’s literally the canon backstory!

the first time they met, they bumped into each other and (presumably on trained instincts) mary laid john on his ass then apologized, and he was smitten. but he was only smitten because of cupid’s arrow. the cupid we meet in canon tells sam and dean that their parents weren’t a good match, that they didn’t (wouldn’t?) get along, and that their relationship was ordained and the love was manufactured.

so you have the gravity, right there. the push and the pull. the fighting and the mismatch despite the passion and the love they literally cannot help but feel. and it lends itself so well to telling an unhinged story where two people meet and fall in some kind of love at first sight and are weird about each other!

(in the way that sam and dean are weird about each other. breaking in in the middle of the night and fighting your brother is weird! disappearing out the door with someone you haven’t seen in two years while lying to your partner about why is weird! it’s all unhinged and so it compels the audience!)

to make that work on screen, you need to set up opposing dynamics so you get the push and pull, and you need chemistry. like, a lot of chemistry. the other magic of spn is the insane off the charts on screen chemistry that J2 have. lightning in a bottle, right?

the thing that made me ultimately decide not to watch the prequel was mary’s casting and character styling. despite being one of the few people actually excited about the story conceit (i love john and mary as characters!! i’m genuinely interested to see how the lying and hunting and vietnam trauma and the personality clash all played out!!), as soon as i saw the first promotional photos, the tentative hope i’d been harbouring for the show died a quiet death.

not only did this version not look much like either of the other two marys we had met in terms of face and height, but she had thick eyeliner and straight hair and a black leather jacket and a hard look and scowl. none of that jives at all with the mary we know and not just because she was sanctified in the memory of winchester men. we met young mary and she was dressed in bright tones with bright eyes! she was full of smiles (and lies), full of dreams for her own future, with bouncy curly hair and emotional frustrations and vulnerabilities.

she was bringing sam, not dean.

mary campbell is a rebel. she is like both her sons in different ways, much the same as john. there are parallels on both sides and i think it’s fruitless to say who is paralleled more to whom in the (main) show, who has more of who’s personality. but in that arc, in her youth, mary campbell wanting to leave the hunting life and have a civilian life with her partner john winchester was absolutely a parallel to sam’s similar yearning for freedom, for safety and simplicity.

so we know already -- mary’s rebellion looks like sam’s rebellion. it’s not the devil may care attitude of dean, it’s a more serious and anxious rebellion against her upbringing. she’s tense but soft. easily annoyed but not sarcastic, possibly too earnest (in itself a perfect lie, something that makes her interesting because she’s anything but honest with john). doe-eyed so that when she drops you on your ass, you’re shocked. this small woman with her sweet smile is kicking your ass? what in the - ?

casting a mary that is bringing forward features of dean, styling her in such a way as to look harsh and ‘badass’ instead of downright preppy, giving her that look and attitude and all of it? misses the point.

there is no dean without sam. or at least no story about dean worth watching. because there is no gravitational push-pull between dean and ... dean. meaning that if both the prequel leads are bringing dean’s energy to their role, there is no chemistry.

electricity isn’t formed without opposing charged ions. there’s no lightning in a bottle when everything is the same.

(there is no sense of pull between them to prompt a push. and when it comes time to write the push in anyway, without the pull? it will feel discordant and unconvincing to the audience’s eye. it will rankle.)

this issue sits as central, to me, even before any retconning of the original story. before the complete lack of 1970s vibe, and before what i’ve seen about them possibly(idk???) getting mary’s age wrong, and what i’ve heard about them making john bumbling or boring despite being a literal marine (who are...extreme) who quite literally just came back from vietnam, likely traumatized and intense. before the fact that they literally copy+pasted the plot of spn to the prequel with mary’s dad going missing.

all of these features, alongside the casting issues, the styling issues, all of it right down to the original prequelgate itself, speak to the same fundamental issue -

the prequel is missing heart.

the lack of sam (not even in presence so much as in essence) functions like a hole in the heart of the show from which it is bleeding inward. the lack of love letter to time era, to the stylings and setting reads like a lack of love to the story itself. the lack of care put in to re-introducing us to the version of mary that we knew, those changes to her style and personality and story, read like an insult to those of us who loved her already, as if she was not worthy of a place in the heart of the creators as she already was.

i wanted to love this show. desperately, i really did. the day it leaked, before i’d heard about the rest of the ensuing prequelgate nonsense, i wrote a post in defense of the concept (since deleted). i wanted so badly to love it. i can’t. because i feel like the people creating it don’t love it.

many will take this as a critique of jensen ackles and to some extent, it is, but mostly just a critique of trying to create a new show half-cocked while splitting his time acting on a handful of other projects instead of dedicating himself to the time and energy this show needed in order to be a success. i have no idea what his vision was for this story, and i’m not convinced he had a core vision.

(for whatever else you might critique about kripke’s era of spn, it had a vision and it knew what it was. that vision was central to its resonance.)

more than that though, it’s a critique of all the producers and creators involved who thought that they could build off of what we already loved while gutting the core pieces we loved in the first place, while replacing these elements with their own versions instead, versions seemingly uninterested in the emotional foundations on which they were building.

i can’t help but feel they were arrogant enough to think that making us love it would be as simple as checking boxes on a list and slapping a shine over it, thinking we’d be satisfied with the empty shell they deigned to put together. that they didn’t need to push each other, challenge the story, question the character favoritism or biases the team members were bringing to the table.

it’s the dean story with dean producers and writers and no one thought to question if they needed more balance? if the story needed more heart? if john was intense enough, if mary was sweet enough, if the characters had dimensions?

was it ignorance? arrogance? were they all too up their own asses that they dismissed legitimate concerns as fandom wank because of prequelgate and fandom bullshit until it was too late?

i’m sorry, that got more charged than i intended. bottom line, this isn’t a love letter to supernatural or its fans. love takes effort and dedication and care and heart. i’m not convinced the prequel has any.

#anti spn prequel #anti prequel #negativity for ts #wank for ts #i honestly did not want to say anything #especially until i watched for myself #but i'm not sure i can bring myself to lmao #sorry for anyone who actually watched and enjoyed #and i would genuinely and sincerely be interested in hearing what you enjoyed about it if so #even in anon in my inbox #and if you think this long-ass complaint post is too biased that's fair but like... it's honest too #i don't dislike jensen like literally the opposite #but i can't help but feel that he did not have someone balancing him out and challenging him #and did not hire people who would accomplish that and instead sort of the opposite #and that that is part of the critical difference between being part of a team and creating the team and selecting its members #for what it's worth i have similar if milder complaints about walker but that's also a genre thing and i gather is improving #anyway #phyn rambles #phyn rants

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krikeymate · 10 months

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I’m writing a Tara, soccer playing AU. Kind of, maybe. I don’t know, it’s still in development. (I have like 2000 ish words)

I was just wondering how you thought Sam would react to Tara getting injured/hurt during a game? (Or just any thoughts in general. - Sorry, bit of an odd one but I look up to your writing and way of thinking and just yeah)

She’s 11 when she joins the team in middle school, Sam hates the idea. Tara’s tiny, small for her age and the other kids tower over her with ease. Her fear of Tara getting hurt is overwhelming at times, she wants to make her quit on numerous occasions but doesn’t have the heart to do so after seeing how much joy it brings her. Especially after her mother makes a drunken comment about how girls don’t play soccer, that Tara is too small and weak for sports. She knows Tara will prove her wrong.

She’s their star player after all, her size actually working to her advantage, allowing her to dip and weave between players with speed.

Tara inevitably gets hurt in a game, some small neighbouring town where the team is made up of older kids from higher grades. Sam on the side of the pitch, absolutely seething at what was clearly a intentionally bad tackle. She knew this would happen, her initial emotional response leads to her wanting to tell her sister I told you so. But Tara is still on the ground, clutching at her leg as she cries in pain, her team starting to crowd around her in concern.

She finds herself toe to toe with the ref and opposing teams coach nearby to her sister, shouting in their faces about what has happened until she hears Tara calling her name.

“Sammy?” There’s a quiver to a voice, one that makes Sam’s entire chest contract painfully. It only fuels her rage that someone had caused this but right now Tara needs her sister.

Tara is her focus. It’s not like she could beat up the kid in front of the entire crowd of parents. Although she wishes she could.

SPORTS? In my pagan inbox? HELL YEAH! You make that AU buddy, sounds like you're doing so well so far, a couple thousand words is nothing to scoff at!!

This sounds so good, and I hope you share it with us when (if) you're ready. I love what you've said, it works perfectly! I think you've got a great grasp on the characters.

I feel like Sam sees Tara go down and she's definitely elbowing people out the way, climbing over a barrier if there is one. She can hear Tara sniffling, but she's not bawling, she didn't scream, so it can't be a serious injury. She gets in the face of the kid who barreled into her, screams, asks them "what the fuck was that!" The ref and the coach gets in between them, tells her to take a step back. Then Tara's calling for her.

Her legs hurts so much and it's so loud and she's feeling overwhelmed. She just wants her sister.

Sam has more to say, but she turns and scoops Tara up on her arms.

Her teammates will make fun of her for being a baby later, but Tara doesn't care when Sam's arms are around her. It only makes her more determined to do better next time.

#/mp #ask box #Scream #Sam Carpenter #Tara Carpenter #miscellaneous scream au's

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maximumwobblerbanditdonut · 5 months

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This kiss between Alfie Enoch and Eleanor Tomlinson is more convincing than the one between Eleanor and SH copied from “The Notebook” film

youtube

The Couple Next Door wastes no time in telling us that its psychodrama is heading nowhere good.

The new six-part Channel 4 thriller opens with a dramatic flashforward of Gone Girl-esque menace to a woodland cabin in the Yorkshire Dales. Evie (Poldark's Eleanor Tomlinson) emerges clearly unprepared for the elements around her, barefoot, in a negligée and on the run.

In hot pursuit is her other half Pete (Alfred Enoch) and her neighbours-with-benefits Danny (Outlander star Sam Heughan) and his wife Becka (Jessica De Gouw). Evie's crying, Pete has a gun, Danny's wearing an extremely tight jeans and jacket combo. It's all very dramatic, if a tad soapy.

Then we jump back to when this central quartet first met, as a pregnant Evie and her hubby move onto the Leeds cul-de-sac they will shortly meet that titular couple on. The drama bats off the inevitable Desperate Housewives comparisons in the first few lines of dialogue: "I'm sold. Bit Desperate Housewives, maybe, but it's nice," says Pete.

Like that show, it plays on the curtain-twitching and behind-closed-doors intrigue of suburbia, albeit sidestepping the humdrum nosiness and mind-numbing boredom that setting has been captured with on screen before.

Danny, or Tarzan with a Leeds accent and a vast array of muscle tees, welcomes the newbies to the 'burbs by taking their fridge into the house, which he picks up with the ease most people use to retrieve a milk carton from within the fridge.

His wife and yoga nut Becka instantly takes to the couple and when Evie and Pete lose their baby, they turn to their non-monogamous neighbours for support and a friendship between the core four soon blooms.

Danny is a traffic copper taking bribes on the side. Pete is a snarky journalist whose work speaking truth to power will inevitably collide with Danny's dodgy dealings at some point. Evie is a kindergarten teacher desperate to have children of her own. Becka mostly brings the good vibes.

Oh, and Hugh Dennis is also here, down the road from that lot, in the role of a lifetime as a creepy peeping Tom. His main characteristic is a hyper-fixation on Becka, for which he has a telescope station and an ominous Becka-themed folder of JPEGs on his computer, which he has conspicuously named 'untitled'.

Outlander's Heughan and Poldark's Tomlinson are both breaking their 18th century period drama moulds in this psychological couple-swap thriller. However, their chemistry on screen doesn't quite simmer in the way you hope it would from something billed as a drama in which its characters are "chasing deepest desires" and reckoning with the fallout.

It's just a lot of Heughan and Tomlinson staring at each other, often in a way that trends towards cringe as opposed to sexy. When the pair go for a joyride around the neighbourhood on Danny's motorcycle, the thing feels more like an F1 hot lap than seduction by scooter.

The pair told the Radio Times they never did a chemistry test before being cast and questioned what they even really achieve, but maybe the answer would have been better chemistry?

Meanwhile, De Gouw exudes the sexuality required as Becka, so much so you're occasionally left wondering why Danny gives a fig about Evie to begin with. Enoch is solid as the one who's not really down with all of this swinging stuff, questioning whether he's actually as authentic to his progressive persona as he assumed he was.

Both the couples sort of have better chemistry with their own partners in the drama – we get a fairly steamy no-nudity sex scene between Pete and Evie in the first episode, begging the question of whether there's any point in the partner swap that comes later.

A surprising highlight is Dennis with his dark, dead-eyed stare, offering a more family-friendly incarnation of You's "I'll love you to death" Joe Goldberg.

The chief notable absence when comparing this to those other shows is the gaping chasm where some light relief might have gone. Desperate Housewives balanced adultery and arson with both unintentional and intentional gags aplenty, while You has had the biting commentary of Joe's voiceover, particularly in its standout third season.p

But what it does have bubbling underneath the psychodrama is something fairly interesting to say about the way society views non-monogamous relationships, and the unconscious rules we largely abide by in coupledom, which here sex and desire throw into question.

Outlander fans coming over to The Couple Next Door in the hopes of more hot and heavy Heughan won't be disappointed, although this contains less of the romance and never quite reaches the sparky heights of Jamie and Claire.

Ultimately, Pete sort of said it best: bit Desperate Housewives – although perhaps not enough in the ways we would want – but it's nice enough.

She is not wrong! 🤫

She’s not impressed by SH, with zero romantic/sexual chemistry. Could be He does have platonic chemistry with other co-actors. But it means He’s very inconsistent in his approach. Sometimes it goes beyond his acting ability, and it's just the way he works 🤷‍♀️

#Youtube

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dominicvail · 2 years

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So. Funny story. I decided not to watch s13 when it premiered in the US because i watched the tail end of s12 on tv here when it aired and i enjoyed it So much more than i do after going through the ordeal of finding a dl and not being able to find time to watch it in one go and all. Like, it kills the experience for me. And i wanted to enjoy it.

So i thought, it’s fine! it’ll air here in a month or so!

Except i forgot that the network that aired new orleans got shut down and the one that owned la scooped the rights, and instead of airing la they aired nola first! Because airing them both was too much for them, apparently.

so basically i watched the premiere tonight when it aired and i enjoyed it a lot even if Callen’s sudden Hetty problems are actually even funnier than Nell’s sudden hetty problems because it makes him look uh... somewhat slow. I had also missed how funny all these idiots are. G confronting Killbride and getting yelled at was also comical but not in a ‘this is a funny scene’ way, but a ‘this is SO on brand for G when he gets all dog with a bone about something’ and oh dude. Kilbride has you on a shorter leash lol. Sam is ‘not Again’ and can u blame the guy?.

Joelle and Callen once again bringing out the worst in each other. It can actually be annoying sometimes, because it Kind of grinds that sometimes it paints G to be a bit hypocritical in a way that makes me thing the writing is not self aware as opposed to them saying something about G’s cognitive dissonance, but it was On Point this ep between the two. Just Nasty as hell. They’d trample each other for their own benefit. Is it pleasant? No. Interesting to watch? Yep!

but also side note i’d not ask Hetty for a reference in anything that isn’t shady as fuck. I am objectively aware they were trying to make a connect between Hetty’s history with the foster system and how she’d Not be a good person to ask in case of adoption because of what she’s done in the past, but it was suffering from show typical clunkiness of plot formation. But if this bothered me, lbr, id’ not still be watching it.

Also... Watching this in may of 2022 aware of world events, i think, made this a bit of a different experience.

It was very funny to see them react to somebody telling them that just... no mass slaughter guys! i forbid it! and them being pissy about it. Kilbride Was a dick in that scene to the point even Sam sassed the hell out of him and it was great. Not sure proving they actually Didn’t have to just kill all those people the past 12 years is necessarily the Best tactical decision here but it’s where we’re at apparently.

the biggest shock of the ep was Sam’s car being a casualty. I normally judge if sam and g will be shot at on whether they inexplicably end up in some other car, because it’s actually a super accurate rule of thumb for this show, but they shot the wild cat!!! Fatima drove it through a wall!!! Sam being mad about that even After it had been shot out was hilarious like dude... i think the car was already done for.

Anyway, it was fun. G has his biannual crusade to work on, Sam has that to work Around, Kensi and Deeks are working through it all and adapting to their situation, and the ritual ‘lets think of something that lets linda hunt be absent for long stretches’ plot is now in full force. Fatima and Roundtree being the excitable kids to the team’s casual experience is really funny. You were kind of like that in s1 guys! lollll

but yeah i didn’t actually intend to let this blog die i just. was too wrung out to seek out the show online and expected to be able to watch it soon and it never aired. And also didn’t want spoilers. So i was kinda stuck there.

yeah. Hi!

#text #idr my tags #liveblog thing #i think #technically

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antigonewinchester · 2 years

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The Mark & Hell, part 1

(Previous posts: Intro post; Dean & Hell, season 4.)

Now, I’m finally getting to how Dean’s time in Hell is threaded through the actual Mark of Cain arc. There’ll be several posts in this section, so I’m splitting them up into small parts for a bit more accessibility. This post covers the plot and mythological / lore connections between the Mark, demons, and Hell.

In 09x11, “First Born,” it’s Crowley, a demon, who tells Dean about the First Blade and encourages him to go looking for it so Dean can kill Abaddon (herself another demon). Crowley leads Dean to Cain, who isn’t just a demon but a Knight of Hell, “… the deadliest demon to walk the face of the earth. Killed thousands. The best at being the worst.” It’s then Cain who gives Dean the Mark.

At the end of season 9, the Mark brings Dean back to life as a demonic Knight of Hell himself. Dean unleashes some general havoc – getting drunk at bars, singing bad karaoke, hurting or killing people he doesn’t like – before Sam and Cas are able to cure him of his “demonization,” turning him back into a human with a human soul in 10x03, “Soul Survivor.”

Carver as showrunner was clear that demon!Dean was intended to be Dean, even if his soul was twisted by the Mark, as he talks about in this TVLine interview:

TVLINE | Dean as a demon, how is that different from Dean just being possessed by a demon temporarily? What is he like? Dean is not possessed by anything. It’s his own soul that’s been twisted into a demon soul, so this demon is not anyone other than Dean. So every thought, every action, that’s Dean, as opposed to some other demon possessing him. So while he’s a demon, that causes some complication of thought in him in that, “This is really me doing it.” It also motivates a certain bravado. “Yeah, this is me doing and owning it!” There’s a real period for Dean of deciding how dark he’s going to be and what kind of demon he’s going to be, because he can’t blame it on anyone else but himself. And then afterwards is when it will have the most effect on him because it was him. It was his actions that led him to becoming a demon. He pushed it with the Mark. He pushed Sammy away at the end of last season. He said, “I can do this by myself.” So there’s a certain consequence to all this that is almost more interesting to us than the actual demon part.

Framing-wise, this description paints Demon!Dean quite metaphorically, as Dean’s demonic change revealing a hidden side (his resentments towards Sam, for instance, or his lashing out when people insult him). I’ll also note that Carver’s emphasizes Dean’s responsibility in this situation. And Dean definitely took on the Mark without asking the consequences and then spiraled down the rest of the season, which led to him becoming a demon even if he didn’t know that would be his ultimate end. However, I do read Dean pushing Sam away as a bit more protective than perhaps Carver does, with Dean misdirecting before he went to fight Abaddon / Metatron as about him not wanting Sam to be hurt or even killed in those fights. Considering that Metatron did end up killing Dean, even with Dean having the Mark/First Blade powers, I don’t think it’s a stretch to say Dean’s intuition that his fights with Abaddon and Metatron would get very ugly was pretty spot on. But maybe Sam and Dean could have taken Metatron together, with neither of them being killed, if Dean hadn’t prevented Sam from joining him. There’s definitely a “I have to / I need to this alone” with Dean’s attitude, which the show always frames as something bad or misguided. I also see that aspect as riffing on the idea of Sam and Dean keeping each other human (Dean sending Sam away so he can fully embrace that killer side of himself, which is especially clear in the Abaddon fight).

The one minor aspect Carver’s framing leaves out is Crowley’s role in Dean becoming a demon: the last scene of 09x23, “Do You Believe in Miracles,” heavily implies that it wasn’t until Crowley put the First Blade into Dean’s hand that the Mark reacted and revived him in as a demon, which would make Crowley instrumental in Dean’s demonic resurrection. Dean’s actions did lead him to that situation, but Crowley then resurrected Dean as a demon without Dean’s knowledge or consent, too.

During the rest of season 10, Dean’s struggles with the Mark are then connected to his having been a demon, with this aspect actually briefly touched upon in the same interview (emphasis mine):

TVLINE | You’ve had instances where the boys were possessed, but now Dean’s fully a demon. What made you decided now was the time to pull the trigger and go down that avenue? Dean being a demon here ties into a deeper mythology in the show, that being the Mark of Cain and Cain. That’s really one of the places we started to get the idea. The show has made a point of saying how rooted these brothers are in, frankly, the mythology of the world, and to find another anchor that was literally around at the beginning of time made us feel like… It wasn’t so much the spectacular effect or whatever of Dean being a demon. It’s more just rooting him in something more final, something that will not necessarily totally go away even when/if he’s converted back from demonism.

Several explicit references to Dean’s time as a demon, as well as his time in Hell, occur over the season. In 10x09, “The Things We Left Behind,” Dean flashes back to his time as demon!Dean, as well as his receiving the Mark and killing Magnus with the first blade, right before he kills the loan sharks. 10x17, “Inside Man,” begins with with Dean having a nightmare about his past violence and yelling for Sam in his sleep. One of Dean’s screams is the same audio cue from the end of 3x16, “No Rest for the Wicked,” when Dean woke up in Hell and cried out for Sam.

There’s also a repeated image of Dean looking at himself in mirrors in season 9 and 10, a visual symbol of Dean’s questioning his sense of self as connected to his corruption by the Mark. This visual image first occurs in 04x01, “Lazarus Rising,” with Dean carefully looking at his eyes in a bathroom mirror while flashing back to his time in Hell. While Dean’s eyes are mostly human in those flashbacks, there is one cut where Dean’s eyes are briefly demon black, implying that Dean was on his way to becoming a demon when he’d been in Hell. (A similar example, non-demon but still monster-related, is in 06x05, “Live Free or Twi-Hard,” where Dean looks at himself and his new vampire teeth in a bathroom mirror.) In 09x23, after Dean has attacked Gadreel and Sam and Cas have locked him for everyone’s safety, Dean coughs up blood and looks at his face in a small mirror in a cabinet he finds in the room. He’s clearly worried about the Mark and how it’s affecting him. In 10x10, after his Mark-influenced massacre at the end of 10x09, Dean looks at his reflection in a cracked mirror. The visual metaphor is obvious: being overtaken by the Mark and killing all those people has cracked Dean’s sense of a heroic self. In 10x17, Dean again goes to a bathroom and sees his eyes flash demonic black in the mirror, with Dean being surprised and upset to see so.

The Dean and mirror imagery culminates in 10x23, “Brother’s Keeper”. From the transcript, emphasis mine:

Scene opens on the exterior of the motel at night. ‘MOTEL’ is lighted in red letters on the outside. Cut to Dean’s hands as he washes them in the bathroom sink. He looks in the mirror and sees his reflection. When he looks again he sees Castiel, face all bloody. Dean looks away, troubled or maybe scared. He continues to wash his hands. He looks up again and sees Rudy in the mirror reflection. He washes his hands more vigorously and looks away, visibly upset. He punches the mirror, slams the phone off the wall throws the TV to the floor and proceeds to thoroughly trash the motel room. When he is done he is breathing heavy and looks anguished.

This time, Dean doesn’t need to see demon eyes, because he’s already become monstrous enough as a human: he horribly beat up Cas at the end of 10x22, “The Prisoner,” and then he caused Rudy’s death in 10x23 by not negotiating with the vampire and instead egging him on, so the vamp killed Ruby and Dean then easily swooped in to kill the vamp himself. Dean still has enough humanity to feel ashamed of what he’s done, as shown through his guilty washing of his hands and then his smashing up of the motel room, Dean trying and failing to deal with his anger, frustration, and shame.

Finally, the whole of 10x22 is very evocative of Dean’s time in Hell. The Styne family worked with the Nazis, just as Alastair did. Cyrus’s situation parallels what Dean faced in Hell: Cyrus’s father coerces him into torturing and killing the kid who bullied him by threatening Cyrus with torture and death if he didn’t, just as Dean was faced with Alastair’s torture in Hell and then his offer to make it stop if Dean became a torturer himself. When Dean is later trapped by the Stynes and tells them he can’t die, they get excited, seeing him as a “perfect lab rat” who they can keep experimenting on without him dying, calling to mind Dean being continuously tortured in Hell without being able to die. When Dean escapes from the Stynes’s house after murdering everyone there, escaping from a metaphorical Hell, he returns home almost totally lost to the Mark, killing all the Styes trashing the Bunker, even Cyrus. And Cas isn’t able to save Dean from 'Hell’ this time, as Cas’s pleading with Dean to stop does not work and Dean pretty brutally attacks Cas before leaving.

#meta #meta personal #dean #dean & the mark #dean & hell #season 9 #season 10

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mobscene-updates · 2 years

Text

ADMIN NOTE. Activity check one.

So, whilst this is primarily an updates page, it will also be where the new, more stringent activity checks will take place. It was discussed briefly before now, but here is where I will formally cover the process of what the new rules will be. If things improve, they’ll drop back down again and be less strict, but until then, these are compulsory, and I shan’t be lenient in the same way I have been until now.

If you have not already requested a hiatus, it is too late. You can’t wait until you know there’s trouble to do it. If you know you’re going to be busy and away from the group, you know, and you have the time to let me know.

Those excluded from this round of activity checks due to a pre-discussed hiatus are:

Lina

Lia

Mina

Sam

Bri

Mari

Italian characters (indefinitely)

These hiatuses are now concluded. To be exempt from the next activity check, you must come to me and request another. Hiatuses will no longer be open-ended. They will last a maximum of two weeks, and you must check in at the end of this period so that I know you haven’t just disappeared entirely. If you have no interest in coming back after this time, that’s fine, but it’s just helpful to know so I don’t hang around waiting forever.

WHAT CONSTITUTES ACTIVITY?

What is required for activity is now changing.

One reply a week to a coffee shop starter that you end up waiting another week to continue, just so you don’t technically break the activity limit, is no longer good enough. You have to be here, actively pushing forward the general plot of the group, or, if that’s not the case, showing examples of genuine character development in the meantime. This might sound daunting, but it isn’t. If you think it is, that might be a good sign that you just don’t have the time to dedicate to a group setting anymore. If the dash gets stagnant, and if people are waiting too long for replies on important threads, it just doesn’t work out.

I will list some examples of what passes as good activity, and also, bad. Please note, however, the bad is not always to be discouraged. (Read for further information.)

It simply can’t be all that’s happening.

GOOD:

Mob-related plots. Anything criminal, no matter how small, particularly if it ends up being a multi-faction thread, is fantastic. They often open doors for others to react to what’s happened, or for the subsequent planning of retaliation. I’m not talking about big plot drops like people being assassinated or things getting blown up, those come in moderation. But this is a role play about organized crime. I want to see more of it.

Darker starters. The same starter in a different setting over and over again isn’t going to get anyone excited. Think outside of the box. Make it more Mob-related. If you’re a neutral, witness a crime. Get caught up in something you shouldn’t, and potentially face some consequences for it depending on who replies. If you play a gangster, put your character in a precarious situation and open it up to opposing factions only. Wander into an enemy establishment and cause a fuss. Have someone spot you with a weapon. Pass commentary on politics and see who you can rile up. There are plenty of options to explore if you can give it a little thought.

Multi-person threads (ie. more than two participants) that create a more interesting social dynamic on the dash. They end up being more fun, and that in itself stokes muse for everyone involved, including those reading. Plan a drunk night out where everyone gets smashed and dragged into drama. Drunk text your boss. Black out, accidentally wander into enemy territory with your boys, and end up in a fast-paced thread between two sides trying to work your way out of it. Some of our most memorable Mob moments came from threads like these. It brings everyone together in character, as well as out, and both are important.

Self paras. If you have the kind of character that doesn’t routinely end up in drama, that’s fine too. Balance social/family heavy threads with self paras. There are plenty of opportunities for character development outside of crime heavy plots. If you’re having a particularly difficult time placing them into what’s currently happening, perhaps try another angle. Maybe some internal monologue about the events in question (especially when news stories start breaking on the Advocate again.) A self para about an important moment from their past that you wish to explore in further detail. A memory with a character important to them. Past trauma, past relationships, insights into family. Deep-dives that make both yourself, and everybody else, feel more connected to the character you play. Let’s get invested in each other’s work again.

Event planning. Again, this is limited in its frequency, but planning events is a great way to spark an activity surge, so anybody who puts the effort into this, and subsequently being around to host it, gets an immediate activity pass for those two weeks. Bonus points if you can somehow work a nice mob drama plot drop into it.

BAD:

Text threads. These are absolutely invaluable. I’m not discouraging them in the slightest, because they’re great for social development, and especially for the quick transfer of information between characters. They just can’t be all you’re doing. They will not count toward any form of activity check; seven-day limit included.

Vague starters and replies. ‘I’m sorry, did you say something?’ Don’t always make the other person do all the work. If you’re writing the starter, put the effort in to directing it somewhere. The same with your replies. When you read them back before posting, make sure that they add direction and motion to the thread. Are you giving something for your partner to respond to? No? Then perhaps consider rewriting it so that this changes. Give what you want in return.

Instagram/social media posts. I love these, and once again, they play a fun and interesting part on the dash. Particularly for breaking personal news to the wider audience. This isn’t me saying don’t use them, because we all like to see little snippets into our characters’ lives, and they’re certainly fun to create. Just make sure they’re not the only thing you’re doing.

Posting only closed starters. These are infinitely important, particularly for pre-established plots, but by their very nature, they close you off to other people. If you are going to post a mass of closed starters, be sure to post an open as well, or reply to as many open starters as is feasible, to balance it out. A poor closed to open starter ratio is exactly what ends up in bubble role playing. If you can’t handle posting open starters because you can’t keep up, maybe drop a character to limit the workload. Also if you’re going to post an open, be sure to actually respond to the replies you’re getting. I will now be policing open starters to check this. Posting a starter and getting four responses, only to continue with none of the threads after that, is unacceptable. You’re wasting the time of people who put the effort into replying. I am not yet policing those who only post opens, and don’t reply to any of the ones in the tag, but if you don’t start changing it, I will send out warnings.

SO WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?

It means, from here on out, everybody is going to need to be a little bit more conscious about what they’re giving to the dash.

There will still be a seven day activity limit.

On top of that, though, there will now be an extra activity check once every two weeks to assess the quality of this activity. So, you might not technically have been inactive for more than a week, but have you actually contributed? (See good vs. bad activity examples above.) You will be required to submit at least one example of meaningful activity to me. Self paras, contributions to plots, an important thread with somebody that showed some development for your character. I think you understand what I mean by this point in the post.

There will be a master list of every character linked in a moment. Beside it will be two dates. The date that you last submitted this information to me, and the date the next submission needs to reach me by. This can be done at any time. There will be no specific dates for activity checks. Some of you could owe me on a Wednesday, some of you could owe me on a Saturday, it doesn’t matter, as long as it’s at least once every two weeks. You can also submit early. For example, if you posted a self para five days ago, but you fancy posting another and submitting that to me, too, you’ll have your limit extended two weeks from beyond the point at which you submitted the second self para to me.

If you have any questions about what any of this means, you can reach me via the main, tumblr messenger here, or on Skype.

I will be posting an example within the next few hours courtesy of Alexa so you can see what I’m looking for, and also how these posts will happen, and subsequently contribute to making this page a good place to keep up with all the important happenings on the dash.

YOU ALL HAVE UNTIL THURSDAY TO COMPLETE THE FIRST CHECK.

No exceptions. No hiatus requests.

Thank you.

#admin note

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luna-rainbow · 3 years

Note

It wouldn't surprise me if Spellman is a Tony fanboy. It honestly feels like Marvel's been working really hard to retcon a lot of the stuff particularly from CACW and even CAWS (never forget he was the one who designed the helicarriers for Project Insight) to make Tony look good or to revamp his image. It would make sense why Bucky and Wanda are being treated so horribly by the writers lately and it makes me really worried over what they're gonna do to Sam. Or any of the other remaining members of Team Cap for that matter. Now that I think about it, a lot of what followed CACW has been trying to retcon or change audience's perspectives on it. I wonder if maybe they weren't expecting for so many fans to actually side with Steve and panicked and that's why it seems like a lot of those characters are being punished or written sloppily:

-Steve becomes VERY OOC and ditches his new family for a woman he kissed once and a time where most of his new friends would have been treated like dirt

-Bucky is given ableist writing, victim blamed, and turned into an antagonistic figure towards Sam and the Wakandans

-Wanda is forced to kill and watch the person shes loves most die, go through her grief alone, is going to "go mad" and be the main villain of DS2

-Sam is already being sidelined for Peggy and wasn't allowed to have proper agency in his own show

-Clint...has honestly had his character fucked up since AOU, but was turned into a homicidal one note character in Endgame

-Natasha is fucking dead

-Sharon has been retconned into a villain

-The only one left of the main Team Cap that hasn't been screwed over by the writers recently has been Scott. Makes me worried for what's gonna be in store for him in Ant Man 3

I do feel by and large most of the creators at Marvel sided with Tony for CACW — heck, even CEvans said if it was up to him he’d side with Tony “for sure” on the Accords. The Accords was never made clear in the movies. When you talk about accountability and frame it with Wanda bringing down a building on one side and then “Bucky” bringing down another on the other side, of course the audience is going to agree that they need accountability. Steve’s words are also not as clearly or firmly worded as Tony’s on the issues because, hey, Tony got more lines. I remember my initial impression when I watched it the first time (especially with all the noise and explosions going on) was that Tony was pro-Accords, and Steve anti-accords = anti-regulation = anti-accountability. Which actually wasn’t true. Steve was just given a few short frames to say they needed to retain accountability in their own hands. He never had the opportunity to point out all the flaws in Tony’s argument, which comes to fruition in the end - the Avengers being imprisoned without proper trial or hearing. Did Tony come back to get them after he realised he was wrong about Bucky and therefore wrong about them? No. He found out about his parents and decided to continue to punish the rest of the Avengers for it.

The more I think about it, the more CACW was IM4. Steve and Bucky were plot devices to develop Tony’s story of dealing with his mummy issues. Steve himself had very little development. He simply replayed what his beliefs were in CATWS. Bucky, likewise, wasn’t developed as much as displayed for plot effect.

Do I think there is a concerted and conscious effort to make Team Cap into villains? I don’t think it’s necessarily conscious, but that doesn’t mean it’s not happening. I think these people clearly favour Tony and identify with him much better than they do Steve, Sam, or Bucky. They don’t really want to get into the heads of these characters, so they create a shell of characteristics and put them through the motions; as opposed to developing their character and delving through their emotions. Hence post CACW Team Cap all seemed shallow and superficial, because none of the writers wanted to get into their heads about what their motivations are and where their faith lay, because that might mean coming to terms with the idea that Tony was in the wrong.

I feel a lot of Team IM fans still believe (and even Team Cap fans) that Steve was driven entirely by the selfish need to protect Bucky, which personally I don’t agree with. I think Steve also had noble, non-personal reasons to protest what Tony proposed in the Accords. But it’s this “selfishness”, which Team IM fans see as Steve’s hypocrisy/fallacy, that he needs to pay for — and he does it by ending his arc with an even more selfish choice, by cutting off the two people who anchored him.

Wanda and Nat got fairly empathetic treatment in their respective series/movie. It’s just when they end up in dudebro’s hands that things go pear-shaped.

Scott is more periphery in terms of the conflict against Tony and he was never Tony’s “friend” as Steve allegedly was. There wasn’t that personal element as there was with Steve/Bucky/Sam, so I’m a little more hopeful for him. If they do turn out to ruin him then I guess your conjecture is right - they really do be out punishing Team Cap.

#cacw #meta #steve rogers #anti tony stark #just in case #asks #anti mcu

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caffeineforbucky · 3 years

Text

As Time Goes By...(Chapter One)

Post-blip (five or six months later)

A/N: This is my first time writing on this website or anything public really, I usually just write for me, please just bear with me if it looks or sounds janky. Also, thanks for taking the time to read. I deeply & wholeheartedly appreciate you. Enjoy!

Summary: I suck at them but, I'll give it a shot. You- the reader, are surprised by 'old' friends when they show up out of the blue, asking for your help on a mission. (This is just the sum for chap. 1)

Word count: 2,760

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Fem! reader

Warnings: Angst, swearing, ex-boyfriend jealousy...

The day was coming to an end, a small heatwave conjuring up a sweat as you wiped down your last table for the night. You blew out a breath, brushing back a sheen of perspiration with your forearm, watching the last customer walk out of the restaurant as the bell chimed above their head.

You never understood why people chose to sit inside when there were tables out on the sidewalk. It was hotter in here than out there, especially since the air conditioner had gone out just a few days prior and the fans above the tables were only circling the air inside. It was an actual oven, but they contended.

Your hightops heaved across the tile, dragging yourself with the sufficiency of a person who was only working because they had to. You kicked up the doorstop, pulling the door towards you with a small amount of goodwill and vigor to finish locking up, flipping the paper sign over from open to closed. It wasn't as if you hated your job. You thoroughly enjoyed the atmosphere of it all. It was the only person working the night shift job you hated with every fiber of your being. You weren't completely alone in the restaurant, having a few cooks and the owner to keep you company, especially on busy nights like the one you just had.

"I'm clocking out, Mrs. Turner!" You call out, reaching behind your back to untie the knot of your apron, pulling it up and off your neck once the ties came undone. Trudging back to the table, you picked up the disinfectant wipe and toss it in the bin, making your way to your boss's office before hanging up your apron on the hook. "Mrs. Turner...?" You murmur softly, poking your head in through the doorway, only to see her counting the profits for the day. "I'm heading home," You chime, pointing behind your shoulder with your thumb as she glances up at you.

"Alright, Honey," She beams, a bright smile pulling at her lips as her eyes meet yours. "I'll see you tomorrow then?"

Working for the Turners wasn't supposed to be a permanent job, in fact, it wasn't even your original plan, as opposed to the small favors you would complete now and then for the people that were willing to pay a pretty penny for your...services.

But you figured having a stable job was smarter and safer than the alternative. And the help wanted sign was very persuasive, due to the pretty colors and splashes of glitter. It looked like it was made by a child, which you later found out, was decorated by Mrs. Turner's seven-year-old. "Always." You accede, tapping the doorframe as your goodbye before parading into the breakroom to gather your things from the lockers.

You take your backpack off the hook and swing the strap over your shoulder before time punching your card and going straight through the back door. The sounds of the city hit your ears as the heavy door slammed behind you. Traffic honks and tires treading against the grain while you walk further into the busy streets of San Francisco.

As you were about to turn the corner, you were met with the sight of your friend's van, followed by a trumpet rendition of La Cucaracha. You grinned widely, gripping your strap tighter as you jog up the 1972 Ford Ecoline, aka Big Bertha. At least that's what you called it. "Luis!" You rejoice, resting your palms on the ledge. "What are you doing here?"

"Scotty sent me out for a few things," Luis answers, his hands gripping the steering wheel, his head turned to you. "I was just about to go when I saw you. Thought you might need a ride." He shrugs, a cute smile playing on his lips.

You nod, reciprocating the smile at his answer. "Yeah, if it's not too much trouble..." You drag, your voice hesitant, as if he didn't offer at all.

"Nah, get in." He gestures, beckoning you with a wave of his hand. "Your place is on the way," Luis loosens his seatbelt, reaching over to the passenger side to pull up the lock, opening the door for you.

You climb in, plopping down on the tufted leather seats as you pulled the door towards you, closing it shut. "Thanks, Lu," You breathe, dropping your backpack below your feet, then you fasten your seatbelt. "How is Scott, anyway?" You ask as Luis changes gears and presses the gas, the van rolls onto the street.

"Ehh...he's...he's alright, know what I'm sayin'?" He answers, glancing at you before focusing back on the road. "I mean, he missed like five years of his daughter's life. He's just trying to spend as much time with her to make up for years they both lost."

You nibble at the inside of your cheek, nodding softly in agreement as the city lights passed you by. There wasn't much you could say to that, having lost so many people yourself. People you considered family just...gone.

"Yo!" Luis pipes up, snapping you out of your train of thought. "Didja see the news today?!" He shakes his head, whistling at the thought. "I can't believe they would just give some random dude the shield like that, ya know?"

You drew in your bottom lip in contempt, nodding once again at Luis. You had seen the news, and they couldn't have picked a better time to broadcast. If it hadn't been for Mrs. Turner asking you in, you would've hunted Sam Wilson down and kicked his ass yourself.

The van rolled to a stop, brakes squealing as Luis pulled up beside your apartment. You sighed heavily, glancing at the small apartment you shared with your Ex-boyfriend. By the looks of the living room light illuminating behind the curtains, he was home, and you absolutely dreaded when he was. It wasn't as if you wanted to live with him, but you had no other alternative. Ever since dropping your side job, money was tighter, and he was kind enough to let you stay, just until you found a place. "Thanks again for the ride, Lu." You mumble, unclicking your seatbelt as you took hold of your backpack. "You didn't have to."

"Don't even mention it, Y/N," Luis reassures, watching you as you pull at the door handle, opening it to get out. "I know how hard it is to get back into the norm."

You shut the passenger door, shooting him a sympathetic smile. "I'll see you around?"

With a smile, Luis waves goodbye and drives off into the night, the exhaust pipe blowing smoke as he rode off. You shook your head, cracking a smile at the honk of his horn. You turned towards the front entrance of the apartment, your stomach twisting as your smile dropped completely. You swallowed thickly, rolling the tension from your shoulders to prepare yourself before jogging up the small flight of stairs.

You fished your keys from the front pocket of your backpack, taking a breath before shoving the key into the lock, twisting as you pushed the door open with your shoulder. "Joshua?!" You voiced, calling out your ex's name to make sure it was him. You dropped your belongings beside the door, pushing your sneakers off before kicking the door shut with your foot.

"Yeah, in here!" He responds quickly, a slight tremor to his tone.

You frown softly, tossing your keys into the bowl on the console table before sauntering to where his voice was emanating from. "Josh, are you...?" Your voice came to a halt, your footsteps stopping altogether as you walked into the living room.

"Hey!" Joshua exclaims once your figure comes into view. "You wanna explain who they are?" He presses, his face crossed with fear as he gestures to the two men sitting calmly on your living room couch.

You remained quiet, your body tense, eyes wide as your focus shifted between the men on the couch and your ex.

"Well...?" Joshua demands, crossing his arms over his chest, shifting in his stance at the unsettling glare one of the men was sending his way. "I was in the middle of hosting game night-as you can see, when they showed up," Josh drops his arms, hands splaying out to gesture to the coffee table consisting of five different dips, two bulk-sized bags of tortilla chips, and a twenty-four pack of Blue Moon beer. "The guys were just about to come over."

You take a deep breath, closing your eyes to refrain from any and all insults towards your ex. That explained why he was home. "Um..." You utter, pinching the bridge of your nose, "Fucking hell," You curse under your breath, eyes fluttering open to look at Joshua. "Josh," You begin, clearing your throat as you start with the man on the left. "They are Sam Wilson and..." You hesitate, eyes settling on the man to the right, his sight alone bringing back the memories that you swore you didn't want to remember. "James Barnes," You finish, ripping your eyes away from his baby blues to look at your ex. "Aka-"

"The Falcon and The Winter Soldier..." Joshua finishes for you, his eyes flashing with amazement, head whipping towards the guys. "Shit!" He curses, smiling widely like a kid in a candy store. "Can I get you guys anything? A plate? Beer?"

"Actually," You grunt, interrupting before Sam or Bucky could answer. "Can you give us a minute, Joshua?" Insisting while your foot tapped impatiently against the hardwood floor.

"Should I be worried?" He inquires, eyes filled with confusion as he looked between the three of you, trying to piece together the situation at hand. The main reason you and Joshua couldn't work it out was that you kept a lot of secrets, mostly from him. He didn't like the fact that you wouldn't let him in. Sure, you lied to him, the biggest lie being that you were an Avenger, but that was just to keep him safe. There were other reasons why you decided to split up as well. Joshua knew...he knew deep down you were just with him to pass the time. He could see it when he looked into your eyes. There was someone else in the reflection and it wasn't him. If he was honest with himself, he could admit that it did hurt him. That he wanted a chance to make it work with you, but with the way you were staring at James, he finally recognized that reflection.

He should've noticed it early on-like that day he had somehow convinced you to take a trip to D.C for a tour of the Captain America museum. You were hell-bent on not going, trying to make up some elaborate excuse or an alibi of sorts, but alas, you still went. And for some odd reason, you couldn't stop coming back to the Bucky Barnes portion.

"No," You reply, keeping it short to dismiss him.

Joshua's mouth set in a hard line, a foreign feeling forming in the pit of his stomach-jealousy. He never had to worry about it before, especially when his friends used to come over, back when you were still together. Except for that one time, but how could he blame them? You were the kind of person that listened, laughed at the jokes being made, could lend a hand when needed, and your looks were just a bonus in his book. "Uhm, yeah," He coughed, frowning softly while nodding his head at you. "I have to go pick up the pizza, anyway," Josh brushes past you, fetching his keys from the bowl while slipping on his Vans that sat up against the wall ledge that separated the front door from the living room. "Are you going to be okay?" He mumbles, glancing over his shoulder to look at you.

You shoot Josh a smile, nodding reassuringly, his footsteps approaching closer before stopping in front of you, the palm of his hand landing gently on your shoulder, giving it a light squeeze. "Let me know if you need anything, m'kay?" Josh's voice is soft, the concern in his eyes making you feel guilty. You knew he cared about you, and there wasn't a time where you'd catch him staring at you for far too long, but you were well past that. "I'm just a text away," He notes, waving his cell in his hand.

"Josh, I'll be fine," You sigh, stepping away from his touch, the sound of his hand hitting his jeans as it dropped from your shoulder. "I always am."

"Right," Josh nods, looking over at the men on the couch before gazing back at you. "I'll see you in a bit, bug." And with that, he turns, opens the front door, and steps out, shutting the wooden door behind him.

You close your eyes, the pet name Josh had coined for you making you sigh. He agreed to stop calling you that all together and it only made you feel that more guilty for ending things. "So..." You pipe up, opening your eyes as you turned to look at the guys. "To what do I owe this pleasure?"

"Bug?"

Bucky is the first to speak, his jaw clenched at the mere sound of the word. Indignant at the way Josh had touched you, even if it was just your shoulder. "I didn't know he knew you like that," Bucky flashes you a taut smile, nodding softly as he shared a look with Sam, but the falcon only shook his head. "How long have you been..." Bucky couldn't even finish the question, his glove-clad hands tightening at the thought of you being with somebody else...someone that wasn't him. Though, it was his own fault. If he hadn't done what he'd done-you'd have never found another.

"Wow," You scoff, padding closer to where they sat. "You don't miss a beat, do you? Just..." You sink into the sofa adjacent to the one they occupied. "-Right into the big stuff."

"I didn't bring you here to question her about her love life," Sam voices, his scolding eyes on the man beside him. "And she sure as hell isn't obligated to answer you, Bucky."

You smile gratefully at Sam before glancing down at your leg that had begun to bounce in anticipation. "What are you guys doing here? And how'd you find me?" You ask, tilting your head in curiosity as you look up at the guys. "When I resigned from the Avengers initiative, they ensured me that I wasn't able to be traced, not by your or any other remaining member. I was supposed to be scot-free," You declare, hitting your thigh with your fist.

"Oh, come on, Y/N," Sam chuckles, shaking his head at the naivety. "We both know that's a bunch of bullshit. The government is always going to have its eyes on us. Especially free agents like you and us."

You draw in your bottom lip, biting down, eyes flickering between Sam and Bucky. You knew it was too good to be true, and part of you sensed the bullshit when the government explained it to you. You just didn't want to believe it.

"You were an ex-assassin. How could they not keep tabs on your whereabouts?" Sam recounts, emphasizing that it was in the past. At least, that's what they thought. "And I had some help from Redwing as well." He shrugs nonchalantly.

You choke out a laugh, shaking your head at the smug demeanor emitting from Sam. "Redwing," You whisper, smiling thinly. "Of course, nothing could ever be hidden from your personal P.I, huh?"

"I hate that thing," Bucky grumbles, folding his arms across his chest. in annoyance. "Invasion of privacy, I'm telling you."

"You love redwing," Sam jokes, playfully jabbing Bucky's arm with his elbow, "It's okay Bucky, you can admit it."

"Can we get back to the issue here?" You interject, "Not one of you has explained the reason you're here. I mean, don't get me wrong, it's great to see you...one more than the other," You whisper that last part but, completely aware that Bucky could hear it. "But, you both showing up out of the blue...? That's almost a bad omen."

"I didn't ask him here, by the way," Sam acknowledges, raising his hands in defense, "I just want to get that out of the way. Bucky came because he wanted to. I'm here," Sam gestures to himself, "-For one reason and one reason only..."

"And what's that?" You ask, leaning forward in your seated position.

"I need your help, Y/N."

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