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deanbrainrotwritings · 4 months

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— GIMME HALF

REQUEST : “hi!! I was wondering if you could maybe write an age gap (legal obv) with female!reader × dean winchester where the reader is like in her 20s and dean's in his 40s :) just some rough smut with choking and hair pulling and spitting (if you're comfortable with it) and dean being like super "hungry" for her, like he's waited a long time for it to happen. also lots of dirty talks cause i absolutely love them hahah :) anyways im in love with your writing and all your stories! thanks a lot! <3” — anonymous

PAIRING : dean winchester x professor!reader (f.)

CHARACTERS : miracle, sam winchester

WARNINGS/TAGS : explicit(18+), angst, enemies to lovers, age gap, voyeurism, smut, oral sex, p in v, praise kink, choking, hair pulling, dacryphilia, rough sex, spitting

WORD COUNT : 8.4k

A/N : devil wears prada song title. @spnkinkevents : #12daysofspnkinkmas2023 — chair sex and food play. I wrote this half-asleep while listening to ASMR, like… that’s how I write most of my stories, plus, they’re always written between 00.00-02.40. Doctor Who references, ‘cause I’m a nerd. I got carried away…. Cliffhanger bc I’m cruel.

There were countless pros and cons to having houses built so close together with windows facing the same direction.

Pros: Accidentally seeing your hot neighbour walk around naked in the living room and kitchen. Accidentally catching your hot neighbour jerk off when they think that everyone’s asleep.

Yup, she’s seen all of that and more. All from that nameless, freckled, green-eyed man next door.

Even wholesome things, like him playing with his cute dog, babying the little rascal and spoiling it. Him cooking and baking, being wholeheartedly content with feeding it to the tall, Hazel-eyed puppy dog of a man, the tall man’s gorgeous deaf wife, and his tiny adorable son; the blue-eyed, dreamy dude in a trench coat; and that endearing young boy with blue eyes who looked like a combination of all three of the men.

There were times where she’d seen the green-eyed man dressed as a cowboy and even a princess to entertain the little baby boy—his nephew. For sleepovers with him, he’d read him bedtime stories while being completely animated. He’d build a bunch of forts, with sheets, the couch, pillows, and some Christmas lights. He'd talk to the little boy and hold serious conversations despite neither of them being able to understand each other. He’d teach the young boy and the baby boy how to fix cars—at least he tried to. He’d pack his best friends' lunches every morning with his hair unkempt, half asleep, while sipping on some coffee. He’d even take naps with the baby, treating him as his own son.

He’d do ridiculously endearing things, too, such as baking bread at night when he couldn’t sleep. He'd read books only when he was alone, as if he’d be made fun of by his friends, and she finally understood why. They were either romantic, erotic, or completely nerdy and abstract. He had range. He’d watch cheesy soap operas and rom-com k-dramas when he did chores. He loved to collect things such as Pokémon cards and even legos.

There were a million things he did that she thought were cute. The windows into his house were like the screens of a television, like her favourite character, she got to see him when he’s relaxed and surrounded only by those who love him

As for the cons, we’ll get to that…

When they first moved in, it was about three and a half years ago. She’d been visiting her family in Kansas City for her oldest brother’s birthday in June.

When she returned to Lebanon, they had already settled down. There was a brown and beige Ford pickup truck, a black Subaru—both parked in the front, and a sleek black Impala in the driveway.

The youngest, Jack, waved at her one day when he returned with Cas after buying groceries. Then, Cas awkwardly introduced himself and Jack, and gave her the names of the other two men who were brothers, Sam is the tall one and Dean was the freckled one.

Sam was the most social one. He’d spark up conversation with her whenever he saw her, dropping bits and pieces of information about himself, his brother, his fiancée, Cas, Jack, and Dean’s loyal dog, Miracle.

After seven months of living together, Sam moved out with his wife, Eileen. They’d just gotten married, and they both invited her. She’d gone, the wedding was pretty, cute, and modest. Y/n had spoken to a few of their close family and friends. Dean, however, kept to himself the whole night as if he were grieving. He’d smile occasionally if any of his friends came to him, he was enthusiastic, and then he'd go back into himself.

Four months later, Sam and EIleen returned; she was pregnant. It was a boy, he’d planned on naming him after his big brother, which Y/n thought was adorable. He hadn’t told his brother, but planned on telling him the day his son was born.

Y/n could tell Dean had mixed feelings about his brother’s departure, mostly negative feelings. He loved Eileen and his nephew. But when it was just him, Cas, and Jack, he'd often drink, despite concerned, useless interventions with Cas. Unless Sam, Eileen, and his nephew were there. He’d never even glance at that top-shelf cupboard.

The good thing was that at least Dean was a happy drunk.

The first time she interacted with Dean was a few weeks after she’d returned from Kansas City, she assumed two things: his heart was closed off to new people, and he’s one hot, irritating, grumpy, sour, old man.

It was the spring semester at Kansas University. Y/n was grading her students’ creative, personal essays in the office downstairs. She was perplexed by the small percentage of her students and their inability to use proper grammar or follow the thorough, detailed checklist she created to get them to pass easily.

Just when she thought she’d gotten great at making their lives easy, they return the shittiest, half-assed essays. She felt bad for the bad grades, but since the rest of her students managed to get perfect scores or at least proficient scores, she couldn’t just let them pass.

Loud banging on the door startled her from reading an impressive essay. Her blood ran cold and she scrambled up from her rolling chair, ignoring that she pushed it halfway across the room.

Her socked feet were quiet on the wooden floor, making her way quickly down the hallway until she got to the shelf where she kept her gun. She pressed it against the door and looked through the peephole, then relaxed when she saw Dean.

She was irritated by the loud knocking, though, regardless of how cute he looked when he was clearly pissed off. She opened the door and set the gun down on the table where she usually placed her keys.

“Lady, have you seen the mess you made outside?” Dean asked her, pointing behind him. She stared at him, stunned by how much prettier he looked up close. Her cheeks turned hot, but she looked past him trying to see whatever he was pointing at.

She looked at her red Mustang parked in the front as a reminder to restock the kitchen, then looked close to where his house was. She winced at the mud and the running water from her hose going into his nice lawn.

“Shit,” she murmured, toeing her socks off before moving past Dean to turn the hose off. She got distracted by the mud and the puddles as she pulled the hose, and coiled it back where it should have been. It’s been a while since she last let her bare feet feel this beneath, the smell of wet dirt was amazing, even when it wasn’t caused by rainfall.

“Do you always do shit like this?” He asked from behind, his tone harsh.

She frowned when she turned to look at his furious face, careful to not touch her forehead with her muddy hands when she used her wrist to move hair away from her face.

“I’m sorry,” she apologised, tilting her head at him. He just rolled his eyes at her, then he stared at his lawn, and ran his hand down his face. “Did I do somethin’ else to piss you off?” She asked, looking around to see if there’s anything else she may have forgotten.

“One, your cat’s too damn loud, crying and meowing for my damn dog when you let him out,” he started, which made her blink in confusion. She didn’t expect something like that to get on his nerves. “And B, why the hell do you have cameras facing my place?”

She narrowed her eyes at him, her ego being injured fueled her anger and defensiveness. “Okay, listen, Doctor Who, I said I was sorry, okay?” She could tell her words stunned him by the furrowing of his brows in bewilderment, disarming him and shutting him up. “It’s not my fault your dog likes my cat, too. And the cameras are off, they’re there to scare people, so fuck off,” she snapped before she stop herself.

Dean scoffed at her, “fuck you.” She rolled her eyes at him this time, staring daggers into his back when he turned around to get to his home.

“If you’d fuck me, maybe you wouldnt be such an asshole.” Her snide words made him freeze. He laughed dryly and he turned to face her once more, her arms crossed over her chest.

“Pretty sure I’d still hate you, sweetheart,” he chuckled, crossing his own arms. That stung, even if she didn’t know him personally and half the time she spent romanticising him based on the little bit of information she had. “And I’d rather go fuck some other chick.” She clenched her jaw and breathed in slowly, angry heat began rising up her neck the faster her heart started to beat.

Entirely unintended, she venomously spat, “according to your brother, you haven’t been lucky enough, and you’re not going to be.”

“You talking to my brother about my sex life?” He stepped closer to her, his nostril flaring in anger. Betrayal and hurt crossed his features and she realised her mistake.

“No, just overheard him ‘cause you’re an overbearing douchebag,” she lied smoothly. Truth was, Sam and Eileen did accidentally—drunkenly—tell her how hard it was for Dean to maintain a serious relationship for more than three months. They don’t remember sharing that information. It was easy for her to casually ask about Dean’s love life and availability, masking her attraction to Dean as mere surprise as to how the younger brother got married before the older one. “Makes sense now why no one will sleep with you,” she laughed mockingly, stepping closer to him defiantly.

His face was red now, too. Angry, offended, he rolled his eyes at her smug face and body language. “You don’t know shit about me.”

“Sure, yeah, if that makes you feel better,” she snorted, patting his very nice, broad shoulder with her muddy hand as she made her back into her house. Preoccupied by the small mud-print on his beige Henley, he couldn’t get the last word in or stop her from leaving him flustered in her swampy driveway.

That was the start of a horrible relationship with her neighbour. The neighbour she had a crush on.

He found all kinds of reasons to complain. Big and small. And she secretly did things to piss him off, occasionally sabotaging his plans.

The thing was that deep down, she still liked him, but he made her so angry and frustrated. And it felt good to see him angry and frustrated by things she caused either on purpose or accidentally. Any attention was better than no attention.

Eventually, that all changed. The fun, the it’s-better-than-nothing feeling, it didn’t last. Fourteen months later, she stopped the cruel games and decided to avoid him completely.

When her friends offered to take her out, she agreed, even if she wanted to stay home. If Dean was home, she made sure to never say no to them, and sometimes she’d offer to take them out. Wherever.

She’d started to grade at the cafe, library, or the diner, even if Dean went to all those places often. At least he wouldn’t say anything there around all those people.

When she grew closer to Sam, Cas, and Jack, she’d find excuses not to go over to Dean’s when they offered either food, game nights, movie nights, or random hangouts. They started to notice too—the tension, the avoidance, the hostility—and they’d go over to her place instead, often without Dean, who’d choose to go out to avoid staying home alone.

It was awful. The rejection started to hurt, yet, he had her heart in the palm of his hand. Deep down, she knew that Dean wasn’t a bad person; he just didn’t like her.

Eventually, Dean ended his animosity, too, and everything went back to ‘normal’. She slowly started to reject offers from her friends to test the water, stayed home to grade, and didn't permit her cat to leave even if it cried for an escape. If she took him out, it was with a leash she eventually got him to get used to.

They ignored each other when they crossed paths—in the driveway, at the grocery store, at diners, at the cafe. They acted like complete strangers. She’d keep her curtains closed, at least she did for the windows that face his house. She made her presence as unnoticeable and as invisible as she could to prevent causing more damage to each other.

Then, about two months ago, on Halloween, Sam, Eileen, Cas, and Jack went to her house to collect candy. Sam made a point of staying back while the rest of them walked to where Dean was waiting—looking anywhere but at her house—to convince her to go to his and Eileen’s place for Thanksgiving.

He was honest, cute, wide hazel eyes attempting to convince her to try and make amends with Dean. She didn’t doubt it, when he told her that Dean felt guilty, but her pride was bruised, and her heart was broken. She told Sam she would be visiting her own family for that holiday. She omitted that she’d be going to her mother’s house a few miles away, still in Lebanon. And she easily convinced her mother to let her stay the rest of the week until she had to go back to work.

Now, Christmas was near—in four days, to be exact. It wasn’t the holiday spirit that made her change her mind, it was the hurt and the exhaustion of planning her life around avoiding Dean.

So, she called Sam, she asked if he could do anything to get Dean alone tomorrow.

For the rest of the day, she would start to prepare everything—even though it was Dean who created the mess—she was willing to make the first move and hopefully meet him halfway.

She couldn’t lie that she felt embarrassed by how excited she was to see Dean. She couldn't even differentiate the meaning of the butterflies in her stomach, but she powered through her fluttering heart and her shaking hands as she prepared everything before going to see him.

She considered not doing it at all, calling it quits—but the consequences of that quickly made her miserable. That would just mean more avoidance, more hiding, more changing everything about herself to make him happy.

All of this over one little misunderstanding. One bad day where her mouth ran without consulting her brain first ruined what could have otherwise been a good friendship—perhaps even a romantic relationship.

She was twenty-six and just like Dean, she hadn’t had a serious relationship since… Well, ever. The last time someone convinced her to date them was in highschool, and even before that, it took her a month—or less—to figure out she wanted nothing to do with them. She didn’t like the people she dated. She realised quickly that she didn’t even want a future with them, she didn’t even allow them to kiss her or touch her. So she figured that if she didn’t want to marry them, what was the point of wasting her time?

For so long, the first thing she thought of when she felt attracted to someone was: can I stand the thought of their touch? Can I see myself kissing them, letting them kiss me? Can I stand the thought of the fights and staying with them through thick and thin? Can I picture myself with them in the future, permanently?

The answer was always ‘no’ and the attraction died immediately after the realisation.

With Dean, the answer was different. Not for some stupid reason, like fate, or the boy-next-door trope. No. This was reality, and the real reason was the fact that she got to see who he was before she was attracted to him.

It was the selflessness, the love in everything that he did, the gentleness of his heart, the kindness that radiated from him, and the ease in the way he did chores, the way he made his friends laugh, his playfulness, the loyalty, the way he was clearly protective.

It was the open windows of her house into his open windows that let her see through him, down to his very beautiful core. It was the lack of hidden things, the openness of his soul because he felt safe, unwatched. It was real because Cas, Jack, and Sam were proof that even though Dean wasn’t perfect, he was worth it.

The Doctor did say once: the good things don’t always soften the bad things, but vice-versa, the bad things don’t necessarily spoil the good things and make them unimportant.

For the first time, she was willing to take a chance.

She smoothed down the silky emerald-green dress. It was pretty, flowing down her body perfectly, stopping at the middle of her calves…. Actually, now that she looked at herself in the mirror, her curls perfectly maintained, the light touch of makeup, the heels… was it too much?

She ignored those anxious thoughts and made sure she had everything she needed and everything that she prepared before stepping out into the cold.

The spaghetti straps didn’t stop the cold, but the heat of her nervousness at least did something as she walked up to his door and waited after knocking gently.

When he opened the door, he was stunned to see her.

“What?” He asked bluntly.

She could tell that the way she was dressed caught him off guard. His eyes moved from her face, up to her hair, back down to the boxes in her hands, and lower to her feet.

“I’ve got pie,” she said the first thing her mind thought of. Yes, it was blunt, yes, it disarmed him further… It was not smooth, but Dean looked behind him, and then he looked at her once more while biting his lip before opening the door wider, and stepping out of the way for her to enter.

She exhaled shakily as he scratched the back of his neck. Out of habit, she slipped out of her heels before stepping inside his home, planting her bare feet on the soft, long rug he had. He kindly, wordlessly, took her heels from outside and placed them on the shoe rack he had inside before shutting the door behind her.

She felt so… warm. Finally, she was inside the place she longed to be in. Right where Dean was. Along the walls there were dozens of pictures, but she didn’t go too far, she waited for him.

She felt his presence behind her and it made her shiver, but she couldn’t bring herself to look back at him. Instead, she stared at photos of him with Cas, Sam, Jack, and other people she hadn’t met. Women and Men. Dean was smiling in all of them. And in a large majority of them, they were looking at him while he looked at the camera.

What a funny thing.

“Here,” he said from behind her, his deep voice sounded soft, gentle, unlike the last time they spoke to each other. It made her shudder. “Let me help.” She slowly braced herself when she turned around, staring into his beautiful green eyes, illuminated magically by Christmas lights.

“Thanks,” she whispered, carefully loosening her grip on the objects in her hand for him to take what he wanted—which was everything.

She stepped to the side when he murmured, “no problem,” and started to walk off to the kitchen. She followed him slowly, took a look around, respectfully, curiously, just when she heard the clicking of nails and the thump of paws on wooden floors, and the bark of his dog headed in their direction.

“Miracle,” Dean grunted, setting everything down on the table, “not inside.” While the fluffy dog did stop its excited running, his enthusiasm was not lost as he wagged his tail, and playfully got down on his stomach in front of her feet. Still on his belly, Miracle approached Y/n slowly, paws and tongue at her toes, as if testing the waters.

“Hey,” she greeted softly as she squatted slowly and laughed quietly, gently scratching Miracle’s head as he nudged her hand with his wet nose, staring up at her with adorably wide eyes—much like Sam did. “You’re so cute,” she cooed, her heart warming up when Miracle barked quietly.

He then jumped up and turned towards Dean, who was watching them—perplexed, happy, conflicted.

“You were asleep,” Dean scolded, but sweetly took Miracle’s head in his hands and kissed him between his ears. Miracle whined and stepped away, sitting in front of Dean as if saying ‘I’ll be good if you let me stay’. “Whatever,” Dean groaned with a smile, which made Miracle happy, because he laid his cheek on his paw and stared up at Dean, resting.

Now, it was awkward.

Dean caught her staring at him, her expression inquisitive. She cleared her throat awkwardly, but she couldn’t form words. She only now noticed that he was wearing a faded black shirt and hotdog pyjama pants.

“So…” Dean began instead, “pie.” It wasn’t any better, but it’s as she always said: it was better than nothing.

“Yes,” she confirmed, “strawberry… you weren’t getting ready for bed…?” She inquired, tipping her chin in the direction of his attire.

“Not to sleep,” he reassured her, taking a few steps toward the cupboards to pull out two plates, glass cups, and then some utensils from the lower drawer. “Why are you doing this?” Dean asked quietly from where he was across the kitchen, everything still in his hands.

“I deserve better that’s why,” she snapped. He blinked at her, guilty, but she paused and took a deeper breath. Careful to not smear her eyeliner, she rubbed her temples instead. She reached behind her to wrap her ankle around the leg of a chair to pull it out and sit down. “Sorry, I don’t like… being angry,” she breathed out, looking out his kitchen window into her dark living room. She switched the Christmas lights off. “It's very stressful because I…” She turned to look at him and forgot her words as he came closer.

He looked cuter in person and prettier, still. Three years and nothing has changed, he still had her heart right in his hand.

“Why?” He pressed, placing everything down on the table in front of her. Looking up at him felt intimidating, so she averted her gaze. He was much older than she was… it made her… feel dumb. See-through. Like he could figure her out in seconds.

“Because I’m friends with your friends,” she admitted without looking at him, then she reached out to arrange the plates, cups, and utensils. He sat down thoughtfully, and watched her unstack the small boxes she brought over.

“You’re doing this for them,” he laid out flatly, but he took a seat next to her and stared at her. His eyes on her made her self-conscious, flustered. She bet he could see everything, all the ugly and the weird in her.

“I’m doing this for me,” she corrected him gently, “I just want to be happy,” she sighed, removing the plastic wrap she placed over the pie she baked. “Is that selfish?” She wondered out loud, taking the knife, she stared at it.

“No,” Dean sighed, wrapping his hand around hers to take the knife. She inhaled sharply at the warmth of his touch, his calloused palms brushing against the back of her hand, sending warmth over her chest, pressing into her wrist with her heart excitedly pounding against her ribs.

She released the knife into his hold, trying to hide how much he affected her, but she doubted she could fully do that with the Christmas lights exposing the blush she could feel on her face. She could feel her veins pumping blood faster, caught up with the heavy beating of her heart. If he looked down at her neck, he could probably see it in her veins.

She looked away, down at Miracle who was still peacefully laying on his belly, and Dean looked away towards the beautiful pie to start slicing into it.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured, taking her plate to give her the first slice. She looked up at Dean, taking the plate with a generous slice of strawberry pie.

“I wanted to be the first to say it…” She complained playfully, trying to maintain eye contact with him, but his beauty was intimidating, forcing her to look away, “soon as my ego stopped being sensitive,” she added.

Dean laughed softly, placing his own slice on his plate. The sound of his laugh made her smile, her stomach flipped with elation, at the crinkles by his eyes. Her breathy exhale made him look at her.

“Well, I’m forty-four, my ego’s been bruised enough times,” he told her, “I don’t care much for it when…” he trailed off and chewed on his bottom lip thoughtfully. She bit her lip, too, trying not to stare too long at his pretty mouth.

“Well, thanks,” she murmured, her jaw twitching as she looked away from him.

“I’d consider all this an apology,” he told her, gazing at her as she opened two rectangular boxes. She smiled, shaking her head. She pulled out a bottle of homemade eggnog along with a decorated jar filled with white frosting, and a small container with crushed peppermint candy. “This isn’t… poisoned, right?” He teased, still watching her while she opened the bottle of rum eggnog, she tilted her head at him, amused. “Just making sure… you did make all this…” he trailed off, impressed.

“Taste the pie,” she encouraged as she started making the drinks.

“You’re just trying to shut me up,” he chuckled gruffly, but he picked up his fork and started to dig in. The strawberry filling barely touched his tongue when he moaned, she watched him not even begin to chew. His brows furrowed and he closed his eyes, savouring the pie.

It made her blush, but she focused on covering the rim of the cups he brought with the whiskey frosting she made and the peppermint candy shavings before filling it with eggnog.

“You made the frosting, too?” He asked, tipping his head towards the jar. His mouth was full, some strawberry filling dripped down the corner of his mouth, but he picked it up with his tongue. She licked her lips, trying to stop herself from breathing airily, and passed him the eggnog with a nod and slid the jar of frosting towards him to serve herself some eggnog.

Dean dipped his finger into the frosting, collecting a large amount before wrapping his lips around his finger to suck the frosting off. She forced herself to look away from how hot he looked and ate her own slice of pie instead.

“I’ve seriously been missing out,” he murmured regretfully. “I was real childish,” he told her, “I never should’ve gotten pissed over… everything-”

“Dean,” she interrupted him, giving him a sheepish smile, “you already apologised and I forgive you. Besides, I did things, too.. on purpose… so, I’m sorry.” She pursed her lips and took a sip from her eggnog, swiping her tongue along the sweet frosting.

“You did things on purpose?” He repeated, a smirk on his face. She breathed out a laugh and nodded bashfully. “Why?” he wondered, leaning into her curiously, subtly moving his plate of food towards her. She considered being blunt, but she chose to test him instead.

“Probably the same reason you got pissed at everything I did and didn’t do,” she laughed, pulling a piece of strawberry out of the pie to put it in her mouth.

“I doubt that,” Dean muttered, picking up his own drink, and taking a large gulp. She eyed him closely, her eyes becoming hooded when he licked across his lips after drinking to collect the thin layer of sweetened alcohol on his mouth.

“What was your reason then?” She wondered flirtatiously, her voice low and seductive. She pushed her plate away with her arm., and mimicked his body language, scooting forward in the chair.

She watched as his eyes darkened and his jaw clenched, his hand tightening around his fork before he dropped it. She’d never quite been stared at that way before, but it suddenly—almost, made her laugh. Her legs felt weak, her stomach heavy, almost fooling her into thinking she couldn’t get up, but she did.

With a rapid heart and shaky knees, she pushed her chair back, and Miracle lifted his head in alarm. Dean leaned back in his chair, sliding his palms up his thighs, and watched hungrily as she lifted her dress up her legs, squeezing in front of him and part of the table to sit on his lap.

“Seems like we’ve both been missing out on a lot of stuff,” she whispered, her stomach fluttering for a variety of reasons, but mostly from excitement. He bit his lip, eyes twinkling as he placed his hands slowly on her thighs. She sank her teeth down on her lip, too, breathing heavily when his hands began sliding up her thighs, lifting her dress higher, and higher.

“You look beautiful,” he whispered, continuing to move her dress up until his hands were wrapped around her hips where he could realise she wasn’t wearing any underwear. “I thought I should tell you, before I ruin you,” he rasped, tightening his hold on her hips.

“Fuck,” she moaned, moving forward in his lap until their hips were pressed together. She brought her hands into his hair, and pulled it gently, bringing her mouth close to his, but she never kissed him. She breathed against his lips and when he leaned forward to kiss her, she pulled back teasingly.

“You’re seriously gonna make me wait?” He whispered, slowly rolling his hips up into her, his hard cock pressing into her wet core. She gasped softly against his mouth and laughed breathlessly.

“You feel good,” she praised, flushing as she ground against him harder.

“I’d feel better inside you,” he smirked, sliding one of his hands farther up her dress, his warm palm flattening up her stomach reverently, stopping beneath her breasts..

“I bet,” she moaned, arching into his touch before finally pressing her tinted lips against his. Dean moaned softly against her mouth, pressing against her hungrily, then lifted her up, carefully moving his plate and cup aside to lay her down on the table.

“Miracle, bed,” Dean ordered when he pulled away from her lips. The dog obediently stood up and excitedly made his way to where Dean’s room was. Dean kissed her once more, drawing her attention away from Miracle and back to him.

She’d never been kissed the way Dean kissed her or touched the way Dean touched her. His hands were everywhere, testing, learning, skillful. He scratched her skin sending sparks down to her already soaked core, kneading her body roughly until she moaned against his mouth. He squeezed her and made her wet. He dug his blunt nails into her and made her nerves ignite. His hands smoothed across her, sailing over her body like she were an ocean and he was a sailor.

He was desperate, devouring her mouth with his tongue and his teeth, putting his all into the kiss, licking her lips, teasing the inside of her mouth, brushing against her warm tongue. He yearned to memorise the taste of her mouth, to feel close to her, pressing and moaning against her the way he’d done when he ate the pie and frosting. He nibbled on her lips, tugging, biting, claiming, taking the air from her lungs and pulling away at the perfect time.

He rolled his hips into her frantically and finally started to move away from her now-swollen lips, the colour of her raspberry tint robbed and replaced by the redness of his kiss.

He dragged his teeth teasingly along her jaw and licked his way down her neck, pressing his stubbled face into her neck, kissing and sucking softly, searching. She rolled her head to the side, giving him all the access he needed, until finally, she moaned loudly when he sucked into her sweetspot. He smiled against her throat, feeling her take handfuls of his shirt, her hips wiggling impatiently beneath him.

He kissed lower still, then back up to the other side of her neck, and bit her collarbones, kissing every inch of her skin, her shoulders and her sternum. She loved every second of it and slipped her hands beneath his shirt, touching and scratching his skin, pulling him closer as he bucked into her bare core.

“Did you know your shirt was see-through when we first met?” He whispered into her cleavage. She laughed and replied with a breathless ‘no’. “Well.. your tits on display, legs bare in those tiny shorts, all pissed as hell… it was hot,” he chuckled, lowering the thin straps of her dress until the top started to reveal her breasts.

“Is that why you jerked off that night?” She asked, gripping his hair and tugging hard. He grunted and laughed, staring into her lustful eyes.

“You saw?” He teased, bringing his hand to her breast, squeezing roughly. “The answer’s yes.. And everytime after that, it was also ‘cause of you,” Dean confessed, “couldn’t stop thinking about you, every day and every night. I thought I hated you, but I guess I just needed to fuck you.”

She chuckled, gripping the hem of his shirt, dragging it up his body as he latched onto her nipple. She hummed softly, tugging hard at his hair, in complete bliss as he wrapped his mouth around the bud, licking, sucking, and biting until she whimpered for him to give her more—which was impossible. He moved onto her other breast, savouring her warm skin with his hotter mouth, tugging her neglected nipple with his fingers, twisting and pinching.

“Please,” she moaned, yanking his hair so he’d pull away. Dean growled against her flesh and bit down hard on her breast, before pulling away, drawing a mewl from her of his name.

“You could be nicer,” he muttered, allowing her to lift his shirt up off his body, but he continued to kiss her breasts, sucking gently around the flesh to leave red marks. He lifted her feet up on the table and pressed her thighs close to her chest, opening her up to admire her soaked sex.

“We’re long past nice, pretty boy,” she teased blushing and biting her lip when he stood up straight. She didn’t look at him, too insecure to watch him as he brought his hand to the inside of her thighs, teasing her vulva.

“You think I’m pretty?” He grinned, circling her entrance, moaning at copious amounts of arousal on his fingers. “So wet… you that needy for my cock inside you?” He asked smugly.

She looked at him now, heat flooding up her face at his obscene words. Before she could say anything about it, the tattoo on his chest drew her attention away from the adorable pride on his face.

“You’re a hunter,” she stated, stunned, blinking at him with a smile. He looked down at himself then at her, speechless. She lifted her hips and hitched her dress up higher to reveal her ribcage where she had the same tattoo, twice as small.

“You’re a professor,” he remarked with arousal on his face, pushing his finger into her. He lowered himself down her body and wrapped his arm around her legs, holding her open as he breathed warmly against her wet cunt.

Before she could close her legs to him demurely, Dean dove in, his mouth hot on her pussy. He ate her out the same way he kissed her, teeth making her whimper, his tongue parting and tasting, picking up the flavour of her wetness as she moaned.

He salivated on her, humming in satisfaction while he sucked her clit into his mouth while he fingered her. Her hands found his hair once more, pulling hard and almost painfully, but his cock jumped each time inside the thin material of his pyjamas. Dean added a second finger as he moaned against her swollen clit, knuckles deep, pressing against the front of her textured walls, drawing silent moans from her, making her squirm more and more.

“Fuck,” she panted, “you’re so good,” she praised, flexing her hand above his head before gripping at the honey strands. He slurped lewdly, devouring her pussy, squeezing her hips desperately holding her close to his face while she pushed him harder against her cunt. “Dean… I’m close,” she moaned, closing her legs around his head.

He moaned again, adding another finger, shoving deep as he circled her swollen clit with his tongue, drawing figures on her clit possessively. She gasped loudly and cried out his name, tensing up when she orgasmed, her walls clamping down on his three fingers. The rapture of her orgasm seemed endless as he continued to tongue at her clit, it made her writhe uncontrollably, and he smirked against her pussy.

Her whiny laugh and the way she squeezed his head to stop him made him chuckle, and he tapped her thigh once he pulled his fingers from within her pulsing walls. She released him, melting into the table while he licked his fingers clean of her release.

“You taste good,” he told her earnestly, “so fucking good.” She bit her lip, giving him a look of disbelief. He narrowed his eyes at her, leaning down to lick a long stripe up her pussy, then down, pushing his tongue past her clenching, wet hole.

“Dean, fucking…” she moaned, “oh, God, why does that feel good?” She snickered, then he pulled away hovering above her. She opened her eyes to his smug face, his clean fingers squeezed her cheeks roughly until she opened her mouth. She furrowed her brows, whining out with her hands around his wrist so he’d release, but she shut up when he spit in her mouth.

“Taste yourself,” he ordered, licking his lips. Her pupils dilated as she looked into his eyes, the tangy taste of herself made her mouth water and she swallowed. “D’you know how hot you are?” He asked rhetorically, kissing her roughly once more, ravenous and stopped only when he felt her hands pushing his pants down his legs.

“I want you, Dean,” she whispered against his mouth, biting his lip before returning the passion of his kiss.

“Where?” He asked teasingly, wrapping his arm around her waist, he sat her up on the table and gently held her face in his hands, before releasing her to strip completely.

“I want you inside me,” she told him coquettishly, hopping off the table to slowly let her dress pool around her feet. “I want to ride you, to feel you stretch me open…” she walked towards him, watching him completely aroused, a look of pleasant surprise on his face, “I want you to fill me up, and make me cum on your cock…” she licked her lips, staring down at his cock, erect and leaking precum. “... I’ve never seen a dick this nice,” she told him, wrapping her hand around the base and stepping closer to him.

He grunted, “suck it then.” She laughed through her nose, releasing his cock to fondle his balls. He moaned, stumbling slightly. “I’ve been wanting to shut you up with my cock in your mouth,” he told her, a smirk on his face, “now, I’m just thinking how pretty you’ll look with your lips wrapped around me.” Dean reached up and curled his fingers around the back of her neck.

She looked behind him, removed her hand, and tipped her head to the chair, “sit.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he grinned, kicking the chair towards him like she had earlier, then he sat, legs wide and tempting. “You’re sexier than you were in my imagination,” he told her, watching her get down between his legs, kissing his thighs while looking up at him through her curled lashes.

“Keep talkin’,” she grinned up at him, taking his heavy cock in her hand once more. Dean gave her a sexy look, smug and aroused.

“I wanna finish in your mouth,” he told her, “want to see you swallow my load.” Pleased, she moved forward and began kissing and licking the length of his cock, teasingly and experimentally feeling the velvety, veiny texture against her hand, tongue, and lips. “I want to hear you choke on my cock, and see what you look like with tears in your eyes as I fuck your pretty face.” She moaned softly, intrigued by the description of his fantasy.

She dipped her tongue into the slit, moaning at the taste of his precum, drooling over the soft head of his cock before sucking him into her mouth.

“Fuck,” he moaned, tangling his fingers in her hair. She slowly took him deeper, pulling him out of her hot mouth teasingly, then swallowing inch by inch of his hard cock. “You’re so good at that, baby,” he panted, letting her take her time at her own pace, but he gripped her hair tightly. “Don’t stop,” he moaned, staring into her eyes as she continued to take his cock, bobbing her head, not stopping until he hit the back of her throat. She swallowed around him, and he bucked his hips up, releasing a whispered curse, attempting to keep his eyes open to watch her suck him off.

She got comfortable between his legs, taking his freehand to put it in her hair. He took her hair, put it together, and waited for her permission before slowly lifting his hips, pushing his cock slowly into her throat. When she gagged, he slowly pulled back, then pushed back into her, lips parted, releasing quick breaths.

Eventually, he started to fuck her face in earnest, lifting his hip up off the chair, pulling her hair hard to guide her on and off his dick. Her spit dribbled down her chin in a mixture of his precum. She swallowed as much as she could, moaning and blinking tears that tickled her eyes and her jaw.

“You look so fucking…” he chocked on a moan, “so damn sexy.”

She ignored the soreness of her jaw, relaxing it as best as she could as he fucked her near mercilessly. Her pussy throbbed with every sound of his pleasure, clit aching for attention at the way he gazed down at her with burning desire, but she refused to touch herself, enjoying the build-up, the desperation for another orgasm, for his touch.

He throbbed in her mouth, turning to mush beneath her mouth. He even began to whimper and moan her name, praises and dirty words becoming scarce in attempts to hold back his orgasm, edging himself with her mouth. It didn’t take long for him to hold her with her nose against his pelvis breathlessly.

He pulled her off his cock, and released her hair to wipe tears tenderly from her hot cheeks with his thumbs, trying to get his mind off the near-pleasure of her mouth around his cock while catching his breath.

“Yummy,” she rasped, pulling a breathless laugh from him. She wiped her chin with her shoulder and smiled up at him, slowly getting up on her knees to get rid of the ache of sitting on her legs.

She got up, leaning back against the table, admiring him in his red, flushed, somewhat sweaty state. His hair was a mess from her hands and he had a blush around his neck to his ears. She knew the hardness of his body accounted for the fact that he was a hunter, as well as the scars she felt beneath her soft hands, bite marks, bullet wounds, and healed slashes.

“Come closer,” she told him and he laughed, bringing himself and the chair closer, stopping when she sat on his thighs, fixing herself over his strong thighs. “Gonna cum if I tease you?” She asked, tapping the head of his cock. It twitched instantly and he moaned.

“Depends,” he replied breathily, sliding his hands up her body. She hummed softly, spreading her legs, positioning his cock near her soppy folds.

“On what?” She cackled playfully, parting her folds with one hand, circling her clit with her fingers. He watched her lustfully, the wetness that made her pussy shine coated her fingers.

“How wet and warm you feel on my cock,” he replied truthfully. He grabbed her hand and moved it out of the way anyway, taking his cock to push it between her folds, pressing the tip against her clit.

“Fuck, Dean,” she moaned softly, grasping his shoulders, “you feel… I need you,” she whimpered, rolling her hips along the length of his cock. He moaned with her, moving her hips closer to him, her wetness coating his cock.

“I’m gonna fuck you so good, sweetheart…” Dean moaned, watching her lean back against the table, positioning the soft head of his cock to her entrance. Completely enthralled, he watched himself slip inside her, and she watched him, biting her lip hard in concentration, the stretch of her walls around him almost painful. “Fuck… I can feel how bad you need me… I need you just as bad,” he panted, flexing his hands on her thighs, desperately trying not to thrust up into her warmth. He dug his nails into her flesh, his head tipping back, his hips rolling up.

“Dean,” she moaned again, starting to lift herself up and down his cock, reaching up to cup her breast. “Shit, you feel amazing,” she breathed out, grinding her hips against his until he was fully inside her.

“You okay?” He asked, one of hands drifting up to knead her breast comfortingly. She nodded, buried her fingers in his hair and brought him in for a kiss as she bent her knees, and tucked her feet in between his thighs.

“I could cum like this,” she mumbled against his lips. His chuckle rumbled through his chest and he shook his head, her pussy clenched at the sound and she started to lift herself up again.

“Don’t worry,” he told her, sucking on his lip momentarily. “I’ll make you cum so hard…” He paused to moan, thrusting up into her slowly, meeting her hip. “...you’ll never want to fuck anyone else,” he promised her, building up the pace of his thrusts until she stopped moving with him altogether, letting him fuck up into her needy cunt.

“You’ll only wanna be fucked by me,” he continued, watching her lean back with her elbow on the table, her hands roaming his warm body, “and I’ll be there, ready to fuck you hard.” He looked over her shoulder, at the jar of frosting. “Pounding into your sweet cunt,” he swore breathlessly, reaching behind her, dipping his fingers to gather frosting, “makin’ you beg, makin’ you impossibly wet.” He smeared frosting over her nipples, over her collarbone, her sternum, until he had no more while she moaned his name needily.

“Makin’ you feel things you’ve never felt before.” He gripped her hip with frosting-coated fingers, leaning forward to lick and suck the whiskey frosting from her body. “I’ll fill you up as many times as you want,” he vowed, smoothing her hand up her back, into her hair once more, pulling until she whined his name. “I’ll fuck you wherever you want.”

Her pussy continued to gush over Dean’s cock the more he talked—his breathless, husky voice taking her over the edge. Each rough pull of her hair made her mewl and whimper as she rolled her hips desperately against his.

“Dean, please,” she whispered, scratching down his back, digging marks into his skin the harder and faster he thrusted into her. Loud skin slapping, the wet sound of her pussy being penetrated, with every push of his cock in and out of her, squelching and driving her crazy. She dug her nails into her palm, making obscene sounds that made her self-conscious.

“I’ll fuck you all over your house, all over mine.” Another moan of his name, another rough pull of her hair. “I’ll fuck you in my car, in your car, anywhere and all over town.” He pulled away from her sticky chest, licked his lips at the sight of her, so she screwed her eyes shut. She felt a warm pool of wetness on her pelvic bone, opened her eyes to him spitting between their bodies, watching his saliva drip down her folds to her clit.

She’d never heard of or experienced sex quite this raw and dirty.

“I’ll make you scream my name, make you forget how to talk, how to walk…” She leaned back into him, panting into his ear, keeping him close while rubbing her clit. He yanked her hair, forcing her to look at him.

“Dean…”

“I’ve wanted you for so long,” he whispered, closing his eyes, he breathed against her lips, “and I want you forever.”

As he promised, she cried out his name when she came, squeezing his cock hard, coating him in her release. He grunted her name, cursing loudly as he came inside her, his hot seed spurting into her, filling her as he said he would.

He circled his arms around her as she writhed once more, releasing her hair as she put her arms around his neck, panting and catching her breath until the pleasure subsided.

“I want all of that,” she murmured after a few moments of silence, kissing his cheek. He squeezed her and moved back, bewildered. He moved hair from her face and tilted his head at her, drawn to her nakedness, her flushed beauty. “First, I want to shower…” Slowly, carefully, she climbed off his lap, her legs shaky, her pussy releasing the mixture of their pleasure.

“That’s a good start,” he told her softly. “Son of a bitch,” he mumbled when he stood up from the chair and looked around at the mess in the kitchen. “No one’s coming home anytime soon… thanks to Sammy…” Dean trailed off, smoothing his hand over his head to fix his hair.

“Thanks to me,” she came clean with a shy smile, bringing his gaze up to hers. His eyes twinkled and he laughed loudly, tugging her towards him again by her arm, his lips pressing against hers.

➥ sempiternal

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jennyboom21 · 7 months

Text

And you replied: "Of course it is." You knew this was a a lie and it landed you in therapy but you want to believe.

This is the fakest moment in American history. Not since the moon landing has anything been so fake.

But you know what?

It's OK. This moment is actually interesting and fun. A certain sort of goofy obsession has seeped in. No, it's not real, but who cares? We all love this phony love affair. We will continue to love it. We will keep loving it until this spectacularly fake relationship dies and Kelce becomes a cautionary lyric on one of Swift's future albums.

For now, however, despite knowing this relationship isn't real, and likely some type of marketing ploy, we're all going to treat this like it's a true love story. The question is why do we like something that we know isn't real? The reasons, I believe, go beyond some of the obvious and superficial ones. It's not just our societal obsession with stars. It goes deeper than that.

Kelce and Swift represent a fleeting moment where we can all be a little nerdy and little obsessed and maybe even laugh at ourselves a little bit. I'm not talking about Swifties or Kansas City fans. Both of those groups are already hardcore and infatuated. This is about the rest of us. The people who don't have time to get obsessed about anything. The people who normally don't care about football, or how many stadiums Swift has sold out, can feel like they're part of something everyone else gets.

There's a more cynical view that says we're infatuated because our own lives are so boring. It's less that and more that our lives are so full. We don't just have our jobs and loved ones but the world seems chaotic and dangerous. There are threats to democracy, financial stress, a rise in white nationalism and extremism, and a general sense that things could go awry at any moment.

It's not simply that Swift and Kelce are a distraction. It's that sometimes we desperately need one.

This story is also about something else. The ability for all of us to laugh at ourselves. It's likely Swift and Kelce are laughing about this, too. So is Kelce's mom, Donna Kelce. Remember that scene in Kansas City when Travis scored a touchdown and Swift wildly celebrated but Donna, well, was just chill? That wasn't because she's seen her son score dozens of touchdowns. It was because she just didn't want to play along. Donna Kelce doesn't play that.

Yes, this is a conspiracy theory, but it's one of the few accurate ones.

I also believe we like the idea of Kelce and Swift as a couple because, at least as far as we know, they both seem like good human beings. We never truly know the people we follow as celebrities and while I don't know much about the singer, I do know the football player. He's known on the team as a diligent and decent person. He's been described to me by a former coach of his as "laid back" away from football.

Swift herself continues to do things away from her day job that have a considerable and positive societal impact. In a recent Instagram post, Swift pushed her 272 million followers to register to vote. The group Vote.org says it recorded more than 35,000 registrations.

"I've been so lucky to see so many of you guys at my U.S. shows recently. I've heard you raise your voices, and I know how powerful they are," she wrote on Instagram. "Make sure you're ready to use them in our elections this year!"

This, along with other things related to Swift and Kelce, caused the heads of right-wingers to explode. One wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter: "Taylor Swift hates America. Taylor Swift hates President Trump. Taylor Swift loves communism. Maybe Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift would be good together.”

Their anger was another reason to love this relationship.

The last time the public had such an infatuation with a couple was Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley. There was a belief that relationship, like this one, wasn't real either. That one felt weird to watch.

This one feels great to watch.

For the people who hate this story, don't worry, you're not alone. "I'm already over it," Chargers running back Austin Ekeler told the Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz. "I'm over the Taylor Swift stuff. Can we move on please?"

No, we cannot. We will not. How dare you even ask?

And for those of you who say you don't care about any of this, well, you've read this far. You obviously do. Just like the rest of us.

Even if it is totally, without question, completely fake.

#gaylor swift x promances #everyone knows she stunts but they can’t say why she does it #gaylor swift #stunts and shows #Gaylor swift x the msm #USA Today x Gaylor swift

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self-loathing-angel-of-thursday2 · 26 days

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Beautiful Spouse’s Rewatch Thoughts SPN 14x09 The Spear

“Must be Michael” “I don’t think i’ve ever had a good time in Kansas City” “Looks like these people aren’t having a good time, either” “the fuck is wrong with their teeth, man? Oh yeah these are the Michael Monsters” “huh” “Garth’s there to do a job and betray Michael, or he’s serious, and it’s a bad plot line to get him killed so they don’t have to pay Garth anymore” laughter “kinda funny” “Why would he need the decoder ring?” “Wait - Garth is doing a job now?” “that’s right - he half turned into Bobby or something” “How did we not know about this until now?” “still never understood the title from the previous episode” “fkn asshole” “god that sounded nerdy. Big Michael stuff going down soon. Sounds like a social media post. Stay tuned for more details” “what the fuck? I wouldn’t have understood that anyway” “don’t we get Lucifer back already? We never closed that arc. Sick of this Michael crap” “Have you considered that if Jack gets hurt, he loses his soul?” “Did Jack do that for real? I don’t know the terms of the deal. Any magic or any time he gets hurt? Maybe a little column A and B?” “Dude the homeless guy who sleeps in here at night is going to shit himself when he sees both of you running around with your weapons” “that’ll get you” “that’s not good. A little too easy for them” “Dude at this point why bother letting Sam live?” “Fkn idiot” “that was easy” “going to answer the cell phone, and she’s going to be gone. Yeah, that was easy” “Man they wouldn’t have written the shit like this if it weren’t for commercials” “how they cut it, ya know?” “at this point, doesn’t everyone on the planet know that monsters exist? Or is this some sort of conspiracy thing?” “those look like really heavy earrings. It can’t be comfortable” “you’re already an archangel. I don’t understand the statement jewelry but I guess I don’t have to” “Ok. That was good, but he wasn’t supposed to go in alone” “You went into where Michael is alone? Couldn’t even wait for backup?” “just kill his ass” “you’re just wasting your time at this point” “even as werewolf with super powers…he’s still…” “Why aren’t we running yet?” “really? This is the part where you pack up and leave” “pick it up dammit. That’s always the most frustrating shit when they drop stuff” “fkn stab a bitch already. God you always wait so long” “that’s not good” “God I’m so over this Michael thing” “ok”

#beautifulspouserewatchesspn #supernatural rewatch #supernatural #supernatural s14

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apatheticanvas67482 · 2 years

Text

Title: Isn't It Strange?

Pairing: Dean Winchester/Castiel

Word count: 6,701

Triggers: alcohol, mentions of death and guilt.

Summary: Destiel coffee shop, roommates AU.

First of all: HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY! Hope you're having a blast and that if your plans are similar to mine later, that your liver survives the night.

So this is for @spnvalentines gift exchange (hosted by the wonderful @fallingstarsdeancas and @acklesology). Originally it was going to be a little different. I managed to turn it into something very long (at least for me) and so this is the first chapter that can act as a standalone but will have more parts to come if you don't hate it.

I'm posting it on AO3 aswell:

Creds to: @walksinstarllight for catching all my errors, @carlgrimeschildsoldier for reading it through and feeding back, and @dadstiel-trenchcoat + @run-you-clever-blaine for listening to me complain about fics not writing themselves psychically.

And I really hope you enjoy it, @lotsofquestionslimitedanswers!

Chapter One: Strangers

03:47 AM

Dean groaned into his pillow. Was he ever going to get any sleep? It was his second night here – new bed, new apartment, new city – and he had absolutely no idea what he was doing.

What you need to know about Dean is that his life kind of just fell apart. One day he was this outwardly confident, womanising, small-town hero, and the next thing he knew he was packing anything he could fit into the trunk of his car and driving as far as physically possible away from everything he’d ever known. He’d gone from his Kansas home of 24 years to a barren 70 square foot bedroom in San Francisco. His duffle bag sat in the corner.

He'd chosen this place because it was the first place he’d seen within 60 miles of his little brother Sammy that could take him right away. Sam had always been the smart one in Dean’s eyes. When they were younger, Sam had always been reading something. Every night, Dean would walk into his brother’s bedroom and Sam would give him the latest rundown on whatever weirdly fascinating subject he’d decided to become possessed by that day.

‘So, get this…’ Sam would say before Dean could even get a word out. He’d always been so damn proud of his baby brother.

Dean had never really taken school seriously himself. Maybe once, a long time ago, Dean remembered eagerly adding and subtracting fictional coins to and from a fictional treasure chest or dividing up fictional candy amongst his classmates. But then his mom had died, and his dad, John, had moved them all from Lawrence to Lebanon. And that was it for geeky Dean. It didn’t really matter. Dean had always known he’d wanted to be a fireman anyways; he’d never once thought ‘what if’.

Now Sammy was studying pre-law at Stanford University and Dean was unemployed, with absolutely no idea what he was going to do next. Dean could picture his brother now, buried under a mound of dusty old textbooks, hanging off their every word, or curled up watching some history documentary with his nerdy friends and his loving girlfriend.

Dean smiled. He liked Jess. They had only met once and not under the best circumstances or for very long, but it had been clear to Dean that she cared for Sammy, and who was Dean to argue with that.

So, yeah. Dean had moved all the way to San Francisco to be closer to his brother again, and then he had proceeded to make absolutely no attempts to contact him whatsoever. He hadn’t seen Sam since the funeral. Dean didn’t know if he could actually face him. They called sometimes. Sam would tell Dean about his studies and ask how he was, and Dean would forgo mentioning literally anything about his life and tell Sam that he was doing fine.

Sam had called yesterday, and Dean had let it ring for the first time in months. He’d texted him afterwards explaining that he was fine, he was just in a meeting. A meeting. Smooth, Dean, because firemen go to lots of meetings. They didn’t. He’d never attended a meeting in his life.

A loud bang and a string of curses pulled Dean from his thoughts.

Oh, had he not mentioned that he didn’t live alone. The ad he’d found had been for a roommate.

Dean sighed and climbed out of bed to see what all the fuss was about. He shivered for a moment as his covers slipped away then crossed the small space to his bedroom door. As he peeked his head out into the hallway, he saw Castiel.

Castiel was his roommate and quite possibly the oddest person Dean had ever met. He walks around appearing consistently confused, squinty, and tilting his head at almost everything that came out of Dean’s mouth. Apparently, he knows next to nothing about movies, or tv shows, or comics, or cars or sports or even music. And yet, within the first hour of meeting him, Dean found out how many steps there are from the apartment to the nearest subway, bus station, library, and grocery store. He now knew the percentages for all the different crime rates in the city, how many cars cross the golden gate bridge in a day and how much each of those cars would contribute on average to the air pollution in San Francisco, as well as how many boats were currently sitting in the harbour and even how many cats were put into rescue centres state-wide each month.

When he’d moved in, just over a day ago, Castiel had welcomed him, stuffed him full of pastries, shown him to the bathroom and to his bedroom, and then given him a book just because it was his favourite. Dean had dubbed him ‘the dorky little guy he now lived with’ (even though in truth, Castiel wasn’t much shorter than himself) and now the guy was half naked, swearing and scrubbing the floor at the bottom of the stairs with his coffee-stained shirt. A mug lay forgotten and cracked into three to the left.

‘Umm,’ Dean said, unintelligibly, starting off strong for their second conversation ever. Castiel looked up at him with wide surprised eyes.

‘My tea,’ Castiel went with, waving a hand at his uncovered chest. Dean blinked. They were both clearly socially inept, which was new for Dean. ‘I didn’t mean to wake you.’

Dean brushed him off, ‘It’s fine. I was up anyway.’

Castiel looked at him curiously. It was strangely unnerving, like those ridiculously blue eyes were staring straight through Dean’s corneas and into his mind. ‘Why?’ He asked, like it was a perfectly acceptable question to ask a stranger at four in the morning, like anyone ever stayed up that late, alone, for light and casual reasons.

Dean shrugged. ‘No reason. Just thinking about that perfectly good mop you mentioned on your tour the other day.’

Castiel took a long, befuddled moment to process his words before looking back down at the sodden t-shirt in his hands. ‘You’re being sarcastic.’ He pointed out slowly, causing Dean to rub the back of his neck. It would be awkward if his new roommate wasn’t a fan of sarcasm.

‘Yeah, I kind of… do that, sometimes.’

Castiel nodded. ‘I’m not very good with sarcasm.’ He revealed, pushing himself backwards into a kneeling position.

‘Sorry.’

‘No, it’s fine.’ He was looking at him again with those big blue eyes. ‘You can teach me.’

Dean didn’t know what to say to that and it turned out he didn’t have to because his roommate simply picked up the tea-soaked shirt, climbed to his feet and walked away. Presumably to get the mop, but Dean honestly couldn’t say.

Looking down at the shattered mug and what was left of the spill, he had no idea what to do next. Was he supposed to help? Was he supposed to just go back to bed, or hang around and wait to see if his roommate ever came back? He didn’t know what was expected of him as a roommate. Standing around doing nothing felt uncomfortable and going back to bed felt unnecessarily rude, so instead he crouched down and began carefully collecting the little grey ceramic pieces and lining them up with each other out of curiosity. The former mug had apparently once said, ‘Me-Wow! This Tea is just the Cat’s Whiskers.’ Dean snorted; the absolute oddest guy he’d ever met.

He straightened when Castiel returned, sans the t-shirt, with a mop in hand. His roommate watched him as Dean held the broken pieces of the mug just in front of his chest, and Dean looked back. Castiel now wore a jumper that seemed to be competing in the same race to be the dorkiest item he owned as the mug. It was a baggy, light grey sweatshirt sporting a giant cartoon bee and had the words ‘BEE HAPPY’ printed across his chest, but Castiel looked anything but. He was staring at Dean’s hands with sad eyes.

‘That was my favourite mug.’

Dean pressed his lips together, not sure if he was supposed to speak words, or what? If it was Sam, Dean would knock him on the shoulder and tell him to stop being such a girl, there were other mugs out there, and Sam would look at him and know that he was trying to be comforting. But, if he told Castiel to stop being such a girl, he had a feeling he’d either end up being lectured on the sexism ingrained in society through comments such as that, or he’d be left awkwardly standing there as his roommate bursts into tears.

‘I’m always breaking my favourite things,’ Castiel sighed. Neither option sounded all that appealing to Dean, so he decided to take control of the situation and get it over with as quickly as possible.

‘I’ll swap you,’ he held out what remained of the late cup of tea. Castiel took it with gentle hands as Dean reached for the mop – he resisted pointing out that it was a bit late to be putting on the kid-gloves because he didn’t know this guy and he really was making an effort not to get cried on. He made quick work of the spill on the ground, pretending to admire how efficient this mop was rather than how the mug was carefully being pieced back together behind him.

When he turned around Castiel was staring at him seriously. ‘Thank you, Dean.’ He said earnestly. So, he’s intense, Dean noted down mentally, although it was kind of endearing.

‘Um, yeah. No problem.’ He leant against the wall and scratched his head, still holding the mop. ‘So…’

‘Oh, I should –’ Castiel’s eyes went wide once more. He balanced the mug on a nearby sideboard, making sure none of the pieces slid out of place, and rushed to take the mop from Dean. ‘You should, you should sleep.’

‘Yeah, well…’He trailed off.

‘Good night, Dean.’ His roommate offered him a small smile.

‘Good night, Cas,’ he said as he slipped back into his room, just missing the strange look that followed him.

It wasn’t until he was back, lying on his memory foam mattress, that he realised he’d just given the man a nickname. Awesome. Dean screwed his eyes shut and pulled his covers up over his head until he fell asleep.

***

The best thing about the new place was definitely Second Story. It was this little café the landlord owned above them and if there was one thing Dean could get used to it was the way he would wake up to the flat completely saturated with the smell of fresh coffee, sweet tea, and flawlessly baked pastries. He may have only got three out of four hours of his necessary beauty sleep, but it was almost impossible not to feel like a morning person when breathing in that air. Besides, when he was on call back home, he’d often gotten less. At least here he wasn’t being rudely awoken by a fire station alarm system.

Dean stretched out across the sheets, keeping his eyes shut. He was starting to get used to the way the memory foam moves beneath him – appreciate it even. Sighing, he rolled out of bed and assessed the room. His duffel bag was still in the corner of the room with his clothes from yesterday on the floor next to it. Dean crossed the room and rifled through it, grabbing the first shirt, jeans, and boxers he came across. He snatched up his dirty laundry and his wash kit as well and headed to the bathroom.

After a quick rinse under the shower – not long enough to allow his thoughts to run wild – he stepped out into the bathroom. It was bigger than his own bedroom because it doubled as their utility room. A washer and a dryer took up one half of the room, with a drying rack and a laundry hamper. Dean put his dirty clothes next to the hamper instead of in it where he assumed Castiel’s laundry resided.

Speaking of Castiel, Dean cringed, he could not believe he’d gone and given him a nickname like that. He’d only been here two days. They’d only interacted three times: once when he’d arrived, once when Dean had gone down to the kitchen for lunch yesterday, and then again last night. It was little soon to start shortening each other’s names. Hopefully, Castiel was going to take the same route as Dean and pretend it had never been said. If he went downstairs and got called anything but Dean, he’s pretty sure he’d keel over dead. Although, Dean reckoned Castiel was more likely to question him about last night rather than follow suit. Either way, same result; dead Dean.

Since he’d arrived, he’d only gone upstairs twice to grab some water from the kitchen they shared with the café. The rest of the time he’d spent either holed up in his new room contemplating calling Sam or just wandering aimlessly through the neighbourhood.

Today he’d walked in and out of a nearby pet shop, round golden gate park and along the beach. He’d stopped to buy some groceries from the nearest Walmart and then walked back to the apartment, pausing outside San Francisco Fire Station 23.

Dean wasn’t stupid, he knew he was going to need a job, and that he was going to need it relatively soon. He may have managed to find the only cheap apartment in San Francisco but that didn’t mean his pockets were deep enough to put him up for long without an income. It was just that the idea of getting a post at a new station here made Dean feel queasy. Actually, the idea of going back to fighting fires at all made his stomach turn right now, but Dean was busy denying that. Instead, he put it down to the fact that going back, but not to his old fire house, would just feel wrong. Maybe it was just what he needed, but he couldn’t shake this feeling long enough to send in an application.

He thought about alternatives all the way back home. He knew a lot about cars, maybe a mechanic would take him on, or he could bartend some place; he definitely knew how to drink. By the time he was standing out front of the apartment, he’d talked himself into sending out his CV to a few places he’d walked past on his way. There had been several bars, a couple mechanics and a nightclub. Dean figured he stood a good chance of getting something. If not, he could always find a supermarket somewhere, he shivered at the concept.

For a moment, Dean paused on the sidewalk, watching the steady stream of customers up and down the steps to the café and then he made the decision to follow them. He hadn’t actually seen the actual café part of the café. He was pretty sure Castiel worked there, simply because he never seemed to use their front door. They shared their kitchen with it but he couldn’t see the rest of it from there.

It wasn’t really anything he had expected. It was one large room with an L-shaped counter in one kitchen, behind which was the door to the kitchen. Sofa booths and table sets filled three quarters of the rest of the room with the final portion being dedicated to several towering bookshelves and a much smaller, one-person counter, behind which Castiel stood.

He was wearing a ridiculous blue vest and dark charcoal jeans, leaning against the wall behind him and reading a thick hardcover book. His eyes wrinkled at the corners as he smiled, presumably reading something amusing. Dean tried not to stare as he walked up to the main counter. A young woman, about Castiel’s age, smiled at him as he approached.

‘Hi, I’m Daphne. Welcome to Second Story. What can I get you for today?’

‘Um…’ Dean looked back at his roommate who was chatting with a little old lady and helping her decide between two books. Daphne cleared her throat. ‘Sorry, I- I’ll have a coffee please. One shot of espresso. Black.’

She nodded slowly, smiling. ‘Coming right up.’

Dean waited to the side as Castiel scanned in one of the books and waved goodbye to the woman. He watched until Castiel caught his eye at which point he snapped his attention back to Daphne and pretended to be very interested in the coffee-making process. Yes, what an intriguing espresso machine; lovely… buttons.

‘Dean.’ He jumped, he thinks maybe literally, and tried not to curse. Apparently, Castiel had decided to cross the room to greet him.

‘Castiel.’

His roommate squinted. Oh god, please don’t mention the nickname. He was about to say something more, anything more because right now they were just staring at each other when Daphne interrupted.

‘You’re Dean?’ Which at least got Castiel to look away from him and glare at her as she placed Dean’s coffee on the counter.

‘Yes? I’m Dean.’ He shot his roommate a questioning look as he got out his wallet and paid for his drink. Castiel didn’t meet his eyes.

‘Sorry, I know. I promise it’s not creepy.’ Daphne reassured him, putting away the cash. ‘Castiel just mentioned you moving in as all.’ She smiled at the pair of them. ‘Have a nice day.’ And then, grinning widely disappeared into the kitchen.

‘Um, well-’

‘I should get back.’ Castiel interrupted, gesturing to the completely empty bookstore portion of the café.

‘Okay…’ Dean nodded. He would’ve told him ‘see you later’, but Castiel was already walking away at an alarming pace. Great. Dean had repelled him already. Instead, he took a seat in one of the corners to finish his coffee, wishing he’d gotten it to go.

It took him about 15 minutes to finish the cup. 15 minutes that he’d spent watching the café scene play out. They seemed to have a few regulars that came in waves and bright genuine smiles and stayed to trade inside jokes with both Daphne and Castiel. And even when there weren’t regulars, the atmosphere was warm and comforting, and of course the smell that often filled their apartment below was even better up here. The whole place smelled like butter, coffee, and chocolate.

As Castiel got up on a step ladder to rearrange some of the higher shelves, bringing some books down and putting some books up, Dean decided it wasn’t so bad.

***

The next couple of days proceeded in a predictable pattern. He spent his mornings reading the falsely apologetic rejection emails from the various bars and garages he’d applied to over a cup of coffee upstairs. He’d scrub off the sting of being turned down with a short drive along the coastline with his baby before calling up Sam to continue the upward trend of telling his brother nothing. Despite knowing that his brother would know exactly what to say to pull him out of the slump unemployment was dragging Dean into, he omitted it all. Then he would spend his afternoon back at Second Story devouring any one of their particularly awesome grilled sandwiches, pretending not to watch his roommate work.

‘Talking to him might be quicker.’ Dean jumped and turned to face Claire. She was working the afternoon shift with Kevin on the counter and liked taking the piss out of Dean whenever he dropped by, probably because he was the only customer that wasn’t going anywhere – what with living downstairs and all.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he tried. ‘Y-you, you go talk to him… okay.’ Dean died, ears burning red.

‘On second thought, maybe not.’ Claire laughed and collected the paid bill, pocketing the tip.

‘Shut up.’ He sank down into his seat. He wasn’t sure at what point all of his roommate’s co-workers had decided it was okay to bully him, but now it was pretty much a daily occurrence. In their defence, it was probably his fault for watching Castiel go about his day like some second-rate pervert or sad horny teenager. He couldn’t really put his finger on why he was acting like this. He barely knew the guy and it wasn’t as if he had feelings for him. That wasn’t possible.

Yes, Castiel was objectively gorgeous, but Dean had been attracted to guys before and he was never usually this tragic.

‘She’s right, you know,’ drawled a voice from behind him. It was Crowley, the only other customer who refused to be run off. The difference was nobody actually seemed to like him. Whereas Dean thought of his torment as a friendly sort of banter, the Second Story staff seemed to genuinely despise this Armani wearing man.

‘Butt-out, Crowley.’ Dean glared.

‘What?’ Crowley shrugged, ‘She is. Talking to him would definitely ruin your chances.’

Claire threw a napkin at his head.

‘In fact,’ he smirked. ‘I just changed my mind. Do it. Just, let me know when so I can watch.’

Other than the fact that he enjoyed making people squirm, Dean didn’t know much about Crowley. He imagined he was a lawyer or perhaps a businessman of sorts. He wore far too many designer suits and carried himself with far too much pride to be anything else. He exuded smarm and found each one of Dean’s emails more amusing than the last. Which is why Dean enjoyed watching Claire pick up Crowley’s half full coffee cup with Dean’s empty plate and carry it away from him.

Crowley shrugged, killing some of Dean’s amusement, ‘I’m late for a meeting anyways.’ He left a 20 under the saltshaker and got up to leave. ‘Seriously, Dean. Call me if you ever go over there.’ He waggled his eyebrows and left the store. Dean dropped his head to the table.

***

The next morning, he got his last rejection, and it was Castiel who brought over his coffee.

‘Hello, Dean,’ he said as he placed it down in front of him.

‘Good morning.’

‘Is it?'

‘What?’ Dean looked up at where his roommate was still inexplicably still standing.

‘My people skills may be rusty, Dean, but something is clearly bothering you.’ Dean blinked at him. ‘Would you like to talk about it?’

‘See, I’m actually more Warhead than Yukio.’

Castiel squinted at him, ‘I don’t understand that reference.’ Dean drank his coffee to stop himself from explaining himself further. At which point, Castiel sat down across from him.

‘Uh-um, are you allowed to-’ he gestured to his roommate, ‘…Sit?’

‘I don’t think my boss will mind.’ Castiel smiled like he’d just told the world’s funniest joke.

‘Okay…’

‘My sister, Anna, used to tell me that there are always people who want to help. That we are never alone.’ Castiel paused profoundly for a moment. ‘Of course, my brother Gabriel says that Satan’s gonna ride all our asses either way, and Balthazar thinks the answer to everything is tequila, so maybe my family isn’t the best source of wisdom.’

Dean stared at him, unable to process much past the biblical names let alone the content of his sentences. Was Castiel making a joke?

‘My point was you can talk to me.’

‘Thanks man, really, but no thanks.’

Castiel nodded, ‘You know where to find me.’

Dean finished the rest of his cup in lieu of a reply. As he went for his wallet, Castiel stopped him with a hand on his arm. ‘It’s on the house.’

He grimaced slightly, was he that obviously pitiable?

‘Thanks,’ he sighed and pushed back from the table, trying not to think of himself as a charity case or whether or not this could be classified as his roommate buying him a drink.

The moment that he was outside he regretted not taking Castiel up on his offer. He considered turning on his heel and going back inside to do just that, which… terrifying. Dean didn’t think he’d ever even thought about opening up voluntarily.

Sure, Sam could almost always poke and prod his feelings from him, and Rufus, his old captain, had always known when to bench him, known when the job was getting to him. But Dean had never told them how he was of his own volition, had never really wanted to, or thought it could help.

‘What is going on with me?’ He asked the impala as he reached where she was parked because apparently Baby was his sole confidant – and he called his roommate odd. It was sad. One day he was going to talk to his car, and it was going to answer, and Dean would have to check himself into a psychiatric hospital.

He drove for longer than he had meant to and ended up outside an unassuming looking bar instead of where he was supposed to be. It’s big wooden sign stood atop several boulders, informing him that it was in fact called ‘The Rocks’. What was it with this area and their puns? He briefly considered whether this was a dorky enough sign for his roommate to enjoy drinking here - if Castiel even drank, that was.

Dean sighed, maybe ‘Balthazar’ had a point.

Now thinking about whether Castiel would ever consider actually drinking with him, he shut the door of the impala behind him. Apparently, he was an idiot with little to no control over his consciousness. It was all he could do to deny that maybe Castiel offering to listen had rocked the boat more towards liking him than just a physical attraction. No sleeping with your roommate, Dean reminded himself as he pushed open the door to the bar.

Inside, he found himself a seat on the edge of the bar and ordered himself a double whiskey. The bar was relatively quiet which wasn’t surprising. It was only six. Everyone here were obviously regulars. A blond girl and a young guy were shouting at each other over a competitive looking game of foosball whilst an older couple chatted on a table nearby. An old-fashioned jukebox filled the bar with the sounds of the 100 top rock songs of the 70s and other than that there was a group of three men huddled around their pints in the corner. When the bartender came over with his drink, Dean downed it in one.

‘Rough day?’ Asked the man who had handed him the glass.

‘Rough month.’ The man hummed, refilling his glass.

‘Wanna talk about it?’

‘Warhead.’ He pointed at himself drawing a laugh from the bartender.

‘So, who’s your Yukio?’

Dean finished his drink again, ‘Don’t have one.’

‘Another?’

Dean shook his head. ‘Tequila.’

‘Damn, really? You’re gonna make me go downstairs before we’ve even introduced ourselves?’

Dean puffed out his cheeks and exhaled, ‘More whiskey, then.’

‘No, no,’ the bartender drummed on the table, ‘I’m going, I’m going. You just gotta tell me your name first.’

Dean considered him for a while before conceding, ‘Dean.’

‘Nice to meet you, Dean. I’m Benny.’ He winked at him, which was hilarious. ‘I'll be right back with your tequila.’

Over the next few hours, the bar filled up, but Benny made sure to keep coming back to talk to Dean and keep Dean's shot glasses full. They talked about anything and everything other than their actual lives. At one point they got into a debate about the best Batman so far. Benny was probably right with his position on Christian Bale, but Dean had a soft spot for Kevin Conroy and the animated series. Although, they both agreed that Heath Ledger got the crown when it came to the Clown Prince of Gotham.

Dean only lost sight of him for about 20 minutes the whole night. At around 11, Benny disappeared out back and was replaced by the blonde from earlier. Her name was Jo and she coaxed Dean away from the tequila with some less intoxicating but highly entertaining comet shots that Benny joined him in when he re-emerged from behind the bar, apparently off duty for the rest of the night.

About three hours later, Benny had an arm slung over his shoulder and was laughing raucously about something Dean must’ve said. They were both far too drunk to keep track of their own words and were only still sitting on their stools by way of leaning on each other. Until, of course, they inevitably did fall off their stools. Led Zeppelin’s Ramble On reached its final minute and, because robbing a bank would feel less illegal than ignoring this songs’ climax, Dean jumped up to sing along, sending him and Benny toppling to the floor.

It was at this point that Jo cut them off and sent them home.

‘Hey,’ Benny held him in place with both shoulders, both swaying. ‘If you wait here for me to grab my stuff, my place isn't too far from here.’

Now, normally he’d have said yes to a guy like Benny. He was attractive and funny, he got sarcasm and watched movies, and talking to him made Dean feel a little bit like the old him. Unfortunately, Benny did not have startling blue eyes, a penchant for awkward encounters, or whatever the fuck else made Dean trip over himself around Castiel. It was ridiculous and it made Dean miserable – not that he wasn’t already miserable.

So, instead they parted with an ‘Alright, brother. See you around.’ And a ‘Yeah, see you, Benny.’ Benny walked back behind the bar to pick up his shit, while Dean made his way for the door.

Sighing, Dean pushed his way out of the bar, into the fresh air outside, and said goodbye to Baby– because even when practically incoherent, he still talked to his car. He zipped up his jacket and began walking. He stumbled forward for a few streets, chastising himself for his moronic attraction to the man he now shared space with. Dean may be new to the whole roommate thing, but everyone knew the one golden rule: don’t get involved. He repeated it in his head like a mantra as he walked and then turned right into a random shop because he’d seen a mug in the window.

Inside was the Castiel equivalent of a room. Odd, but immediately one of Dean’s favourite places. There were reasons people called these things curiosity stores. It appeared to sell everything from occult items to collectable action figures. Crystals were dotted all over the place and comic book pages plastered the walls. The whole place smelt of old books and incense and spread of flashing monitors sat behind the counter. It was insane.

‘Can I help you, gorgeous?’ A beautiful woman decked out in AC/DC merchandise, leather, sunglasses, and a large quartz pendant appeared from behind a set of shelves. ‘Opal?’ She said, holding out the white stone she held in her hands towards Dean as she approached.

‘Um, no thank you.’ Dean coughed, ‘I was just-’

‘No, no. Of course not.’ The woman shook her head and frowned at him. She slipped off her sunglasses and stared at him with serious white eyes that couldn’t possibly see but bore into him, nonetheless. ‘Selenite!’ She grinned at him like a Cheshire cat.

‘I- what?’

‘That’s what you need; selenite.’

Dean had never been so confused. Her nonsensical words swam around his head with all the whiskey and tequila. ‘I just came in for, er, a mug…’

‘Yes, yes. Castiel does love his cat mugs.’ She waved him off with a stray hand and vanished back behind the shelves.

‘H-how did you-’ Dean faltered, getting cut off by a particularly hard wave of nausea to swallow. God. Never mind, it wasn’t worth the words, he’d rather contain his earlier sandwich.

‘Some questions,’ the shopkeeper returned and walked over to the counter, ‘Are not worth asking.’ Well, that was creepy. ‘Who cares how? What’s important is what is.’

‘Very Yoda.’ Dean commented, completely off-kilter. He wasn’t sure if it was the woman or the alcohol.

‘Very Pamela.’ She corrected. He just nodded; Dean had never felt more lost.

‘Life’s a maze.’ Pamela grinned.

‘What? Seriously, how are you-’ Pamela raised an eyebrow and he stopped talking. He really hoped she would stop with the psychic act; it was giving him the heebie-jeebies. Pamela turned her attention towards the register.

‘Hurry up, won’t you?’

‘What?’ Dean said again because honestly, what was happening?

Dean opened his mouth to call her a crazy woman, but she cut him off, looking at him like he was drooling all over her carpet, ‘The mug.’ Oh.

He turned and fetched the mug from the window. It was painted blue with a fluffy cartoon cat hanging upside down saying: ‘YOU HAVE CAT TO BE KITTEN ME’ and Dean was sure Castiel would love it.

‘He will.’

Stop that, Dean thought as he walked over to her.

‘Shan’t.’ She smirked, plucking the mug from her hands, and zapping it with her scanner. ‘$3.45.'

Dean squinted at her as he passed over his card. She passed it back to him with the mug and small translucent pebble. It was white and polished, and he looked at Pamela questioning.

‘Selenite, threw that in there for free.’ She patted him on the shoulder. ‘Now, say bye-bye and exit out the door you came through.’

‘But- I,’ Dean shook his head, ‘Bye.’

‘Bye, Dean.’

***

By the time he got back to the flat, he could feel his pulse in his face. The last few drinks had definitely been a bad idea. Dean could feel his organs fuming inside him and was pretty sure if he didn’t pass out within the hour, he’d spend the next day cleaning up the mess. He groaned.

Second Story’s lights were still on, probably Meg just finishing up for the night, but Dean had no desire to be bullied tonight.

After pressing his face into their front door for several minutes, he stepped back to check his pockets, breathing deeply through his nose. With one hand cradling the cat mug to his chest, he managed to dig out his keys. He then proceeded to fumble with the lock, drop them completely, and, in a failed attempt to catch them mid fall, pushed them through the letterbox. Fuck. The keys clinked together nonplussed as they met the floorboards on the other side.

Dean sat down. Maybe he could just sit out here all night. It was either that, or Meg, or potentially Castiel if he started knocking on this door.

Nope, no, definitely not. If Castiel saw him like this, he’d probably have to move all over again. To Meg it was – even if it was a slight risk that she’d leave him out here.

Meg was an old friend of Castiel’s, that for reasons unbeknownst to Dean, he kept around, and other people seemed to like. Sure, she was sarcastic and biting, which should place her in the gets-along-with column of the people-Dean-knows list, but she was also relentlessly amused by Dean’s Castiel-related awkwardness and relentlessly mean.

She picked up the night shift at the café. After 8pm on the weekends and until about 2am, it operated as a bar in its own right. Dean didn’t think it ever got particularly busy. In fact, it usually seemed to be occupied by the same closed group of people each week. They’d arrive just when Dean would hear Castiel coming downstairs and leave several hours later after several obnoxiously loud rounds of drinks. It didn’t really bother Dean, he’d slept through worse, but he still thought it was a little rude, especially whenever it became obvious that they were making noise for the sake of making noise.

As Dean climbed the stairs (literally climbed, using his hands to help), he was suddenly glad for how late he’d stayed out. The street was quiet, meaning he wouldn’t have to deal with any of the late-night customers with his head pounding like it was. He peered through the glass. Meg was nowhere to be seen. Fucking great. Dean began to knock.

After several minutes without a reply, Dean began to bang on the door slightly. Mainly because he wasn’t sure he’d make it back down the stairs, so Meg had become his only option.

‘Hey! Meg, open up!’ he tried again, yelling this time. Still nothing. Dean gave up and collapsed to the floor, propping himself up against the iron railings. He closed his eyes and felt the earth move beneath him. Why does he do the things he does? He sighed.

‘Dean?’ Oh fuck.

Dean looked up and confirmed his suspicions. Meg did not have a man’s deep gravelly voice, nor was she doing a brilliant Castiel impression, nor was she actually there at all.

‘You’re not Meg.’

‘No…’ Castiel looked down at him from the doorway, forehead wrinkled with concern. He was wearing a different pyjama sweater than usual. This one had a picture of a tortoise on the front.

‘Good. Good.’ Dean repeated, mainly to himself, feeling sleepy now. ‘You’re nicer anyways.’

‘You’re inebriated.’

Dean looked at him in a way he hoped accurately conveyed his request for his roommate to use smaller words.

‘Drunk,’ Castiel corrected. ‘You’re drunk.’

Oh. ‘Yes.’

He watched as Castiel opened the door wider and leant down to pick him up off the floor. Dean still had the mug cradled under his arm which he hugged closer, both to protect it and to conceal it because it was a surprise – and also a little embarrassing.

‘Smaller words.’ He said as Castiel guided him inside onto one of the sofas, because it was a good point that was worth making. ‘Like Cas.’ He said because he was drunk and an idiot. ‘I’m gonna call you Cas, from now on.’ Dean decided.

‘Okay…’ Cas just looked worried.

‘I’m fine!’ He reassured, ‘See!’ He said, lifting his hand to his face and missing his nose completely.

The mug dropped onto his lap causing Cas to look at it oddly.

‘Oh, I got you a new mug.’ Dena looked at it too. ‘Surprise?’

Cas picked up the mug and examined it, breaking out into a gummy smile. ‘I love it.’ He looked at Dean solemnly, ‘Thank you, Dean. This means a lot.’

Dean swallowed, ‘Yeah, well. Don’t get used to it. My money’s got to run out sometime soon.’ Castiel frowned again. Dammit. He liked Cas’s smile.

‘It's fine.’ Dean slurred slightly and patted his roommate's knee as if that was at all convincing. ‘I’m sure I’ll get a job eventually. Maybe I’ll go back to being a firefighter.’ Now Dean was frowning, and he was horrified to realise he was about ten seconds away from tears. ‘Or maybe… Walmart?’ he sighed and sank backwards.

‘You could work here.’ Dean looked at Cas. ‘I mean, if you, if you wanted to, that is.’

‘I don’t know.’ Dean ran a hand over his face and poked himself in the eye. ‘I don’t know if your boss would even like me. No one else hiring seems to.’

Cas laughed, ‘He likes you.’

‘What? How do you know?’ Dean blinked owlishly at him and then narrowed his eyes in suspicion.

‘Because he’s me. I’m the boss.’ Cas explained, propping Dean back up who had begun to slide off the couch. ‘I own the cafe.’

‘You?’

‘Me.’

‘You own the café?’

‘Yes.’ Castiel kept a solid hand around Dean’s arm. ‘Would you like the job?’

‘I don’t know anything about books.’

‘You don’t have to.’

‘Or tea.’

Cas smiled at him, ‘You’ll learn.’

Dean nodded. ‘Okay.’

‘Okay.’

A few moments of silence passed. It was nice.

‘Hey Cas,’ Dean whispered as he began to drift off.

‘Yes?’

‘If I asked you out, would you say yes?’ He closed his eyes and waited for an answer. Cas was quiet for a long time and Dean wondered if he was just going to ignore the question, which, mortifying.

‘Dean?’ Dean held his breath. ‘Ask me tomorrow.’ Oh.

Dean smiled. Okay, yes, he would do that.

‘Good night, Dean.’

Night Cas, Dean thought but was already falling asleep.

#castiel #supernatural #dean winchester #destiel #fanfic #kat writes some shit #waywardwriters #mine #coffee shop #bookstore #alternate universe #crowley #daphne allen #claire novak #benny lafitte #jo harvelle #sam winchester #userstarry #spnvalentinesgiftexchange

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popculturebuffet · 3 years

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Static Shock: Shock to the System and Aftershock Review

“You know what? 13 years ago, me and some friends sat in a restaurant all night and daydreamed about the kinds of stories we would tell if we had the chance. We wanted to expand the concept of superhero to include characters that kind of looked like us, who had some of the same background, experiences and dreams as we did. We wanted to create something fun that a new generation would respond to the same way we responded to our childhood heroes -and damn if we didn't succeed beyond my wildest dreams. Today, Static Shock is a household name with millions of fans of all ages (Is there stuff I'd do differently? Yeah, almost all of season four but why nitpick?) Static is the most successful thing I've ever helped create and I'm both proud and gratified that people have taken it into their hearts. “

Dwayne McDuffie, Co-Creator of Static and Writer for Static Shock

This review is dedicated to Dwayne McDuffie and Robert L. Washington III. Rest In Power Static Shock is awesome. I grew up with the show watching it both first run on the WB and second run on Cartoon Network and loved it as much as I did other large parts of my childhood courtsey of DC like Batman the Animated Series, Teen Titans and both Justice League Shows. What makes this unique among the DC Properties is that Static wasn’t really a big name when he got a show. He wasn’t even part of the DC Universe.

See as I had no idea for probably a good decade, Static actually came from Milestone Comics, a company ran by and focused on african americans. The goal was understandable: While black heroes existed at the time, and there were some fantastic ones like Storm, Jim Rhodes and Steel... these guys weren’t the center of their universes. The big faces of the big companies, Spider-Man, Wolverine, Hulk, Iron Man, Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, The Flash.. were white. So milestone was a shakeup of that with the main teams and heroes all being black, from Icon, an alien who’d lived among man but rather than end up in kansas like say superman ended up imprinting on a slave woman centuries ago and has been with us since, who was encouraged by an energetic teenager named Rocket to put on a costume and do something with his powers and his community, Hardware, a tech genius who had his work stolen by a white asshole and wanted to fight back and BLood Syndicate, a group of gang members all caught in the “The Big Bang”, a huge fight between all of Dakota, the midwest city where the comics take place, that ended when the police released a bunch of experimental gas that gave them all super powers.

As most of you who have watched the show already know, this is where Static comes from. Static was the company making their own Spider-Man, i.e. a nerdy teenager who suddenly gets super powers, in this case Virgil Hawkins who at the prodding of a friend took a gun to The Big Bang to get revenge on a bully. .but ultimately couldn’t go through with it, decided it wasn’t him and got rid of the gun and ran.. and still ended up in it, becoming Static, a young hero dedicated to using his powers to fight other “Bang Babies”.. a term that dosen’t really sound that great and they really should’ve thought through. But Phrasing aside the character was great and I look forward to reading more and only haven’t because I have to buy the issues gradually, but DC is currently re-releasing the individual issues of Static, Icon, and Hardware weekly in anticipation of a reboot of Milestone Coming in May digitally on Comixology at only 2 bucks a pop, and rereleased the original print collections that were long out of print for 10 bucks each, though i’m getting static on it’s own since i’ts really not that much less expensive as it only collects four issues while Icon and Hardware both collect 8, so I can wait a bit there on Hardware and already own Icon: A Hero’s Welcome.. and really need to review it at some point.

While Milestone’s output was good, at least from the two books i’ve read, with Robert Washinton III, who sadly not only ahs also passed but was fucking homeless for a while in the 2000′s.. what the actual hell, writing Static alongside Dwayne McDuffie, whose later moved onto animation writing tons of Static episodes all of them classics including the school shooting episode, the first three rubberbandman episodes and both Anasazi episodes. Point is it had good writers and artists and even had a distrbution deal with DC, so they had a leg up on the glut of other comic book companies.. but happened to start at the start of the comic book crash, a huge downturn in sales in the 90′s as the speculator boom, i.e. a bunch of people assuming every number one would be worth golden and silver age money, forgetting a character has to BUILD INTREST and this stuff takes time, and whose attempts to sell fast flooded the market with comics no one wanted,, caused the roof to cave in and with a bunch of assholes pegging milestone as a “Company for black people” rather than you know, a company trying to add fucking diversity and represntation to the comics industry, and that simply wanted a unvierse that was centered around people of color instead of white guys. The company eventually had to shut down, and was left to lisencing. This is where the show comes in. Producers HAD been trying to make shows based on Milestone for a while, as far back as the mid-90s and the company was was all for it but the closest it got was an x-men style team series using various characters whose first draft was terrible and whose second draft by Alan Burnett, a producer on various DC Animated shows who’d go on to produce Static Shock, that McDuffie and others really liked but sadly did not get picked up. eventually though with presistance Static ended up getting a series and as I said McDuffie went on to write for it though he did not develop it. Some changes went into place naturally to make it work for an early 2000′s kids show and while i’ll probably miss so since again, only read one issue as we go. But due to Milestone coming back my intrest was peaking, hence finally reading the copy of Icon I had to buy from the library years ago due to keeping it overdue but am now EXTREMLEY glad I own as i’ts incredibly rare and really damn good, and wanting to read static, doing so lately since it’s finally on digtiial and again not too expensive. So join me as I give you a shock to the system and revisit this hell of a series to see if it holds up.. which just to cut that short it does and i’m only holding off binging MORE because I want the first two eps to be fresh enough in my head to review properly.. and also go over the various voice actors because that’s a thing with me now and charcter co-creator dwayne mcduffie because he’s awesome.

As I like to do when covering a series first episodes, let’s run down the voice cast.

First up is an UTTER LEGEND, and I use the term voice acting legend a lot, and mean it every time and have good reason to use it when I say it, and Phil LaMarr is a GOD in the buisness, having done a metric ton of voice acting roles, and being easily the most proflific black voice actor in animation. He’s also done some acting work, mostly in pulp fiction which I have not seen, but his true staying power and talent is in animation so here’s just the roles I feel are most notable or may not be very notable but i’m bringing up anyway because it’s my list.

His roles besides Virgil include Lester Payton the Texas Ranger who showed up for one very good episode of king of the hill to be badass and show up the hickish, stupid and very punchable local Sheriff, Gearld’s obnoxious older brother Jamie O on Hey Arnold, Hermes Conrad from futurama, Carver from the Weekenders (PUT IT ON PLUS DISNEY), Axel Foley for exactly one bit in Clerks the Animated Series, but anyone whose seen it will know exactly which one, Micheal on the Proud Family, Black Vulcan on Harvey Birdman (In His Pants), Hector Con Carne and Dracula on Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy and Evil Con Carne, Jack on Samurai Jack something I didn’t know for decades (and I didn’t know about the carver thing till today though i’ts obvious in hindsight), John Motherfucking Stewart on Justice League and later Steel and Adult Static in the Unlimited seasons, Osmosis Jones on Ozzy and Drix, Bolbi Strogofski on Jimmy Neutron (And yes i’m just as shocked as you are.), Wilt on Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends, Marcus on Life and Times of Juniper Lee, Bull Sharkowski on My Gym Partner is A Monkey and Also a Sociopath Please Help God My Life is a waking nightmare..... okay the rest of that title is implied but we all watched the same show, we all know in our hearts that was the title

Moving on, he was also, and yes there’s MORE: Maxie Zeus on The Batman, Philly Phil on Class of 3000, Both Robertsons AND Fancy Dan on the Spectacular Spider-Man, Jazz on Transformers Animated, Kit Fisto and Bail Organa on Star Wars the Clone Wars, Gambit and Bolivar Trask on Wolverine and the X-Men, Aquaman I, L-Ron and Green Beetle on Young Justice, J.A.R.V.I.S. and Wonder Man (Simon Williams) In Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, Gabe and Carny on Kaijudo: Rise of the Duel Masters (Really miss that game and have been snapping up what cards I can get lately), Baxter Stockman in the 2012 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (And there’s also an awesome photo of him with 2003 Baxter... the two best together in one place. I got chills), Dormammu (I’ve come to bargin) in various Marvel Shows, Noville in Mighty Magiswords, Zach’s dad Marcus in Milo Muprhy’s Law, Craig’s Douchey Brother Benard on Craig of the Creek, showing he’s clearly come full circle, And Mr. Scully on the Casagrndes. And given It took about two paragraphs to cover all of this, yeah, I MEANT legend.

Next we have Kevin Micheal Richardson as Virgil’s Dad Robert, and it’s the first time since I started introducing Voice Actors on a show that i’ve overlapped. I already covered him during the second episode of legend of the three caballeros, but for the short version he’s also very acomplished, very damn good and I somehow missed he played the old blind guy in hey arnold> Needless to say the dude is awesome.

Virgil’s Sister Sharon is played by Michele Morgan who was in the rap group BWP and did some smaller roles outside of this the one exception being Juicy on the PJ’s, which I have not watched much of but REALLY do not like, though i’ll at least give it credit for being a decently long lasted black claymation sitcom at at time when there were, and hoenstly still aren’t, many black animated shows.

Back to long casting sheets, next up is Jason Marsden, who is one of my faviorites as i’ve realized recently as Ritchie. As I also found out only recently he started on the Sitcom Step By Step and while that show is .. ehhhhhhhhh, he is great in it because he’s great in everything. He also apparently has his own internet variety show which I have to watch now. His roles include Max Goof, ironically given I was just talking about that role a few days ago, Haku in the english dub of Spirted Away, Micheal, the kid being yelled at by a bunch of 80′s cartoons characters not to take drugs in Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue!, Nermal in the DTV Garfield movies and The Garfield Show, Tino on the Weekenders (SERIOUSLY DISNEY), Snapper Carr on Justice League, Rikochet on Mucha Lucha! for the last season (Why I do not knkow and while I love the guy he was not the right choice), Felix on Kim Possible, Chase Young on Xiaolin Showdown (WHich I did not realize was him and now I do easily his best role and I REALLY should’ve), Red Star and Billy Numerous on Teen Titans, Speedy on Batman Brave and the Bold, Impulse/Kid Flash II on Young Justice, and Fingers on Kaijudo. He hasn’t done as much lately which is a shame but hopefully i’tll pick up again.

Next up is Hotstreak, Virgil’s brutal bully turned unhinted pyromancer played by DANIEL COOKSY, another actor i’m happy to talk about and another faviorite I haven’t seen much of lately. Daniel was an actor from childhood, playing Budnick on Salute Your Shorts, but he quickly gained a long and storied catalogue of VA Work: His first big roll was as Montana Max on Tiny Toon Adventures and if there is a god he’ll be back for the reboot, Stoop Kid on Hey Arnold, the incomprable Jack Spicer on Xiaolin Showdown, far and away his best role and part of why Chronicles sucked so bad was he was he didn’t get to reprise the role, The titular Dave the Barbarian, Django of the Dead on El Tigre (Had no idea), Kicks utterly insufferable big Brother Brad on Kick Buttowski and apparently he’s back at it again after laying low for a bit as he’s voicing Snag in Long Gone Gultch.. which I already really needed to watch but hot damn, I missed him. Sign me up.

Frieda, Virgil’s crush and close friend who in the comics was his main confidante and love intrest but here is eventually pushed aside, is voiced by Danica Mckeller whose work didn’t seem all that familiar.. until I found out she was Ms. Martian on Young Justice. Hello, Megan. Very talented and she did get a major role in a dc show eventually so good for her. Can’t wait for season 4.

So with our major players out of the way, let’s talk about Dwayne. McDuffie is an AWESOME man and my respect has grown for him more and more with time. A writer and editor at Marvel, McDuffie has a decent resume doing smaller but awesome books, which I got most of for free last year when Marvel was giving out free digital collections due to the lock down, like Damage Control, a sitcom set in the marvel universe about the company that picks up after superhero battles and the logistics and antics that insue and Dethlok, about a pacfist trapped inside a cyborg zombie. He was as mentioned one of Milestone’s founders, and wrote Icon, Hardware and co-wrote the first few issues of Static. He’d go on to a pretty stacked career in animation, writing on this show and Justice League before becoming story editor and show runner for Unlimited , even making a return to comics as a result writing the Marvel miniseries beyond and an arc of Fantastic Four in which Black Panther and Storm filled in for Reed and Sue while the two of them worked on their marriage after Reed did.. pretty much everything he did in Civil War. He also became head writer and show runner for Ben 10: Alien Force and Ultimate Alien, revamping the franchise a bit, and Alien Force, at least the first two seasons are awesome and I feel people overreacted on the changes. Ultimate Alien is okay, but has it’s problems but the finale was awesome and left the man’s legacy on a high note.. as he sadly passed in 2011 due to heart complications. He is truly missed and produced some utterly amazing stuff whlie he was alive. So on that melacholy note let’s see what happens when his creation hits the tv screen shall we?

Shock to the System:

This episode is written by Christopher Simmons, who is apparently a huge art designer guy.. but i’m not sure that’s the same chirsptoher simmons. Much more notable is the writer of the episode after this Stan Berkowitz, who was showrunner for season 1 and has done a LOT of DCAU work and is suprising talent, having written a lot of awesome Justice League episodes including Secret Society and The Royal Flush One. Point is we’re in first class hands. Before the episode itself I want to talk about the intro and how it’s unique among DCAU shows. Like most Western Animation the intros for DCAU shows didn’t change much over the seasons with the most I can see is JLU changing up the footage to preview the current episode and later adding Hawkgirl to the intro after her return to the team. I THINK superman the animated series changed some of it’s footage too, but I can’t confrim it and may of just been imagining it. As i’ve talked about on my blog it’s normally a pet peeve of mine, mostly because shows you know, change after season 1, characters get added some one shot characters used for the intro never return, and after a while it can feel dated especially in more recent shows where the status quo is not at all set in stone and things change quite a bit. But sometimes it can be good enough that either the dated elements don’t matter or general enough that you don’t need to change it and i’ts just that good.. and given Batman the Animated Series has both in spades, you can see why i’ts probably my golden standard for intros and after superman the animated series DC mostly followed suit. But being part of the teen superhero boom of the 2000′s Static is unique in that it splits the diffrence: It’s intro gets the character across perfectly like a good intro should starting with Virgil getting out of bed and running a comb across his head before showing off to his sister to bug her and literally running into his dad who hand shim his bag and smiles, silently showing off his family. He then runs to school and runs into some trouble.. and said trouble changes for each intro, with Rubberband Man for season 1, Kanga (Whose name I only know because I happened to run across it) for season 2 and your guess is as good as mine for seasons 3 and 4, though Hotstreak is a constant. They still save some money for seasons 1 and 2 by recycling some animation.. but that’s alright with mea s it was good animation, and the improtant thing is cycling out old villians for new ones, while Season 3 is the only out and out redo to show off Richie taking on the Gear identity, adding about 10 seconds of intro to let him show off. Seriously it’s an utterly great intro and like the other DCAU intros outside of superman, stuck in my brain.

The other change that’s ENTIRELY diffrent from the rest of htem is that the music changes each time. The first two have the same formula just with a difrent vocalist and backing track: a superhero theme but with some hip hop beat boxing over it. The first intro is fine enough, not specattcular but stilll god. The second song.. is eh. Not really great and feels like a marked downgrade from season 1 and just dosen’t blend an ocrehstiral superhero theme with the beatbox elements NEARLY as well. The third song though is my faviorite.. even if I HATED Little Romeo as a kid because I really did not like his nick show, it’s more a straight up rap song, but it has a faster beat that fits the intro better, and Romeo’s bragging fits Virgil’s character and penchant for Spidey quips perfectly. I also find it ironic that the theme that blends in with the dcau the most, the first season’s, is the one from BEFORE they decided to put it in the same universe. Still this season’s intro slaps, I just like the LIttle Romeo one a bit more. The opening scene is picture perfect. Some masked crooks looting a warehouse are loading some stolen TV’s into a van when suddenly the lights come on one by one above one of the crooks before his tv switches to various channels before going haywire. Cue our heroes’ entrance. Let’s tak ea good look at him

Static’s Costume is awesome. While I prefer the season 3 redesign, and clearly DC agrees as the redeisgn was used for both pre and post new-52 when they used him, and while he’s getting a fresh design for the reboot, said design takes a lot of cures from said outfit. As for how the outfit differs from the comics itself this is the design he had in the comics

It didn’t change much from the first issue, with the exception of his now iconic big puffy jacket which was added pretty early into the character’s history but I was unaware of that and just assumed he had the bodysuit the whole time. The more you know. But as you can see outside of the cool puffy jacket over a costume the two couldn’t be more diffrent. While the Dakotaverse outfit is more a standard superhero outfit, with some regular clothes touches on top the first cartoon outfit comes off more realistic, looking fantastic, but still coming off as something two teenagers could realistically have thrown together with what clothes they could buy, while still looking awesomely superheroy. IN short it’s perfect and only topped by the season 3 onward look...

But the slicker look, with an even cooler jakcet and the new colors all fitting the lighting ascetic better, but fits: not only has Virgil come along farther since he started, but with Richie now having a genius brain as Gear, he can provide a far slicker, far more professional superhero outfit on the budget the two have. This show is just great at costume design.

So getting back to the episode at hand, Static puts up a huge sign in elecrticy saying “Bad guys here”, PFFFT, and then hides away and narrates that a few days ago he’d be the last person anyone would’ve expected to be a hero. Cue Flashback.

We meet Virgil Hawkins on an average day: rapping into his razor, getting into a petty argument with his older sister Sharon, as a younger brother myself I relate to this, and talking to his dad who tries to get them to cut that out. We find out his mom has passed via his sister making really terrible eggs and saying that’s how mom made them. Exposition! Though we do get a great bit through this as when his sister gets distracted by her boyfriend calling, he uses the opportunity of her leaving the room to dump the eggs.. after having earlier jokingly prayed to his mom for a way out of breakfast. “Thanks for looking out for me mom” That’s both very sweet and very hilarious.

This is a change from the comics it turns out as I was utterly flored to find Virgil’s mom alive and well when reading the first issue of Static. Turns out this was a change made during development and one Dwane McDuffie admitted in the interview I got the tribute quote from to not liking as he had a good reason for having Virgil have a nuclear family, as most black families in media at the time were just one single parent and a kid or two with the other having either left or died. He wasn’t too bothered by it as while he preferred what he came up with in the first place, the show DID get some really good stories out of her being gone and didn’t just have her be absent because shut up. Virgil is still working over her death and the way HOW she died ends up playing an important role in this episode and gives Virgil a dislike of guns, as she died to gang violence. So the change wasn’t for stupid or racist reasons, but likely both to keep the character count down while giving them something to work with for storylines. Or it could’ve been for stupid reasons and the writers simpily made lemonade out of that very dumb lemon, either way it ended up working. Virgil also plans to ask his friend Frieda out. Frieda was a bigger deal in the comics, being Virgil’s friend and confidante as well as his ocasional love intrest, but here while she was inteded to at least be his love intrest here, that sorta fizzled out. As for the best friend role we meet her replacement in Richie, which McDuffie conceded was the kind of change a studio would make swapping out a female character for a male one. That being said the crew made the best of it and Richie is awesome, a bit of an overcompensating dipstick at times, but a good sounding board and pal for virgil and funny as hell too. He was also gay, something only revealed post series by McDuffie.. but unlike say Dumbledore, it’s a bit easier to swallow here: The early 2000′s were an even worse time for gay characters in tv let alone cartoons, and if they couldn’t kiss or have sex scenes on regular tv, there was no way we were getting any representation in a children’s show. So it was largely just hinted at by Richie overcompensating in how “into girls” he was and i’m once again fine with this being word of god as it was literally the best they could do and his counterpart in the comics was also gay, if not as relevant. Ritch encourages Virgil to work on his opening to ask her out as it’s awkward as heck, hits a bit close to home.. but I do appricate the show just .. having him try and ask her out from the first episode. They likely would’ve drug thigns out a bit granted had they used Frieda more, i’m not blind to the convetions of the time. .but as someone who got the very wrong idea from tv that just waiting around meant a girl would like you eventually, when no you need to actually try even if rejection happens, I honestly wish we had more of this in media than the other garbage morals at the time.

So he prepares to , not helped by her mentioning guy after guy is asking her out.... but before he can F-Stop, the future hotstreak, shows up. F-STOP

That being said...... it’s not as bad as the original gangster name for the comic’s version, Biz Money B. Yes BIZ MONEY B

So yeah while F-Stop is no more intimidating, it at least means I can stop laughing. Francis, because I can’t type F-Stop without laughing and this review is already behind, shoves Virgil out of the way and agressively hits on Frieda, even saying “you smell good”, the international sign your a douchebag and also to call the police. Virgil steps up to the guy and gets PAINFULLY slammed into the lockers, something I give the animation team a lot of credit for, as you can FEEL how fucking painful that was. Virgil is saved by Wade, another local gangbanger who in the comics was a close friend of Virgils but here saves him seemingly just because.. seemingly.

On the way home though Virg’s problems don’t end as naturally, the giant sized asshole with nothing better to do has his goons corner virgil before VIOLENTLY beating him.. off screen but the noises, and the clear brusies including a black eye, on virgil afterwords.. just holy damn i’m suprsied they got away with this but it shows just how horrifing it was and that this is a step above regular bullying, which make no mistake is absoluttley terrible and the series would later do an episode on it and school shootings, into straight up gang violence. Wade shows up again and gets the bastards to flee.. but also makes it clear he can’t keep doing this.. and forces Virgil to meet him at his base under the bridge. And it’s a tense sequence, with Virgil KNOWING this is a bad idea but having no real choice and Wade making it abundantly clear that he wants Virgil to join his crew, and makes a chilling point: while Virgils dad RIGHTFULLY dosen’t want his son to join a gang as Virgil points out.. he can’t be there for him all the time and eventually one of those times, Francis will be around. And he may not surivive that. Virgil nods noncomittaly. At home it gets even more grim as he dosen’t open up to his family, understandably as his dad would jsut say to call the police and well.. we’ve seen how the police treat black people. At best they’d just try and use Virgil as an informant and that likely wouldn’t end fucking well for Virgil. Ritchie points out he can’t join a gang, virgil’s mom died that way.. see told you it’d be important to the plot.. but I like how the story dosen’t offer an easy answer.. well okay he gets electric powers soon enough but without the fantastic element this is just an innocent kid caught between either joining the very thing his mom hated or hoping a system not built to protect him will keep him alive. It’s utterly saddening and chilling and holy shit is it amazing a cartoon in the early 2000′s was able to get away with.. ANY OF THIS, and they handle it great, paired down a bit from the comics but even then it’s still incredibly balsy they got THIS much in.

Naturally Wade calls in his favor and our hero is forced to come running.. and soon finds out Wade’s brought him in for a massive gang war. Welcome to the big bang, baby. He hands Virgil a gun as things get started and Virgil.. drops the thing and tries to escape, in a harrowing sequence.. and runs into Francis because god apparently REALLY hates this kid today. As if to prove that the police show up and while that prevents a beating, they demand they disassemble. then release untested gas on them because of course they do.

As a result the big bang truly begins, with the various gang members getting mutated.. and naturally so does virgil. Though he wakes up the next day seemingly fine. How’d he get home? Does his dad know where he was?

I don’t know and we’re not getting any answers, but Virgil soon finds weird stuff happening like his clock shorting out, change being attracted to him and his razor going wild. It’s only once he get sback to his room he gets an inkling of what’s going on and calls Ritchie to meet him at the Junk yard.. though it is a bit of a dick move as he dosen’t you know, tell him anything about Wade or Francis right away. He does at the yard though.. and that he has powers, having finally figured out how to use them to a point. And the series does provide a decent justification later as to why he’d get this so quickly: Virgil is a smart kid, gets great grades at school and apparnetly there’s even an episode later where he gets a scholarship to a fancy genius school. So him getting how elctromagntisim works or being a quick study on it makes perfect sense.

Richie suggest the obvious.. to become a superhero. And the thought.. hadn’t occured to Virgil. It’s honestly a nice twist on the old trope. That he hadn’t thought of it, not because he’s selfish or any of that or needs to learn a hard lesson, those have been done.. simply because the rush of getting his powers, and implicitly of having a way out of his current predciament, a way to keep Francis off his back and keep Wade from pulling him in further. His own path. But once i’ts brought up.. he jumps on it. Part of it is being a nerd like you or I, of course he wants to.. and being a good intetioned one, he knows this is the right thing to do. It’s waht makes a superhero a hero: Anyone can get powers in a universe like this, esepcailly the dcau, but it takes true courage and heart to use them selflessly and knowing you’ll be in danger. It’s why I love surperheroes: they often didn’t ask for this but they do it anyway because somebody’s gotta. We also get an intresting wrinkle is superman is, at least I think in this episode I could’ve missed it or misremembered things, mentioned as a fictional character. That’s because originally like the comics this wasn’t part of the DCAU.. but eventually the crew decided it shared staff from it, shared a network, both first run and on reruns, why not just make it part of the DCAU proper. I fully support this decisionf: While i’m midly annoyed unlimited never really used anything from static shock outside of Static himself in the time travel episode, despite you know Static and Gear having BEEN to the tower and not being much younger than Kara and defintely older than Courtney, I chalk it up to weird rights issues or something like that. But having Batman, Batman Beyond, Superman, Green Lantern and the Justice League itself all guest star was a good idea, and expanded both static’s universe and gave the DCAU something differnt as most heroes in it were older and more experinced in contrast to the up and coming virgil. Again really would’ve been nice if he and gear could’ve been a part of the expanded league but production might of just been too far ahead or, given he had his own series, they might just have wanted to stick to toher characters. Also begs the question why Icon or Hardware wasn’t adapted for the expanded League but hey, questions for later and the tricky logisitics of the milestone rights might’ve been the issue. I don’t know I wasn’t in the room.

So we get a costume montage, including Black Vulcan from Superfriends, who again ironically would be voiced by Lamarr not too long after this, though weirdly they DON’T use his outfit from the comics for this montage. I mean why not? It fits the gag and would’ve been a good second to last choice.But what could’ve been aside we get our winner and cut back to present day...

Thanks boys. Static finds out one of the things in the warehouse is a shipment of computers for the school and can’t help but show off, showing up to the school, where Frieda and Richie are setting up for the dance, and dropping off the computers, and even saying his catchphrase for the first time “I’ll put a shock to your system” (Which Richie chimes in with awesome line and I agree, great catcphrase), before helping set up and flirting with frieda.

Though as Richtie says he’s a natural. He’s not wrong as he can work a crowd. .but back it up too as his first run out had him easily taking out the crooks, and as many teen superheros and fans of heroes of hte type, myself included will tell you, getting it right in one is not easy. Not even Miles MOrales was immune. All Static needs now is a villian.

And the end of the episode provides one as we see, in horrifc and once again damn suprising detail most of hte new metas aren’t doing so good and are melting and other stuff and we catch up with Francis whose burning up.. and naturally given that hair, though given he named himself F-Stop it’s the least of his problems, he’s got fire powers and escapes to “Have me some fun”

So with that we end episode 1. And it’s excellent, a great way to introduce the hero and while the warehouse opening is a bit superflous, it is a decent addition, showing our heroes first outing in costume and giving us a bit of an action scene to get us through the very heavy rest of the episode. But the rest of the episode is no less grippping, telling the tale of a teen caught in an unwinnable scenario who suddenly finds a way out. And speaking of which waht of Wade? Will we see him again? Is he perhaps Ebon, the series big bad as I thought when I was a kid? What comes of the man who directly caused static’s origin?

Yeahhh that’s the one mistep I think the pilot makes. Frieda is understandable as that was likely a simple change in creative direction. This though? Why build this guy up if your not going to bring him back. I mean where he went was probably the grave, as he probably did due to his mutation, but it’s still VERY weird to spend a whole episode focusing on this guy, building him up as a big personal threat to our hero.. and NOT have him become the series big bad. And maybe he WAS supposed to be ebon and they just changed their mind. I don’t know but it bothers me it bothers me a lot. Otherwise though flawless. ONe more to go.

Aftershock: We open outside an electronics store, as our heroes watch the news reacap what happened in the first episode, with the media dubbing it the Big Bang and revealing their could be hundreds of “Metahumans”, as Virgil dubs after deciding the media’s term “Mutant” dosen’t fit, a nice wink to the fact that that’s the term used in dc comics and I believe milestone but could be wrong there. Me I like the term, has a nice ring to it.

At the store while Richie mulls over waht this means Static finds out he’s a human CD player.... this was before mp3 players and streaming on your phone made them horribly obsolete mind you and if you don’t know what one is congradualtions you live in some sort of bubble and you made me feel really old junior.

Frieda happens to be there and Virgil quips “What’s the matter they run out of britney cds”. Dude she’s not bad. Also be careful what you wish for man. Nickeback returned the year after this. You have not truly suffered through bad music yet my young friend. They spot a kid looking feverish, and he soon turns into a purple werewolf, as you do. It’s a bang baby.. those are richie’s exact word and you may not want to start a panic there bud. Just saying your best friend is one. THeir not all like this. Our heroes book it only to run into Francis who naturally refuses to let them leave and only doesn’t try to beat up Virgil because Virgil points otu the werewolf and nonplussed, he goes to fight it, scarring it off by revealing his own powers. He’s now dubbed himself Hotstreak which points for getting an actually good name kid. No points for what happens next as unsuprisingly getting powers did NOT mak ehim a better person and he attacks Virgil who blocks with a garbage can lid and thankfully is blasted into an ally. Richie tries to guard frieda for damn obvious reasons but gets hsi shirt burnt up because shut up Thankfully Static shows up, and we get our firsdt full on superhuman fight as both fight each other with aplomb, and it’s a damn good fight.. and one that goes pear shaped for Virg as he’s caught off guard when he finds out Hotstreak can use his powers to fly, and tackles him and his previous trauma causes him to freeze up. Thankfully , as Frieda put in a call earlier, the fire department arrive and HOt streak has to retreat, though Virgil is bummed that he “Choked”. And I love this as it not only shows Virgil’s inepxerince, as this is his first time fighting a bad guy but that just because he HAS power now dosen’t mean trauma and his previous fear of Hotstreak goes away or you won’t freeze up from time to time. It dosen’t make him weak or anything like some assholes would call it .. it makes him human. Humans make mistakes, and it makes him all the more relatable that he’s not pefect and that he did freeze up as I know I certainly would at last once in the circumstances.

Things don’t get better at dinner as Sharon and Pops argue over the bang babies with Pops calling them a meance and Sharon pointing out Static exists so they can’t all be bad. See assuming a group of superhumans are bad because a handful of them ar edick sis why the x-men had to get their own island nation. You can only save an ungreatful populous so many times before you say “fuck it i’m getting my own island, pay me for life saving drugs, save your damn selves and stop doing genocides on us. Kay thanks”. But he does bring up a valid point that rattles his son: We don’t know anything about the Bang Babies or their biological structures and it’s likely they might further mutate into monsters, Static included.

Virgil, understandably, wants to check this and thus he and richie compare blood samples in science, to no real conclusion. She he checks out with his doctor who assumes he’s sexually active in a great getting crap past the radar bit and a bit of realisim, but he agrees to the test though if something came up he would have to tell Virgil’s dsad and is up front about this. Nice dose of realisim.

That night City Council has a meeting and the Mayor TRIES to deflect Papa Hawkins questions about the bang babies which again, while being a judgmental ass as not every person hit was a gang member (Virgil, and as we discover later some others), and not every gang member is there by choice, some by circumstnace some, like virgil almost was, because they HAD no other option. Again years of reading x-men may of just made me a bit touchy on assholes admitely assuming superpower people bad. But it’s clear the public is upset and while she says an investigation is underway... Virgil and Richie are not only not convinced, but figure she’s actively covering it up. And unlike everyone else there who probably suspects the same, they can do something about it and tail her. It’s during this, and cleverly as I didn’t realie till writing this using similar skills to his human cd player act, Virgil listens in and discovers whose behind it: Edwin Alva, whose apparently richer than bill gates and a beloved phinarophist Alva, as it turns out, was actually the arch enemy of Hardware in the comics, taking advantage of the guy in his civiliian idtentiy and thus casuing him to launch a war on the asshole. He does transition into this series well though, being the one behind the gas that caused it and with the mayor agreeing to back off, planning to simply dump the info about the big bang on a disc then destroy everything for now till the heat dies down. Yup sounds like a corprate douchebag.

Static tails him, finds the lab and infiltrates it, stealing the disc.. but getting caught by Alva’s goon, and trapped in a glass prison, forced to use ALL his power to escape and barely getting out alive, but not before bouncing off alva’s car. Still he now has the proof.. and meanwhile Hotstreak, who I was wrong did get captured, is forced to take pill sbut spits them out once the orderly is gone. Dude.. WHY DIDN’T YOU WATCH HIM. Make sure he swallows that shit especially since, as he has no powers right now and can’t harm you.

Hotstreak escapes off screen and our heroes discuss the disc before he shows up, and we get a REALLY fucking amazing scene: Virgil ducks into an Alleway and ritchie is worried.. and Virgil disarms him with just one word responses Ritchie: Virg you can’t take him. Virgil: Gotta. Ritchie: Well at least wait for the fire department Virgil: Can’t. It’s simpile but it gets the point across: This is his fight, he can’t wait for help, and people need him. And this is what makes a true hero: It’s easy to be a hero when everythings going well.. but it’s the true ones who stick it out against the odds and fight anyway. And he’s going to. So we get one hell of a fight, though naturally Hotstreak burns up the disc. And I do like this as it dosen’t feel contrived.. yes Static could’ve left it with ritchie.. but he wasn’t thinking in the moment and dind’t really have time to think abotu the disc, only that people were being hurt and he was all they had between them and Hotstreak. It was no choice at all. Still that pisses Virgil off that the last night’s work is now worthless, and he fully charges up and curbstomps francis who retreats into a clearing. Hostreak brags when static follows, as even he’s figured out Static needs to be around metal, as he’s usually on his disc or the street, and in the park there suppodsidly isn’t any. But he’s not THAT smart as Virgil points out two things: one, he hoped to do this on PURPOSE so they wouldn’t be around people and no on e would get hurt and 2).. this is a city, there’s metal everywhere.. and he awesomely and cleverly proves it by unlodging a sewage pipe with his powers and dousing his foe, winning and proving his stuff. I love this solution, it’s a clever spider-man type way to disarm him, using smarts and the einvroment instead of just brute forcing it. Though the sewage part wasn’t intetional our hero still won and gets praise from the people dumb enough to follow the fight.

However at home Virgil points out it was Pyrrhic Victory and shows off his smarts by telling the tale behind it, which I didn’t know,because tv tropes didn’t exist yet: king pyrhus fought the romans and WON.. but had so little armies left that he still lost overall. That’s what this feels like to Virgil: he beat hotstreak but any chance at a cure for Bang Babies and Alva going to jail for causing them is gone. His mood does get a boost though as the doctor calls and reveals he’s fine, he just has a bit too much elctrolytes and just needs to lay off teh salt. He celebrates, we get a quick gag and the episode ends

Aftershock is another stellar episoe, giving us Virgil’s first super foe and a personal one at that, while showing some growth. As richie tells him he’s not virgil anymore he’s static and he can’t let his past get to him.. and he does’nt going from cowering in fear to easily beating his foe with simple logic. It’s a good followup that answers questions you may have from the first ep, like what does this do to virgil’s body, who supplied the gas, and why has no one done anything about this, and sets up another villian for Static in Alva. Great stuff. I highly recommend these episodes and the show as a whole: it’s fast paced, grounded and enjoyable, having just enough levity to not be too dour but just enough tension and stakes to be intresting. A throughly fantastic superhero show and one that i’d certainly love to revisit on this blog If you have an episode of static or the dcau in general you’d want me to cover, my comissions are open and details are on a tab on my blog or can be gotten simply by asking me via ask or dm. Tommorow we’re going deeper underground, there’s too much damage in this town as the Lena Retrospective continues. So expect gay ducks, straight ducks and some terrfirmains. See you next rainbow.

#static shock #static #virgil hawkins #richie foley #robert hawkins #sharon hawkins #hotstreak #milestone comics #dc comics #dc animated universe #dcau #dwayne mcduffie #robert l washington IIII #kids wb #hbo max #2000s #animation #black lives matter #black history month

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regrettablewritings · 4 years

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Hopefully I got here in time! If I did, could I please request some general headcanons from the headcanon thing for Clark kent please?

Who initiated the relationship, and how did it go?: You both did, in a way. Much like with his water-breathing Atlantean colleague, the two of you respectively just seemed to seep into the position of dating. Unlike Arthur and his partner, however, you and Clark were much more aware of the path you were taking. It was more or less just quietly agreed that this was what you both wanted. After all, there are only so many dates, so many texts, so many late-night phone calls (due to both of Clark’s schedules), so many homemade dinners, so many coy smiles, so many walks to the park, and so many initial brushings of the hand-turned actual hand-holding that two people could do until it becomes obvious that there’s a desire for a more openly romantic relationship. However, because you and Clark are very private people, it still made either one of you blush whenever one referred to the other as their significant other. But other than that? The transfer from acquaintances to friends to romantic partners went surprisingly smoothly, given that neither of you is one to make a fuss.

Did they have an official first date? If so, what was it like?: If you consider the apology dinner you treated him to, then yes, you did have a first date. Granted, first date or not, it was a rather awkward one, given that you were still vibrating with embarrassment and guilt for nearly getting him killed. You were more than thankful with Clark’s patience and gentle nudging towards other, better conversation topics besides how sorry you were for your conspiring. Otherwise, it’s hard to plant the title of First Official Date on anything the two of you have done together because of the near seamless manner with which you both fell into the relationship. The closest you could get to an anniversary was just the day you called him your boyfriend out loud and even before that, it was mainly just an unspoken understanding. Not that either of you particularly mind it: No amount of trips to the park for ice cream or visiting the local sculpture garden could ever replace the uniqueness of dinner in a restaurant courteously rented out by one of the richest men in the world. All because he tried to, at one point, kill one member of the party while the other member helped him do so.

What was their first kiss like?: You like to joke that you had two first kisses: You had a first kiss with Clark, and you had a first kiss with Superman. And both were about as anyone would expect from either figure, if they didn’t know that they were one and the same. While the shyness of his civilian form was more so an act Clark put on, he’s still not necessarily the coolest cucumber in the barrel. More like a cucumber whose consistent gentlemanly behavior means that taking the initiative to kiss a gal will probably not go too smoothly. Of course, he meant for it to play out as they do in the movies: It’s during an impromptu movie night at your apartment. Originally, he had just been invited over for dinner but at one point the conversation topic turned to movies and he mentioned not seeing one of your absolute favorites. He didn’t mind you gently tugging him over to the couch to watch it; how could he mind spending more time with you? And the moment was perfect: You were relaxed, leaning against him, the tone being set on the screen was mellowed and quiet . . . Even in his usual hesitancy for such an occasion, Clark knew that the time was right . . . Unfortunately, his glasses didn’t get the memo, judging by the way they clashed with your forehead. But technically, the kiss made its landing, however sloppily. You still found it cute, giggling as you gingerly removed the eyepiece to try for a much smoother, more expected kiss. You spent the entire rest of the evening feeling as though you could speak bubbles and butterflies into the air, feeling like a schoolgirl all over again. Maybe he’d learned better by the time the “Super Kiss” happened? Maybe just being Superman instilled him with a sense of confidence? Whatever the case, it was certainly a 180 -- down to the fact that you were literally walking on air. You thought he was joking when he offered to take you out flying one evening. But as you found yourself clinging desperately as you rose high above the ground, you realized you were dating a complete mad man. The entire while, you were zig-zagging between spewing curses and keeping your mouth closed to keep bugs from flying in. Hell, in your frantic state, part of you debated on whether or not you wanted to stay with him for pulling this type of crap. As far as you knew, Clark wasn’t telepathic. But then again, maybe he was: His abilities seemed to be infinite and increasing in numbers by the day, and maybe that might’ve explained why, after flying to the bay, he came to a stop. Just long enough for you to register everything, but differently: The breeze was gentle, and the air carried that aquatic quality that all freely-running water does. In spite of your fear, you couldn’t help but feel compelled to crack your eyes open just for a bit. Just to see what it looked like . . . You did not regret it: Who knew that hovering above the bay could allow you to witness such a gorgeous sunset? Clark, apparently, as he wasn’t as focused on it as he was your reaction to it. The obvious amazement in your expression told him all he needed to know: That you were impressed, that you forgave him, and that you were in a much better mood with this once-in-a-lifetime scenery before you. In short, he would’ve been a fool not to take advantage of the mood. Even if you weren’t floating high above the water, the way the romanticism of it all zapped through you could’ve made you shoot to the sky all on its own.

Were they each other’s first anything (kiss, relationship, etc.)?: He was the first non-human you’ve ever dated, so that’s got to count for something.

What’s their height difference? Age difference?: Clark stands at the handsome height of 6′1″, so apply that as necessary.

What’s their relationship with each other’s families?: It should go without saying that Martha adores you. She admittedly might’ve been unenthused after learning about your part in the plot to kill Superman, but you had long since made up for it. (Not even the distance between Metropolis and Kansas could stop you from delivering an apology basket of fruits and candies to her. In person.) You’re smart, you’ve proven yourself to be loyal and loving, you won’t endanger her son again, and you own up to your mistakes; she’s proud to have you dating Clark. Meanwhile, your family hasn’t had the chance to meet Clark in person due to “your job keeping you in the city constantly”. However, the video calls have been going well enough for you to confirm that your family adores Clark. And how could they not: A handsome, strapping young man who treats you well? They’d take twelve if they could! Sure, he’s a little more demure than the usual guys you introduced them to, but maybe that’s a good thing: They’d never seen you this happy with past boyfriends. If you two were to even so much as go on a break, you would probably be hounded about how you didn’t lock him down! The only downside is that you’re in a constant state of anxiety that they might notice that your delightful boyfriend bears an uncanny resemblance to the red-caped alien who’s always zooming around, trying to save people.To your knowledge, they haven’t caught on yet (thank god for dodgy Wifi and pixelated video calls). But just to assure they don’t, Clark makes sure to come off especially shy, mussy up his hair just a bit more, and unfix his posture.

Who takes the lead in social situations?: It’s like a card trick, because many would assume it’s you 25/8, given how shy Clark comes across. But the reality is that Clark is more than capable of taking the lead in many situations. Sure, he’s tall but to most people, that just makes him a tall pushover: He’s still sheepish and clumsy and constantly slouching. Or is he? For one, those baggy clothes hide those muscles of his, which keeps many aggressors hassling you from knowing that he can possess a pretty firm and potentially devastating handshake. And for another, his ability to appear unassuming means that nobody knows for sure if he’s being passive aggressive or not, but many would rather not take the chance. Even in more positive situations, though, Clark will sometimes let his public confidence from the Superman persona seep through. Just to assure nobody gives you grief over anything. But for the most part, so long as neither of you can sense any injustices or anything directed at you specifically, it’s understood that you’re more than capable of handling things. Though don’t be afraid to ask him for help if you need any: Clark is more than happy to help!

Who gets jealous easier?: Neither. Clark isn’t the jealous type. And although you know Clark is a catch, nobody else necessarily seems to, much to your constant confusion. He’s sweet, he’s handsome if nerdy, he’s smart, he’s caring -- In a bizarre twist, you wished more people saw him as you do! He’s definitely a partner to get jealous feelings over. Some days, you just want to scream from the rooftops what an absolute babe Clark Joseph Kent is but at the same time, that might mean more people discovering his alias. And besides: You don’t have the super powers necessary to fight everyone off of your boyfriend. So for now, he’s your sweet secret. Frustratingly perfect as that is.

Thank you for your patience!

#clark kent x reader #superman x reader #superman imagine #superman imagines #clark kent imagines #clark kent imagine #dceu x reader #dceu imagines #dceu imagine #regrettablewritings #character ship meme #character ship headcanons

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tchotchkeshelves · 3 years

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hello im am humbly request number 6 with jessme my dearest perse-phone telephone for the writing prompts list

6) things you said under the stars and in the grass

“It’s just not the same without the moon,” Esme mutters, turning her head to where Jess lies.

“You know, I was just about to say the same thing.” Jess pauses for a moment. “I’m not sure it’s worse though, just strange.”

Esme reaches out for her hand, absentmindedly brushing her thumb over her palm. “What hasn’t been these days?”

“You.”

Esme squeezes her hand. “Fucking sap.”

Jess grins and squeezes back before returning her gaze to the sky. She was the one who suggested stargazing when Esme told her she would be in town. Stars never really were Esme’s thing, but Jess most certainly was, so she didn’t really mind at all. Besides, the greater Kansas City area is sorely lacking in Charlestons, Esme is just glad to hold her girlfriend’s hand.

“You were there when the moon went down, right?”

The memory of that game is nearly burned into Esme’s eyes. The sky opening in dark waves, the pull that left the entire team sore for days, the awful shrill sound... “Yeah, I was there.”

“What was it like?”

“Not very fun.”

Jess sees the look on her face and doesn’t ask anything further. She’s always been good about that. They’re both haunted in their own ways, sometimes it’s only polite to ignore the ghosts.

“Any constellations?” Esme asks. Jess lights up as if the starlight reflecting off her dark eyes has just gotten brighter.

“Yeah! Wait, you might want to get closer so you can see what I’m pointing to.”

Esme smiles, inching closer until she’s right up against Jess’s side. “This close enough?”

“Hmm, maybe a bit closer.”

Esme lays her head on Jess’s shoulder.

“That’s perfect,” she says, slipping one arm around Esme who immediately snuggles in. Jess scrunches her face in concentration, searching the sea of starlight with her eyes.

Esme can’t help but stare. Jess is always beautiful, but there’s something about her lying there, so caught up in navigating the stars, that seems almost angelic. Nothing’s been easy, never is with blaseball, but maybe if she can just stay in this moment forever, everything will be okay.

“Esme?” Jess looks down at her with a small smile. “You’re gonna give me stage fright with that look.”

She grins. “You find any?”

“Yeah, here...” she points towards a couple of stars with her free hand. “That one’s Ursa Major.”

Esme laughs. “That’s supposed to be a bear?”

“Yup, and if you look up a little bit, that’s Ursa Minor.”

“Bear and smaller bear?” Esme still can’t see any bears in the pinpricks of light, but she trusts Jess on that.

“The Romans definitely could've benefitted from some more creativity.”

“Seriously though, how do you remember all of them? There are so many stars.”

“I had a huge space phase when I was a teenager. Like I religiously watched Cosmos.” She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear before adding, “The 80s one of course.”

Esme lets out a dramatic huff. “I can’t believe my girlfriend is a nerd.”

“Hard to believe I wasn’t always a hot jock huh?”

She laughs. “Impossible.”

“Well, there’s a lot more of them up there I could show you.” Jess raises an eyebrow. “Or is that too nerdy for you?”

“I would be honored, just as long as there aren’t any more bears.”

Jess leans down, planting a soft kiss on her forehead. “I love you so much Ezzy.”

Esme melts a little bit. “I love you too Jess. Now you better show me all the stars because I don’t plan on getting up.”

“I think that can be arranged.” Jess plays with a loose curl on her forehead. “We do have all night.”

#sorry this took so long i wrote out a whole other version and then scrapped it #blaseball #jessica telephone #esme ramsey #jessme #fic #long post #also i feel like i should clarify i know almost nothing about constellations so this is almost certainly wrong

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leupagus · 5 years

Text

I’m just a lovey-dovey bitch

More musician AU, because I wanted an excuse to send these losers to Nebraska and @broadlybrazen wanted some drunken handstroking, and I’m easy like Sunday morning.

Through some combination of magic and Stevie — “I’m hoping I had something to do with it,” Patrick says mildly when David finally gets hold of him, words tumbling out like so many dropped cards — Patrick Brewer gets invited to play at the Maha Festival. On the main stage, even if it’s an early set.

There’s been buzz about a long-shot nomination for Best New Artist, which he’s been encouraging as much as humanly possible between managing the growing entourage that travels with them and managing Patrick, who still wears his shitty Costco jeans — “I put you down on my card, if you want to go back sometime,” Patrick’s eyes big and brown and totally fucking with him — and brings the fringed vest on the bus to use as a threat if David gets too bossy.

“I’m supposed to be bossy,” David protests as they pull off 80 just past Council Bluffs. “I’m your boss.”

Patrick smiles at him. “Do I need to get you another copy of The Rights of Man?”

“OK we’re both Canadian, so you need to stop with that,�� David says, and Patrick threatens him with the fringed vest again.

Despite this the Maha set goes off without a hitch; Patrick plays the single, a few others from the album they’re hoping to push in the next few months, and some song about tractors that David’s never heard of but the crowd seems to love. People come up to David with smiles instead of sneers, to leave a number, talk over collaborations, get some small piece of Patrick that they can use. David’s still a relative neophyte in this industry, compared to Stevie or Jocelyn or hell, even Roland, but this part is very familiar.

By the time Patrick’s done signing and selfie-ing and listening to earnest infants tell him how much they love him, David’s vacillating between pride and a sick dread in his stomach. Patrick Brewer is someone now, someone that tiny children adore and that security guards recognize and that gets invited to festivals and if David’s any good at this he’ll keep being more and more of a someone, until he’s too much of a someone for David to hold onto. And that was the plan, that’s what everyone agreed on going into this. The Roses sell the company and get back to some semblance of their old life, everyone goes their separate ways. This is exactly what David used to want.

They end up at a bar next to the hotel they’re staying at, one of those basement-type claustrophobic affairs with sports on every flatscreen and flatscreens on every wall. “Reminds me of the Glockenspiel,” Patrick says, sliding onto a stool.

“The what now,” David says, sitting next to him.

Patrick smiles. “The bar where we met, remember? The open mic night.”

“Oh god, that place had a name?” He makes a face and Patrick laughs.

There are three other patrons in the entire bar and the bartender looks like she’d rather be killing a deer with her bare hands, but she gives Patrick some local brew and David an italian soda with minimal glaring. Patrick notices the drink and his eyes narrow, but he just talks about the festival and where they’re going next: Kansas City, then Austin and Houston, concerts alongside radio interviews and podcasts and a few other social media “events” that Alexis keeps texting him about.

The conversation meanders, like most conversations with Patrick do; there’s another argument about going to see a game while they’re in Kansas City, because Patrick’s love of baseball is deeply nerdy but also weirdly sentimental and he’s convinced somehow that if only David watches a game, he’ll become some sort of convert. This devolves into a discussion of the seventh-inning stretch, which David insists sounds dirty and Patrick insists is because David’s deeply disturbed. Stevie’s new boyfriend gets mentioned and they agree that he’s not good enough for her, although David thinks that’s mostly because no music critic is good enough for anyone and Patrick seems to think it’s because he’s not attentive enough to what she wants.

“If I let that kind of thing stop me from dating, I’d still be a virgin,” David says, signaling for another soda.

Patrick snorts, then hiccups and blinks. “I think I’m drunk,” he says, thoughtfully.

David frowns as he does the math. “You’ve only had—“ a thought occurs to him. “Patrick. Did you eat anything before the show?”

Patrick’s blush makes David relieved that he’s stone-cold sober, because otherwise this night would end really badly. “I definitely thought about it.”

“This is why I can’t leave you alone for a minute,” David mutters, and waves at the bartender. “Hi! Yeah, do you sell food of any kind? A burger or some sort of grilled cheese situation?”

The bartender looks like she’s fantasizing about gutting that deer. Or maybe him. “We’ve got pretzels.”

“Great. We’ll take some.” He tries smiling at her but she’s too terrifying to make it convincing, so he ends up kind of grimacing as she trundles off. Next to him, Patrick is laughing.

“Never knew I’d cause you this much grief, did you?” he says, leaning his head on his hand, half-sprawled out on the bar. They should’ve gotten him drunk for that last photoshoot, had him lean against a bar or a pool table, loose and smiling and color spread down his neck.

“Oh, I did,” he says instead of saying any of that. “That’s why I didn’t want to sign you in the first place.”

Patrick’s jaw drops, outrage in every curve of him. “You what?”

David shrugs and takes a sip, keeping his face bland. Moments like this, where he can fuck with Patrick, should be cherished like the rare jewels they are. “Stevie talked me into it. I thought anyone who drank Red Mountain wasn’t going to be worth the hassle.”

Patrick laughs again. “Little did you know.” He looks around, although he doesn’t seem to be taking in the depressing, dingy decor. “It’s funny, you know. I wake up and keep expecting today to be the day where it’ll get interesting.”

“‘Interesting’?” David echoes.

“Not interesting,” Patrick amends, patting his elbow in drunken apology. “I mean it’s just — work, you know? Which is great, I like work, and this beats my old cubicle any day of the week. I guess it just doesn’t feel… like anything’s happening.” Patrick shrugs and takes another drink.

David squeezes his eyes shut so he doesn’t have to watch Patrick fellate a bottle. “You just performed on the main stage at Maha,” he says. “Last week we shot a music video with Zia Anger. I’m pretty sure three different girls asked you to sign their breasts tonight. Things are happening—“

“I know,” Patrick says, putting his hand on David’s wrist this time. “‘m sorry, I don’t mean — I’m grateful, David. Really.”

It would be a spectacularly bad idea to ask him how grateful, and in what ways he’d be willing to express that gratitude. “You’re welcome,” he says instead, trying to sound flippant and failing miserably, if Patrick’s smile is anything to go by.

Patrick is still touching his wrist; he turns David’s hand over, palm up, and runs his fingers across his lifeline. “Have you been taking palm-reading classes from Twyla,” David says, too high-pitched. He tries pulling away but Patrick’s pulls back, his brow furrowed in concentration as he slowly spins one of David’s rings, the one he perches on the second knuckle of his middle finger whenever he has to go on tour with Patrick.

“It’s so strange,” Patrick says. The callouses on his fingers catch on David’s skin. “You do all this work — I see you working, all the time — but you’ve got the softest hands I’ve ever seen. Even though they’re strong and really big. You have big hands. And strong. But really soft. Do you put something on them?”

“Um,” David replies, cleverly.

The pretzles arrive with a clatter. “I’ll put it on your tab,” the terrifying bartender says and leaves.

“You should eat these,” David says, trying once more to get his hand back. Patrick makes a very unsettling pouty face and holds tighter. “Patrick—“

“David,” he replies, voice low and those big eyes looking at him and David hates everything about his life, every individual thing.

#schitt's creek #ficcage of interest #david/patrick #schitt records #I can't decide if they get interrupted by a phone call or if David just spills his soda #either way: more pining and wistful eye contact pls

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arnorcttos · 5 years

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( ludovico tersigni + 22 + muse 59 ) isn’t that apollo amoretto over there? i heard HE joined faction: nomads after they got back to west ham. it’s funny, ‘cause they were only on the service trip to terrorize his peers. hopefully they fit in there – they’re ADROIT, but also INDELICATE. oh, i’m sure they’ll be fine. ( james, she/they, 20, EST )

okay hi i’m james and this is my baby apollo, who is actually a brand new spankin’ muse of mine so !! we’ll see how this goes b/c i’ve literally never rp’d him before !! and i’ll b frank. his background is inspired by logan in veronica mars. sue me. actually don’t i’m already in college debt but sudfjkfg PLEATHE plot w/ him. leave a like. two likes. that’s not even possible. i may change his fc in the future b/c like ... i’m currently making his gif icons as i go and to b frank ,,, it’s rly hard sdjfkgh but i love him. so we’ll see. sdjnfkmgh

TRIGGER WARNING - DEATH, MURDER, MENTAL HEALTH ISSUES, DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

a e s t h e t i c s

fingers across keyboards and piano keys, m&m’s scattered, vintage gaming consoles and tangled wires, worn vans and broken skateboards, banging of drums and splintering drumsticks, deep rhythms beating with your heart, the hum of a hefty computer and the buzz of a monitor, green text against black screens, unruly hair unkempt, flannels filling closets, bloody baseball bats, posters lining up and down walls, loud punk music shaking the walls, glares and whispers, the suffocation that comes with loneliness, pills rattling in their bottles, unmade beds.

general info !!

full name: apollo casimir amoretto

nickname(s): caz, polly, lover boy, 2000 (b/c of his screen names lmaoo)

b.o.d. - january 31st, aquarius boi

label(s): the escapist, the hellion, the insurgent, the netizen, etc. etc.

height: hitting 6′0″

hometown: west ham, kansas !

sexuality: bi...? fucking. it’s pride month ofc he’s bi.

his stats are TBD but his pinterest is HERE !

biography !!

cristian amoretto and camilla silvestri had a romance that could be described turbulent at best, and down right explosive at worst

cristian, a native italian actor whose career began before he could walk, and camilla, the daughter of two italian immigrants with big dreams in a small town, met on the set of a coffee shop. their love story began quickly, dating within only a few months of knowing each other and engaged before the year was up

camilla walked down the aisle 6 months pregnant with lil’ baby apollo, who was then born in west ham, kansas, aka the town that camilla’s family had settled in

was raised primarily by his mother and grandparents! his father was often off shooting movies, leaving camilla to take on the role of stay-at-home mom despite her own dreams of making it big as an actress

apollo grew up as a huge momma’s boy -- i mean, god, he just really loved this mother, y’know? his relationship with his father was much rockier because of his ... lack of being around.

when his grandparents died around the age of eight, that’s when things got...worse. it felt as if camilla’s parents were the only barrier between camilla and cristian’s budding wrath.

it became more apparent that cristian was not meant for the family life, his anger quick and his fists quicker, stinging words and venomous glares. a control freak who couldn’t handle camilla being an independent woman.

this wasn’t apparent to the neighbors, or much of the town in general, because the amorettos were such a prominent family up in their mini-mansion in oak ridge -- it was hard to imagine that their life was anything but exquisite and dreamlike.

this was, of course, up until camilla filed for divorce and a restraining order in the same day, face bruised and nearly unrecognizable. she, obviously, got custody of apollo.

at this point in time, apollo was fourteen and...pretty stoked for them to get away from his father. they holed up in southside and life continued as normal. for the time being. gossip swarmed apollo at school surrounding the circumstance which was annoying, to say the least. it led to him becoming withdrawn from the other students, not getting the whole ... gossip appeal.

in hindsight, they should’ve moved out of west ham. death threats in the form of letters and the eerie feeling of eyes constantly being on them came to a halt on apollo’s graduation day: the day that his father also, coincidentally, murdered his mother.

for making me miss out on years of my son’s life, was cristian’s excuse as he was escorted from the bloody crime scene at their apartment and into the police car.

obviously, cristian was convicted and sentenced to prison. apollo still has dreams about testifying in court against his father.

and then apollo became known not as the son of two celebrities, but the son of a murderer. total bummer !

became even more withdrawn and almost dropped out of college a few good times! the only thing that kept him rooted to west ham was his band.

and now he can’t leave, and he’s surrounded by people who all look at him weird and he feels like they’re all expecting him to be like his father, and he’s not, but god -- when people expect you to be one way, it’s so hard to act otherwise. it’s just not a good time !

pretty much why he went on the service trip tbh ... like, y’know ... if ppl want to believe that he’s just as bad as his dad then damn ! he was gonna wreck sm havoc on the trip, just being an absolute nuisance.

personality !!

his main focuses are computers / video games, drums / his band, and like ... skating ... vaping ... gamer things, y’know.

from a young age he’d always been very fascinated by video games, and being the Rich Boi (tm) that he was, ended up with a whole lot of them to play, on a whole bunch of consoles.

but like ... he’s a PC guy :/ he may have a super rare nintendo 64 console or two but nothing can beat his dual-monitor set up with his hand-build computer !

he also got real into hacking, y’know, just small things like watching security cameras in different cities and occasionally changing his grades b/c like ... who wouldn’t ? also ... cheated in dark souls. fucking loser.

his favorite games to play were always multiplayer games online like WoW and overwatch so !! he’s pretty fucking mad he can’t play them anymore. like. so mad. genuinely furious. he’s been trying to hack his way into like ... wifi or something dumb, ever since they got stranded in new west ham, but he’s had no luck !

he joined a band in high school because he was angsty and young, and like, turned out to be really good on drums ?? they had like ... some real big jimmy eat world / green day / say anything / old school fall out boy vibes. just a whole bunch of ‘fuck the government, fuck the authority, anarchy, rebellion, revolt revolt revolt’ angry rock music that got a buuunch of noise complaints during practice.

his role in the band was essentially the ~nerdy~ one, because he was a gamer, but like he was also Edgy and Angry and wore all black like Constantly (he still does who are we kidding)

probably paints his nails black and has a nose ring b/c gamers can be edgy too !!

huuuuuge junk food junkie. like ... he will consume Everything and Anything unhealthy. has a huge sweet tooth, he can’t remember the last time he’s drank straight up water.

but like ... he’s a loner pretty much. only friends he really bothered keeping were his bandmates and like ! half of them went missing along with the rest of the town so ! he’s feeling a lil’ lost

but not lost enough to do Nothing, y’know ?? coming back to west ham to an empty town awoke his little baby survivalist in him, probably due to a lot of survival games he played online, and he immediately took over his old home in oak ridge ! it was pretty much rotting there with his dad in jail, but not anymore !!

has also probably broken into a few homes already tbh b/c he’s just. ruthless. impulsive. if it feels like the end of the world then he’s yolo’ing, he’s peace-ing out, u cannot stop him.

uuhhh so he’s got this fucking...pomsky, right? her name is tulip. she was camilla’s before she passed away and like, what is apollo gonna do, huh ? put the dog in a shelter ? hell fucking nah. that’s his dog now.

unfortunately tulip isn’t the most .... tough looking dog. apollo set up a bunch of fucking speakers around the property of his dad’s house and plays large barking noises whenever somebody gets too close, just to ward off intruders, but like ... there’s no fucking big dogs man. it’s just apollo and tulip.

this isn’t like a Personality Trait but idk where to put it so ! apollo’s on antidepressants b/c like ... y’know ... the whole dad-murdering-mom thing sort of fucked him up a lot ! they make him feel pretty blah and diminished his sex drive so like ... hook ups aren’t really an option for him atm !

besides that he smokes a lot of weed b/c self medication

he’s ... sort of an asshole. like ... he can be rude and he doesn’t have much of a filter and i don’t know if there’s any softness left to him ! he just really misses his mom and his bandmates and has a lot of wishes involving changing the past and he reacts badly to things because he’s so defensive and on edge constantly.

he misses twitter the most, tho.

no but he’s just like. .. sad gamer boi ... a man and his dog ... who also carries like five knives on him and definitely knows where his dad kept his gun.

like he’s not socially awkward or necessarily Bad with people .. he’s just bad with people :/ doesn’t try hard enough ! is a little too apathetic ! chaotic to true neutral

wanted connections !!

i envision his band to have like ... four or five members including him. two guitar electric guitar, one bass, one drums / keyboard, any of them singing idk that’s not important. and since two of them have Disappeared, i’d like the One (or two) that Remains ! anarchy boys !

generally .. anybody else who is tryn to survive, that maybe he can bond with or completely clash with ??

i’d love enemies, just ppl he Refuses to get along with or they are just on bad terms for whatever reason

people he’s trying to not ! not get along with ! but it just doesn’t work out b/c like ... lbr, apollo’s pretty bad with other people.

just any falling outs.

uuhh ... maybe a few somewhat-friendships ! like... awkward acquaintances

ppl he knew primarily from high school / haven’t spoken to since

maybe one or two ppl who’s soft towards him or he’s soft towards or vice versa b/c like ! i’ll b real .. it’s pretty nice to have !

ex-flings, ex-somethings, ex-gfs, bfs, anything from the past.

hookup gone bad b/c he couldn’t get it up b/c antidepressants be like that (this is based off of a true story can we get a sad yeehaw in here)

gaming pals from before no wifi.

skater buds. vaping buds. b/c i can confirm that apollo owns like three juuls. stoner buds.

someone he’s like ... hesitantly forming an alliance with b/c sometimes it’s easier when you have someone on ur team ! b/c then drama when one of them betrays the other uwu

somebody trying 2 break into his house b/c u Know it’s got some good shit in there but he’s just like ‘alexa play dogs barking audio’ and then ur muse is like ... there’s no fucking dogs

juul pod dealer. that’s all.

i’m down for anything rly !! pleathe hmu !!

#apogeeintro #god i'm sorry this took so long #death tw #mental illness tw #it's implied but yknow #murder tw #domestic violence tw

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hailtothegeekbaby · 2 years

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Bo Lings: Delicious Chinese Food in Kansas City, Missouri

During Planet Comicon 2021 in August, we decided to venture out for some dinner and see a little of Kansas City while we were there. And of course we chose one of our favorite things to get: Chinese food. (more…)

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abrclub · 6 years

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ABR Club Exclusive: Interview with Kip

If you've ever stopped by the merch table at an August Burns Red show, there's a good chance you've met their merch guy, Christopher "Kip" Hondru. Having been a fan of the band for nearly ten years, Kip and I developed a casual acquaintanceship through many merch table transactions over the years. While following ABR on The Phantom Anthem Tour in January and February, I had the chance to meet up with Kip in Milwaukee, WI where he gave me a tour of the historic Eagles Club venue and sat down afterwards to talk about tour life, photography, and how he spends his time when he's not on tour.

Photo by Ray Duker

David: How did you get the nickname Kip? Do you prefer Kip or Christopher?

Kip: It's something my sister called me when I was younger. Friends and family always call me that, and it just kind of stuck around. I'm told that Kip is a nickname of Christopher. In regards to which name I use when I'm introducing myself to somebody, it depends on who I'm with. If I'm with my friends, I'll introduce myself as Kip. If I'm some place where I'm by myself, I'll go straight to Christopher. I do like that name a little better, but I'm not picky. I was named after my grandfather, so I think that's why I like the name Christopher. I use Kip when I'm selling merch for ABR, unless I'm trying to be funny. Then I'll give them a funny name. Sometimes it's fun to mess with the kids [laughs].

David: How did you get introduced to ABR, and how did you start selling merch for them?

Kip: I grew up with a lot of the guys in the band, went to the same school (Manheim Central), and rode the school bus with JB. I've known Brent since second grade, so I've always been around and would always help out here and there with local shows. When I was in college I would go out with them during the summer or on weekends when time allowed it. In 2009 I came on full-time when our previous merch guy was looking to get out of it. I wanted to stop my 9-to-5 job and go on tour because my friends were doing some cool stuff.

David: Did you go to Manheim Central from 1st through 12th grade?

Kip: Yup, born and raised. JB and Brent went as well. Matt was homeschooled, and Jordan [Jordan Tuscan, the original bassist] was homeschooled along with Matt. Jon Hershey, the original singer, was in my grade. I knew him longer than I knew Brent, probably by about two years. JB was in the grade above us. Josh Bowman, our tour manager, was in JB's class.

David: What's it like in Manheim with August Burns Red? Does everybody know them, or know of them?

Kip: A lot of people do. When I meet someone and they're like "oh what do you do?", I tell them I work for a band. They'll ask "what band?" and I'll say August Burns Red, and they'll be like "oh I think I've heard of them!" or "oh I saw them in the newspaper the other day!" [laughs].

David: Where did you go to college, and what did you major in?

Kip: I went to The Art Institute of Philadelphia from 2003 to 2007 and majored in photography. I really excelled at digital output and large format printing. I also did a lot of traditional film photography as well and would mix the two mediums together, scan the negatives, and then print them out digitally. I used specialized cameras called large format cameras, which are unique to work with and something I enjoyed.

David: I know you have a camera collection. How many cameras do you have in your collection? Do you use them?

Kip: I'm not sure, maybe over 200. Not all of them are work. I try to use them, but other things have kept me busy recently. I always try to keep a camera around or on me. I have one on tour with me, but I've only shot two pictures so far [laughs]. A lot of what I shoot doesn't need to be rushed around, so I'm just amassing images. I have a spreadsheet of the cameras in my collection, but it's not up-to-date. I kind of stopped adding to it and recently sold a lot of cameras.

David: It's always surprised me that you're really into photography and collect cameras, yet you don't use Instagram. Why is that?

Kip: I was never much about posting and sharing a lot of things. I never really got into that. I'm trying to stay off my phone much as I can [laughs]. It becomes an annoying habit.

Editor's note: If you want to check out Kip's photography, visit www.christopherhondru.com.

David: You used to post on Twitter a lot about things that happened at shows while selling merch and you started the Shoes Got Weird photo series. What happened to that?

Kip: I just lost interest in that stuff. I do think that photo series was funny, as a quick off-the-hip kind of thing. That hashtag came out of one particular tour I was on. I was working for The Devil Wears Prada, and they would spend a lot of time at the mall on off days, so I would be walking around the mall with them killing time. We would walk into shoe stores, and I would be like "dude, shoes got weird! Look at these!", and then it just became a thing [laughs].

David: What's your favorite part of selling merch?

Kip: I can't pinpoint just one thing. It's a combination of a bunch of stuff, like traveling with my friends, seeing new sights, and continually meeting new people. Like you for example, and getting to recognize your face and getting to know your name, seeing you come back time and time again, and seeing how stoked you guys are as fans. It keeps me going just as much as it keeps the guys in the band going and excited. It'll be sad the day I stop touring, because I won't be able to see everybody who I'm acquaintances with as easily.

David: What are some of your favorite ABR merch items you've sold over the years?

Kip: I like selling guitar picks. They're fun, unique, and collectable. I've become a pick collector myself because of selling them, and I've met lots of pick collectors through that. Now I save some picks for certain people because I think they're great guys and I want to make sure they get some picks. I've got two of every pick we've sold ever since we started selling them at the merch table. Someday I'll put them all in a frame of some sort.

David: What are your favorite cities, venues, and places to eat on tour?

Kip: A lot of people ask me this question. My quick answer is I like a lot of the smaller college towns, particularly in the Midwest, like Spokane, Washington; Lawrence, Kansas; Tulsa, Oklahoma; Des Moines, Iowa; Missoula, Montana. Those are cool because they're smaller towns, so if I wanted to check something out it's not far away from the venue. I usually have limited time before a show to go check something out, so if I'm close enough I can maybe ride my skateboard there in half the time I could walk there. It's usually a cool cheeseburger joint, burrito shop, or a bar/brewery that I'd like to check out, maybe a skatepark sometimes.

David: I didn't know that you skate. Do you use a longboard or a normal skateboard?

Kip: Cruiser board, and some longboarding. Not as much as I used to. I used to skate in the skatepark when I was younger. I'm not trying to do any tricks anymore [laughs]. I'm strictly cruising around. I like snowboarding a lot. I don't get to do that much, so that's where longboarding comes into play. Being on Warped Tour really got me into that because it had a lot of parking lot space, so it was an easy way to get around. We had a group of friends who liked to skate and we would find cool hills. That was always fun and something I enjoyed about going on Warped Tour.

David: So do you bomb hills a little bit then?

Kip: Yeah [laughs], I'm not trying to get max speed, but I will carve pretty fast.

David: Besides cities, what are some of your favorite venues?

Kip: One of my favorite venues right now is The Fillmore in Philadelphia. It's a newer one, beautiful, it's good on all fronts. It has good parking for us, and there's an easy load-in. It's also in a cool neighborhood. There's lot of things to do around there. I also like Philadelphia a lot. A venue a lot of us like in in Belgium. It's called AB Brussels. It's a scenic venue too and state-of-the-art. It's completely soundproof, like you'll walk outside and have no clue there's a metal show going on inside [laughs]. It's in a historic town with lots of cool architecture, which is something I enjoy about touring. I like architecture and history and being able to see something that had some kind of tie to the past and is still around. This building (the Eagles Club) is an example. I really dig that stuff. Anything that's an old theater that's still being used is cool to me, especially if I can find an old picture of what it used to be.

David: What do you do when you're not on tour?

Kip: A lot of different hobbies, odd jobs, and things to make money where I can here and there. I don't actually look for other tours, but if they fall in my lap, sometimes I'll take them. Lately I've been really involved with making cider. I've been a longtime home-brewer, so I started making hard cider and learning about apples and different apple products. Living in Lancaster County, PA, there's a lot of farm history and barns that I'm intrigued by, so I'm exploring local history back home through the history of the apple.

David: What's your favorite kind of beer?

Me: I like all kinds of beers and ciders and the whole gamut of the spectrum. I don't have an absolute favorite, but I definitely like something that's very flavorful and hopefully 100% real ingredients and no adjuncts if that makes sense. That sounds kind of nerdy [laughs]. So like a good farm-based or orchard-based cider, rather than random ciders you're gonna find at any bar.

David: If someone is visiting Lancaster, what would you recommend they check out?

Kip: Drive into the country side if you can. Go see the farms and see an Amish buggy. There's lot of cool things to see in the city as well. There's Central Market which is the oldest farmer's market in the country. There's good food and stands to get produce. There's tons of restaurants and cafes. A lot of people like Prince Street Cafe. I like a lot of bar restaurants like Pressroom, Taproom Spring House, Lancaster Dispensing Company, The Fridge, Quips Pub, Lancaster County Brewing Company, Horse Inn, and Isaac's Restaurant.

David: Is there anything else you would like to add?

Kip: Come to the 15-Year Anniversary Show! We haven't talked about it yet, but we might do some cool merch items there. This is the first time it's on the record, I haven't said this to anyone else, but there's a small chance I might bring some of my personal poster collection there. I have a flat file cabinet at home with photos and posters I've collected over the years that have been piling up.

#August Burns Red #Kip #interview #ABR Club Exclusive

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waywardnerd67 · 6 years

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Back Home

Summary: Nikki moves back to her hometown after a bad break-up. Finally, after a year she is back on her feet and has a chance run in with fate. Characters: Dean Winchester, Nikki (OFC) Pairing: Dean and Nikki (OFC) Warnings: Angst/Fluff Word Count: 2515 (With lyrics) Louden Swain Song: “St. Louis” – Able-Legged Heroes (Lyrics Bold) A/N: This is for @mrswhozeewhatsis 2018 Louden Swain FanFic/FanArt Project. This will be the only story I ever name a character after myself. I only did that because this is about my hometown and also why not. Flashbacks are italicize. As always this is unbeta so all mistakes are mine. Likes, comments and reblogs are splendid and I will love you doubly for them! Enjoy! **Special Note**: I chose this song specifically because when I read the lyrics and listened to it I immediately began writing a story in my head. There is also the fact that I was born, raised and still live in St. Louis. For a song to inspire me to write a story about my hometown is truly something special.

So I'm back home But what remains I watch the snow Drift off my windowpane

I sat back in my seat resting my head against the cold window as the world zoomed past me. The steady rhythm of the train helped my body to relax for the first time in days. Glancing to the left I saw a couple snuggled together bringing up hard memories for me. I turned my music up letting the rock tunes flush out the unwanted thoughts. I closed my eyes for just a moment and there was his perfect face. Short, spiky dirty blond hair that was always soft to the touch. Strong, chiseled jaw that was covered by stubble. Full red lips that sent chills down my body whenever they were pressed against my skin. His nose and cheeks dusted with freckles that were more noticeable in the summer sun. Finally, his eyes. Eyes that pierced through every wall I had built around me. Eyes that were like looking into a heavy forest on a bright spring day. Eyes filled with constant worry, guilt, love and protectiveness. I opened my eyes blurring from tears. I closed them again so they could fall.

Opening them slowly again a slow smile spread across my lips. The train was pulling into the St. Louis Amtrak station. I looked fondly at the skyline I grew up taking for granted. The tall buildings filled with regular people working nine to five. Hotels buzzing with guests here to see everything St. Louis could offer. Most of all, the centerpiece of my hometown, the Gateway to the West. The Arch. Standing six hundred and thirty feet into the low hanging clouds. The Arch grounds were covered in snow making it a picture perfect sight except for the aching in my chest as the train came to a stop. I grabbed my bag slinging it across my body and pulled my stocking cap down on my head as my long, wavy chocolate brown hair covered my ears protecting them from the frozen tundra that is St. Louis in December.

The breeze makes me choke And all the time the answers were in front of my face I try to think about tomorrow but I can't forget today

Walking off the train, I look to see if my best friend, Megan, is there yet. Pulling out my phone I dial her number anxiously awaiting her answer. “Nikki? What’s up?” she said obviously forgetting she was supposed to pick me up. “Hi Megalynz, you were supposed to come get me from the train station downtown. Remember?” Her apologies started flying as I could hear her frantically getting her things. I looked around and decided I could probably walk to Union Station making it easier for her to get me. I told her to meet me there and to take her time. I pulled my heavy coat tighter around me and put my earbuds back in to block out the city chaos all around. As I walked, I marveled at how small I was compared to everything around me. The buildings, the parking garages and even the people hurrying along the streets to their jobs or event. The ache in my chest was growing painfully choking me. Shaking my head, I pushed forward concentrating on the lyrics flowing into my ears.

When I finally reached Union Station, Megan is waiting for me with hot chocolate and an ‘I’m sorry for forgetting you’ donut. As she drives back to her house where I will be living until I get on feet she talks about everything going on in her life. I smile and nod at all the appropriate moments and silently grateful she never asks why I shipped all my stuff to her. We pull into her driveway that is freshly shoved by her boyfriend and she gives me the five-cent tour. “The basement is your domain. There is a living area, a bedroom and a full bathroom. You can stay with us for as long as you need.” She said to me as we walk down into the basement seeing all my boxes from Kansas. “Thank you Megalynz. I think for the rest of the evening I just want to rest down here by myself and get through some of my boxes.” She nodded as she left me be.

I'm back home I feel depressed I found your clothes

Unpacking my boxes was more traumatic than I was expecting. I found a few of his flannels I had stolen to wear with his scent on them still. Whiskey, leather and car grease. I picked up my favorite red and black one holding it to my face as a wave of fresh tears came down my cheeks. My chest was burning from me trying to hold in my emotions and finally I let them out screaming into the shirt. Rage bubbling up inside me as I threw the shirts in a corner and laid down on the small couch sobbing. Memories of better times flooding my head and overwhelming my soul. Why did he have to consume me? Why could he not just leave me in peace?

“Dean Winchester put me down!” I giggled as he spun me around from behind in the Bunker library. “No more research, Nerdy. Time to spend some time with me.” He said as I glanced back at him seeing him wiggling his eyebrows. I started laughing as he led me to our bedroom, “Sorry pretty boy, Sam and I have to finish looking for a lead on the First Blade since Crowley obviously dropped the ball. Now, if you’re a good boy and help us then I will spend all the time in the world with you.” I started to drag him back to the library where Sam was chuckling to himself. “Nope!” Dean said grabbing me around the waist again carrying me down the hallway. “Sam! Sam, help me!” I called out as I heard him laughing. “You’re on your own with him, Nikki.” He yelled as I sighed loudly in frustration. “Dean, you’re being a very bad boy right now.” I said placing my hands on my hips as he closed the door nodding, “Yes, but that’s why you love me.” Rolling my eyes, I nodded slowly as he closed the distance between us.

Why leave a note? Why leave a note? Your words are a joke

The memory felt so real in my mind that I could feel his strong arms around me. Holding me tightly giving a false sense of safety and comfort. I sat back up looking through the one box I knew had exactly what I needed in this moment. Safely contained in a wooden box and wrapped in bubble wrap was the bottle of Jim Beam bourbon I packed away. I preferred Bulleit whiskey, but it made me think of him too much so I was making the move to bourbon to drown my sorrows. I opened the bottle and tip the spout to my lips. The burn down my throat was comforting and warmed my body. After a few more swigs from the bottle I placed it on the small coffee table and spotted something in the shirt pocket of one of his flannels. I crawled over sitting in the middle of the shirt pile and pulled out the piece paper opening it.

“Nikki, I know you’re mad at me. I know there is nothing I could ever do to get you to forgive me. Hell, I don’t forgive myself for what happened. I was trying to protect you and Sam from the Blade… from me. I hurt you both in ways I could never imagine but especially you. I wish you would just talk to me one last time. Let me try to make things right. Let me say I’m sorry in person. I love you, Nikki. I was never able to say that out loud to you and I don’t want to go through life without saying it at least once to you. All the women I have been with and none of them make me feel as you do. I’m the best version of me when you are around and I need you. I love you and I need you. Please come back to me. -Dean”

I ran my fingers over his handwriting that was distinctively beautiful in his own way just as he was. All this time waiting for him to man up and say those words. Three little words and it was in a damn letter. I fold it the letter up walked into my new bedroom placing it in the top drawer of my dresser. Standing there letting the anger from everything that had happened and reading his letter fueled me. There was no time for sulking, weeping or wallowing. No, it was time for me to get my life together and not think about the past. Look forward and move on.

I found my old records And all my books I found my old Bee-Gees But the turntable, you took I made a call into work I said I can't make it in today I'd sleep it off But I'm too awake And all the time the jokes that did not make any sense I finally figured out the punchline was at my expense, yeah My expense

Six months after leaving everything behind and moving back home I had found a job and was able to move out into my own apartment. Megan was on her way over for our weekly dinner and movie night. When I opened the door for her I was met with a large box being carried by her boyfriend. “Hi, you didn’t need to bring me a present.” She chuckled at me as she kissed her boyfriend goodbye. “It arrived for you this morning. It’s from Kansas so it must be from…” I held up my hand for her not to finish. “Well, it can wait until tomorrow after I’m off work. Right now, it is girls’ night and Captain Steve Rogers is waiting for us.” Megan laughed as we settled in with beer and pizza.

That night I tossed and turned thinking about the box. Not getting any sleep, I decided to call into work for the first time and tried to sleep off the funk that was stuck on me like a fungus. After lying in bed for what seemed forever I got up picking up the box and placing it on my bed. Cutting it open with the knife I kept at my bedside I looked inside to see a bunch of my things and another letter. I set the letter to the side and looked through my things. Quite a few of my books that Sam had borrowed throughout my time living in the Bunker. A few records I had bought to play on Dean’s turntable and now had no way of playing them for myself. Finally, my favorite band t-shirt of Dean’s It looked like it had been wadded up in the bottom of his closet which pissed me off.

“Nikki, is that my Led Zeppelin 1977 Tour shirt?” Dean asked as I nodded looking down at it. “You said I could grab any shirt from your bag to borrow since all my shirts are stained in Vamp gunk.” They had just finished a case in Nebraska taking out a nest of Vamps. Sam had been working a case in Sioux Falls with Jody and Claire. “You so know that is my favorite shirt, right?” I looked up nodding as if I did not know everything about him already. “If anyone were to mistreat that shirt in any way I would be heartbroken and upset.” When I focused on him I saw he was actually nervous about me wearing the shirt. “Do you want me to take it off?” There it was, his tell. The corner of his lip slowly rising into a smirk as he nodded. “You’re a jerk. You were just trying to Vulcan Mind Meld me into taking off my shirt!” I shouted as I threw a pillow at him. He caught laughing, “It almost worked too.” I huffed sitting on the bed brushing my long hair. “Awe, don’t be mad plus it looks better on you than it does on me. You should keep it.” I kept my shoulders straight and huffed. “You know I will keep because you were being a jerk.” I glanced over my shoulder to see him pouting as I looked back I smiled as I did a victory dance in my head.

I picked up the letter surprised to see Sam’s handwriting. “Hey Nikki, I hope you are well. I miss you a lot and have been tempted to find your new number to call you. I was cleaning Dean’s room out and found a few of your things in there. I also wanted you to have your books back. Things are… complicated here since you left, but I understand why you did. Sorry, the shirt looks like a giant ball of winkles. Dean has been sleeping with it every night since you left and now that he has left the Bunker I figured I would send it to you. He’s hunting hardcore now across the country by himself. I mainly stay in the Bunker to do research for him and take on local cases or work with Jody and the girls. He says he wants to be alone and it worries me but you know how stubborn he is. Anyway, I’ll stop blubbering. I hope to hear from you when you’re ready of course. Miss you. -Sam” I folded the letter putting it with the other one in my top dresser drawer. I missed Sam and Castiel a lot, but it was for the better to have a clean break.

I looked out my office window admiring the snow falling on the streets of downtown as my manager walked in. “Happy one year of putting up with me.” She said as I laughed. She sat down the small cupcake on my desk sitting in one of the chairs. “Thank you, Suzy. It’s hard to believe it’s been a year already.” She nodded as we chatted about upcoming events and meetings for the next hour. She got up to leave, “Why don’t you get out of here early. There is nothing that can’t wait until Monday. Have a great weekend.” I smiled thanking her and started packing up my laptop. As I walked out on to the busy sidewalk I had no idea I had a date with fate. Looking down as I grabbed my phone out of my pocket I ran into a sturdy body knocking me backwards. “I’m so sor…” I looked up into a familiar pair of forest green eyes, “Dean?” I whispered.

With nowhere to go And all the time the answers were in front of my face I try to think about tomorrow but I can't forget today I cannot forget today (Today) I'm back home

My Nerd Herd: @waywardbaby @waywardrose13 @carryonmywaywardcaptain @anotherwaywardsister @ladywinchester1967 @dwgrl1903 @akshi8278 @ericaprice2008 @mirandaaustin93 @spnbaby-67 @time-travel-bouqet @1967-essentialghoul @weirdoblogger69

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thorne93 · 6 years

Text

Inexplicable Fate (Part 14)

Prompt: When a blinding pain overtakes you at work, what will be in store for your life when you run into the Winchesters and learn Lucifer’s son is about to be born?

Warning: Language, pain, angst, violence, fighting (verbal and physical)…fear of insanity??

Word Count: 1923

Notes: This is for @roxyspearing gif challenge. (This is the part with the gif!!!) It’s a Jack x Reader fic (so Season 12 and 13 spoilers) Long, slow burn, (a little slow paced at first).

Feedback always appreciated. Feel free to send a message, ask, or leave a comment! :D

Beta’d by the ever fabulous @like-a-bag-of-potatoes

Forever Tags: @capsmuscles @cocosierra94 @essie1876 @magpiegirl80@letsgetfuckingsuperwholocked @iamwarrenspeace @marvel-imagines-yes-please @superwholocked527 @missinstantgratification @thejemersoninferno@rda1989 @munlis @thefridgeismybestie @bubblyanarocks3 @random-fluffy-pink-unicorn @hardcollectionworldtrash @igiveupicantthinkofausername@kaliforniacoastalteens @feelmyroarrrr @kaeling @friendlyneighbourhoodweirdo

IF Tags: @iamafishandigosplish @myfamilysincarolina @ilovemyangelforever @kazuha159 @bisexualdolphinthings @mysteriouslydeliciouswerewolf@justiceiswater @millard-our-savior @polkadottedpillowcase @hunter-demigod-timelord @octo-cow52 @damnedangel98 @bad-moose

Dean Winchester: @akshi8278 @mogaruke

Sam Winchester: @mogaruke @lenawiinchester

Castiel: @lenawiinchester

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12 Part 13

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A couple weeks went by and things got slightly less tense between Dean and Jack. You and Sam had talked and you agreed to not push Dean to like Jack and to not push Jack to use his powers. Maybe if the stress was off everyone, things would sort themselves out.

You took it upon yourself to start digging into all the angel lore you could. Mainly, to see if you could find out what you were, but also to find out anything for Jack as well. If you weren’t reading, you were practicing your powers, with Jack occasionally coming in to watch you. You ended up joking with him a bit, and he seemed to warm up to you a lot, as he came around you as much as he could. You got him into Star Wars and other nerdy things because you thought it might help if he watched some cinema to understand the human experience.

Sometimes, he asked you to show him how to do something. How to move the pencil, how to teleport, how to focus his inhuman strength. You happily showed him, reveling in the chance to teach him, to be with him, to be near him...

He had confided in you about how he felt nothing when he hurt people. He told you that he said he was sorry, that he felt bad, but he really didn’t. You assured him that it didn’t matter what you were in this world, what mattered is what you do, what choices you make, that defines what kind of person you are. He seemed to like talking with you, because both of you were struggling to find out who you were. Neither of you really knew where you came from.

Sam and you bonded a bit over reading, he helped you find books for what you were looking for and even did some investigating himself, but ultimately finding nothing. But the time together was nice.

Dean and you got back on a better track. He wasn’t avoiding you anymore and his overall behavior was better...ish. You could tell he needed something to lift his spirits, but there was nothing you could offer. How could you? He’d lost most of his family within sixty seconds of each other, and he’d seen it happen.

Sam and Dean took Jack on a hunt. You were against it at first, but Sam pressed that Jack needed the air, and Dean needed to get to know him. The hunt went well, especially since Jack saved Sam and Dean’s life. Jack had told you that Dean even said he did a good job. Which brightened your life, but you knew ultimately, the two of them had a long way to go.

Jack and you were alone while Sam and Dean went on a case. For you, this felt like a test of your will power. You’d never been fully alone with Jack, but now, with no one around, those feelings that lingered beneath the surface were brought to the full frontal of your mind. It also didn’t help the fact that you seemed to be falling in love with him. He was so innocent, and sweet, yet strong and wise. The two of you clicked in every way.

The two of you were sitting in the library as Jack tried to look for a case, and you read lore, but when you looked up, he looked so handsome you could barely stay in your seat.

Lustful images flashed in your head, as if you were watching a rapid slideshow. Moaning, sweating, crying out his name.Things you’d had in your dreams before. Ever since you’d felt this attraction to him, you’d had many dreams of Jack. Every night, in fact. Some sweet, innocent, like picnics in parks, walking side by side in malls, holding hands in the kitchen...Some, not so sweet and innocent. Sometimes they were so powerful, it woke you up, only to find you’d been sweating heavily during the nearly lucid dream.

You didn’t tell anyone. How could you? Dean would be the last person who would want to hear it, Jack wouldn’t even know what to make of it, and Sam would probably have zero advice or ideas. So you kept it to yourself.

But right now, with the way his hair was laying, the way he was frowning at the screen, he looked so...goddamn attractive you could barely contain yourself. Being alone didn’t help. Fantasies of pinning him against the table and claiming him ravaged your brain.

You’d never felt this way about a man, and it was driving you insane. You just wanted to touch him, to touch his lips to yours. Was that too much to ask?

“Y/N? Are you okay?” Jack asked suddenly.

“Huh? What?”

“I asked if you’re okay…”

“Oh, right. Yeah. Never better,” you lied.

Then you heard footsteps, indicating he approach of Sam and Dean, saving you from your embarrassment.

“How’d it go?” Jack asked.

“Yeah, how was the hunt?” you wondered, looking to them.

“Well…” Dean started.

“Um,” Sam said.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” you asked, panic already starting to take hold in your chest.

But then you heard more steps and your head turned...to see Castiel.

You’d never felt so much joy in your life as you did at that moment.

“Hello, Jack...Y/N,” Castiel greeted.

“Castiel?” Jack breathed in shock.

“Yeah, it’s me,” he answered.

You got up from your chair and rushed over to your angel friend, wrapping him in an embrace. “I’m so sorry,” you whispered.

“It’s okay,” he assured, hugging you back.

“I missed you so much,” you confessed in a whisper, gripping him tight.

“And I you,” he replied.

You let him go, so that he could see and talk to Jack, but held onto his hand. Jack asked how Cas was alive and Dean echoed it.

“Jack, did you bring Cas back?” Sam wondered.

“I don’t know,” he answered. “I wanted him back. I begged for him to come back...but…”

“So did I,” you interjected. “I prayed and begged too…”

Curious expressions took over everyone in the room before Dean said, “Well here he is.”

“Because of us?” you wondered.

“We don’t know. Maybe, but we aren’t sure,” Sam answered.

“Thank you, both of you,” Castiel said and you smiled at him, sweet and soft.

“I missed you so much,” Jack said as he stepped forward to wrap his arms around the angel. You let Cas’s hand go and stepped away, giving them a proper introduction.

“They tell me you’re doing well,” Castiel said.

“I am. Watch this,” he said as he walked over and made the pencil move, easily, you beaming with pride at his side. He went on to tell you all of a possible zombie case. To which Dean was thrilled for, in Dodge City, Kansas.

The car ride over wasn’t incredibly comfortable as you had three to the backseat, but you were in the car with the people you cared most about in this world, so you didn’t mind one bit. Dean picked the Wild Bill suite, which was not your style of suite, but hey, this was Dean’s little vacation, and he needed something to make him happy.

Dean was ecstatic with all the cowboy memorabilia and you couldn’t help but be delighted for him. He deserved this.

“Y/N, you can have the couch, since I don’t sleep much,” Jack offered.

“Well Castiel doesn’t sleep at all,” you remarked.

Dean and Sam got settled while you, Cas, and Jack reunited. Jack asked Castiel so many questions, and you just sat, listening, happy he was home. They talked for hours, and you knew Jack was hearing things from Castiel he desperately needed.

The four of them went out and worked the case for two days, and you were reading the Bible when the four of them returned, and they didn’t look too good.

“Is everything okay--Jack!” you cried, jumping up at the sight of his bullet holes. He’d been shot. Clearly not hurt, but it always scared you, nonetheless. Your hands flitted to his jacket, barely touching the holes. “What happened?”

“I killed someone,” he nearly growled as he pushed past you and went to sit on the couch. Sam, Dean, and Cas gathered on the opposite side of the room to talk. You joined them.

“What happened?” you said in the lowest voice you could manage.

“We caught the ghoul, we were in a showdown, when Jack thought he could take him down. As it happens, the guard for the bank the ghoul had just robbed ran out, getting caught in the blast zone,” Dean explained.

“There was nothing he could’ve done,” Sam assured. “By the time Jack started the attack, it was too late, the guard was already there.”

Concern painted itself on your face as your heart ached for him.

“I’ll go talk to him,” you said, leaving the three of them there to talk. You went over and sat next to him. “Hey. It was an accident,” you said.

“A fatal one,” he said, not facing you, his voice low. “You weren’t there. You have no idea.”

“No, but I know you’re a good person,” you said kindly. “People have accidents all the time. You wouldn’t believe how many people do something like this,” you tried.

“Really? How many people deal with celestial powers out of their own control?” he demanded, turning to you.

“Jack...That’s not---I was just saying--”

“Well don’t. Just stop. Please. The last person I need trying to tell me it’s not my fault is you,” he said, turning away.

“Oh...Okay...I’ll just...go then,” you said as you got up. Jack needed space and you always respected that, especially at a time like now. So you left the suite and went outside for a minute, soaking up the sunshine and the warmth, trying to ignore how Jack’s response to you made you feel.

“Y/N?” Castiel said behind you.

“Hey, Cas,” you greeted lightly.

“Dean wants us to take Jack back to the bunker.”

“And leave the case?’ you wondered, confused.

“No, he’ll stay here and take care of it.”

“We should,” you agreed. “He doesn’t need to stay here.”

“You should try to talk to him, again. He’ll listen to you,” Castiel informed.

“No, he won’t,” you said, shaking your head. “You heard me in there. I tried, and he just snapped at me. He doesn’t want my help.”

“Y/N, when I look at the two of you, I see a bond. It’s unlike any we have with him. It’s like the bond Sam and Dean share. Immovable. Irrevocable. Jack...He just doesn’t want to disappoint you.”

“And how would you know that, Cas?” you asked, sardonic.

“Because I do the same thing with Sam and Dean,” he answered. “He’s mad at himself, not you.”

“I just want to help him,” you whispered. “That’s all I want.”

-------------------------

On the way back to the bunker, Castiel had tried to help Jack, but he continued to stay mad at himself. Sam and Cas backed off and didn’t bother him when you all returned home. You sat in the library with him, wanting to talk to him, wanting to console him but he said nothing for a long time.

Until he leaned forward and whispered, “I’m sorry for getting upset with you. I just...I am so sick of people getting hurt every time I try to do something good.”

“That’s what an accident is,” you reminded gently.

“Yeah? How many accidents have you had?” he wondered, anger in his hushed voice.

A solemn expression took hold of your features. “Jack...That’s not fair...You didn’t mean to hurt him, you know that.”

“Do you know why I said what I said to you?” he asked suddenly.

“When?” you wondered.

“When I said you were the last person I wanted to tell me that?”

“Oh...yes,” you said, nodding. “No, I don’t know why you said that.”

“Because...I can’t bear the thought of being evil in your eyes,” he said, peering at you, that same feeling that always washed over you, happening all over again. “I didn’t want to disappoint you…”

“That could never happen,” you assured.

“After days like today, I’m not so sure. I was just...I was trying so hard to impress you…”

“Impress me? Jack, why would you want to impress me?”

He pursed his lips and his brow furrowed as he seemed to think of a way to answer you. “Because...I want you to prove to you I can be good. So I can be someone you deserve.”

“Why do you think you need to be someone I deserve?” you wondered, desperate to know if he felt the same about you as you did him.

But the answer would have to wait because Dean opened the door just in, coming in stating he had taken care of everything, to which Sam replied “good”, and that seemed to set Jack off.

“Good?” Jack said, getting up and marching into the war room. “How is that good? I killed someone. What was his name? The guard? Did he have a family?”

You quickly followed behind him, standing to his side. “Jack, don’t,” you pleaded. “Don't do this to yourself.”

“No, I want to know,” he replied earnestly, glancing your direction briefly. “Did he?” he demanded again, his eyes set on Dean.

“Yes, he did,” Dean answered, making your weary eyes shift to him.

Sam spoke up and said, “Jack, look, this life, what we do, it's it's not easy. And we've all done things we regret.”

“Just don’t,” Jack warned, turning away from everyone. “You’re afraid of me,” he said quietly, as he went to face them again.

“No,” you assured as you took a step towards him, your need to comfort him kicking in automatically.

“No, maybe you're right. Maybe I'm just another monster,” he thought out loud, his words piercing straight through you.

“Jack...No. You’re not a monster. Monsters don’t care if they hurt someone,” you said, echoing your words from weeks ago, trying desperately to remind him that he was good.

“She’s right. You're not a monster. I thought you were. I did. But like Sam said, we've all done bad. We all have blood on our hands. So if you're a monster, we're all monsters,” Dean said as he circled the table.

“No, you don't--Every time I try and do something good, people get hurt. I thought I was getting better. I'm not...I don't know what I am, but I know I can't make the world a better place, not like this. I can't even do one good thing. And I know that if I stay, I'm gonna hurt you. All of you. And I can't. You're all I have,” he said solemnly, his eyes flashing to yours and lingering for a moment, the feeling of paradise inside them and inside you as you looked into them again.

“Jack,” you softly said taking a step towards him, but he took a step back.

“Please...don’t,” he begged, his voice breaking.

“Jack, listen,” Sam tried.

“I have to go,” he said, his head hanging.

“No, Jack,” Castiel intervened.

He held his hand up and your eyes widened. “No!” you pleaded, realizing what he was doing, but his mind was made up.

A powerwave came from his hand, blowing through you, but knocking the other three men in the room far off their feet, hitting the nearest object or wall.

“I’m so sorry,” he told them, heartbreak in his voice and face, and he disappeared.

“Jack!” Cas said when he got back up. The three of them scrambled to their feet and searched for him.

“You won’t find him,” you confirmed quietly. “He isn’t here.”

“Well where the hell did he go?” Dean demanded gruffly.

“I’m not sure. I can’t see where he is. I can only feel him,” you explained. “I need to be with him,” you said quietly, ready to teleport and be by his side no matter the cost.

But Dean asked you a question, interrupting your plans. “Why didn’t you get knocked on your ass when we did?” Dean wondered.

“I don’t know… His powers don’t affect me,” you replied.

Sam frowned at you. “Wait, the day he was born, he knocked all three of us back, that affected you.”

“I wasn’t expecting it. It was like a sucker punch, but with energy,” you explained.

“So if you can feel him, get him back here,” Dean commanded.

“He isn’t a dog, Dean,” you snapped. “I can’t just grab him by the leash and yank him back to the dog house.”

“Are you kidding me? We’ve got a ticking time bomb only you know where, and you want to let him wander?” Dean demanded, getting in your face.

“Dean,” Sam said, trying to get him to calm down.

“I didn’t say I wouldn't try try. I’m just telling you if I do find him, I can’t pull him back here even if I wanted to. I can find him, and ask, but that’s all I can do.”

“Well then do that,” he told you.

“Okay. I’ll be back if I have anything.”

#inexplicable fate #we have a gif for that #jack kline x reader #jack kline fic #jack kline #dean wincester #sam winchester #castiel

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theliterateape · 3 years

Text

Culture in Real Time

by Don Hall

“I have a surprise for you in honor of February!”

Dana and I have this thing we can’t quite find common ground upon concerning birthdays. She is a minimalist from a wholly unsentimental Pennsylvania family. I’m a materialist raised by a mother who calls presents “prizes” and gives gifts as a part of her love language.

While I’m old enough not to care, I still want my birthday to be a celebration of me. It’s small in spirit but, in that self-diagnosis we all attempt on our own psyches, I was the child of a beautiful woman who attracted men who wanted her but tolerated me. Birthdays were my mother’s way of reminding me that, at least to her, I was someone of note.

“I’m putting the blue in the toilet!”

Another unusual record skip in our marriage is those Tidy Bowl tablets you put in the tank and turns the water blue. To her, they are a sign of white trash, low culture, unnecessary expense. To me, they are an odd bluish signal of semi-wealth and extravagance.

For the most part, the toilet remains clear. She likes it that way because she can then examine the color of her urine to see if she been hydrating properly (too yellow and she’s not). Once in a moon, she indulges me with a tab of unnatural blue with a hint of ammonia. It’s stupid but I love it every time.

We are both Aquarians which means we both are almost zealous in our personal independence and the sight of her in the bedroom and I on the couch, doing our separate things in the same space, is common. We do well together.

Our differences—in terms of how we view money, consumerism, art, reading, politics—are bizarrely cultural.

My DNA is mostly Irish. Some British, a bit African American, some Native American, but mostly Irish. I have the fair skin and propensity to addictive behavior of someone Irish but culturally I’m not one who embraces Ireland or her ways. Culturally, I’m a bit trailer trash, a dash biker gang, a sprinkling of Southern United States with a Midwestern sensibility.

I’m an American mutt.

A child of the seventies, a GenX guy who came of age in the 80’s, I’m the archetype of classic rock and slightly retrograde sexist attitudes that almost every Motley Crue and Scorpions song conveys. I still call women I meet “darlin’” and “honey” as a sign of friendliness. I prefer to throw the rock and roll horns to a thumbs up. I have tattoos but most are quotes from my favorite authors.

Culturally, I’m a fucking mess, man.

I have friends who live a more culturally identifiable life. I’ll admit to being somewhat envious of them.

Arlo is black. I mean, black black. He is originally from a tiny county in Georgia and laughs as I tell him how much he fits the stereotype of a sixty year old black man from Georgia.

"You could be played in a movie by Louis Gossett, Jr." and he cackles.

Arlo has a love/hate relationship with his cultural bedrock. He loves the food. "Barbecued pork, collared greens, black-eyed peas. My gramma's kitchen table was what I think Arab suicide bombers dream of instead of virgins." He loves the music. "Mississippi John Hurt, John Hooker, Buddy Guy? Sh-eee-it." He hates the drug culture which he was surrounded by growing up. He hates the idea that all black people can dance. "No one in my family had any of that. No dancing."

Jim (his Korean name is Junghoon but everyone who knows him calls him Jim) tells me he feels out of place when he sees his family. "I guess I'm like a self-loathing Jew in that I'm Korean but by way of Decatur, Illinois." Culturally, he is a "no zone" in that his parents tried to instill the cultural markers of a second-generation Korean kid but he was never really into it. "I always hated kimchi. Hot Pockets. Pepperoni. Keep your Bibimbap to yourself. Give me a bag of Doritos, please."

Culture is comprised of four things in increasing levels of significance: symbols, heroes, rituals and values.

What the three of us all have in common is comic books. All three of us claim to have learned to read courtesy of Stan Lee.

The Fantastic Four. The Avengers. The Amazing Spiderman. The X Men.

The difference between the DC world and the Marvel world was that the heroes in DC were gods and the heroes in Marvel (mostly) were humans with godlike power.

These were the legends and fables of growing up. These were the morality tales of my youth.

From Peter Parker I learned that with great power comes great responsibility. From Logan, his mantra that "The pain let's you know you're still alive" resonated. Daredevil showed that any liability can be overcome (with the help of some radiative waste).

Bruce Banner instructed that anger can be managed. As an angry Irish-esque kid in Nowhere, Kansas during high school, I needed that lesson. Arlo loved Luke Cage ("But not the Netflix one. The one with the chains and the afro. I was country-black but he made city-black look cool.") and Jim was a huge fan of Ben Grimm ("He always felt like a freak but had his family to give him a purpose.").

I had girlfriends who had broken my heart but nothing I could compare to Peter Parker's grief from Amazing Spiderman #121-122 ("The Night Gwen Stacy Died"). Not only did he lose his great love, he snapped her neck trying to save her. Holy fuck! I was seven years old when I read that and the gravity of a beloved hero failing so horribly was traumatic and took me years to process.

Iron Man #120-128 has Tony Stark dealing full-bore with his alcoholism in "Demon in a Bottle."

The entire early X Men storylines find an incredible synthesis of the civil rights issues of the late sixties. While the debates about discrimination, non-violent vs violent protest, and inclusion bypassed my ten year old brain, the ideological battles between Charles Xavier and Magneto set the groundwork for when I started reading James Baldwin in high school.

Even more pervasive in the Marvel Universe was the idea that heroes were as flawed as the villains. Doctor Octopus was the bad guy but not evil. Galactus was not evil but simply trying to survive and his means of staying alive involved eating planets. The crossover of villains to heroes was commonplace in the Marvel Universe cementing an ethic that anyone—even Magneto—could find redemption.

My friend has a kid who loves his superheroes. His introduction to them was the MCU and the films of the Avengers. One day, he and his kid were watching Captain America: Civil War and the child wanted to know if Tony Stark was a good guy or a bad guy. My buddy had a bit of a conundrum because in this case there was no easy answer.

This is a bedrock principle of Marvel: there are no good guys or bad guys. Every character is flawed and can make mistakes. Every hero gets to take turns being selfish, afraid, greedy, and enraged. Every villain has a tortured past and is only the villain out of misguided and traumatized perspective. Like the Netflix Daredevil series when Kingpin doesn't realize he's the bad guy until the thirteenth episode and then is astonished by it.

“Culture is how you were raised,” a friend tells me.

Comic books and the desire to be one of these flawed superheroes are culturally important to me. They are as defining of who I am and who I wish to be as natural hair on a black woman working in an office defines her or traditional prayer rituals are to someone raised in a church. These heroes have been a part of my life since I can remember having memories and I've been engaged with them since that nebulous time.

Isn't that culture? My cultural identity?

We GenX types were raised, in part, consuming pop culture in ways previous generations did not. Hours upon hours of televised stories infused into the soft tissue like an army of Manchurian candidates waiting for the buzzwords to activate our consumerist triggers. The advent of VHS tapes made viewing movies the ultimate babysitter. While a kid born and raised on the streets of Detroit might have very little in common with another born and raised in Idaho, both had cultural roots in their mutual boners for Jill Munroe and devastation over the death of Lt. Colonel Henry Blake. A black kid in Birmingham, Alabama could be as racially different from a white kid in Salt Lake City, Utah but both could bond over Star Warsand Nintendo.

As I read it, culture is comprised of four things in increasing levels of significance: symbols, heroes, rituals and values. By that quite academic frame, it seems that as we parse out our differences in our current multi-cultural war in America, it is a fixation on the symbols that trip us up. Skin color, hair, clothing and style, food, language, sexual proclivities and the presence of certain genitalia are all surface-level identifiers. They are the symbols of each human on display.

I knew a (white) guy who grew up on the South side of Chicago, went to predominantly black populated schools, had mostly black teachers, and whose only friends were black. He dressed black, spoke black, acted black. Did any of that make him somehow less white and does that make any difference? I know a (black) woman—you'd know her, too, if I shared her New York Times Bestselling name—who, if you talk to her on the phone sounds like the secretary from Ferris Bueller's Day Off but looks like Weezy Jefferson from Good Times. Did her accent and nerdy mannerisms make make her less black and does that make any difference?

“Culture is how you were raised,” a friend tells me. “A lot of it is hidden in the back. It’s not just the food you ate growing up but why that food and not something else. It’s what your family decided to spend money on and what they wouldn’t spend money on. It’s those weird rituals you’d practice every holiday. It’s the clothes you wore but more deep than the fashion is why you wore those specific clothes.”

He tells me a story about clothes. His family didn’t have a lot of money so they saved cash by handing clothes down from one sibling to the next. It was frugal and smart with five kids. By the time my friend got the clothes (he was number four of the five) the strain of wear, the places his mother had stitched up, was obvious. And his little brother then got new clothes because four was the limit of the physical shirts and pants.

My friend spends a lot of money on fashion. He wears the latest trends and has a closet full of suits. He says he spends maybe a third of his take-home on shoes. “That’s culture in real time.”

I don’t dress up for much. I own no suits. I have ties but they’re mostly Marvel, Star Wars, and Beatles ties. My dress shoes are either decent tennis shoes or boots. When I was a kid, my mother wanted to please her aunt. Her aunt was a church-goer so we joined her church. I remember the day she told me I couldn’t go to church because my clothes weren’t up to snuff. “You can’t go to church dressed like that!” she guffawed.

I recall being embarrassed. I didn’t have anything nicer. She laughed at my best clothes. It obviously stuck because I still cringe at the memory. As a result, I bristle at the idea of dressing up for anything or for anybody and I do not go to church. “That’s culture in real time.”

While a follower of The Avengers as a kid, I was never a fan of Captain America. No good reason for that. Steve Rogers just never did it for me. That is, until Chris Evans portrayed the character in the MCU movies. Maybe it was my time to appreciate his retro-goodness; maybe I needed to be a bit older to fully appreciate his specific kind of superhero.

Perhaps I needed to live some life before the ideas that the “I can do this all day” persistence did me any good. The belief in something so strong that he’d go against all of his friends in a fight. His loyalty to Bucky despite the fact that his childhood friend had become a villain. His enduring love for Peggy Carter. His stalwart acceptance that he is almost a century older than he looks and most of his friends are long dead.

I didn’t need those values as a kid. I need those values today.

Dana is fourteen years younger than I am. No, I wasn’t looking for a third wife who was born when I was entering high school. It just worked out that way. The age difference feels sometimes like I was encased in ice for seventy-five years only to be resurrected long after the war was won.

The differences we have are bizarrely cultural. She is a free spirit. I am a worker bee. She is a poet in need of inspiration and subject to the mood swings of that breed of writer. I am an essayist who approaches writing like the laying of bricks to build a house who becomes more a follower of Stoicism the older I get. She grew up in the same house she was born in. I grew up moving from place to place with no true sense of a physical grounding. She is relentlessly frugal. I am an impulse buyer.

But we make it work.

Once in a while I wake up in the morning to take a leak and the toilet water is blue.

#culture #comic books #race #class

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davidmann95 · 7 years

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This Superman guy's pretty great, huh?

Okay. Figured I’d write this at somepoint, seems like as good a place as any to do it.

Yes: Superman is pretty great. The character’s great,the costume’s great, the cast is great, the powers are great, the scope of thekind of adventures you can tell with him is great, the mythology’s great, thepower he has to inspire on the page and in the real world is great. I’ve known that since I was…I dunno,three? Two? I’m told he was my first three-syllable word. I’m not sure what myfirst exposure would have been; Supermanthe Animated Series was airing when I was a kid, my dad had the Fleischercartoons on tape, we’d watch reruns of TheAdventures of Superman whenever they aired, I had some odd issues of Superman Adventures, I had picture bookslike The True Story of Superman, Superman: Slippery When Bad and I Hate Superman!, I even had an abridgedversion of John Byrne’s Man of Steel manyyears before I would change my tune on it. It was well past the whole nineyards of lunchboxes and Superman-themed birthday parties - mom and dad wereLois-Mom and Jimmy-Dad for a bit, who got a call one time from a teacher inpreschool that I had dramatically taken off my shirt to show the temporaryS-Shield tattoo I’d gotten on my chest. My dad ended up having to drive toevery Burger King in the area asking for any spare Superman toys because Icouldn’t stand that they had been discontinued before I could get them all andI was making life hell for everyone in the process. I couldn’t play Supermanwith other kids on the playground, because I’d demand we recreate the scriptsof adventures verbatim.

Around seven or thereabouts though,while I never developed any of the disdain towards him that so many seem tohave, I drifted away for a while towards Batman and Spider-Man. Purely bycoincidence, this is also the age I was diagnosed with Asperger’s.

It’s not something I talk about agreat deal these days. Not because of some sense of shame, to be as clear aspossible about that right upfront. It isn’t even a matter of my especiallybeing able to pass as neurotypical - take me out of my comfort zone into anynumber of common social circumstances and that illusion falls by the wayside.But I’ve carved out I feel a pretty decent niche where I’m typically fairlysatisfied and able to function at a level that meets my own standards, and as aresult it’s usually background radiation of my life, not something that comesup unbidden until a situation demands I start thinking about it again. Even when I do, thinking about it much often leaves me feeling self-conscious and self-indulgent, and convinced I’m either being stupidly self-aggrandizing or stupidly self-pitying about it.

So naturally, even once I reallystarted to get back into Superman in earnest at 13 alongsidecomics in general and he became my favorite character in earnest, there are some associations it took me awhile to make.

I’m not quite certain when Istarted to think about it, but the structure of how I thought about it I know came about thanks to @postcardsfromspace‘s (excellent) article I See Your Value Now on learningabout their own Asperger’s. I doubt it’s an association any creators for thecharacter have given any thought (aside from maybe Mark Waid, given that in an interview on Birthright he specifically noted how his idea for Martha Kentbecoming a UFO buff in response to her son was meant as a parallel to parentsof kids with autism having to become self-taught experts on the subject), andall a Google search immediately turns up is comparing a young Clark’s troubleswith his X-Ray vision in Man of Steelto sensory overload in children with autism. It’s not something that would havelikely even occurred to me if it wasn’t for that…well, that I have Asperger’s,and Superman’s a special interest, and as a default I’m always ready on somelevel to connect any input I get back to him.

Obviously, there’s Clark himself.He screams it, right? Likely just because of a general conflation of ‘nerd’traits with ‘Aspie’ traits, but it’s all there right on the surface: shy,awkward, naïve, can’t read a room to save his life, unaware of some generalsocial conventions given his penchant for drab suits, horn-rimmed glasses andfedoras well into the 21st century, either without many friends orlocked into a rigid and small social circle, by all appearances more alivebehind a screen than he ever is to anyone’s face. Even the more confident takeson him, such as in the Reeves TV show or the New 52 Action Comics, seem to lack a social grace or two, seem to grate onthe people around him. Precision-constructed by the greatest man to ever liveto be beneath the notice of his peers in every way imaginable, of course you end up with that guy.

…except even when Clark’s purely apost-Smallville construct on Superman’s part, he’s not made out of nothing, ishe? The Kansas boy who grew up reading ATale of Two Cities as a toddler and obsessively pouring over astronomytextbooks for clues can hazard a guess of what it feels like to be a nerd. Theguy who grew up on a farm who flies and can accidentally shatter steel in hisgrip is entirely familiar with how it feels to awkwardly maneuver around in acrowded city. The square who grew up in the middle of nowhere constantlygetting accused of not knowing how the world really works can probably express a little doubt over his ownself-awareness and naiveté if he absolutely has to. Clark Kent is historicallybuilt on Superman’s own worst image of himself.

(This incidentally, along withplenty of other storytelling-based reasons, is why I intensely dislikeit when Clark’s the ‘real guy’, and therefore confident and charming and on topof things; it’s Kryptonite to the ideas in play there.)

And the shyness? The sense of beingout of place? The - let’s get right to the heart of it - alien-ness?

Superman’s pretty cool. He’sfriendly; he’s understanding; he’s clever and kind and determined. He’s alsosomething of a loner who’s often surprisingly loathe to open up to people,and even once he’s married he still needs plenty of time to himself to thinkthings through. He’s someone who when he puts on the costume always engageswith the world in a very specific context: where his natural talents are mostobviously geared towards being helpful, where so long as he can pull off Sweetand Composed and make some speeches when he has to people will accept him withopen arms. Being Superman puts him in a situation where he can show his bestself, personally and socially and morally, and be accepted for his goodness ina way nerdy, quiet Clark Kent never can.

And god, does he need thatacceptance.

That’s often applied to painfullymaudlin stories of him hand-wringing over his social impact on humanity andwhether he can save all the little children of the world from cancer orwhatever, but it’s still something else that seems to be pretty consistentacross the various interpretations. Unless he’s barreling ahead with a degreeof self-confidence bordering on flat-out arrogance, he’s always worried abouthow he seems in the eyes of the world. Whether that means Red Kryptoniteexternalizing anxieties of old age or powerlessness or throwing him intodreamworlds of hate or irrelevance, or wondering whether he can justify one ofhis two identities, or pondering his alien nature, or questioning what Supermanmeans as a symbol to the world, or being flat-out replaced, or even protectinghis secret, it’s always the same question refracted through endless prisms: Can I belong here? Am I doing well enough,being useful enough, to deserve what I’ve been given? Will they find me out?Would they ever accept me if theyknew the truth?

For all the joy that comes with who he is, that’s his life too: it’s growing up inSmallville knowing there’s no one else who’ll ever know the distinct timbre ofair-pressure changes when a hummingbird slows down its wingbeat a fraction, noone he could talk about the sight of snowflakes assembling themselves out offreezing raindrops to without sounding as if he’s out of his mind, no one whocould fully empathize with having to practice normal human reactions to theworld. It’s spending half his life trying to be a normal guy among normalpeople and failing because of his own insecurities, the other half really beingable to do his best in his own element and being the person he wants to be, butnever being sure if it’s enough for those around him. It’s finally meeting other Kryptonians orsuperheroes but realizing even their own experiences diverge so sharply thatthe communication gap remains, that as a matter of circumstance he is and will alwaysremain fundamentally other in someways, no matter how deeply he connects with other people.

His relationships seem to fit the mold too - it works pretty dang well that histwo best friends are a coworker who’s simultaneously the cool dude who takeshim under his wing and the kid whouncritically looks up to him, and someone with the same ‘hobby’ who’s himselfpretty well-known for having issues opening up to people. Or that his wifefalling in love with him is framed in terms of her looking past him at his mostvulnerable and awkward and unable to fit in to see the person he actually iswhen no one else can, while a major part of his love for her is her being thekind of person who’s pushy enough to force him out of his shell and some of hismore self-defeating behaviors.

And that his worst enemy, in spite ofhis aura of smug self-regard, doesn’t seem able to relate to other people on afundamental level or manage to work with them very well when he’s not in fullcontrol of the situation, even as he needs them to accept and validate him. Lexfails because he’ll never work to bridge that gap in the same way as Superman,seeing that as a ridiculous and unrealistic imposition, and Superman as anintruder into his personal universe trying to force his unrealistic standardsof “acknowledge other people and whatthey think about things” on him while at the same time agonizingly,bafflingly succeeding where Lex fails. He’s the embodiment in that regard ofthe frustrated, shamed instinct of the isolated that you’re already great, sopeople should already love and understand you and it’s their fault for notgetting it (hence for instance how in All-Starhe overtly sees the world and the relationships that make it up in a coldly material manner where people naturally flock to only the most outwardly great aroundthem - colored by a sexist streak that’s taken on a whole new degree of toxic prominencewhen it comes to the socially awkward in the near-decade since the book’sconclusion).

(It also works that Superman’scharacter in All-Star is defined byhis disconnect from humanity, and that his big character arc is having tobecome emotionally honest enough to talk with the people who love him aboutwhat he’s going through.)

Again, clearly none of this is theintent on the part of those who’ve worked with him over the years. This is byno means the bedrock or secret key to what makes him tick; it’s at best a componentin a much larger machine. I’m sure if you dug into it enough you could find somethingproblematic in the proposition, and I won’t pretend there couldn’t becharacters closer in every sense to my own experiences.

But none of them would be Superman.

Sure, it helps that I grew up withhim, and that he’s a character with enough detail and weird ideas and characterwork that I can delve into the minutia of him in a way I can’t with anyone elseto the same extent other than Batman, but beyond all that, he’s Superman. He’s TheGuy, the best, and that I can see myself in him in *any* way means more than itever could with any other character, because that makes him being a role modelmean something else.

For all I talked about how lonelyhe is above he’s still an idealist, still has friends and a job and weirdpersonal hobbies at his personal ice-cave and a way to express his highest,best self in a way that’s loved by the people around him. The way he seesthings differently can be accepted and shared even as he understands and caresfor the people around him. He’s happy. And that he can start from a place of being the onlyone of his kind and end up a good person, the best person, in part because he knows better than anyone what it isto be alone and why others matter so much? That has more weight to people, andto me, than can be expressed.

I mentioned before I’m not wildabout Clark being the exclusive true identity in part because of how much itmesses with this. I’ve also said elsewhere that while both Clark and Supermanare inseparable and true parts of his identity that can’t be denied as importantaspects of who he is, if I absolutely had to choose one as being the ‘real’ one I’dgo with Superman. And I can pick apart any number of storytelling reasons forthat, but thinking about how I relate to Superman in the way I do made merealize something else. I have to see Superman as the truest self becauseSuperman’s who he is at his best, when he’s not afraid or ashamed and can showhimself in all his alienness to everyone and be accepted for it. That’s thedream, right? I’m no Superman, but I’ve gottabelieve in him, ‘cause I’ve gotta believe in me.

I’m pretty sure some of you canrelate.

#Superman #Asperger's #Autism #Clark Kent #Lex Luthor #Lois Lane #All Star Superman #Analysis #Opinion #Me

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