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mikhailoist · 5 years

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Why Dean and Cas Will Go Canon in 15x09: An Analysis Essay

There have been many speculations about what the future holds for Dean Winchester and Castiel as the end of Supernatural approaches. For the past eleven years, the Destiel relationship has been explored, although it has unfortunately been used as a way to queerbait LGBTQ+ audiences. Despite the subtext and the countless romantic tropes present between these two characters, they have not yet been established as a canon relationship on the show. However, the fifteenth and final season has built a storyline centered around Destiel and the very likely chance that they will become canon ⁠— specifically in the ninth episode. In this essay I will focus primarily on the impact the Destiel relationship has had on Dean’s character development, and why I believe Dean will finally admit his feelings for Cas in 15x09.

Dean has never been known for being the best at expressing his feelings. He has said the words “I love you” only twice on the show (to my immediate knowledge), and both of these moments occurred in the much later seasons. In the season 12 finale, when confronting his mom, Dean’s “I love you” follows an emotional exclamation of the words “I hate you”. He hates his mom for leaving him and making his life miserable, but he loves her because he can’t help it. Meanwhile, in season 14, Dean tells Sam “I love you for trying” when Sam attempts to find a different solution to the Michael problem. We as viewers know Dean loves his little brother, but the fact that it took him fourteen seasons to admit those words out loud conveys how difficult it is for him to grasp the concept of love. However, back in season 8, a discarded version of the script for 8x17 has Dean saying “I love you” to Cas during the scene where Cas, brainwashed by Naomi, is beating Dean up. This would have been the first time on the show that Dean said these words to anyone; however, Jensen disagreed with that part of the script and had it changed. He knew his character well enough to realize that, at that point in Dean’s story, he was not ready to utter those three words to anyone. However, the fact that the writers even considered having Dean tell Cas he loves him is proof that Cas has been a primary factor in helping Dean realize that it’s okay to let his walls down and express his love for other people. Castiel has, in many ways, offered his own love to Dean over the years, a love that Dean hasn’t ever known. All his life, Dean has either been hurt or abandoned by the people he has admitted to loving. His mother, Mary, severely hurt him and left a wound that is still healing ⁠— yes, he loves her, but he explicitly stated that he hates her, too. We never heard Dean say he loves his father, though if he loves one emotionally toxic parent because he can’t help it, we can assume he loves John for the same reason. Meanwhile, Dean’s love for his brother is definitely strong ⁠— he’s made deals to bring him back from the dead, and so on ⁠— and while that love has been reciprocated, Sam has never loved him quite as much. In 5x16, Dean learns that Sam’s personal heaven was the day he left for Stanford, which was Dean’s own personal hell. Dean has always pulled countless strings to save Sam’s life, but when Dean was trapped in Purgatory in season 8, Sam didn’t even consider trying to find a way to bring him back. The list goes on. This isn’t to say that Sam doesn’t love his brother; it just further proves my point that Dean has never felt the same love from the people he gives it to ⁠— at least, not from his immediate family. Castiel is another story. Cas has shown love to Dean in many ways, ways that can easily be defined as healthy, pure, unconditional, etc. He “hunted, rebelled, and [he] did it, all of it, for [Dean]”; he refused to leave Dean when the Mark of Cain was turning him evil; he gave up an entire army for Dean; he always comes when Dean calls to help him in his time of need; he “gripped [him] tight and raised [him] from perdition”. The list goes on and on. The point I’m making here is that, while Dean’s character has slowly been developing in the sense that he’s learning to let himself love people, he always ends up getting hurt in the end. Cas was the one who never hurt him. This brings us, finally, to the premise of their relationship in season 15. Dean is holding a grudge against Cas and closed himself off, which ultimately drove Cas away in 15x03. However, when we watch Dean blame Cas for Mary’s death, I believe we’re only seeing the surface of what’s really going on Dean’s head. Jensen even addressed this at his panel with Misha at DCCon, when he stated that there will be an answer to the question of why Dean is treating Cas so horribly in 15x09. He says, “Dean has a moment by himself where he prays to Cas, and it’s a bit of a confession on why he feels the way he feels and why he’s treating Cas the way he treated him.” This spoiler alone is loaded with so much material that hints towards Destiel becoming canon, and I will address all of it shortly.

As soon as season 15 premiered, you, me, and all the other fans of this show knew we’d be in for a wild ride. With Jack dying at the end of season 14 and Chuck unleashing an apocalypse of ghosts on the world, we all had a feeling that the plot would center around Sam and Dean fighting ghosts like old times ⁠— taking the show back to the basics, per say. This was a fear I had, especially when one of the first trailers for the season featured Dean saying to Sam, “You and me against every soul in Hell? I like those odds.” However, right off the bat, we see in 15x01 that the brotherly relationship is not intended to be the primary focus of the season. It’ll definitely be a huge aspect, as it always is, but there are many other themes that outweigh the brotherly relationship and are becoming much more present in the final season. All of these themes connect back to Destiel in one way or another. The first one is “Family don’t end in blood”, a memorable quote that originated from Dean’s father figure, Bobby. The most important people in Sam and Dean’s life so far do not share their blood, but the boys consider them family. As this essay is focused on analyzing Dean’s character, I’m going to mention a few family members who don’t end in blood for Dean, specifically. The first is Bobby, of course, who is still a primary father figure in his life, despite being deceased since season 7. The second is Jody, who is the most maternal figure in Dean’s life and was once referred to as Dean’s mom over Mary. Another is Charlie, who was extremely important to Dean and, as he said, “the sister [he] never wanted” (jokingly, of course). Seasons 12 through 14 partly stripped away the “family don’t end in blood theme”, especially with Mary returning and the episode where Dean got to have closure with John. At the same time, Jack became like a son to Dean. Dean even says “he was our kid” when referencing Jack after his death in 15x01. So, even though Supernatural seemed to forget about “family don’t end in blood” for a while, it seems like the writers are returning to that theme in season 15. Cas, of course, is a huge part of this. He leaves in 15x03 because Sam and Dean “have each other”. This is heartbreaking to hear Cas say because, despite everything, Dean has always made it a point to tell Cas that he’s family (some of the prime examples being 8x17 and 11x23). However, it’s interesting to note that Dean forgave Jack at the end of season 14 for killing Mary, because he considers Jack family; meanwhile, Dean is still holding a grudge against Cas, even though Cas wasn’t the one who killed her. Not to mention Dean only knew Jack for a couple of years, while he’s known Cas for eleven ⁠— and still, for some reason, what Cas did was unforgivable. It’s extremely difficult from an audience viewpoint to understand why Dean is so unwilling to forgive Cas after everything they’ve been through, even though we know he considers Cas family. And that’s just the thing. Cas is more than family. That’s why Dean is closing himself off, because after everything revealed at the end of season 14, it’s easier for him to stay angry with Cas, the man he loves, than to face the truth that Chuck made known to them: “Nothing about [their] lives is real.” The “we are” scene in 15x02 clarified Dean’s fears about the Chuck situation. He believes nothing about his life has ever mattered, because Chuck designed every aspect of his life. Why, then, is he only choosing to project this anger onto Cas? Dean believes the fact that he saves people for a living doesn’t matter, yet he’s still saving them; he’s still fighting the good fight. He probably believes Rowena’s sacrifice doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things, yet he mourns her death and feels terrible after she dies. Despite feeling this way, he still shows kindness to Sam, to Rowena, to Ketch ⁠— to everyone but Cas. The only reason for this that makes sense to me is the heartbrokenness Dean feels upon realizing that he and Cas were never real. He can bear the thought of his relationship with his brother being fake all along, but when it comes to Cas? The angel who pulled him out of Hell and the only one who has ever shown him what love truly looks like? If none of that was ever real, I can imagine why Dean feels the way he does. That doesn’t validate the way he’s treating Cas by any means, but knowing Dean, I understand. This man has always been closed off. When he finally opens himself up to the possibility of love thanks to Cas, only to have a fear instilled in him that none of it ever mattered, I understand how terrifying and heart-wrenching that is for him. I understand why it’d be easier for him to be angry at Cas and to push him away. And he wouldn’t do this if he just saw Cas as his brother ⁠— because he’s not even pushing his own brother away, and we know how close Sam and Dean are. No, he’s pushing Cas away because Cas matters to him in a way that is unparalleled.

Three episodes into season 15 and the writers are already focusing on the Destiel “breakup” as the primary conflict. Every episode so far we’ve had some kind of interaction or comment that has increased the tension between them. The “we are” scene is a prime example, as is the final scene of 15x03, of course, but there are other moments as well. In 15x03, when Dean volunteers Cas to go to Hell with Belphegor, he subtly mentions that Cas has “been there before”. This moment was small and fleeting, but there’s no way the writers didn’t include it on purpose. Cas going to Hell to rescue Dean was the catalyst for their relationship. It’s where everything started. It’s a pivotal moment in Dean’s life that I’m sure he holds extremely close to his heart. Now that Chuck’s control over their lives has been revealed, Dean is probably thinking that Cas rescuing him from Hell never mattered, either. But it did matter, and that’s what Dean has to learn. And he will learn, because the second major theme of season 15 is going to focus on free will. I wholeheartedly believe this ⁠— it was even mentioned at Comic Con 2019. (This is also why I disagree with the fan theories that the Supernatural finale will mirror Swan Song, but that’s an entirely different essay.) Dean is going to learn that the relationship he built with Cas was a product of their own choices. When Cas said “we’re making it up as we go” in regards to him and Dean, he meant it. It will take him some time, but Dean’s going to see that he and Cas do matter and they are real. He’s going to pray to Cas in 15x09, which is a sign of his faith in Cas, not God. It’s a sign of faith in the angel who believes in free will just as much as he does, rather than a sign of faith in the god controlling their lives. The prayer alone can heavily be identified as a romantic trope, especially since Dean always prayed to Cas in the past. Cas was the one who taught him faith. Not faith in God, but faith in him. Faith that Cas would always come when Dean called and that he would always be there to pour love into Dean’s life. But a simple prayer isn’t going to be enough, and we all know this. This is where a spoiler released by Misha Collins comes in. Misha said, and I quote, “I think their current relationship is precarious, and it’ll take something really big happening to heal their divide.” Something really big. Knowing what we know about Dean, what is something really big going to look like? I’ve already restated Jensen’s own words that Dean’s prayer is going to be a confession, and to confess means to “admit or acknowledge something reluctantly, typically because one feels ashamed or embarrassed”. We know Dean feels ashamed about pushing Cas away, but why did he push Cas away? He’s going to have to tell Cas the full truth, otherwise Cas is not going to come back. He��s moved on; he’s tired of being treated like a punching bag, like he doesn’t matter. Sure, he’s been told by Dean that he’s “their brother”, but even that wasn’t enough to get him to stay when everything started falling apart. We know Cas loves Dean in a different way, a very special way. He knows he and Dean “share a more profound bond”; he was willing to risk everything for Dean. I’m sure he knows Dean feels the same way, but our poor hunter is going to have to admit that out loud if he wants his angel back. In 15x09, I believe Dean will confess to Cas that he pushed him away because he loves him. He’s going to admit that he loves him differently than Sam or Jack or any other member of his family, and that’s why it was harder to accept that he and Cas may never have been real. Hopefully, by 15x09, Dean will try to assure himself that they are real; that, or he will ask Cas to come back, because even if they’re not real, he would rather pretend that they are. I think he will tell Cas in his prayer that he wants to continue writing their own story. Back in season 4, Dean taught Cas how important it was to have free will; in 15x02, this was paralleled by Cas in the “we are” scene. I think it will all come full circle in 15x09, and Dean will realize that the story of him and Cas is beautiful, it’s not controlled by anyone else, and it’s theirs. Tears will form in Dean’s eyes, he’ll bow his head, and admit to Cas that he loves him. Not as a friend or a brother, but as someone he wants to be with in a romantic way. Because for the past 15 seasons, all signs have pointed to a romantic relationship between these two. Season 15 is already focusing heavily on a breakup storyline. And if Misha said it’s going to take something really big to patch things up, then Dean finally admitting his romantic feelings for Cas is the only thing that makes sense to me.

#yes i wrote a whole ass essay #yes i know i'm extra #yes i know i'm probably gonna get clowned #but THIS is IMPORTANT!!!#deancas #destiel #dean x cas #dean x castiel #dean winchester #castiel #spn #supernatural #15x09 #spn 15x09

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demigodsanswer · 4 years

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Once Upon a Pointe: Chapter 5

Story Summery:

“Annabeth, you’re with Percy,’ Chiron said. Annabeth. She looked like the figurine in a little girl’s music box had come to life to dance in City Ballet. Percy felt like every opportunity to dance with her was a privilege. Just don’t forget the choreography, Percy thought as he got into the right starting spot for the wedding pas de deux. Don’t forget the choreography, and don’t drop her.”

Percy, a soloist with the ballet company, and he is offered one chance to dance with Annabeth, one of their star principals. If he nails the choreography, he might just earn a chance to dance with her. And, if he’s really lucky, he might get a date out of it as well.

Chapter Title: Diamonds

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Note:

Like the chapter itself, this note comes to you in two parts:

Part 1: Content warnings. This is the angst chapter. It gets into what happened between Luke and Annabeth and their breakup. There is talk of a relationship between someone who is underage and an adult. There are some scenes of verbal manipulation bordering on abuse. the particularly bad scene is the breakup scene. This scene is demarcated by ***** at the start and ~~~~~ at the end. If you want to skip this section, just control F for ~~~~~ when you get to the stars. Be aware, though, that some of this content is sprinkled throughout the chapter.

Part 2: There is a tendency when it comes to fiction, but esp. fan works, to conflate the events of the story with the authors moral or political stance. Annabeth talks in this chapter about a decision that she has made, and, likely, not a lot of people will agree with it. Please do not conflate this exploration of a fictional character in a fictional situation with what you think my moral or political stance on the issue is. This is a story, not my advice to survivors. On that note as well, please know that you are not entitled to my past, trauma, or research. Please do not come a-knocking demanding that I explain what may or may not have happened to me in the past or what research I may or may not have done to write this chapter. If you don't like the chapter, you are free to say so and/or to stop reading the story, but you are not entitled to my past. If you demand that information of me, I simply will not engage with your comment.

Part One: El Tango De Roxanne

“First there is desire. Then passion. Then suspicion. Jealousy, anger, betrayal. When love is for the highest bidder, there can be no trust. When there is no trust, there is no love. Jealousy, yes jealousy, will drive you mad!”

“You’re free to leave me, just don’t deceive me, and believe me when I say ‘I love you.’”

Ten Months Ago:

Beckendorf didn’t need to be in the “Diamonds” rehearsal, but he didn’t have anything else scheduled, and he wanted to see their progress. It was the first time in a long time that he hadn’t been slotted to dance with Annabeth, but it seemed like the right call. Beckendorf had always felt more suited to “Emeralds” than to “Diamonds.” Annabeth, though, fit into the elegance and opulence of Imperial Russia flawlessly.

He smiled as he watched Percy turn her around, perfectly on time with the music. Beckendorf had only spent eleven months in soloist purgatory (although it had taken him four years to reach that rank); he was sure that after three years in the corps and four years as a soloist, Percy was working as hard as he could to prove himself a principal. He sure did look like one as he and Annabeth continued their dance.

Beckendorf didn’t remember his own short stint as a soloist very fondly. Almost overnight, he had gone from dancing six ballets a night to one solo in one ballet following his promotion. Even though he had more solo time, his time on stage decreased, and he was never first or even tenth in line for principal roles the way he was now. For eleven months, he was desperate to get on stage and to get promoted. He didn’t know how Percy had managed living in that limbo for three years.

If anyone had earned their promotion by now, it was Percy.

Beckendorf watched the ballet master’s eyes track Percy’s technique, face, and movement, paying little attention to Annabeth. He smiled; they were testing him, and Percy was acing the exam.

~*~*~

Beckendorf ran into Luke in the showers. “Hey, saw Annabeth dance earlier. She looked good.”

Luke smirked as he got changed, heading into his own rehearsal. “Yeah, she’s gorgeous. Shame she has to dance with Jackson.”

Beckendorf furrowed his brow. “Percy’s a great dancer.”

He scoffed. “You sound like Annabeth. I swear, he’s all she talks about.” Luke went back to pulling warmups out his bag to cover his tights.

“I’m sure you don’t have to be jealous of Percy,” Beckendorf said. He talked to Annabeth pretty often, and he didn’t think she spent too much time gushing about Percy by any measure. As far as he could tell, Annabeth loved Luke more than anyone.

“I know,” Luke said, the smile back on his face. “She pretty much begged me to marry her.”

Beckendorf paused. He didn’t sound overly enthusiastic about getting married. He didn’t want to pry, but he felt like he had to ask.

“Do you not want to –”

Luke cut him off before he could continue. “Check these out,” he said, holding up his phone. “Bet Jackson wishes he could see these.”

Beckendorf looked away as quickly as he had looked at the phone. “What the hell, man?!” He yelled. Luke had shown him a wall of photos of Annabeth; the images had been thumbnail size, but it didn’t take long to notice that she was nearly or completely naked in all of them. “She’s your fiancé!”

“Aren’t I lucky?” He said casually.

Beckendorf tried to wrap his head around what had just happened.

He and Luke had been in the company together for years, but they had never been close. Beckendorf didn’t even show Luke photos of his and Silena’s honeymoon. He couldn’t figure out why Luke thought what he had just done was appropriate.

“You shouldn’t show people those,” he said finally.

“Please. She wouldn’t care.” Luke said, putting his phone away.

He felt himself getting angrier with each response Luke gave. Beckendorf had great respect for Annabeth and counted her a friend. He couldn’t understand why Luke would expose intimate pictures of her, especially to him.

“Have you asked?” Beckendorf asked, trying to keep his voice below a yell.

Luke didn’t answer his question. Instead he told Beckendorf: “Relax,” with a suave calmness, as if he hadn’t just shown Beckendorf dozens of naked photos of Annabeth.

Luke’s calmness pushed Beckendorf’s anger over the top. Beckendorf slammed Luke up against the row of lockers, making some of the doors shake.

Luke put up his hands. “What the hell, man?”

“Do you have any idea how fucked up this is?” Beckendorf asked, still holding him against the wall.

“Whoa, guys, what’s going on?” Beckendorf heard Jason say, coming around the corner to break up the fight. Beckendorf stepped away. He couldn’t hit Luke. If he did, he could lose his job or be arrested. Beckendorf grabbed his bag and left without a word to either of them.

~*~*~

“What should we do about this?” He asked Silena as they left the studio.

She shook her head. She wished she had been more surprised by what Charlie had told her, but she knew Luke better than a lot of people. Dancers rarely thought about who in the costume shop was listening to them.

He had seemed nice at first – charming, sweet, all those things. But Annabeth’s career had begun to take off; she was earning leads, first-cast roles, and getting promoted through the ranks quickly. His had begun to plateau. He was already a principal (a well-respected one, at that), and he was six years older than her. At thirty-three, his career was entering its sunset phase, and hers was on the rise.

She had heard him trying to undercut her accomplishments to other dancers, attempting to take credit for roles and promotions she earned, but she had never expected him to do something this low.

“We have to tell her,” Silena said. “We can’t let him keep doing this without her knowing.”

Charlie nodded. He had expected that answer. Still, it didn’t mean telling Annabeth was going to be any easier.

~*~*~

Annabeth wasn’t stupid. No matter how cheerful Silena had tried to sound on the phone (“Can Charlie and I drop by for a few minutes?” she had asked) that something was obviously wrong. She and Beckendorf were close, of course. They had done most of their partnering together for the last three years. But they didn’t hang out outside of rehearsal that often, and they didn’t just ‘drop by.’

What they were coming to talk to her about, though, was a mystery. She catastrophized of course – worse case scenarios all over the place – and she tried to rationalize – your friends just want to hang out.

When she opened her apartment door for them and saw their grim faces, though, she went back to catastrophizing.

“Can we come in?” Silena asked.

Annabeth stepped aside and let them in. “Make yourself at home.” She told them. She had started boiling some water when they were on their way and went over to the small kitchen area to pour the tea. “Can I get you anything? I made us some tea.” She said.

They both declined but accepted the tea silently.

The two of them sat on Annabeth’s couch, while she sat in the big chair at the foot of the coffee table.

“So, what’s up?” She asked, trying to hide how terrified she was of the answer.

The two looked at each other, as if they hadn’t rehearsed this part. Annabeth looked in between, them waiting for an answer.

Finally, Beckendorf took a deep breath, looked her in the eye and said: “Luke tried to show me nude photos of you today.”

Annabeth shook her head and squeezed her eyes shut as she let out a small laugh of disbelief. Beckendorf’s words bounced around her head but her mind refused to process them. “I’m sorry,” she said, “what did you just say?”

Silena nodded. “Luke tried to show him a bunch of naked pictures of you that he had on his phone.”

Annabeth shook her head again, her mouth open, trying to find words or a deep breath, but both escaped her. Time seemed to halt as what Beckendorf had just told her sank in. She felt her mind and emotions go numb to the news, her anxiety subsiding suddenly and inexplicably.

“Why?” She finally asked. Her brain seemed to turn back on suddenly, finally reacting in earnest to what she had been told.

Why would he do that? Why would he do that to me? Why would he show that to you? Why did you tell me about it? She wanted to yell. She felt a fierce anger deep in her gut, like she could run the eighty blocks to the studio and make a scene in front of his rehearsal.

“I, uh …” Beckendorf paused for a moment, unsure of how to answer, “it seems like he was jealous of you and Percy.”

Annabeth leaned her head back. She felt like she could scream as the rage bubbled up, finally finding words to attach itself to. “He always does this!” She said, standing up and pacing around her living room. “I mean, seriously, if I say I like partnering with someone who isn’t him, and we never partner together because he’s too tall and he knows that, he takes it as some personal attack or some sign that I’m cheating. And I’ve never cheated on him!” She folded her arms on the back of the chair, resting her head in them. “Fuck! I can’t even compliment a coworker?” She yelled towards the floor. “And now …” she paused and looked up. “Why would he show them to you?” She asked.

Beckendorf shrugged. “I told him how good you are Percy looked at your rehearsal, he said some jealous things about Percy, then showed them to me, saying that he bet Percy wishes he could see them. I don’t know if he wanted to prove something to me or tell Percy about them or what.”

Annabeth sat back down in the chair, sinking low into the cushions. Her anger subsided quickly, replaced with a deep and overwhelming sadness that seemed to rip through her chest as she began to sob.

They had gotten into a fight a few nights before over Percy. She had mentioned over dinner that she though he would be promoted to a principal by the end of the summer, and Luke had gone quiet, ignoring her for the rest of the meal. She knew what he was waiting for: an apology for upsetting him.

She hated doing that. When she was younger, the apologies came easier. She found herself apologizing for crying when he yelled at her.

“I made me cry,” she had once told him, “I knew that doing that would upset you.” She had gone to Reyna’s apartment for an all-soloists party without Luke, who, as a principal, hadn’t been invited. He had asked her not to go at all, claiming he didn’t trust other guys to behave around her. She assured him that she could handle herself. A few drinks later, it was just her, Reyna, Piper, and a few others left, all getting ready to just crash on couches, air mattresses, or beds. When she called him to tell him, he yelled at her until she was crying in Reyna’s bathroom. If Reyna had known why she was crying, Annabeth was sure she would have advised breaking up with him on the spot, but, instead, Annabeth faked a panic attack and used that as an escape.

Because she loved him. So much of the time she loved him, and their relationship was fun, and passionate, and loving. Eighty percent of the time, he was the perfect guy.

And twenty percent of the time, he sat quietly through dinner, waiting for an apology for something so minor. When she was about twenty, she learned that it was easier to just offer the apology and move on.

“Sorry.” She said to him finally.

“I don’t know why you do that.” He said. “You know it upsets me.” Luke said, not looking at her.

“He’s just my dance partner.” She protested.

“Well, you sure do think a lot of him.”

“I think that he’s talented, yes.”

He looked up at her. The hanging light fixture over their kitchen table reflected in his eyes, making them almost look gold instead of blue. Annabeth sat up straighter, ready for a fight if there was going to be one.

Instead, he stood up, plate in one hand, and dropped the dish in the sink, before heading towards the door. “I’m going out.” He told her.

When the door slammed behind her, she let out a deep breath, sinking into her seat, trying desperately not to cry. Not for him, not again. After a moment, she stood up and went to the sink to clean up. Luke’s plate was broken in the sink, cracked into three larger ceramic pieces, with little shards decorating the rest of the basin. Annabeth took a deep breath again, and place her own plate over the broken one, resolving to clean it up later.

She hadn’t expected this from Luke though. To show someone something so private and without much reason. For what? To make Percy jealous? Beckendorf jealous?

She knew the answer had nothing to do with either of them. There were truths about her relationship with Luke that were crystal clear if she thought about them for long enough, but they were terrifying to deal with.

She loved him, and they were great together so much of the time. He had promised her that they would be together and be a family. She hadn’t wanted to get married so young, but they had been together for years. When he proposed he had promised her all of that: family, security, permanence. Everything.

It was so easy to believe that promise was unconditional. But she had seen the patterns for years. He didn’t trust her, he took credit for most milestones in her career, and he certainly didn’t like moments when she soared above him. He had been on edge since she became a principal, constantly worried that she would outshine him. “I’m afraid you’ll get too good,” he had said jokingly soon after he had proposed, “and then you’ll leave me.”

It was an irrational fear – he was a great dancer, and so often male choreography existed to make the female dancer look stunning as he blends into the background.

He was never good at blending, though. He had to be the center of his own career and hers. Hell, most people in the company already resented her because they thought she had slept her way to the top, and she knew those rumors started with him. And now …

And now.

She looked up when she felt Silena’s hand on her shoulder. She offered her a tissue.

“Are you going to be okay?” Silena asked.

Annabeth shook her head, not quite sure how to respond.

“I just didn’t think he hated me this much.” She said after a moment.

“Oh honey,” Silena said, pulling her into a hug as she kept crying. Silena didn’t try to convince her that he didn’t hate her, or that he had just made a mistake. She just held her and let her cry.

After a moment, Annabeth sat back up, and found herself talking in circles about her relationship with Luke; Silena and Beckendorf’s faces became more upset and angrier as the stories piled up.

Finally, Annabeth paused to drink her tea. Silena sat back on her heals and told her, “You can’t marry him.”

Annabeth sat up straighter, mug still in her hand. “Please don’t tell me what to do.”

Silena nodded. “I’m sorry, but …” Annabeth could see her searching for the right thing to say.

“If he hurts you like this now,” Beckendorf said, “it’s probably only going to get worse when you’re married.”

“It’s not like he’s ever hit me.” Annabeth said, putting her mug back on the table. That was true; he’d never even come close.

“But he controls you,” Silena said, “and he undermines you, and he violates your privacy. That’s not any better.”

Annabeth took a shaky breath. “I just … I don’t know what I would do without him.”

“Anything,” Beckendorf said, “you could do anything without him.”

“But we’ve been together for so long,” she said, “and I love him so much. So much of the time it’s so good.”

“Is it so good?” Silena asked. “Or do you spend that eighty percent of the time self-censoring to keep him happy? Do you spend that time waiting for the next time he gets mad at you?”

Annabeth hung her head and began to sob again. I can’t marry him, she thought for the first time. She had had doubts before, but she figured every bride had doubts. But Silena’s question had broken through walls in her mind that kept those doubts out. Was she happy? I can’t marry him.

“I just don’t want to be alone.” She admitted, still crying.

“Honey,” Silena said, “as long as we’re alive, you’re never on your own.”

Annabeth looked up and leaned forward quickly, pulling Silena in.

“I know you’ve been together for six years –“ Beckendorf started. Annabeth didn’t let him finish his sentence.

She took a deep breath, and before she could remember to be afraid, she told him: “It’ll be ten years this December.”

Silena pulled away from the hug and looked at her. “Aren’t you twenty-five?”

Annabeth nodded. “We went on our first date after my first Nutcracker season as an apprentice.”

Silena gasped and leaned on the coffee table for support. Beckendorf just muttered, “Jesus Christ,” to himself.

Silena looked more shocked than Annabeth had seen her in the entire conversation. “You could really sue him for this.” She said.

Annabeth hadn’t thought of that. Of course, she had known that their age gap was inappropriate and illegal, but it had never occurred to her to press charges over it (especially not considering she was planning on marrying him). “I don’t know,” Annabeth said. “I don’t even know what to do about right now.”

“Are you going to break up with him?” Silena asked.

I can’t marry him, she thought again, but the words wouldn’t leave her mouth. “I don’t know. I mean, an hour ago I was happily engaged, and now I don’t know what I am. It’s all just a lot, and I want to talk to him about everything and just … get things sorted out.”

Silena nodded. She opened her mouth to say something, but she was cut off by the door opening.

Annabeth’s eyes met Luke’s, before he scanned the rest of the apartment, shooting accusatory looks at Beckendorf and Silena. Beckendorf stood up, staring at Luke before asking Annabeth, “Do you want us to stay?”

“No,” Annabeth said, “you guys can leave.”

“Are you going to be okay?” Silena asked. Annabeth nodded, and she hoped that was true.

*****

When the door closed behind them, Luke turned to her, his eyes calm. “What were they up to?”

Annabeth looked at him in disbelief. “You really have no idea why they were here?”

Luke ignored her puffy eyes and runny nose and sat on the couch. “What did they tell you?”

“So, you do know?” Annabeth asked. She stared him down, waiting for him to admit to what he’d done.

“I don’t understand why you’re upset.” He said to her.

She almost laughed at him she was so angry. “Are you kidding?” She asked. “You violated my privacy, you exposed me to another dancer!”

“You’re mad at me because I love you? Because I think you’re beautiful, and I want to show you off?” He asked, moving closer to her.

Annabeth stood up from the chair and walked away from him. “That’s not what you did, and you know it.” He didn’t look guilty or remorseful. He just stared at her like she was the one in the wrong, like she was crazy for not seeing the situation from his point of view. His indifference felt violent. “We were going to be a family, Luke.” She said, her voice quivering. “You promised.”

She walked towards the kitchen, unable to look at him.

“We are going to be a family.” He said.

Annabeth sobbed again. She leaned on the sink, afraid she might throw up, but instead the words she had so far been too afraid to say left her mouth.

“I’m not going to marry you.” She said into the sink.

“What?” He asked, standing up to walk into the kitchen.

“I’m not going to marry you.” She repeated, turning around to face him. “I can’t believe you would hurt me like this.” That was a lie; he had hurt her like this before, just never in this way.

“Annabeth –” He tried to reach out to her, but she dodged him.

“Don’t touch me.” She said.

“You wanted to be a family. And we will be if you don’t throw that away over something so stupid -”

Annabeth cut him off by throwing her engagement ring at him. When that hit didn’t satisfy her, she picked up the vase of roses on the table, and raised it over her head, letting the flowers and water splash on the floor. When she moved to throw it, Luke flinched. She paused before putting the vase back on the counter. She took a deep breath, overwhelmed by her own anger. They started at each other for a moment. He felt like a stranger to her.

“I want you to get your shit and move out.” She told him.

“You can’t just kick me out.” He protested.

“Oh yes I can, your name’s not on the lease.” She told him.

Luke bent down to pick up the thrown engagement ring. “No,” he said, “but is yours? Or is it your daddy’s name?” He asked. He pressed his body close to hers. This time, Annabeth didn’t move; she stood frozen, half with fear and half with pride. She felt his left hand wrap around the curls at the base of her neck; his right hand held her left hand. From a distance, their position may have seemed romantic, but Annabeth felt vulnerable in his grasp.

She tried to look him in the eyes, but she was met with a cruel look she could barely stand. She stood still, not wanting to make him angrier than he already was.

“You wouldn’t have anything without him or me, Annie.” He told her. Annabeth shook her head as much as she could with his grip still in her hair. That’s not true, she wanted to tell him, I know that’s not true, but she couldn’t find the words. “And he doesn’t love you, not really.” Annabeth started to cry again. “You’d be alone without me.” He said again. She sobbed, resisting the urge to lean against him for comfort as always had.

He dropped the hand from her neck. The ring had been clenched against his palm, leaving an indent in his skin. He took her left hand. “So let’s put this ring back on.”

She clenched her fist, resisting it. “No!” She said, stepping back from him before he could grab her again. Her sock met the puddle the flowers had made, and she slipped backwards, crushing the roses under her weight.

Luke leered over her. He looked like he might spit on her or kick her, but he just frowned and shook his head as he slipped her engagement ring into his pants a pocket.

“You’ve never been less attractive,” he told her, before walking towards their bedroom

Annabeth sat motionless in the puddle of flowers, watching him move through their bedroom, gathering street clothes and dancewear. Annabeth couldn’t be sure of how long he’d been in there, but he emerged eventually with a suitcase and a dance bag.

“The wedding is off,” he said to her, as if it had been his idea, “until you can get your act together.”

When the door slammed behind him, Annabeth curled up on the floor and sobbed, gripping the roses in her fist. She crushed them until the petals stained her fingertips and the thorns cut her palms.

~~~~~

Part Two: Sparkling Diamonds

“He’s your guy when sparks are high, but beware when they start to descend / Diamonds are a girl’s best friend”

Silena and Beckendorf hadn’t been far away, reluctant to leave her alone, despite her protests. Once Luke left, they came back, collected her, and brought them to their apartment for the night. Annabeth was grateful for them. She didn’t like burdening people, but they were right. She hadn’t wanted to spend the night alone.

She woke up in the morning to the sound of a blender. Their ‘guest room’ was a futon in the living room near the kitchen. It had been a surprisingly comfortable bed, which Annabeth was grateful for.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to wake you.” Beckendorf said, pouring the fruit mix into two glasses and offering one to her.

“Thanks.” Annabeth said, taking the glass. “What time is it?”

“Seven.” he said. “Class starts in a few hours, then dress rehearsal, but I’m sure Chiron will understand if you don’t want to –”

Annabeth shook her head. “There’s no reason for me not to dance today or in the performance. I’m not sick, I’m not injured, I’m doing it.” Luke had tried to take so much from her, and she wouldn’t let him take dance.

Beckendorf could tell that there wasn’t any use arguing with her.

Annabeth stood in the wings, taking deep breaths as she watched Luke at the barre. She picked a spot on the stage as far away from him as she could find, avoiding his looks, and trying to look as though the past night’s events had no effect on her.

Class helped her refocus. It was a methodical focus on technique and control, and that’s what she needed in that moment: control.

Dance had always been her escape. It was what she did or where she went when she felt like there was no one on her side. It didn’t matter that Luke was in the company with her, she tried to tell herself, or that other people in the company had seen photos of her, what mattered was dance.

Have other people seen the photos, she thought suddenly. She hadn’t asked Luke, but if he showed them so casually to Beckendorf …

She tried to put the thought out of her mind, trying to convince herself that if someone else had seen them, they would have told her. But Luke did have a lot of friends in the company … She snapped herself out of the thought spiral, returning her attention to the ballet master’s next combination.

She wished Luke looked worse. She wished he looked like he had been crying all night, or like he had been betrayed, or like he felt guilty, but he didn’t look like that at all. He just looked like any of the other dancers. Annabeth tore her eyes away from him, refocusing on the combinations, trying to keep Luke as far from her mind as she could.

Annabeth took a deep breath as she stood in front of her dressing room mirror. Her costume glittered with crystals and rhinestones. Even her tights were white to match the tutu and bodice; her pointe shoes had been spray-painted to match. Carefully, she pinned a bejeweled hairpiece to her bun, the final bit on bling on her costume.

“Looking good,” Piper said. Piper was the Diamonds lead in the second cast, and her dressing room roommate. Second cast rehearsed after the first, so Piper was still lounging in her normal dancewear.

“Thanks,” Annabeth said, trying to steady her breathing. She had run to her dressing room quickly after class to avoid as many people as she could, but there was no avoiding Piper.

Piper had spotted that something was wrong from when they had first gotten into the dressing room. “Are you okay?” She asked Annabeth.

Annabeth shook her head as she peeled off her warmups and took down her hair.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Piper asked.

Annabeth thought for a moment before shaking her head. If she tried to talk about it, she worried she would break, and she didn’t have time for that. She just wanted to relax, enjoy a small lunch, and go out and run the ballet. “No.”

“Okay,” Piper said. “But I’m here if you need me.”

Annabeth nodded. “Thanks.”

Before every show, Annabeth had a recurring nightmare. They were always the same: the orchestra played her cue, she ran out on stage, slipped, and fell on her face. She would get up, and try to continue, but she couldn’t remember the choreography, or she’d do the choreography to the wrong dance. Last night, Annabeth had dreamt that she went out on stage, met the corps and Percy, all in their gilded white costumes, only she was in her red costume from Don Quixote, and she could only remember the steps to Kitri’s act one variation.

She looked down at her costume. It was definitely white. She did a few steps, confirming for herself that she did remember them.

The curtain fell at the end of Rubies, and Annabeth tried to hide herself in the shadows as much as she could as Luke left the stage, but he found her.

“Good luck.” He said smiling. To anyone else, it seemed sweet; to her, it felt deeply insidious.

She tried to smile back, but she felt her stomach churn looking at him, so she just looked away towards the stage as the corps took their place.

He barely moved away from her, taking a spot in the wings where he could see. He’s going to watch, Annabeth realized. That’s okay, she tried to tell herself. He’s just a company member. He wants to watch. He’s allowed to.

After a few minutes, the corps left the stage, and the music for the pas de deux began. Percy entered the stage from downstage left, and she entered from upstage right. They moved slowly to meet each other in the middle. For a moment, all her nerves melted away. She was doing the thing she was best at, and nothing could get in her way.

The dance was slow and elegant, and she and Percy worked well together as partners. She didn’t have to think about anything during the dance. She found peace for a moment as her body moved through the music.

She took his hand and dropped down into a penche, a standing split, one leg going straight up in the air as her body dropped forward, supported by him. Her gaze drifted past Percy though, into the wings, where Luke was still watching. She saw him whisper something to one of the young corps girls, who put a hand over her mouth to stifle a laugh. Annabeth’s heart rate rose as she lifted out of the penche, turning around to move on with the dance. On the other side of the stage, she saw the Stoll brothers, good character dancers, but also good friends of Luke. They were looking at something on a phone, smiling and not paying attention to the dance. They’re looking at the photos, her anxiety told her. They’ve seen them. How many people do you think have seen them?

She turned back to Percy; her movements less precise as she began to spiral. He could tell something was wrong, and tried to help her through, holding onto her tighter when he could to help her stay steady. He’s probably seen them, she thought. He knows. They all know.

She stopped.

She stood flat on the stage as her heart rate rose. Out in the audience, she heard Chiron call for the orchestra to pause, but his voice sounded far away.

“Annabeth? Are you …” Percy started.

She shook her head. “I’m so sorry, I can’t do this.” She said to him. She didn’t recognize her own voice or what she was saying. She looked at Luke one more time. He was smiling.

Annabeth turned and tore off stage in the other direction.

Her dressing room door was opened for her, and she tore inside. She was met by Piper who pulled her into a hug. “I was watching on the monitors.” Piper said, squeezing Annabeth close. “What happened?”

Annabeth sobbed into Piper’s shoulder, holding onto her to keep herself from collapsing, making no effort to explain. Piper didn’t push her to, she just held her until Chiron knocked on their door.

“Annabeth, can I speak with you?” He asked through the door.

Annabeth pulled away from Piper, grabbing tissues to wipes her eyes and nose. “Yes, can I get changed quickly?”

“Of course,” he said, “meet me in my office.”

Annabeth looked at herself in the mirror. Her makeup was running, and her eyes were red, but her hair and costume were still pristine. She took a deep breath and grabbed a makeup wipe, removing all traces of the streaked makeup.

She knew before entering Chiron’s office that she wasn’t going get through the conversation without crying. If he was merciful, she’d still have a job at the end of it.

When she walked into his office, he asked her to sit, looking at her with a removed sympathetic look.

“What happened out there?” He asked her.

Annabeth began to cry despite her best efforts not to. She had hoped she’d make it longer than four seconds.

The story of the night before came spilling out of her. Chiron listened silently, his eyes going wide with shock at some of the details. She finally mustered up all the courage she had and told him: “We’ve been together since I was an apprentice.”

He sat up straighter in his chair. “Well, this is all incredibly unacceptable,” he said.

Annabeth could tell that he didn’t know what else to say to her.

She had spent all morning trying to convince herself that Luke wouldn’t be a distraction. That dancers date all the time and break up. They keep going, why couldn’t she? But she knew it was different. He had a hold on her that he wouldn’t let go of easily.

She took a deep breath and admitted: “I don’t think I can keep dancing here as long as he’s here.” She started to cry again. The idea of losing City Ballet was a nightmare. Losing it because of Luke, though, was never something she expected. But it wasn’t a nightmare at this point, it was a reality she was living.

“Well, we certainly wouldn’t want to lose you, especially considering the circumstances,” Chiron said. “Let me work on keeping you here.” He said. She wasn’t sure exactly what that meant, though. “Do you know what your next step will be?” He asked.

She shook her head. “I don’t … I haven’t had much time to think about all of this. I just …”

“Why don’t you take some time off?” Chiron suggested. Annabeth looked at him, her heart racing. Other than a few injuries, she had never just taken time off before. “If you think that would help.” He added. “I’ve watched your career since you joined the school at fourteen. I want to see you dance here, but I also want to see you heal.”

She thought for a moment before nodding. “I think a break would help.” She admitted. “I hate to do that though.”

“Take your time,” Chiron said. “The ballet will be here when you come back.”

“Will Luke?” She asked.

“Not if I can help it.” Chiron said. Annabeth let out a deep breath and almost smiled.

“I don’t want this to be huge news in the company, though. I’m sure there will be rumors but –”

“We will do what we can,” Chiron promised her. “Do you have someone to stay with?” He asked. Annabeth nodded, hoping Silena and Beckendorf didn’t mind if she crashed at their place for another few nights. “Great,” he said. “Keep me posted on your situation. And if you pass Piper, tell her she’ll be dancing Diamonds with Percy first cast. Katie will take Piper’s second cast spot.”

Annabeth nodded, and headed out of the office.

When she stepped into the hall, she was met by Percy, still in costume and looking worried. “Hey,” he said, walking up to her, “are you okay?”

Annabeth didn’t know Percy that well, but they had been in the company together for years. This was the first time they had partnered together though, and they had started to become closer. She still didn��t know much about him except that he was kind and funny (and he had eyes so green it should be illegal.)

She was almost overwhelmed that he cared about her enough to wait outside the office to check on her. Luke, she noticed, was nowhere to be seen.

“I’ll be okay,” she told him, hoping that was true. “I’m so sorry.” She added.

“Don’t worry about it. Do you need anything?” He asked.

She shook her head. “Thank you. I’m not going to be performing, though. I’m taking a break for a bit.”

He looked shocked, but he was too polite to ask any questions. “Good luck,” he said. “And really, please let me know if you need anything.”

Annabeth nodded and headed back to her dressing room to pack her things and tell Piper that she’d been promoted to first cast.

~*~*~

Present Day

“So, I left, stayed with Beckendorf and Silena for a few days while Luke moved out. A month or so later, I went down to Virginia until December,” she finished telling Percy.

They were sitting on her couch facing each other. She had tucked her knees up to her chest, closing herself off as she told the story. She had asked Percy to come to her apartment during the phone call, sending him an Uber. When she opened the door for him, she nearly collapsed against his chest, pulling him in for a hug. Percy hugged her back, holding her tightly. He felt grateful that she still trusted him enough to be close to him.

As she told him her story, he wanted to pull her in close, but she kept to one side of the couch, hardly looking at him as she recalled some of the more painful details.

Percy hadn’t felt this angry in a long time. He had known men like Luke before, he had lived with one for too long, and he didn’t like the idea of anyone having to put up with that, and certainly not for a decade. Certainly not still.

“Fuck him for doing that to you.” Percy said finally. He tried to conceal his rage; he knew it wouldn’t necessarily be the most helpful thing to add to the conversation.

Annabeth took a deep breath. “He’s the worst, and I can’t believe how much time I wasted with him.”

Percy moved closer to her, just close enough the rest his hand on hers for comfort.

“Did you ever end up pressing charges or anything?” He asked.

Annabeth shook her head. “I tried. It seemed like the right thing to do. I met with a lawyer and it was … awful. It was just hours of traumatizing questions of whether or not we had evidence or foundation. It wasn’t helping me get better. There was one moment where I realized that I if I had to sit on the stand, I’d be more likely to throw up or have a panic attack, rather than offering any evidence to help my case.

“So eventually, I sat down and thought about what I actually wanted. And I wanted to heal, which wouldn’t happen as long as this process was on going. I wanted him out of City Ballet, which Chiron was already working on, and I wanted him out of my life, and to get rid of the photos. So, we settled between the two of us. He’d leave the ballet and move to Portland to work for his dad, which he did, and he even let me delete the photos of his phone myself.” She let out a grim laugh. “Should have figured he had them somewhere else.”

She took a deep breath and continued. “But, anyway, he left, and I hadn’t heard from him until today.”

“Do you think you’ll go forward with something now?” Percy asked. “Because I’m sure Mr. Gmail could get that email back if you –”

Annabeth shook her head. “Probably not. I mean, maybe? I don’t know. I’ll probably call him at some point and ask about today, but I still don’t think I’m ready for any legal process.”

“Don’t you want him to face consequences?” Percy asked. Percy thought back to Gabe, and how many times he wished that his mom would divorce him, or that a school councilor would notice that Percy was bruised. That someone would do something to get him out of his and his mom’s lives. None of that ever happened. The happiest day of Percy’s life was when they’d found Gabe in the Hudson – some unsettled poker debt and a bar fight. His mom had never let him know all the details, but Percy always figured that his body must have been even more bloated and smelly after a few days in the river. He’d be lying if he said he didn’t want something similar for Luke, instead of him just walking away to a different life.

“I wanted to hurt him,” she admitted. “When I held up that vase, I wanted to hurt him, to make him bleed, to make him vulnerable. But more than that, I wanted to keep my career, to keep my life.”

“Do you think your career would be ruined by exposing him? You’ve already got Chiron on your side.”

“No,” She told him. She paused for a minute, thinking about what to say.

“You know, the day after he moved out, Jewels opened,” she said. “I went and sat all the way in the back. Chiron had pulled Luke from “Rubies,” but Jason was dancing in his place. From all the way in the back, he looked like him. But that didn’t bother me. I felt nothing. The thought of him being on that stage didn’t make me angry, and the thought of him never dancing on it again didn’t make me happy. But then “Diamonds” started. And I saw you, up on stage with Piper, and I just started to cry. Because I didn’t know if I’d ever be on that stage again.

“I left New York a few days later, and I spent months with therapists, and old dance teachers, and my journal, and Greys Anatomy reruns, just trying to figure out what do, and …” She trailed off and stared at her hands as she took a deep breath. Finally, she looked back at Percy. “I’m just trying to do what’ll make me happy, and, right now, pressing charges won’t do that, I don’t think.”

Percy didn’t say anything. She started to cry again, and he handed her a tissue and her glass of water, offering a short pause before she continued.

“We were engaged. I told him I wanted to marry him! We were a month away from the wedding. I had a dress! Have a dress; it’s still in my closet.” She looked over towards her room, her gaze distant.

“I know we like to think we live in some liberal utopia, but how many judges will look at this case – look at me – and think I’m just some vindictive would-be bride who got dumped? I have no evidence of our relationship before I was 18, and even then, it’s slim. Most people think we started dating when I was 20! It’s just my word against his.” Percy wanted to tell her that she was wrong, that there would be judges who would take her seriously. Or lawyers who would encourage him to settle, getting her a restraining order or something. But he knew Annabeth was smart; if she didn’t think that was possible or good for her, she wouldn’t do it.

She shook her head, looking down again, blonde curls a curtain covering her face. “And for what? Maybe he’ll face consequences if put before the right judge, but what are the consequences for me? I have to sit in front of a room of people I don’t know and tell this story again? Ask them to believe me?” She sobbed again.

“I never even told my dad what happened. What? Am I supposed to sit in court and say, ‘Sorry dad, you trusted me to go off to New York and I got taken advantage of for a decade in the apartment you pay for? Now watch some lawyer hold up nude photos of me?” She laughed and sobbed at the same time before continuing. “No. I can’t do that.” She took a deep breath and took a sip of water before continuing.

“Percy, I’m so embarrassed. I’ve spent the last few months trying to understand that I was taken advantage of, and harmed, and that it all wasn’t my fault, but … I lived with him for five years. I believed him when he told me he loved me. And not just when I was sixteen. I believed him when I was twenty-five. For ten years, I thought he loved me. And I’ve never been so wrong about something, and I am so embarrassed. I have a fucking wedding dress in my closet and –” she cut herself off with her own sobs, taking a few more tissues from Percy, who just rested a comforting hand on her leg as she cried.

She caught her breath after a moment. “I don’t want people in the company to know what happened. Going to trial would just mean everyone finding out. I don’t want rumors that I’ve slept my way to the top to get worse. I don’t want people to judge me, or pity me, or hate me. I don’t want people to know the photos exists, because they’ll just go looking for them. I just … I can’t give up what I have right now for a trial that might result in nothing.” She took a deep breath. “I know it might not be the right thing to do. It’s not the brave thing. But it’s what will make me happy right now.”

Percy nodded. It didn’t matter what he wanted to do to Luke, or what he felt he deserved, he reminded himself. He was at Annabeth’s apartment to comfort her, not to try and tell her what to do.

“You know, I danced the Sugar Plum Fairy when I was seventeen?” She said. Percy nodded, he had heard that story before, but he didn’t know why she was telling it. “I was in the morning class,” she continued, “before the matinee. I was going on that night as snowflake and flower. Right before class started, Chiron came up to me and told me that whoever was dancing it that night was out. I don’t even remember who I replaced, but he told me that I was going to do it. I had about four hours to learn it, get in a costume, and get on stage. And I remember Lee Fletcher was my cavalier.” Percy knew Lee, of course, he was one of the oldest dancers in the company. He had retired two years ago, but he still came back for the Nutcracker to play Drosselmeyer. He was possibly one of the kindest people Percy had met at City Ballet besides Beckendorf.

“So, Lee and I go into a studio and just start running the dance over and over with a ballet master. Then I got into a costume and waited for act two to start. While I was waiting, I remember him coming up to me and saying ‘Don’t worry. If you forget the steps, just make it up. If you forget the steps to the pas de deux, just make it up, and I’ll follow your lead.’ And I could tell that he was kind of joking to lighten the mood, but also very serious, and that was exactly what I needed to hear. But, anyway, I went out for the solo, it went great. We did the pas de deux later, it went great, and I felt like I was on top of the world. I had debuted at Sugar Plum at seventeen.” She smiled. “And then I went backstage, and one of the ballet masters just said, ‘great job Annabeth. Go bring that costume back to the shop, we need you as a party guest, a snowflake, and a flower tonight.’ And that was it. I had my moment, and it was over as quickly as it had been given to me.

“And then, this November, I agreed to do some guesting performances at my youth company. I would be their Sugar Plum for their Nutcracker performances for the first two weeks of December, and then I would move back to New York right before Christmas. And then Chiron called me and asked if I was coming back for Nutcracker. I told him I’d be back in the city on December 20th, and that was planning on doing the Spring season shows, but not Nutcracker. And he said ‘December 20th? Can I put you in for shows after then?’”

“And I just said ‘yes, of course.’ I didn’t realize until I said that how much I wanted to be back. He put me in for three shows, all with Beckendorf. The first one was December 23rd, and I was standing in the wings, waiting to go on. I felt so nervous and so calm at the same time. Then Lee came up behind me, and he was all dressed up as Drosselmeyer, and he said ‘remember, if you forget the steps, just make them up.’” Her voice caught, and she started to cry again, but she spoke through it. “Then he hugged me and told me that he was glad I was back.

“I thought no one remembered that day. It had all happened so quickly. No one was in the audience to support me. I didn’t even have time to call my friends or family to let them know it was happening, and it was over so fast. But for him to come up to me nine years later and show that he remembered that day, and that he knew how important it was to me it just … it meant to world to me. And I knew that this was where I wanted to be and dance for the rest of my career.

“And I just want Sleeping Beauty to be perfect, because I want people to know that I am back, I’m not going anywhere, and that I’ve worked hard and I’m good, and I’m not giving that up.” She paused and took his hand. “And I know you understand that.” Percy nodded. He did understand. The two of them had come from incredibly different trainings and upbringings, but somehow, they had both landed in similar situations. They were leading a ballet together, and half the company thought she wasn’t qualified to do it, and the other half thought he wasn’t qualified. But they were all wrong, and they would show them.

She squeezed his hand but kept holding on. “Today, when I was in costume and on stage again, I felt so strong. I was balanced on two tows, and I felt like nothing in the world could knock me over. I don’t think I’ve ever felt that way.” She smiled faintly, looking up at Percy. “I just want to keep feeling that way for right now.”

Percy nodded and smiled. “It’s your decision, and I won’t try and push you in any other direction,” he promised. “But I’m by your side no matter what.”

“Thank you, that means a lot.”

Percy took a deep breath. “I do kind of understand what you’re going through.”

He ended up telling her most of the details he remembered about Gabe. Their ‘guys secret’ where Percy gave him poker money or else Gabe would punch his lights out. His yelling, his smell, and the day Percy realized he hadn’t been the only one being hurt by Gabe. Annabeth kept holding his hand as he talked through the story, offering him comforting squeezes when it became too much.

“Then one day, he turned up dead in the river, and it seemed like all of our problems were over.” He said. “My mom and I were suspects for a little while, but they eventually figured out it was some gambling dispute turned bar fight.”

“Who knew that of all the things, this is something we’d have in common?” Annabeth joked. Percy laughed for the first time that evening.

Percy only noticed how long they had been holding hands when Annabeth let go of his. She turned her body to face foreword, putting her feet on the ground for the first time in hours. “Anyway, I hate to ask you this,” Annabeth said, “but would you be willing to stay here tonight? Just in case he tries to come around or something? If not, I can call Silena, I’m sure –”

“Annabeth,” Percy said, “of course I’ll stay.”

She let out a deep breath and smiled. “Thanks. You can take the bed.” She said.

“Absolutely not. I’ll be fine on the couch. I’m not taking your bed away from you.”

“No, seriously, I’ll be fine. Besides, this is a pull-out couch.” She said, patting the couch cushions.

“That might be worse.” He said.

She stood up and stretched. “How about we settle this later, and for the time being, we pop on a movie? I can make popcorn.”

“That would be fantastic.” Percy said. They didn’t have a rehearsal the next two days, so they could afford to stay up a little late. They both needed to unwind.

“I have Netflix. I used to have more DVDs, but Luke took most of them when he moved out. All he left were Moulin Rouge and the behind the scenes footage for the Lord of the Rings movies.” She said, walking towards the kitchen.

“Wow, what a psycho.” Percy said.

“He took Psycho too.” She added. Percy laughed, before standing up.

“Can I help you with anything?”

“Wanna melt the butter?”

A few minutes later, they were sitting on Annabeth’s couch, under the same blanket with a bowl of popcorn in between them, as Baz Luhrmann’s colorful early 2000s masterpiece started. Musicals weren’t Percy’s favorite genre (although he was always partial to Ewan McGregor), but he understood them. They were like ballet. Musicals and ballets were things that your logic understood, but your emotions did. And Annabeth had a number of emotional reactions to the film.

By “El Tango De Roxanne,” they had finished the bowl of popcorn, setting it on the table, and she had taken his hand, gripping it with anticipation as the scene went on.

Percy worried about their movie choice the Duke ripped the diamond necklace from Satine’s neck, before stripping her and abusing her, but Annabeth kept her eyes forward as the music swelled. “You made me believe that you loved me,” The Duke said to Staine. Annabeth didn’t move, but Percy squeezed her hand as the Duke tore at Satine’s clothes. She didn’t move until Satine’s death; Percy watched her quickly wipe tears from her face.

“Luke always hated this movie.” She said. “Probably why he left it.”

Percy could figure out that a movie that punishes jealousy in love would make Luke squirm. He wanted to ask what Luke had against the behind the scenes footage of The Lord of the Rings, but it didn’t seem like the appropriate time.

When the credits rolled, Annabeth wiped her eyes quickly, before standing up to take the popcorn bowl to the kitchen.

“So,” she said, “you’re taking the bed?”

“Absolutely not,” Percy said back, “you’ve had a very long day, and it’s your bed. You’re taking it.”

“You are my guest and an absolute saint for listening to me for hours and hours.” She walked back to the couch and poked him in the chest. “You are taking it.”

Percy laid down on the couch. “Nope, I’m just fine right here.”

Annabeth groaned. “You know what? It’s a king-sized bed, why don’t we each just pick a side?” Her face was a little red, but that might have just been from crying.

Percy nodded, trying to seem casual. They had done plenty of intimate things on stage, but that was their job. Sharing a bed platonically felt like a new level of intimacy unmatched by any ballet moves or stage kisses. “Alright, but you’re picking which side first.”

“Fine,” she agreed. “If you need something to change into, I might have something.” She offered.

Percy looked down at his sweatpants and tee shirt. Usually, he just slept in his boxers, but that wouldn’t do for tonight. “I’ll be alright in this.” He promised.

They took turns in the bathroom, and Annabeth found him an extra toothbrush to use, which he was grateful for. He texted his mom, briefly explaining the situation to her. Sally had texted back: “Thank you for staying with her, I’m sure she appreciates it. Be safe.”

“It’s not like that.” He texted back. She just sent back the shrug emoji and a blue heart.

When he stepped out of the bathroom, Annabeth was already in her pajamas – just a plain black tee shirt and flannel pants. She had gotten under the covers on the side near the window.

Percy almost smiled getting into bed with her, but he held back, not wanting to make anything weird. It was weird enough being in Annabeth’s bedroom at all. Most of her furniture was white, and her shelves and dressers were decorated in photos of her dancing, trophies, and a few old pairs of pointe shoes that she had written the date on and the name of a show. Before she turned the light off, Percy noticed a pair hanging by their ribbons over the nightstand on his side. They were particularly faded with age, and the ribbons were fraying. “The Nutcracker, 12/6/2011” they said. Percy smiled.

“Thanks again for staying.” Annabeth said, already rolled over away from him.

“Of course.”

She reached over to the lamp on her nightstand and clicked it off, leaving them alone in the dark.

~*~*~*~*

A/N: Sorry this became so thematically tied to Moulin Rouge. It wasn’t that way about five hours ago. Damn you Baz and you’re wonderfully stylized musical.

Jewels: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9Z2-0GVvIE&t=4374s (skip to 59:31 for the pas de deux) Kitri act one variation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOvXo841L1o Sugar Plum Fairy solo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pKwCEfGRDU Sugar Plum pas de deux: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qy6dlGpC3Ns (this is not the NYCB choreography, but you get the point) El Tango De Roxanne: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rn0xXo1gwGY

#percy jackson #annabeth chase #percabeth #charles beckendorf #silena beauregard #luke castellan #Percy Jackson and the Olympians #once upon a pointe #Piper McLean

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dothwrites · 5 years

Text

15.04 coda--before knowing remembers

---

Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders.--William Faulkner

---

Sam’s bombshell effectively kills any conversation. Sam seems to be fine with it--he rests his forehead against the window like he’s in some kind of goddamn music video. Rain streaks past the windows and for a long time, the only sound in the car is the squeal of the wipers across the windshield and the soft hush of the tires sprinting over wet asphalt.

What is there to say? Dean feels like a real piece of shit, but he can honestly say that it’s been...years since he thought about Jessica. Truth be told, he tried not to think about her much at all. It was one of those things--someone that he managed to be too late to save, another chalk mark on the tally of failures in his life--Except there, for the first few months that he and Sam were hunting together, back when their entire mission was We need to find Dad, he couldn’t turn his back on the idea that he’d failed. Failed Sam, failed Jess, even failed Mom in some subtle yet irreversible way. Every time he looked at Sam, it was like watching her burn all over again. Every time Sam woke up gasping was another reminder--You failed.

So yeah, Dean tries to put Jessica out of his mind as much as possible. He’s done really well--between Madison, Ruby, Amelia, Eileen, and Rowena, between apocalypse after apocalypse, Jess got lost in the shuffle. Dean only met her the once--cute, blonde. Nice tits, if he’d been looking, which of course he was. Seemed sweet. Maybe seemed like she would have been something good. And then Dean crashed into her life and she ended up just another dead girl.

So yeah, they don’t fucking talk on the way home.

They get back to the bunker. Sam looks at Dean for a moment, like there’s something that he wants to say, but he can’t just figure out the words for it. He decides on silence. The last Dean sees of him is his shirttails whipping around a corner as he makes his way to his room. Dean wants to call after him, but he finds that he just doesn’t have the energy. That seems like it’s happening a lot to him lately.

He ends up in one of the chairs in the library, glass in hand. He swirls the whiskey around, watching how it catches the light. He takes a slow sip, savoring the burn.

It’s obvious that you’re not parents.

That one...that one had stung.

That kid, Billie. The way that he’d looked at Dean and knelt, so calm. Terrified. There was a look in his eyes, like maybe he wanted Dean to find a way out for him, but he already knew that wasn’t going to happen. His hands shook as he raised the machete--

Jack. Jack, looking up at him, slightly cross-eyed as he tried to keep Dean’s face and the gun in his sight. The acceptance on his face. The trust. The resignation.

He’s like our kid, Sam said once, and Dean had scoffed. Dean Winchester, father? Yeah fucking right. But then the words had set in, and yeah. He and Sam had Lucifer’s weird little kid sleeping in their bunker.

You’re not a parent. You wouldn’t understand. You’d die for your kid. Or kill for them.

Dean tried to kill his kid.

Sitting in the library, with Sam in his room doing his level best to try and disappear, it finally crashes down on Dean--the rage, the grief, the betrayal, the incessant screaming in the back of his mind--make it stop, make this stop, please, please--And Jack had just looked at him, doe-eyes blinking as he’d guided Dean’s hand toward his forehead.

With a convulsive movement, Dean hefts the glass at the wall. In the split-second when it shatters and glass flies everywhere, he sees it--a flash of blue-white light, lightning striking, a clap of thunder and a flash of wings--And then he’s standing alone in the library, his hand bleeding where one of the shards managed to cut him.

“What the fuck,” Dean mutters. He looks down at the blood trickling down his wrist. He presses down on the place where his skin split. Bright pain flashes through his hand and up his shoulder and the blood starts to flow with a vengeance. He remembers pressing down on the gash in Sam’s hand, when the wall came down, when...when...

Dean presses harder on the wound--What about this is real? What happened when Sam’s wall came tumbling down? Why is there betrayal mingling with his memories of Jack? What about this is real?

We are.

Dean rips his thumb away from his hand. His palm aches and the only sound in the library is the almost inaudible drip of his blood onto the hardwood floor. “What the fuck,” he mutters again, before he goes to wrap his hand.

---

Sam emerges from his room around lunchtime the next day. Dean almost thinks about saying something, but decides against it when he sees the dark circles underneath his eyes. I can’t breathe, Sam had said, and for the first time in maybe years, Dean lets himself see the toll that this job took on his baby brother. Just another person in the long line of people that Dean’s managed to fail.

Mom, Dad, Bobby, Jack, Charlie, Benny, Kevin--

There’s something else there, a name that lurks in the shadows at the back of his mind. Dean reaches for it, but it slithers away. It’s the almost, not-quite, tip of your tongue type of remembrance, where he would know what he was thinking about if he could only put a name to it, but he needs to put a name to it before he knows what he’s thinking about.

“You have an accident last night?”

Dean startles and looks over at Sam, who’s peering in the wastebasket. Ah. The remnants of the glass would be right on top.

Dean forces a nonchalant shrug. “You know how it is. Butterfingers.” He waves his hands, forgetting the cut on his palm until the healing skin pulls.

Sam doesn’t look convinced, but he also doesn’t look like he’s willing to go the ten rounds that it will take to wrestle a straight answer out of Dean. He never thought that he’d miss that pinched face and the prissy set of Sam’s mouth, but here he is.

“So I thought that we’d take some time off,” Dean begins. He’d actually thought no such thing, but in light of last night’s conversation, it seems appropriate.

“Actually I found us a job last night.” Sam holds out his phone and Dean scans the article. Two bodies found in Shoshone National Forest in Wyoming. Not the type of job that he would take when the temperature’s dropping, but hell. He’ll take it.

“All right. Give me a few hours to get some laundry done, we can be on the road by 3.” After some searching, Dean finds a muffin that’s a little less stale than the others, and shoves it into his mouth. He chews around the dry texture, wincing as the lump of flour descends down his throat.

“Great.” Sam is already half out the door when Dean calls his name. He pauses, but every line in his body screams his desire to be gone.

“When you...” Dean scratches at the back of his neck, unsure of how to continue. In the doorway, Sam shifts his weight, taking an infinitesimal step backward. “Your wall. What do you remember about it? When it came down?”

Sam eyes widen before he squints in suspicion. The wall is just another thing in the long line of topics that they Don’t Talk About. They could fill an entire, separate bunker with the things that they choose to forget.

“Why are you asking?”

Dean takes refuge in irritation. “It was just a question, never mind. Jesus.”

Properly cowed, Sam’s shoulders slump. “I mean, you were there; I told you what I know. It just came down--too much scratching. I managed to wake up in time to help you stop Crowley from taking all the souls out of Purgatory, but not in time to stop the Leviathans from escaping. Took a while but I managed to patch it back up.” Sam’s fingers ghost self-consciously over his temples. “Seriously, why do you--” Sam’s eyes fall to Dean’s hand, and Dean resists the urge to snatch the offending apendage out of his sight. “Did something happen last night?”

The scoff that Dean forces out of his throat burns in the air. “No. It was just...I was just wondering. Trying to figure out where we went right and where Chuck was just trying to nudge us along, you know?”

The tension in Sam’s posture fades away, but doesn’t completely disappear. There’s still suspicion in his eyes as he looks at Dean. “You need to stop picking at it. Whatever Chuck did, whatever he tweaked--we’re free. Who cares whether or not he helped build back the wall? You said it yourself: we’re making our own choices now. He’s not interfering in our lives anymore.” Sam shakes his head as he huffs a little disbelieving laugh. “To think that I have to explain free will to you of all people.”

“Yeah.” Dean shrugs. His ignorance sits on his shoulders like a cloak and he tries to shake off the feeling that he’s missing something essential. There’s something lurking just outside his awareness, something huge, something related to Sam’s wall, and Jack, and free will-- “Whatever. Leaving at 3!”

---

It’s an 11 hour drive to Shoshone National Forest. Once upon a time, Dean would have made that drive in one shot and not thought twice about it. Now, however--

Hour 7 brings a twinge to the back of his neck and a persistent ache to his lower back. His ass hurts. His 25 year old self would split a gut laughing at him. Of course, his 25 year old self never envisioned reaching the other side of 40 so what the hell does that asshole know?

Sam doesn’t say anything as Dean pulls into the motel parking lot. He grunts when Dean says “First shower,” and by the time that Dean emerges, he’s fast asleep on the bed.

“Asshole,” Dean mutters. He throws on some sweats and a t-shirt and pads over to Sam’s bed. Fucker didn’t even bother to take off his boots.

Sam groans as Dean pulls off his boots, but doesn’t wake. The thought of moving that gargantuan body puts more weariness in Dean than the entire drive, so he doesn’t bother trying to roll Sam under the blankets. Let the Sasquatch figure that out for himself.

He tucks himself under the blankets and pushes away the doubts nipping at the back of his mind. They won. They beat the ghost apocalypse, flipped God the bird, and killed the monster.

So why does it feel like they lost?

---

The next time Dean wakes, he’s in a dream.

He can always tell that it’s a dream because sunlight tickles his eyelids while the scent of fresh laundry wafts into his nose. There’s no natural sunlight in the bunker and most motel sheets smell like ass. More than just the sensory elements, there’s the unreal, slow quality to his body and the world--the idea that he’s lagging, just a second behind where he should be. Every edge is muted and foggy--no one would ever run into the corner of a table in this world. If they did, their body would just slide off like oil and water.

Dean likes this kind of dream, where he can pretend to be someone, anyone else, if only for a few minutes. He likes when he can wake in a bed that’s undeniably his, in a world where he gets to greet the dawn like any other person. A world where he doesn’t have to skulk in the shadows and feel guilty for what he’s done. A world where he gets to wake up with a warm body in bed next to him.

At first, Dean doesn’t roll over. He used to have these dreams all the time, right around when he left Lisa. In the dream, he would wake up next to her and it would be like no time had ever passed. She’d grin at him, that huge I’m glad you’re here, I’m glad your face is the first thing I see in the morning, smile and press against him, all warm supple skin and easy laziness. Dean would wake up from those dreams feeling the ache of missing her, feeling the coldness of his empty bed even more than usual. And after all the shit had gone down, when she and Ben barely survived their encounter with Crowley’s minions, and he’d had to beg that douchebag Balthazar to erase their memories...Dean would imagine, just for a second, that he could hold her one more time.

So he doesn’t roll over. He’s happy to linger in this moment, but only for a visit. A tourist. The hand on his upper left arm changes that.

It’s a strong hand, capable. The fingers spread over his skin, slotting against his muscle in a predetermined way that lights recognition along Dean’s spine. A thumb strokes over a smattering of freckles while Dean struggles to breathe. It’s on the tip of his tongue, he could reach out and touch the answer.

“Morning,” a sleep-rough voice rasps. A man’s voice. “You’re up early.”

Dean can’t stop the roll of his body. He looks at his companion--dark, messy hair, sharp nose, light blue eyes, full lips, a jawline full of stubble. A lazy, indulgent, Sunday morning smile lights up his face. “Why don’t you go back to sleep? We can get up in a few hours.”

Dean’s mouth opens, ready to say the name--Sam’s wall, Leviathans, We’re making this up as we go, I did all of it for you, I’ll have to watch you while you murder the world, I love you, We had a family, We Are--He’s inches away, centimeters, his heart singing because this is it, this is what he’s been missing--

He blinks, and the world...frizzes, like static on a TV picture. Dean blinks, mouth dry, and looks into Lisa’s warm, brown eyes. “Hey sweetie,” she says, thumb skating over the skin just below his eye. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

---

Dean wakes in the motel room, gasping and shaking. The dream threatens to slip through his fingers like water, so he grabs the notepad and writes down everything that he can remember--What the man looked like, the feelings that he had, the sudden realization that empty slots were being filled in his mind.

Even as he writes, the details of the dream vanish. Within thirty seconds, he can’t remember the shade of the man’s eyes. After a minute, he’s having trouble recollecting the sound of his voice. After two minutes, he can’t remember what he said. His left shoulder tingles and Dean tries to fit his fingers to the pattern. It’s not right, he knows that, yet it feels closer to right than anything else.

He leaves his hand on his shoulder, squeezing, throughout the night.

read the rest on ao3!

#destiel #destiel fanfic #destiel fic #supernatural #spn spoilers #15.04 coda #spn 15x04 #spn15 #fare thee well spn #welcome to the end #coda fic #dothwrites #should there be a part two #or should we leave it the way that it is #decisions decisions and all of them wrong

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hennessystevens-udaku · 5 years

Text

The Choking Game

KING JADE/KING HENNESSY/SUB!ERIK

Erik sat in the emerald green throne chair of Hennessy’s bedroom, feet propped up on her desk. He’d just finished his nightly workout, and his studded chest shined with sweat. The Gatorade Hennessy had waiting for him was gone in 2 big gulps, a sign that he’d pushed himself hard. She stared as his Adam's apple bobbed up and down like an egg caught in his throat. There was a small hole in the toe of his sock exposing his glossy toenail painted with clear polish done by Hennessy's hand. She chuckled softly to herself at the memory of the night he let her do it.

“What’s so funny, lil girl?”

“Oh nothing,” she lied with a smile.

“That typically means it's something.”

“Does it really?” she asked, still feigning ignorance. He pulled her onto his lap kissing her shoulder.

“Yes ma’am,” he answered in between soft kisses to her skin.

“Well maybe this time is different,” she replied between her mewls.

“Connerie,” was his response as he traded the soft kisses for slightly rougher nibbles to her skin.

“Waaaait,” she whined. “I thought I was supposed to be giving you a massage.”

“Massage me then, Princess. What oil you using?”

“Homie whipped up some homemade shea butter. It’ll leave you feeling softer than a baby’s ass, braille bumps and all,” she giggled. He replied with a rough smack to her ass.

“Keep talking shit ma,” he threatened, his Oakland twang creeping out a bit. Hennessy stood to retrieve the shea butter smoothing it into his skin with deliberate motions. He let his eyes fall closed, allowing himself to fully enjoy his wife’s strong yet gentle small hands as they relaxed the kinks in his weary bones. She used her knuckles to knead the skin of his shoulder blades and spine then used her finger tips to massage his neck and temples. When she was done, she fell back onto his lap, wrapping her arms around his neck.

“Daka,” she cooed as her fresh set of coffin nails found their way into his scalp.

“Princess?”

“I have a question.”

“And I may have an answer.” She smirked, letting a finger snake its way into his Cuban link chain.

“What would happen if I did this?” She slid out of his lap and turned to face him. She let her hand travel up his stomach to his sternum and finally to the chain that rested snuggly against his chest. He watched as she grabbed ahold and twisted so that it choked him ever so slightly. His eyes grew wide as he stared up at her, his top teeth sinking into his plump bottom lip. His grip tightened on her hips as she twisted the chain even more.

“I don’t think those were words, Daddy.” He hissed softly, his eyes darkening with lust as he stared up at her.

“Fuck Auré. You teasing me,” he moaned.

“How? I just asked a question that I’m still waiting patiently for the answer to,” she responded with a giggle, still maintaining her grip on his chain.

“Am I intruding?” Charlie called from the doorway of the bedroom.

“Daddy’s being mean. I asked him a simple question, but he’s ignoring me.”

“Well that’s rude of you, N’Jadaka. Answer the little nugget.” She entered the grand room and approached the duo, her observations clueing her in to what was happening. “Well isn't this something. Don't mind me.” She took a seat on the desk next to Erik's feet to watch.

He bit his lip again, knowing that there wouldn’t be an easy way out of this.

“It turns me on,” he moaned softly.

“I’m sorry, what was that?” Hennessy asked, twisting the chain once more. Erik’s hips began involuntary jerking, slowly thrusting upward. His eyes bucked again, a silent plea for her to not make him repeat what he had just said, but he knew better. King Hennessy wasn’t one to go easy, especially when it came to the brattiest brat in The Kompound.

“Oh my,” Charlie grinned leaning forward to watch. He was forgetting himself. That massage must have truly worked wonders.

“Say it again, my love,” Hennessy coaxed with soft strokes to his cheeks.

“It turns me on,” he grunted through clenched teeth.

“Aww Daddy Brat has a choking kink,” Charlie teased and she ran the heel of her YSL pump up and down his inner thigh. “Why.. does it turn you on, N'Jadaka? You've neglected to share that part. Is it the feeling of her fingers pressing and twisting the cool chain so that it winds and tightens, squeezing your neck so tightly that you lose your breath? Is that it? Do you like the feeling of losing control? Knowing your very life is in the hands of one of the brats you discipline?”

“Fuck,” was all he could say in response as his dark eyes bounced between his wives.

“Is your neck phallic representation? Are you imagining how tightly that meat stick between your twitching thighs could be squeezed? By those soft, small hands nonetheless. So feminine. So powerful. Address her by her title, N'Jadaka.”

“Yes, King Jade.”

Charlie slid her heel to the seat of his pants and applied mild pressure. “Don't look at me. Look at her. What is her name?”

“K-King H-Hennessy,” he groaned. If there was some sort of euphoric purgatory between Earth and the Ancestral Plane, Erik was there.

“Tighter,” Charlie requested and Hennessy happily obliged, applying more pressure to her husband’s thick neck.

“This is what you do to us, N’Jadaka. You toy with our bodies and minds in whatever way you see fit until we’re putty in those stubby fingers of yours. How does it feel for the shoe to be on the other foot?”

If he were in the presence of anyone else, there was no way in hell Erik would be whimpering and moaning the way he was, but because this was a side of him that only his first, fourth, and seventh wife could bring out of him, he relished it.

“I love it,” he smiled.

“Words of a masochist,” Charlie said retracting her foot only to have Erik grab her by the calf, putting it back.

“I'd like to try something. May I,” Charlie asked Hennessy before she made a move. Standing from the desk, she pushed Erik's feet down to the floor and straddled his lap, grabbing the Cuban link chain from Hennessy and twisting it tightly causing his chin to raise.

“Hey Mikey, I think he likes it,” she teased scratching the fingernails of her free hand down his bumpy chest and down his stomach into the band of his briefs. She squeezed him there with equal tightness biting and tugging on his bottom lip before releasing all three at once and returning to her spot on the desk. Erik whined pitifully when she left his lap.

“That's all. You kids have fun. I'll watch,” she grinned staring Erik down. He was panting like a dog in heat. Well technically, he was a dog in heat. His hardened member throbbed in his pants while his wives taunted him. Hennessy regained possession of the Cuban, twisting it around her hand while whispering the filthiest things in his ear in French. Charlie watched with a smirk, recording the entire ordeal for research purposes. It was a solid look into the thoughts and inner workings of a known sadist moonlighting secretly as a masochist. This was a private piece of his identity and a face he never revealed to the world.. and now it was on camera in Charlie's gallery. She hummed chipperly.

“Judging by that growing wet spot in ya pants, I think you’ve got something to ask me, N’Jadaka,” Hennessy quipped as she released her hold on the necklace before tightening it again.

“M-May I cum King Hennessy?”

“Cum? Already? We’re just getting started, Daddy.”

“N'Jadaka. Have you ever been waterboarded?” Charlie noted Erik's thrown expression. “I'm thinking of creating our own version of that. Wouldn't it be better if you were smothered by vagina rather than a shirt? Drowned by Hennessy rather than water?” His expression changed to something a bit more excited. Hennessy’s eyes shined with mischief the more Charlie spoke.

“Whatchu tryna do, wifey?” the small princess questioned.

“I'm trying to see you smother our lovely husband with that dangerous cooch of yours, but don't remove the panties. Let him suffer. Henny smiled a devious smile as she hoisted herself onto her husband’s lap and then up to his face. She gripped his dreads with both hands as she guided his head between her legs, allowing the soft satin of her panties to caress his face.

“Gahdamn,” he groaned, his nails digging into the arms of the chair.

“No one gave you permission to speak, N’Jadaka. Smother him so he can't breathe let alone speak,” Charlie goaded admiring the view.

“Yes King Jade,” Henny obeyed, pushing their husband’s face deeper between her plump thighs. The feeling was unlike anything Henny had ever imagined. The soft satin coupled with the warmth of his skin and breath had her dripping, leaving slick snail-like trails along his cheeks.

“Permission to touch you, King?” Erik called out, his voice muffled by his wife’s vagina.

“Permission denied,” Hennessy moaned, causing Erik to whimper as his nails dug deeper into the arms of the chair.

“Ooh the Jaguar about to come out,” Charlie teased before giving further instructions.

“You’ve got 5 minutes to make her cum without using your hands and tongue. Get creative. I need to see this, I might learn something,” Charlie said zooming in on the footage. He blew his lips like a raspberry making a noise that sounded like a propeller. It seemed to work because Hennessy reacted. She rolled her hips, pushing his face even further between her legs. She was now using his nose as a clit stimulator and boy was it doing the trick.

“1 minute,” Charlie announced as she moved to get closer. She wanted to capture it all, right down to Hennessy’s love faces. The tiny princess’ body went into overdrive, jerking and spazzing until her release coated the seat of her panties and the tip of his nose.

“Do over. I can beat that time,” Erik pleaded, keeping his hands down.

“Not tonight, Daddy. I have other plans for us,” Hennessy murmured softly draping her arms around N'Jadaka's neck. Lovey dovey mode was back in effect.

“Welp, that's my cue. I have some online reading to do. I shall see you two in the morning.” Charlie stood and made her way to the door as Hennessy and Erik continued nibbling on each other's lips, caught up. The next round would occur behind closed doors.

————————

TAG LIST: @vibranium-soul @imagine-mbaku @mareethequeen @greennightspider @jozigrrl @lovemecharlie @alyshastevens-udaku @thehomierobbstark @youreadthatright @tgigoldie @killmongersgurl @dameshaemonique @princessstevens @princesskillmonger @amethyst1993 @iamrheaspeaks @laketaj24 @bidibidibombaclaat @whatmoredoyouwantamericaa @forbeautyandlife @bastioncarterstevens-udaku @inlovewithmakeupcomicsanimelove @dacreskars @thadelightfulone @wakanda-inspired @hold-me-like-a-heart-beat @ayellepea @awkwardlyabstract @madamslayyy @blowmymbackout @vikkidc @champagnesugamama @sociallyawkward18 @trevantesbrat @supersizemeplz @itsangeludaku

#hennessy chiron #my shit #the kompound #erik x henny #the household #king hennessy #king jade #charlie jade #erik stevens #erik killmonger

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mrswhozeewhatsis · 5 years

Text

A Woman of Letters (Getting a Feel for Sam Winchester) - Chapter 18

Summary: You’ve just opened an occult bookstore in Lebanon, Kansas, when you fall for a tall, handsome customer…literally. You soon find out that there’s more to the world than you ever suspected, including you. Discovering your heritage puts you directly in a witch’s crosshairs, though, so the Winchesters offer to take you in and teach you how to protect yourself. As you discover your own family history with the supernatural and your own hidden talents, you can’t help but wish a certain brother was as excited about your interest as you are.

Total length: 43 chapters, 70,247 words - Read on AO3 - Series masterlist

Chapter word count: 1947 words

Pairing: Sam x Reader

Warnings: Canon-level angst and violence

You

The next few days continued as that one had. You got up in the morning, had breakfast with Dean, did target practice in the mornings, self-defense in the afternoons, dinner with the brothers and sometimes Cas, and then evenings either in the library reading old files with Sam or watching movies with Dean. You appreciated the movies Dean liked, though you didn’t get quite as excited about them as he did. Dean seemed to like getting you caught up on his favorites. Apparently, Uncle Lloyd had shaped your movie experiences, too, having kept you from going out much with your friends to see what was popular. Dean took it upon himself to make sure you were completely caught up with Star Wars, all the Die Hard movies, and even Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit movies, though they seemed to make him more emotional than the others. When you actually saw tears running down his face during one of them, you snuggled close to him on the couch and rubbed circles into his arm. He finally paused the movie and told you about Charlie. By the time he was done, you had wrapped your arms around him and he was curled into you, silent tears soaking into your shirt. The force of the grief you felt coming from him was so great that you also had tears running down your face. When he turned the movie back on, the two of you stayed close together, you tucked under his arm. After that, it wasn’t uncommon for you to snuggle against him while you watched whatever movie he had decided you needed to see. Sometimes Sam and Cas would join you, but you always found yourself next to Dean.

The hours you spent in the library with Sam were precious to you, though. When he was poring over old books and barely knew you were there, you would sit close to him and just enjoy the lack of static while you pretended to read. Even though you and Dean had gotten close, he felt more like a big brother to you. His job, and he said this to you often and loudly, was to protect you and make sure you knew how to protect yourself. Oh, and teach you everything he thought you should know about pop culture and classic rock. He also took you under his wing in the kitchen, expanding your skill set to baked goods, especially pie. You still couldn’t whip something up out of nothing, but now you had more experience with different kinds of recipes. The best part of your time in the kitchen was when Dean would talk. He would finally open up about his life with his Sammy, from the fire that took their mother, to the demon taking their dad, to his time spent in Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory. When you were with Sam, though, he’d occasionally give you an actual smile with that warmth behind it, and you’d almost swoon. It took you hours longer than it should have to go through the records you were studying because you kept getting lost in thoughts about Sam. There were so many questions running through your mind about him, and you could never get up the nerve to just interrupt his work to ask him.

The worst was when Sam started showing up in your dreams. You had dreams before this that could possibly be Sam, but this was definitely Sam. The day after the first dream, and it was a very good dream, with his warm hands and long fingers all over your body, you couldn’t even look at Sam. It was a rare day when he’d slept in instead of going for an early run, and he had breakfast with you and Dean in his pajama pants and a tight t-shirt. His hair was still messy from sleep, the shirt showed off his arms and shoulders, and the pants were just barely hanging onto his hips. When he reached up into the cabinet for his cereal, he showed off just a strip of skin for half a second, and it took you a moment to catch your breath. Scenes from your dream flashed through your mind…Sam kissing you in the library, Sam’s hand touching you innocently in any number of places, Sam’s shoulders under your hands as his lips found your neck…and you felt your face flush. Cas had showed you the trick he’d taught Sam to contain his feelings, and you spent a moment studying your eggs and bacon while you carefully put your lust-filled thoughts in with the rose quartz crystals in the bookstore in your mind.

A few days after Sam had started translating the journals, he was done. He spent another day waiting on Cas to review his work before he would show you the finished product. During that day, you found your grandmother’s file in the Men of Letters records. When you saw her name, and tracked down the file on her, you whooped so loudly Dean came running from his bedroom, gun drawn. When he saw you were triumphantly holding a file in your hand, he relaxed, and let out a sigh.

“Son of a bitch, Y/N! I thought Rowena had found a way in here through a vent or something!” You laughed at Dean’s exasperated face, and just grinned.

“After five solid days of sneezing through dusty files, I found my grandmother’s file! Sam was right!” You held it up in triumph, looking toward Sam to see if he was as excited as you were. He was smiling, but all you felt from him was static. “I’m sorry for doubting you, Sam.” Sam nodded, but said nothing. Dean set his gun down on the table and walked over to you to look over the file with you. You both sat down, and started reading together, Dean’s arm around the back of your chair. By the time you were done, you were in awe.

“So? What does it say?” Sam was smiling smugly, and you had a feeling he would already know the answer.

“My grandmother was listed under psychics, and her file says she was an empath, a lie detector, and what they called a persuasive. Apparently my uncle was right. She could nudge people into doing and thinking what she wanted. There are a bunch of experiments they did on her in here, and it looks like it was my grandfather who supervised most of them. I guess that’s how they met.” While Dean started reviewing the file in detail, you looked at Sam. “But you knew that already, didn’t you?” You gave Sam a grin that you hoped would get him to let his walls down for a second. Sam smiled, but behind it was still static.

“Your grandmother talked to your uncle about it before she died. Assured him that your father didn’t have the gift, but suspected you did. At least, that’s my translation. I want Cas to make sure I got everything right before I give everything over to you.” Sam looked down at the papers for a moment, and you felt the static lift for a just a second, giving you a short burst of warmth before it returned. “There’s a lot of really personal stuff in here, and I don’t want there to be any misunderstandings.” The smile Sam gave to you was warm and almost shy, and it would have completely melted your heart if it weren’t for the static behind it. Instead, you thought you felt your heart crack.

In a moment, a wave of different emotions rushed through you, and you knew they were all yours, faced with the static from Sam. Why couldn’t he let his guard down just a little? Because he thought he was making it easier for you. Why did it bother you so much that you couldn’t feel him? Why did it make you happy that he cared enough to keep himself from hurting you? Why didn’t you have the courage to tell him that it was unnecessary? Dean interrupted your thoughts as he flipped through the file.

“I bet we could do some of these experiments here. You know, see if you have all of your grandmother’s abilities or not. I think we’d need to find someone you don’t know, though. What do you think, Sam?”

“That might not be a bad idea. Any tools Y/N has to help defend herself are tools she should learn how to use. I bet if we called Hank, told him he could make it up to her for freaking her out that first day, he’d come around and help.” Dean nodded at Sam.

“Looking at this, though, he’d have to be almost as clueless about her as she would be about him. Otherwise, the experiment would be tainted.” Dean pushed the folder over to Sam, and they spent the next few minutes discussing experiment parameters and such. You considered your new-found talent as a “persuasive” while the brothers chatted. Had you ever used your gift without knowing it? Obviously not with Uncle Lloyd, or at least not successfully, but maybe with teachers or friends? Suddenly, a wash of different memories of times when you had debated issues and won hit you. Had you been using an unfair advantage? As you reviewed each instance in your head, one in particular stood out.

You had convinced Crowley to save the Winchesters. Without knowing what you were doing, or remembering that you were mimicking your grandmother at the time, you had persuaded Crowley to bring the brothers back to you. Hand on arm, eyes locked, and a desperate plea, and the King of Hell had done your bidding. You felt your face pale and your eyes widen.

Sam covered one of your hands with one of his and asked, “Are you okay, Y/N?” You looked up at him with your mind still blown.

“I persuaded the King of Hell to bring you back to the bar parking lot when you were fighting Rowena.” Your voice was soft and strained with the shock of what you had done. Both of their jaws went slack.

“Y/N? Do you mean you used your gift and persuaded Crowley to do something?” Dean’s voice was incredulous. You nodded silently.

“Tell us exactly what happened,” Sam said. You told them about Crowley’s original plan to use you as a hostage if they failed to kill Rowena at that moment, and that he hadn’t planned on pulling them out of the apartment. However, after you asked him nicely, he had immediately rescued them. Not only that, he’d done it with a smile.

The brothers looked at you and then each other with wide eyes, then started talking more about how they could test you and wondering how far you could really make someone go against their own desires. While they chatted, you pulled out your phone and texted Cas.

YOU: Are you nearby?

CAS: Yes. Sam called me earlier and asked me to come and review his work, so I’m on my way. I’ll be there in less than an hour. Are you okay?

YOU: I’m fine. We’ve got news about my abilities that I wanted to share with you. And I want to practice with you some more, if that’s all right?

CAS: It would be my pleasure. See you soon.

What followed was a string of emoticons your phone couldn’t read, and a few that showed up but still made no sense to you. You chuckled, and Dean looked at you with a smile. You held up your phone with a grin.

“Emoticons.” Dean laughed.

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huntertales · 5 years

Text

Part One: Your Nerd Is Showing. (LARP and the Real Girl S08E11)

Episode Summary: Sam, Dean and the reader investigate the mysterious deaths of two LARPers who were engaged in a game involving an actual fairy. While digging deeper into the game, the boys discover the queen of Moondoor is a familiar face they met just a few short years ago, an I.T. woman named Charlie Bradbury. Word Count: 6,140. Pairing: Dean Winchester x Reader

Previous Part | Supernatural Rewrite Masterlist

You wanted to say things were finally starting to look up for the better since getting back to your own head space. Sam was back in business with you and Dean, but the decision forced him to leave Amelia along with the happy life he lived a year ago that he was thinking about wanting to have forever. The choice didn't just effect Sam, in order for this to work again, Dean ended his friendship with Benny when it was realized that the vampire only caused more harm than good to keep around. The reason why Dean had kept the brotherly bond going for so long was for the reason that Benny had saved him from that hellhole and felt like he had owed him. You thought saving the vampire’s life twice was enough payment for what he had done. At some point he was going to have to let the past go, all of you had to in order to make room for the future.

You had gotten Cas back just a few weeks ago without a real explanation of how he got pulled out of Purgatory, you wanted to turn a blind eye and pretend that maybe it was the universe spitting him out of a place where he didn't belong. But that didn't seem to be the case when the angel starting acting strange, in a way that you didn’t want him to be around until you figured out what was going on. You were starting to grow happy that he decided to skip out on all of you and kept quiet. Kevin was still trying to figure out how to read his half of the demon tablet, but he wasn't making much progress. You and the boys were left going back to what you knew well, roaming around the country and looking for a case to keep you occupied until something better came along.

You were lying down in the backseat of the Impala, not looking for sleep, just enjoying the peacefulness of the quiet ride you hadn't felt since the arguments and fighting started with the boys. There was nothing better than hearing the rain hit the metal roof as Dean's music played quietly up front. This was what you loved. But what you didn’t particularly enjoy was the feeling of your jeans feeling tighter than you were used to. You knew you were already a few more pounds away from not being able to get into your jeans anymore. And weeks shy of a stomach that wasn’t going to look like you were getting little chubby from eating.

While you were relaxing in the backseat and occupying yourself with the silence, Dean was in his rightful place behind the wheel and his brother in the passenger seat right across from him. Every so often the older man took his attention off the road to steal a glance at you from the rear view mirror to see that you hadn't changed much over the past few hours. He snuck a glance at his little brother from the corner of his eye to see Sam was occupying himself with a map that was illuminated by the small flashlight he was holding. Even Dean could see in the darkness the sullen expression on his brother's face. It wasn't exactly the passive anger he had shown for weeks now, or the regret he was probably feeling from leaving a life he wanted behind. He just looked like he needed some fun to get him back into the swing of things again.

“You okay, man?” Dean asked his little brother.

You moved your gaze away from the window and turned your head slightly forward so you were looking up at the back of the boys' head when you heard Dean's question directed to the younger Winchester. Sam was silent for a moment before he answered. "We have the most powerful weapon we've ever had against demons, and we can't find a way to use it."

“Yeah, well, Kevin’s on it. And when he finds something, he’ll call. So we wait.” Dean said. It was the answer that nobody wanted to hear at this point in the game when you had something big brewing up. Kevin was working his hardest at trying to find anything about closing the gates of hell, but even you had to admit you were growing antsy at finding something. “Look, all of us had a rough go over the couple of weeks. And,uh, I know what you guy up wasn’t easy, Sammy. Maybe we ought to take the night off—go see a flick, hit a bar or two, have some fun.”

"You remember fun, don't you, Sasquatch?" You teased the younger man as you pushed yourself up to a sitting position. You were now leaning against the front seat of the Impala with your head poking between both of the brothers, your attention focused on Sam as you gave him a smile with an arched brow. "Let's squeeze some in before it’s too late.”

Sam knew what you were really talking about from the subtle joke you slid into the conversation, his brother presumed you it was about the closing the gates of hell and the tedious process it was going to bring. You leaned back in your seat when Sam’s phone began ringing. He shoved a hand into his pocket and looked at the caller I.D., and speaking of the prophet, he noticed Kevin’s name pop up on the screen when he looked down at his phone.

“Kevin, what do you got?“ Sam answered the phone thinking it was the prophet, however another voice he hadn’t heard in a couple of weeks. It was the hunter who was in charge of looking after the kid. “Garth. Hey. Really? Okay. Uh, yeah. Thanks, man.” You furrowed your brow slightly in curiosity from the one sided conversation you were hearing Sam have with the other hunter you had only worked with once, and nearly ripped his head off. Garth took over the role of Bobby, checking up on hunters and keeping an eye on the most important person in the supernatural world right now. It seemed from the sounds of Sam’s conversation Garth called to give the three of you a case, however the younger Winchester was caught up with one little factor he couldn’t help himself but ask before he ended the call. “Oh, wait, hey—hey Garth. Garth, are you there?” Sam asked the other hunter. You heard the man on the other line reply with a yeah when you leaned forward in your seat to eavesdrop on the conversation. “How’d you know where we are?” The hunter’s response made your lips stretch into a smile, “You’ve been Garthed.” “Look, it's bad enough that you're tracking us, but it's even worse when you say we've been ‘Garthed.’” Sam said, seeming not amused as you were from the man’s catchphrase that you knew he was going to try and make a thing. The both of them discussed a few more things before Sam ended the call, a sigh falling a second after he hit the end button. “Okay, we got to lose the GPS on our phones, because Garth has been tracking us, and other hunters, apparently, to assign cases.” “Smart. A total Bobby move.” You said. You admitted to Garth straight to his face you never liked the idea of him taking the place of the older hunter who passed. But you came around, and seemed happy at seeing him excelling in the role. “What's the deal?” “Uh, well, it's close—Farmington Hills, Michigan. Dude got ripped limb from limb inside his locked apartment.” Sam told you the details of the case that Garth called about. You winced slightly at the thought while Dean muttered about how that wasn’t good. “Working a case. As long as we're waiting on Kevin, that'll be our fun.” You were tempted to make a remark about how much of a downer he was being at focusing so hard on the job and not letting loose after the tense weeks all of you had. But you stopped yourself when you started to think about things from his point of view. Sam's kind of fun wasn't what you or Dean had in mind, his was left behind in the motel in Texas with a broken heart. He wanted to forget about the life that he left behind and focus on the very thing he was going to be doing for the rest of his life. You had a feeling you wouldn’t be in the mood for anything fun if what you wanted was ripped away from you once again. You knew it was going to take some time for him to adjust to the way things were. And when he was finally over his past maybe you could force a smile on that face of his and make him feel a little bit happier about his choice.

+ + +

The next morning you and the boys headed to the crime scene dressed in your fed clothes to try and see what you might be able to learn yourselves about what could have caused a man to have his limbs ripped apart. You flashed your badge to the officer guarding the door and offered him a smile when he glanced nonchalantly at the identification and nodded his head for the three of you to head inside. The place was still crawling with the forensic team and a few officers going over the crime scene to see what they could learn about what caused a man to be ripped apart limb by limb. You were here for the same reason, but looking for a different type of suspect and evidence to find the killer.

You followed behind the boys as you took a moment to take a look around the apartment of your victim. First thing you noticed was the movie posters on the wall of a certain genre you strayed away from and a complete shelving space dedicated to what appeared to be all sorts of fantasy looking toys. Your observation was quickly cut short when your attention was drawn away from the shield you were looking at and the sheriff that was in charge of this investigation.

“Sheriff. Special agent Taggart.” Sam introduced himself to the older man before directing his arm to Dean and then you. “This is my partner special agent Rosewood and special agent Crane.”

“FBI? You guys are quick.” The sheriff said. It seemed he was expecting the feds at a later date in this investigation, you were a little surprised that you were here so soon as well. You had arrived in Michigan late into the evening and got a few hours of sleep before Sam suggested on getting to the crime scene before any sort of possible readings could be tampered with. “Haven’t even got the body out.”

"Well, the FBI is all work, no play." Dean jokingly said. You knew well enough that the man wasn’t making small talk with the sheriff when he looked over to his brother to give him a smile. It was more of a subtle petty jab. You refrained yourself from rolling your eyes at his childish behavior.

"You know, why don't you give me and agent Crane the tour while our partner looks around?" Sam suggested as he gestured an arm to you. “I like to think her and I work together best.”

"I work better on my own." Dean added.

"Your world, agents." The sheriff said, shrugging his shoulders as he turned around and started to head to the bedroom as he waved a hand for you and Sam to come along. "Follow me."

The three of you exchanged a silent exchange of words from a simple nod of the head. You and Sam followed behind the sheriff as Dean headed into the kitchen that was empty for now, giving him peace to scan the room for any sort of readings. You made your way into the bedroom where the victim had been found murdered in his own bed, all of what remained was an outline of a torso and head that were covered with a white bed sheet. You found yourself staring at the bloody marks left on the sheets of where his limbs used to be before they were ripped off by some unknown force. You knew it had to be psychically impossible for someone to rip off a human limb with some rope and willpower alone. Even if a handful of people were involved in this crime. But there wasn’t much evidence to show that there was anyone at all.

“Vic’s name was Ed Nelson, thirty-one years old, an insurance-claim adjuster.” The sheriff began informing you of the basics on the victim. You continued to look around the room to see there was blood splatter all over the walls. This poor bastard died brutal and bloody. “He lived alone, which was a real shocker, considering his place is full of toys.”

“So what happened?” You asked the sheriff.

“No sign of forced entry. Near as we can tell, he was tied up and pulled apart. Died of the shock or massive blood loss.” The sheriff said. You could only hope the death of the victim was quick and painless, but the sight of the bedroom and all of his splattered blood made you guess he felt his limbs being ripped out from the socket and skin ripping from his body...you stopped yourself from thinking too much about it, shuddering in disturbance. “Dealer's choice on that one."

“So what about these chains?” Sam wondered as he looked down at the duffel bag lying zipped open with all sorts of clothes still inside, making it look like the victim had just come back from a trip and didn't bother unpacking just yet. You peered closer to see there appeared to be just that, and it looked oddly familiar to you, making you wonder why the victim had some lying around.

“That’s actually chain mail.” The sheriff corrected the younger Winchester. You found yourself giving the sheriff a slightly surprised look as to why your victim, had some medieval hardware packed with his everyday clothing. You got a shrug and a smile from the sheriff. “We did find clear rope-burn marks on his wrists and ankles.”

Sam decided to head over to the victim to see if he might be able to find something that could explain what happened. You followed behind him as he crouched down to the ground to examine the left arm. Lifting up the blanket covering the limb, you hovered over Sam's shoulder to see if there was anything suspicious. And you sure did. You found what appeared to be a mark on the forearm that looked to be an old tree. It could have been a tattoo, but your gut was telling you otherwise when you and Sam made eye contact, both of you presuming it might have meant something more than just some ink.

“So, anything...missing from the body?” Sam asked the sheriff as pushed himself up to his feet.

“You mean aside from the arms and legs? Uh...nope.” He said, chuckling at the man’s odd sounding question “All there—twig and berries, too.”

"What about the neighbors?" Sam continued. "Did they hear anything weird?"

“Uh, neighbor downstairs said she got woke up in the middle of the night by the sound of horses stomping their feet and galloping. We didn’t find any hoof prints. She probably heard a TV or was having a bad dream or she was high as balls. Fortunately, we got a real lead off his cellphone.” The sheriff said, heading out of the bedroom and to the living room area that was just a few steps out of the room. "According to the phone records, Ed's last call was from a guy called Lance Jacobsen. An accountant, also thirties, also lives alone."

Your focus was momentarily cut away from the sheriff for a moment when you saw Dean stepping out of the kitchen. You gave him a subtle look, wondering if he might have found anything useful, but the shaking of his head told you otherwise. You let out sigh and directed your attention back to the older man to ask, "How's he a lead?"

“The two of them talked together for fifteen minutes, and then Lance sent Ex here all kinds of angry texts. Some of them were your typical threat stuff, but some were a little weird.” The sheriff said. Dean wondered what he meant by weird. The sheriff looked down at his notepad for reference and flipped through the pages to find the exact words. “Like, uh…’You small bleed for your crimes against us,’ followed by an emoticon of a skull. And this beauty—’I am a mage. I will destroy you.’”

“Huh.” You mumbled underneath your breath in curiosity from the texts that did sound like they were threatening, but in a context that was a bit odd. “Maybe they were…” Your eyes wandered around the apartment once more as you looked around at the vast array of collectibles from all sorts of sci-fi and fantasy genres. “Talking in a language they could understand.”

“These kids today with their texting and murder.” The sheriff replied. He had to be in his sixties at least from the graying hair and beard, a little too out of touch with what people he would call his grandkids and what they liked to do in their free time. You offered up a polite smile, not exactly sure where he was going with that sentence. "My men just brought Lance into the station for questioning.”

“Well, we’re gonna need to take first crack at the suspect.” Sam said.

“Like I said, agent,” The sheriff repeated what he said once before. “it’s your world.”

The sheriff seemed compliant with whatever you and the boys would need long as you kept up pretending you were FBI and here to help solve the case. Sure, you would have loved to spend a few days relaxing and doing something fun, even though a few of Dean’s suggested activists you couldn’t participate fully in. It was having the three of you back together and enjoying one another’s company was what you really missed. Working a case and finding out what could have ripped a man's limbs off wasn't a bad way to spend your time, either. Long as you and the boys were back together without bickering, you would consider yourself having fun.

+ + +

The drive to the police station wasn't too far from Ed Nelson's apartment, making it a few minute drive before you were heading inside the familiar setting you've seen dozens of times before. When you were pretending to be a federal agent and the rare occasions when you getting in trouble for doing said thing. You and Sam were ready to find out which interrogation room the suspect was being held in, Dean insisted that he needed one more cup of coffee before grilling someone.

While Sam waited around for his brother to fix himself up the drink in a paper cup he found along with creamer and sugar, Dean offered to make you a cup. You agreed to have a hot drink, but changed out the coffee for a cup of decaffeinated tea—one sugar packet and just enough creamer to change the tea into a slightly cloudy color. The creamer had to go first, and then the sugar. Your instructions were a bit odd, that’s what you expected was the reason why Dean was giving you a funny sort of look.

"What's with you lately?" Dean couldn't help himself but ask when he followed your directions to the T and handed over the warm to the touch cup to you. You furrowed your brow slightly as you brought up the paper cup to your lips, feeling the steam tickle your top lip as you blew on the liquid to cool it down. "Normally you’d kill for a cup of coffee. But you haven’t touched the stuff in weeks.”

You felt yourself freezing in your spot from the observation that Dean made about you that you hoped would go unnoticed, or presume it was a reason that wasn't worth mentioning. But you should have known better. Dean was trained in this sort of lifestyle to pick up the small cues that made you...well, you. You managed to keep your cool as Dean stared at you, his eyebrow raising slightly at why you were taking so long to answer. Suddenly you could feel the words "He knows" screaming in the back of your head. You heard of pregnant women getting frazzled and confused while they were carrying, and it seemed you caught the "pregnancy brain" early.

“That’s cause, uh...” Sam jumped into the conversation when he noticed you were starting to look a bit nervous as the seconds started to pass while you tried to think of a good enough of a lie to steer the topic into another direction. Dean gave his brother a slightly confused look as to why he was answering for you. “Y/N told me she hasn’t been feeling well lately. Thought it might have something to do with the drinking and caffeine. I suggested she cut it out for a while to see if she might feel better. You said that Y/F/N wasn’t much of a drinker, right?” "Yeah, I did, actually." You agreed with the white little lie that sounded good in your mind. Sam was smooth at being able to come up with a story right then and there, evening going for the person you were pretending to be to try and cover up any past behavior that might have been suspicious. Dean seemed satisfied with what you fed him as he walked off to throw away the sugar packets and creamer. You let out a sigh of relief as you looked up at the younger man who was now standing next to you. "You know, you’re pretty good at this whole lying thing.”

Sam shrugged his shoulders at the ability to come up with a story in the matter of seconds. What can I say? I've been doing it my whole life. And it’s not the first time I’ve lied to Dean about something…”

“Oh, Sammy. Come on. We talked about this. Try not to bring your gloom while we’re working.” You said, knowing well enough the conversation he was mentioning without even having to speak a single word. You lightly hit him on the chest as you began walking off to the interrogation room with your cup in hand. You looked over your shoulder as you grew a smile and gestured with your free hand for him to grow one of his own. “We’re supposed to be having fun, remember?”

Sam rolled his eyes at your attempt at humor as he followed behind you into the interrogation room where your suspect was waiting since the cops picked him up about an hour ago. You set down your cup as you stood over the metal chair that was directly across from the suspect’s, giving you a chance to greet the man with a friendly smile. He looked up from his folded hands on the table to give you a nervous expression at the sight of not one, but three authority figures here to question him about the death of who he would call soon a friend, despite the texts that landed him here in the first place.

“Lance Jacobson? We’re with the FBI.” Sam was the one who introduced you to the man as he took the seat right next to him as Dean took the one next to you. All of you sat down and got yourselves comfortable for the routine questions you were about to ask him.

“The FBI?” Lance asked. He sounded surprised from his tone of voice at everything happening this morning. Too fast for his brain to comprehend the events all in a row. It would be stressful for anyone in his position. You gave him a moment to process why you were here as you attempted to take a sip of your tea. “I can't believe this is happening. I can't believe Ed's dead.”

You found yourself momentarily stopping yourself from doing nothing when you saw Lance burst into tears as he let out a few hiccuping sobs. A natural reaction for someone who was coming to terms with the death of their best friend. You furrowed your brow slightly as you looked over at Sam, both of you wondering if Lance was a really good actor. Or he was truly mourning the loss of a good friend in front of your very eyes. You furrowed your brow slightly in disturbance as you looked over at Sam who sat next to him, wondering if this was really happening. Not that there was anything wrong with a man crying about his pain, for some reason, you were starting to feel awkward, unsure if you should console him.

“Lance? Lance, just—just breathe.” Dean spoke up, trying to be the one to get the man to focus again for a few minutes so the three of you could ask your questions and head out to continue on with what you needed. Lance managed to compose himself for a few seconds as he lifted his head up to stare at the older Winchester. “Just breathe. You’re fine.”

Lance managed to keep himself together for all of two seconds before he started sobbing again. You took a sip of your drink as you watched the man go through himself at letting out a few more tears before someone tried again to get him back down to reality. "We just need to ask you a few questions." Sam told the man, reassuring him that it wasn't a serious matter quite yet. "Try to calm down."

“We want to know about the texts you sent Ed last night.” You explained to him, watching as he wiped away his tears and half-attempted to compose himself.

“I told them when they brought me in those texts weren’t from me.” Lance said.

You narrowed your eyes slightly as you gave him an expression to show him you weren’t falling for such a weak attempt at his lie. “Well, your phone and Ed’s phone say otherwise.”

"No, I mean, they were from me, but they weren't from me me." Lance attempted to clear up the situation with an explanation to you and the boys that sounded justified in his head. However you found yourself staring at the man across from you with a blank expression. You would admit that you were a little more slower at thinking from the lack of caffeine to kick start your brain. But you had no clue what the hell Lance just said, and what he meant by anything.

“Did you really think that sentence was gonna clear things up?” You asked him.

“I’m sorry. This is all a big misunderstanding. Those text messages were from Greyfox the Mystic to Thargrim the Difficult. Our characters in Moondoor.” Lance attempted one more time to explain himself by giving more details and names that sounded like something straight of a fantasy novel. You found yourself staring into the distance as you tried to think if you had read anything with the names in them while Dean stared at the man with a blank expression, having not a single clue where this was going. "Moondoor is a game that Ed and I play. We're LARPers. Live-action role-playing?"

"Right. LARPing." Dean said, nodding his head. He offered a smile to Lance to show him that he understood all of that part. Good times."

“We play Moondoor every other weekend at Heritage park.” Lance said. “All the info about it is on our website.”

"You guys have a website." You repeated after the man, pretending to sound impressed.

"Yeah, one of the players designed it." Lance said. You were feeling yourself becoming overrun with the urge to start laughing at the man for what he liked to do in his free time. Not that you weren't a stranger by indulging things into things nerdy and what not, you managed to hide your smile as you reached for your cup of tea again. You and Dean looked at each other from the corner of your eye as you exchanged a slight snicker, Sam flashed you a warning glare to knock it off. “In fact, if you log onto the site, they should have posted pictures from last night’s feast. I was there all night.”

“What does any of this have to do with the texts?” Sam asked the man.

"I play a character named Greyfox the Mystic. I'm a very, very powerful mage in the game.” The details Lance gave didn’t clear anything up on what that had to do with anything. You raised your brow slightly as you pretended to be impressed by his alter ego he liked to play as before telling him to continue on. “Ed is…” Lance started to talk about his friend, but he found himself letting out a sigh as he corrected himself. “Ed was Thargrim the Difficult of the Elder Forest, son of Hargim and Bouphin, brother to—” While Lance was going on about the details, he found himself being lost in translation from the familiar blank expressions. "He was Lancelot to my Merlin."

“Ah.” Dean mumbled, finally beginning to understand some of the context of the situation. “Well, if you guys were so tight, then why the threatening messages?”

“We were named to the queen’s honor guard in anticipation of the battles of kingdoms this weekend. I thought he broke protocol, so I called Ed after game hours and accused him of cheating, and then I challenged him to a duel.” Lance said. Sam repeated after the man, wondering himself if he heard the last word correctly. “Wands and swords at dawn.”

"Now, just out of curiosity," You entertained the subject matter as you traced the rim of your paper cup. "When you say 'wands,' do you mean magic wands?"

"No. Un-magic wands, agent. Because what I really want in a duel is an un-magic wand." Lance sarcastically answered your question. You give him a look to show him you were being serious. In this line of work you learned to take everyone's word with a grain of salt. "Yes! Fake wands! It's a game!" You rolled your eyes from his response as you grabbed your cup up from the table to take another long sip of it to try and finish it. Lance thought it was the perfect time to continue on with his mourning that you had momentarily stopped. This time with an extra touch. "I can't believe it. Oh, ye gods! Thagrim the Difficult has fallen!”

Lance tilted his head up to stare at the ceiling for a second, Dean found himself following the man's gaze, wondering if there was something around that he couldn't see. The man burst into tears once more as he started to sob once again. You blinked as you watched him go through himself, not sure what you could do to make him...stop. You decided your time was done here and got up from your seat. However you couldn't leave him just yet crying like this. You awkwardly patted him on the shoulder, telling him that everything was going to be okay.

You and the boys headed out so Lance could grieve in privacy, what there was from the two way mirror and the security cameras. But you had good a feeling that wasn’t going to be much of a problem for him. You let out a sigh when you were finally back into the main area of the police station. Sam shut the door behind him as the three of you tried to make sense of what just went down.

"So?" Sam asked the both of you. "Do you believe Dungeons and Dragons?"

"I've seen a lot of people cry in my time from my time growing up and hunting. Those weren't crocodile tears, guys." You said. "That's not our guy.”

“So what are we looking at?” Sam wondered.

“You and Y/N saw the chain mail.” Dean said. “This could be ‘Fifty Shades of Grey Fox’ for all we know.”

“All right, well, let’s check out the Moondoor site,” Sam suggested. “see if Lance’s story checks out.”

You and the boys headed to the nearest available computer to see what you could find out in the quick search that it would take. You sat yourself down at the computer and pulled up a new internet browser. It took only a few seconds before you were at their homepage that looked pretty impressive and well put together. "'Welcome to Moondoor, Michigan's largest LARPing game.'"

“And here I thought we needed to get out more.” Dean muttered underneath his breath. His remark made you let out a quiet chuckle as you clicked on the photo gallery to see what you might be able to find and what this whole thing was all about.

You pulled up the pictures that must have been posted this morning. A slideshow of what appeared to be Lance in his costume seemed nothing more than some Renaissance fair. He seemed like he was having the time of his life with a grin on his face and women crowding around him. Part of you felt like this was something that from the outside looked like it was only for the type of people who occupied their parents' basements as teenagers playing their games of Dungeons and Dragons and watched Star Wars religiously. The people who found a safe haven in a fantasy world while in reality they were being shoved into lockers and teased for what they liked.

You would consider yourself a bit of a nerd. You enjoyed reading at every possible second you could get and prided yourself on the knowledge you worked hard on to discover, along with many other talents that were a bit useful while hunting. But you never quite had the problem of being labeled as a nerd. Sure, Dean had muttered the insult here and there, but you knew deep down he was one himself. It seemed his curiosity was peaked at what he saw. And you knew it wasn't because he saw Lance being kissed by two different women on the cheek, showering him with affection.

“Huh.” Dean mumbled, pretending to be only half-interested. “It actually looks kind of awesome.”

Sam gave his brother a look from the corner of his eye as you let out yet another quiet chuckle. "All right, there's a video." You said, pushing the mouse over to click on it. "Let's see what this is all about."

"Moondoor. A world of intrigue, honor, passion." You dropped your hand to the desk as you watched the video begin by opening up to a man who was dressed in a replica outfit that almost one like a knight before leading to a few shots of all sorts of people dressed in costumes, along with a blacksmith. You raised your brow slightly as the narrator continued on introducing the groups of people. "Four kingdoms—Followers of the Moon, Elves, Warriors of Yesteryear, and the dreaded Shadow Orcs. All will fight on the fields of Never in the biannual battle of kingdoms. PIck up a sword or a mace. Take control of Moondoor and defend the current ruler…”

The video played on with shots of the fake kingdoms of people and their respected outfits that differentiate them from others. And like every good kingdom needed a queen. You watched as the video cut to what appeared to be a knight handing a bouquet of flowers to a woman dressed in her respected crown and throne. You silently thought to yourself about how pretty her dress was, however your gaze was quickly shifted from her outfit and to the actual woman on the screen.

“Wait, is that…” Dean found himself taken back at a face that seemed all too familiar.

You watched as the shot of the woman zoomed in closer, giving a shot of the redhead as she smelled the bouquet of white flowers and stared into the lens, giving him a smile. “The Queen of the Moons.”

You hit the spacebar on the keyboard, stopping the video from playing anymore. With the video paused on the queen's face, you looked over your shoulder and pointed a finger at the screen, suddenly overcome with curiosity how they had met this woman before. And you had a feeling there was a good story behind this. "You know her?"

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belabee · 5 years

Text

I’m Not An Angel: Chapter 3

Chapter 3: To Fly With Me Won’t Be Easy

Rating: Not rated (this will be changing in the next chapter)

Relationships: Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester, Past Sam/OMC, Past Dean/OMC

Tags: Angst with a Happy Ending, Past prostitution, (definitely more to come)

Summary: Sam and Dean run into a blast from the past, and old secrets come to light.

Chapter Summary: Sam and Dean have a little heart to heart.

Author notes: I'd like to thank @daydreaming-scribe for betaing the first 2 chapters for me <3 :* I've uploaded the edited versions and I think they flow better now. I'd also like to thank @teamfreewillbettertogether when I got stuck in chapter 2. I've had a really hard time with writing this past year, despite my best efforts. I've been putting more effort into it lately and hopefully, I'll be able to start posting more regularly. This chapter hasn't been betaed with anything other than my own eyes and Grammarly, so please forgive any mistakes.

Anyhoo… Enjoy?

Read on AO3

The boys trudged into the motel and Sam made his way to where his duffel was on his side of the room as Dean quietly shut the door behind them.

“What’re you doing?” Dean asked quietly.

Sam paused in his task of unzipping his bag. “I...uh. I figured you wanted me outta your hair as soon as possible. I mean, pick a hemisphere, right?” he replied, not meeting Dean's eyes.

God, he hated letting his brother down like this. Just another sin to add to his already long list of unatonable choices.

Not looking harder for Dean when he was in Purgatory. Allowing Dean to think that he hadn't tried at all. Ruby and the demon blood. Lilith. Saying yes to Lucifer. Everything he'd done while soulless. Sticking around when he was obviously a burden with his hallucinations. Getting Charlie involved with the Book of the Damned. Setting Amara free. Getting involved with the British Men of Letters. Trying to drown out his love for Dean by getting involved with other people.

All of them. All of them his choices that got people killed. He had no business loving Dean. He had no right to taint Dean with his affections. Dean deserved better. Dean deserved to be as far away from his impure, despicable-

Sam's internal rant of self-hatred was interrupted by two strong arms wrapping around him. Dean's hands rested on Sam's wrists, halting their task of furiously shoving his belongings into his bag.

“Sam. Stop,” Dean said, gently turning him around to face him. When Sam still wouldn't look at him (Fuck, when had he started crying?), Dean cradled his face in his hands and lifted it to force Sam to look him in his eyes.

“Oh, Sammy,” Dean said, wiped the tears away. “Shhh, it's okay. ” Dean pulled him close, and Sam couldn't help but hide his face in Dean's neck, clutching tightly at his shirt.

Sam choked back a sob, before shoving Dean away. Dean stumbled back a couple steps with a look of hurt shock on his face.

“No, Dean. It's not okay,” he said, angrily wiping the rest of his tears away. “It's not ‘okay’. I'm sick. I'm wrong. Hell, we've known it since day one that something's not right with me.” He stalked away from his brother, furiously pacing the room, grabbing his belongings and throwing them onto his bed. “I've tried to fight this, Dean. I've been fighting this for longer than I can remember. And every time. Every time I break, I let myself be selfish. And weak,” he said with disgust. “And every. Time. Someone gets hurt. Or worse. Dead. ” He spun around to face Dean.

“You deserve better. Even you've said so. Hell if I could, I'd bring Benny back for you. Because you were right Dean. He'd been a better brother to you, then I'd ever been,” Sam's angry tirade petered out as tears welled up in his eyes again at that last sentence.

“Oh, fuck you, Sammy” Dean said angrily. “Don't throw that old shit back in my face.”

“I'm not! I'm just reminding you what's true! We both know Benny had been more loyal, more trustworthy than I've ever been. And then there was the siren.” Sam threw his arms out to his sides, frustratedly trying to get Dean to see reason. “Even the monsters could see that you deserve a better brother.” Sam pushed past Dean to continue packing his bag.

“Sure, we're stronger together. Sure, there's nothing we can't do if we put our minds to it. But that doesn't mean we're better together. You're better off without me. And Cas is back, and Jack is doing fine now that he's got someone to guide him. And who better than the Righteous Man and an angel of the lord to guide his way. Jack would be better off not having the Boy with the Demon Blood to corrupt him. And I can just keep hunting, and you'd be safer, happier-”

Sam was cut off by Dean shoving him against the wall. “Jesus, Sammy. For once in your life just shut the fuck up and listen to me,” Dean said lowly. He rested his forehead on Sam's. “Goddammit, we’ve been through this. None of that shit matters. Come on, Sammy. You're supposed to be the smart one,” he whispered.

“Dean, we both know you're just as smart, if not more than-mmf!” Dean placed a hand over Sam's mouth.

“I thought I told you to shut up,” Dean said, cocking an eyebrow. He smirked when that got him a silent bitch face. “There's my pain in the ass little brother that I know and love.” Sam's eyes widened. “Yeah, Sammy. I love ya. I know I never say it directly. You know I suck at this touchy-feely shit. But hell, Sammy. I thought you’da figured it out when we stopped the trials. I told you, there is nothing, past or present, that I would put in front of you.”

Sam’s vision started to blur again. He shut his eyes tight to try to stop the tears that were threatening to fall. “No, Sammy. Look at me. Look at me, dammit.” He opened his eyes reluctantly. “Now you listen to me, Sammy, ‘cause you know I ain’t gonna wanna say this shit again.” Dean took a deep breath before continuing. “I know these past few years have been a roller coaster of shit - hell, our entire life has been a roller coaster of shit - and I say stupid hurtful crap all the time. But you know how I get when I get scared, when I’m hurting. You know because you know me. And all that shit about deserving better, that’s bullshit. Because there ain’t nothing better for me than you, Sammy. You think I’m mad about you loving me as much as I love you?” Sam gasped under Dean’s hand, eyes wide. “I ain’t mad about that, Sammy. I’m hurt. You deserved better than Seth. And I shoulda done more to protect you from that.” Dean slid his hand away from Sam’s mouth to cup his jaw, touching their foreheads together. “Why the hell didn’t you just tell me?” He whispered brokenly.

“What the hell was I supposed to say, Dean?” Sam whispered. “To be honest, I’ve been trying like hell to just block it out. Just lump it in with all the other nightmares, all the other shit we’ve been through. We both know that compared to everything, compared to Hell, it’s nothing. A drop in the bucket of shit that the universe has thrown at us.”

Dean snorted. “Vivid.”

“Dean,” Sam smiled exasperatedly, and Dean chuckled.

They stood there in silence for a few moments, so close that they were breathing each other's air.

“So… um… did, did you really…um..” Dean stammered out quietly, blushing.

Sam smirked. It wasn’t often that he got to see Dean flustered like this. The little brother in him who wasn't dreading the rest of that question couldn't help but want to relish in it. “Did I what?” he prodded in spite of himself.

“Did you really call out my name when you were with him ?” Dean continued, not meeting Sam's eyes for once. Sam blushed. Damn, guess it had been too much to hope that Dean would have forgotten about that part. “Uhh, uhm, y-yeah,” he replied, looking down.

“Jesus, Sammy.” Dean rasped out and as close as they were, Sam could feel the full body shiver that ran through his body.

“I…I'm sorry, Dean. I really am,” Sam whispered. He closed his eyes, renewed shame fulling him.

“Shh, Sammy. I told you. It's okay,” Dean said pulling Sam closer, wrapping his arms around him. Sam returned the embrace fiercely. “I told you, I'm not mad at you.” Sam closed his eyes and breathed in that nearly forgotten but still familiar scent of home. Of gun oil, and leather, and Dean. “Still, I wish I'd saved it. I'd wanted to,” he whispered.

“I don't think I would've been able to do anything even if you had, sweetheart. It's bad enough I got you mixed up with Seth-”

“Dean, what happened with Seth is on me, not you. I'm the one who decided to taint myself like that. Not that there was much left to taint.” Dean pulled back a little to look Sam in the eyes. “Why do you always do that?” Dean asked, exasperated.

Sam tilted his head, confused. “Do what?”

“That whole impure, tainted thing? You did it during the trials too. Why do you keep painting yourself as less than me?” Sam jerked his head back a little. Surely Dean wasn't that blind.

“Because you are better than me. Always have been. You're noble and selfless. You're stronger than anyone else I've ever known, and the smartest, most beautiful person. Why do you think Heaven chose you as the Righteous Man?” Sam looked down, “I've never been anything more than the Boy with the Demon Blood, trying fruitlessly to atone for everything I've done.”

“God Sammy, for someone so smart, you sure are an idiot sometimes.” Dean cupped Sam's jaw and tilted his face up. “All that shit? Being good, and strong? All of that has always been for you. And I ain't pure, especially not after all the shit we've been through. I don't give a rat's ass what Heaven has to say about that, we both know that their sense of judgment is more than a little fucked up.”

Dean leaned forward, bringing their faces closer, their lips so close that Sam could almost taste it.

“All I've ever wanted was to be the best that I could be, for you. Because to me, you've always deserved the best.”

End Notes: The next one is gonna take a little bit since it's like twice as long as the rest of the chapters and I'm still trying to find a good point to end it XD Plus it'll actually get to the smut and I'm super nervous about that XD I'm also on twitter though I'm not very active: @belabee33

#bela's writing #my writing #writing is hard #wincest #sam winchester #dean winchester #samdean #angst #I'm Not An Angel

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a-winchester-fairytale · 7 years

Text

Memories ~ Welcome Back

Summary: One phone call from a familiar voice. That’s all it took to bring back everything that had happened in the last year.

Dean x Reader, Sam, Bobby, Castiel, Charlie

Word Count: 1642

A/N: This is a Supernatural series that I have been working on. The "Memories" are meant to provide a backstory between the reader and the Winchesters, so they will span over a few years. I did change a few things about the timeline, but I tried to stick as much as possible to the events of the show. I appreciate all feedback! Thanks a bunch!

**I tried something a little different with this one, and to be honest I'm not sure if I'm happy with the way it turned out, but I'm posting it anyway. It goes back and forth between different events over a year's time. The flashbacks will be in italics**

Memories Master List

When your phone rang, waking you up, you groaned and flipped it open without even looking at the number.

“This better be important!” You said without opening your eyes. You heard a muffled laugh, and then his voice.

“Y/N?”

Your eyes shot open and you sat straight up in bed. You glanced now at the caller ID and saw the name you were hoping to see.

“Dean?” You practically whispered, afraid you were dreaming.

“It’s me.” The familiar voice came back to you and you smiled. But how was this possible? Where had he been for the last year?

It had been months, several long months, and you hadn’t seen or talked to the brothers. You had gotten a message from a burner phone that just had Bobby’s old house phone number in the message. You knew it had to be Sam. Bobby hadn’t used that phone number since you were a kid. On a guess you drove the six hours to where the salvage yard used to sit. Looking at the ruble that was left gave you an empty feeling in the pit of your stomach. You leaned back against the back windshield and looked up at the sky. For a brief moment you allowed yourself to remember back to your childhood and Bobby. You could feel the ache in your chest growing and your eyes started to well up. You quickly shook it off and sat up, taking a deep breath and letting your anger push the hurt back down.

“How do you turn it off like that?” You heard a voice behind you. You slid off the car and spun around abruptly to see Castiel standing next to the back door of the car studying you.

“Castiel.” You breathed his name. “How do I turn what off?” You asked, glancing around for anyone else.

“Your pain.” He said simply.

“I don’t know. I just do.” You answered, rubbing your palms on the legs of your jeans. “What are you doing here?”

“Sam says that’s not healthy to do that.” Castiel vocalized, ignoring your question. He was still trying to process what he saw you do. Human emotions still fascinated him and he often tried to get some kind of understanding of them.

“Yeah, well, not much about being a hunter is.” You replied sarcastically. “Why are you here, Castiel?” You repeated. You had never been alone with Castiel. Truth is that there were still a lot of things about Castiel that made you nervous. You were still leery of him since he went behind the brother’s back to make a deal with Crowley and started this whole Leviathan situation. You tried not to blame him, because Dean had told you he did it all with the best intentions in mind, but you weren’t ready to trust him yet.

“I came to make sure it was safe.” He answered and then he disappeared. You rolled your eyes.

“That doesn’t make any sense.” You yelled into the air.

A few moments after Castiel’s disappearance, you saw headlights in the distance. You couldn’t see the car or the driver and you readied yourself for a fight, trying to ignore the knots in your stomach. When the car turned off and the lights dimmed, you recognized the passenger as Sam. You were running half way down the driveway when you saw Dean get out of the driver’s side of the car. You hugged them both, now understanding what Castiel had meant by making sure it was safe.

“Where’s the impala?” You asked, looking at the car they came in. You heard Dean curse under his breath and turn away.

“Sore subject.” Sam told you, explaining that they had to put the impala in storage for a while so they wouldn’t be easily detected.

“Oh, you must hate that.” You couldn’t resist.

“You have no idea.” Dean admitted, looking up at you and kicking some of the rocks in the road. Even his thick eyelashes couldn’t hide the frustration in his green eyes.

“Not that I’m not thrilled to see you, but what’s with the midnight rendezvous?” You asked Sam.

“We need your help.”

“Purgatory?” You couldn’t help but be shocked. “Castiel too?”

“Yeah, it’s a long story.” He said. You could hear the exhaustion in his voice. No telling what all he had been through.

“Are you okay?”

“I will be.” He answered. “Have you seen Sam? I can’t get ahold of him.”

“He’s okay. He has a new number.” You told him, biting your lip to keep from saying more.

“Can you meet me at the cabin?” Dean asked.

“You bet. I’ll bring you some food too.” You told him, knowing that no one had been out at the cabin in a very long time. That brought a laugh on the other end.

“You’re awesome.” He added.

So once again you joined Team Free Will in an attempt to stop Dick Roman. The next thing you knew, you were sitting on a rooftop across from Roman Enterprises, focusing a sniper rifle on the window of the office Charlie was trying to break into. Although a bullet wouldn’t stop the Leviathan, in a pinch it would give Charlie a chance to get out of the door.

You could see her down the hall talking to a security guard, listening on the radio lying next to you as Dean tried to teach her how to flirt. You could imagine the look on Sam’s face when you heard Dean say, “Stop laughing, Sammy.” You had to fight to keep from laughing yourself.

When things went south, and you could no longer help from the roof, you ran down the stairs and out into the street. You skidded to a stop at the sight of Bobby’s ghost throwing Charlie out of harm’s way. The shock of seeing him made you freeze. You couldn’t believe your eyes.

“Y/N” You heard Dean’s voice through the fog inside your head, breaking the spell. You immediately went to help Charlie.

You saw the miles ticking by as you got closer and closer to the old hunting cabin. You tried to keep yourself from speeding through most of the country side, pretty sure that no drive ever seemed longer to you. Although you had heard his voice, his laugh, none of it would really be real until you saw him for yourself.

You had given Dean the phone number that Sam had given you when he had left. Although you tried to respect his wishes and never use it, you got a message from Sam once a month that just said he was okay. The last time, he had sent you a picture of him and some girl. He was your best friend and you kept telling yourself that he deserved to be happy. He wanted out of the life. He always had.

You had left with Charlie, promising to keep her safe until she got to where she was going to start her life over. By the time you got back, Dean and Castiel were gone. Sam was off the radar. Crowley had taken Kevin, the profit they had told you about, to who knows where. You tried to find out something about Dean and Castiel, but no one knew anything.

You managed to trap an angel in a fire of holy oil, only to find out that Castiel hadn’t been in heaven for a while, and there was no word on angel radio about Dean. It took a while to get your hands on a demon high enough up the chain to get you to Crowley.

Crowley had been studying the Leviathans and Purgatory for a year. He was one of the last people to see Dean and Castiel. If anyone would know where they were and how to get them back, it would be the Crowley. So, here you stood, performing a spell you never thought you would ever do; one aimed at bring the King of Hell straight to you.

Dean was on the porch when you pulled up. He stood up and took a few steps down to the grass. His movements were a little stiff, but he was all in one piece. You jumped out of the car and ran straight into his arms, not waiting for the hunter tests to prove it was him. You were so relieved to see him, you didn’t care.

“Okay. I missed you too, but formalities.” You heard him say and you stepped back.

“Right. Sorry.” You said, a little embarrassed now. You each went through the routine – holy water, silver, and borax. Once that was done, you grabbed the bags out of the car and followed him inside.

You pulled out burgers and fries and set them on the table in the kitchen. Dean, while grabbing some beers from the fridge, saw the pie in the bottom of one of the bags. You heard him moan a little and smiled when you saw his face light up as he pulled out the pie.

“Have I told you how awesome you are?” He asked, smiling.

“You might have mentioned it.” You said through your laughter.

As the two of you ate, Dean explained some of what happened, but he only provided the highlights. You could see the darkness flash on his face every once in a while and he quickly changed the subject. You asked about Castiel, but he only said, “He didn’t make it” and walked away to start a fire so you let it drop there.

When you heard Sam pull up in the impala, you made a polite, but quick exit. You didn’t want to be there for the conversation they were about to have. You only hoped that Dean wouldn’t hold it against Sam that he had walked away, at least not for too long.

Next...

#dean winchester #dean x reader #Sam Winchester #bobby #purgatory #charlie #series #supernatural #memories #fanfic #reader fanfiction

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mittensmorgul · 7 years

Note

Why do you think Metatron got a redemptive death when character after character of Actually Good People gets spit on and fridged in the most horrid or nonsensical ways?

I’ve been sitting on this message for a while, because I wanted to do this reply justice and not just add wank to wank for the sake of being wanky... despite there being a bit of that feeling behind my personal reaction to a few of these horrid and nonsensical deaths you describe.

Eileen. Charlie.

Right? I have no defense for EITHER of these deaths. I personally feel they were both not only pointless, but horrifying in the way they were handled. I have written a hell of a lot on BOTH of them, and I don’t think adding more about either of them here would really serve any purpose. (but heck it does prove the point that meta writers aren’t endless wells of nothing but positivity, or attempts to explain away every instance of terrible writing, or defend the indefensible... I think pretty much all of us agree that neither of these deaths were written or handled well... AT ALL)

So let’s focus on Metatron for a moment. Because I do get why he got a “redemptive death.” It’s not something you can compare to Eileen’s death and say that she “deserved” to live more than Metatron, because she was a “good person.” That’s not how storytelling works. It all comes down to how the character was paralleled and what they metaphorically represented IN CONTEXT, in the larger narrative.

Metatron had set himself up to “play god,” to BECOME the new god. Going all the way back to the first time we met him back in s8, we see him holed away on Earth hoarding stories. Studying and experiencing creation and humanity in a second-hand sort of way, through OTHER PEOPLE’S STORIES. Now that we have canon confirmation that Chuck was God all along, the parallel only becomes stronger.

(Recall the last time a character attempted to “become god,” Cas took on the purgatory souls against EVERYONE’S better judgment, and personally paid the price for his hubris, despite it taking pretty much all of s7 for that storyline to play out... and the fact that he was “dead” throughout most of it, and is STILL seeking redemption for everything he did during the s6-s7 era... that repentance and redemption is still a core motivation for everything Cas has done since... and the cause of his depression and self-loathing that was enough to motivate him to say yes to Lucifer in s11, and to be vulnerable to influence STILL at the end of s12... Playing God on this show always has negative consequences. But back to Metatron...)

Compare Chuck’s entire narrative arc to Metatron’s, and Metatron summed it up perfectly in 11.20:

Metatron: You know, I was a crappy, terrible god. My work was pretty much a lame, half-assed rewrite of your greatest hits.

Metatron was a plagiarist, literally in text that was his purpose. He was the personification of a literary device. He was a cheap knockoff version of the real thing. AND HE KNEW IT ALL ALONG. But as the plagiarist, his role in text was to serve as a mirror for the real author of creation, and as such he needed to be the sacrifice for the TRUE story to play out. The reconciliation of light and dark couldn’t have happened without it, not because Metatron the terrible bad guy earned redemption, but because Metatron the literary device had served his function in the story. So fucking meta.

As for Eileen, she served a function as a narrative mirror to Cas. I mean, I think that’s pretty much how most of the meta we wrote about her after 12.17 went, right? Unfortunately her part in the story was handled rather ham-fistedly, and I am still not over that and still FURIOUS about it, but with gritted teeth I can see how the mirror played out in 12.23. And like with Charlie I have made it less horrible in my own mind with fix-it fic and utter fucking denial. For now it’ll have to do... >.>

The other death in s12 that a lot of people screamed about was oddly Mick Davies. But again, the character he was most paralleled to throughout the season was Cas. Especially once he even adopted a spiffy version of Cas’s wardrobe... all the while the BMoL were paralleled to Heaven and the corruption of the angelic hierarchy. Yet Mick got a taste of what life without “the code” could mean, and for the first time in his life was beginning to think for himself about that “grey area.” He brought his concerns to the BMoL and was immediately killed for disobedience, for having been “corrupted” from their true mission. He never even had a chance, and we were all looking at the screen thinking he was an idiot for bringing such dissension so blatantly to his bosses, knowing nothing good could come of it. But hey, decades of what essentially amounts to brainwashing by the BMoL isn’t that easy to overcome.

*stops self from writing thousands of words comparing it to MK Ultra and how this was directly demonstrated by Mick’s flashbacks to Kendricks AND fully illustrated by how Toni blatantly brainwashed Mary, and how ALL of that was a blatant parallel to both what Cas experienced for most of his existence in Heaven via Naomi’s “fixing” him AND the crack in his chassis that Jack was able to exploit to his own advantage in 12.19, because it’s fucking inescapable when you lay it all out blatantly like that... that his loss of agency has literally been the exposition and the narrative push that’s driven Cas through every bit of character development he’s ever undergone... and how Cas and Mary and been on parallel narrative journeys for the entirety of s12 and there was never a textual or subtextual demonstration that either had veered from that blatant parallel... bleh... I digressed anyway...*

But yeah, narrative parallels, exposition we’re intended to apply to said parallels, blah blah blah... Sometimes “good characters” are thrown under the bus. It sucks.

Sorry I kinda ran off down tangents...

#spn 12.19 #spn 12.17 #spn 9.18 #spn 11.20 #spn 12.23 #spn 12.20 #spn 12.21 #wank adjacent #i should probably tag this better >.>#this is how stories work #Anonymous

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supernaturalimagine · 7 years

Text

From Trials Springs Love

Author: @photogirl894

Original Imagine Link: Imagine you were the one to undertake the Trials instead of Sam and, while watching you go through it all, Dean gets really worried and he realizes he’s actually in love with you.

Word count: 5,064

Warnings: none

Summary: Based on the SPN Season 8 finale with the addition of my OC, Ava, and a couple other changes.

Fic:

Dean was sitting in his bedroom in the Men of Letters bunker with his normal, half drank bottle of beer on the bedside table and his head in his hands. There was so much on his mind right now: finding a case, making sure to look after Sam, wondering where Castiel was yet again…

But most of all…he was worried sick about Ava.

Ava was a woman hunter who had joined up with the Winchester’s years prior after she had saved them from a nest of vampires and helped them take them out during the remainder of the case. She was quite the hunter; good with a knife, an excellent shot with a gun and could hold her own in hand to hand combat. Not to mention, she was knowledgeable about monster lore and spells and could gank a demon like it was nobody’s business. It has surprised the brothers at first how good she was because, physically, she was a shorter and a bit thin and didn’t look as intimidating, but she knew her stuff. That couldn’t be denied. After witnessing her excellent skills, Sam and Dean offered to let her tag along with them and she accepted.

Over the years, Dean and Sam had grown close to Ava and they considered her like family, just like they did with Bobby Singer, Castiel, Charlie Bradbury and Kevin Tran. She seemed to fit in well with them.

In the recent months, the Winchester’s had learned from Kevin, who was a prophet of the Lord studying the ancient Demon Tablet, that there was a way to seal the gates of Hell and keep all monsters and demons out forever: someone had to undertake three specific Trials. They had agreed that Dean would be the one to do it. However, when the first Trial was upon him, which was to kill a Hellhound and bathe in its blood, Ava took the chance before he could have killed the Hellhound, completing the first Trial. Because of her actions, she had to be the one to do all the Trials. Ava explained that she just couldn’t let them do it and risk either of them losing each other again. Sam and Dean–especially Dean–were angry with her at first for being so reckless, but they knew there was no helping it.

The second Trial was to save an innocent soul from Hell and deliver it to Heaven. They learned that it was Bobby’s soul that they needed to save and, with the help of a Reaper, Ava was taken to Hell through Purgatory. When things started to go south and it looked like Ava was stuck there, Dean had to have his vampire friend from Purgatory, Benny, help them and it required him to kill the vampire. Benny ended up sacrificing himself to see Ava and Bobby through to the end and, once they returned topside, Bobby returned to Heaven and the second Trial was complete.

Now, they were on the verge of the third and final Trial, which was to cure a demon, confirmed by Metatron, the scribe of God himself. Thanks to some Men of Letters research, they found an exorcism ritual they could use and Crowley, the King of Hell, was their demon of choice, already captured and tied up in the basement. The plan was for Ava to take him to an abandoned church where she could confess her sins to purify her blood and perform the ritual. All of this, she was going to do alone.

That’s where Dean was losing his head. They had one more Trial to go and he wasn’t sure if Ava would be able to handle it. After the first two Trials, it hadn’t gone unnoticed that they had affected her. For one, after each one, her arms would glow bright white and she would yell out in pain. After a while, she would claim she was fine, but lately, Dean had been noticing that she was having nightmares, coughing up blood and had developed a spontaneous fever a time or two. It pained him to see her like that and to know that she was lying about how she was.

At first, after the first Trial, he understood why he was worried. She was a close friend and he didn’t want to see her get hurt. But after the second was done and she got worse, it almost killed him to see her in pain, knowing that there wasn’t anything he could do. Cas had offered to heal whatever was going on with her, but Ava insisted that she was okay and could handle it. Dean knew the look in her eyes when she said that. It was the same look Sam always had whenever something was going on with him that he didn’t want anyone to worry about; the same look he himself got for the same reasons. He had become all too familiar with it and was now seeing it in Ava.

After taking another swig of beer, Dean opened up the chest at the foot of his bed and pulled out two photos. One was of him, Sam and Ava all standing together and smiling on a beach, all of them in their swim gear. That had been a day where they all chose to take a mini vacation for a day. The other one was a picture from that same day of Dean and Ava with her jumping up on his back and the two of them were laughing. Dean couldn’t help but smile at that picture. It was one of the rare moments where they actually looked happy. He had to admit that Ava’s smile made him smile, too. There was so much about her that he admired: her beauty, kindness, laughter, spunk, strength, loyalty and her desire to make the world a better, monster-free place. She also was a stubborn woman, to be sure, but that reminded Dean a lot of himself. She really was unlike any girl he had ever met.

That led to another thought: after this last Trial…what was going to happen to Ava? Would her condition get better…or worse? Would she possibly die?

“No…,” Dean whispered out loud, shaking his head to try and push that thought away. Even the mere thought of Ava dying was too much for him to handle. He would die himself before he would ever let that happen to Ava. It would never come to that! He would let it.

“What is going on with me?” he asked himself. He hadn’t had these kinds of thoughts about her before. Where were they coming from? What did they mean?

Just as that question came to mind…he about knew the answer right away….

At that moment, there was a knock at his door. After telling the person on the other side to come in, the door opened and Sam stepped in.

“Hey,” he said, closing the door behind him and sitting on the edge of the bed next to his brother. “You’ve been in here a long time. You all right?”

All Dean did in response was let out a sigh and fiddle with the pictures that were still in his hands.

Sam saw the photos and caught on quickly, though. “You’re worried about Ava, huh?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Dean answered without hesitation. “You’ve seen how she’s been acting. The effects of the Trials have been messing with her and she’s trying to pass herself off as fine. We don’t know what’s gonna happen to her after this last one. Cas isn’t even sure if he can heal her and…I’m just scared out of my mind.” He then ran a hand nervously down his face and exhaled loudly and shakily.

“Wow, I’ve never seen you like this,” Sam pointed out. “You really are worried sick about her.”

Dean grunted as he took his hands away from his face. He was silent for a minute before admitting out loud for the first time, “I think I’m in love with her, Sammy….”

The look on Sam’s face turned startled at Dean’s new revelation. “You…you’re in love with Ava?” he asked in clarification.

Dean answered by simply nodding his head timidly.

“What do you mean by ‘you think’ you love her?” Sam then asked. “You’ve been in love before. Shouldn’t you know by now what that feels like?”

“Yeah, I know, but I didn’t realize I felt that way about her until now. I don’t know why.”

“Are you going to tell her?”

“I don’t know how I can tell her…and I doubt it’ll do anything to persuade her from doing the third Trial alone. I can’t stand the thought of her doing that ritual alone and with Crowley in the room with her.”

“Dean, Ava can handle herself, you know that. She’s a strong woman.”

“I know she is…but right now, she’s not as strong as she usually is because of what the Trials are doing to her.”

“You just gotta trust her, Dean. She knows what she’s doing. Besides, we’ll both be outside the church in case she needs us or anything goes south, so she won’t be completely alone. Plus Cas should be back later and can help if we need him to. Everything will be okay…and you’ll get your chance to tell Ava the truth.”

Sam gave Dean a pat on the shoulder. “Come on, man. We’re about ready to go,” he told him as he stood up and went to the door.

Dean halfheartedly nodded in response. “I’m right behind you,” he said back as Sam opened the door and walked out.

After Sam left, Dean took one last longing look at the picture of him and Ava together, taking in the look of her beautiful smile for what he feared might be the last time.

“I sure hope this works…,” he thought to himself, setting the two pictures in his hand down on the bed. Then he picked up his jacket from a nearby chair and threw it on as he followed after Sam.

The Winchester’s now were standing outside the old, abandoned church they had traveled to next to Baby, their ‘67 Chevy Impala. They both had their sawed off shotguns filled with salt bullets at the ready in case any other demons came their way. Inside the church, Ava was with Crowley performing the curing ritual and it had already been a couple hours since they had started. It was beginning to get dark outside.

Dean kept pacing back and forth nervously until finally Sam, now getting antsy, said to him, “Dean seriously! Stop pacing, everything is gonna be fine.”

“Don’t tell me what to do, Sammy,” Dean shot back.

“You’re getting yourself too worked up, man. You gotta calm down,” said Sam, trying to help.

Dean flipped around to face his brother and spat, “And just how am I supposed to calm down, huh? Ava is in there alone with Crowley and we don’t know what’s gonna happen to her! On top of that, we haven’t heard back from Cas and we have no idea where he is!”

“Dean, Sam!”

The Winchester’s both jumped in surprise and raised their shotguns at the person who had just appeared. As soon as they saw him, they both exhaled in relief and lowered their guns.

It was their angel friend in a trench coat, Castiel.

“Cas…!” Dean groaned. “We’ve talked about this. You gotta give us more warning instead of just popping up like that and scaring the hell out of us. Where have you been?”

However, both Sam and Dean began to feel uneasy as they noticed the look on Castiel’s face as he approached them. It was a look of concern, worry, and almost horror.

“Cas, what’s wrong?” asked Sam.

“I was in heaven, interrogating Metatron,” Castiel answered.

“Metatron? Why?” Sam asked to clarify.

“I had to get information on everything he knew about the Demon Tablet and the Trials,” Cas answered. “I had a feeling there was more to it than what he had said before. After some persuasion, he was willing to cooperate.”

“What did you find out?” asked Dean.

“It’s not good,” Cas replied in warning.

“Damn it, Cas, just tell us!” Dean snapped impatiently.

“Metatron admitted to me that he didn’t tell us the full truth about the Trials,” said Cas. “Millennia ago, when he was writing the Demon Tablet, God told him that He wanted whoever undertook the Trials to make the ultimate sacrifice in order to complete them.”

“What does that mean…?” Dean hesitantly asked, afraid that he already knew the answer.

Castiel’s expression turned graver as he responded, “It means Ava is in danger…and we need to stop her right now.”

It was just as Dean feared: Ava was going to die as a result of the Trials’ effects on her. Knowing this made his blood turn cold and his heart began racing like mad. The only thought he had was to get inside to Ava before it was too late. He sped up the steps of the church, with Sam and Cas right behind him, and burst through the doors. In front of them, Ava stood next to Crowley, who was once again tied to a chair, holding a syringe close to his throat and her arms were glowing white once again.

“Ava, stop!” Dean shouted.

Ava’s head bolted up, startled to see the three guys suddenly running into the room. Dean, Sam, and Cas all noticed that her face had turned paler than it had been earlier and her eyes were dark and sunken. In honesty, she looked terrible and that concerned them a lot.

“Easy there, okay? We have a slight change of plan,” Dean told her, taking notice of her reaction to them bursting in.

“What? What’s going on?” she asked, confused.

“Metatron lied,” answered Sam.

“You finish this Trial…you’re dead, Ava,” Dean added, trying to keep his cool.

For a moment, Ava said nothing. Then she responded in a way none of them expected, asking one simple word: “So?”

“What?” Dean asked, perplexed by her reply.

“Look at him. Look at him!” cried Ava, pointing to Crowley. “Look how close we are! Other people will die if I don’t finish this!”

Dean knew he had to say something to get through to her, so he turned to Sam and Cas and gave them a look that told them he was going to handle this. Then he looked back to Ava and said to her, “Think about it. Think about what we know, huh? Pulling souls from Hell, curing demons; hell, ganking a Hellhound! We have enough knowledge on our side to turn the tide here…but we can’t do it without you.”

Ava let out a half-amused scoff and replied back, “You can barely do it with me.” When Dean looked confused, she explained, “I mean, you think I screw up everything I try. You think I need a chaperone, remember?”

Dean closed his eyes in shame, knowing she was referring to some things he had said to her before when she had accidentally messed something up on their last case; she thought she had trapped the monster they were hunting when in truth she hadn’t fully trapped it and it had gotten away. He hadn’t been thinking when he had said those things.

“Come on, man, that’s not what I meant,” he tried to tell her.

“No, that’s exactly what you meant,” Ava contradicted him. Then her face turned sad, which tugged at Dean’s heart. “Do you wanna know what I confessed in there? What my greatest sin was?” she then asked him. Dean said nothing, yet she answered in a shaky voice, “It was how many times I let you and Sam down…I can’t do that again.”

It was then that Dean could feel his heart breaking at Ava’s confession and he had a hunch that Sam was feeling the same thing. He never knew that she had felt that way and it pained him. He felt ashamed, especially knowing that he had apparently played a part in how she was feeling.

“Ava…,” he started to say, but Ava kept going.

“You’ve trusted me with things I thought I could do; that you thought I could do,” she said, getting emotional, “and I failed time and time again, despite how good a hunter I am. I know I’ve messed up; I know I’ve let a monster or two escape or get to you or Sam or even me because I was naïve about things before. You’ve told me I’m reckless…and I know that. And knowing that; knowing that I have failed you two so many times when you’ve put something in front of me…makes me feel like you’ll never be able to trust me again. Do you have any idea what that’s like?”

“Hold on, hold on!” Dean finally exclaimed, not wanting to hear anything else. He couldn’t take it anymore. When she stopped talking and stared at him with hurt in her eyes, he said to her in astonishment, “You seriously think that? Because none of it–none of it–is true. Listen, I know we’ve had our disagreements, okay? Hell, I know I’ve said some junk that set you back on your heels. But, Ava…come on. I killed Benny to save you.” He pointed at Crowley in the chair. “I’m willing to let this bastard and all the sons of bitches that killed mine and Sam’s mom walk because of you.” Now he too began to get emotional and his voice began to tremble as he cried out, “Don’t you dare…think that there is anything, past or present, that I would put in front of you! It has never been like that, ever! I need you to see that! I’m begging you!”

Ava hadn’t quite expected that kind of a response from Dean and she stayed silent, breathing heavily and tears forming in her eyes. Behind Dean, Sam and Cas exchanged surprised glances. They, as well, were a bit shocked by Dean’s reaction and the things he said. They kept quiet and decided to continue to let Dean handle the situation. Although, deep down, Sam hoped that maybe now Dean would find the courage to tell Ava how he felt, considering how he was already starting to let a lot of things out.

Dean kept going, “I know you’ve messed up before, Ava. Who hasn’t? Hell, Sam and I have messed things up twice as much as you and in bigger ways. But that’s because we’re human and we all make mistakes. I know I gave you crap about it before, but I didn’t mean it in a way as if to say you were a screw-up and you let us down. You’ve done more good things than bad. You’ve saved my life and Sam’s life more times than I can remember!”

He paused briefly to see if Ava would say anything, but she turned her head away.

“Do you have any idea how important you are to us?” he then asked. “You’re family! You’re like a sister…to Sam and Cas, anyway.”

That particular comment puzzled Ava and she then asked, almost angrily, “Then what am I to you? Do I not mean as much to you? Am I not enough?!”

“You are more than enough! You mean everything to me!” Dean blurted out. The dam within him was beginning to burst and he knew there was no holding back now. “Ava, if you go through with this, you will die and if you die, I will never be able to live with that! I realize now I can’t go without seeing your smile the first thing every morning when we have breakfast…or hearing you singing loudly in the back of my car…or knowing you’ve got my back when we’re hunting monsters and demons. The thought of me losing you…I can’t take it! I’m not gonna lose the woman I love. Not tonight…not ever!”

Ava’s head shot up in shock. Did Dean just say what she thought he had said? “What…?”

Behind Dean, Sam was developing a small, pleased grin on his face.

Dean said nothing for a moment, still processing the fact that he had just practically poured his whole heart out to Ava, which he almost didn’t realize he was doing at first. He hadn’t said the exact words he wanted to yet, but she at least had an idea of how he felt now. All that was left was for him was to say the three words he wished he would’ve said a lot sooner.

He took a deep breath and then replied more calmly, “I love you, Ava…and I’m sorry it’s taken me this long to tell you.”

A tiny whimper escaped Ava’s lips as they formed into a small smile and Dean could see a tear finally fall from her eyes. He waited patiently for her response, anxious and afraid all at once.

Finally, she said, “That was another thing I had confessed…that I could never get up the courage…to tell you how I really felt about you…that I love you, too.”

A feeling of warmth swelled up within Dean at hearing her say those three words back to him. He didn’t know what to expect from her and it made him happy to know that she felt the same.

But then her demeanor turned serious again as she added, “And it’s because of that, that I want to end Crowley now while I still have the chance.”

This wasn’t going how any of them planned and three guys got hesitant again.

“Ava, don’t,” said Dean. When he was sure he had her attention again, he slowly made his way towards her and said, “I told you I’m not gonna lose you. If you let yourself die…I’ll never be able to live with myself. We’ll find a way, all right? But not like this.”

Ava, still breathing heavily, turned her sunken eyes away, torn between wanting to finish the Trial and listening to Dean.

Dean could see her frustration and knew he wasn’t quite getting through to her. When he was directly in front of her, he stated, desperately, “You gotta let me help you, Ava. There ain’t no me if there ain’t no you.”

His last words rang in her ears like loud bells. He really needed her…and she needed him. She realized he was right: she couldn’t go through with this. Despite how miserable she had felt at first, Dean had made all of that misery melt away with every word of confession he had said to her. The Trials were not worth her life, not when there was so much more she had yet to do and especially now that she knew how Dean felt about her.

Sucking in air through clenched teeth, Ava finally asked Dean, “How do I stop?”

His face changed from afraid to relieved, seeing that he had finally convinced Ava to not go through with the Trial. He stepped closer to her and said, “Just let it go.”

She tried but struggled. “I can’t. It’s in me, Dean. You don’t know what this feels like,” she tried to explain through her tears.

“Hey, listen…,” he simply said as he gently took the hand that she had cut to get blood from and wrapped it in a blue bandana he had pulled from his pocket, “…we will figure it out…okay? Just like we always do.”

Ava released a choked sob as Dean then pulled her into his arms. “Let it go, okay?” he said comfortingly, holding her close. “Let it go, sweetheart.”

Ava hugged him right back, burying her face in his jacket. Suddenly she felt something different in her arms. When she peeked around Dean’s arm, she noticed that the glowing on her arms was fading.

“Hey!” she cried out, nudging Dean and pulling her arms away.

Dean looked down, took Ava’s hands in his and watched the white glow in her arms slowly disappear.

“See?” he said, smiling at her and feeling hopeful.

Ava began to smile herself, but it was too brief a happy moment before she suddenly yelled loudly in pain and started to collapse.

“Ava? Ava!” Dean cried out in alarm as he caught her limp body.

“Ava!” Sam joined in, rushing up to help Dean.

“Dean, get her outside, now!” ordered Castiel as he opened one of the church doors.

Dean swept Ava up into his arms, reassuring her despite her grunts and cries of pain, “I got you, sweetheart. You’re gonna be just fine!”

With Sam directly behind him and Cas following, Dean ran outside of the church and out into the night. He set Ava down on the ground next to the Impala. She was still writhing and groaning miserably and he knew they were running out of time.

“Ava, hold on. Just hold on,” he told her as he knelt down beside her and cradled her against him. Sam knelt down on her other side and took one of her hands in both of his, giving Dean a look of uncertainty.

“Cas, you gotta do something!” Dean said pleadingly as he turned to Cas.

Cas stepped forward and crouched down in front of Dean and Ava. “I will do what I can. It may use a good amount of my power, but I think I can help her.”

“Hurry, Cas,” said Sam.

Cas outstretched his hand and let it hover over just between Ava’s chest and stomach. A bright white light started to emanate from his hand.

“Dean…!” Ava whimpered.

Dean pulled her closer and said calmly, despite how afraid he was feeling inside, “You’re gonna be okay, Ava. Don’t give up now.”

Right then, he felt Ava’s head starting to falter and lean away. Her eyes were slowly closing. He was losing her.

“Hurry, Cas!” he shouted urgently.

“I’m trying,” answered Castiel. The light from his hand grew more intense to the point where Sam and Dean almost couldn’t look at it and had to turn their eyes away.

Dean tucked Ava’s limp head beneath his chin and nestled his face in her hair. “Stay with me, Ava…,” he begged in a whisper. “Stay with me.”

A few seconds later, Castiel’s healing light slowly diminished and disappeared. Dean, Sam, and Cas all looked down at Ava anxiously, waiting for her to respond in any way. But her eyes stayed closed and she wasn’t moving.

“Ava?” asked Sam quietly, giving her hand that he held a squeeze.

“Ava…?” said Dean, a noticeable trace of fear in his voice.

Just when they began to think that they had been too late, Ava’s eyes flew open and her head shot up as she started gasping for air and breathing heavily. The three men gave her a moment to catch her breath, but they couldn’t hold back the glad smiles they all had at seeing that Ava had made it.

When her breathing got a little steadier, Ava asked them, “What happened?”

“I was able to heal the damage the Trials had done to you,” answered Cas. “It wasn’t as hard as I had first thought it would be.”

“Come on, let’s get you up,” Sam suggested, taking her arm and signaling to Dean to get her other side. The Winchester brothers carefully got Ava up to her feet. She started off a little shaky, but they supported her weight until she was sure she would be fine.

Sam then turned to Cas and told him, “We should get Crowley out of that church.”

“I’ll help you,” Cas replied and the two of them walked back towards the church, leaving Dean and Ava alone.

“You really scared the hell outta me in there,” Dean told her.

Ava shrugged, saying nothing, and just hung her head, unsure of what to say now.

“I’m sorry I made you feel so horrible about yourself,” Dean apologized. “I never meant to hurt you and I wasn’t thinking when I said those things.”

She nodded and said back, “You’re forgiven, Dean. And I’m sorry for worrying you with everything about the Trials. I just wanted to prove to you and Sam that I was capable of handling something like this…even though, in the end, I was wrong.”

“You don’t need to prove anything to me or Sam,” Dean told her, taking a step closer to her. “You’re a good hunter the way you are and we both know it. Everyone makes mistakes; that’s what makes us human.”

He then reached up, tenderly tucked some of her hair behind her ear and then cupped her cheek with his hand. Dean looked deep into Ava’s eyes and told her, “And I wouldn’t have you any other way.” Then slowly, he leaned forward until his lips gently met with Ava’s and gave her the sweetest kiss he could have ever given.

As great as the kiss was, it was too short; cut off by Sam and Cas running out of the church and Sam crying out, “We’ve got a problem!”

“What’s wrong?” asked Dean.

“Crowley escaped,” answered Castiel. “We were untying him and he was able to slip his bloody wrists out of the handcuffs. Then he disappeared just before we could do anything.”

“Damn it!” Dean exclaimed.

“I’m going to try and follow him,” Cas informed him and Sam. “I will be in contact.” Then in an instant, Castiel flew away and was gone.

Ava then broke the silence and said, putting her hands on her hips, “Well then, boys, guess we better hit the road and get to finding Crowley.”

“You’re sure you’re okay?” asked Sam.

Ava grinned. “Never better,” she answered.

“Well, let’s find a motel first and get some rest,” Dean suggested. “Tomorrow, we’ll get to work.”

“Let’s get to it, then!”

Both Dean and Sam grinned, satisfied and made their way to the car.

“So, since Dean and I are pretty much a thing now, does this mean I get shotgun?” Ava asked teasingly.

Sam scoffed at her replied as he opened the passenger door, “Yeah, fat chance!”

The three of them, all chuckling at each other, all climbed into the Impala and sped off down the dirt road, ready for some well-needed rest and ready to take on what the next day held in store for them.

#Dean Winchester #Dean Winchester x OC #OC #Sam Winchester #one shot #spn one shot #dean one shot #oc one shot #sam one shot #supernatural #supernaturalimagine #submission #photogirl894 #Admin: Lana

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elizabethrobertajones · 7 years

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Ok.. so do you think Charlie's ''Did you break up with someone too?'' to Dean refers to Castiel or Benny? Personally I like to think it refers to Cas since I ship Destiel, but Benny also seems plausible in the context...

Oh, my friend… I love this one so much :P You’re pressing my meta buttons here.

On the surface text, the episode opens with a recap that as far as I recall was pretty much just comparing Sam breaking up with Amelia to Dean giving Benny the adios. Charlie’s line is also seemingly touching on the same thing but in a surface text way you can shrug it off as the fact that it’s just a comparison - even go fairly deep on it being a commentary on the way that the brothers give stuff up for each other whether it’s a lover or vampire BFF who totally deserved better… And you can get quite deep in talking about all that without really needing to think too deep about the comparison that brought you there

Of course because it’s paralleling a break up to something else that looked a hell of a lot like a break up, it’s queer subtext around Dean and Benny. I personally think there’s no real implication Dean and Benny were a Thing, or that Dean in particular was romantically interested in Benny especially as the overlap with Cas drama is just too huge. However, in the got-back-to-earth side of the story, Benny is played off instead of a Dean/Cas love triangle, a Sam and Dean one and Benny is used to start off the jealousy and insecurity about being brothers that fuels Sam’s meltdown (Cas is involved in this too - honestly that 1 second blink and you miss it shove to get shotgun in 8x08 is the entire basis of this in a way :P Benny soaks up a lot of this which makes it easier in a sense that Cas doesn’t take too much fire for getting between Sam and Dean).

Obviously if you like that sort of thing the relationship subtext between Dean and Benny makes the other point of the love triangle coded that way, though I see it as jealousy about Dean having someone else who calls him brother (as Benny does, repeatedly.) The actual subtext here (Dean sneaking around with a secret relationship, followed by Sam’s issues with the discovery of it, Sam clearly comparing it to Ruby’s seduction of him though I don’t think he says so in as many words, and the break up) is more on Dean and his relationship to Benny, in the way that it looks and the way people react. Charlie’s comparison is part of that: though Dean doesn’t inherently do anything relationship-y with Benny, everyone around him reads it that way and it creates a sort of… bubble around it.

I think it does count as Dean is bi subtext in the sense that it’s part of a wider pattern of Dean always having this stuff, there WAS romantic coding between them (because of the heavy paralleling to Sam and Amelia through the entire first half of the season equating Dean and Benny to that relationship) but maybe more in a potential or missed opportunity way (and I feel like Benny could be read as in love with Dean very easily). It’s kind of just… stuff happening in his orbit all the time that ends up coding him this way because of the relentless way it attaches to him :P Since I mentioned 10x19 already today re: Sam and Rowena, I’m just going to throw in a reminder that Benny is an established powerful part of Dean’s subconscious. There was no direct reason he’d be called up unlike how Rowena had a very immediate relevance to Sam. Benny just affected Dean that much that a spectre of him was such a powerful choice in that case)

Though the parallels were all between Amelia and Benny, in the recap of 8x11 and the end of 8x10 clearly being about this in DIRECT parallels, Dean ALSO is starting to have real issues with Cas because of his weird behaviour. Cas fucks off at the end of the episode in 8x10 and doesn’t return until 8x17, while Dean gets increasingly worried about his absence, and this is the first episode of that in between time as the main plot drama with Cas festers in the background. Dean DOESN’T have an emotional arc about Benny in this time in the same way that we never get any comment about Benny being on his mind between seeing him, and in 8x10 Dean is actually pretty neglectful of him because of all the drama going on (involving Cas, who comes to him to start them off on this one, but also some Sam drama on the side)…

If we compare it to the similar emotional structure of season 11, it’s like 11x11 where Dean has no idea Cas is possessed by Lucifer but that and the surrounding episodes really start to lay on the irony that he hasn’t noticed yet. Since 8x11 is the start of a period of worrying about Cas.

For example our first ever episode that starts with the now standard pattern of Winchesters in the Bunker, one comes into the room and asks what’s up, find a case that way, etc, part of that conversation is the “have you heard from Cas” thing we get oh so used to hearing in this much-repeated conversation :P This all builds until 8x16 which ends with Dean asking where Cas is all tearful after that prayer…

So, this comment about a break up going forwards, can have a double meaning of the rocky times indicated by how weird Cas is (and 8x10 ends with Sam and Dean warding the cabin so they can talk about how weird Cas is and how he flapped off so strangely and Dean of course is very hurt by it). The fact that he left has an open-ended feeling of hurt and worry for Dean about what’s up with him, and is the emotional arc we’ll get if we have to make it a competition between Cas and Benny about what’s affecting Dean going forwards. Benny sort of gets filed with Lisa in things we never talk about again, but if Dean is hurting and weird about it… Cas is the one who we see drama about ongoing :P

I also think there’s double meaning in what Dean says to prompt that:

DEAN Yeah, well, now he’s more committed than ever, so there’s that. But, trust me, this life – you can’t afford attachments. You just got to… let go.

Season 8 has a lot of Cas fucking off when Dean wants him around - it’s basically the point of their emotional drama. In 8x22 Dean says “sounds like him” when Sam can’t find Cas in the Bunker, and in 8x23 Cas comes to Dean telling him he’s going to go lock himself up in Heaven forever for the sake of fixing it. In 8x11, Dean’s so far lost Cas in Purgatory only to discover Cas willingly stayed behind, gone through the process of adopting Cas as a hunter in 8x08 only to have Cas choose to stay behind and not come with them, then Cas pops up in 8x10 wanting Dean’s help, and flaps off immediately and weirdly enough he and Sam need a crisis meeting about it.

Dean very clearly wants Cas to stay, so in this respect, Dean’s abandonment issues are deeply at play in this season, as he keeps on trying to keep Cas, and to make him stay, and losing that. I can understand why he’d be (doubly) bitter about attachments after having to let go of Benny in the same day he was dealing with his 3rd or 4th feeling of Cas leaving THAT SEASON already, and that it might be on his mind when he says that, because he had to both push Benny away, and just can’t make Cas stay, so what’s the point of getting attached to him? Making Dean both the dump-er and dump-ee by the end of 8x10.

I also went through my blog and found a ton of links to other discussion of this… Some of it Dean x Benny, some of it Destiel, some of it kind of… less shippy:

http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/127712786998/lrthreads-suricattus-mooseleys-8x10-vs

http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/126528573368/i-dont-ship-deanbenny-but-i-can-see-there-is

http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/98136115408/crossroadscastiel-torn-and-frayed-is-such-an

http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/94449409953/rhymeswthfrenzy-and-this-is-why-ill-never

http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/151662901753/bisexual-dean-winchester-i-was-just-rewatching

http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/148212898434/dustydreamsanddirtyscars-8x11-larp-and-the

#Asks #8x11 #8x10 #... so tired I don't really know what else to tag #so just tag padding #out of the first 5 tags :P #Destiel #Dean x Benny

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flauntpage · 6 years

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Everything is Right Again…Or Not: Thoughts on Flyers 2, Sabres 1, and Star Wars The Last Jedi

With a mild wave of my hand I feel confident in telling you, “This is not the hockey you were looking for.”

Yes, the Flyers won, extending their season-best win streak to five games. Yes, they somehow have turned a disastrous 10-game losing streak into a 5-5-5 performance over the past 15 games. And yes, it’s Star Wars day and I have something to say about that as well later, for those of you who are crossover fans.

But the reality is, last night’s 2-1 win over the Buffalo Sabres, a team that, based on talent, is in that awful purgatory between NHL and AHL caliber, was Ugly, and yes, that capital U was intentional.

Don’t believe me, ask some Flyers.

“It was a boring game to watch,” Jake Voracek said. “I should know, I played in it.”

And while waiting for Dale Weise to finish up what had to be the longest media scrum of his career, Michael Raffl was standing off to the side waiting his turn – quite impatiently.

I was standing next to him and this quick exchange took place:

Raffl: (to no one in particular) “Come on Weiser, enough already.”

Me: “Guess you really don’t want to talk to us tonight, huh?”

Raffl: “You saw the game. Every answer I give you guys is going to be a one line answer. That’s all this game deserved.”

Hey, at least they could acknowledge when their own product was bad.

“Yeah, I don’t think it was our best game today,” said Valtteri Filppula, who scored a goal. “But it’s good, sometimes you have to be able to win these types of games and I think that’s a good sign.”

So is winning five in a row. It has quelled the mob chanting for Dave Hakstol’s firing… for now. It has saved the season from plummeting into the abyss… for now.

But, when you play that ugly of a game against the worst team in the sport, it’s got to leave you a little chaffed, even though you still got the two points.

Here’s the rest of the Raffl conversation, before his scrum:

Me: “Well, at least you guys won the game right? You gotta be happy with that, right?”

Raffl: “We’ll take it, but I would say we played better in about six or seven of those games in the 10-game losing streak than we did tonight. This wasn’t fun. It was like a war out there. There wasn’t anything fun about it at all.”

So yeah. Bad hockey. So much so that a non-media member sitting in the press box said to me at one point, “What the hell are we watching tonight?”

Which brings me to the shaping of a hockey narrative – which I think is one of the stories I want to tell you today.

I know the Philadelphia hockey media has taken some abuse over the years on this web site – some guys more deservedly so than others.

But, I will tell you it’s probably the hardest sport of the four majors to really cover for the following reasons:

It’s the fourth sport nationally, so the assumption is, outlets don’t need to have reporters covering the sport who are willing to dig deep for great stories – which encourages pack journalism.

Most of the people covering it never really played the sport, so gauging what is good and bad is often done statistically, which doesn’t always tell the story – even through analytics.

And it’s that second point that’s the real sticky one. Because what ends up happening is we become such slaves to those numbers – both traditional measures and modern analytical measures, that we oftentimes miss what’s happening right in front of us.

I admit, there have been times in my 18 years around this sport, that I have fallen in that trap myself. And, to the defense of the guys on the beat who are there day in and day out, it’s easier to do that when you have to provide content on a daily basis.

But, now that I am of the part-time variety here on Crossing Broad, and I don’t have to write something of value every day, it’s admittedly easier to sit back and be a little more analytical of a game.

I’m not a slave to a deadline. I don’t have to tell you any specifics about the game if I don’t want to. I don’t have to operate in that pack journalism mentality that is forced upon the media on game nights by the team – so that everyone ends up with mostly the same quotes.

No, my job here is easier in the sense that I’m given free reign to write about what I want as long as it’s compelling, informative and accurate.

So, I feel bad for the guys covering the team – at least the ones that are left anyway – because they’re working their tails off, even if the protocol leaves them chasing those same tails on a daily basis.

Which is why, last night, Travis Sanheim was your No. 1 star and everybody wanted to talk to him.

Look, it’s understandable. Sanheim scored his first NHL goal:

Travis Sanheim scores his first NHL goal! http://pic.twitter.com/R9Kgyp5B5p

— Sons of Penn (@SonsofPenn) December 15, 2017

And because of that his team recognized him post game by giving him the Ric Flair robe:

Sanheim wearing “Wooo” http://pic.twitter.com/jFN0zk9rA4

— AntSanPhilly (@AntSanPhilly) December 15, 2017

Good for Travis. It’s been a long-time coming and it’s certainly worth mentioning since he is such an important building block for the future of the franchise.

But star of the game? A crush of happy horseshit questions from the media?

Especially when he had plays like this:

Sanheim held the puck for a little too long and his turnover nearly resulted in a goal the other way. http://pic.twitter.com/aCB7SGGlal

— Sons of Penn (@SonsofPenn) December 15, 2017

and this:

Brian Elliott misplays the puck and it's 1-0 Buffalo. http://pic.twitter.com/6Cepe5Hq0y

— Sons of Penn (@SonsofPenn) December 15, 2017

Yes, that’s on the goalie primarily… but where was Sanheim going? He went too far with Filppula right there, ended up getting in the way of Elliott trying to get back into the crease, and wasn’t in his proper position to negate Kane in front of the net.

And he had at least one more turnover in the first period that I couldn’t find on Twitter.

To his credit, with everyone in the media salivating over his first NHL goal as a great story line, Sanheim started spitting truth:

“I don’t think we were very happy with our first period, especially me,” he said. “I thought minus the goal, that might have been my worst period of the season.”

Thing is, look at the advanced stats, and it looks like Sanheim had a good game as well.

His Corsi For percentage (CF%) at 5-on-5 was 60.00, which is very good.

So good possession numbers, scored a goal, must have been a good game, right?

Wrong.

“It’s obviously a challenge to find both sides of [the game],” Sanheim said. “I am just trying to stick with my game. I think the offensive side has always been there. I think if I make the right reads I can join up and join offensively. In saying that I have to make sure I am keeping it safe in my end.

“The better I am defensively; it turns out the better I am offensively. I am just trying to work on the little areas defensively and I can join offensively.”

Improvement? Yes. We’re starting to see it in bits and pieces. But, play this way against a better team? Toast.

The other narrative being pushed last night was discipline. Questions were flying around after another low penalty total for the Flyers that their improved play may be related to the fact that they are taking fewer penalties.

On this five-game win streak, the Flyers have only been shorthanded eight times. And if you count the last loss of the 10-game losing streak, it’s only 10 times in six games.

That’s definitely good stuff. It’s definitely a point worth talking about – like we did here on Crossing Broad two days ago.

Again, not a shot at the writers – it’s much harder to do that job when you are in the moment under deadline pressure and you have to construct a story.

So, I had no interest in that either.

Nor did I have interest in breaking down Elliott’s puckhandling mishaps. You already saw one, that led to the lone Buffalo goal, but then there was this one too:

Before the goal, Nolan Patrick saved Brian Elliott from another brutal goal after a bad play with the puck. http://pic.twitter.com/WPUJ4AH5Ru

— Sons of Penn (@SonsofPenn) December 15, 2017

So yeah, Elliott was a little shaky in the first period. Maybe he was bummed about the death of net neutrality.

Whatever it was, he bounced back and made some big saves – again – to keep the Flyers in the game until Filppula’s goal put them ahead, and then Elliott did a nice job of protecting the lead, finishing with 19 saves.

No, the guy I was most interested in talking to was the guy on the board nobody in the media really seemed to care to talk to – Nolan Patrick.

See, in that story from Tuesday linked above, I wrote that the Flyers were doing Patrick no favors by playing him in meaningless minutes and that they should let him go to World Juniors to rebuild confidence.

And then last night happened.

No, he wasn’t a star of the game. He didn’t muster a point.

He made a nice play to bail out Elliott on that wraparound, which was the one thing the pack did want to ask him.

But, as everyone peeled out of the locker room to go hear Dave Hakstol say a whole lot of nothing, I stuck back to chat further with Patrick. To his credit, Charlie O’Connor from The Athletic was there with me too, but that’s it.

And Patrick was pretty hard on himself when I asked him about not playing a lot of minutes:

“I don’t think I deserved to play any more than I did in those games on the road trip,” he said. “I wasn’t playing very well and I wasn’t doing anything to help the team. The last couple of games I’ve been trying to do what they are asking of me and it’s been getting better. Obviously I want to get the coach’s trust and as a young guy I follow the guys who have been doing this for a long time in their career because I want to keep getting better and earning their trust.”

Nice self assessment from the kid.

Patrick averaged less than nine minutes per game in the three games in Western Canada. He was basically playing a fourth line role and not getting many minutes.

The last two games, he’s seen a bump in ice time, garnering over 12 minutes each game. Against Buffalo, he even was granted a shift late in the third period when the Flyers were protecting a lead – a situation that would have him rooted to the bench in front of Hakstol in games previous.

And while his possession numbers have been terrible, as I documented Tuesday, last night, they were pretty good. His CF% was 60.00 against Buffalo, tied for fifth best on the team.

“One of the biggest things I needed to improve on was D zone faceoffs,” Patrick said. “I just need to keep getting better at that. It’s something that’s pretty easy to work on. We have a lot of really good faceoff guys, so it’s good to go against them in practice and I can learn from them. There’s a lot to learn.

“You know, in Junior you are ‘That Guy’ and you are thrown into every situation. It’s a real adjustment here. There’s guys who have been in this league a long time who are the go-to guys and you just have to try to contribute whenever you get the chance. It’s a process. I’m not worried about points, or confidence, or anything like that. I know with my abilities it will come eventually as long as I keep working every day.”

I still think the Flyers should loan him to Team Canada for the World Junior Championships. And I know this was the worst team in the NHL that he looked really good against, so we should temper any excitement.

But, it’s rare that a 19-year-old player understands what his strengths and flaws are and what he needs to do to become more well-rounded. Patrick’s got that. And although his development is slower than many would have hoped, he does appear to have the right mindset and that can only bode well for him as he sticks around the league even longer.

Holiday light show

If you’re going to the game tomorrow against Dallas, you’ll be in for a holiday treat.

No, the Flyers aren’t giving out free figgy pudding.

Instead, they will introduce the “Holiday Light Spectacular, presented by the Rothman Institute at Jefferson,” a new, holiday-themed light show.

The show will begin promptly at 7 p.m. and light-up bracelets will be distributed to all fans that are programmed to match the sights, sounds and colors of accompanying video projected on the ice and around the building.

The three-part show, the first of its kind in a NHL arena, is set to a compilation of popular holiday songs, and feature reindeer, elves, Santa, animated Flyers players (think Jib Jab), and much more.

“This show is a new, can’t-miss holiday attraction in Philadelphia and one that we hope becomes an annual tradition for us,” said Shawn Tilger, EVP & COO of the Philadelphia Flyers. “This show is in line with the holiday staples of the region, and we’re excited to bring entertainment of this caliber to Flyers fans here on Saturday night.”

The 10-minute show, produced by Montreal-based technology firm PixMob, in conjunction with the Flyers and 3601 Productions, features eight, 32,000 laser phosphorus projectors and 50 moving lights that are programmed to be in sync with the 20,000 bracelets worn by fans.

At least the Flyers are in the middle of a winning streak, so handing out bracelets isn’t a bad idea. Because that’s never gone wrong before, has it?

In all seriousness, it actually looks cool:

STAR WARS

I mentioned Star Wars in my lede.

I will tell you that my two sons convinced me to hustle home from the game last night to go see the late night premiere of Episode VIII: The Last Jedi.

As a kid, I was a Star Wars fanatic. I had every action figure, read every book, and saw each of the original trilogy movies dozens of times.

Then, the prequels came out when my oldest son was the same age I was when the originals came out. I didn’t think they were great, but I also didn’t think they were as terrible as everyone made them out to be.

Yes, there were issues. Yes, the acting was sub par. But, at least the story was there. It all tied together nicely, because it was what George Lucas had planned.

Then came the latest Trilogy.

I was one of the few who instantly hated The Force Awakens a couple years ago. Many Star Wars fans chided me for not liking it, although over time, I’ve noticed more and more people side with me that it wasn’t a good story.

What was a good story was Rogue One, which I felt stayed true to Lucas while J.J. Abrams went… well… rogue himself with a predictable story line in The Force Awakens.

So, with Abrams out and Rian Johnson in, there was hope that maybe the story would get better.

All the major reviews are in and they are praising Johnson for The Last Jedi.

I can’t. I just can’t.

Look, I’m not going to spoil anything here. I’m not going to break it down in gory detail. But, the plot of The Last Jedi is contrived. It takes faaaaaaaaaar too long to play out and tried to trick the audience with a lot of sharp twists and turns that only end up resulting in exactly what you’d expect.

The characters that die, die stupidly.

The ones that live, live in ways that really make zero sense.

And everyone has angst. Everyone is conflicted. And it keeps flip-flopping its way to a conclusion that, for me, is a flop.

There are new characters that are irrelevant. There are old characters with no thread to the story.

There are new creatures – including these annoying Furby-like creatures that really take to Chewbacca. Only thing is, I was waiting for them to get wet and multiply and start saying “Mogwai.”

Methinks the reason behind all the love is today’s audience likes things to be different than the past generation. I get that. Change is good. I don’t disagree.

But when you fly directly in the face of the original story, you’re hurting your product and cheating the audience.

It’s why Mark Hamill has had some negative comments about the movie, although he’s backtracked recently. But he did say Lucas’ original storyline for episodes 7-8-9 was far different than we we ended up with.

And that’s a real shame.

Look, I’m going to be on an island on this one, like I was two years ago, but I’m confident, in time, everyone will look back on this film and say, WTF?

Go see for yourself.

Everything is Right Again…Or Not: Thoughts on Flyers 2, Sabres 1, and Star Wars The Last Jedi published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

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