#wake up thinking would anyone in this world ever be able to sum up how I feel about batfleck

[topguncortez]

Left a Scar on My Heart || whumptober day 12 - B. Bradshaw

whumptober masterlist

synopsis: in the wake of a tragic death, everyone deals with their grief differently. You thought you'd be able to handle it, but you weren't strong enough.

word count: 3.0k

@ailesswhumptober prompt: self harm, character death

warnings: suicide, mentions of self harm, details about character death, character death, unhealthy coping mechanism, grief

It wasn’t planned. It was heartbreaking and tragic. But how could you ever plan the death of a young person? One minute their heart was beating, pumping warm oxygenated blood through their body. And the next, they were cold, laying in a funeral home basement. There wasn’t any way anyone could prepare for what happened, not your brother, not your squadron, or even the man you loved. You didn’t realize how much you were leaving behind, you could only think of wanting to be in a better place.

Your last mission had left you with more than just a dead wingman. Maverick had given you the Bobe speech he had given Rooster after Phoenix and Bob’s bird strike. You knew that these kinds of things could happen if you flew long enough, but you never wanted it to happen to you. You couldn’t get the sound of your wingman, Chipper’s voice out of your head as he told you to tell his wife he was sorry and to give his child a hug. You couldn’t escape the sounds of bullets hitting your jet and flares tearing apart your wingman’s jet. Every time you close your eyes the image of his jet crashing into the deep blue ocean, taking his body down with it. 

Bradley had been at work when he got a strange text from you. You were on leave, for the time being, waiting for a clear mental eval from behavioral health. Bradley agreed that it was for the best that you were taking time away from the squad. Everyone took Chipper’s death hard. The aviator community was small, and everyone knew everyone somehow. 

“I’m so sorry, Bradley.” 

The message read. He furrowed his eyebrows as he read it over and over, trying to rack his brain on why you would be apologizing. You hadn’t been the nicest to him lately, snapping at him for small things, but he summed that up to you going through the grieving process. Bradley shook his head and started typing back a message to you, telling you that there was nothing to be sorry for, when Jake’s contact photo showed up on the screen. More confusion filled Bradley as he swiped to answer the call. 

“Hey, what’s-” 

“You need to get here,” Jake said. Bradley could hear the sound of sirens in the background. He stood up abruptly from his desk, not even bothering to grab his bag, taking his keys only. 

“What’s going on?” Bradley asked as he jogged out to his car. 

“Y/N, she. . . ” Jake’s voice cracked, “She texted me as I was on my way over, and I. . . I found her in the bathtub. . . she slit her wrists, man.” 

Bradley halted in the middle of the hallway, Jake’s words registering in his head. He felt like his heart was going to explode in his chest, as his knees began to weaken. Bradley tried to force air into his lungs, as the phone fell from his hand and went crashing to the ground. 

“Rooster?” Maverick asked, stepping out of his office as he heard the crashing sound. Bradley lifted his head and looked up at his uncle. Maverick moved quickly as the color drained from Bradley’s face. He barely reached him in time as Bradley’s legs gave out and he went crashing to the ground. 

— — — 

The news of your death had traveled fast around the aviator world. Everyone took it differently, but Bob took it hard. He hadn’t really been around death. Sure, he grew up on a farm and understood the circle of life. But this was different. You didn’t peacefully die in your sleep with your loved ones around you. You decided to take your own life in a traumatic way.

Bob had seen you two days prior, and he kept trying to reply it, if there were any signs of what were to happen 48 hours later. Bob was angry, angry at the world for being unfair, angry at the birds chirping outside his window, angry that the sun was shining every day, but most importantly angry at you. 

He didn’t think he could cry so much, but he felt like he had cried half his body weight out. Bob, in his anger, had deleted all the photos that he had of you on his phone and anything around his barracks room that could remind him of you. If you wanted to erase yourself from the earth, then he was going to erase yourself from his life. Bob would snap at anyone who mentioned your name or any memory of you. 

Why should they be telling happy stories and memories from flight school or mission when you weren’t happy? His anger bubbled over when he first got to see you. Your parents had invited some of the Dagger Squad to view your body before the visitation and funeral. Bob looked at you, lying peacefully in the dark brown casket, and cursed you.

“What the fuck were you thinking? Hm? Why do we all get to suffer and you get to just… leave? Your brother found you. Jake found you in the bathtub, and he hasn’t stopped drinking himself into god damn oblivion since. You have always been selfish, and this really just fucking proves it.”

Bob could barely remember your funeral. It wasn’t because he was drunk like Jake was, it was simply from being in pain. The human body is designed to forget pain, and that’s exactly what he was doing. It felt like a blur, one minute he was picking up a flower arrangement that was knocked over, and the next he was helping carry your casket to your gravesite. He had to hold himself back from all but chucking the clump of dirt at your casket in the ground. He had drunk himself into oblivion that night, he didn’t even remember getting into a fight with Jake or punching the hole in Natasha’s wall until the next morning.

It took Bob almost a whole year to come to terms with your death. He had enrolled in anger management and therapy with the help and encouragement of Natasha and Bradley, who were tired of having to order Bob new plates and glasses. He hadn’t apologized for what he said until the first anniversary of your death, and he stood face to face with the black granite stone that was erected over where your body lay. He ran his hand over the smooth, cool, rock and cried.

“I’m so sorry for what I said,” He cried, “I get it now, and you felt like there was no way out. I forgive you, Y/N. I hope you can forgive me. I’ll see you when I get there.”

— — — 

Natasha tried her best to keep it together. She felt like if she didn’t hold herself together, everyone around her would fall apart. She’s always felt like she had to hold the group together, one of the main ones who coordinates all the holiday get togethers and makes dinner reservations for “fancy dinner night” (as Fanboy calls it) once a month. To her, you were like the younger sister she never had but always wanted. The news of your death shook Natasha to her core, but she couldn’t let anyone see it. 

Javy was the one who told her, having answered Jake’s phone call while she was napping. He had broken down in the kitchen hearing the words leave Jake’s lips. He had gone up to the bedroom and shook Natasha awake slowly. Her first words to him, seeing his bloodshot eyes were,

“Who died?”

When Javy  tearfully said your name, all he could do was pull her into a bone-crushing hug. Natasha had taken on the task of going to tell Bob, Jake was trying to get ahold of him, but he wasn’t answering. Natasha held her best friend off the ground as Bob sobbed. Natasha couldn’t let him see her break down. Bob was barely holding it together, Natasha had witnessed his anger firsthand when she mentioned going to see your body. Bob had punched a hole into the wall, and all Natasha did was apologize for mentioning anything. She was quiet during the first viewing as your parents had encouraged them to tell stories about you. Jake, being the talkative one he is, told stories and the group shared a few laughs, but it was hard to find happiness during a time like this. Javy was worried about her, wishing that she would do something; cry, scream, drink. But Natasha pushed down her feelings.

Natasha held Javy during your funeral. Javy had also seen you like a little sister, having been around Jake for so long.  Javy had told Natasha countless times that it was okay if she cried, or screamed, or punched holes in his walls like Bob, but she shook her head and said she was okay. 

It wasn’t until the end of your funeral, standing over the closed casket, watching it get lowered to the ground that it really started to hit her. Natasha didn’t say anything as she looked at the hole in the ground where your body lay, white roses and clumps of dirt thrown on top of the casket, and tears started escaping her eyes.

“I should… I should’ve brought her blanket,” Natasha said and Javy choked back a sob, “She left it at my house after the last movie night we had. She’s scared of the dark, she hates it. She also hates being cold. And that blanket…” Natasha could picture the wool and fleece blanket that was folded up over the back of her couch, “It was like being in a sauna, she had it everywhere she went. She was like Linus from Snoopy with that thing,”

“I know,” Javy said rubbing her arm.

“She’s cold,” Natasha said looking at him, her brown eyes wet with tears, “She’s cold and in the dark, and that stupid fucking blanket-“

Javy held his girlfriend and rubbed her back as sobs racked through her body and she kept mumbling about your blanket. When they finally got home, Javy laid her down on the couch. Natasha gingerly grabbed the blanket off the couch and cuddled up with it, your scent still lingering on it.

— — — 

Jake was drunk, again. 

This was how he spent most of his Wednesday nights now. On Wednesdays, you used to beg him to watch the Bachelor and drink wine. He would never admit it, but he loved the stupid reality show as much as you did and would always vote against your favorite. But now, he couldn’t bring himself to turn on the TV. He sat in the silence of his living room, drinking down your favorite wine.

When he got that text from you, he was just getting in his car to go check on you. The whole dagger squad had set up a schedule to make sure you weren’t alone all day every day. But Jake was running late to get to your house. He had sent you a text telling you that he was getting lunch for the two of you and he’d be right over. But then he got that text. 

“You have always been my protector, Jake. I love you. I’m so sorry.” 

He broke pretty much all traffic laws to get to you before it was too late. Your front door was unlocked as Jake barged right in, yelling your name. He could hear the water running from the bathroom as he ran down the hallway. He had to break down the bathroom door and he was met with a puddle of pink water and your body in the bathtub. 

“Oh Y/N,” Jake cried as he rushed to you. He turned the water off and gently ran his hand over your wet hair. He knew better than to mess with a crime scene, but all he wanted to do was pull your body out of the water and hold you. 

After Jake called 9-1-1, he called Bradley, telling him to come over. As the police and corner were doing their invstigation, Jake grabbed a bottle of scotch from your liquor cabinet and took a seat on your front porch. He had stayed there until Bradley and Maverick arrived later. 

“You just missed her body,” Jake slurred, “They’re trying to dry up all the water now.” 

Jake couldn’t remember the last time he was sober since that day he found you. He was even drunk, having to have Rooster drive him to the airport to pick up his parents. Rooster had tried to tell Jake to slow down with the drinking but it resulting in a yelling match between them in the parking lot of the funeral home. 

When Jake showed up to your funeral, dressed in all black with sunglasses covering his drunken eyes, Bob rolled his eyes as he slugged into the church. At least his uniform was all squared away and he managed to get a shave and a haircut before showing up. According to Natasha, he was starting to look a little homeless. Jake lazily stood next to his parents, swaying slightly as he greeted people. Bradley grabbed him by his ear and dragged him away from the family.

“Are you serious? You’re drunk?” Bradley said, seething.

“Well done, Columbo,” Jake said as he stumbled over a flower arrangement. It fell to the ground with a clank and all eyes snapped to him. Natasha apologized as Bob bent down to pick it up, “Y/N would’ve thought it was funny. She was the one who was cracking jokes at these things, anyway.”

“The hell is wrong with you?” Natasha asked.

“Well shit Nix, let me start with the fact that my baby sister slit her wrists in a bath tub,” Jake said loudly. 

“Shut up,” Bradley seethed, “Clean yourself up.” 

Jake just shrugged and pulled out the black flask you had gotten him for his birthday and took a drink of whiskey.

— — —

Bradley hadn’t cried. He didn’t think he could. Much like Natasha, he was busy keeping Jake from alcohol poisoning and Bob from breaking all the plates in his house. He was on the verge of crying when he showed up at your house to confirm the words fell from Jake’s lips. You and Bradley had been together for over two years, and he had planned on proposing to you in a couple of weeks. 

Bradley had helped your parents get flights out to North Island as soon as they could. It was supposed to be Jake who went and picked them up, but he was in shape to drive. Your mother’s face had dried tear streaks and your father’s eyes were red. Bradley offered to let them stay at his house so they didn’t have to be in the last place their daughter was alive. 

Your mother felt lost, not sure where to begin to plan a funeral for you. Bradley had assured her that the Navy was taking care of most of it and all she had to do was decide on what photos to use for the slide show. Bradley made sure that your parents were eating proper meals and Jake wasn’t killing himself with alcohol. 

The second time Bradley thought he was going to cry was when your mom asked him to grab your uniform from your room. She couldn’t bring herself to go in there, so Bradley did. It was just like you had left it, your bed was haphazardly made, and your shoes were kicked off in random spots by the door. Your laptop was open, and your clothes were spilling out of your dresser drawer. It looked like you had just left for the day and were planning on coming back. The only thing was it felt cold, like a frozen time capsule. Bradley shook his head and opened your closet, finding your dress blues. His eyes also fell onto the green bomber jacket he had sworn he lost on deployment. He felt heat rise in his eyes as he ran his fingers over the stitching on the inside of the jacket: ‘Lt Nick ‘Goose’ Bradshaw’

Bradley stood strong during your funeral. Your brother was a mess, showing up smelling like a bar room floor. Bob disassociated the whole funeral, not saying a single thing to anyone, and Natasha was holding Javy. When your mother got up to speak, visibly shaking, Bradley moved from his seat and stood next to her. He put his hand on her back and she handed him the speech. Bradley cleared his throat and looked at the full church and then at the smiling portrait of you.

“I’m not much of a writer, I left that up to Y/N,” He read your mother’s scribbled words, “But, I’m going to try my best.”

Jake watched from the car as Bradley hugged your parents after the luncheon following your burial. He admired Bradley’s strength and wish he could be there for his parents like he had. He had yet to see him break, and that was cause Bradley had yet to break. That night they all had spent the night drinking at Bradley’s house. Countless stories of how you had gotten them out of trouble, or into less trouble were shared. As the night dwindled down, Jake had asked the man who was going to be his brother-in-law:

“You cry yet?”

Bradley sighed and shook his head, “I’m scared if I start… I won’t ever stop.”

Jake agreed and opened the fridge. He at first grabbed a beer, but placed it back and grabbed a water instead. He said goodnight to his friend and headed into one of the guest rooms. Bradley finished wiping down the kitchen table and then trudged down to his bedroom. He stripped out of his dress blues he was wearing and his eyes fell onto a box that wasn’t on his bed this morning. He looked around his room and then walked over to the box, that was wrapped in your favorite wrapping paper with a big pastel yellow bow on it. A handwritten note laid on top of some tissue paper. He opened the card, and in your handwriting it read:

‘Please, return to Bradley’

Bradley tore the tissue paper open and sucked in a deep breath looking at the bomber jacket. He gingerly pulled it out and sniffed it, and it still smelled like your perfume. Bradley’s eyes clouded with tears and he sat down on the couch. He pulled it into his chest, burying his face in it, and cried.

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[heliads]

Hii! Here we go, a request for Kaz x reader based on the song "Later never comes" from Scrooge. I think it could go in so many ways and I'm really excited to see what you envision for this particular fic!! Your writing never ceases to amaze me Lisa! Once again, thank you for listening!!😌✨️ (little kaz gif for inspiration)

what a song for what a man

masterlist

Kaz Brekker is not the type for pretty sentiment nor glowing praise. It is notoriously difficult to be near him as anything more than an enemy, which is part of what makes the Dregs so deadly as a gang. If they can put up with Dirtyhands for months at a time without losing their minds or their will to live, well, they can do just about anything. So they do.

You, then, are a wholly different substance. Not only are you Kaz’s friend, you’re in a relationship with him. Every damned soul this side of the True Sea and half those on the foreign shores, too, know not to mess with Kaz’s girl. You convinced the coldest heart in the world to fall in love, that must count for something.

You’d like it to count for something, at least, and at the beginning, it did. You and Kaz were unstoppable. He had a goal to rise above the ranks of petty thugs and street criminals, to lead the best Barrel gang and crush the others while he was at it. You helped him with it, and swore to be by his side until the sky finally fell.

It was good back then. More simple than now, at least, although it didn’t feel that way. What you’ve learned since those early days is that money tends to bring more trouble than anyone expects. Sure, as someone who’ll be a canal rat from their first breath until their last, you appreciate being able to have food in your stomach and a warm roof to keep you dry more than anyone, but you also know what it did to Kaz, and that’s something terrible, too.

The problem with finally getting to the top is that you have to stay there as well. Kaz spends every waking moment scouting out his enemies, making sure they’re too weak to stand against him and fighting them off if they ever reach that point. He runs through his sums and profits until the numbers swim behind his eyes. Business is booming, he’s recruiting more loyal soldiers by the day, and through all of it, he makes less and less time for you by the hour.

You knew exactly what to expect when you fell in love with Kaz in the first place. Greed is his god, his servant, his lever, his only reason for existence. He likes to say that he controls it, but it controls him just as much. Remove gold from Kaz and his entire empire plummets. You share that too, you loved him just enough to keep making excuses for his wealth knowing it would fill your pockets too, but you’re reaching your limit.

You didn’t think you could feel lonely in a city like this. The Barrel is crawling with people of every kind, saints and sinners and criminals such as yourself. The Slat alone is filled to the brim with the other Dregs. You’ve befriended as many as you could stomach, using their teasing banter to fill the increasing gap between your ribs that Kaz had once filled.

Even stepping outside the door has you washed away in a flood of conversation. Dozens of languages spin from hundreds of windows. Walk two streets down and it’s as if you’ve crossed five national borders. Ketterdam is a thriving mess of rotten civilization, thousands of souls spilling between your fingers wherever you go. It has never been quiet, and when the silence threatens to tear you apart, constant noise is here whenever you need it.

Recently, you’ve relied on that ceaseless din more than ever before. You talk to your friends, you complete your jobs, you count your coin just like your boyfriend, but it doesn’t stop you from remembering how it had felt to have Kaz back with you. You used to spend hours with him in his study, both of you poring through documents or mapping out a future.

Now, you can hardly take a step into his study without him asking you to leave him be. You’re not the only one facing his wrath; Inej and Jesper have also shared similar stories, but it hits doubly hard when you remember that you’re supposed to be the one easing the pain from Kaz’s life. Every time you try to reach out, he cuts you off with a blow of business and profits. There’s just no getting through to him.

So, you start pulling yourself back as well. The separation doesn’t hurt nearly as much if you stop giving Kaz chances to reject you again and again. You stop taking the rickety steps up to Kaz’s office, he never visited you anyway, so why should you waste your time on something he clearly doesn’t want? Kaz never leaves his work for meals, so you stop inviting him to eat with you. Might as well save your breath for people who’ll listen to you.

Inej knows how you feel, of course she does. There has yet to be a secret in this world hidden from the Wraith, and yours are no exception. She picked up on your gloom in about half a second, even before you realized how much you were hurting from Kaz’s absence. 

She encouraged you to tell Kaz how you felt, insisting that Kaz was unaware of many human emotions, and he wasn’t likely to realize you were unhappy unless you told him. You tried many times and gave up after the ninth attempt. Each time you began that conversation, he dismissed you with a wave of his hand and a new excuse about work consuming his time yet again.

So you stopped trying. It’s funny, you’ve never had a problem with persistence in your life. The Barrel was not made for those who lay down and die after the smallest grievance. You clawed your way up to survive with bleeding palms, yet it is Kaz’s slights that hurt you like nothing else.

Every day feels like a fresh blow, knowing that he’s in the very same building as you yet refuses to see you for a second. After suffering death by a thousand cuts for the third month in a row, your broken heart slowly realizes what it has to do. If you want to live with the slimmest chance of happiness, you have to remove yourself from a situation in which you are not your lover’s priority.

There’s a train heading towards the rural, central parts of Kerch, closer to Belendt than Ketterdam. You’ve booked yourself passage there. A good opportunity awaits you:  there’s a small hospital that’s found itself frantically growing. In need of a new owner, it sent out ads that reached your ears. As someone with a deep knowledge of crime and danger, someone who isn’t likely to be intimidated by threats by rivals, you’re a top candidate. You applied and heard back almost immediately with a resounding yes.

Just before you accepted the job and left, you gave Kaz one more chance. This time, you aren’t going to swallow back your words, even when he tries to dismiss you at the door. You knock once at his office door, balling your hands into fists at your sides for some semblance of strength before letting yourself inside.

Kaz looks up briefly, but you don’t think his eyes even manage to make it all the way up to yours before they snap back to the mess of papers in front of him. “Now isn’t a good time, Y/N.”

You clear your throat. “It needs to be now. There’s something you need to know.”

He sighs, still staring at the addendums to this month’s sums. “Does it have to do with business?”

“Yes and no,” you begin, but Kaz cuts you off.

“If it’s not urgent, it’s going to be a problem for later. I don’t have time for lesser concerns.” He says.

You refuse to move. “Later isn’t really a thing for you, Kaz. We’ve been waiting on later for months.”

“Have we?” He asks. As you watch, his attention slips away from you like grains of sand down an hourglass. Before your very eyes, he’s almost forgotten you’re there.

You take a breath in and out, then force yourself to speak again. “There’s a hospital in central Kerch in need of an owner. I’m moving out to take the position. This is the first time I’ve ever left Ketterdam, but it’s going to be good. It’s a lovely place, and the patients are in need of help. It’s a very nice opportunity.”

“Yes,” Kaz mutters absently, “very nice.”

You blink at him in surprise, but realize that he’s just parroting your words back at you. Despite the fact that you just confessed to leaving him behind, Kaz hasn’t picked up on a single syllable out of line. This is the last sign you need to know that you need to go. This is not a place where you are the center of anyone’s attention, so you might as well find somewhere else where you are.

“Goodbye, Kaz,” you say at last.

He doesn’t even manage a cohesive phrase in farewell, just keeps his eyes studiously scanning the page until the door closes behind you. Inej is waiting in the hall outside, perched up on the railing of the staircase.

“Well?” She asks hopefully, legs swinging in the air, “how’d it go?”

You shake your head tersely. “He didn’t even listen. I told him I was finding a new job and nothing happened.”

Inej’s face falls. “No. I really thought he’d react to that, but he didn’t in the slightest?”

“Not at all,” you confirm, “and that’s it, I think. There’s a train headed out tomorrow, I already bought my ticket.”

Inej’s lips twist into a frown. “You knew he wouldn’t respond?”

You nod. “Of course he wouldn’t. Kaz is Kaz, he was never meant to love someone like me. I don’t know what I was thinking to believe I could be the exception, but I was wrong. Kaz doesn’t want someone like that, certainly not me.”

“That just means he’s blind,” Inej declares, “you’re better than he deserves, Y/N. I’m sorry he can’t see that.”

“I’m sorry too,” you exhale, “but it’s over now.”

And so it is. You wake up early to catch your train, and Inej insists on seeing you off. You think she’s doing it in some part to convince you to stay, but your mind is made up. This is not a home for you, not anymore. Not until the people you love come to love you back once again. Until then, you need to clear your head by leaving.

You give Inej your address, just in case. If there was anyone in this world you’d trust to keep your secret, it would be her. She waves goodbye until the train disappears around the corner and you can see her no longer. After that, you’re left to the great unknown. You can only hope that it will hold half the contentment you’ve been missing for so long.

…

Something is wrong, and Kaz knows it. The feeling has been itching at him for days now, this unsettling sensation telling him that all is not right in his world. Kaz does not like this feeling, he never has. Dirtyhands is always in control of his surroundings; Fate bows to him, that’s how it has always been. Even when he’s temporarily down, Kaz can conjure up a solution to fix whatever comes his way.

It would be nice, then, if he could figure out what the issue was. Kaz rarely has trouble immersing himself in anything but work, but he finds himself unable to focus now. Even the allure of more jobs and more kruge cease to luster in the same way.

After what is probably a shamefully long time, it occurs to Kaz that he hasn’t seen Y/N in quite a while. She usually drops by his office with a word of good news or a smile, bright spots in the midst of this gleefully dismal city, but Kaz doesn’t think he’s seen her in days. Since that feeling of trouble started, actually.

In a place like the Barrel, unsettling coincidences and strange absences usually mean someone has been murdered, so Kaz doesn’t think he’ll be able to rest until he has confirmation that Y/N is alright. Despite his best attempts at making sure he has no weakness, he can decisively say that Y/N would be just that. His traitorous heart has a way of skipping a beat when she’s around, a habit he tried to cure himself of at least a dozen times yet just made stronger by the day.

Yes, he needs her, and yes, her lack of visibility in his life is most certainly messing with his head. Kaz departs his office and heads down the stairs to her room in the Slat. He knocks once, waits, hears nothing, then knocks again. Of course, it is no trouble at all to assume that Y/N is merely busy or out on some other job, but for some reason Kaz gets the feeling this isn’t the case.

For one thing, there are no lights on inside, not even a small oil lamp left to heat the place. For another, Jesper accidentally upset an inkwell on this stairwell a while ago, and judging by the pool of black still undisturbed by her threshold, no one has entered or left this door in a couple of days.

Kaz is seriously starting to worry now. There’s one person who knows everything in this place, so he turns to track down Inej in the hopes of finding out if she’s seen anything. When he looks back towards the stairs, though, he realizes that she’s beat him to the punch. Inej has appeared out of the gloom to lean against the stairwell, eyes wide and expectant.

Kaz’s fingers harden around the crow’s head of his cane. “What do you know?” He asks, cutting to the chase.

Inej arches a brow. “About what?”

His eyes narrow. “Don’t feign ignorance, Inej, I know you have some hand in this. Where is Y/N?”

Inej folds her arms across her chest. “You know, I was wondering how long it would take you to notice.”

Kaz doesn’t remember walking over to her, only that he blinks and he’s looming over her, the slow cold of rage icing over his veins. “Wraith, I am not in the mood for games. Tell me where Y/N is or–”

Inej has rarely been frightened of him, and she certainly isn’t now. “Or what, Kaz, you’ll ignore her again? Do you know how long Y/N has been coming to me, distraught because you refuse to give her the time of day? She’s been trying for so long to convince you to love her, and she left because she realized that you never would.”

Kaz feels thunderstruck. “What do you mean she left? And why would she think that?”

Inej gives him one of her knowing looks. “Y/N wanted to find someplace she could live where the people around her wouldn’t push her away every time she spoke to them. And don’t glare at me like that, Brekker, because I tried to talk her out of it so many times. That’s more than you, by the way. She told you she was leaving straight to your face and you didn’t even notice.”

Kaz opens his mouth to say that’s not true, that he would absolutely have picked up on Y/N mentioning that, and then he remembers the last time she dropped by his office. He’d been distracted by reports that Pekka’s profits had been growing. She had something about— about— a hospital, yes, that was it, someplace nice. She was going someplace nice, and he hadn’t realized it in the slightest. 

Kaz raises a gloved hand to his temple. “She said goodbye and I acted like nothing happened. Kept telling her we’d talk later.”

Inej nods knowingly. “Later never comes, Kaz. None of us have time for such promises.”

He scowls at her. It’s always easier to hate someone else than himself, although he can’t quite manage it now.  “Alright, then, if I wanted to go about fixing things, how would I do it? Where is she?”

Inej refuses to divulge that information quite yet. “Do you really want to fix things? You spent all this time ignoring her. Why should you force your way back into her life just to do it again in a couple more months?”

Kaz sighs, the ghostly sound of his regrets leaving him in the same manner as a soul:  all yearning, all hopeless musing that nothing will ever be better. “Because now I know what it’s like to be without her, and I don’t ever want to do that again.”

“Even for kruge?” Inej asks, still suspicious. 

“Even for kruge,” Kaz answers, fighting a bitter taste in the back of his throat. Is he really so predictable that she’d have to ask?

Inej eyes him a moment longer, then sighs and relents. “Alright, then. What you’re going to want to do is take a train south, away from the city…”

Kaz hasn’t thought about leaving the Barrel in quite some time. He almost doubted he could leave, like the city has such a deep chokehold on him that his lungs would give out the second he passed the borders of Ketterdam. Forget the fact that he’s been as far as Fjerda, Ravka, and the like; abandoning the Barrel to some distant whiff of grime and penance behind him feels like some unnameable sin. 

The feeling lessens the further he gets into the country. The rolling hills and clear skies remind him of a different time in his life, a different last name. Rietveld, not Brekker. A simple schoolboy, not an immoral conman. If Kaz were to see the boy he’d once been on the streets today, he’d probably rob him blind without a second thought. That’s what had happened to him. It’s what happens to them all. Something is taken from you, you get your revenge by taking from someone else. So the cycle continues.

Out here, though, the relentless surge of predator and prey seems farther away. Its claws slack, its hold on Kaz grows thin and tenuous. Before he knows it, he’s blinking in the bright sunlight of a Kerch that has not been his in quite some time. He was never supposed to go back. Not alone, at least.

He isn’t alone, though. He’s here for somebody. Kaz managed to pry the name of the hospital out of Inej, and he asks for directions from a nearby locomotive worker. After that, it’s just a matter of hitching a ride and heading over.

The hospital is quite busy, but even amidst the hustle and bustle, Kaz spots Y/N immediately. She’s writing down notes on a book cradled in her arms, calling out directions to people as she passes them by. Kaz takes one hesitant step forward, then two, and she sees him at last.

He’d like to say that one look at her made the uproar around him die down. Instead, he thinks it doubled in volume. The shrieks of children with sprained ankles are amplified by the erratic beating of Kaz’s heart. Younger patients swarm around him, and maybe it’s just the threat that one of them will bump into him out of nowhere but Kaz swears he starts seeing ice water instead of warm air, and limp, plague-ridden bodies instead of groaning victims. 

One elderly man with a broken leg weakly closes his eyes to preserve strength and Kaz feels his entire system lock down. Suddenly, he’s no longer Kaz Brekker, man on a mission, but the younger Rietveld boy, doomed to drown with the rest of the corpses in a city on fire.

Just when he’s sure he’s going to implode, Y/N is in front of him, somehow clearing a path across the busy scene. She gestures for him to follow and Kaz does, not trusting himself to speak lest the bile in his blood finally come out. 

Only once they’re alone in a room with the door closed can Kaz finally begin to breathe. “I came for you,” he manages to gasp out.

Y/N nods, eyeing him hesitantly as if she expects him to run. “I didn’t know if you would.”

Kaz is not so far gone that he can’t feel a pang of hurt at her words. “I didn’t realize I had sunk so low in your opinion.”

Y/N purses her lips. “I always had a high opinion of you. Months of you ignoring me, though, that made it hard to stick around.”

Kaz nods once, a mechanical motion. “You’re certainly receiving a fair amount of attention here.”

He’s not sure if he means it as a jab or not. Y/N isn’t either. “Yes, well, there’s definitely no lack of activity here,” she says crisply, “I could use some personal space, though.”

“Is that why you came all the way out here?” Kaz asks plaintively, “or was it just me?”

Y/N looks away. “Both,” she decides at last, “I’d been wondering about exploring the world and I didn’t like living in a place where the person I loved couldn’t care less about me.”

He appreciates the truth, he always has. Still, it hurts, and more than Kaz thought mere words possibly could. “I always cared about you,” he whispers. 

Y/N glances carefully back at him. “Is that why your books have spent more time on your mind than me?”

Kaz can’t ignore the dig, especially not since it’s true. “I was wrong. I grew so used to having you around that I took you for granted. You were always there. It didn’t occur to me that you wouldn’t. I should have tried harder to make you stay.”

The words are hard to force out at first, but they get easier as time goes on. Y/N seems to accept this. “And you’ve changed in a few days? Seen the error in your ways and had a complete personality switch?”

“Well,” Kaz manages to croak, “I think that’s impossible. Even Inej’s Saints couldn’t do that.”

“Inej,” Y/N smiles, “what did you have to do to convince her to tell you where I was?”

“I told her the truth,” Kaz admits, “which is that I needed you more than anything. More than money. More than the jobs.”

Y/N’s eyes are wide. “And she believed you enough to tell you my address?”

Kaz inclines his head. “You have a job here. One you enjoy, if your activity level is any indication. I know how important that is. I won’t ask you to leave that for the Barrel if this is truly what you want.”

He hesitates, and Y/N picks up on it in a flash. “And the catch?”

Kaz levels his gaze at her. “I would, however, ask you to leave for me. If I promise you my time, would you come back?”

Y/N is silent for far too long for Kaz’s liking. At last, the faintest trace of a smile appears on her lips. “I already signed the job contract for my position at the hospital.”

Kaz feels his heart shatter on the ground. “Does that mean you can’t come back?”

Y/N shakes her head. “It means I’m glad I only signed on as a temporary measure while they look for a new candidate. I’ll tell them to hire the next in line.”

Kaz must have quite the expression, because Y/N breaks out into laughter. “Oh, don’t worry too much,” she says, “I don’t think I could ever leave Ketterdam. Not easily, at least. I knew that the second I boarded the train. Leaving has its merits, but I’ll always want to return more than I want to go.”

Kaz nods again, then steels himself and holds out his hand. “Shall we go, then?”

Y/N stares at his hand, then smiles and takes it. For once, the expected wave of revulsion upon physical contact doesn’t happen. All Kaz feels is calm, like a ship that’s been finally tied to an anchor.

“Yes,” she replies, “let’s go home.”

requested by @zaypay, i hope you enjoy!

grishaverse tag list: @rogueanschel, @deadreaderssociety, @cameronsails, @mxltifxnd0m, @story-scribbler, @retvenkos, @thatfangirl42, @amortensie, @gods-fools-heroes, @bl606dy, @auggie2000

#kaz brekker #kaz brekker imagines #kaz brekker x reader #kaz brekker oneshot #grishaverse #grishaverse imagines #grishaverse x reader #grishaverse oneshot #shadow and bone #shadow and bone imagines #shadow and bone x reader #shadow and bone oneshot #six of crows #six of crows imagines #six of crows x reader #six of crows oneshot #grishaverse kaz #grishaverse kaz imagines #grishaverse kaz x reader #grishaverse kaz oneshot

[sea-owl]

So this is gonna sound majorly angsty but imagine in the Into the Colinverse, the group finally notices another Colin that they hadn't before. He looks a bit older than Show Colin but younger than book Colin. And when they finally ask about what his world is like he just smiles sadly.

It turns out was the one who made the wish to meet the other Colins because he wanted to know that there was at least one universe out there where he ended up with Penelope. Because in his universe, she is now forever beyond his reach (death,married happily to someone else, etc.) before he ever spoke of his feelings to her or realized them. But at least it seems like in every other universe they are destined to be together which brings him some comfort.

I could probably make it more angsty. Who remembers some of my earlier crack shipping posts, partically this one. Link

Well to sum it up in that post Daphne and Penelope fell in love before Penelope's first season. They come up with an idea for a lavender marriage for Daphne to a husband who wants an heir and after that does not care what Daphne does. When the season starts the girls start hunting for a sperm donor.

Taking into account that by the books Colin was gone for roughly a year before the Duke and I, I can easily see it sliding into place in the No Pen Colin's world. Because wouldn't that be something, not only do you lose the love of your life to someone else but that someone else is your favorite sister. Then you can't discuss with anyone because that would put two people you love in danger and No Pen Colin would never risk either of their lives like that.

So, No Pen Colin stays silent after he figures it out. He stays silent as Penelope takes employment as Daphne's companion, as their children's governess. He stays silent as he watches the two women raise their children under a lord who has no care what his wife does so long as the heir to his estate is alive and able to take over. He stays silent as at their hidden joy when Daphne's husband dies so they no longer have to hide in their own home.

No Pen Colin stays silent, becoming their silent protector because despite his personal heartbreak he loves these two women, and they love him. Their happiness is enough for him. If he has to travel sometimes to tend to his heartbreak so he can continue he self-assigned duty, he thinks nobody could fault him.

It's during one of these trips that he learns about concepts like reincarnation, and how one choice can completely change your life path. No Pen Colin wonders if at least one of these worlds have him married to Penelope.

When wakes up in a house in Bloomsbury with so many different versions of himself, all of them married or together with Penelope, No Pen Colin finds himself given a comfort he didn't have before, and maybe his heart heals just a little.

#into the colinverse #colin bridgerton #polin #little bit of daphne x penelope #see those crack ships came in handy #bridgerton

[iambutagrapefruit]

thoughts:

i hv been reminded of how i wld try to take on challenges (willingly) in the past . as a form of self improvement mentally i guess. and now i hv realised i m no longer like that when i instinctively tried to take the presumably lighter bag of groceries and leaving the heavier one for dad. it really brings up the sentiment that i might no longer be as good as my past self

it also reminds me of why the teenage years are typically surrounded by a general theme of joy, happiness and optimism -- the hope that we really do great things and become greater people. when the future seems so distant it really seems like anything was possible. but now as we approach working age we really get a glimpse into how our realities are about to look like and how daily life is like and we know what is achievable and what is not achievable

i dont really know why life feels more miserable now, and why i don't seem to feel connected to anyone anymore. the looming sense of boredom and purposelessness has been there for far too long. is this simply the result of hormonal deficiencies? even if it is, will they ever be fixed? i just don't know how i m supposed to continue really living life like this. it just feels like lockdown came and has stuck around.

i also don't know how seriously to take my ** social anxieties **, i mean given singapore's culture of being "obedient" and it being uncommon to initiate conversation, what am i even hoping for. i guess we could start with curing email anxiety and actually being able to network and talk to people at work . i don't know why everyone else is adapting fine in london and making new friends and talking to new people when im the only one who can't click. im also tired of everyone having to counsel me and make me feel better about things and the fact that i have nothing pleasant to share whenever i meet up with people. it really pains me when i see how people are living now and how far they have gone compared how i am right now and my decline ~~ then again social media only portrays some of the best, so i have to remind myself of that. but even so, i think my point stands.

talking to people at work just feel like a chore honestly. like on a perfectly fine day like today i m already going through the mental fatigue and just have no energy to maintain the fine balance that is being friendly and jovial to co-workers and still being professional. like what is the point. when you spend most of your days on some of these more empty actions. where is the satisfaction and joy that you get from genuinely kind conversations going to come from. but then again i recognise that not everything has to be like that and it would not be better if it was. i guess it's just something i will accept with time and as i get validated abt it (hopefully) i will be more ok with.

in sum-- wld be nice if i cld talk endlessly with someone abt these //woeful thots// n someone who'd be willing to cheer me up and suggest fun things for me to do without it being done out of pity. i also want my confidence back. the feeling of being able to Mother my day to day life.

i wish i cld be that person for myself. i mean, can i?

on a separate but related note: the way i have been spending so much time on social media (as a replacement for real human interaction? to pass time? as a result of boredom?) has caused me to really understand and perceive life in the way that people illustrate it on social media. by that i mean when i wake up each morning my brain is literally flooded with something from the internet and when i go to sleep it is the same. the solution wld perhaps be for me to live in a little scandinavian/ dutch etc. village house where it is beautiful and i hv some hands on work to do each day but not too intensive . wld be best if a cat or dog cld be there. i still can contact the outside world with traditional telephone functions but no social media or internet. also there can't be bugs or extreme heat (like in sg) or cold (like in scandinavia themselves ... or yakutia )

#anyways :~)

[tarydarrington]

It takes about half an hour for the general topic of conversation at the party to turn to his scars.

It shouldn’t be a surprise; any guests of Archmage Beck’s are bound to have at least a passing familiarity with the way a Scourger’s arms are meant to look. The maze of ink is a symbol of power, a sign of something dangerous and elite, and his ragged array of raised, pale cuts is a far cry from elegance. It’s natural that they would pick up on the difference. It’s natural that it would be gossiped over. It’s natural that Caleb feels rather like teleporting straight home and letting his future self deal with the social consequences.

To borrow an odd turn of phrase Veth had once used, two halves are at war inside of him. One is filled with an angry, headstrong pride that makes him want to shove his scars in the faces of all those who care to gawk and let them have their fill. The other wishes he had brought a coat.

It’s rare that Essek does much at these functions aside from artfully disappearing in such a way that lets him mingle with as few fellow guests as possible, but after only a few moments of stares following him, the elf appears at his side.

“May I borrow you, a moment?” he asks.

The way his eyes dart around the room reminds Caleb of an irritated cat’s tail swishing.

“As many moments as you like,” he replies, and follows Essek into an empty hallway.

The sound of the crowd is immediately muffled by the walls as they step inside, and Caleb wonders fleetingly if this is where Essek has been all night. Someday, if they ever manage to talk about whatever this is between them, maybe the two of them will attend a party without the rest of the Nein. Just for the pleasure of being able to leave early without stranding anyone, if nothing else.

Or they could stay. Caleb thinks he wouldn’t mind a party like this quite so much, if he were with Essek.

He shakes the thought as Essek finally looks him in the eye for the first time, and Caleb’s eyebrows shoot up as Essek begins to shrug his way out of his cloak.

“Herr Thelyss, we are in public,” he deadpans, and grins at the way Essek’s face - not quite his own, here, of course - flushes.

“What is the Empire saying? Don’t bite the hand that feeds you?” He takes the cloak in both hands, holding it out between them at its full length and width, turning a critical eye on Caleb. He seems satisfied with his findings, folding it neatly over one arm before clearing his throat. “If you like,” he says in a softer tone, “you may borrow this.”

He might have been less surprised if it were a striptease. Essek is fond of his layers. They’re elegant, they present an image of inscrutability, and - most importantly to Essek, he has learned - they obscure his body. It gives him privacy, this kind of which he values greatly. To be offered something like this is quite a gift, indeed.

Essek seems, as usual, to know what he’s thinking. “It is rather warm, tonight. I dressed accordingly.”

Caleb gives him a once-over for precisely the length of time that could not possibly be considered staring. He’s not lying. The fine, light clothing beneath his cloak is amorphous enough to preserve his modesty.

Caleb thinks of the way their stares follow him. He thinks of all the pain he went through to get these scars, and all the good he’s done to ensure they are never inflicted on anyone else. He is not ashamed of these scars. Essek will understand, if he turns the offer down. He always understands.

Then, he thinks of the faces they’ll make if he returns to the room wearing Essek’s cloak.

The rest of the night passes about as he expects, with three important observations made. Firstly, Essek’s cloak is still warm and smells very much like Essek. Secondly, the well-tailored, black tunic he had been wearing underneath follows the lines of his body loosely enough to obscure most details, but just closely enough to draw his imagination to fill in the blanks. Thirdly, despite the smattering of murmurs and stares that still turn in his direction from time to time, the sum of the previous two facts makes this evening entirely enjoyable.

He suspects, from the way Essek steals a few more glances than necessary, that it might be a positive experience for them both.

-

The number of times the Mighty Nein find themselves in combat before the end of a fancy party truly ought not to be as high as it is.

Then again, Essek remembers the circumstances of their first meeting. It may be absurd, but it isn't surprising.

What is surprising - or rather, what would have been surprising, had one informed him of it several years ago - is the way he doesn't think twice before placing himself between a nearly-downed Veth and the blow intended to finish her. The blade cuts him from shoulder to chest, catching him at the wrist on the follow-through and leaving a stinging cut in its wake.

Caduceus sees to the wound with his usual easy precision, but the magic doesn't work the same way on his clothing. He picks dejectedly at the tattered remains of his neckline, the end of his sleeve hanging ragged to match. This had been a nice cloak. That, and the Ruby’s festivities inside, blissfully unaware of the commotion in the gardens, are still due to continue for another few hours.

Just as he's considering how bad a faux pas it would be to call it a night, Caleb ducks down into his line of sight, squatting beside him where he rests against the low stone wall.

"You know, I think perhaps you are a little breakable to be trying for Yasha’s role,” he says with a bemused smile. Before Essek has a chance to respond, he adds, “That was very brave of you. I will thank you on Veth’s behalf, since I think she has, ah, moved on from the moment.”

Moved on from the moment seems, in this case, to mean that she has been offering for the last several minutes to bandage Bluud’s barely-scratched biceps. Essek waves a hand.

“It’s perfectly alright,” he says. “Though I must admit, I will mourn the clothing.”

Caleb gives him a sympathetic grimace, and Essek tries not to fidget as he watches those blue eyes assess the damage and catch on the strips of rarely exposed skin. He makes a little clicking sound with his tongue as he takes it in that is much more attractive than it ought to be.

“Would you like to…” Caleb’s brow furrows in thought, and to finish the question, he takes the end of his scarf in one hand and dangles it between them. “If you like?”

Essek wipes the look of wide-eyed, touched surprise from his face as fast as he can, but he’s sure from the way a small smile tugs at Caleb’s lips that it hasn’t gone unnoticed. His gaze drops down to his ruined neckline. The damage is high enough that it’s possible the scarf could cover it, if properly arranged.

“That would…” He takes a breath. “I would be… grateful.”

With an encouraging smile, Caleb ducks out from the middle of the scarf and pools it in his arms, offering it to Essek. When he takes it, the warmth and weight of the fabric reminds him of Caleb’s cats. He tries to keep his breathing steady as he turns it in his hands - and realizes only when he attempts to duck through the center that he has no idea how to properly wrap something like this.

He’s slighter than Caleb, so the loops that circle Caleb perfectly slip awkwardly off his shoulders; besides that, the elegant coil has been tangled in the handing off. He tries to wind it around his own neck from the beginning, but finds it frustratingly difficult to get it to sit the way he’d like it to, and is entirely uncertain of what to do with the ends.

“I… am afraid I am rather at a loss,” Essek admits begrudgingly.

Caleb cocks his head to one side in curious surprise, but instead of questioning, he holds out his hands. “Would you allow me?”

He takes the scarf back when Essek nods mutely in response, and suddenly he is very, very close. Caleb gives him a reassuring smile, as though he knows - and of course he knows, he always knows - that he needs a moment to adjust to the proximity. The care in those eyes almost knocks Essek’s gaze away, but instead holds it locked in place.

“Is, ah…” Caleb begins, and his voice sounds thicker than before, “is this alright?”

Essek hopes the somewhat dazed half-nod he manages gets the point across.

He’s had Caleb’s arms around him before, but for some reason the feeling of them bracketing his neck as Caleb drapes the scarf around and around him is so achingly intimate that it stops his breath. 

His gaze breaks from Caleb’s for just long enough to notice the v of bare skin now visible at the neck of his shirt, and he snaps his attention back to Caleb’s eyes as his face burns. Caleb’s smile quirks upwards on one side at the sight. He gives the scarf a few gentle tugs to place it just right.

As his hand draws away, he lets it rest cupped against Essek’s cheek for just a moment. The night is cold, but the space between them feels warmer than a fireside. The fireside, as well, would have fewer sparks.

Caleb clears his throat as he pulls away and stands, and the spell is broken as both of them turn to studiously examine their surroundings. Essek shifts the weight of the scarf experimentally. Sometimes, one of Caleb’s cats will climb the man and wind itself around his neck in a thoroughly endearing display of affection. Caleb has always thought of it as the highest compliment, to be chosen in such a way, and Essek imagines it must feel something like this. And never, not even covered in four layers and his old mantle, has he ever felt so protected from the outside world.

“Thank you,” he manages after a moment.

“Ja, of course.” It’s a minor relief that Caleb sounds about as breathless as Essek feels.

As he stands, letting his levitation spell carry him gently off his feet, the hem of his sleeve catches his eye. Caleb’s gaze falls that way, too, then flicks back up to his with a mischievous glint in his eye.

“Well,” he says, and holds out his arm, “that is a shame.”

Essek looks from Caleb’s face to his arm and back, heat creeping up his neck. Caleb knows him well enough to understand this is no small request. He knows Caleb well enough, in return, to understand that he will take no offense if he refuses.

Carefully, holding his breath, Essek tucks his hand under Caleb’s arm. The billowing cloth of his sleeve falls down to cover the ragged end of Essek’s, and Essek finds himself wondering for a moment if the loose style was intended to mimic his own.

The smile on Caleb’s face is so fond that Essek can’t help but return it.

“Well,” Caleb says, leaning in conspiratorially, “shall we?”

They’re not the last of the Mighty Nein to return to the party - Essek suspects Beauregard and Yasha have found their own pursuits in the garden, judging by the looks they had been exchanging after the battle - but they’re not the first, either. Jester and Fjord have found the Ruby and joined her in polite conversation. Caleb steers him dutifully in the other direction; they both know well what will happen if Jester sees them like this, and perhaps Caleb is as loath to break the moment as he is. They make the rounds together, and Essek thinks that they must look for all the world like a real couple. The thought brings a strange lightness to his chest, and he finds himself absently curling his hand around Caleb’s arm where it rests.

“My nefarious plot has gone off without a hitch,” Caleb murmurs with a grin. “Now, you are stuck with me for the rest of the evening.”

Essek doesn’t bother holding back the smirk. With a covert flick of magic in his free hand, he draws away from Caleb’s arm to politely retrieve a glass from the tray of a passing waiter. Caleb watches him with incredulous surprise, eyes trained on the end of his sleeve - perfectly intact through a Seeming spell.

“I think I can manage without, if I must,” Essek says mildly.

He passes the drink to his off hand as Caleb flushes a bit.

“Well,” Caleb says sheepishly, “that is one way to do it.”

Essek raises his eyebrows at him teasingly, and before he can talk himself out of it, slips his hand back into the crook of Caleb’s arm.

To his credit, Caleb doesn’t tease. The surprised little smile he gives Essek instead gives him more warmth than the scarf does, and Essek lets himself smile back as Caleb’s hand comes up to rest over his. Not enough to hold him in place, just enough for a little more contact.

“You know, you could have done that before,” Caleb murmurs. “At Astrid’s party, when you lent me your cloak.”

Essek takes a sip of his drink to hide the blush. “I realize,” he replies. He could admit that the way those people had treated Caleb lit his anger in a way few things have since he left court. He could admit that he knows, from experience, that it’s more of a comfort to have something real between you and the rest of the world. He could admit that giving his own cloak as such a barrier for Caleb had felt like a more personal kind of protection.

He could even point out that Caleb could have used the spell himself, if he had wanted to; but he finds he likes the quiet implication given by the fact that he took Essek's cloak instead.

"It suited you,” is what he settles on.

Caleb gives him a hum of acknowledgement in response. “Ja, well,” he adds with a soft, knowing smile, “the scarf suits you.”

Of course, Caleb always understands. And as they move about the party for the rest of the night, arm in arm, Essek thinks that he doesn’t mind parties quite so much with Caleb by his side.

#shadowgast #essek thelyss #caleb widogast #critical role #mine #mine:fic #caleb #essek

[ptersparkers]

the art of eating pussy (5)

summary: upon realizing you lack skills in the bedroom when a touron asks you out on a date, you turn to jj, a self-proclaimed sexual deviant, for help.

warnings: smut, y’all. 

notes: i haven’t been in the right headspace to right recently and wanted to give my reads something of quality and substance, not something to rush just for satisfaction. behold, chapter five.

co-authored and co-written with @storiesbymads​. SHOW MY WIFE SOME LOVE.

add yourself to my taglist + series masterlist 

JJ’s hung up. 

You’d been spending less time at the Chateau in favor of spending time with Trent since it was the last week that he’d be on the island. His mind was racing, conflicted with the thoughts of your mouth on Trent and his lips on your neck. The night of the party had been the worst moment of the week and his jaw hurt from clenching by the time he ended up crashing out on John B’s couch. JJ always drank to forget and that night wasn’t an exception. 

He knew it wasn’t just about sex with you anymore. It wasn’t about the opportunity for him to get off by the hand of someone else. It wasn’t about him taking advantage of you. There was nothing complicated about the two of you in the bedroom. 

But outside of the bedroom, JJ’s head was spinning every time you said goodbye or forced him out the door because your parents were home. He didn’t have to think when he was with you; JJ knew what you wanted and knew what to expect. He knew that his time alone with you was the product of these lessons but that didn’t mean he had to think of this time as anything but passionate. When his tongue wasn’t down your throat, he was thinking about the tight feeling in his chest that left him wondering what was going to happen once you told him it was over because he didn’t want this to end.

JJ hadn’t thought about the lessons ending until he saw you tucked underneath Trent’s arm at the party. This whole situation wasn’t friends with benefits and he knew it, which is why it messed with his head so much. Yes, there was the whole “no strings attached” ordeal, but this wasn’t just one of you calling the other for sex. This was much more complicated. You were one of JJ’s best friends but the only difference is you’d seen him naked, intentionally. 

His thoughts are preoccupied with the idea that once the lessons end, you might still be with Trent despite him no longer being on the island. JJ would have to go back to being just friends and he’d have to pretend that he never saw you naked. He’d have to pretend he didn’t revel in the thought of you trembling beneath him. The other Pogues, to his knowledge, had no idea that the both of you were fooling around and he didn’t know if it was something he wanted to disclose. On one hand, he wanted a second opinion on whether or not this was something healthy. On the other hand, he knew what they would say; that JJ didn’t care about catching feelings and it was unlikely that he would consider succumbing to being a boyfriend. He knew he’d expressed his disdain for relationships in the past, but now he wasn’t so sure. 

You ended up skipping out on the last two beach sessions in favor of Trent. Pope had decided to stay behind on the sand with JJ while Sarah, Kiara, and John B. enjoyed themselves under the warmth of the sun and the contrasting coolness of the ocean waves. Pope could sense something was amiss when JJ was the first to propose having a relaxing afternoon and hadn’t shown up with his surfboard tucked underneath his arm. 

“Something’s up,” Pope stated. “Something’s been up for a while and I didn’t want to say anything about it until I knew for sure, but something’s definitely up.” JJ shook his head. 

“It’s nothing.” Pope nudged JJ with his shoulder. 

“C’mon, man. You don’t want to surf, your mind is a million miles from where you are, and not to mention, this entire week you’ve been moody.”

“I’m not moody,” JJ muttered with a scowl, flicking at a clump of sand near his foot. Pope’s mouth formed a knowing smile. JJ sighed. “Okay, I’ve been moody.” 

“What’s up? Is it your dad again?” 

“No,” JJ replied softly. “I just think life is bullshit.”

“We all think life is bullshit.” 

“Feelings are bullshit.” Pope’s ears perked with interest. 

“Feelings?” JJ looked at Pope before looking back at the view in front of him, watching as Kiara had playfully splashed Sarah with ocean water. He wished he could feel that carefree. 

“They suck,” he began. “I think it’s stupid that people are allowed to feel something for people and not know if they feel the same.” 

“Are you talking about someone?” JJ paused. 

“No,” he replied. 

“Okay...” Pope trailed off. JJ sighed once more.

“What I’m trying to say, is, I wish we weren’t cursed with not knowing where the lines are blurred and I wish we could all say how we feel without consequence.” 

Pope sensed that JJ was trying to speak metaphorically and project his emotions on a secondary situation. He nodded, trying to follow the blond’s train of thought. He pursed his lips as JJ spoke and wanted to understand what he was saying to the fullest extent, but the boy decided to let JJ talk. 

“Have you ever thought about getting off this island?” JJ asked after a few moments of silence. 

“What kind of question is that?” Pope asked, laughing. “Of course I do.”

“But really,” said JJ. “Not just getting off and seeing what it’s like. I mean, like, what you’re gonna be doing in twenty years and the people who are going to be in your life.”

“Sometimes,” Pope replied with a casual shrug. “I try to take things one day at a time. I never want to overwhelm myself.”

“Lucky you,” JJ muttered. “I see myself off of this stupid fucking island by the time I’m thirty. I don’t want to live in a place where I feel trapped and can’t say what I want to fucking say.”

“I want to be able to forget about the Kooks,” Pope chimed in. JJ nodded. “I kinda want to live in San Francisco.”

“I’d probably live in Europe or something,” JJ said. “Don’t know where but I’d want to experience life as far away from North Carolina as possible.”  

“You sure you’re okay?” Pope asked. He knew he wasn’t. 

“Yeah, man,” JJ replied. “Just got a lot of things on my mind.”

The idea of fooling around with anyone that wasn’t you hadn’t crossed JJ’s mind. He’d been to Boneyard keggers since the lessons began but the notion of flirting and bringing a girl back to the Chateau was way off his radar. The Pogues didn’t take much notice but JJ wondered if they knew something was amiss or if they’d say something about it if they did. If he was able to realize he hadn’t slept with anyone since he began “teaching” you, then they might have. JJ knew their worlds didn’t revolve around him, and the boy was still as goofy and troublesome as ever, but there was a seeded doubt that made him awkward whenever he was around his friends if you happened to be there. 

It wasn’t that his stomach felt queasy or that his heart was racing. He’d be lying to himself if he admitted that. His head was clear when it came to how he felt about you and he wouldn’t hesitate rushing to your house if you called him for another lesson or if you just wanted to kick back with him in your room and jam out to vinyls you pulled out whenever you felt nostalgic. Before, he would never have considered approaching your side of the island but now he didn’t feel as small as he did when he didn’t have a reason to be there. Your parents were familiar with your friends and didn’t mind JJ stopping by, which gave him more of an incentive to visit you when he had had enough of the Chateau and his friends’ loud personalities. 

JJ knew his head was clear when it came to how he was feeling. The only part that clouded his judgement was Trent and dealing with the different friendship he’d have with you. He was sure that if the Touron wasn’t in the picture, things would be much easier for him. Trent’s dark and slick hair reminded him of greed and filth. His boisterous personality reminded JJ of everything he never wanted to be and he couldn’t understand why you’d pay attention to him for longer than a quick glance. The Touron was casually cool, the type of person who wanted to say they were able to rub elbows with the socialites of New York City by posting it on his social media accounts. You, on the other hand, were down to earth and courageous about your future potential. He couldn’t fathom why you were so attracted to someone who was your opposite. 

Your head had been spinning too. Trent was the perfect gentleman and he hadn’t given you a reason to not trust him. And yet, every moment you spent with him reminded you that you weren’t spending it with JJ. You couldn’t understand why you’d been thinking about his shaggy hair when he wakes up or the way his eyes squint when he laughs a little too hard. Trent was giving you his full and undivided attention, and you always felt guilty when you needed to force yourself back into reality because you had been zoning out, daydreaming of being anywhere else. 

But JJ never seemed to be anything other than friendly with you. You opted to disregard how he acted during the lessons, summing that up to pent up sexual frustration and a genuine interest to help you out after years of teasing you. You weren’t completely naive; you knew this was a way for JJ to get himself off, much like it was for you. The only difference between JJ taking advantage of you versus not was the fact that you wanted him to teach you how to make others feel good and how to make yourself feel like a goddess in the bedroom. You weren’t exactly sure why there had been a lack of awkwardness between the both of you despite him being your best friend since birth. There was never a question of doubt from JJ when you asked him to help you learn. There was no laughing when you admitted your lack of knowledge. Perhaps that’s why your initial doubt disappeared the first time he asked you to kiss him.

Trent had apologized for the beach date when he’d gotten startled by strangers parking next to him and promised you he’d make it up to you. He came through on his promise after you got worked up before your dinner date. You arrived at the hotel he was staying at while his father attended an event on the other side of Figure Eight and his hand glided up the side of your dress. Trent wasn’t rough nor was he gentle; he was giving you what you thought you wanted but it didn’t feel as skilled or as tender as when JJ’s fingers were inside of you. With JJ, your orgasm approached as if JJ already knew everything there was to know but Trent took his sweet time making you cum. 

You always cursed yourself for letting your mind wander innocuously to JJ when Trent’s lips were on your neck or when his fingers were toying with the hem of your clothing. There wasn’t much going on between you and Trent, sexually, despite him wanting to take it further. You were lucky enough that Trent verbally expressed his willingness to wait, but you wondered if that wait time had an expiration date. You wanted to make sure if it felt right before you were able to deliver on a promise. You knew that your lessons with the blond would come to an end the moment you two had gone all the way, or until you were ready to experience sex without JJ, and you always moved that thought to the back of your mind to avoid thinking about it. 

By now, you felt guilty for spending the majority of this week with Trent. Kiara had texted you a few times but understood wanting to spend time with him until he left. As far as you could tell, neither John B. nor Pope cared too much because they were happy their youngest friend was happy with someone. JJ, on the other hand, you couldn’t read. You didn’t understand why it was so difficult for you to reach out to him first or comprehend him, which you were usually good at. Suddenly, you were overthinking the way he talked to you and if he chose to sit next to you or someone else. You were overthinking his lingering gaze either on your thighs or some girl who walked past him with a weird knot in the pit of your stomach. 

You kept telling yourself none of that mattered because you had Trent and you were sure you knew how you felt. Trent treated you right, was willing to wait, and never made you feel second best for not being as sexually promiscuous as he was. Yet something was lacking and you couldn’t figure out what it was. 

You tried not to think about it on your way to the Chateau. The screen door slammed shut as you walked into the living room to try and save yourself from the downpour of rain. After Trent had dropped you off when his father had called him during the middle of a movie marathon, you opted to see the Pogues and spend some time with them once you realized how many times you had declined their offer to hang out. You saw JJ already sprawled out on the couch, seemingly all by himself. 

“John B’s out with Sarah,” he said casually, pushing himself up onto his elbows to give you some room to sit down. You nodded a thank you, crossing your arms over your wet torso in an attempt to warm your shivering body as you sat down. Glancing down at your chest, you silently swore as you noticed your red bra was, in fact, very visible under your white shirt. 

“Nice bra,” he chuckled, trying not to ogle too long. JJ hoped his comment didn’t make you feel awkward; he was having a hard time talking to you because he didn’t exactly know where he stood with you. 

“Shut up,” you mumbled but you couldn’t help the heat that rose to your cheeks. 

“So…” JJ trailed off. “How’ve you been? Haven’t seen you in a few days.” 

“I’ve been good,” you nodded. 

“And Trent?” he asked, attempting, and majorly failing, to hide the venom that laced his tongue. You mistook this as annoyance.

“Good,” you said, not wanting to talk about him anymore. JJ cleared his throat, his teeth grinding as he clenched his jaw, as he shifted on the couch so that he was sitting upright and facing you. 

“You've been putting my lessons to good use?” he asked. He didn’t know why he’d asked. He had no desire to hear about you with another guy. 

“You could say that,” you said. Were you really putting them to good use if you weren’t enjoying yourself with Trent nearly as much as you had been with JJ? You couldn’t tell JJ that Trent’s hands on you just sent your mind spiraling back to him or when Trent’s lips were on yours, it reminded you of that first night you started the whole thing. 

“Oh? Does he make you feel good?” he asked, moving closer to you. “Because it’s not worth it if you’re not getting something out of it, too.”

“Uh, well-”

“Do you want me to make you feel good?” he asked suddenly. He knew he was asking the question more for himself but he was desperate to have you again. He figured it wouldn’t hurt to show you how a real man treats his girl. 

“What?” you were taken aback by the forwardness of his question. You watched as his eyes dilated, flicking back and forth from your lips to your chest. 

“You know what I mean,” he said. “You need to be shown what it’s like to be taken care of.”

“But you already-”

“Just let me do this for you,” he snapped. “Please.”

“Okay,” you said before turning your body on the couch to face him. You hadn’t stopped shivering since entering the Chateau not too long ago and your goosebumps increased as you watched JJ move closer to you. He used his right hand to pry your knees apart, positioning himself between them. Your heart rate picked up as he leaned forward to press his lips against yours, the cold air hitting your wet skin when JJ pushed the soaked fabric of your t-shirt up so that it rested just under the hemline of your bra. 

“Up,” he mumbled against your lips, the vibrations forcing a soft moan out of you as you broke the kiss to lift your arms above your head. You let out a small laugh when your shirt made a sloshing sound against the ground. It stopped as soon as it started, however, because you felt JJ start applying open-mouthed kisses along your collarbones. 

Feeling his body pressed up against yours stirred up all the daydreams you’d had every time you’d gotten intimate with Trent. You’d been in this position before with him, but somehow it felt better without the pretense of a lesson. You were under the guise that this wasn’t just about teaching you what you liked and what you didn’t. Part of you wanted to believe that this was more than a lesson you’d acquire from JJ’s depth of knowledge. JJ’s kisses trailed lower and lower until his teeth started toying with the waistband of your shorts. The throbbing between your legs was growing steadily and you let out a sigh of relief when he finally dipped his fingers into the waistband and tugged the wet shorts down your legs with effort because of the rain, dropping them on the floor with your shirt. 

“JJ,” you whimpered as he took his time moving down your body. He slipped his hands under your knees so that he could place them on his shoulders delicately before he laid out on the couch with his face centimeters away from your nearly bare pussy. 

He let out a soft laugh in disbelief at how incredibly soaked you already were. It was practically coating your thighs at this point and your cunt was aching in anticipation for his touch. All JJ could think about is how you let another man see you from this point of view, which was enough to give rise to JJ’s ego. His mission was to make you feel so good that you’d think of him the next time Trent put his hands down your pants; he wanted you to remember this moment and know what it was like to be eaten out by someone who was determined to make you orgasm like a holy grail. 

JJ’s jealousy didn’t cause him to act rashly and dominate the situation. He started by pressing fluttering kisses to the side of your knee, his eyes flickering up to see you watching him intently. JJ began by tenderly kissing the inside of your thighs, making comments about how soft you are and how you smelled so sweet. He does all he can to make you squirm underneath his touch, loving that your gaze didn’t leave him even if you tried. JJ pressed a kiss to the waistband of your underwear and you whimpered at the thought of him being so close to you in a way that was more intimate than before. 

He chuckled when he heard you whimper again and moved his mouth to kiss along your clothed entrance. You knew JJ’s game all too well and you knew he’d take his time teasing you until you were begging for it. It took a while to come to this conclusion, but you figured out that you enjoyed the slow pace before the big finish. JJ had taught you that when you reached an orgasm, it was less about the other party getting off by getting you off. The point of your orgasm was to make you feel like a queen in the bedroom, not like a used toy to get someone else off. 

So when JJ used the pad of his index finger to move your underwear aside and toy with your cunt, you didn’t bother begging for his mouth. Instead, you closed your eyes and relished in the feeling of his warm hands on you. JJ looked pleased at your reaction and wanted to make this moment last for as long as he could. His finger moved in slow circles before hitting a sensitive nerve that caused your hips to rise, to which JJ laughed and pinned you down in the cushions. 

JJ pressed two delicate kisses on your entrance. His mouth was being coated in your slick and he licked his lips, closing his eyes to savor the way you tasted. His body inched forward in an attempt to be as close to you as possible before licking a stripe with his tongue pressed flat against you, causing you to let out a deep moan in satisfaction. 

JJ’s tongue worked like magic, as if he already knew all of your weak spots and was discovering the different sounds you could make by his tongue. His hands were gripping your thighs and his eyes would look at his meal before back up at you, and you had taken the liberty to use your hands to tug on his hair when he had hit a pleasure point. 

“That’s a good girl,” he whispered against you to himself, proud of how loud and unapologetic you were being. He swore that if the Pogues had walked in the door, he’d stop eating your pussy and show them how pretty you looked underneath him. But he knew they would all be at Kiara’s until the storm passed. 

His motions were delicate until he recalled the thought of you and Trent together in bed. His tongue began to dart in and out of you at a faster speed with every increasing thought. Giving Trent a handjob. Trent stripping you out of your bra and underwear. His fingers inside of you. His tongue down your throat. His cock in your mouth. His cock in your - JJ’s - pussy. He knew he was irrational and wrong to think that last thought, but in this moment, your pussy was his for the taking and he was going to make your orgasm like your life depended on it. 

JJ’s grip on your thighs became tighter and you felt locked underneath him. Your toes curled and your hips bucked at the pressure and pace at which JJ was eating you out. His head was moving like he was catching every last drop of your wetness before going back for some more. JJ had taken the liberty to lift his head and spit on your entrance before diving back in, his tongue so deep inside of you that you almost considered asking him to use his cock instead. 

“JJ,” you muttered, tugging on his hair. 

“Just cum, baby,” he urged. “I’m ready for you.” 

You obliged and it didn’t take you that long to release. JJ lapped the white pearls that were spilling out of you and his eyes were rolling to the back of his head as he realized this was the first time he was seeing you, and tasting you, from this angle. JJ’s jaw was becoming sore but he paid no attention as your legs spread wider against the couch and your body moved to the rhythm of his tongue. 

When you were coming down from your high, JJ couldn’t have imagined anything hotter than the sight and sound before him, but your fingers reached down to your aching core in oblivion and began toying with your clit as your breathing steadied. JJ watched in awe as your fingers moved in slow, delicate and circular motions, your bottom lip in between your teeth and your eyes shut. His mouth hung open at how totally, completely, and utterly fucked you were in this orgasmic haze and was pulled out of this fantasy when you tugged your hand away and reached for a tissue to clean yourself up. 

JJ couldn't think of anything to say and neither could you. You settled on watching a movie in silence. 

***

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#jj maybank x reader #jj maybank #jj maybank imagines #jj maybank smut #rudy pankow #rudy pankow x reader #rudy pankow smut #obx x reader #obx imagines #obx #outer banks x reader #outer banks #* #study sessions #the art of eating pussy

[tealenko]

Didn't Have the Heart (Chapter 1)

Chapter 1: Sleep Talking

I decided to start posting this one because the follow up chapter of Listen Before I Go is longer than usual and didn't find the will to edit that one ehehehe so here we are.

Btw this is a direct continuation to Never Have I Ever, but if you don't want to read it (I mean... you could... is one of my best fics ehehehehehe) But if you don't, you only need to know that this starts after both of them got mega drunk, Garrus and Vega discovered their relationship and then they went to have amazing sex in Kaidan's room (I think that sums it up pretty well lol)

Summary: Shepard wakes up after a long night of drinking and she does her best to stand up without waking up the person sleeping next to her.

Words: 934 Rating: Teens and up Warning: Language.

Read in AO3 -> [link] Next Chapter -> [link] Through Hell and Back series -> [link]

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The stars glow bright in the distance. Different colors, different intensities… Random flickers of light trying to brighten the galaxy and defeat all the darkness.

She stares at them for a while, letting her gaze travel through every single star a couple of times.

Right… She says to herself, trying to find a reason to get up. Back to the real world.

But she stays right where she is, as all of her being starts screaming at her, the moment she attempts to move.

Shit… She brings one hand to her head as the images of what happened last night start to flood it in a never ending stream of embarrassing and blurry memories. Urgg… No more rynchol until the war is over, Mio. She orders herself before trying to move, failing miserably yet again. Ahhh… Or maybe until my next life.

She’s about to attempt one more time when, all of a sudden, something distracts her, and a quick shiver recovers all her body the moment a rogue arm wraps slowly around her waist.

Shepard closes her eyes for a few seconds, taking in the sensation caused as she’s dragged closer to its owner, concentrating on the way he is breathing as he sleeps and, with a great deal of effort and trying her best to not disturb her companion, she manages to turn, little by little, until she is able to have him face to face.

She stares at him for quite a while, enjoying the view of him sleeping peacefully next to her.

His hair is messed up and going in every single direction, except for the one he usually styles it, and there’s a prominent five o’clock shadow that has grown out in just the few hours they got to rest, and that she sometimes wishes he would let grow longer instead of shaving it the next morning.

Every few minutes, he moves a little and opens his mouth ever so slightly, which is always followed by a subtle sigh, making him look even more adorable in her eyes.

She examines every single detail about him, turning her gaze to all the little differences that weren’t there three years ago.

There’s a few gray hairs and wrinkles where there didn’t use to be, and way more scars and injuries that she didn’t have the time to pay attention to before.

But all those details seem to suit him quite a lot. In fact, she finds herself trapped for longer than she would ever admit to anyone, mesmerized by the man in front of her.

Is he even real? A part of her wonders, not truly believing that they’ve managed to fix all their problems after everything they’ve been through. How can someone… Her line of thought is interrupted for an instant, as she gets momentarily lost in the big smile forming on his face. How can someone… Be this perfect?

His smile gets even wider and, still lost in his dreams, he strengthens the hug even more, burying his face inside her neck area.

“I mean it…” He mumbles, completely asleep. “I…”

He cuts himself with a quick giggle, tightening the embrace even more.

Ay… Only the universe knows what you must be dreaming ab…

“Mio…”

Her mind freezes for a second not expecting to hear him say her name all of a sudden. I… I can’t believe he’s still passed out.

She slowly shimmies her way out of the embraze to sit next to him but, once she’s made it out successfully, she can’t bring herself to wake him up, seeing him sleep so happily next to her.

She isn’t accustomed to this yet, even after all this time, and she doubts she’ll ever be.

How could she, even after all these years, get used to this feeling of having her heart attached to his, like there is some kind of invisible string joining them into one. A sort of force field that brings them together wherever they are and that yanks her heart out if they are apart.

Shepard stares at him for minutes deciding what to do next, wondering if she should wake him up.

I should go… He needs to rest.

She finally decides, standing up in order to leave, but finding quite quickly that she’s unable to do so, so she just stays frozen next to where he is, looking at him.

Oh my… How right you were. She smiles, having a quick flashback of what he told her when he convinced her to stay the night. I’ve never slept with a better view.

After taking a deep breath, she lowers her head and kisses him on the forehead before starting to walk towards the door.

“Mio?” He mumble once again in dreams, although this time around she decides to answer.

“Yeah?” She asks, right in front of the door, ready to leave the room.

“I love you.” He confesses, still completely asleep, smiling and humming a little after he says it.

Shepard looks at him for a couple of seconds before turning around to open the door and leave but, just when she’s about to cross the threshold, she stops dead.

“I…” She starts saying in the lowest tone of voice possible and staring directly at the hallway, knowing that she’ll be completely unable to finish what she wants to say if she turns to look at him. “I…”

Shepard curses herself for a second, musters all the courage she’s able to find in herself and, before leaving the room behind, takes a deep breath and finishes her sentence.

“I love you too, Kaidan.”

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

I won't lie to you... I'm flying without a plan here and every chapter has a mood way too different from the others.. But I can tell you this: there will be some sort of smut at the end.

If anyone ends up reading this please feel free to suggest changes or prompts for the future.

Btw I’m from Spain, I’ve checked everything a thousand times but if something is wrong please forgive me.

#mass effect #commander shepard #kaidan alenko #shenko #shepard x kaidan #fshenko #mass effect 3 #femshep x kaidan #fanfic

[sinnabonka]

It’s spec time: Empty spaces

I want to use this opportunity to talk about every possible ending I saw out there and, using my natural talent of seeing the worst in the best, explore the reasons why each has no sense (except The One, of course).

for my other specs click 

That’ll be a long trip, hon, make yourself comfortable.

15x20: possible endings

Cas is not coming back

Cas is coming back, but Dean keeps it friendly (friendzone much?)

Cas comes back in another vessel

Cas comes back and the whole “sharing the vessel” thingy

Cas comes back, where a) we get a full Destiel endgame and b) “Hello, Dean”, cut to black, an open ending free for interpretation

Now, starting from the top.

Cas is not coming back

What’s wrong with this one? 

Oh boy, where should I even start? I have a whole “Love Always Wins” on it, but to sum up, there’s no reason for Cas not to be back except if there’s someone hating him / hating Misha / hating us on the crew.

He has been to Empty, came back twice. He’s not even the only one jumping in and out, so the finality of this death is very...weak, vague? 

The whole season is Destiel centered (bite me, antis), the arc of their relationship is the foundation, it’s also mirrored in other relationships through the season - Sam and Eileen, Charlie and Stevie (also, Stevie? Gas-n-Sip Steve anyone?), Earth and humanity. Separated, but reunited. 

Only Dean has an emptiness waiting to be filled.

The whole ep19 is screaming about this void.

Just look:

(and metaphorical emptiness, as well)

I mean -

Empty is The Big Bad this season. Why?

Does that look like anything Chuck-related to anyone? No? Didn’t think so.

And following the metaphor, to defeat the empty, you should fill it up with someone something. 

Cas is coming back, but Dean keeps it friendly, brotherly

Dean Winchester is the most repressed son of a bitch the sun ever shone on, but it’s clear as a day, that the walls are crushing. The whole “I want to experience things for the first time”, the longing in his looks at Garth and his wife dancing. 

He didn’t want to bother Sam when Mrs B went nuts, because he wanted Sam to have a nice evening with Eileen, he wanted his brother to have one thing Dean himself thought he could never have - a chance. To love, to be loved, not to be alone anymore. We always wish others what we would want for ourselves.

And here enters the lamp with a steel chair.

We can joke all we want, but lets once again look at our parallels: Sam and Eileen, Charlie and Stevie. All of them “let the guard down”, allowed themselves to love. “The best eggs in her life”, anyone? This post lives in my head rent free, I had to get rid of 2k words in French I knew to make a place.

So, I think we agree on this once, as well - not gonna happen.

Cas comes back in another vessel

To fight this argument, my friend, we will have to think about our good ol’ pal Jimmy Novak. And his little daughter, Claire. And the way things ended up for them, because Castiel took over his body. Remember how brokenhearted Cas was, when Jimmy was gone? Remember how he said that ruining Jimmy’s family and his life was the biggest regret of his life?

Yeah, see, I can’t imagine any situation where this end justifies the means.

Not for Castiel, for sure. So, that’s a strong no, too.  

Cas comes back and they are “sharing the vessel”

In the blue corner we have Castiel, who’d hate to take over another body. In the red one, we have Dean, who had the whole “Michael, we had a deal” fiasco, all the drowning inside his own head, being powerless and not his own man for some time. And Dean even has voiced his fears to Cas, so they both are clear on his feeling about this “experience”.

Throw into it the whole narrative of the season (of the show?) centered around the free will, about being able to make their own choices.

Add some more salt with narrative of “We are real”, and multiple times one character had to “wake up” another one for them to be back to reality.

I mean, what’d be different?

This time Dean’d be stuck in between the Dream World where he has a life with Cas and the Aching Reality without him? How cruel is that?

The ending of the show is about a new chapter, a fresh start, not about never finishing the last page of the book you love so much just to keep the story running, even if only inside your head.

I personally would be very disappointed and hurt with this outcome.

So, the only one left is...

Cas is coming back and Dean reciprocates

I don’t know how, I don’t know when, I don’t know if we even get to see him or it is just “Hello, Dean” and cut to black, and we only get the close shot of Dean’s widening eyes and tears gleaming in them once he recognizes the voice.

Of course I’m clowning for the whole cycle, for Dean speaking his truth, loud and clear, for everyone to hear (especially antis with their “brotherly love”).

Of course I’m clowning for him pulling Cas in a hug and muttering “You stupid son of a bitch, don’t you dare leaving me again like this. Ever!”.

I’m the biggest clown alive, honk honk.

Will I be disappointed with the “Hello, Dean” ending? Yes, I will. It’s bittersweet, we’ve clowned for too long to get just that. 

We deserve good things happening to them and to us, too, we deserve certainty.

We deserve the happy end, for a change.

#spn spec #spn speculation #spn positivity party #spn positivity #team deancas positivity #destiel positivy party #destiel #deancas #casdean #supernatural #spn 15x20 #supernatural finale #spn meta #destiel meta #destiel spec #castiel #dean winchester #Dean meta #castiel meta #sinnabonka talks #15x20 speculation #endgame speculation #endgame destiel

[makeste]

Kind of related to a earlier ask. But do you think the reason why AM hid how the 4th died is because he suspects Deku might not have long to live because he unlocked SIXQUIRKS?

well if he really thought there was a danger to Deku, I expect he would have told him right away rather than keeping it a secret. he wouldn’t take that risk with Deku’s life, especially in a scenario where the quirk would keep eating away at his lifespan the longer he holds onto it. I think All Might would have taken the quirk back himself before it came to that. so I think he agrees with the Fourth and First’s hypothesis that being quirkless allows someone to take on OFA indefinitely with no ill effects. in fact, if I understood their conversation right (which I’m not saying I did lol), that was actually All Might’s hypothesis to begin with, which he researched, and which his vestige then communicated to the First and the Fourth.

as for the question of why he didn’t tell Deku, my guess is that it has to do with the “you’ll probably be the last successor of One for All” part. Deku is still just a boy. he’s still in school, he’s still learning how to use his quirk, and meanwhile AFO and Tomura and the League are all out there growing more and more powerful each day. there’s already a ton of weight on Deku’s shoulders, far more than All Might ever meant to place there. even before this latest attack, that “it’s up to you to save the world” pressure had already been mounting for a good while. All Might was retired. the Symbol of Peace was gone. society was scrambling to figure out what to do without him, even as the villains were all plotting and scheming in his absence. and this sixteen-year-old boy whom All Might views as his own son was caught smack dab in the middle of all of that, because of the quirk All Might gave him. caught in a situation he absolutely under no circumstances should have been in.

and then All Might discovers that even if worse comes to worst and Deku does find himself a target of the villains, there’s nothing he can do about it. because Deku literally can’t pass the quirk on to anyone else without potentially killing them. there’s no grown-up he can turn to in a worst-case scenario and entrust the power to them instead. even if he wanted to give it to Aizawa-sensei, or Endeavor, or Hawks, or literally anyone else, he couldn’t because the quirk would literally destroy them. it had already reached the point back in the Fourth’s time where it killed a user within eighteen years; add on five more generations of Quirk Singularity Goodness, and who even knows what the timeframe would be for a tenth-generation successor. we might well not be speaking in terms of years anymore; it could be months, weeks, or even mere days before their bodies rejected the quirk and it killed them.

and even if one of them told Deku “it’s okay, I’m still willing, I accept the risk,” we still run into the issue where One For All can only be passed on when the user wills it. as in, if Deku says no, that’s it. that quirk is staying with him, period, end of story. it won’t matter to him that his arms and legs are broken. it won’t matter to him that TomurAFO wants to steal his quirk and then kill him. it won’t matter to him that a huge percentage of the heroes are now either dead, injured, or retired. it won’t matter that he’s not in the least bit prepared to shoulder a burden like this.

he will shoulder it anyway, because he’s someone who’s not able to live with the alternative. no amount of pleading or even threatening is going to convince this kid to give the quirk to someone else if he knows it will kill them. and so to sum it up, what “you’ll be the last” really means, is that OFA is now Deku’s burden to bear forever. ready or not. that last pretend little lifeline of being able to give it away is gone. OFA dies with Deku. meaning that the story of OFA versus AFO will also end with him, one way or the other.

so yeah. that right there answers every single question I had about why All Might kept this secret (and not just from Deku, but from Deku’s anxious childhood friend as well). he wanted to shield him from that burden as long as he possibly could. but now he knows, and so it’s going to be an interesting discussion once Deku finally wakes up. not sure how he’s going to take all this, and he definitely would be justified in finally giving All Might a piece of his mind, hero-worship be damned. but I won’t lie, I’m holding out for some good Dadmight content as well, and honestly I wouldn’t say no to another hug either.

#bnha 304 #midoriya izuku #one for all #all might #bnha meta #deku meta #bnha #boku no hero academia #bnha spoilers #mha spoilers #bnha manga spoilers #makeste reads bnha #asks #anon asks

[guesst]

some of the best fantasy au fics for bnha that i've read

i decided to make a fic rec list of one of my favourite aus/fusions. mostly midoriya-centric, there are some crossovers (with hp), and a lot of different ways in which the authors have taken them - so it could be Quirks, ghosts, outright fantasy aus, spirits, witches etc etc. there isn't a specific order and there aren't a tonne (these are the ones i could find buried in my bookmarks lol), but the ones on the list are all really well written i love them.

i've tried adding relevant information, the summary (shortened if it's pretty long) and just. adding some random tags that may be important. not all of them though. obviously this is not a complete list and there will most definitely be more fics out there, if there are some really good fics that you know that aren't on this list, feel free to tell me, i'd love to read them!!!

i hope someone enjoys these!

Faith Becomes You by SugaSuga

oneshot | gen dfo, quirkless midoriya summary 'There's a tiny shrine in Musutafu that's overgrown with kudzu vines between Izuku's apartment and his middle-school. There may very well still be a god inside it. There may be nothing but the myth of a man from when Quirks were first emerging. Izuku hides in its walls for a while and ends up tending to the forgotten shrine. All good deeds have their impact, don't they?'

Of Mythos and Men by Oceanbreeze7

oneshot | gen spirit animal au, kinda summary (shortened) 'When he was young, Midoriya always wondered what his mythos would be. The matching half to his quirk, the ancestry of its power. Mythos were strange things, not linked genetically like quirks seemed to be. [...] Midoriya hadn't met his mythos. Even in UA. (In his dreams, something called to him, 'Chase me!')'

what a lion cannot manage by LadyLiterature

multichapter | ongoing | f/m, m/m kitsune au, female izuku, future bakudeku summary (shortened) 'She wants to be a hero. Wants to save everyone she meets and even the people she hasn’t. [...] A smart fox avoids fights. A smart fox does not seek them out. A smart fox does not fight for everyone. A smart fox, when they absolutely must, only fights for themselves and what is theirs and nothing else. Izumi, for all that she tries to be, is not a good fox.'

My Magic Academia by Kiterou

series | oneshots and multichapter | ongoing | gen HP crossover, wizard midoriya, platonic bkdk, some ocs summary (shortened) ' [...] In which Midoriya Inko is a witch and Izuku a wizard and even after 150 years of quirks taking over the world, Izuku still couldn't tell Kacchan that he isn't worthless and that he still could become a hero all on his own.'

A Lonely Windchime Makes No Sound by Musecookie

multichapter | ongoing | multi reader/shinso, total fantasy au, very wholesome summary (shortened) ' [...] You enjoy visiting your slightly creepy local library. When you accidentally befriend the elusive owner's familiar, he begins to appear more and more when you visit. You don't really mind, and he doesn't seem to hate you, even when the two of you become tied up in each other's fate as you pursue the secret to reviving a magical species of flower. Soft Strangers to Friends to Lovers type beat with lots of fluff and naps! Sleepy cuddles included.'

The grapes of friendship by Gentrychild

oneshot | gen crack, dfo, vampire izuku summary 'Izuku, a dhampir hiding his real identity as he goes to UA, the best wizard school in the country, spends the day with his friends. None of them are aware of it.'

Yesterday Upon the Stair by PitViperofDoom

multichapter | complete | gen less supernatural, izu's quirk lets him see ghosts, he still has ofa summary (shortened) 'Midoriya Izuku has always been written off as weird. As if it's not bad enough to be the quirkless weakling, he has to be the weird quirkless weakling on top of it. But truthfully, the "weird" part is the only part that's accurate. He's determined not to be a weakling, and in spite of what it says on paper, he's not actually quirkless [...] Not that anyone would believe it if he told them.'

sum of all (and by them driven) by Elemental

series | multichapter | ongoing | gen dadzawa, spirits give quirks, izu sees these spirits series summary 'Quirks aren't what you think they are.' first part summary (shortened) 'Midoriya Izuku is medically quirkless, not technically homeless, perpetually exhausted and doing his damned best despite it all. He also sees spirits, which might be cool if not for the fact that a) no one else does, b) they really don't like him very much, and c) he's pretty sure the heroes now think he's a villain working for the League [...]'

The Struggles of a Modern-Day Vampire by miraculousemily47

oneshot | gen crack, 1-a shenanigans, vampire midoriya summary 'After Midoriya Izuku is turned into a vampire towards the end of his first year at U.A., he decides he wants to tell his classmates about his condition. The only problem is that he can't physically say the words, and his classmates are fucking idiots.'

Lights in the Dark by FrostKitten

series | oneshots | ongoing | gen supernatural au, izuku can see demons etc, quirkless/magic au summary (of first part) 'Midoriya Izuku, like most young kids, knows there are monsters. They live in closets, under beds, and occasionally in the park. As he grows older, his friends stop seeing them...but he still does.'

Hand in Unlovable Hand by jumbletea

series | oneshots | ongoing | gen vampire midoriya (and aizawa), dadzawa, toga n dabi n mido being siblings summary 'A collection of stories surrounding a not-quite-human Izuku and everyone he meets along the way.'

Simply Superstitious by CryCaladrius

multichapter | ongoing | gen lots of folklore and yokai and stuff, 'quirkless' magic user izuku, decent dad hisashi too summary (shortened) 'Izuku Midoriya’s father is a Hou-ou — a Japanese phoenix. For some reason, this means yokai have a standing invitation to pester Izuku with their existence. Birds assemble choirs for his birthday. If there’s no cedar leaf under the welcome mat, the amazake babaa that lives two apartments over will be knocking on their door by evening. His yokai-purifying excursions get mistaken for vigilantism far too often. [...]'

Cuckoo Bird (anonymous author)

multichapter | ongoing/maybe discontinued | gen it may be discontinued but theres lots of fae folklore, deku is a changeling, deals etc, plus some platonic shindeku building up?? summary 'There's something off about Midoriya Izuku. (change·ling /ˈCHānjliNG/ noun a child believed to have been secretly substituted by fairies for the parents' real child in infancy.)'

tread softly as you go by IceEckos12

oneshot | gen if you read any fae au please let it be this! has faeries but mido is not one summary 'Humans used to be good at the old ways. They used to know how to bait the trap, to spin a web of words and lies that would ensnare even the most wily. Humans used to be able to twist deceptions around knots of iron and turn them into weapons of power. They forgot a long, long time ago. A boy unwittingly makes a deal with one of the fae, severing his ties to humanity. However, he finds that the fae world is far more strange and complex than he ever could have imagined.'

Hell is just a shoujo manga by supercrunch

multichapter | complete | f/m fantasy au, bakudeku, fem!izuku, isekai, dekusquad stuff, also some iidachako summary (shortened) 'Izuku wakes up crushed under a statue, trapped in the body of a princess who doesn't exist. Turns out she's a demon, which is weird. What's even weirder is the déjà vu that surrounds Kamino palace, reminding her of the events of this one manga she used to love. [...] But that's probably just a coincidence. [...] The problem here, obviously, is that Izuku's the demon princess. Ergo, she's a villain. And that means she's going to die at the end of this manga. Again.'

hold your breath as you cross by cassiopeia721

oneshot | gen dadzawa, another 'quirks are from spirits au' (expect more of those actually), mido is sad :( summary 'As the bridge between the world of guardian spirits and the quirk users who are blessed by them, Izuku's duty is to clean up the mess his predecessor left. It's taken what feels like an eternity worth of work, but Izuku's finally finished, and he's ready to rest at last. Unfortunately, the pro heroes who just watched him take down the Scourge of Kamino have no intention of letting him just wander off, and he finds himself stuck in an interrogation room with a bunch of humans who he's sure will never believe a word he says.'

To See with Eyes Unclouded by CrazySatan

series | oneshots | ongoing | gen witch au, witch midoriya, quirkless mido, bkg is not a good friend series summary 'Midoriya Izuku is a witch. A powerful witch. And even though he doesn't have a quirk, and magic doesn't Work Like That, Izuku ends up a hero. Somehow.'

Demons and Darkness by wolfsrainrules

series | oneshots | ongoing | gen dadzawa, shinso and mido and bkg are becoming friends, they can see monsters/spirits/bad things summary of first part 'Izuku has believed in the things that go bump in the night since he was small. That means he can see them, and almost everyone he knows....can't. So he decides he's going to be the shield humanity needs, no matter what. Eventually, he finds others that See too.'

know what i've made by the marks on my hands by simkjrs

multichapter | ongoing/maybe discontinued | gen dadzawa, quirk spirit au (this inspired most of the others on this list), also eri summary (shortened) 'Midoriya Izuku just wants to lead a quiet, peaceful life. This is foiled by the fact that a) he can see spirits, b) his good nature demands that he help anyone he sees in trouble, and c) he, by all rights, should not exist. [...]'

Izuku haunts class 1-A by Artistic-Gamer

series or multichapter whichever floats your boat | incomplete (hiatus) | other there are some triggering themes! such as suicide, blood, body disfigurement! please take care of yourself and avoid reading if this will hurt you! in other news: so much dadzawa, so much friendship, hurt mido summary (of first part) 'Class 1-A is rumored to be haunted, only the residents are aware it’s more than just a rumor..'

U.A's Resident Ghost by BeyondTheClouds777

multichapter | ongoing/maybe discontinued | gen ghost midoriya, dadzawa, friendships!!!! summary 'There is a ghost at U.A. Not haunting U.A. Not even hanging out at U.A. There is a ghost. Enrolled. As a student of U.A. And it's just Shouta's luck that he has everything to do with it.'

and now, the weather by xylophones

oneshot | gen CRACK, paranormal/ghost hunters au, dekusquad stuff summary 'Izuku runs a fictional horror radio show. Because ghosts aren’t real. Right? (“Holy shit, ghosts are real,” Izuku whispers. Then, with the smugness of a sixteen-year-old who just won a decade long bet, “I knew it! Kacchan owes me five hundred yen!” “Midoriya,” Todoroki sighs, “this ghost is trying to kill us.”)'

U.A Unsolved by handcrusher(ameliafromafairytale)

oneshot | gen (it's a fic of a fic, so if you've read yesterday upon the stair then you'll understand better) izuku can see ghosts thats his quirk summary ' "Hey there, ghosts," Midoriya says, "it's me, ya boy." The dorms are haunted. Shenanigans ensue.'

The Haunting of Class 1-A by BritishRobutt

multichapter | ongoing/maybe discontinued | n/a ghost midoriya, vigilante au, crack, the ghost bit is izu's quirk summary 'Everyone always told Izuku he couldn't be a hero, so when he dies and discovers his quirk, he becomes a vigilante out of spite. Whoops. After becoming Spectre, Japan's most wanted vigilante, Izuku realizes he can just fulfill his dreams of going to the top heroic school- after all, who can physically stop him from attending UA when he's a literal ghost?'

Caged by SternStunde

oneshot | gen tododeku, fantasy au (todo is a dragon, mido is a princess), genderbent deku (fem deku) summary 'Then she held up one of the books and smiled. "Want to learn an ancient language with me?" She was kind of a nerd, and she really hoped the dragon was too.'

Magic Runs Deep by draconicschinx

multichapter | ongoing/probably discontinued | gen mido has a quirk and he can see mythical creatures. summary '"Midoriya Izuku has always been good at making friends. Not human ones, really, but they are good friends nonetheless. " Izuku can see and talk to and interact with mythical creatures. It's not exactly the quirk he was hoping for, but he's going to use it to help humans and his non-human friends all the same.'

#bnha #mha #fic recs #fantasy au #ghost au #vampire au #witch au #boku no hero academia #my hero academia #spirit fanfics #i have gone to an unnecessary amount of effort for a list that no one asked for #hmm #mythical beasts #myths and legends #i hope my tagging is okay lol #fic rec list #midoriya izuku #midoriya izumi #genderbending #shinsou hitoshi #dadzawa #quirkless au #lots of aus #magic

[kaizokuou-ni-naru]

The Voyage So Far: Dressrosa (Part Two)

east blue (1 | 2) || alabasta (1 | 2) || skypiea || water 7 || enies lobby || thriller bark || paramount war (1 | 2) || fishman island || punk hazard || dressrosa (1 | 2) || || whole cake island || wano (1 | 2)

wild how this is upwards of 750 chapters in and yet i still get a big dumb smile whenever luffy declares he’s going to be king of the pirates. one piece is a series very much driven by its main characters and their goals and dreams- i don’t think it would be nearly as good if the main character was anyone but monkey d. luffy. 

personally, i always just feel kind of proud whenever he says this, because- yeah!! he is!! that’s luffy, he’s going to be king of the pirates, and we’ve known that since day fucking one. 

i really think there’s something to be said about usopp never taking credit for saving luffy and law from sugar. it’s arguably his greatest feat in the entire series thus far- an impossible, perfect shot across an entire country, with an angry mob inches from his back- and he never even tells anybody he did it. he’s come a long way from someone who tells tall tales about heroic acts he never did to someone who doesn’t even feel the need to take credit for ones he really did, so long as his friends are safe.

i really like how corazon’s introduction and characterization throughout the flashback is handled. at the start of law’s flashback, we know a few things about him already: that he’s someone law loved very much, and that he was killed by doflamingo. we know how this ends. 

but then cora is introduced as a clumsy mute weirdo who nearly kills law as one of the very first things he does, and we as the audience aren’t really sure how to reconcile that- and then the rest of the flashback is us, along with law, slowly discovering what a complicated and contradictory but ultimately good person he is. something very similar happens with the asl flashback- we know the endpoint of luffy and ace’s relationship, but the flashback is all about how they got there, from attempted murder to willing self-sacrifice. 

i think it’s really cool the way law and doflamingo’s backstories are layered together. they’re characters who exist with a lot of parallels and similarities between them already, which is something they’re both clearly aware of- i’ve mentioned before i think the only real difference between them is that law got corazon where doflamingo got the executives- and presenting their backstories simultaneously only makes that more obvious. 

i’ve always found it so interesting that we get what’s pretty much our only substantial exposition about the will of d direct from a former celestial dragon. it makes sense- cora’s basically the only character we’ve met who both has this information and is willing to share it-  but i don’t know, there’s something that feels very poetic to me about him having this information that’s clearly been suppressed and hidden by the dragons and willingly choosing to share it in order to help protect law, a D, who should technically be the very enemy he was once taught to hate and fear. 

i really like corazon. 

it fucks me up that we can tell the exact moment cora dies from the moment law starts making noise again. 

this might be a controversial take? i’m not sure. but i like baby five. i think her and sai’s relationship is really sweet, and people might complain about her getting off easy or whatever but i’m honestly glad she gets a happy ending after being thoroughly emotionally abused and broken her entire life. and on a lighter note, she’s also just a fun character to watch through the whole arc- the running gag with her crying whenever law glares at her is still one of my favorites in the whole series. 

the shot of robin’s bloody back is a favorite of mine, because it’s a reveal that doesn’t get lingered on at all, and yet at once it gives the entire proceeding scene a lot more weight when we understand just how much pain she must’ve been in the entire time. and yet she never even flinched or faltered while protecting rebecca. nico robin is very, very strong. 

there’s something so deliciously fitting about diamante’s final fall ending with him cracking his head on scarlett’s grave, and something so lovely about kyros and rebecca finally getting their proper reunion there, when neither of them ever really got a chance to mourn.

law’s line about the strawhats trailing nothing but miracles in their wake is one of the first ones i always think of when i think about the strawhats in general and luffy in particular, mostly because it’s so true. from the very beginning, the strawhats have been doing the impossible, from sailing to the sky to breaking in and out of the world’s greatest prison, and law saw that and staked all his hopes on it and they did not let him down. 

also i think it’s very cool of law to, when held at gunpoint and down an arm, grin, flip doflamingo off, and tell him to eat shit and that luffy is going to kick his ass. love that for him.

i think dressrosa does a very good job of making the victory against doflamingo equally law’s and luffy’s. they cooperate and trade off fighting him throughout the arc to great effect, and i think it’s pretty clear that neither of them could have tackled the massive challenge of dressrosa alone. 

while the final fight is luffy’s, it’s made clear that that’s only after law’s done absolutely everything he could and spent the majority of the arc distracting doflamingo, keeping him occupied, and even fucking shredding his insides with pure radiation before finally needing to tap out. i think it’s a good balance, given that luffy is the protagonist but law’s grudge against doflamingo is the driving force behind the entire arc. 

conqueror’s haki clashes are always very cool, pretty much regardless of who or where or why, but the one between luffy and doflamingo is a favorite. 

one of the things that’s always impressed me about one piece in comparison to other shounen series is how it handles its powerscaling- in that it does it well with a gradual increase and villains who vary widely in strength instead of every arc necessarily needing to be bigger and better than the last- and i think the way it handles powering up the main characters is a big part of that. 

through the entirety of one piece thus far, i’d say luffy has had three major power-ups- second and third gear in enies lobby, haki at the timeskip, and gear four here in dressrosa (an argument could also be made for ryuuou in wano, but i think that’s less major than these others). this helps prevent runaway powerscaling and also makes new power-ups feel like a genuine event, which i really like. 

i once referred to luffy as ‘hopebringer’ in a conversation with friends, and it’s a descriptor for him i think sums up really well how he manages to save so many people while insistently not being a hero. luffy inspires people, inspires whole countries, starting all the way back with coby in romance dawn. it’s one of the reasons i think it’s fitting how thoroughly he’s associated with the dawn. 

doflamingo is very, very scary. which is interesting, because he’s indisputably less powerful someone like kaidou, but at the same time i find him a much scarier villain, and i think it comes down to doflamingo’s gleeful, wanton cruelty. not that kaidou is in any way shape or form a nice person, but our first introduction to doflamingo is him forcing marines to attack each other just because he’s a little bored. he hurts people just because he can, and finds it funny. 

relating to my earlier comment about hope, i really like how the whole country comes together at the end to cheer luffy on and count down to his return. it makes it feel all the more triumphant when it does, especially for the citizens of dressrosa who’ve been suffocating under doflamingo’s rule for years and can finally, finally see freedom.

other people have put a lot more thought of the symbolism of doflamingo’s eyes and glasses than i intend to, but i’ll settle for saying that it’s the breaking of the glasses, before anything else, before the birdcage even vanishes from the sky and everyone is safe, that shows us that, at long last, doflamingo is well and truly defeated. his glasses break, and so does his power. 

i’ve written a longer post about it before (here) but it’s a recurring motif that one piece’s worst villains are those that steal people’s freedom, including, in the cruelest cases, the freedom to express their emotions openly. we see it with koala and the celestial dragons, with the failed smile fruits in wano, and here, too, with kyros. and, much like koala, triumph for him means finally being able to cry. 

i mentioned it back in the first post, but i’m so, so happy rebecca and kyros get the happy ending they deserve. they’ve both been fighting a war that they never should have had to for years and years, and they both deserve to get to just live, now, peaceful and quiet and together and surrounded by flowers. 

i really dig the note dressrosa ends on. it’s happy, of course, obviously, with the liberation of the country, kyros and rebecca’s happy ending, the creation of the grand fleet, even law getting some degree of closure through his talk with sengoku, but it also leaves this massive, gaping question- what now? 

in a way, doflamingo’s speech here follows up on law’s new era speech from punk hazard. luffy and law have just thrown a major wrench into the delicate power equilibrium of the entire new world, and we have all these characters out there who might be affected, who might want to take advantage, who might try to seize the throne. 

#the voyage so far #one piece #opmeta #arc: dressrosa #long post #not japanese

[plus-size-reader]

Angel Blood

Clary Fray x Plus size!reader

Word Count: 2113 words

Warnings: none

Summary: The reader has been protecting Clary all her life, and hiding a huge secret. 

—————————————————————————————————

Clary was almost positive that she was out of her mind. 

After everything she’d seen at the club tonight, she had to be going crazy. 

Of course she was because there was no other explanation for what was going on. Everything that she had seen, everything that was going on, it wasn’t real. 

There was no way any of this was real. 

People didn’t just vanish out of thin air ever, and that thing in the club had tentacles in its face, not to mention the fact that she was ninety-nine percent sure that she had killed a guy. It was hardly what she’d expected from her eighteenth birthday when she woke up this morning.

Still, she knew what she saw.

There was no way to explain it, and she was sure that she was going insane, but at least she knew what she had seen. 

If there was anything she had, it was that, and thankfully, it was more than enough for you to help her. When she told you what had happened, you believed her completely and totally, which did make her feel a little better. 

Though, to be fair, you knew a lot more about this than she did. 

This was in her blood.

Clary was a shadowhunter, she was born for this, and while it didn’t make sense now, you were sure that she would adjust. All she needed was time, and a little guidance, which you and the others would be able to give her. 

Not that you wanted Jace to be involved at all. 

After all, it was his idea to bring her back to the institute, which was a terrible idea from the start. Mundanes couldn’t be here, ever, and there wasn’t supposed to be any exceptions to that, even where Clary was concerned. 

She couldn’t just be here. 

You told Jace that as soon as he got back, holding her tight to his chest all full of demon venom, but were immediately ignored by the male. He had already made up his mind, and when he did that, there was nothing you could do to stop him. 

Logic didn’t have a place in Jace’s mind. 

In general, this wasn’t something that you tended to deal in because mundane business wasn’t for you to worry about but for some reason, he had this idea that he had to save her. 

He wanted to keep her safe. 

You understood that this mattered to him, for whatever reason, but this was a bit much.

Alec made the argument that bringing her here was dangerous for not only her but also everyone else in the building, and this was one of those rare instances where you found yourself inclined to agree with him.

Jace had gone too far and now, he’d managed to rope you all in with him. 

It was insane. 

You had been watching over her and Jocelyn all your life, but now, Jace had just swooped in to save the day. It was something that there was no going back from and you just had to hope that when Clary woke up, she’d be able to handle it. 

“How could you be so reckless?” you huffed, protecting Clary was your job. 

You had been her best friend forever and you were someone she was familiar with. If anyone was going to take care of her in Jocelyn’s absence, it should have been you. 

It was literally all you were here for, but in typically Jace Wayland fashion, he had found a way to take that out from under you as well. 

Now, you were going to have to get past him to do anything, like you always had to, as if the other shadowhunters needed another reason to doubt your abilities.  

“I saved her life, shouldn’t you be thanking me?” he grinned, that telling smirk on his face that remained there indefinitely. Normally, you would have just shrugged him off but today you could have knocked off if you felt so inclined. 

He could be so frustrating sometimes, so sure of himself that no one else mattered. 

It was nearly enough to drive you out of your mind. 

In all the years that you had known Clary, you had kept a close relationship with all of the shadowhunters as well. You were one of them, and though this life was a difficult one, hiding it from Clary and all, it was just what you had to do. 

You had to protect her, more than anything else, and as difficult as it was, that was all that mattered at the end of the day. 

Jocelyn loved you like a child of her own, she trusted you with her secrets and most importantly, she trusted you to protect Clary when she couldn’t. That was the whole reason you were here, the whole reason you had been by her side for so many years. 

At this point, you loved her more than anyone and you certainly didn’t want her getting involved with Jace Wayland.

Not because you were jealous, of course, but because you wanted what was best for her. 

That was all.  

“I’ll thank you when I’m sure she’s safe” you countered, gingerly brushing a lock of her hair from her face, where it had fallen in the entire tussle. She was in a lot of pain, with the venom taking its toll on her, but her body was taking the healing rune well. 

She was going to be fine. 

However, until she was awake and calmed down, you weren’t going to be able to relax. 

For whatever reason, this was the most stressful thing you’d ever gone through. You’d had years to go run through this in your mind, but now that it was happening, you were lost. 

This wasn’t supposed to happen like this. 

Jocelyn had been careful, crazy even, so that Clary wouldn’t find out about who and what she was before you were ready to deal with it, but now, you were on your own. She wasn’t here to help you figure this out. 

For now, Jocelyn was gone and you just had to do your best to explain this whole thing to her. 

“She’s going to be fine, she’s one of us. She’s strong” Jace shrugged, looking down at her from where he was at your side, still doing his best to figure out what it was about her that was so special. 

Clearly, she had made an imprint on the both of you and he wasn’t even sure why yet. To be fair though, he didn’t know her like you did. 

He never could. 

“Yeah, that’s one thing we can agree on” you allowed, gingerly giving him a shrug. You weren’t sure what it was you were going to do when she woke up, or how blending your two worlds into one would work, but before you could worry about it, she shot up in bed. 

The action was quick and startled you slightly but you didn’t pay that any mind. Instead, you sat down beside her and did the only thing you knew to do, the thing you were best at. 

You tried to calm her down. 

Even now, that was all you could think about. 

“Good Morning sleepyhead” you tried, doing your best to stay calm, but it was a sad attempt at best. You were clearly shaken, startled over her abrupt awakening, but thankfully, Clary was still a little out of it.

To her, this whole thing must have felt like a dream, so she only smiled at you at first. What had happened today was the last thing on her mind as she looked at you, at least, for a few seconds. 

However, as soon as she reached up and grazed the portal shard hanging around her neck, she panicked. The object brought back everything she’d gone through in the past few hours and the recollection she had was distressing to her. 

No one in their right mind would handle it well, you knew that without a shadow of a doubt. 

While you weren’t surprised by the world you’d grown up in, you weren’t under any illusions as to how jarring it must have been to her. Waking up in this place was more than enough to freak her out, and Jace certainly wasn’t helping either. 

“What is going on? Where are we? Where is my mother?” she asked, immediately bringing all the current issues to the forefront. 

They were swirling around in her head, looming over her, and not one of them made sense. It was too much and you definitely couldn’t blame her for being overwhelmed. 

“We will explain everything Clary, trust me” you hummed, taking her hand in your own in one final attempt at comforting her. You had no idea how this would go, but if nothing else, at least she was at the institute now. 

As difficult as Jace could be to deal with, you knew that she would be safe as long as he was looking out for her. 

At the very least, you could give him that.

~

Jace wasn’t exactly thrilled when you asked her for a moment alone with Clary to explain but eventually, he decided that it would just be best to do as you asked. The two of you had an understanding, that it would be much better to just try to find common ground. 

Besides, Jace wasn’t exactly the best one to tell her everything, not when there was so much technical history to bring her up to speed on. 

She needed you. 

“What is going on?” she repeated, not speaking again until you returned to her bedside, having stepped away for a moment to ask Jace for some privacy. She had no idea what was going on yet, and unfortunately, you weren’t sure your explanation would help. 

There was just too much happening in your world to sum up in one conversation. 

Still, you knew that you had to try. 

“I’ll fill you in more as it comes up, but there are some things I need to tell you before then” you started, hoping that the more you filled her in, the easier this would get for her to digest, but that wasn’t going to happen. 

Mundanes couldn’t handle the world outside that they were used to, and while Clary wasn’t necessarily mundane, she had been raised that way. Until you figured out what Jocelyn wanted for her, you had to just fly by the seat of your pants through this whole thing. 

“We’re Shadowhunters, Clar” you hummed, giving her a soft smile as you often did while looking at her. Even now, as disoriented and lost as she was, she was the most beautiful girl you’d ever seen. 

Hopefully as this whole thing came into the light, you would actually see the benefits of bringing her fully into your world. 

At least she would understand you completely now. 

“We have angel blood, and that makes it our responsibility to protect the human world from demons and other downworlders” you tried, finding it much more difficult to sum up everything that being a shadowhunter intold than you would have thought. 

It was really complicated.

Still, Clary didn’t seem completely lost as you assumed she would. She was bewildered of course, but she was silent by the time you’d finished, startling you that much more. For whatever reason, it was more alarming than if she would have freaked out. 

It just made you worry that much more that she was losing it. 

“I know it’s a lot, but I’m going to be here the whole time to help you figure it out. You’re going to be okay” 

The words came out forced but you really meant them. It wasn’t going to be easy, but you knew that no matter what came your way, the two of you would be able to deal with it. 

You always had, and now that the rest of the shadowhunters were involved, it would be even easier. 

You could do this. 

“Please don’t leave, there’s no way I can manage all this without you” she hummed, after a few seconds of silence as she thought over what you were suggesting. She had lost way too much already and if she had to do this without you, she’d be completely lost. 

She couldn’t do this without you. 

“Clar, I’m not going anywhere” you promised, this time fully confident in the words leaving your lips. You loved Clary, and whether or not she knew it, there was nothing you wouldn’t do for her. 

No matter what happened, nothing was going to happen to her. 

#clary fray #city of bones #mortal instruments city of bones #mortal instruments #clary fray x reader #clary fray x ps reader #clary fray x plus size reader #clary fray imagine #city of bones x reader #city of bones x ps reader #city of bones x plus size reader #city of bones imagine #mortal instruments x reader #mortal instruments x ps reader #mortal instruments x plus size reader #mortal instruments imagine #femslash

[ojcobsessed]

oliver jackson-cohen for flaunt magazine, by jessica romoff, july 2019

***

The first horror movie I ever saw was The Exorcist on my grandmother’s RCA console TV, midnight on Christmas Eve. My grandmother is a Catholic Portuguese woman who was devout to cross stitching and Jesus Christ, resulting in crucifixes nailed into every wall of the living room. So, as every flash and jolt from the TV screen would animate the tortured figurines with chilling white light, I prepared in panic and thrill for each one to flip upside down.

Not only did this movie ignite my passionate love for horror, but actor Oliver Jackson Cohen’s passion as well. Mine lead me to accumulating random 70’s slasher movie memorabilia and sporadic nightmares, while Cohen’s lead him to eventually being the star of hit Netflix horror miniseries The Haunting of Hill House as his character Luke Crain, with a few nightmares as well. The 10 episode show is a modern reimagining of Shirley Jackson’s novel “Hill House” and follows the Crain family during the summer they lived in the haunted home, and flashes forward on their lives decades after the tragic events.

During a phone interview with him, I learned Cohen is much more than just a dedicated actor with a jawline that can cut glass; Cohen is a whirlpool of empathy, an artist who gushes his heart into everything he does, and demands that his character Luke, and those battling with similar struggles, are portrayed more than just their addiction.

With your role in last season, I was really impressed by how you portrayed a character with drug addiction, and how you refrained from making him a stereotypical, one dimensional person - and I was wondering how you avoided leaning on this cliche when approaching Luke?

Thank you, number one, I think we all have seen drug addicts portrayed in movies and tv shows before. Most of the time, they are always portrayed as their addiction, and I don’t think that’s very true for anyone who knows anyone who has substance abuse problems; there is actually a fucking person there. So it was very clear from the get-go that I had a responsibility to present a fully formed human being, and they actually brought in a specific writer to write Luke’s character- who was a heroin addict in recovery. I said to Mike, the director and creator of the show - before we even started that it’s very important that Luke is the sum of all his parts and is not just his addiction. So I think that the way I approached it, is that when I first began doing all the research and the pre-work before we started filming, I started looking at documentaries, because I had never done heroin before, so I thought, Oh I’ll start looking at documentaries - but then I realized quite early on that that was putting a judgement on him. And I don’t think it’s fair - because behind anyone who has fallen into this trap is someone who is deeply struggling. And I felt it - I felt a huge amount of, not pressure, but a need to show the person behind the addiction and show the person who is actually struggling, and why he had become an addict. So I focused on that - so I spent no time whatsoever seeing Lucas as a drug addict; I saw him as someone who was struggling to come to terms with everything that he had experienced and happened in his life. And so I focused on anyone who is trying to numb themselves, that know they’re running away from something. So I built up the terror of that, instead of focusing on “I need my fix.”

Was there something that happened in your own life, that was out of your control and not your fault, but regardless someone judged you because of that - perhaps driving your connection to Luke’s character?

Oh 100 percent, and that’s what is so interesting, because I don’t have a substance abuse problem - but I think that out of all the characters I have ever played in the past 10 years, there’s the most of me in Luke. Like, all of that stuff of just trying to function, and the vulnerability, and just trying to be normal, and being so ashamed - all of that is my own shit, and so [laughs] I didn’t need to be a heroin addict to understand the pain that he was going through, so, so much. I think it’s incredible getting to play someone like that because, in a weird way it felt like therapy - I was able to go to work everyday and just be all the parts of myself. I think it’s interesting as well for men, there’s this whole thing about having to be a certain way, having to always be strong, and I think inherently a lot of people do feel incredibly fragile. So all of that stuff of Luke is me, and my stuff, and I didn’t have to pretend - I just got to go to work and be as vulnerable as I feel. You know we all have incredibly complicated lives and incredibly complicated upbringings,  and I used all of my stuff: I was diagnosed with PTSD a couple of years ago so all of that is in there with Luke - and it felt incredibly cathartic to be able to kind of put it all out there and be there.

When your work is something that is so emotionally rigorous, and strenuous, it must be very draining dedicating yourself to a character who is really struggling his whole life  - How do you unwind and decompress from this intensity?

[Laughs] I….you know what, I’m not very good at it. I feel like I’m one of those people, I’m sort of with the school of thought that you either go to work and you fucking do it  - and you do it for real, or go home. I’m not into this whole I’ll just pretend! thing, so it’s probably not the healthiest way of working. But I feel it’s necessary, and then I don’t know how to handle it. There were a couple of days on set where specifically we were filming all of Luke’s episodes or the stuff where he’s sort of roaming the streets - that got way too intense. We would rap at 6 am and I would go back to my house and sleep for a bit, and then wake up and just be so out of sorts: I would have to call people at home to reassure me that everything was okay.

I imagine the intensity can be overwhelming

Yeah, I mean, it sounds really wonky - but I think that when you’re messing around with stuff like that, and you’re tricking your brain into thinking something is real, and then on top of that you’re drawing from your own personal well of shit that probably should be kept untouched - it’s gonna be messy at times. So yeah, it gets… it did get a little hairy. But again I felt that it was important - and I think all of us across the board in the cast felt that it was so important to do that - to give Luke a voice. And what’s been so interesting when the show came out, it was so overwhelming, the response, specifically from people that have struggled with addiction. And it was so warming to hear these stories from people, so I think it was necessary for all of us as actors to go to those dark parts of ourselves, and put that out on screen.

Is there something that you wish you knew before you began acting in a horror TV series? Or about a TV series with intense family drama with horror influence?

Hm..I don’t know. Just… it’s all good. [laughs] it’s gonna be all good.

Honestly, that’s pretty solid universal advice. And I was wondering, are you a fan of horror in general?

Yes! Huge

And is this a genre that you want to continue with?

Yes, I had never done anything horror before, so this was a dream. I remember I watched The Exorcist when I was like eight or something, and it completely terrified me - and I still to this day have nightmares about it. I think what’s so clever about horror, and I think specifically with what Mike has done on our show, it becomes a metaphor for something else. So specifically with Hill House, if you take away the house and all the ghosts and all the horror elements, it’s about childhood trauma. So you can swap out what all those kids went through, the horror they experienced, can be swaped out for sexual abuse, or physical abuse, or anything like that. So you manage to kind of navigate all of these horrific things we kind of don’t want to look at, in the veil of ghosts, so it becomes palatable for an audience. I never knew this, Netflix told me this, that horror is the most watched genre in the whole world.

Really!?

Across the board, yeah! I thought it would be comedy. But that’s why Netflix made the show. Because they realized that actually there was such a massive market for horror. So yeah, a really long winded answer to your short question - yes I was a fan of horror, I always have been.

Me too! I’ve never thought about how horror can be a metaphor for trauma. That’s so fascinating. Just one last question - I know that you can’t say too much about the second season… right? Or they’ll shoot you.

Right [laughs]

So, see if you can answer this: if Season 1 and Season 2 were mythical creatures, what would they be?

[Laughs] What would they be… ahhh...I genuinely don’t know how to answer that question. They’re both just beasts from the darkest corners of our minds. Season 1…. Uh… what I can say - is that season 1 I believe was amazing, and with what they’re doing with season 2 is even…. More incredible.

#oliver jackson cohen #oliver jackson-cohen #peter quint #luke crain #haunting of bly manor #haunting of hill house #2019 #tw: childhood trauma #ptsd

[whump-town]

Books & Bonding

(There is no point to this, it’s just a drabble I wrote after finishing my Art History paper) Enjoy some bittersweet father son bonding 

Jack is laying upside on the couch, the way Hotch has probably told him a thousand times before not to. So that his ass is propped up where a back would normally go and his back is where a butt should be. He’s letting the blood rush to his head because it, direct quote, “help him think better”. At this current time and place, Hotch is too distracted trying not to burn cookies in the oven and keeping pasta stirred. So he doesn’t waste his breathe telling his son, again, not to sit like that. 

“You just don’t understand,” Jack sighs wistfully. 

Hotch has managed to raise one strange kid. He’s seventeen-years-old and spends more time ranting and raving about books than girls (or, hell, boys). Hotch doesn’t even know where they stand on that. They’ve discussed gender and sex, in more of a book sort of way. Jack had gone on about chosen expression differing from biological traits and Hotch can’t even remember why that was. He just knows what followed it was The Hunger Games sequels because that had prompted a discussion on riots and Hotch’s personal beliefs on the government.

There’s never a dull moment.

Pausing in his pasta stirring, Hotch takes a moment to correctly process the rant he’s just been on the receiving end of. Rubbing his palm into his eye, he wonders if it would be simpler to talk about gender expression again. At least then he knew what to say. 

Now they’re… debating, what? Identities? 

Raising his son around the team might have been a bit of a mistake. Jack seems to consume the parts of the team that Hotch has always struggled with the most. Reid’s quickly devolving, circling rants about anything and nothing at all. Emily’s obsession with books that require a strange and open mind to the natural progression of the world. Fucking woodwork from Morgan. Where does that even come from?

Humming to himself, he collects what he thinks is a good response. “The point,” he asks, glancing towards the living room. Waiting for Jack to pop up and he does, resting his chin on the cushion as he watches his father. “The point is that there is a danger in being anyone but yourself, yes?” 

Jack nods, “essentially.”

Hotch hums, nodding his head. He might be able to remember the title of the book, Jack probably mentioned at some point, he does understand Vonnegut. Emily got Jack a collection of his work for Christmas last year after the two made an entire day of picking apart Margret Atwood’s “Handmaid’s Tale”. Of course, he’d also read the book but it was far more interesting to sit back and observe the two of them. 

“What does that mean for you?” Hotch asks. He means it. 

It seems to do the trick. To scratch whatever itch Jack wasn’t finding on his own. He deflates, sinking as he thinks about it. 

Seventeen-years. That’s how long it’s taken for Hotch to realize he’s a better father than he’d thought. Better than he could have ever imagined. He’d been terrified when he’d first been handed Jack. Shaking, the nurses had taunted him for that. He’s a federal agent who was in a national news making explosion, Boston, and he’s afraid of a newborn baby that weighs six pounds and some change. 

But he wasn’t afraid of Jack. He was afraid of those eyes looking back at him. The same eyes as his and the same eyes as his father. 

He and Jack don’t have a complicated relationship, not the one that plays out so tauntingly on the television in seemingly every movie. Not once, has he ever raised his voice or, God-forbid, even his hand. And Jack is pretty normal considering. Just a standard kid making his weigh through the world and the best part is-- 

he tears up a little just standing here thinking about it-- Jack always comes home. 

Hotch never had a home. 

A dad. 

“I don’t know who I am.”

Hotch blinks quickly, shaking his head. He’s not expecting that. 

Jack has moved from the couch, now aimlessly walking circles in the kitchen. He’s barefoot and in a sweatshirt, Hotch knows he stole from his closet. He’s worn the knees out of his jeans and the bottoms are rolled up. They’re thrifted and his favorite. 

The melancholy hits Hotch right in the chest. That stupid sweatshirt. He’d hid it in his closet because he can’t bear to part with it but he can’t stand to look at it. Haley used to wear it far more than he ever did. 

For every part of Haley left in their son-- the sandy blond hair, love for complicated books, and pacing that has always driven Hotch mad-- there are pieces of Hotch as well. The lanky body and hair that can only be contained with an unGodly amount of gel and a skilled hand. 

Where does Hotch even begin to explain the in and outs of identity? That this half-way through puberty child of his is built out of ancient love. The kind not meant to last but hurt. That it’s never as simple as  “I am”, it is everything. It’s not the sum of a whole. There is nothing set in place and Jack will change and change again before he even realizes it. He’ll hate parts and cling to others desperately but there will never be an answer. Yet, every guess he’ll come up with will be right. 

“Don’t worry about that,” Hotch assures him softly. This will make one hell of a conversation to have with Dave some time but for right now, it’s… complicated and he doesn’t have an answer. “You’ll figure it out,” Hotch affirms with enough confidence that they both buy it. Hotch doesn’t doubt for a second that his off the walls bookworm of a child will come to understand who he is. Today’s just not the day and that’s understandable. “For now, go pick a movie and I’ll bring you some macaroni, alright?”

Jack looks like he wants to push that. He doesn’t. A part of can rationalizes that his father doesn’t know the answer either and… A pang of sadness and a bit of fear hits his chest, his dad is tired. Too tired for the kind of long-winded conversation that Jack’s brought into play. 

It’s a strange fear that he’s carried his entire life. Mortality is a hell of a thing to become aware of. 

Jack curls up on the couch, he’s going to milk the hell out of movie night. Eating dinner on the couch is a rare gift and he’s excited by the thought of breaking a rule… sort of. 

“This the book,” Hotch asks two bowls in hand but stopped to bend and scowl at the book cover on the coffee table. 

Jack nods his head, taking his bowl and freeing one of Hotch’s hand so that he can pick the book up and examine it. “You can read it,” he offers, scoping too hot macaroni straight into his mouth. As one does, he proceeds to sit with his mouth open and look obscene as his mouth burns. He then follows it by another mouthful, as if that one will have magically cooled down. 

Hotch puts it back down and takes note of the title. He’ll read it and then he’ll ask Emily about it. He settles down on the couch like he’s got any intent on watching this movie. In reality, he’s going to eat maybe half of his dinner and fall asleep before the rising action of the movie can even be established. 

“What’re we watching?”

Jack smirks and hits play, “gonna be honest, no idea. It has Keira Knightley in it so that was the appeal.” He glances over at Hotch, knowing that his father has no idea who the actress in mind is but he won’t ask. Not for reasons guided by ego but because it won’t matter.

By the time she comes on screen, Hotch is asleep.

Without comment, Jack pulls the throw blanket behind them down. He takes the bowl out of Hotch’s hands, setting on the coffee table, and covers Hotch up. With a sigh, he lays his head down on his father’s thigh. 

Hotch wakes just enough to realize what’s happening and wraps his arm around Jack’s chest, keeping him close. 

Knees pulled to his chest, Jack finds himself falling asleep too. For a moment, tears sting his eyes as he realizes that his dad is never going to carry him to bed again. He’ll never fall asleep on the couch and wake up half-wrangled up in his dad’s arms like a ragdoll too tired to protest but content beyond means. 

He just wishes he could go back and appreciate that one last time.

(the book in question is Kurt Vonnegut’s Mother Night and it’s my favorite book of his)

#criminal minds #criminal minds fanfiction #jack hotchner #aaron hotchner

[lizacstuff]

😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭🤯🤯😭😭😱😤😭😭😭😭😭😭😭🤬🤬🤬🤬😭 What did you think of the episode? I always look forward to reading your thoughts.

Yep. Your emojis pretty much sum it up, don't they? LOL. I think the episode is decent in terms of quality, it was well-paced, very dramatic, the acting from Hande and Kerem was astounding, but watching it was just like constantly toggling between pain and fury, and that is not that fun.  

Part of me wants to say it was a well written episode, because it definitely made me feel and I thought it flowed well, but part of me wants to say it was terribly written because the number of contrivances and character assassinations (spoiler alert, I don’t list Serkan in that number) that had to occur to set it up is way too much. So maybe I'll settle on that the episode was well written, but the nonsense they needed to make it work was hackneyed. 

This was the first time I cursed the 2+ hour format. On shows I'm used to, if an episode is hard to take, you just have to suck it up for 42 minutes, 2+ hours was a lot of sucking it up.  My apologies in advance if I curse a LOT. I think I'm going to approach this by giving my take on each character in turn.  I'll start with the characters on the shit list and it will go from shittiest to slightly less shity.  Characters not on the shit list are down below. (spoiler alert: Serkan and Eda are safely on the NOT shit list) 

(Keep reading below the cut)

CHARACTERS ON SHIT LIST

Selin - WTF? I've thought she was a huge, pathetic turd since episode 18, and I thought she left in a disgraceful way, siccing psycho Balca on him, and it was frustrating that she never had to answer for any of her psycho moves, but this is a new level of crazy, bitter, fucked up that I could not have imagined for her. The writers really said: how can we make her the worst person ever?  Plot wise, at least they made it make sense why he would call her. The last time period he remembers, she was his girlfriend. I get it, and I think I get why they did it. As I've said before, if amnesia Serkan wakes up and finds this amazingly beautiful woman standing over him, and finds out she's his fiancé, even if he doesn't remember her it's not the worst thing in the world. They decided, I suppose, to make their journey back together that much harder and earned. They wanted him in the least receptive frame of mind when he met the amazingly beautiful woman. Enter Selin to manipulate and poison his mind. And lose any last shred of dignity she might have retained from the first time around. 

Is there anyone who didn't want to slap the shit out of her every single second she appeared on screen? I have no idea where she got the confidence this episode. The only saving grace is the bitch is going down hard.  Piril and Ferit both tried to warn her, as did Eda, but it's not going to be pretty for her. And the only thing I hope is that she actually pays some sort of price other than the utter emotional devastation and humiliation she's going to get. Frankly, I think she should be charged with kidnapping since she was hiding someone with diminished capacity that was the subject of a missing persons case. (Aydan can go down with her for not reporting it) Outside of soap operas, that is criminal. However, I doubt any of that will happen, she'll just slink off once she's found out and Serkan turns on her. 

Aydan - WTF? I don't think any of us predicted she'd be a villain this episode, and this is the first of the character assassinations that was required to make the plot work. First, her son was in a plane crash, and is recovering from severe injuries, she gets a call from Selin and she doesn't grab Eda and catch the first plane to where he is? He has amnesia and she thinks he's able to make rational, proper decisions? So she just respects his wishes not to be disturbed and leaves him with his obsessed ex-girlfriend? Who is this woman? Not Aydan. For the first 16 episodes she didn't give a damn about what Serkan wanted, she imposed her will on him and even though he resisted, she never lost him. She thinks she's going to lose him by flying to his bedside and bringing the love of his life? This makes no sense. Second, she allows devastated Eda to continue being in the AGONY of not knowing what happened to Serkan??? FUCK OFF, AYDAN. But again character assassination required to see it work. 

The one thing that's sort of in character, I think, is her hedging her bets with Selin and Eda. I've always said her acceptance of Eda was born out of self-interest. True, she saw how devastated Serkan was when they broke up and she wanted him to be happy, but mostly because she found out he was moving away from her and she thought she was losing him. She's a shrewd woman and she saw that the path to keeping him was Eda, so she got on the Eda train. I do think she genuinely cares for Eda, but if the Selin engagement lasts more than a couple days I could see her not fighting it like she should. Because where was she this episode in trying to get through to him? I get that everything happened over two short days, but she could have tried harder to talk sense into him and to probe for what Selin was feeding him. And she could have questioned Selin a whole helluva lot more. 

Piril - WTF? What is with Serkan's best friends just accepting Selin back into the fold under these circumstances? How is Piril not furious that Selin knew her good friend and business partner was alive and didn't tell her??? Selin let Piril and Engin continue to mourn him and think he was dead when he was alive, and Piril is calling her her good friend? WHAT THE FUCK? I'm not sure if this is character assassination because Piril is a bit of an odd ball, but this is assassination on just basic human reactions. Who wouldn't be furious? Who wouldn't be repulsed and incensed that she tried to move in on a brain-damaged man who had been about to marry someone else? 

Piril doesn't even need to be his best friend or to have participated in all his wedding festivities to know that's fucked up. How was Piril not screaming "BITCH YOU BE CRAZY" at her?  Like it takes Olympic level handwaving to accept Piril's conversation with Selin. Especially since she knows Selin wanted to ruin his happiness at all costs! Yes, she at least brought up the subject and very weakly said "You know we all know they are very much in love" and warned her that things might end badly, but it should have been a helluva lot stronger than that, and she should have been furious.  

Ayfer - She actually didn't do much this episode, which is the problem, because she also did very little to support Eda. TBH, I can't stand her to begin with so she makes it to this spot on the list, above people who should have been better. 

Engin - He gets a few points for telling Serkan the story and trying to bring it up again, however, he just always stopped shy from actually defending Eda or really probing for what Selin told Serkan. Again, there's a short timeline, and maybe he's planning to do it and not overwhelm Serkan, which isn't a bad thing. I just don't feel like he relayed how happy Serkan became after he met Eda. Though, to be fair, I sort of get why we didn't get really heartfelt testimonials for Eda, we want Serkan to start to fall for her again without being told to. I think they're going for a situation where Selin is the only voice in his ear, poisoning him against Eda, but even under those odds, he'll fall for her again. 

But his interactions with Serkan are not why he's on the shit list. He makes this list for just seemingly accepting Selin back and not voicing any concerns over her UTTERLY, PSYCHO, BIZARRE, eFFED UP behavior. Everything I said about Piril applies here. How is he okay that she kept the news of Serkan's survival from his best friend and business partner? Engin was the person Serkan confided in, he knows how he felt about both of those women. How is he not calling Selin out to her face?? So I don't need his friends to be in his ear telling him how much he loves Eda, but I do need them in his ear poking holes in the nonsense Selin is telling him and setting him straight on the state of their relationship when the plane went down. And I need them to be calling Selin out to her face. 

Erdem - He remains on the shitlist for gargantuan dumbassery not committed this episode.  Ferit - Ferit is low down on the shit list, but he still makes it for once again not coming down HARD on Selin. As her ex-fiancé he's in a unique position to call her out, and while he did issue her a warning, trying to soften it in terms of him not wanting her to get hurt was weak and ineffective and it feels like maybe he is still harboring feelings for her. UGH. Man, stop it! What is attractive about this bitter, manipulative psycho? Get in there and battle her on her own terms. Threaten her with the truth, push her, make her feel pushed into the corner so she gets reckless. Threaten to tell Serkan in front of her about the conversation you overheard that made you decide to leave her at the wedding table. Do something, and make it not for her own good. 

NOT SHIT LIST  Leyla - Little she could have done, in light of her relationship with one year ago Serkan, but it would be nice if at some point she gets some sort of dig in at him, "You were a better person after you met Eda."   Seyfi - It seemed like he was in the dark about Serkan being alive, Aydan must have kept it from even him, so he can be on this list. (Again Aydan would never keep it from Seyfi, so more OOC from her)

Deniz - So far he seems like a genuine, not psycho guy. He might be harboring feelings for Eda, but he didn't do anything creepy and was genuinely there for her more than almost anyone else. Did anyone catch the vibe between him and Ceren when she was leaving his shop? Ceren wasn't even mad at Ferit at that point, but there was a definite... charged moment. However this show does that from time to time, remember when Fifi seemed to have a weird tension-y moment with what's his name, Babaanne's bodyguard in one of his first episodes? That never surfaced again. 

Ceren - She was trying her best to be there for Eda. 

Melo - She was trying her best to be there for Eda. 

Sirius - Good boy! You know who your mama is. 

Serkan - Look, Serkan was a grade A asshole (you were right, Kerem) this episode. However, I have so much sympathy for him. He is a VICTIM. The man was in a plane that went down, had injuries including a traumatic brain injury, and lost the last year of his life. He appeared to be having some sort of PTSD with the nightmares. (Also thank you jebus he's sleeping on the cabin couch and that witch was going to her own home at night in Istanbul).  It's natural he called the person who he thought was his girlfriend. He was not to know that she's an evil psycho who was going to brainwash him. She is manipulating him, and I'll say it again, he is her victim. Also, I know lots of people think he was out of character and more harsh than he was in the pilot. He definitely was harsher than the pilot, but I don't think he was out of character.  In this episode, think of him as episode 3 Robot Bolat, but throw in having amnesia, experiencing trauma, being brainwashed by someone he trusts, and suffering from PTSD. 

It's a lot. He was so overwhelmed. I say episode 3 Serkan, because that's when Serkan realized he was starting to fall in love with Eda and it caused him to freak the fuck out and he was so cruel to her. He was a grade A asshole then too and we had that again, but heightened, in this episode. Sounds like he had these inklings of feelings before he even came back (he told Engin) that he didn't know what they were, but clearly they confused and frightened him, just like in episode 3. This is a man who doesn't believe in love. So to find out that he not only fell in love, but he fell so hard he became someone he doesn't recognize, I think made him recoil even faster and further, especially after Selin had brainwashed him into thinking he was manipulated into it by a bad person. So every time that Eda came near him and it affected him, whether it was physically like his heart, or that ineffable pull he felt, it made him retreat to a robotic defensive position. He didn't understand the feelings, they confused him and Selin made him fear them. Plus you add in how emotional Eda was, including the slap, and it was more than he could handle. 

It was enjoyable to watch the moments where Eda affected him, (kudos Kerem because you could see it on his face). However, those moments just pushed him into a corner, so he retreated to the place he thought was safe, which is Selin. He said it to Engin, in his retrograde amnesia mind, everything had changed but her (little does he know). It's interesting that the few flashes of Eda he had were from very early episodes. So he's not flashing to when he was fully in love with Eda, and was sure of his own heart and mind. He's flashing back to when he first started falling in love and was also scared, confused and felt out of control. And remember he's a control freak. So I'm sure that a taste of those wild, exciting, out-of-control, confusing first feelings are also fueling his current crazed state of mind. 

And that's how the events unfolded, with that state of mind. When Eda kissed him, he felt it, and it scared the crap out of him. And he said it right there in the moment, he wasn't going to let her "confuse" him, and he was going to put an end to it.  And that's what he did, try to put an end to those very confusing feelings for a person he's been told is trying to manipulate him and take advantage of him. So to make the out-of-control feelings stop, the robot malfunctioned and did the one thing he thought would get Eda to stop pushing him and shut all of it down. He proposed to the person who currently represents safety and for whom there are no confusing, wild, uncontrolled feelings. He doesn't love Selin, so there are no scary emotions attached. But did you see him when he made that speech? He was confused, and stuttering, and stumbling and looked dazed af. That's someone in acute crisis. And that shot of his face when he's hugging Selin? He looks like someone just shat on his head. Could he be more miserable?  Poor baby. 

Eda - THE REAL POOR BABY!  And the other victim in all this. Hande knocked it out of the park! She was so good. How many times did she break me this episode? A bunch. I loved that Eda was unwavering in her belief that Serkan was alive, even though everyone else had given up (except Aydan the lying sack of shit). I'm glad we know that Eda was so upset she wasn't leaving her room or eating, but I'm also glad we didn't see that. It's enough to know she started out devastated without the viewer having to wallow in it in an already upsetting episode, it was a smart move to immediately time jump 2 months. However, she wouldn't be Eda if she wasn't able to pick herself up and do what needed to be done. Which in this case was take care of Sirius, take over the firm, and keep track of the manhunt for Serkan. That's a lot on her plate, and of course she thrived. 

It was nice the whole company was behind her when she brought home the award, too bad they couldn't have backed her up like that when it came to Selin!  (pick a side, Piril!) They all need to stop acting like it's normal what Selin did! It's not normal!!!! Stop normalizing it and her! It felt like Eda was being gaslit at times, like none of the people Serkan remembered cared that Selin had obviously been preying on someone sick and injured and with diminished mental capacity. Why were they all like that!?!?!  I know, because if they’d reacted like a normal person would, Selin couldn’t have continued the charade. 

I was wondering how their first meeting would go down and Eda fainting seems entirely appropriate. And of course, he caught her without even knowing it's his job, “If you fall, I’ll catch you.”  *sob*  Eda pulling out the old classics to get him to remember was the best. Even through the pain and fury, I thoroughly enjoyed many of those moments. I, along with everyone, was thrilled to see the handcuffs back. Good move, Eda! And they fell right back into bickering and bantering. Though I think they should have taken his car, because all their memories are driving together in that car.

Bless her heart, she was doing everything to jog his memory, and I applaud that. But on one hand I think maybe she made a critical error in being so emotional (not that she could help it) because he was really freaked out by her, and I know she had been put through the wringer and Serkan not remembering her was the blow to end all blows, but she sort of lost it during that first meeting. And he was so overwhelmed that of course he shut all the way down. The truth is it's not his fault he had amnesia, he's a victim. She's totally entitled to those feelings, and the anger at him and the situation and the universe, but in trying to get through to him the heightened emotion might have been a critical error, because he just wasn't receptive to listening to her after that. On the other hand, that's how their relationship has been from the start. She's emotional and spontaneous and fiery and he navigates it. So one might hope it would spark something that he would remember. 

Same thing goes for the confrontation at his house.  He was such a dick, and she broke my heart, but she was so overwrought that I don't think Serkan of a year ago, who has now been traumatized and manipulated, could handle it and it caused him to become the worst version of himself. Again I don't fault Eda, most of us would have collapsed due to the sheer weight of what she'd been through, but her approach, coming in hot, did fuel the situation and I can see how Serkan got to that emotional place. 

At least they gave me one thing I asked for! The password. Serkan, maybe stop saying it's something you would never do, when you demonstrably did it. You bought her a star and then the coordinates were your password.  At some point your brain needs to put two and two together here. But actually I want him to check and see that he really did name a star after her. Her stealthily leaving so she didn't have to give it to him, and thus not be able to change the password, was great.

As for the last scene, girlfriend was looking FIIIIINE when she walked in that restaurant and boyfriend was having to command himself to stop looking at her. The kiss was a big swing, but she had to try and I'm sure we all wanted to hug her when he malfunctioned and did a crazy thing out of sheer panic. 

We, along with Eda, were put through the wringer this episode, but we survived and it can't get worse... okay nevermind, I'm not going to say that. Instead I'll just say, it WILL GET BETTER. There will be a reward for this pain. It's coming. We will see his awakening feelings in the next episode, I know it! Just hang on! 

#Sen Çal Kapımı #Sen cal kapimi #edser #serkan bolat #eda yildiz #sckask #sck episode discussion #edser discussion #sck 1x29 #asklizac #anonymous #Anonymous

[cauldronofmorning]

Okay so.... I've encountered your tags about "the talking scene between trapper and hawk in dr pierce and dr hyde the stuttering the grabbing the not blinking how another of hawk's coping methods has bitten the dust#trapper being soft parental but annoyed and how he needs to check out while hawkeye needs to save the entire world"... if you have time, Go off! I would love that 2000 word essay and your opinions.

It’s a bit of a mess and would probably get a C- if I handed it in, but! Dr Pierce and Dr Hyde and how it shows the difference between Hawkeye’s and Trapper’s coping methods.

Context! Alan Alda wrote the episode, mental health is important to him (not to psychoanalyze an actor, but he had depression before the show and his mom was schizophrenic) and there’s a quote on how Hawkeye didn’t actually change much in the eleven years, just had his coping methods beaten down.

So throughout season one, Hawkeye and Trapper have mostly been ignoring the trauma of a war. Hawkeye naturally ended a movie with a speech about propaganda (Yankee Doodle Doctor) and Tommy tells them (Sometimes You Hear The Bullet) about a kid who should have been the blonde hero in a war movie actually dying and not hearing a bullet, forcing them to actually quietly think about it. But for the most part, they can distract themselves with booze, pranks and women, and Hawkeye can still draw a straight line between his tenuous sanity pre-war and the place he’s in.

There’s also two important episodes in season two before Dr Pierce and Dr Hyde, that make the war more personal for both of them. The first is Radar’s Report, where a scared prisoner contaminates Trapper’s patient by knocking the blood over. Trapper’s sulkier throughout the episode, obsessed with how it could have been okay if it weren’t for that incident, and less indulging of Hawkeye’s girl of the week problem. His patient doesn’t make it, and he makes a beeline to the POW’s tent, maybe would have killed him if Hawkeye hadn’t bought him back to reality. “That’s not what we’re about.”

The second is For The Good Of The Outfit. This one has a village bombed by American military and Hawkeye/Trapper run afoul of previously decent sounding generals trying to shut them up from talking about it, including passive aggressive threats to send them to the front, and specifically to Hawkeye, intercepting letters to his dad. It’s okay by the end of the episode, but he’s still livid when he finds this out.

In comes Dr Pierce and Dr Hyde. The episode starts with Hawkeye already slightly dissociated from a long shift, thinking it hasn’t ended, and Trapper having to gently take him by the arm and guiding him out of the OR, telling him he was taking the chest cases “like he was their only hope”. Hawkeye wanting to save everyone keeps popping up throughout the episode; here, when he’s stumbling into Henry and his ego filtered through deprivation making him think he’s the only one who can do chest cases, the scene I’m getting to, and the end where Trapper and Henry sum him up.

As much as Trapper is “let’s get drunk to deal, okay?” kind of comfort in comparison to BJ who can actually talk about emotions, if not necessarily knowing the best way to deal with them (Hawkeye has a type and it’s repressed blondes), he’s soft with Hawkeye – gentle touches, firmly telling him to go to sleep, indulging that chopper noise is just thunder – until he figures the best way to get his friend to rest is to sedate him behind his back.

The thing with Trapper is that while he might be a bad husband, cheating on his wife with no shame (but he keeps bringing up that Hawkeye is more perverted so that might make it easier for him to deal with, see the couple of times he glares at Hawk for flirting with Henry/a male patient, Divided We Stand, The Trial Of Henry Blake, Check Up, Life With Father, Adam’s Ribs), he’s a good father who ran into a minefield for Kim and tried to go AWOL for Cathy and Becky. That’s not to say he always treats Hawkeye like a child, that would be weird considering how much flirting they do, but when the other man is manic or badly affected, Trapper’s first instinct is to be parental.

After Hawkeye in his doubletalky way admits to Radar he’s compulsive and psychotic (sidenote:  his symptoms of strong emotions, not being able to think clearly and too many spirals to name actually bear that diagnosis out, instead of just using the word when one thinks another is behaving badly), he wanders around the camp like a ghost, making notes about corpsmen with guns and nurses checking patients in post-op.

As Hawkeye often does, whenever he finds something out, or thinks he has in this instance, he has to tell his live-in boyfriend of the season immediately, and if he can’t sleep then neither can anyone else. He sits on Trapper’s bed, extremely close and not blinking, and jostles him awake. Already Trapper’s slightly panicky, as no matter what he says about being the mellow one, any time there’s shouting or loud noise in the swamp, he always wakes up with a start. Even when he sees it’s Hawkeye it takes him a few seconds to process and get back into his role.

Hawkeye’s very sad and very quiet. For the past seven minutes, even though he’s dissociated, exhausted and not doing well, he’s still trying to do his normal thing of turning his anger sideways and being snarky or being a clown bottom for the gaggle of nurses. Going back to one of Trapper’s good qualities is that he’s a decent parent, Hawkeye can regress emotionally into being like a ten year old (incidentally, the age when he had the most trauma pre-Korea, with Billy, his mom dying, guilt over not wanting dad to remarry and at some point losing his virginity), both for funny like in Picture This and for sadness.

So he’s finally noticed that he’s in a war zone and he’s too tired to make jokes about it or distract himself from it. Trapper already sounds frustrated but still listens, telling him to go bed before he drives himself crazy. There’s been a few takes that Trapper would get sick of later Hawkeye, and given how much they really can’t talk to each other that often, even just a mention of Hawkeye’s will when he has to go to the front makes Trapper shut down and Hawkeye cover with a joke, that’s probably true. They’re both messes, but for now Trapper can give Hawkeye someone to lean on.

“If I thought I could stop it just by going to sleep, don’t you think I would try?” Hawkeye does a twitch of the head, still unblinking, and that’s just really asking Trapper to understand and take him seriously. Also the wording, he’s not saying he can stop thinking about it just by going to sleep, or stop feeling anything just by closing his eyes, although both of those are implied. He makes it very clear later on (Letters, Preventive Medicine, Blood Brothers) that he feels like he’s as bad as the war – god and martyr complex combined – and if he can’t fight against/blame everything on that then it’s time for some self loathing.

Trapper does actually pay attention and gives him some advice. Definitely not great advice, but advice nonetheless, to close his eyes when things get unbearable, and to keep checking out when it keeps happening. This can’t work for Hawkeye, who’s had a guilt complex ever since he was a child, but it’s how Trapper copes. The next episode when Kim’s mother turns up for the boy, after a time of being actually open, he goes right to dismissive snark. Plus in season three’s Mad Dogs and Servicemen, another one on how differently Trapper and Hawkeye deal with things, he shrugs that he pretends he’s not there all day along.

Hawkeye’s stuttering a bit at this point. Words are important to him, it’s why you should probably leave him a note even if you’re a man who 1) wants to forget about Korea as soon as he arrives in Boston but won’t 2) wants desperately to believe he’s straight but isn’t 3) cares through physical touch and can’t think of what to say for seventy two hours. Wordplay is important to him too, and he admits to Sidney in the finale that his brain thinks too fast. Obviously exhaustion is going to put his brain and mouth out of sync, and considering how he sounds like he’s going to cry in the mess tent when he can’t even get words out to Frank Burns, it makes him all that more helpless.

“Somebody, and it wasn’t you or me, started this war.” It’s the “whoever the them, we were always us” of it all. It’ll be more important in the third season, and what happens in Welcome To Korea, but Hawkeye has taken it for granted that he and Trapper will stay co-dependent no matter what happens or who they come up against or how their time is running out. Much how he probably didn’t tell Trapper about the abandonment trauma he’s suffered before, Trapper always reassures him to come back soon, or no charge for leaning on him, or it isn’t a Christmas goodbye, and doesn’t want to share real feelings.

Beyond that scene, with Hawkeye dragging himself off to be a hero, assume that everyone who tries to take care of him really just wants to sleep with him, and cry while singing, Trapper tries to sedate him while he’s not looking. He’s tried being parental, he’s tried the repression advice, it’s time to be passive aggressive for Hawkeye’s own good. Or what he thinks is Hawkeye’s own good. It’s not especially great on Trapper’s part, but a similar thing happens reversed in Mail Call, where a drunk Trapper tries to go AWOL and as soon as he’s distracted laughing at Frank, Hawkeye locks his bag away so Trapper won’t be tempted again. Both of them are repressed messes who can’t really talk to each other.

When that sedation attempt ends up in Frank falling over, Trapper goes to Henry to be the worried macho boyfriend. Like with the only comedic dancing allowed and not the time in Officers Only when a genuine offer gets turned down, being protective over Hawkeye where he can hear can only happen when it’s for fun/likely no real danger.

At the end, Trapper and Henry sit by Hawkeye’s bed when he’s finally asleep and talk about him. Kindly, but they know he’s unstable with a hero complex. Like Mulcahy said in season eleven, the camp has a lot of experience with not dealing with reality, and even Trapper says in Iron Guts Kelly that one man’s reality is another man’s fantasy. Nobody has the capability to talk about this yet, and Sidney and Hawkeye only really become friends in O.R. Hawkeye will wake up and he and Trapper will pretend this never happened.

When Adam’s Ribs comes around, and Hawkeye has a manic episode over needing to eat something that isn’t liver or fish, Trapper and Henry are again the ones looking after him, comparing him to their kids and Trapper in the background both snarking over Hawkeye’s slippage in sanity and looking out for him. It’s not as quite high stakes as Dr Pierce and Dr Hyde, but they’re still worried about him.

To end this out, Trapper and Hawkeye and mental health is a fun thing to look at. Neither of them are particularly emotionally intelligent yet, Hawkeye just kind of a self absorbed mess and Trapper finding it easier to be a reassuring rock and keep his own struggling to himself, and they keep things from each other while also taking past each other, but they comfort each other with jokes and distractions that only they can understand. The repressed clowns are trying, even if it does all end with a borrowed kiss and only just barely missing each other.

#hawkeye pierce #trapper john mcintyre #mental health tw #dr pierce and dr hyde #mash #piercintyre #gene-ious