Emily (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
iluvroadrunner6) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
roadrunnermuses2012-02-07 05:34 pm
iluvroadrunner6) wrote in roadrunnermuses2012-02-07 05:34 pm
Entry tags:
requests } { 100 situations
Okay. Here's the deal.
My writing muse has been kicking me in the ass. I want to try and jumpstart it. So here is the plan: under the cut there is a table of prompts that I stole from
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif){kind=small}
100_situations. You give me a verse and/or pairing and a prompt, and I will write you comment fic.It doesn't have to be something we play. It could just be something that you know I know. Crossovers are gold. Cracky funtime prompts are even better. You can give me as many as you want, but do keep in mind that there are only a hundred prompts and you do need to share.
I will try to get as many of these as I can done this week so that they're not other there forever as they usually are. Just MAKE ME WRITE. Please. I will guarantee you at least a hundred words.
Thank you.
| 001. | Tired | 002. | Back Alley | 003. | Sunrise | 004. | Late | 005. | Son |
| 006. | Hot | 007. | Friend | 008. | Floor | 009. | Cheat | 010. | Think |
| 011. | Disgust | 012. | Shelter | 013. | Borrow | 014. | Chair | 015. | Alter |
| 016. | Peace | 017. | Beach | 018. | True | 019. | Crazy | 020. | Love |
| 021. | New | 022. | Beggar | 023. | False | 024. | Happy | 025. | Cancer |
| 026. | Pickpocket | 027. | Reverse | 028. | Deliver | 029. | Arrival | 030. | Fall |
| 031. | Knife | 032. | Torn | 033. | Danger | 034. | Neutral | 035. | Mate |
| 036. | Fly | 037. | Loud | 038. | Touch | 039. | Seek | 040. | Argue |
| 041. | Work | 042. | Sink | 043. | Nut | 044. | Stuck | 045. | Animal |
| 046. | Pray | 047. | Kill | 048. | Light | 049. | Cold | 050. | Affair |
| 051. | Restaurant | 052. | Movie | 053. | Wait | 054. | Patient | 055. | Crime |
| 056. | Choke | 057. | Fever | 058. | Summer | 059. | Eat | 060. | Thirst |
| 061. | Chance | 062. | Appear | 063. | Whisper | 064. | Day | 065. | Scream |
| 066. | Fail | 067. | Confused | 068. | Smile | 069. | Come | 070. | Alone |
| 071. | Fast | 072. | Slow | 073. | Return | 074. | Fire | 075. | Positive |
| 076. | Baby | 077. | Upset | 078. | Kitchen | 079. | Winter | 080. | Ignorant |
| 081. | Fool | 082. | Afraid | 083. | Prison | 084. | Sex | 085. | Hate |
| 086. | Alarm | 087. | Genius | 088. | Negative | 089. | Flood | 090. | Bomb |
| 091. | Hospital | 092. | Trap | 093. | Celebrate | 094. | Old | 095. | Disappear |
| 096. | Writer‘s Choice. | 097. | Writer‘s Choice. | 098. | Writer‘s Choice. | 099. | Writer‘s Choice. | 100. | Writer‘s Choice. |
Total Word Count: 38,549 words
no subject
044. Stuck - Parker / Neal
don't need your heart cuz i've got mine | alias/leverage | 750 words
Eliot sighs heavily as he leans back against the chair he’s tied to. Rachel is at his back and needless to say this is not the way he wanted to see her again. This isn’t really the way you want to see anyone again, but finding out she’s CIA is one of the many low points in his very eventful day. But right now, his major concern is that they’re tied together, while the person who ambushed them is getting away with the package.
The fact that Rachel isn’t concerned with that, however, is a little troubling.
“Don’t you think you have bigger things to worry about right now?”
“I mean, is it just something about me? Do I look like an easy mark?”
“Rachel.” She’s spiraling, unable to really focus on much else. To be fair, focusing on him is better than focusing on the fact that Damien Moreau is most assuredly going to kill them, but it isn’t helpful at the moment. They need to get out of there before Moreau comes back to actually follow through on that promise, and Rachel panicking isn’t going to get them anywhere.
“It has to be something. First Sark, now you—that can’t be a coincidence.”
“Rachel, now really isn’t the—” It takes a moment, but his brain actually processes the name, and he cranes his head around to try and get a better look at her. “—Julian Sark?”
“Okay, I don’t need you rubbing it in on top of it, alright? It wasn’t exactly my finest moment.”
Eliot still can’t get over the fact that she just compared him to that tool, but he swallows that down for now—or tries. “I am nothing like Julian Sark.”
“Eliot—”
“No, Sark is a pompous ass, we’re not even close to the same person.” Eliot might not be a nice guy, but he at least is not as bad as Sark.
“Right. So you’re saying that you would have remembered my name and called me?”
The sarcasm was there, and the instinct is there to bite back, but he knows she has a point. His head dips a bit, and he smirks. “I was thinkin’ about it.”
There’s a long pause from the girl at his back, and then a squeak as she shifts in her chair. “Really?”
“If we don’t get out of here, it’s not going to matter, so I think we should figure that out first.”
At that, there’s a bit of a laugh. “I think you’re not quite getting what my mission is here.”
“I’m guessing the company sent you in here to infiltrate Moreau’s organization.”
“Yeah. But I’m not meant to be here undercover. I’m the bait.”
“Bait?”
As soon as the word is out of his mouth, sounds of a scuffle echo from down the hall. It makes Eliot even more anxious to get out of these zip ties and be able to defend himself, but when the door’s finally broken down—the face on the other side is not who he expects.
“Bristow?”
Sydney looks at him for a moment, before laughing. “Eliot Spencer. I should have known.”
Rachel only continues to look amused. Or at least that’s what he can hear in her voice. “I take it you two have met before?”
“It’s a long story.” They reply simultaneously, and Sydney smirks again before continuing.
“I tried to get him to work for APO.”
“Which she should have known wasn’t going to happen.”
“I didn’t know that. I can be very persuasive.”
“The last time we saw each other before that you broke my arm!”
“That wasn’t personal. And you put up a pretty good fight before I managed to break that arm. I can recognize capable when I see it.”
Eliot rolls his eyes as the zip ties are finally cut free and he rubs his wrists. “I work alone.”
“Yeah, I’m getting that.” Sydney sighs heavily and looks at both of them. “Dixon is loading up Moreau and his men. We’re heading out to the rendezvous in five.”
“I’ll be there.” Rachel nods, and Sydney and the rest of her men clear out the room. She waits until Eliot turns her, before giving him a bit of a smile. “So. Were you really serious about calling me, or were you saying that to one-up Sark?”
He laughs softly, before leaning in a bit closer. “I guess you’ll have to wait and see.”
i'm gonna stick like glue | swallow the lies | 1613 words
Planning isn’t necessarily a luxury he can always afford. When he can, when he takes the time to make sure something will go off without a hitch, it usually does. He plans for all the angles, makes sure there’s always an exit strategy, and is never afraid to play a long game. Especially when it’s something this important.
He has ninety-five percent of the FBI angle worked out. Agent McSweeten is pleasantly easy to convince that Neal is an asset worth being borrowed, and Peter’s finally stopped giving him that judgmental ‘I know you’re up to something’ stare. All he needs is to fool the one thing he can’t con. His tracking anklet.
Fortunately, he knows a fantastic hacker.
Unfortunately, Hardison hates him.
… Okay, hate is probably a strong word, but Hardison definitely doesn’t like Neal, which makes it harder for Neal to convince him that this is something that needs to be done. Normally, he would wine him and dine him, but given that Hardison’s in Boston and Neal’s in New York, he’s going to have to do this over the phone.
The phone rings a few times, before Hardison’s voice comes over the line. “Yeah?”
“Hardison! It’s Neal.”
“No.” Then there is a click! as the line is disconnected.
That went about as well as could be expected. Neal waits for about five minutes, before hitting redial on the phone.
“What part of ‘no’ wasn’t clear the first time?”
“It’s for Parker.”
There’s another long pause on the other end of the line. “What?”
“I need you to help me hack my tracking anklet.”
“Your tracking anklet.” Neal could practically see the frustration on Hardison’s face already. “Sorry. You’re right, I did give you the wrong answer. I should have said hell no.”
“Hardison, it’s for—”
“Do not give me the it’s for Parker crap. I am not an idiot. Hacking your anklet sounds more like something for you than something for her.”
“Would you give me five minutes to explain before you rush to judgment on what I’m asking you to do? Please?”
“Fine. Five minutes.” There’s a beep from somewhere on the other side of the phone.
“Are you timing me?”
“You are wasting your five minutes.”
Neal sighs heavily before speaking again. “Parker’s birthday is coming up, in case you didn’t already know—”
“What. Yes, I already knew that. Parker and I have a deep and profound bond. We understand each other in ways that you do not and will never comprehend.”
There’s a pause. “Are you done?”
“Am I—Am I done? You really gone go and ask me that right now?”
“Hardison … ”
“Just get on with it.”
“Parker and I have this … tradition. But in order to do it this year, I need for my tracking anklet to say I’m in my hotel room, safe and sound.”
“And you want me to make that happen.”
“You’re the only person I know who feasibly could.”
There is another long pause on the other end of the line as Hardison mulls it over. Neal knows that the last thing Hardison wants to do is help him, but he also knows with Parker on the table, there’s little room for him to say no. There’s a heavy sigh.
“Send me the specs and I’ll see what I can do.” A pause. “But if I manage to do this do not think that you are getting a ‘get off the anklet’ free card. This is just for Parker’s birthday.”
“I wouldn’t expect anything more.” Neal tries not to sound pleased at the fact that he’s getting his way, but he’s never been very good at that. “I’m sending you the specs now.” He sends the email before leaning back with the phone. “Thank you, Hardison.”
“I still don’t like you.”
He doesn’t give Neal a chance to respond to that before he hangs up the phone. It’s not much, but at least he still didn’t say no.
***
“You know, I’m surprised Agent Hagen would wind up with someone like you. She doesn’t seem the criminal type.”
It takes a lot for Neal not to laugh at that, but he’s not about to blow Parker’s cover. “It wasn’t something we planned, really. It just … happened.”
McSweeten nods, but he can see that the man is pretty disappointed. He clearly had a bit of a crush on Parker himself. Not that Neal could blame him, really. Parker is pretty fantastic. They come up to the hotel room door, and McSweeten hesitates for a moment before knocking.
There’s no sound behind the door before Parker opens it, looking confused. Her eyes linger on McSweeten for a moment, and then shift to Neal. There’s a small amount of recognition there, but she’s still not entirely sure what’s happening.
“Agent McSweeten. Neal.”
“Agent Hagen,” he says with a smile. It’s his subtle way of letting Parker in on the con, and her eyebrows go up for a moment before she responds.
“What’s going on?”
“Agent Burke loaned Neal to us for a case, and watching him hasn’t been much trouble. However, my partner and I have to take care of some … official business that we can’t take Caffrey along on. He’s assured us that he will be safe with you.”
Neal is grinning at her over McSweeten’s shoulder, and Parker is trying her best not to look amused. It’s actually not bad. She’s gotten better at that since the last time he saw her.
“No problem,” she says, stepping to the side so that he can come inside. “I’ll make sure he stays out of trouble.”
“Thank you,” McSweeten nods as he steps back, and Neal makes his way into the hotel room. “It was nice seeing you again, Agent Hagen.”
“You too, Agent McSweeten.” As soon as McSweeten starts heading down the hallway, Parker closes the door behind him, and gives Neal a look. “What are you doing here?”
“Working a case for the FBI,” he says innocently, his shoulders coming up in a bit of a shrug. “Just like the man said.”
“In Boston?”
Neal takes a deep breath, before giving her a bit of an innocent look. “It’s your birthday.”
“Duh. I know that.” She frowns, crossing her arms in front of her chest. “I’m not sure what that has to do with … ” Her voice drifts off as what he’s asking her starts to dawn on her. “And you’re in Boston.”
“I am,” he grins.
“What about your anklet?”
“Hardison.”
“ … He helped you? I thought he hates you.”
“I think hate is a strong word.”
“He told me once he wanted to strangle you with your tie. And punch out the bottom of your hat.”
Neal pauses as he takes that in. “I’m not sure if I should be more worried for my life or my hats.”
“But he helped you.”
“In theory. I guess we’ll have to wait and see what happens, but so far, so good.”
Parker doesn’t let that statement weigh on her for long. If Hardison helped, it must be good enough for her, because her next response is a wide, child-like smile and moving a bit closer to him.
“So. What are we stealing?”
***
When the curators at the Harvard Art Museum come in to work the next morning, they are dismayed to find that they are down a Gustave Moreau, as well as a portrait of Augusta Savage.
They would have been extremely upset, if not for the fact that two days later, the pieces were mailed back to them, perfectly intact.
***
Neal returns to New York with a bit of a bounce in his step, something that seems to rub Peter the wrong way from the moment he walks in the door. Neal does his best to ignore it, going right to his desk and settling in to catch up on what he missed. Peter is the one who makes his way over to him, leaning against the side of his desk with a look.
“Have a nice vacation?”
“Vacation?” Neal blinks up at him. “I was working a case. I’d hardly call that a vacation.”
“You were in Boston. Trying to tell me you didn’t take the opportunity to see Parker?”
Neal’s face continued to remain completely innocent. “Even if I did—it’s not really a vacation if you just see your girlfriend for a few hours the night before you leave.”
“So Parker’s your girlfriend now?”
“In the conventional sense. I don’t know if that’s what she would call it, but it’s close enough.”
Peter’s quiet for a moment, still regarding Neal with a look that says he doesn’t quite trust Neal’s intentions being honorable. Neal, honestly, couldn’t say he blamed him, but he isn’t going to be giving anything up either.
“While you were in Boston, the Harvard Art Museum was hit. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?”
“Why do I have the feeling I should be worried?”
“Do you have anything to be worried about?”
“Can’t say I do, no.”
“Good,” Peter replies, before pushing away from Neal’s desk and heading back to his office. “Keep it that way.”
Neal waits until Peter’s back in the office before burying his smirk in the file in front of him. Five minutes later, his phone buzzes in his pocket as he gets a text from Parker.
What are we doing for your birthday?
Neal grins a bit at that, before sending a quick response back:
I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me?
To start off with, but I will probably add more.
094. Old - Castiel & Elijah.
protect your family, keep them from harm | supernatural/the vampire diaries | 1157 words
“Office hours ended thirty minutes ago. If you care that much about your survival in my class, try again next week—and arrive on time.”
“I’m sure that would matter if I were actually your student.”
Her head snaps up at that, before tipping to the side. The man standing at the door she’s never seen before, but there’s something familiar about him. Something that nags at her memory somehow and she can’t quite place where.
“I’m sorry,” she says softly. She closes her briefcase and makes her way closer, trying to place the face. “I wasn’t expecting anyone.”
“I didn’t make an appointment.” He pauses for a moment, before extending a hand to her. “My name’s Alaric Saltzman. Are you—”
“Professor Abigail Winters,” she fills in quickly, shaking his hand. “Saltzman—Isobel Saltzman’s husband. I’m so sorry for your loss.”
“I was hoping I could talk to you about Isobel.”
She frowns a bit at that, taking a step closer so that she was in his personal space a bit more. “I’m sure you know far more about your wife than I do as a colleague.”
“You two seem to have communicated a lot before she disappeared,” he replies simply. “I was hoping that you might have some light to shed on the subject.”
She pauses hesitantly for a moment, unsure what to tell him. She pulls her hands back just a bit as she folds her coat over her arm. “I think that that conversation is best to have over a drink.” She turns to make her way back to her desk, pausing to scribble something down quickly. “I have an appointment for dinner, but if you meet me here, we can discuss your wife’s work. Say around ten o’clock?”
He watches her carefully for her moment, before nodding, taking the paper from between her fingers. “I’ll be there. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” she says with a nod. “I’ll see you at ten.”
She waits until she’s out of the office, and down to her car before removing the coat from her arm and looking over the wallet she had lifted from him. She flips it open as she pulls out her phone and calls her contact to verify his identity.
She knows what Isobel Saltzman was into. She isn’t the kind of girl to get fooled easily.
***
She arrives at the bar right on time. Even when she was a thief she was never late, and she isn’t about to start now. When she spots Alaric at the bar, she makes her way closer, coming up next to him and handing over his wallet.
“You left this in my office this afternoon.”
She can see the glare in his eyes as he takes it from her. “Funny how I don’t remember taking it out.”
She gives him a bit of a look. “Did you really expect me to just take you on your word? Websites, credit cards, they can all be faked. License numbers, not so much.”
“So you really are Bela Talbot.”
“I’m surprised that that name is still floating around.” She turns to order a drink from the bartender, and once it arrives, she gestures to one of the tables in the back. “I think we should take this somewhere a little more private.”
Alaric takes a deep breath, and nods. “Lead the way.”
She waits until they’re settled in the back table, before crossing her legs in front of her and sipping her drink. “Now. I’m not sure exactly what you’re looking for from me. Isobel only came to me with a question about some family heirlooms.”
“She didn’t use you as a source regarding vampires.”
“Personally, I wasn’t looking to be drawn back into that life again, and beyond that, my expertise lies more in the spirit realm than it does in vampires and werewolves.” She takes another sip of her drink and shifts a bit. “Besides, I felt the direction of her research was a tad … unhealthy for someone who was supposedly looking from an academic standpoint.”
“And you didn’t think to warn someone?”
She could tell he is starting to get angry, but she keeps her cool. “Mr. Saltzman, I was not your wife’s babysitter. I wasn’t going to help her turn herself into one, if that’s what you’re suggesting, and I made that clear from the beginning. My expertise was objects with supernatural power, and I kept our relationship to that.” She shrugs as she places her glass down on the table again. “In my experience, I’ve found that when people are bound and determined to do something, they don’t normally take no for an answer, and vampires have … quite the allure.”
She isn’t telling the man what he wants to hear, but she’s out of that business. As of right now, she’s just giving him the facts. He takes a long swig of his drink before turning back to her again. “You said she asked you to appraise an heirloom?”
“Yes,” she sighs. “She had a ring, and she wanted to see if it could do what the person who gave it to her said it would do.” She pauses for a moment, before gesturing to the large, slightly garish ring on his hand. “That ring, actually.”
He glances down at his hand, studying it for a moment, before looking back up at her again. “What does it do?”
“The ring was designed by Jonathan Gilbert—a man who is known for his supernatural … ingenuity. It’s said that the ring possesses the power to raise it’s wearer from the dead, provided that they were killed by supernatural means.”
“Jonathan Gilbert.” He’s not hearing her, not completely. He’s just processing the information he can actually process, and that’s not particularly Bela’s problem. She’ll just answer what’s asked of her.
“He lived during the Civil War in a small town called Mystic Falls,” she replied. “It’s known for it’s vampire activity, especially during that time period.”
He nods for a moment, and there’s something calculating about it, with the focus of a man who has lost too much. It reminds her of someone she knows, but she isn’t going to bring that up now. “Mystic Falls, Virginia?”
“You have read your wife’s notes.”
He’s quiet for a moment, before looking back at her. “I need you to tell me what you know about vampires.”
She sighs heavily, before gesturing for one of the nearby waiters. “That conversation is going to need another drink.”
how's the weather, whether or not we're together | supernatural/the vampire diaries | 2002 words
The Friendship Rituals of an Adult (Slightly Insane) Angel
Atticus Shane, MFA
When dealing with some of the oldest and most powerful beings in existence, it is an interesting experiment to determine how, in fact, they form connections with the rest of the world. While some of the more common supernatural populaces have been “humanized,” in a sense, or exposed to the human population at large by necessity of using some of them as a source of nourishment, when a creature is as elusive as an angel of the Lord, it makes it hard to determine what measures they would take in search of that essential personal connection. While there are some critics who believe that socialization at that level of ascension is entirely unnecessary, or only desired between those of a similar nature, I recently came across a case that speaks to the idea that they seek communion with other beings just as much as we do.
While this case may be the exception as oppose to the rule, I found it to be quite enlightening to say the least …
~~~~
Castiel has grown quite fond of Mystic Falls.
He’s never been one to be fond of a place, as it were, and he has always considered Heaven his home, but that is no longer possible. He has done too much damage under the banner of trying to do good. Making a new home among the humans is not only the best course of action, it’s his only one. Not that he’s complaining. He’s always been fond of the humans, one way or the other, and he’s very certain that he could make a home in this place that he’s been called to.
After helping repair Alaric’s mind and scaring off the Original Witch in the process, Elena is nice enough to let him stay in her home. Given that the options are the Gilbert house and a mental asylum, and it’d be ungrateful of him to refuse that kind of hospitality, he agrees to stay, inserting himself into their lives in his own interesting way. He even thinks that he’s starting to grow on Jeremy a bit, even though he nearly eviscerated that strange console with the buttons accidentally.
(He warned them about his abilities around electronics. It’s also entirely possible that she just wants him there because Klaus tends to avoid her home when he’s there, regardless of him not being invited in, but Castiel is choosing to ignore the obvious for the moment and keep hold of the idea that Elena has invited him there because she considers him a friend.)
Mystic Falls is small enough and has enough weirdness surrounding it that most of the time he goes unnoticed. He prefers it that way, to be in a place where he can interfere, where he can help, but still maintain the anonymity that he used to hold as an angel. In the end, it’s truly the perfect place for him. Even the Leviathan manage to stay out of his way.
Mostly.
The lone Leviathan that happened to stray into town came across something else first. It’s entire plan consisted of eating a poor stranger in a suit who happened to come their way. Given that Castiel couldn’t afford to let them find out where he is, he assisted in incapacitating it, slicing it’s head off before it could take it’s first bite and watching as the body dropped to the ground. The person the Leviathan had been intent on eating—a vampire, from the looks of him, but not a normal one—looks up at him with wide grateful eyes.
“Thank you.”
“I wouldn’t thank me yet.” Castiel moves over to the head, picking it up off the ground and turning the eyes to face him. “If we do not separate it’s head from it’s body, it will come back to life soon enough.” There’s a pause as he considers his options. “I should just drop him in the ocean.”
“I’m afraid I don’t—”
The man doesn’t have the chance to finish. Castiel has disappeared to just as he said he would—drop the head of the Leviathan in the Atlantic Ocean. He returns mere seconds later, to be greeted with a (extremely) strong hand against his neck, and his vessel being slammed into a nearby tree before he could realize what is happening. One of the street lights above them shorts out in response.
“I don’t like conflict.”
“Tell me what you are, and I am certain we won’t have any.”
“I am an angel of the Lord.”
The man drops his hand from Castiel’s throat as though he’s been burned, which is odd, because he wasn’t intending to smite him. He stays where he is, back against the tree for a moment, before tipping his head to the side.
“Are you one of the Original vampires?”
The man looks startled for a moment—he probably isn’t used to being called out on things that he hasn’t revealed himself—but he recovers all the same. “Yes. I am Elijah.”
“It is nice to meet you.” Castiel is fairly certain he is already making a friend. “My name is Castiel.”
“Castiel.” There’s a pause. “The man my brother was so concerned with.”
“If your brother is Klaus then yes.” Castiel’s chest puffs slightly as he smiles. “I have been staying with the Gilberts. To keep them safe.”
The vampire—Elijah—studies him carefully for a moment. “They are lucky to have you.”
“I am happy to help.”
“Yet you don’t like conflict.”
“The conflict is not with me. It is not forcing me to choose between two sides.” Elena’s side is the right one by a mile. Castiel has learned that he does not do well with shades of gray.
“I see. I have one more question for you, before I should let you return to that purpose.”
“Of course.”
“What is that?” He points to the headless body that was still lying in the middle of the street.
“That would be a Leviathan.”
~~~~
After this point the angel in question seems to have developed a strange sort of kinship with the vampire. While inherently one-sided (it’s assumed that the vampire seems to respect the angel more for his ability than be actually interested in who he is as a person), it could almost be said that the angel has imprinted on the vampire, for reasons that could correlate to both his age and power, and has taken to something almost akin to stalking, if stalking involved overtures as harmless as teleporting in to the Mikaelson home for something as harmless as a game of Sorry.
At the same time, when you’re a millennia year-old being with the kind of power that burns people out of existence, perhaps the analogy isn’t so wrong. However, eventually the overtures became less unwelcome, and the choice of games was upgraded to something more complex—games of strategy such as chess, or in their less structured moods, something like Risk.
However, there is always conflict when you’re dealing with members of different species. Unfortunately for our ancient friends, the angel and the vampire are no exception.
~~~~
Castiel should have known they’d come.
To this day he isn’t entirely sure if it was him, drawing them in like a beacon, or the lure of doppelganger blood, but it isn’t long before Dick Roman makes his way into town, planning to claim Mystic Falls as his own. People slowly begin to be replaced, but Castiel has an advantage. He can see them coming, regardless of what skin they’re wearing, and when those faces start to get a little too close to Elena for his comfort, he does the only thing he can do.
He takes his newfound friends somewhere safe—Elijah included.
The Winchester aren’t given much warning before everyone is teleported into their living room—Bela and Alaric, Jeremy and Elena, and Elijah rounding out the group. However, when you forget something as simple as the fact that vampires need to be invited in, it doesn’t exactly make for a quiet entrance.
Elijah’s left gasping for breath, zooming erratically throughout the living room, and Castiel glances to the side, unconcerned, before turning his attention back to Dean. Dean, who happened to already be holding a gun on Bela, while Sam just looks around with wide eyes.
“You’re going to need to invite him in.”
Elijah blurs past their line of vision again, and Dean glares at the angel in question. “I’m not inviting a vampire into my home, Cas.”
“He’s my friend. He won’t hurt anyone.”
“Your friend choices are already looking a little questionable, dude.” Sam tips his head towards Bela for a moment before his eyebrows go up. “Just saying.”
Elena huffs, frustrated. “He’s going to destroy the house if someone doesn’t do something.”
Elijah manages to find the front door in his haze, throwing it open with some force and stopping just short of the threshold. He takes a moment to catch his breath, before looking over at Castiel with a sharp glare. “Some warning may have been nice, Castiel.”
“I had to get you out of Mystic Falls before you were replaced.” He then turns his attention back to Dean. “Dick Roman is in Mystic Falls. I believe he was looking for Elena. She should remain safe if she’s here, but if you’re going to … partake in this suicide mission to stop them, now would be the time.”
Dean exhales slowly before nodding. “And you couldn’t have just called?”
“I need to make sure that Elena would be safe.”
“And Elena is … ?”
“The Petrova Doppelganger.” Sam finishes the sentence before Castiel can, and at least he knows what the words mean, or at least he seems to. He takes a breath, before nodding. “We should go. Now. We’re not going to get another shot at this.”
Dean nods again, before starting to reach for his bag. “How do you know he won’t know she’s gone?”
“Katherine Pierce is also in Mystic Falls. I believe she should keep him sufficiently distracted until then, provided he doesn’t eat her when she learns of my deception.”
There’s a sharp laugh from the doorway, and Elijah shakes his head. “I believe it would take much more than that to do away with Katerina Petrova.”
Dean slips his bag over his shoulder, before extending a hand towards Castiel. “We travelin’ by angel or what?”
“Dean.” Castiel holds his gaze for a moment, before glancing back to his friend beyond the threshold of the cabin. He then looks back to Dean again, and Dean rolls his eyes.
“Really, Cas? Why’d you have to make friends with a vampire?”
“Would you preferred I make friends with a hybrid?”
“No!” Elena pipes up, shaking her head. “You really wouldn’t. Not unless it was Tyler.”
“No, you know what? None of this means anything to me.” Dean huffs slightly, before waving a hand. “Alright, you can come in. But if you eat any of them? I’m taking your friggin’ head off.” There’s a beat. “Except for Bela. You can definitely eat Bela.”
If Bela has a smart remark to fire back with, it’s swallowed in the rush of Castiel flying them away from the cabin.
~~~~
After the incident with the Leviathan called “Dick Roman,” the angel Castiel has not been seen since—in Mystic Falls or anywhere else. While some theorize that he’s out there somewhere, perhaps called back to Heaven on some kind of divine mission, it’s hard to say that he wouldn’t have at least returned to say goodbye to his friends. He is dearly missed by both those of the Gilbert house hold, as well as some other members of the town, even if they can’t quite bring themselves to admit it.
For someone who spent most of his life observing humanity far and away from the rest of us, he certainly made quite the impression.
no subject
057. Fever - Chris/Bonnie
041. Work - Stefan/Buffy
046. Pray - ripper!Stefan/dark!Bonnie (you don't have to do this one but...I couldn't help it)
i've lived too long on my knees | warm witch's blood | 632 words
Not that he has ever been much for it in the first place. He’s always believed in God, but the idea of God believing in him stopped when he became a vampire. There are certain actions that take you far beyond the realm of a person who can be saved—becoming a vampire is probably one of them. There’s a reason why most people believe they don’t have souls.
Regardless, Stefan has learned to place his devotion in places other than God. At first it’s blood, the idea that he wants to simply drown himself in the haze. He tries to find a moral compass to cling to, but there’s nothing that really lasts for long. People are fallible, Stefan more than most. Damon, Lexi, Klaus and Rebekah, Elena—he fails them all, one way or another. He bounces from one to the other like some kind of violent ping pong ball who can’t decide which side of the line he wants to be on.
He tries to find faith. When he’s at his lowest, he prays for someone to end his misery, and when he’s at his highest, he prays that he can stay. He claws at that narrow chance of redemption until his fingers slip and he drops to the bottom again. Then he starts to climb, and the process starts all over again.
By the time Bonnie comes into the picture, he’s tired of his life going in cycles. He’s tired of fighting for a redemption he’s never going to have, he’s tired of praying to a savior he’s fairly certain isn’t listening. He doesn’t want to be damned, but at the same time, it isn’t something he can escape. The haze of the blood clouds his judgment yet again, sending him so high up that when Bonnie offers, he takes, without a second thought. This isn’t about Elena. It can’t be about Elena. It can’t be about anyone but him, and in a way, that’s how he convinces himself it’s real.
(Or deludes himself into it. That part is never really clear.)
Bonnie tethers him to something real, holds him to his promises, and pushes his limits. In pushing him, she pushes herself, and while he doesn’t know if she should, doesn’t know if the darkness that Klaus wants her to touch is something she can handle, he can’t tell her no. All he can do is protect her from what’s on the outside, regardless of how messy that mission may become.
She has the control. She has the power. She’s so sure of the choices she makes and what she wants that there’s no question otherwise. She wants, Stefan gives, and he doesn’t question it anymore. Questioning it won’t stop her from asking, won’t stop her from wanting, and it’s better him than Klaus. Better Stefan than the monster who will completely tear her apart. There are times when she looks at him, and he can still see the girl, the one who is scared and lost in this whirlpool of disaster that she can’t swim out of, and needs him to take her hand and pull her out.
He can’t not save her. It’s just who he is.
She becomes his new thing to pray to, the thing he looks to for guidance and truth. She can be his redemption and his damnation all in one, and even if he knows that, he can’t even begin to fight it. He has nothing else left to cling to and if he loses the one thing he has left, the one good thing he can do, then he really is damned, and there’s nothing left but the monster.
Stefan isn’t ready to give up on his humanity quite yet.
(no subject)
(no subject)
and i swear i may rest my head tonight | buffyverse/the vampire diaries | 1649 words
She comes to Mystic Falls tracking Klaus, and instead finds a town full of vampires and a whole lot of problems. Between the Original Witch (who, by the way, Buffy thinks is kind of a bitch) and the rest of the Original siblings, she has her hands full with trying to juggle what vampires she can trust and which she can’t. If she’s honest with herself, she should have trusted none of them. If it weren’t for Elena, Buffy would have used the scythe to take not only Klaus’s head, but the head of any other Original that happened to cross her path. No more vampires didn’t seem like a raw deal to her, even if she would have been out of a job. Regardless, Alaric asked her to come. Alaric isn’t an idiot, and if he feels like they can be trusted, she’d follow their lead. Doesn’t mean she has to like it.
Alaric calls her in one of the few moments of lucidity he has before his dark side takes over, rambling about a ring, the Original Witch, and a whole lot of bad about to go down, and she packs it up to head his way. Slaying’s become a bit of a mobile gig ever since Sunnydale cratered, and she tries to get to everywhere she can, but a few names take priority over everyone else. One of them is Alaric Saltzman, in combination with the town ‘Mystic Falls.’
Mystic Falls has always been a bit of a myth. The rumors of vampire and werewolf activity always seemed to have too little information. She could never tell if the mentions of Katherine Pierce, the Salvatore brothers, or even if the story that it was built on the mystical stomping ground where more witches have died than ever should be possible as well as where the whole vampire mess started in the first place were the truth. The phone call from Alaric didn’t really give her much time to question whether or not he was as sober as he sounded, but when friends call, you don’t really think twice. You get your stuff together, and you go.
She arrives in Mystic Falls on the night of the decade dance, wandering through the graveyard just in time to see a dark haired girl follow an older woman into one of the crypts. Deciding that there’s no reason at all to be suspicious of that, she alters her path, making her way to the crypt behind them to check it out.
People never seem to realize that in being a ‘vampire Slayer’ she tends to object to people being turned into them. You think more of them would make that connection.
It ends with Elena safe, Esther on the run, and Alaric locked up in the local jail just until Willow can ride into town to work her mystical mojo and see if there’s a cure. Buffy has bigger problems to deal with, two of which are named Salvatore and look none too pleased when Elena brings a vampire Slayer home from her little field trip.
“Ric starts losing his mind, and he decides to call a vampire Slayer. Why didn’t he just douse us all with gasoline and light a match instead? It probably would have been less painful.”
“Because for some reason, he likes you. But keep pushing me and I could do it myself.”
Her and Damon get off to a very winning start.
Stefan is slightly better, and by slightly she means less with the snark, more with practical, but it’s clear that he isn’t happy to see her either. Buffy, on the other hand, can’t bring herself to care. She didn’t come here to make friends with vampires. She came here to help Alaric, take care of Klaus and do her job.
So long as the Salvatores don’t get in her way, everything will be fine.
***
The desiccation spell that Abby used on Mikael is complicated. Add to the fact that Bonnie wants to do it with Jeremy, who wears the same death-avoiding ring that made Alaric go psycho killer crazy in the first place, and Buffy isn’t convinced that it’s the greatest plan. Neither is Willow.
Unfortunately, it’s the only plan they have. Desiccating Klaus keeps the rest of his blood line from being killed off, and guarantees that he can’t hurt anyone else. That Elena and her family will be safe, at least for a little while.
And there’s the fact that it works.
Three hours after spell is cast, Stefan and Buffy are on the road, heading towards the airfield where Riley is waiting. He’s taking the body to the Arctic, or Siberia, or somewhere else cold, dark and desolate where Klaus can rot for the rest of eternity. Maybe he’s going to drop him in one of those super deep crevices in an ocean somewhere. Buffy doesn’t particularly care, so long as it means Klaus is gone. Most of the drive is spent in silence, the two of them simply taking the time and silence while they have it.
“Are you going to be sticking around?”
The question comes a bit out of left field, disturbing the comfortable silence of the drive, and Buffy looks over before nodding. “Willow doesn’t quite know how to fix Alaric yet. Besides, I doubt the rest of the Original siblings will take too kindly to the fact that Klaus is missing. It might help to have some muscle around.”
He nods as well, fingers drumming against the steering wheel. “You never mentioned how you and Ric met.”
Her eyebrows climb into her hair at that, and she fixes him with a look. “Did we start playing Twenty Questions and no one tell me?”
“No, I just.” There’s a pause. “You show up, and you help us, and all we really know about you beyond vampire Slayer is this tenuous connection to Alaric.” He shrugs. “Call it curiosity.”
“Curiosity, huh?” she smirks, before shrugging. “It was after his wife disappeared. He was trying to track down the vampire that took her, and I was trying to track down … vampires. I helped him be smarter about it. He was a nice guy, it just seemed like he got handed a bad hand.”
“So you kept in touch?”
“Wanted to make sure he didn’t get himself killed. Told him to call if he got in over his head.” There’s a pause as she turns to look out the window again. “He really should have called me sooner.”
Stefan laughs. “Either way, I don’t think we would have responded too well to that.”
“Probably not. But things might not have gotten this bad, either.”
He’s silent for a moment, before sighing. “I guess I have to give you that.”
The drive back is a little more active than the one there, with small bits of conversation peppering the silence. By the time they got back to town, Buffy’s starting to see why Alaric thinks Stefan is one of the good ones.
Or, tolerable, at least.
***
By the time summer rolls around, Buffy’s still in town and things have quieted down considerably. She’s still living in the Gilbert house—Alaric is back and Willow’s spell seems to be holding, but Buffy stuck around to supervise. Or at least that’s what she is calling it. To be honest, she’s probably supervising Stefan more than she’s actually supervising Alaric, but that ‘supervising’ isn’t exactly supervising.
Willow is being very charitable and pretending not to notice. There are reasons why they’re still best friends after all this time. It doesn’t hurt that Willow wanted to stick around and continue to help Bonnie with her magic, which considering the state of the Bennett family line at the moment, it seems like the girl needs all the help she can get.
Stefan and Buffy are in the Gilbert kitchen on graduation day, both with a cup of coffee and watching as the rest of the Gilbert family goes running around the house like chickens without their heads. Between Elena trying to get ready, Jeremy running around trying to find the camera, and Alaric just watching them and looking like he’s very much in need of a drink, there is plenty of entertainment to go around.
“Are you sure we can’t just skip this?” he asks as Buffy adjusts his tie and starts to shove him towards the door.
“Nope. You’re their teacher—your attendance is mandatory. Besides, graduation is very important.” She gets him out the door and onto the porch before he eventually gives in and starts walking on his own. She waves to the three of them from the door. “Have fun! Call me if you get attacked by a snake demon!”
“Is that actually a thing?” Stefan frowns as she turns back around to face him, and she nods soberly.
“Unfortunately, it’s totally a thing,” she sighs. “You don’t want to know what a mess my high school graduation was.”
“I’ll take your word for it.” One arm snakes around her waist to pull her in closer, dragging her back towards the kitchen. “But until that happens, we do have the entire house to ourselves.”
“Mr. Salvatore,” she grins as he leans in to kiss her. “That sounds like you’re trying to—”
Before she can even finish the sentence, the front door slams open. Ever on the alert, she grabs the nearest stake she can find, and Stefan goes for the crossbow in the closet, and when they come around the entryway, they find a tall, slim brunette, looking at them both with a completely excited look on her face.
“This town is awesome.”
Buffy barely knows how to respond. Well, she has a vague idea.
“Dawn?!”
This is going to be a long summer.
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
all you have to do is squeeze your little finger | velocity of saul | 832 words
Nerf gun, to be specific.
Though, granted, that had been when they were kids. Now it was paintball guns, and for every birthday, it has become a sacred Halliwell family tradition, one that is not broken for weather, demons, significant others, or …
… Well, okay, there’s one thing it’s broken for. But only in extreme circumstances.
Wyatt and Chris wait at the bottom of the stairs, listening to the very unappealing sounds coming from the upstairs bathroom. “This isn’t good,” Chris sighs, running a hand through his hair. “We need a back-up plan.”
“Just wait and see what Mom says.”
It takes a minute, but eventually Piper starts to make her way down the stairs and glances over at her two sons. Then she shakes her head. “Sorry, boys. You’re going to have to find someone to cover for Melinda.”
There’s a collective groan from the two of them, and Chris buries his head in his hands. “We can’t just replace Melinda.”
“Why not? It’s just paintball. You have plenty of friends.”
Wyatt cringes a bit. “It’s not just paintball. It’s magical paintball. We can’t exactly invite anyone.”
“Magical,” Chris says, straightening up and flashing his brother a grin. “I might know someone.” He’s orbing away before Wyatt can even question what he’s doing.
He appears a few seconds later in the middle of Bonnie’s dorm room, and is met by two pairs of eyes that do not belong to his girlfriend. One is his girlfriend’s roommate, who already knows about the whole orbing thing, but the other is blond, pretty, but not someone he recognizes. She is just as surprised as he is.
“Elena, a man just appeared in your room in a column of sparkly lights.”
“I noticed.” Elena smirks, before turning to Chris. “This is Caroline. She’s in on the whole magic thing. Care, this is Chris.”
The blond’s eyebrows went up even further. “The Chris? Bonnie’s Chris?”
“The one and only.”
Caroline huffs. “I want a boy that appears in a column of sparkly lights.”
Elena shoves Caroline’s shoulder playfully, before looking up at Chris again. “Bonnie should be back soon. What’s up?”
“I need her help with something.” There’s the sound of the door opening behind him, and he spins around and flashes Bonnie a grin. “Great, you’re here.”
Bonnie looks confused. “I thought you were going home for your brother’s birthday.”
“Yeah, slight snafu with that. Hence me needing your help.”
“ … Sure. What can I do?”
“How do you feel about paintball?”
***
Chris orbs them back to the paintball field, and Wyatt is starting to look a little frantic. His eyes go wide when he sees his little brother, and then they fall to Bonnie. “Who’s this?”
“This is Bonnie. She’s going to fill in for Mel.”
PJ and Parker raise matching eyebrows with each other. “You’re serious?” PJ frowns. “She’s your second?”
“Does she even know how to play?” Parker sounds behind her sister, and Wyatt is asking him the same question with his eyes.
Chris looks to Bonnie. Bonnie raises an eyebrow at them back, before cocking her paintball gun. “I think I can handle it.”
PJ and Parker don’t look impressed, but their sister and their Matthews siblings are coming up next to them, and they don’t really have time to argue. “Fine. Game on.”
And with that, they beam out of sight. Bonnie’s eyes go a little wide. “That wasn’t orbing.”
“Nope,” he smirks, before extending a hand to her. “Let’s kick their ass anyway.”
***
Three hours later, Chris and Bonnie are arriving back in Bonnie’s dorm room, covered in dirt and paint and laughing. “I thought Parker was going to punch me in the face for a second there.”
“Parker always looks like she’s going to punch someone in the face. It’s not just you.”
“Well, that’s good to know.” Bonnie sighs as she drops the paintball gear to the side. “That was a lot of fun.”
“It was,” Chris nods, starting to shed his own. “Thank you for putting up with me springing it on you like that.”
“It’s fine. And it was fun. I had a really good time.”
“Good. I am also supposed to inform you, that as part of the winning team, after you get cleaned up you’re invited back to the house for cake.”
“I will hop in the shower, then.”
Chris nods. “I will zip home to clean up myself, but when you’re ready, just give me a call.”
“Sounds good,” she says, before starting to gather some of her things together. “I’ll go hop in the shower.”
As she starts to pass by him for the door, he reaches out for her arm to pull her closer again. “One more thing.” He leans in, and kisses her softly. “Best girlfriend ever.”
She grins widely as she returns the kiss. “You better not forget it.”
and i'm not sleeping now, the dark is too hard to beat | dark angel/the vampire diaries | 855 words
Bugler’s head was resting against Max’s shoulder as the caravan keeps creeping forward through the darkness. They’re all trying to keep themselves calm, knowing that there isn’t really much they can do in this particular situation, with Familiars on all sides. Wherever this road is going to end, it’s not going to be in a good place, but they did whatever they could to fight it for as long as they could. All that’s left now is to try and see if they can find a way to survive out the other side.
“Almost, buddy,” she says softly, though that isn’t exactly the most ringing endorsement. “There” is pretty much guaranteed to be the end of the road for a lot of them, and they don’t actually want to get there. Max is still trying to find them a way out of this that won’t end in a bloodbath, but there aren’t too many clean options on the table. However, not long after that declaration is made, the caravan comes to a sudden stop, and everyone in the car sits up and takes notice.
“What’s going on?” Fixit asks from the spot across from her and Max shakes her head, before placing a finger to her lips as she listens. There’s a scuffle, the sounds of a struggle and possibly even screams before it all suddenly goes quiet.
Max wishes, for the umpteenth time that day, that she wasn’t handcuffed to the bottom of this damn van, but the crazy cult members wanted to be sure that she didn’t get away. There’s footsteps outside the van, slow and deliberate, before the door opens to …
… what looks like a pretty teenage girl. She has long brown hair, a bright smile and it’s the most welcoming thing Max has seen in weeks of travel. “Hey,” she says with a grin. “Welcome to Mystic Falls.”
***
Mystic Falls started out the Pulse as one of those small towns that somehow just managed to survive. It was a mystery to those outside of it for ages, because most small towns managed to go belly up the minute the stock market crashed, but the people of Mystic Falls sure weren’t questioning it, so for some reason the rest of the world didn’t either.
It isn’t until the transgenics get there that they realize it’s vampires.
Yeah. Vampires.
Not that Max is really in any place to judge. Elena – the brunette one who interrupted their caravan earlier – gets them all on vervain so that Manticore’s lax mental defenses don’t get taken advantage of by their new vampire friends, but apparently their interruption was a rescue mission. Max is not going to look a gift horse in the mouth, especially since it means that all of her people got out of there unharmed.
The Familiars won’t go near them so long as they’re under the vampires protection. Wearing hippie bracelets to protect themselves is a small price to pay.
She’s wandering around the town, trying to get a feel of things as she goes. For the most part, it looks like the Pulse hasn’t touched it. There’s no dirt or grime – the town is almost quaint, and that’s not a word you can use a lot these days. She’s about to turn around and head home when she hears a familiar voice behind her.
“Max!” Elena bounces over as she turns, that same wide smile she used when she rescued them present on her face. She has no idea how Elena can be so bright in the face of the world at large, but she’s not going to fault her for it.
“Elena, hey,” she says with a nod. “What’s up?”
“Just wanted to see how you guys were doing?” Elena comes to a stop in front of her. “Make sure you didn’t need anything?”
“No, we’re … great. Really.” Elena’s been working with them so much over the past few days, it’s hard to imagine they’re left wanting for anything. “You guys have been awesome.”
“Good. Then that means I can make this a not business conversation.” There’s a bit of a flirty edge to her voice that makes Max raise her eyebrows. She can’t say she hasn’t thought about it, but she’s never been that forward about it.
“Not business, huh?”
“Yes. The kind of not business that involves drinks and maybe dinner.”
“Shouldn’t that be the other way around?”
“Not for vampires. Which is kind of sad, but I’ve learned to work with it.” She pauses before extending her fingers to wiggle in Max’s direction, a perfect invitation for her to take. “Well? What do you think?”
Max hesitates. There hasn’t really been anyone since Logan (Alec doesn’t count), and there’s still a part of her that will always wish for closure from the way that ended, but Logan isn’t here now. And it’s not as though they were ever really together in the first place.
She extends her hand with a small smile before nodding. “Sounds good to me.”
Elena grins, before taking her hand and pulling her towards the Grill. “Perfect.”
no subject
Prompt: Who's Your Daddy?
Characters: Caroline (tvd) and Claire (HEROES)
2. Back Alley
Supernatural: Becky/Sam crackfic
52. Movie
Move Sam/Alexis fluff
i see smoke on the water, said the sailor to the daughter | supernatural | 679 words
Today isn’t one of those days.
As much as Becky can get on their nerves sometimes, sometimes it feels like she is the only person that can understand him. She knows his life after all. She has read it, in all it’s gory details, and she gets it. She understands his motives, understands his decisions, and he doesn’t need to explain. In some ways, Becky Rosen is a gift, and while he knows he needs to stay away—his life isn’t safe, and it never will be—there are moments where he can’t. He can’t stop himself from needing to feel those moments of complete understanding. This encounter is no exception.
It starts in a back alley behind one of the local dive bars, and slowly makes it’s way back to the motel room where the boys are staying. He knows that this is wrong, it’s always wrong, but at the same time—when something feels this good, he doesn’t want to be right.
He and Becky are in bed together, and he’s so caught up in the moment that he doesn’t even hear the door to the motel room open. It isn’t until he hears the clatter of the beer bottles hitting the ground, followed by his brother’s voice that he even realizes Dean is there.
“Sam!”
He can see the look on his brother’s face, the hurt and confusion, and he glances between the woman beneath him, and his brother, the closest person he has in this world. He’s unsure as to what to do, didn’t want to betray Dean in this way, but he couldn’t stop himself. When his eyes land on Becky’s again, she shakes her head with a wide smile.
It’s hard to believe that he used to find that smile creepy, not that long ago.
“It’s okay, Sam. Dean’s part of this too.” She turns, and reaches out her hand for Dean to come closer. “I know you guys have a complicated relationship, and I’m okay with it. We should all be here. Together.”
Sam seems uncertain for a moment, but in the end, he knows it’s what’s right. He shifts over on the bed, reaching for his brother’s other hand and pulling him closer …
***
Sam sits up in a cold sweat, shaking himself out of the dream—more like a nightmare—trying to banish it from his head. It takes him less than an hour to figure out what’s going on, and another five to get back to Baltimore and knock on Becky’s front door.
He’s really not happy.
When Becky opens the door, she’s thrilled to see him, but the look on his face kills that excitement very quickly. “You figured it out, huh?”
Sam rolls his eyes. “You really think I wouldn’t?”
“I knew bringing Dean into it this early on was a mistake.”
Bringing Dean into that at all is a mistake, but he’s not going to say it now. He just wants to take care of the problem. “Hand it over, Becky.”
She pouts a bit at that, crossing her arms in front of her chest. “Do I have to?”
“Becky.”
She sighs, before disappearing back into the apartment again. When she returns, she hands over the jar of dreamroot, clearly unhappy with this turn of events. “There. That’s all of it.”
“How did you even get a hold of this stuff?”
“I have my sources,” she says staunchly, crossing her arms in front of her chest. She stares at him for a moment, before a small amount of hope slips onto her features again. “Is there something else?”
“The hair too, Becky.” She sighs again, and then comes back with the lock of hair that she must have snagged when he was spelled. He takes it from her, and turns on his heel to head back to his car. “Goodbye, Becky.”
“See you soon, Sam.”
Sam really hopes that that isn’t the case.
when there's one minute to go, till the lights go down low | supernatural/castle | 722 words
It required both Sam and Alexis being in New York at the same time – harder than it sounds to do and not always Sam’s fault. It also required them both not having any interruptions for the evening – not always Alexis’s fault either. There was usually a brother emergency or an ADA case that needed attending to and the evening would fall apart through no fault of their own, but this time?
This time they are going to make this work. Alexis is determined and when Alexis puts her mind to something, it usually gets done, come hell or high water. She could probably stare the Devil himself in the face, tell him to sit down and wait his turn and then go back to her quiet evening with her sort-of-boyfriend as though nothing happened.
(Granted, she’s never met the actual Devil, but semantics.)
She knows that in order to get this done she’s going to need to be prepared which is why the second Sam walks in the door, she’s extending her hand to him, palm out and expectant. “Give me your phone,” she says, and while Sam stares at her for a moment in confusion, she sighs. “We get one evening together before you have to go back on the road with your brother and I begin the case to end all cases, so we are going to do this with no unexpected complications. This is going to be one evening of pure, uninterrupted Sam-and-Alexis time, and I am going to take very step to make sure that happens so – ” There’s a beat and she wiggles her fingers in his direction, the universal sign for “gimme.” “ – phone, please.”
Sam smirks a bit at that before nodding and fishing his smart phone out of his back pocket. He holds it in his hand for a moment, almost as though he’s considering something very carefully. “If I don’t give it to you, what’ll happen?”
“You will get no pizza. And I went all the way to Staten Island to get the best pizza around, so I think you want to take my offer.”
Sam looks apprehensive, but eventually he places his phone down in her hand with a nod. “You are a cruel, cruel mistress.”
“Indeed.” She toggles through the screen before turning off the phone and placing it on the counter next to hers as she fetches the pizza boxes. “Plus it’ll keep you from trolling for IMDB facts during the movie.”
“What?” Sam looks at her with a bit of a laugh. “There’s some pretty cool stuff on there.”
“Sure there is.” She sits down next to him and flips open the top box as Sam reaches for the paper plates she left on the coffee table. “But it’ll still be there - after the movie.”
“Alright, fine,” Sam grabs his slice of pizza and leans back in his seat. “I had no idea you were such a movie fascist.”
“I prefer my movie experience to be both complete and quiet.” She grabs her own slice before settling back against him and reaching for the remote. “And relax – I’m pretty sure it’s a movie you know all the secrets of, so you won’t be missing much.” It’s an old favorite, one they used to watch all the time back in Stanford, but it’s familiar and comfortable, and just what two people need who aren’t going to be seeing each other for a very long time.
Sam slides an arm around her shoulders and exhales slowly, ready to settle in for the movie. They make it about halfway through and a few slices of pizza in before they’re shifting on the couch, focusing less on the movie, which is far too familiar, and more on each other, which they were still getting to know all over again.
By the end of the second act, she’s in his lap and kissing him and remembering how much she had missed this once it was gone. His arms slide around her waist and pull her closer, and he breaks the kiss for all of a moment to ask.
“We’re not going to watch the rest of the movie, are we?”
Alexis huffs a laugh, shaking her head before leaning in to kiss him again. “Nope.”
sins of a father make your life ten times harder | heroes/the vampire diaries | 886 words
The Founding Families have been gone for a while now, with the last vestiges of them remaining with the Gilbert and Fell lines. It’s not something that happened on purpose. It’s just that when the last living members are either killed off or turned into vampires, there’s not really a lot you can do. All that’s left are Jeremy’s grandchildren and the Fells, but none of the important people in this story ever cared much for the Fells anyway.
What they did care about was each other. They still managed to have a Founding Families Christmas every year, one way or another. One Lockwood, two Salvatores, one Gilbert and one Forbes is close enough, and if anything it’s a guaranteed day, once a year, where they all get to see each other. Caroline never understood why Lexi and Stefan only saw each other once a year, or why they needed that reminder, but a hundred years under her belt and she can see how easy it is for people to drift apart, despite the awesome nature of modern technology.
Regardless, that is all a bit off topic. The point is, one year Caroline brings a girl home for Christmas. This isn’t really anything new, as they’ve brought significant others with them before, but this is the first time that it’s been a girl, and more to the point, a girl their own age. Their actual age. Her name is Claire. She’s cute, adorable, blond and was probably a cheerleader in one of her past lives.
And she’s not a vampire.
That’s enough to even get Damon Salvatore to sit up and pay attention.
They spend the better half of dinner listening to him pepper Claire with questions about who she is and what she does and the various array of ways that she’s hurt herself over the time she’s been alive and Claire answers most of them good naturedly, thank God. If she hadn’t, Caroline would have probably wound up smacking Damon twice as many times as she actually did – as it was, she was bordering on abuse territory.
But eventually, the presents are exchanged and they go their separate ways for the evening, and Claire and Caroline eventually find their way to one of Caroline’s old storage units that she keeps maintained. It’s getting to be that time when she needs to swap it out for another one, somewhere else, because despite the fact that she pays her bills monthly, as expected, if the same people are maintaining something for more than fifty years or so, people start to get suspicious. And there are some things she doesn’t want to give up quite yet. She brings the truck to a stop before glancing over at Claire with a smirk.
“C’mon. Help me load up.”
Claire glances from her phone and frowns at her, before looking back to the storage unit. “You never said anything about manual labor.”
Caroline gives her a bit of a look at that. “It’s not a lot of stuff. It’ll take five minutes and we’ll be back on the road again.” Then there’s a bit of a smirk. “Then we can try out the hot tub.”
“Okay, bribing me with a hot tub? Not all that fair either.” She sighs as she shoves her phone in her pocket before making her way towards the door. In truth, Caroline is right and there isn’t a lot of things to do, especially since everything was already packed up in boxes, but it’s still a lot of effort and Claire, not being a vampire, tires just as easily as a human does.
She also complains just as much.
Caroline is closing down the unit and getting ready to turn in her key when she hears Claire’s voice behind her, sharp and confused. “Why is there a picture here of you and my dad?”
Caroline pauses, blinking for a moment before making her way around the back of the truck to see what she’s pointing at. There, on top of the box, was a framed picture of her and her dad.
“That’s … not your dad.” Caroline glances back to her, confused. “That’s my dad.”
“No, I’m pretty sure that’s my dad.” She pauses for a moment, flipping through some things on her phone, before holding up an almost identical picture, save for the fact that Claire was in the “daughter” position, rather than Caroline. “His name is Noah Bennet?”
“No, his name is Bill Forbes.” Caroline grabs both Claire’s phone and the picture of her and Bill from the box and studies them carefully for a moment before exclaiming, loudly. “My dad is a doppelganger?!? What were they just giving them away like Oprah?”
Claire just stares at her, blinking for a moment. “Is … that supposed to mean something to me?”
“Yep. Welcome to Mystic Falls.” Caroline sighs heavily before handing Claire her phone back and slamming the back door of the truck shut. “Come on, I have to call Elena.”
Claire follows dutifully for a moment, before speaking, with a bit of a pout to her tone. “I’m not getting hot tub time tonight, am I?”
“Nope,” Caroline sighs, sliding into the driver’s seat and starting to the truck. “Not tonight.”
no subject
076. Baby - Danny/Diana (I NEED THIS LIKE BURNING)
078. Kitchen - Toby/Tybalt and Tybalt's cousin Parker.
043. Nut - White Collar Crossover with Toby Daye series.
transition's our profession and we don't work nine to five | october daye/white collar | 936 words
Changelings aren’t really wanted as a general rule and are rarely ever treated as productive members of society. It’s possibly the reason why he’s turned into the thief that he is—if the fae don’t think he can be productive, he chooses to prove them wrong in the most unproductive way possible. Plus, the cat and mouse game keeps him engaged, keeps him busy and out of fae business which is far more dangerous than him stealing some art.
He plays the game and lets the human catch him, because Peter and Elizabeth are good people, and Peter is his favorite kind of person. Intelligent, moral, warm—everything that the fae are not, and that’s why Neal keeps his distance and keeps away from the Summerlands. He hopes that in return, they can keep away from him. All of them.
Well, all of them except for a select few.
He’s in a bar just on the edge of his radius. He could have easily fooled the device into making it think he’s still within his radius, but he’s trying not to fall back into bad behavior. That would defeat the purpose of the game, and it’s a game he’s still interested in playing. But Toby wants to meet him, and he didn’t want Peter’s attention being turned to Toby. Alex, Mozzie—they are already in the game. Toby doesn’t really have the patience for them.
He’s setting up the pool table to break, a bowl of peanuts resting on the edge when he hears her come in. He knows that it has to be her. He learned the pace of her steps long ago, but he doesn’t bother to look up, just keeps setting up the pool table until he hears her voice in his ear.
“You never change.”
He can’t help the smile that crosses his face. It’s brilliant and charming as ever, but he knows her well enough by now to know that she isn’t going to fall for it. It’s one of the things he likes about her.
“I change,” he says with a smirk. “Just not in the way you’re thinking.” He grabs the pool cue and leans against the side of the pool table, before extending it out to her. “Do you want to break?”
“I’m not here to play, Caffrey.”
“Then you’re clearly not having any fun, which is a federal offense as well as being a shame.”
“Federal? Really?”
“I would know. I’m working for the FBI now.” There’s a coy sort of look in her direction at that, and when that doesn’t work, he holds the pool cue out to her like it’s a stick and she’s a puppy, and the look crosses into ‘you know you want to’ territory. He and Toby have not been friends this long without him learning a few tricks that get her to do what he wants. Luckily for her, he only uses his powers for good, not evil.
“Fine. I’ll break.”
He grins as he hands off the cue, before going to grab one of his own. “So. Why the need for the meeting?”
“I wanted to tell you in person. Devin—”
“He’s dead,” Neal replies softly. “Word tends to travel a little faster than you get here. That and it happened almost six months ago.” He’s not angry. He’s just surprised that she didn’t think that he would hear before now, but he doesn’t think that she thought he didn’t know. It’s just her way of not jumping right into asking for a favor. “Are you okay?” After all, she was closer to him than Neal was.
He remembers that much.
“He was in trouble.” She takes her shot and the balls scatter across the table like brightly colored blurs. “He killed Evening.”
That he hadn’t heard. “He killed the Winterrose?” His voice drops just an octave so that they’re not overheard. “I’m surprised he wasn’t dead sooner.”
“It took some time to figure out who,” she sighs, stretching up to line up another shot.
“Meaning he played you like a fiddle.” She also counts on Neal not to pull his punches. That much hasn’t changed either. “What are you doing here, October?”
She hesitates just a little, before shifting so that she’s leaning against the cue. “I need a favor. A … slightly illegal one.”
“How illegal?” he frowns. “Breaking and entering illegal?”
“I need you to forge something.”
“Do I get to know what you need it for?”
“I’d really prefer if you didn’t.”
There’s another pause as he weighs the pros and cons. Toby is one of his oldest friends, and he knows that she wouldn’t ask him to do this if there isn’t a good reason behind it, but on the other hand, Peter is counting on him to be on the straight and narrow. To play the game how it’s supposed to be played. To not break the law.
“I’m not looking to ruin what you have going with Peter, Neal. It’s good for you. I’m not going to make you screw it up.” But the undercurrent to that statement is that she needs him. That she doesn’t have anywhere else to go.
This is why when Toby asks, he’ll give.
“Get it to me,” he says with a slow nod. “I’ll make sure you have what you need. Just make sure it stays off the FBI’s radar.”
“They won’t even know it happened,” she says with a smile, reaching forward and pulling him into a hug. “Thank you, Neal.”
“Anytime.”
and hear my voice like a serenade | two halves make a whole | 699 words
you can catch yourself and catch on fire | leverage/october daye | 665 words
but someday you'll pay the price i know | the vampire diaries/torchwood | 593 words
no subject
Dean/Bela -- Scream
sometimes you need a little faith (all you need is a little faith) | the vampire diaries | 978 words
It’s dark down there, and an odd sort of quiet. She never turns on the light, doesn’t bother to make it to the cot, just curls up on the ground, one ear to the dirty cement floor. If she focuses hard enough, tunes everything else out, she can almost feel like she’s in the tomb.
That’s where she belongs, in the tomb. Locked away underground where she can’t hurt anyone, and no one can find her. It’s where she needs to be, even if she’s sure she’d be better off dead. But Damon won’t let her. He won’t let her just waste away, no matter how much she wants to, and he tries to get her to drink.
Sometimes she will, sometimes she won’t, but it doesn’t matter anyway. Everyone’s gone. She doesn’t know what to do otherwise.
The days blend into each other and she stops keeping track of how long she’s been down there, but she’s at the point where she just doesn’t care. She doesn’t want to know how much time has passed, and more to the point, she doesn’t need to know.
As far as she’s concerned, she has all the time in the world.
***
It’s in the early hours of the morning after that first week, when she drags herself out of the room and back into the boarding house. It feels almost like a foreign place. It used to be mysterious, with secrets hidden in all the corners, but now it just feels dark. It feels empty. There is a presence missing, and she knows that it’s never coming back, no matter what anyone does.
She makes her way quietly through the house, looking for any sign of Damon—it seems like ages since she’s seen him and there’s a part of her that calls out to him as her sire. It’s not as strong as the hybrids and their sire bond, but she needs him there. It’s not love, but it’s a need that she can’t quash. He made her this way. He can’t just leave her like this.
(It’s moments like this that she starts to think that this might be how he felt when Katherine disappeared, but deeper and darker, because of all the time he had to wait. It’s moments like this that she understands and she doesn’t know how to deal with it, she just needs to find Damon.)
The only thing that stops her in her tracks is the filter of the early morning sunrise coming through one of the windows. She knows how sunlight reacts to vampires, and if she had been in any other frame of mind, she would have simply backtracked and made her way around to the other side, but she isn’t.
It’s the first time she’s seen sunlight in a week.
There’s something about it that draws her to it, and she slowly takes a few steps forward, one hand extending out to the light, and watching the way it makes her skin glow and glisten in the sun. She’s noticed it before, when she was human, but now it just seems to do it even more. Up until, at least, it starts to burn. She screams out in pain, and something jerks her back from the light, pinning her against the wall. The pain doesn’t fade right away—more ebbs as the skin starts to reform, but she’s trying not to think about that. She’s just looking up at Damon, who is looking very annoyed that his vampire bait turned vampire can’t even seem to keep herself out of trouble when she’s alone in a locked house.
“Elena,” he says evenly as he takes her uninjured wrist and starts to lace a bracelet around it. She recognizes it—it’s one she’s seen Katherine wear in the past—and she can only guess what it’s for. “I know you’re new at the whole vampire thing, but I think that you remember the whole photosensitivity thing.”
She rolls her eyes sheepishly, looking away. “I forgot.”
“Mmmm-hmmm.” He lets her wrist drop, before looking down at her hand. “That should take care of that from now on. Just be careful. It’s bad enough I have to feed you—I can’t be responsible for you tripping and staking yourself on a splinter.”
She gives him a look. She can’t help it. “Mocking me. Really? You’re mocking me right now?”
“Having you angry with me is better than having you wallowing in self-pity. It was starting to depress me.” She knows that’s not what it is. She knows it’s losing his brother, losing everyone, and the fact that he failed to save her even though she tried, but she’ll let him pretend for now. She’s starting to realize that she wants to pretend too.
She pulls away from him slowly, extending her hand out in front of her as she steps back in front of the window again. When she can barely feel the burning effects of the sun, she reaches forward, pushing the heavy blinds apart and letting the warmth of the sun wash over her, warming her face and her blood. She feels a little more human, and that’s the first time she feels like she could say that in a long time.
She feels Damon move behind her, placing his hands on her shoulders gently. “Your life doesn’t have to end, Elena.”
“It already did,” she says softly. She doesn’t feel the need to qualify that, he knows what she means, but he doesn’t correct her either. Instead she just leans back against him, wanting to maintain a connection with that presence behind her. “I miss him.”
He’s quiet for a long time, sliding his arm around her shoulders to keep her close. “Me too,” he says softly. “Me too.”
i'm well versed in how i might be cursed | supernatural | 1275 words
no subject
You know me. The crackier, the better.
061. Matt/Elena.
Because they are beautiful.
066. Sam/Buffy.
Because he kind of fails at life sometimes.
Obviously, you don't have to do them all, I just like giving options. XD
i remember all your grace and style | the vampire diaries | 1437 words
She had hoped when she left that when she returned things would be better. She realizes as she drives down Main Street that she should have known better.
It isn’t that she wasn’t happy to come home. Mystic Falls would always be home, regardless of what had happened in it. So much had happened in those streets, so much that Elena would never be able to forget, and it was still home. She could only hope that things had gotten better. Then again, Sheriff Forbes had been killed by cancer, not a vampire, so at least that’s a step in the right direction.
She spends the three days leading up to the funeral with Caroline, doing whatever she could for her best friend. Caroline hasn’t changed at all, which isn’t surprising, given that she’s a vampire, but Elena can see the little things, even if outwardly she hasn’t. When Caroline doesn’t want to be alone in her mother’s house, she stays, supplying the alcohol and making terrible dinners.
Safe to say in the six year absence from Mystic Falls, Elena’s cooking skills hadn’t gotten any better.
The day after the funeral, however, when Bonnie has taken over for her with Caroline so that Elena can have a little time to herself, she finally sets foot into the Grill. It’s something that hasn’t changed either. Walking into it is like stepping back in time. She remembers the way Jenna, Mason and Damon would do shots at the bar, the way Alaric would grade his papers buzzed in the corner booth, the way she and her friends would play pool at the back table. The way Stefan would forever be late but always find a way to make up for it.
(There are brief moments where she wonders where Stefan is, if he’s okay. The longer she was away from Mystic Falls, the smaller the pangs got, but how that she’s back in the middle of it again, she sees his face and hopes that wherever he is, he’s okay. That he’s happy. They’ve all been through enough.)
She slides up to the bar, settling onto the stool and ordering herself a drink—something fruity but alcoholic, just enough to give her a little buzz to keep the memories at bay. She wants to stay upbeat, not drown herself in the memories of the past. After all, at the end of the day, they all turned out okay.
Even if she’s drinking in the middle of the day.
“You know, if I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were trying to avoid me.”
When Elena hears his voice, she nearly falls off her stool. Visbily. Which really only causes Matt to laugh, and her to glare. “Don’t sneak up on people like that!”
“Well, maybe you shouldn’t be drinking before five. It wouldn’t affect your balance.”
Elena only glares harder, before turning to smack him lightly on the shoulder. “That’s for scaring the crap out of me.” Then she reaches forward and pulls him into a hug. “And that’s for being here.”
Matt hugs her tightly, just letting her settle against him for a little while. It’s familiar and warm, and she’d be lying if she doesn’t admit that this is one of the things she really missed about home. “I’m sorry I missed the funeral. I just couldn’t get away from work. I swung by the house to see Caroline and Bonnie said you were already gone.”
“I guess you’re lucky I didn’t go far then,” she says with a grin as she pulls on his arm gently. “C’mon, sit. I want to hear about what’s been happening with you.”
“If we’re going to do that, we’re probably going to need more alcohol.”
She laughs, before holding up her hand to signal the bartender. “I was hoping you’d say that.”
***
Three hours, many shots, and long walk later, somehow Matt and Elena wound up in front of her childhood home. It’s empty and dark, which she shouldn’t be surprised by as both she and Jeremy were gone, and Alaric’s been working late at the sheriff’s office all week. Elena knows that she should probably sell it at some point, considering Alaric has his apartment, and most of the time it’s usually empty, but for some reason, it’s easier to pay someone to keep it clean than it is to let it go.
She isn’t sure why the two of them are here now, though. The alcohol is still thrumming through her system and she doesn’t quite remember the conversation that brought them to her front door, but she can’t focus on it long enough to care. Right now, she’s too caught up in the good memories—the ones that the mess with the Originals almost made her forget.
“Everyone always manages to come home eventually, don’t they?” she sighs as she bounces up the stairs, before turning to face him again. “I remember when Jenna left she swore she was never coming back. But she did. And so did I.”
“If you’re Jenna, who am I in this scenario?”
She pauses to think about this as she leans into his shoulder a bit. She doesn’t remember many of Jenna’s high school boyfriends, but there is one prominent one that does come to mind and make her smirk. “Logan.”
“I am not Logan Fell,” Matt replies, flashing her a look. “Logan is the one who ran Jenna out of town in the first place. If anyone is Logan in this equation it’s … ” His voice trails off at the mention of the name, and Elena looks up at him with a bit of a smile.
“It’s okay. I can talk about him,” she sighs as she straightens, moving so that she’s facing him. “Okay. Stefan is Logan. We’re not even going to touch Jenna’s relationship with John, so I guess that leaves … Mason?”
Matt pauses for a moment, considering, before nodding. “I think I can live with Mason. Though I think I got a better deal out of it, because I actually got the girl.”
“You did,” she says with a grin as she takes a step away from him. “In fact, you kissed me for the first time on this porch.”
“Actually, if I remember correctly—and considering I’m the one who had less alcohol, we’re going to assume I’m right—you kissed me.”
Elena’s mouth drops in mock shock as she gives him a bit of a shrug. “I did not. You were my first kiss—why would I kiss you first?”
“No, I remember,” he says, his mouth quirking upward in that lopsided smile that usually comes when he’s trying not to smile and fails miserably. Elena has always loved that smile. “I was walking you home, and we had just made it to the porch, and I was trying to tell you this joke when—”
She cuts him off before he even has the chance to finish. Maybe it’s the alcohol. It’s probably the alcohol. But there’s something familiar about the way he kisses her. They both melt into each other, her arm coming around his neck to pull him closer as he wraps an arm around her waist. It’s a simple kiss—Matt, at the end of the day, is a simple guy. That’s what makes the kiss feel real. They hold the kiss for as long as they can, and when it breaks, he’s still smiling.
“Then you did that.”
She laughs softly under her breath, before looking up at him again. “I had just had the best first date out of anyone I knew. Could you have blamed me for taking the chance?”
“No,” he smirks back at her, his arm still around her waist as he keeps her close. “Guess I can’t argue with that.”
She continues to smile, before shifting a bit to let her head rest against his shoulder. “I missed you, Matt.”
“I missed you, too,” he whispers against the top of her head.
“Can you stay for a little while?”
“Yeah,” he replies as he starts to walk them towards the door. Elena follows his lead, trying to keep as little space between them as she can, but not enough that she can’t move. She isn’t sure what this is, but there’s a small part of it that feels familiar and right, and she wants to hold onto it for as long as she can. “I’ll stay as long as you want.”
“Good.”
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
another local legend and his long time lucky charm | beyond the rift | 1128 words
(no subject)
(no subject)
i've forgotten what i started fighting for | behind the hollow | 871 words
no subject
095. Disappear - Neal/Lilah
take this sinking boat and point it home | erase the pain | 405 lyrics
They’ve been through a lot, Elena and Tyler. She’s a doppelganger and he’s a hybrid, and Mystic Falls is still as big a magnet for trouble as it was when they were in high school, but it’s lessened some. It gives the people in the town a chance to breathe a little, to just let things happen without feeling like it’s the end of the world, and in some ways, Elena thinks that this is how it’s supposed to be. Mystic Falls is supposed to be that quiet little town and while every time she closes her eyes she can still see the way things used to be, it’s her secret to keep.
And most days, she’s okay with that.
Tyler being back in town means it’s not just her secret anymore. She has someone she can talk to about the old days. Someone who she doesn’t have to keep secrets from day in and day out, and that alone is like taking a weight off her shoulders. She doesn’t have to pretend that none of it changed her, because in reality it changed everyone.
Having a friend doesn’t escape her. It’s when those feeling suddenly become more than that that it sneaks up on her. She doesn’t look at Tyler that way until the moment when she does. She doesn’t think of him that way until the moment when it happens.
The problem with living in a small town is that there’s all the history there that goes with it. This time, it isn’t just supernatural history—it’s that Tyler is Matt’s best friend, and he was with Caroline, and it’s Tyler—she’s known him since she was five, and this isn’t like it was with Matt or Stefan where she just knows that it’s what she wants. She’s nervous, because the last time she did this, just jumped and let her feelings take her, she fell in love with a vampire, and in the process, she lost a bit of herself.
It’s been so long since she just jumped and threw herself into something. It’s been so long since she’s looked in the mirror and saw the person who used to just jump and hope that someone would be able to catch her. She wants to be that person again. She just doesn’t know where to start.
The first time Tyler kisses her, she feels herself starting to remember.
Re: take this sinking boat and point it home | erase the pain | 405 lyrics
Re: take this sinking boat and point it home | erase the pain | 405 lyrics
never let a friend fool you twice | white collar/buffyverse | 1230 words
no subject
081. Fool ll Buffy/Alaric
027. Reverse ll Lara/Flint
no subject
081. Matt/Anna
027. Damon/Elena
mountain passes slipping into stones | regret tomorrow | 1248 words
another shovel on the graveyard shift | the vampire diaries | 1172 words
have i paid my dues just to be with you | misinformation | 961 words
no subject
it's the price we pay to feel | bete noire | 582 words
She always needs the contact. It’s almost as though it’s a physical manifestation of the tight grip she has on the people she doesn’t want to lose. It’s the one thing that never changes, no matter what happens—Elena will always reach out. Always be there with the hug or the hand or whatever else the person may need. It wasn’t always wanted, or sometimes even welcome, but she tries, and she’s stoll of the mind that so long as you’ve tried, you haven’t failed.
Bete Noire is so closed off as a city. Elena doesn’t need to meet the people to feel it. It’s a kind of loneliness that sinks into her bones, that’s meant to make you feel alone, even when you’re not. Elena isn’t alone. She has Caroline and Tyler and to an extent, Damon and Bonnie. She knows it’s not the same. She knows there is a distance there, a disconnect by virtue of not being their Elena. Still, she reaches out. She extends the hand across the divide and it is up to them whether or not they take it. She hopes eventually that one of them will. With Damon, it’s complicated—with Damon it’s always complicated, no matter the universe. With Bonnie—Bonnie she couldn’t quite figure out.
They dance around each other, both emotionally and physically. In the shop, out at various events, they stand just close enough to imply they are friendly, but not enough that they could actually touch. It isn’t a great deal of space, but whatever it is that is sitting unsaid between them, it is enough. It takes everything in her not to push or prod, to try and get to the bottom of things, but all it may do is lead to answers she doesn’t want to have.
The old Elena Gilbert wouldn’t have understood the art of relenting. Add another reason to the list of why Elena isn’t the girl she used to be.
Still, it’s odd to think of Bonnie and have her not be someone she can touch. She hears the name Bonnie and she thinks of her best friend, the girl she’s known for as long as she can remember. They’re such starkly different people beyond the fact that they’re both witches , but they both mean something to Elena. They both fill the voids in different ways. Bonnie is bright and bubbly, and reminds Elena of who her Bonnie used to be before Elena and vampires took that away from her. She misses that part of her, but she knows that Bonnie can’t go back any more than Elena can. The longer she stays in the city, the more obvious it becomes.
She can’t force the city on someone either. As much as she misses her Bonnie, she can’t make her magically appear out of thin air.
She instead focuses on what she does have. She has Caroline and her job and her friends and every day the gap between her and the Bonnie in the city gets smaller and smaller. They talk, and another inch closes, slowly but surely, until all that’s left is the next step that one of them will have to take. One morning, Bonnie’s hand brushes Elena’s arm as they’re stocking the inventory. Not an accidental brush that’s a side effect of being in an enclosed space, but an actual touch.
That’s when things finally start to feel like they fit.
no subject
054. Bela/Capa
083. Crowley/Castiel
You don't have to them all, but there's some ideas to play with! C:
destroy me completely then throw me away | beyond the rift | 1194 words
It doesn’t matter if it’s angels and demons, nations in contention with each other, or something as simple as one race trying to conquer the other, in the end, it all comes down to a war. Peace is a figment of an idealistic mind. Chicago learns this the hard way.
It isn’t so much the city itself as the people, the Wanderers it houses within its walls, but all it takes his one First and one Neqa’el to decide that this isn’t the game they want to play, and all hell breaks loose. Wanderers are murdered in the streets, angels and demons fight to the death every day, and the world doesn’t blink an eye.
Everything has an end. These days, he wonders if the world is finally reaching its brink. It’s only a matter of time, it always is, and even after all this time, he still counts the days.
2,090.
2,091.
2,092.
He’s not sure when it happens. He catches a bad Rift and when he returns to Chicago, all he’s left with is a nagging sense of the familiar, and a startling sense of loss. His own name slips from his memory, like water slipping through a person’s fingers. All he has left is the continual uptick of days in the back of his mind. Every time the sun rises the number grows a little larger, and he simply continues to move about through a city that doesn’t want him.
He’s identified as a Wanderer relatively easily, and ushered away to where they grouped them. Public executions are the trend, mass graves created in what used to be Grant Park. He theorizes that it has to do with the fact that Grant Park is where they usually arrive. When he’s lead up to the podium to face the firing squad, he doesn’t understand. It’s written all over his face, but his captors can’t seem to care. All they see is another monster to be put down.
They shoot him in the chest five times. He feels the impact of each bullet, the trickle of his blood down his chest. He’s as surprised as anyone else when he doesn’t die.
Needless to say, it doesn’t exactly send the message they’re looking for.
They usher him back to the holding cells and keep him there. Then, tomorrow, they try to kill him again.
2,153.
2,154.
2,155.
Among the other Wanderers, he becomes something of a folk hero. He heals their wounds, tends to their children, tries to provide some kind of hope, but just because he can’t die doesn’t mean the same holds true for the rest of them. Each day they try a new form of death, and each time, he recovers as though nothing has happened. It never occurs to him to fight back, to strike back against these people who are fighting against him. He doesn’t understand what they’re doing. All he knows is that his friends are disappearing, and will not come back.
Every so often he gets the nagging feeling that he’s forgetting something. He forgets a lot of things, almost regularly, but there’s something pressing, something important. If he realized that he could fly, far and away from here he would have done it a long time ago, but he doesn’t have anywhere to go. All he knows is that he’s the Wanderer who won’t die, and it baffles the Rakshasas sent to execute him every time.
Regardless, every night he’s ushered back to his cell, and every day he returns to the gallows. Nothing ever seems to change.
2,214.
2,215.
2,216.
Eventually they stop placing Wanderers in the cell with him. They find it’s not striking enough terror into their hearts. They stop taking him out to the gallows as well—he’s not good for their reputation either. Instead they try to do it within the confines of their own prison. Swords, knives, guns, poison—anything they can think of, they try, and he barely even feels the pain. It’s almost as though it’s muted, hidden in a place that’s far, far away.
It happens, over and over again, day after day, until eventually, one of them growls.
“Why won’t you die, you piece of filth?”
“Because you’ll find it’s very, very hard to kill an angel of the Lord.” The voice is new yet old, all at the same time, and he peers around the body of his captor to see a short man in a suit, glancing between the two Rakshasa demons expectantly. “Trust me on that. I would know.”
The two demons turn to look at him, and one runs him through with a sword on instinct. He watches as the sword disappears into the suit, but nothing changes. The man doesn’t even seem to feel it.
“Now. That isn’t very nice.”
What happens next is … hazy. The man’s hands shoot forward at some kind of unnatural speed, and the next thing their prisoner knows is their hearts are in the invincible man’s hands and their bodies are on the floor.
“They always insist on things getting messy,” the man sighs, dropping the useless organs covered in black blood to the ground. “But really, that’s what they get for ruining a good suit.”
“Who are you?” The words are out of his mouth before he can stop himself, and the man fixes his eyes on him for a moment, before crossing his arms in front of his chest.
“Don’t tell me you’ve gone and lost your bloody marbles,” he replies, shifting to lean in closer, peering into the other man’s eyes. There is something familiar about him, something that triggers the nagging thought in the back of the prisoner’s mind, but nothing is clicking into place. “You’re sister’s not going to be happy if I bring you back broken. Granted, when she’s unhappy, she tends to go a bit pixie, but for some reason, that doesn’t make her any less terrifying.”
Sister? The word triggers something, a flash of red and a bright burst of light, but nothing more than that. “Do I know you?”
“Better than you’d like.” The man pulls away dusting himself off. “The name ‘Castiel’ mean anything to you?”
All he’s met with is more of a blank stare.
“Brilliant. You haven’t a clue who you are. Suppose that explains why you didn’t fly your way out of here.”
“Fly?”
“I guess there’s no simple way of doing this, is there?”
Before ‘Castiel’ could stop him, one hand comes down on his shoulder, and the walls of the prison disappear around them. Suddenly, they’re standing in a crowded hub, with people buzzing everywhere and one tall, proud woman with red hair standing above them all, with people clamoring for her attention. His eyes turn, trying to scan the room for more familiarity, something that would tell him what this place is supposed to mean to him, but in the end, there’s nothing.
Just this simple, nagging feeling.
“Where are we?”
“Somewhere where those ridiculous bloodhounds won’t be able to find us,” the man in the suit replies. “Welcome to the resistance.”
there's something missing in us, we try to make it whole | beyond the rift | 1185 words
but you don't need help from me, you'll lay yourself to waste | beyond the rift | 1027 words
no subject
Kali&Neal - Smile
Nate&Sophie - Summer
Jondy&Dean - Hospital
Piper(McLean)&Chris(Halliwell) - Deliver
i guess i'm always hoping that you'll end this reign | supernatural/dark angel | 938 words
Not literally, she’s not exactly wandering into midget territory. At the same time, the girl is at least six inches shorter than him and looks like she would break in half if asked to hold anything heavier than ten pounds. Yet, regardless, she maneuvers a 6’1”, almost two hundred pound pile of muscle with a broken leg and a bad attitude into a chair in the waiting room with the finesse of a champion. If people were actually awake and functioning enough to pay attention to them, they might have noticed something was up, but it’s late enough in the day that they don’t really seem to care.
Personally, Dean prefers it that way.
Jondy takes a moment to pull up a chair to very gently (read: not at all, but gentler than it could have been) rest his bad leg on, before flouncing (yes, flouncing) up to the front desk to check them in. Upon her return she nearly smacks him in the face with the clipboard. Dean practically growls as he snatches it away from her, before glancing down to start filling in his (fraudulent) information.
“You do get that I’m the one injured here, right?”
“You shot at me. I’m allowed to take it personally.”
“You broke my leg.”
“That so doesn’t make us even.”
Dean grumbles a bit as he glances down at the clip board again, quietly ticking off boxes and filling out information sections before he starts to pat down his clothes for his wallet so he can find the (fake) insurance card he’ll be using that day. It only takes him a moment to realize it’s not on him anymore and he turns back to face her with a glare.
“Where the hell is my wallet?”
She gives him the most innocent of innocent faces. He doesn’t buy it for a second. “What makes you think I have it?”
“Because I had it when I got out of the car and you manhandled me the whole way here.”
She stares at him for a moment, before sighing and pulling it out of her jacket pocket to place it in his hand. “Your fake IDs suck.”
“Oh, and what makes you the expert?”
“Just commenting on the quality of your work. Also you dorealize that everyone gets free healthcare now, right?”
“You actually have to be a living person to get free healthcare. I’ve technically been dead for a while now.”
She shrugs. “Fox News keeps saying it’s evil anyway.” There’s a beat. “Hey, that’s your job isn’t it? To go hunt evil things.”
Dean rolls his eyes a bit, before shaking his head. “I’m pretty sure that Fox News is the actual source of evil here, not the White House, but hey – I could be wrong. There’s a first time for everything.”
“It would so not be the first time.”
“Lady, you just met me two hours ago, what makes you think that you know anything about how right or wrong I am?”
“You. Shot. Me.” She pronounces each word with a clear, distinct diction that borders on grating, and he glares back at her before handing over the clipboard.
“Take that up for me, won’t you sweetheart?”
She gives him the sweetest not-smile he’s ever seen before getting to her feet and making her way back to the counter. It’s only a few minutes later when she returns, flopping down into the chair next to him and glancing around. Dean pauses, watching her for a moment, before crossing his arms in front of his chest.
“So tell me something – if you’re all pissed off at me because I shot you, why the hell did you bring me here instead of leaving my sorry ass to fend for itself?”
Jondy glances up at him uncomfortably for a moment, before staring out at the rest of the waiting room again. “Because you stopped those smoke things.”
“The demons?”
“Yeah.” There’s a pause and she shakes her head. “There’s not a lot of things I can’t take.”
Dean nods, quietly considering that for a moment before glancing back to her. “I’m sorry I accidentally shot at you.”
She glances back at him again, before shrugging. “I’m almost sorry I broke your leg.”
“Almost?!” Dean is about to protest that further when a pair of nurses come around the corner to distract their attention.
“Mr. Rogers – ”
There’s a snort from the girl next to him. Dean holds up a finger without even looking. “Don’t you dare.”
“ – the doctor is ready to see you now.”
“Thank God,” he sighs. “Get me away from Nurse Ratchet.” He lets them lift him up and lower him into the wheelchair, and as he does, Jondy gets to her feet and shifts her weight awkwardly.
“Probably won’t be here when you get out.”
Dean glances back to her, before giving her a half-hearted smirk. “What? Not going to stick around and abuse me some more?” She gives him a bit of a look, and he nods in return. “Then I’ll see you around, kid.”
“No, you won’t.”
That’s probably more true than he’d care to admit. Still, he nods and is taken back to the examination rooms to get his leg set.
She’s not there when he gets out. He tries not to be disappointed about that.
the next you're dazzled by the beauty of it all | charmed/heroes of olympus | 812 words
and we're always such a good thing when it's gone | leverage | 947 words
it's what you wear from ear to ear and not from head to toe | teleios-ish | 623 words
more requests
012 - Shelter - Lilah/Sam
070 - Alone - Bela/Lilah
the very things that make you live are killing you | psl that needs to be named | 993 words
It’s what comes with being on top. You want to be the one holding all the cards, the one who can force the other person’s hand simply by virtue of being better. Sam is one of them for a while. He is the hot shot lawyer, who buries everything that makes him Sam to make sure he is the one who comes out on top. After all the Senior Partners reward results, not heart. All Sam has to do is pretend he doesn’t have one.
After all, it isn’t as though he has anything to care about.
Being part of their law firm is like a maze of twists and turns—a puzzle, they never seem to be able to escape. He keeps diving further into the mystery while he’s there, trying to figure out what the endgame is, because he isn’t stupid. He hasn’t been raised as a hunter and doing the research for as long as he had to let the little things slip by him.
It starts with a case that he can’t ignore, can’t look the other way about. It ends with the Senior Partners telling him he could have been promising, and three dead demons on his way out the door. His brother is waiting for him, because regardless of what may have happened between them, Dean still comes when he calls, still bails him out when he needs it. This situation is a little bigger than they’re used to, but that doesn’t mean they can’t beat it. And after what the Senior Partners told him about his future, he doesn’t doubt that one way or another, they’ll be seeing each other again.
They put Los Angeles in their rearview mirror, and they never look back.
It only takes Sam fifty miles to regret not saying goodbye.
***
The news reports come in not long after Sam gets his soul back.
The world never really recovered from him aborting the Apocalypse. Rules were broken, and he and Dean are still trying to clean up the mess that was left behind. Castiel’s sigils on his ribs keep him safe from his old life tracking him down, but they don’t say anything about him running headfirst into it. He gets the cryptic emails for weeks, mentioning that big things are happening. By the time he starts packing, he doesn’t even know if she’s still alive. All he knows is that Los Angeles has been plunged into darkness, Wolfram and Hart was massacred, and all Hell was breaking loose.
He leaves his brother, leaves Bobby, and drives right into the heart of it.
Sam isn’t stupid. His life as Wolfram and Hart’s puppet isn’t only for life, it’s for death as well. And while it’s been years since he’s seen her, years since he’s even spoken to her, he’s not going to hang her out to dry. He needs to make sure that she lives. If she lives, at least there’s still a choice. There are instincts that even Wolfram and Hart couldn’t kill, and Sam’s need to take care of people is one of them. He knows that he can’t save Lilah from herself, can’t save her from what’s facing her when her life finally ends, but he can at least save her from everything else.
He hits all the usual locations first—the remains of Wolfram and Hart (her body is unaccounted for), her apartment (abandoned, hasn’t seen life in days), and just as he’s starting to get frustrated, he thinks. Even if the world was beyond saving, there would still be one group of people who are still trying.
They’re even in the phone book.
He arrives at the Hyperion, sneaks his way around the Pylean demon and young woman in the lobby, and up the stairs. He’s determined to search every damn room if he has to, but fortunately, he doesn’t have to get that far. He’s rounding top of the staircase to the second floor, and someone runs smack into him.
He catches her around the waist, and when he looks up to meet her eyes, he can’t help but smirk at the surprise on her face.
“Winchester?”
“Surprise.”
It takes a minute, but eventually, she shakes her head with a chuckle. “You’re an idiot.”
“I’ve been called worse.”
Then the smile turns a bit fonder. “What the hell took you so long?”
He shrugs, just slightly. “I was a little busy. And we should get out of here.”
“You don’t have to tell me twice,” she replies, before he takes her hand and starts to lead her out of the hotel. He heads down the stairs, back the way he came. They pause in the stairwell when they hear voices in the lobby. He wants to slip out as quietly as he came in, and he holds the two of them there as the voices die down and disappear.
Slowly, he signals for them to start to move again, and just as he’s about to get to the door and get her out, there’s the flash of a blade against his neck, and he comes to a stop.
“Leaving so soon, Lilah?”
Sam smirks. “You must be the Watcher.”
“Sam, this is Wesley Wyndam-Pryce. Wes, meet Sam Winchester.” There is a pause. “As in those Winchesters.”
Sam glances to the other man, and he raises an eyebrow. “I take it you’re here to help with the Beast?”
He pauses, before taking a deep breath and shrugging. “Sure. Sounds like fun.”
The blade drops from his throat, and he exhales, before tossing a look back at Lilah. She just gave him an innocent look back, before moving ahead of him down the stairs.
“Don’t look at me. You’re the one who volunteered.”
Sam’s lips press together, muttering as he follows her. “If I die again, Dean’s gonna bring me back just to kill me.”
Re: the very things that make you live are killing you | psl that needs to be named | 993 words
Re: the very things that make you live are killing you | psl that needs to be named | 993 words
yet we go on pretending stories like ours have happy endings | tvd/buffyverse | 1413 words
and everyone's competing for a love they won't receive | supernatural/buffyverse | 1,314 words
no subject
Doesn't have to be shippy, but sure can be cracky. Or anything. Do whatever you wish with this! :)
because of you now i believe | beyond the rift | 888 years
If he doesn’t have a place to tether himself to, then he’ll just have to change his course. Adapt. Make Jules his tether, and eventually he’ll find his way back to her again. There’s no rule that says home base has to be a place, after all. Besides, he’s never been one for rules anyway.
Why follow them when you can change them?
***
The first time they’re separated, it takes two jumps for him to get back to her.
It’s awesome, mostly because they’ve found themselves in a living museum. Jules has been there for a while, so she’s managed to make a little bit of money for them to have a place to stay. The reunion is a happy one (lots of kissing, ample ridiculousness, there’s even some pineapple), even if they spend the evening having to mitigate a war between the Old West exhibit and Ancient Rome.
Shawn gets a job as a security guard after that, coming home making comments about Dick Van Dyke and stuffed monkeys, and all of it is true, but there’s a kind of normalcy to it that almost reminds him of home. He says things that would not make sense in any other context, she humors him solely for the benefit of making him get to the point, and but they find their way, one way or another. He buys her dinner every night and she makes breakfast every morning and for a little while, their life works.
They get three months before Shawn disappears again. He doesn’t get to keep Jules, but he keeps his flashlight, just in case.
***
Four worlds later, Shawn wakes up in a flying house being supported by balloons, and is fairly convinced that he’s going to die. He’s not kidding. There is girlish screaming that was downright shameful, but at the time, he felt he had legitimate concerns. He doesn’t find Jules until he touches down on the ground, which was a few days after the fact, when he realized that if broke the balloons one at a time, he would be granted a slow descent. This came with some trial and error, however, and a great deal more screaming.
This world isn’t exactly as fun as the one before, and not nearly as domestic. There’s a mad scientist to defeat and talking dogs to liberate, and Shawn does it in his own, ridiculous way, but once that’s done they have an island paradise at they’re disposal.
They barely get two weeks before Jules disappears on him again.
It’s not even close to enough. Then again, Shawn isn’t sure that one hundred years would be enough either.
***
It’s a long time before he finds her again.
Each world without Jules in it only serves to make him angrier and more frustrated with the situation at hand. He leaves the jungle with a talking dog at his side and tries to make his way through, pretending as though nothing bothers him. He’s become an expert at that over the years, on more than one occasion.
But one day, there she is, like a bolt out of the blue.
(He’s never understood what that lyric meant, but when he sees her in the middle of the crowd, he starts to feel like he’s getting it.)
The one thing that Shawn is sure of, though, is that he doesn’t want to waste any time. He knows there stands to reason that they might not get much time but as the months tick past, he thinks they might have finally gotten lucky – finally found a home. They conquer every hurdle, get a house, get a cat, get jobs, slowly turn everything into a life, and he knows that this is what he wants.
He’s never actually wanted it before, but he wants it now. That’s the part that matters, in his opinion.
He buys the ring on a Saturday. It’s simple, but pretty, and very Jules, through and through. He makes the reservations, all the arrangements, does pretty much everything but write the speech because he’s always better on the fly. The days count down and he knows that they’ll make it. They can do this.
He gets caught by a rift two days before the dinner. He leaves the ring sitting on the bedside table as he goes.
He hopes the next time he sees her that she’s wearing it.