A Tumblr based repository of my fanfiction. My main archive is on Archive Of Our Own, under username darali_starscream. Subscribe to me there for real-time updates. Links will be added here as I find time to post my backfile.
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Supernatural
Series: Holler Me Home, in progress
Series Masterlist
A Strange Detour -- complete
Belonging To A Screwed Situation -- complete
Stops Along The Way, exit 1 -- complete
Calculate And Pray -- complete
Stops Along The Way, exit 2 -- complete
Finding The Groove -- complete
Stops Along The Way, exit 3 -- complete
Regarding The Road Ahead -- complete
Stops Along The Way, exit 4 -- complete
Ablaze With Hope And Free, part a -- complete
Ablaze With Hope And Free, part b -- complete
Have A Drink On Me -- complete
Stops Along The Way, exit 5 -- complete
Company's Coming -- in progress
Series: Supernatural B-Sides, in progress
Series Masterlist
We're Counting On You, Lord -- complete
Artificial Lullabye -- complete
I'll Gitcha Fixed -- complete
Full Of Broken Thoughts -- complete
Make It Do (Or Do Without) -- complete
Stairwell Drums -- complete
Slow And Sultry Beats -- complete
Series: Professional, complete
Series Masterlist
Calling A Professional, part a -- complete
Calling A Professional, part b -- complete
In Soviet Russia, Professional Calls You -- complete
The Professional -- complete
Series: Switching Up, complete
Series Masterlist
The Patches Didn't Work -- complete
Lipstick On Your Belt Buckle -- complete
Series: House Rules At The HQ, in progress
Series Masterlist
The Personal Improvement Plan -- complete
Relax And Float Downstream -- complete
After Closing -- complete
Hosing Off The Muck -- complete
Two Big Beds -- complete
Chaptered Fics
Double Booked, in progress
Chapter Index
Chapter 11, and its podfic read by Sandra of @talltalesandbedtimestories
The Days Of High Adventure, in progress
Chapter Index
Singular Fics
Snow Bound -- complete
Crazy Ways Are Evident-- complete, podfic by Sandra of @talltalesandbedtimestories
God Save The Queen, And Her Handmaids
A Moosey Fate -- complete
Overdone -- complete
Not My Fault -- complete
A Borrowed Life -- complete
Ambush! -- complete, podfic by Sandra of @talltalesandbedtimestories
The Ways Of Childhood -- complete, podfic by Sandra of @talltalesandbedtimestories
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The Boys
Series: Vices And Indulgences, in progress
Series Masterlist
Training Films -- complete
Housekeeping -- complete
The Three'O'Clock Slump -- complete
Singular Fics
As It All Burns -- complete
Of Constant Sorrow -- complete
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Big Sky
Walk Right In, It's Around The Back -- complete
Shoplifter -- complete
An Errand And A Favor -- complete
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Big Sky/Werewolf The Apocalypse
Weeping Into Our Beers -- complete
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Buffy The Vampire Slayer/Welcome To Night Vale
Dangerous Librarians -- complete
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Countdown
A Touch In Passing -- complete
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The Pitt
Banging My Heart On Some Mad Bugger's Wall -- complete, updates every other day
Maybe film would be better if everyone who wants to become a director were expected to first produce a silent film. Without intertitles. A film where the only tool they have is the moving picture.
Maybe then they'd learn to make films where WE CAN SEE.
love watching pre, idk, 2000 movies where there is "night lighting" that tells you it is dark but the director has paid lighting engineers enough that you can also clearly see everything
My wife pointed out to me the other day that apparently most people were literally only taught how to say Sorry and not how to Apologize or even that they are different things so here.
If all you ever do is step 1, not only did you not apologize, but people will rightfully stop believing you and start getting pissed or hurt.
Credit scores are about intelligently managing debt . . . but somehow can't compute that the most intelligent way to manage debt is to not have very much of it.
Publishers are legally barred from breaking into your house and stealing your music colleciton because of a spat with the manufacture of your stereo or an argument with the band.
See chapter index for synopsis, author's notes, and full list of tags.
---
Chapter Fifteen, Is There Anybody Out There?
That set the tone for our week. I holed up in my office at work, avoided the ED, and tried my best not to hear the rumors swirling. I could sense the irritation of HR from all the way across the building but they couldn't do shit about it. Robby and I work outside each other's chains of command, and as a department head in my own right we were actually roughly equal in terms of org chart placement. Conflict of interest wasn’t in play.
That day we met at this Thai place downtown after work and hit the Giant Eagle for groceries. Robby's Jewish but he doesn't keep kosher-- he didn't blink when I got bacon and a Boston butt that was on sale. We got home, we put the groceries away, and Robby spent the rest of the evening making my nice silk panties very very dirty.
That whole week, it was beautiful. Robby did some chores I'd been putting off, did the cooking, spent the day -- or so he told me -- catching up on some administrative shit regarding conference attendance and continuing education. I came home one day and found him on his laptop listening to a lecture, reading glasses perched on his nose and a pen clenched in his teeth. The professor hard at work, I smiled as I put my stuff away. It was fucking adorable.
Anyway, the details of cohabitation came together so smoothly it was eerie. Living together felt just . . . natural. I'd built my life as a party of one but Robby found room. In my home, in my bed, in my life.
The idyll was so complete, in fact, that when he told me his appointments included one with the same psychiatrist Jack saw for med checks, I believed him.
Stupid. Stupid, stupid Nikki. The rule of life is Trust But Verify, even with people I love.
Especially with people I love.
---
Robby's place was about what I expected-- a brownstone in the Strip District, maybe half-hour/forty five minutes walking distance from work, a hop-skip-and-jump by car. Apart from some artwork on the walls -- original oils in abstract blues and greens interspersed with poster-sized photos of urban nightscapes -- there wasn't much to suggest anyone but an uninspired interior decorator had created the space. The artworks Robby'd acquired on his trip -- the poster sized print of a woman in tribal regalia dancing, the little silver bear icon, a carving of a moose he picked up in Yellowstone -- looked out of place just by force of being picked out by a person. It was a dwelling meant for business as much as for home. I could feel the ghostly presence of networking suits, bored attendees at dinners reluctantly hosted by Chief of Emergency Medicine Michael Robinavitch MD as they sparred over money and being dicks about spending it.
“It wasn’t a party, exactly.” Dennis stood in Robby’s living room, arms crossed over his chest and gripping each elbow in his hand. Looked like he was trying to keep from stimming. My sister does the same thing. “It was just a movie night. That included some drinking.”
Robby nodded, his lips pursed. I could read his eye crinkles well enough by then to know he was fighting to keep from laughing. Poor Dennis though, he looked like someone staring through the loop of a noose with his name on it.
“I’m really sorry,” Dennis continued as the three of us looked at Robby’s busted TV. “I’ll pay for it. Anyway, your mail's up in your office sorted by sender and in order by the postmark--"
"Whitaker," Robby said, in a tone so perfectly, glacially neutral I nearly busted a rib keeping quiet, "why is there an ass print on my coffee table?"
I didn't know people could turn that particular shade of puce.
---
I was right. The third floor terrace offered an amazing view of the Sixteenth Street Bridge as it crosses the Allegheny. The kind of view that makes you think Pittsburgh might be a city worth living in. I couldn't quite see the squat tower of the Pitt, but I could feel its presence.
We lay together on a padded lounge chair sharing some takeout Chinese, cuddled close because the evening had come over cool. "Come on," I wheedled, my loaded chopsticks going for Robby's clenched lips, "you know you wanna."
"No Nikki, I promise, I'm full," he shook his head side to side, avoiding the morsel of broccoli clenched between the bamboo sticks.
"Broccoli's good for you," I teased. "Great for stamina."
"Excuse me," he said, sitting up straight and giving me a haughty look, "are you insinuating I can't keep up with you?"
"I'd never," I said, shivering as my pussy fluttered. Between those clever hands, and that amazing mouth, and that fucking delicious cock . . . I was raw in all the good ways.
Robby's a dirty fighter. When he saw I was distracted, he seized my wrist and redirected my chopsticks. Pop, the broccoli went in my mouth.
"Meanie," I pouted as I chewed.
"Just saving room for dessert," he grinned, with that edge that made my tummy flip.
"No, no, no no no no no," I giggled as his hands went under my shirt. "Not for love nor money will I take a chance on my bare ass showing up on somebody's drone pictures.
"Oh-kay," Robby huffed. "I promise to behave myself."
"Uh-huh," I said. "Try that on someone who doesn't have a younger sibling-- eek!" I squeaked as my bra clasp popped open. Robby, looking entirely too pleased with himself, slid a hand around front and gently stroked under the loose cups. Just feeling all of me, shape and texture and weight. Feeling my heart pounding underneath too.
"See?" he grinned. His fingertips took hold of my nipples, just tight enough to be tight enough. A gentle twist and I squeaked. "You're totally decent."
"And you're a horndog," I panted.
---
"When's your lease up?"
We were lying cuddled in Robby's bed, me curled into his open arm and resting my head on his chest. After some of the most gently relentless sex I've ever had in my life. Robby's entire face should be registered as a deadly weapon.
"At the end of January. Why?" I asked.
"Move in with me."
I blinked and raised myself up on my elbow. "What? That's three months of rent I'd have to come up with plus broken lease fees plus the security deposit that's void because of the carpet damage my dumbfuck ass didn't document when I moved in--"
"None of that's a problem," Robby waved it off with the cavalier attitude of a man in a six-figure tax bracket.
"Robby no," I said, sitting up further so we could talk like grownups. "Just, no. I mean, awesome sex aside, we've only known each other a few months."
"And we've spent the last week already living together," he pushed himself up to sit back against his bed's padded headboard. "In much closer quarters."
"In a honeymoon period," I countered. "When you don't have work to deal with."
A dark look crossed his face. "You think I can't handle going back to work?"
"That's not what I meant," I said. "I'm still wrangling about two jobs worth of work trying to get IT on a sustainable basis." It was mostly true. "You're going to need to hit the ground running in the ED. Neither of us need to deal with relocating on top of all that bullshit. Plus the holidays are coming up." I cupped his jaw, feeling the soft scruff of his beard. The hairs were a little heavy, a tiny bit damp. I blushed when I remembered why.
Sighing, Robby said, "So you just wanna go back to coming home alone every day?"
"Well I'm hoping to be able to take you out for burgers and beers every now and again," I said, but that didn't get a smile like I'd hoped it would. "I don't want to try and speedrun this," I said after a moment's thought. "I haven't . . . been in a serious relationship in a while. I don't want to fuck it up by going too fast."
That got his attention. "How long has it been?"
"Little over eight years," I said, giving him the quick version of Ryan and Superbitch. "It's kind of like an Elmer Fudd gag," I said. "Stops being funny when it starts being you. After that, dating just wasn't a priority compared to holding down a job." And getting away from Mom and Dave but boy, that wasn't a conversation I was prepared to have. Not with Robby's taste still slicking the back of my throat and my body still humming from the . . . three? orgasms he'd eaten out of me. "I wanna savor this," I said. "The whole process. The bit where you buy me flowers and I surprise you with lunch from your favorite taco joint. I just-- you know how they built the Great Wall Of China?"
"One brick at a time?"
"Exactly," I said.
Slowly, Robby nodded. "I can live with that," he said. "But I do have a few ground rules."
"Okay . . . " I prompted.
"First of all," he said, "no fooling around at work."
I busted out laughing. "Of course not. For one thing, the rumor mill is already working overtime."
"Fuck me," Robby groaned, putting a hand over his eyes. "There's a betting board in the security station isn't there?"
"If there is don't tell me. I can hardly look any of my department in the eye as it is. By the same token," I said, "we're not going out of our way to hide anything either. I refuse to be the secret office girlfriend that everybody knows about anyway." That made him wince. "Just how many not-so-secret office girlfriends have you had anyway?" the thought occurred.
"Most of them don't work there anymore," Robby said. "Noelle, she's a bed manager? We had a thing. Not serious," he added as I made a face.
"That explains the offer for a cup of coffee," I said, remembering the lovely brunette in the navy blue pantsuit. She'd come up to me in the cafeteria and offered to buy me a cup of coffee. I'd turned her down because I was in the middle of three things at once again as usual. Besides, I recognized the smirk. The one that said she was longing to talk some trash, and I had an idea the trash she wanted to talk wasn't the fun kind. "So. No dragging each other into the supply closets at work and no sneaking around like we got something to hide. Anything else?"
"I think we can figure out the rest as we go," Robby said. "For tonight, just stay here. With me. Okay?"
"Twist my arm," I said as I slipped into the space Robby made for me and met his lips in a kiss.
---
The next morning, Robby's alarm went off at the fucking uncivilized hour of five AM. "It's okay," he whispered as he got up out of bed. "It's early."
"Pretty sure early was banned by the international war crimes tribunal," I grunted as I hauled myself out of bed and went hunting for clothes. "Got anything in the fridge?"
"No, I was just going to grab something on my way in." He kissed me, both of us giggling over our dragon breath. "Share a shower with me?"
It was a shame there wasn't time to do anything but wash. Robby's shower's nice and big and comes with one of those fold-down benches. Ideal for people who favor lap sex. I could see Robby thinking the same thing. "Some other time," he whispered in my ear as passed a sudsy washcloth over my back.
We parted about quarter after six, Robby setting off at a brisk walk for the bridge and me taking Cutesy Buttons back to my apartment. I packed a gym bag with some date-appropriate clothes and something to sleep in just in case my boyfriend felt like company but not sex.
My boyfriend. Mine. All mine. I felt fucking giddy. Not just new lover euphoria though. For the first time in a long time, I felt hopeful. About the future. I had a challenging job I was actually good at, my financial affairs were in their best shape ever, and I had Robby. Charismatic, sweet, attractive, great in bed-- way the fuck out of my league for sure, and I didn't care.
Catastrophically naive in retrospect.
---
I worked late that day so my departure time would match up with Robby's. He got out late. Very late-- it was more like eight thirty when I got the text to meet him in the park across the street. He was sitting on a bench nursing a beer with some of the other ED staff. I recognized Dennis and his attack best friend Trinity. Princess and Perlah, the attack badgers of the ED, sat together chattering-- about me, it looked like, thank God I didn't understand the language. Emma the RN and Dr. McKay sat next to each other, peering down at a phone and chattering. Your basic bull session crowd.
"Hi Nikki," Robby called out when he saw me. "Tough day?"
"That," I said, "is a trick question. All I did was sit on my ass behind a computer terminal making sure the whole house of cards didn't come tumbling down."
"Hey," Trinity said. She'd foregone beer for a bottle of spring water, I noticed. Probably driving. "Anything to keep us from having to do everything on paper again. I still have nightmares about that."
"Beer me, Dr. Robby," I said, holding out my hand. He fished in the little cooler and slapped a can of Bud Light in my palm. It tasted like crap but hell, it was wet and cold. "So how was you guys's day?"
"E. coli outbreak at the high school," Dr. McKay reported, and everybody groaned.
"Shitty day," I remarked, which got a few laughs.
Robby came home with me that night, and he was too tired to do anything but stuff a quick supper down his throat and fall into bed. And that became our pattern on Robby's working days. One or the other of us would stay over, mostly quiet, just basking in each others company. Sometimes he'd talk about what went on at work that day, other times he'd just sit with his arm around me watching TV or using his laptop to catch up on work chores. His days off, we spent apart. For appointments and life shit like therapy, or so I thought. We had a few wonderful date nights-- Robby knows how to show a lady a good time.
So basically, it was weeks of being a regular couple working our lives together around demanding jobs. So what if Robby got snappy after a particularly difficult shift, or tended to lose patience with me when I started acting silly? So what if he never mentioned his therapist? When I went to therapy I tended not to talk about sessions anyway.
---
Okay, if I'm being honest, there were times when things . . . didn't run so smoothly.
The first quarter budget meeting took place the last week in November, and it was a shit show.
Robby was there along with Baran, presenting a united front for the emergency department. The atmosphere between them might best be described as an amenable truce. I counted it as a mark of personal growth that Robby and Baran had hammered out an equitable division of labor between them. Technically Baran had accepted a demotion to Chief Attending, but in practical terms they shared the department head duties between them-- Robby on the floor running the team and Baran handling the lion's share of the administrative shit. Accepting help with a job that had gotten too big for any one person hadn't been easy for Robby. I was proud of him for that.
Being on the receiving end of his pissy attitude about other departments needing resources? Not so much.
"I'm sorry-- the nursing staff have had to manage without cost-of-living raises for going on four years, our staff turnover rate is double the national average--"
And whose fault is that, Mister Congeniality? I wanted to snap and didn't.
"--and we're talking about a decorating project?"
"I beg your pardon Dr. Robinavitch," I said, putting a hard choke chain on my temper, "but I'm not asking for the sake of aesthetics."
"Really," he countered, dripping sarcasm. "Because it seems to me that's exactly what you're asking for, Miss Cousins."
"My concerns," I said, biting back a snarl at the miss, "are practical. The area of the hospital housing the IT department is part of the hospital's original construction. My department has some of the worst rates for absenteeism in the entire hospital system because the ventilation down there is poor, the climate control doesn't work properly, and as the renovations to the floors above us continue contaminants like bedbugs and dust mites and mold seep down to us through the air ducts. One of my shift leaders broke out in a rash so bad she thought she'd caught measles."
I had everyone's attention-- Mr. James, Dr. Underwood, the legal department, the rest of the suits. Words like mold and bedbugs equal adverse working conditions. Equal lawsuits. Don't appeal to decency in upper management, that is simply not how they make decisions.
"Then spring for a tub of hydrocortisone cream and find better uses for the money," Robby-- Chief Robinavitch said, to my face, in front of the hospital board including out mutual boss Mr. Norris.
"Hard to do when my highly qualified technicians start quitting because they feel like they're bringing contaminants home to their kids, or because they have cumulative stress injuries from broken chairs and desks. I know the outlay for facilities improvements seems like a lot but it's cheap in comparison to having to constantly re-recruit and retrain technicians." And you've been doing this particular devil's waltz long enough to know that, Robby, I thought furiously. "I'm not asking for the department to move upstairs to offices with a view. Our proximity to the server room makes sense. I'm asking for the resources to do the work that should've been done ten years ago instead of relying on space heaters, dehumidifiers, and my technicians bringing their own chairs from home because they know full well they're not going to get one via the usual channels." I took a breath, aware of the eyes on me and my tendency to rant. "What I'm asking for falls under the auspices of reasonable accommodations, and will save money in the long run."
"Or," Dr. Robinavitch said, tone cold and etched in acid, "we can hire another attending to take care of patients, which is what we actually do here."
What could I do? I'd already made my point. So I clamped my mouth shut and let the meeting progress. Baran caught my eye, ticked her head at Robby, and gave me a tiny apologetic shrug.
I didn't get my funding for environmental repairs. The hospital didn't spring for another attending either.
I should not have been as upset as I was. I was advocating for my department, Robby was doing likewise for his. We were doing our respective jobs. I reminded myself of that as I got back to my office, put on my headset, and put on some Rammstein. Perfect for fantasies about wringing one's boyfriend's neck.
My staff know me well enough to know when to not fuck with me, so they left me alone. I spent the day online sourcing some of the shit I'd been counting on that space in the budget to get. New chair for Charmaine, new monitors for Howard, an upright mouse and ergonomic keyboard for Ja'Cory, an air filter, a humidifier/dehumidifier . . . the list kept growing. Plus I needed to look up how to write it off on my income taxes because fuck this shit how the fuck was I supposed to pay for everything out of pocket?
I got home that night seething, so deep in my own head I totally forgot Robby was coming over. He let himself in as I sat curled up in my big blue chair surfing Amazon for something to watch. "Hey," he said, dropping his backpack and keys on the counter. He came in close for a kiss but stopped before leaning down. "You okay?"
I put the remote down. "I dunno honey, being publicly humiliated in front of my fucking boss while begging for resources my department actually fucking needs did not make for a good day."
He blinked. "What are you talking about? Nobody was humiliating you!"
I'm usually better at spotting it when a man gets defensive after he gets caught acting wrong. "'Get a tub of itch cream and find better uses for the money?' How exactly do you think that landed in that room with those people?"
"Fuck 'em. Who cares what they think?"
"I care insofar as they control the money with which I run my fucking department," I said. "Now I gotta kludge together workarounds to problems that could've been solved outright with an outlay of cash that is, in the context of total hospital operating expenses, chump change. So thanks, a lot," I wound it all up.
"You're seriously, going to blame me," his hands got involved, "because you didn't get a budget hike you were never going to get anyway?"
"I'm blaming you for lumping me in with the assholes on the top floor who gripe and whine about not having polarized glass in their floor-to-ceiling windows and real teakwood desks--" my hands got involved, we probably looked hilarious waving at each other like actors in a Noh drama, "excuse me for taking that personally. I thought we were all on the same fucking side here!"
"We are."
"Clearly we are not, if you can't even afford me the decency to shut the fuck up and let me present my fucking case."
"Oh for God's sake Nikki-- grow a thicker skin or find a new line of work already!"
"Fuck you Robinavitch!" I went for the door, grabbing my coat and keys. "Let yourself out. Lock up behind you."
Robby slapped the door shut as I tried to open it. "Where the hell do you think you're going?"
"Somewhere you are not. Asshole." I stood staring at the closed door and feeling Robby's heat behind me. An arm vined around my chest and I tossed it off. "Let me out."
"Not until you calm the hell down and we have a discussion like adults."
"What exactly will we be discussing? Me having a very real grievance over your behavior and you telling me all the ways I'm wrong for feeling slighted? I'll pass. Thanks much. Now let. Me. Out."
Robby took a breath. I could feel his chest rise against my back. "I'm sorry."
I wasn't in a placating mood. "For . . . ?"
"For acting like an asshole. You're right, it was inappropriate."
"Apology accepted. Now let me out."
"Nikki come on," Robby wheedled.
My hand shot up. "Don't. I'm fine, I just need to have my ragefit somewhere else. I will talk to you tomorrow. Now for the last time Michael Robinavitch, let me out."
Robby didn't move. Making his stupid macho point that he still controlled whether or not I stayed or left. Then he lifted his hand and I marched outside.
The motherfucker had me parked in.
"Robby get out here!"
The bastard was laughing. Laughing. "You bellowed?"
"Get out of my driveway before I slash your fucking tires!"
"Little counterproductive for what you're trying to accomplish," Robby said, all smugness.
"Then I will fucking walk." I pivoted on one toe and headed for the alley, snow crunching under my house slippers. My feet were already cold. They'd be blocks of ice inside ten minutes, and the way I was feeling I'd need a lot more than ten minutes to be fit for civilized company.
Robby caught up to me and pulled me into his arms. "Will you calm down?"
"What do you think I am trying to do?" I demanded, each word a growl. I twisted back out of his arms, once again cursing my height disadvantage. Size differences are a lot more fun in bed than they are in arguments. "It's not like I can lock you out. You get to come and go as you please, you get to publicly humiliate me in front of my fucking boss who can accept my standing resignation and oh, by the way, charge me with destruction of property and possibly attempted assault--"
"That's ridiculous!"
"Glad you think so. Now get your car out of my fucking driveway so I can go someplace and cool off!"
"Don't bother," Robby snarled as he body-checked me back a step and stormed towards his truck.
---
I drove a ways, got something unhealthy for supper, and had a car picnic in a GetGo parking lot. Did a lot of swearing. Smoked a couple of cigarettes. Listened to music that hurt my brain. I got home a little after midnight, took a long shower, and went to bed.
The next morning, Robby was waiting outside my office. He had a dozen roses on his arm and a bag with a jug of coffee and cream cheese Danish in his hand. "Shouldn't you be working right now?" I asked as I let him in and shucked my coat.
"Al-Hashimi's covering for me. I can spare about twenty minutes. I--" The wrapping around the roses crinkled, like he was expecting me to grab it and start swatting him with it. "Nikki I'm sorry. You were right, I was a putz." Setting the bunch down on my desk, he reached into his pocket.
Three keys, on an O-ring strung to a plastic Pittsburgh Pirates keychain. Each one had a tiny paper tag taped to it, labeled in Robby's draftsman's capitals. FT. DOOR. D-BOLT. GARAGE. He took my hand and laid the keys down into it, closing my fingers around the little bits of serrated brass.
"You were right about that too," he said. "It's not fair I can just come and go as I please and you can't. I already texted you the alarm code." He smiled a little. "Mi casa es su casa and I'm sorry it took so long to pull my head out of my ass about it."
Keys. Permission. Robby was inviting me in. You're family, not a guest, were the first words my Uncle Wes ever said to me when my mom showed up on his doorstep with two daughters and no job. Meaning pick up after yourself, put the cap back on the pop so it doesn't go flat, you belong here in my home. Maybe more than that, I thought as I got out my keyring and strung Robby's keys onto it. Home, heart . . . future.
Robby picked a single flower in full bloom out of the bunch. He grabbed a pair of scissors out of the pen holder on my desk and used the blade to clip the thorns off the stem. Holding it out to me, he asked, "Forgive me?"
I took the rose and held it to my nose. It was one of those beautiful deep crimson ones, the kind where the red looks veiled in black. The petals tickled my nose, all cool and velvety. It smelled light and fresh. I looked up into Robby's eyes. "Forgiven."
His smile made my heart shine. "Here, give that here," he said. Cupping my chin to hold my head still, Robby tucked the rose behind my ear. "There," he said, softly, looking down at me with that tender look again. "Beautiful."
I defy any woman with a beating heart to withstand being called beautiful by Michael Robinavitch. He stole a kiss, brief and tender. "Sit down, sit down," he said, breaking the spell and putting us back in the mundane world where we had jobs and shit. "Breakfast time."
---
AN: Robby . . . he's trying, okay? Thing about stress is, it makes one fall back on bad habits. Oh, and Robby drives a pickup truck because he got one after he bought his Triumph. Restoration project means part-hauling and it was just easier to have his own truck than to use Duke's trailer all the time.
sam winchester memes for anyone who can't be bothered to save their young ward from a gruesome fate now that their brother and his boyfriend have been zapped into a realm of monsters after finally defeating the goo prince
Kevin was a Prophet of the Lord. He was Heaven’s responsibility, not Sam’s. Sam still had nearly 200 years of cage trauma to deal with after clearing up the Apocalypse that Heaven started.
(Cas took away its ability to kill him but Sam still had memories.)
His ‘stone number one’ and their friend just exploded into black goo as far as he was aware. And his paternal figure had died.
Basically Sam had given enough to the world and Heaven. Heaven needed to step up & do their job.
Funny isn’t it that Sam gets more blame from fans for not rescuing Kevin between s7 & 8 than Dean gets for Gadreel killing Kevin in s9.
. . . and when has the Host ever given a single solitary shit about people that it doesn't intend to use? With the Leviathan neutralized and (they thought) no other tablets dug up, why would the angels bother with chasing down a stray prophet? And Sam knows more about angels than anyone; he'd come to the same conclusions.
Sam left a seventeen year old boy to sit in Hell as the personal guest of Crowley. He didn't even pass the news of what happened to any other Hunter so they could search and rescue. One phone call to Sheriff Mills could've solved a lot of problems.
Kevin Tran was TFW's responsibility, and Sam dropped the ball. It really is that simple.
What infuriates me is . . . Sam's smarter than that, and a better Hunter, and . . . God damn it, he's a more caring man. There is context for Sam's decisions that is missing from the record because of creative choices made by the showrunners. It's very unSam and he deserved better.
I agree it was unSam to do so & I agree the showrunners were at fault and Jared was as pissed as the rest of us about it at the time.
But I’m still sick of Sam being crucified for it. So he was meant to take on the whole of Hell alone? He had given enough & Heaven not doing anything was not his fault.
Also, Jody had only just started dabbling a little in hunting and you think Sam should just send her off to take on Hell alone?
Sam didn’t exactly have great rep with hunters - most of them have wanted him dead at some point, and those that didn’t were already dead themselves.
And again, why is Sam continuously punished for not clearing up another one of Heaven’s messes yet no one blames Dean for Kevin’s death?
Or even calls Dean out for his harsh treatment of the kid?
Why did Dean get to give up hunting to live with Lisa & Ben when people were still dying, but Sam isn’t allowed to just run when he’d lost everything?
I’m sick of Sam being held to an impossible standard by most of the fandom whilst Cas & Dean are forgiven nearly everything.
Anyone not blaming Dean for treating Kevin like shit is incorrect, because Dean was legitimately out-of-line and his post-fuck-up retconning is self-excusing bullshit (not going to save Mrs. Tran after Crowley confirmed she was still alive, for instance).
Kevin's death was an assasination ordered by Metatron. Dean had no way of knowing Ezekiel/Gadreel had been flipped. Kevin's death is squarely on Metatron, not on the guys.
The Hunting community isn't a bloc and TFW did have allies. People who would've helped-- out of obligation, respect for Bobby Singer's memory, friendship with Sam or Dean (Garth, Jody), or just to fuck up some Hell shit. Sam never even reached out, and why he didn't is never explained to my satisfaction.
Sam specifically told Dean to quit. TFW knew messing with the Cage carried too great a risk of re-releasing Lucifer. Dean was not trying to duck his responsibilities-- Bobby and the rest of the hunting community knew he was out of the game. Sam just . . . left. It's the difference between a soldier leaving their post after being properly relieved and desertion.
This is what I meant about missing context. Without a clearer understanding of why Sam chose to run and hide from his responsibilities to Dean, Kevin, and the good guys in general, we're left with . . . a deep disconnect between the story the writers are trying to tell and the one they're actually telling.
sam winchester memes for anyone who can't be bothered to save their young ward from a gruesome fate now that their brother and his boyfriend have been zapped into a realm of monsters after finally defeating the goo prince
Kevin was a Prophet of the Lord. He was Heaven’s responsibility, not Sam’s. Sam still had nearly 200 years of cage trauma to deal with after clearing up the Apocalypse that Heaven started.
(Cas took away its ability to kill him but Sam still had memories.)
His ‘stone number one’ and their friend just exploded into black goo as far as he was aware. And his paternal figure had died.
Basically Sam had given enough to the world and Heaven. Heaven needed to step up & do their job.
Funny isn’t it that Sam gets more blame from fans for not rescuing Kevin between s7 & 8 than Dean gets for Gadreel killing Kevin in s9.
. . . and when has the Host ever given a single solitary shit about people that it doesn't intend to use? With the Leviathan neutralized and (they thought) no other tablets dug up, why would the angels bother with chasing down a stray prophet? And Sam knows more about angels than anyone; he'd come to the same conclusions.
Sam left a seventeen year old boy to sit in Hell as the personal guest of Crowley. He didn't even pass the news of what happened to any other Hunter so they could search and rescue. One phone call to Sheriff Mills could've solved a lot of problems.
Kevin Tran was TFW's responsibility, and Sam dropped the ball. It really is that simple.
What infuriates me is . . . Sam's smarter than that, and a better Hunter, and . . . God damn it, he's a more caring man. There is context for Sam's decisions that is missing from the record because of creative choices made by the showrunners. It's very unSam and he deserved better.
Whenever I think about the value of something being done by a person who really understands the job from a lifetime of experience, I think of my first restaurant job. My goal was to work every position, and I started with a year and a half in the dish pit at 16yo.
When i started as a dishwasher, i was trained by an old career dish pit man named Claudio. He'd spent his whole life washing dishes. It allowed him to move to just about any city in the world that he wanted to and get a job without having to deal with complex hiring processes or strict resumé requirements. Which was the main thing he wanted out of a career. I still think about him.
He'd seen a lot of people come through that station who either didn't consider it a real job or thought it was beneath them, on their way to "better" or "more important" things. And, in retrospect, those first two days he was sort of doing the minimum with me that he could do and still respect himself when he told the manager he'd trained me.
But, maybe it was because i was really interested in learning all the positions there were in a restaurant because i knew they were ALL important, or because i was a hard worker, or maybe it was because i tried to have real conversations with him in my broken spanish and did my best to not make him speak any english unless he wanted to, but after a couple days there was a big shift in the way he and i worked together, and he started to really teach me.
That place ran the dish pit with one dishwasher, so when he was done training me I was going to be doing the job on my own.
The thing that stuck with me the most, for the rest of my restaurant career, was this... and it wasn't just the actual things he was saying, but a completely new way of looking at what i was doing within the context of how the restaurant ran. I came in for my 3rd day and he said
"When you work alone, you want to go home by midnight?"
we clocked on at 3:30 and took a half hour lunch break and usually skipped our tens, so, yeah i absolutely did want to get off work by midnight
Then, even tho i already knew where most of everything was by that time, he took me around and showed me all the dishes, cups, pots and pans, spatulas, silverware, had me look at all of it. Then he told me to remember that almost every one of the dishes I was looking at would be used more than once by the end of our shift- we were clocking on to wash the entire building full of dishes multiple times.
Then he led me back over to the industrial dishwasher most restaurants have, which looks like this:
and then this 60 year old career dishwasher from Mexico City said the thing that changed how I looked at restaurant jobs forever
"This machine takes two full minutes to run a cycle. We are on the clock for 8 hours. That means we have a maximum of 240 times we can run this machine. If you want to wash all those dishes, clean your station, mop, and clock off by midnight? This machine has to be on and running every second of the shift.
If you don't have a full load of dishes collected, scraped, rinsed, stacked, and ready to go into the dishwasher the second it's done every single time? You can't do it. If, over the course of 8 hours, you let this machine lay idle for just one minute in between finishing each load and being turned on again? Instead of 240 loads, you'll do 160 loads.
[like, literally, he had done this math, he had these exact figures]
160 loads instead of 240 loads means you are doing 20 loads in an hour instead of 30 loads. That means the dishes are going to pile up. The cooks will run out of pots and pans and will have to stop and wait for you, the servers will run out of plates and cups and have to stop and wait for you, and your night is going to SUCK. Every part of how this restaurant works can grind to a halt because of that idle minute between dish loads, and if it does you'll have an entire building of people in a hurry and all waiting on you.
And it means you're going to be here until 2 am doing the 200+ loads of dishes this restaurant goes through every night.
For this to work, you MUST have this dishwasher on and running every minute of the shift. As soon as you turn it on you have two minutes to have the next load ready. See these large items i put to the side down here? One or two of them takes up all the space in the machine. I keep them here so that if the machine finishes and shuts off before i'm ready for it i can stick one of these in there and turn it on again immediately. You have to think like that to do this job without stress."
The way he was looking at how the whole restaurant ran, the way he was looking at how he'd spend each minute of the entire shift, the way he broke down what the physical limits were and how to max them out so he could do his job and go home on time without stressing out... The way this 60 year old guy, who had never had professional ambitions beyond being a dishwasher, was still such a competent and brilliant expert in his field.
It was all such an important lesson, and one that stayed with me through every position i went on to work in restaurants, dish pit, busser, server, cook, all the way up through manager before I finally got out of my restaurant career
Claudio never wanted to be anything but a dishwasher who didn't stay any later than he had to.
But he knew how that restaurant ran better than most of the other people in it. I never had a chance to truly thank him for the specific lesson he taught me, because while it had an immediate impact, I didn't really understand how valuable a lesson it was until much later.
But I've thought about Claudio and what i learned from him many MANY times in my life.
All of this. Disaster befalls any company that holds no regard for the expertise of the lowest level staff.
In my younger years I worked at a medical office that managed both mental health and addiction recovery. The company had purchased an empty lot down the road from the building we rented to build a better facility with larger capacity. The CEO worked for months with the architect, and just as they were finalizing everything they happened to let me - who was the receptionist at that time - take a gander at the blueprints. It took all of three seconds for two major issues to jump out at me.
“The receptionist can’t see the waiting room from her desk with this layout.” I said. “It’s around the corner and blocked by a wall.”
“Is that important?” They asked.
“Do you want me to be able to keep track of the patients who are waiting?” I asked.
“Isn’t that what the sign-in sheet is for?” They asked me.
“Not everyone who comes here is signing in for an appointment, some are coming to check in, some people are here for the group therapy and need to be directed to the other side of the building, some people are painfully shy and if I don’t appear warm and inviting they won’t approach.” I explain.
“How often does that even happen?” They asked.
“Every day.” I explain.
“Bullshit.” They said.
“I’m not joking at all. Also, where is the chart room?” I asked.
“Oh, over here.” They said, pointing to a tiny closet on the far side of the building from the receptionist and check out desks. It was tucked neatly beside the CEO’s office. To get there the secretaries would have to go through two sets of security doors and it would be a five minute walk each way.
“Why isn’t it next to the front office, since that’s where the people who use it are?” I asked.
“We had concerns about people just going into the chart room to goof off and not do their work. It takes them away from their desks too much. You should only go in the chart room twice a day - once in the morning to pull the charts for the day, and once in the evening to put way the charts. It would remain locked and the CEO would have the key and let you in to supervise.” They said.
“We pull charts the day before so everything is ready to go and we can alert staff if a patient with additional needs is coming in. We have to go in the chart room every time a patient calls in that’s having a problem with their meds or is in crisis or otherwise has a question for the nurse. We have to go in there every time someone cancels and we are able to fit a waitlisted patient in. We go in there 20 - 30 times a day for legitimate reasons. The only reason any of us has ever gone in there to take a minute was when we got news that a patient had died and we were crying. And even then, we filed charts as we sobbed because no one in this office has free time.”
They stared at me.
“Sit with me for an hour and see what happens up here.” I said.
They took the blueprints away from me before I could keep looking at them, but they took me up on sitting with me. They didn’t last an hour. They changed the blueprints to fix both things I’d pointed out.
Unfortunately, they didn’t let me keep looking at it and they never asked the janitor what he thought, so no one caught the final fatal flaw in the design.
There were no closets in the entire building. Nowhere to put our supplies. And I’m not talking just a place for stationary and pens. I mean no janitorial closet. Nowhere to put paper towels and toilet paper or cleaning products. Nowhere to put holiday decorations or anything at all. They completely forgot about storage of any kind and immediately started eyeballing my hard-won chart room for it.
They wound up putting all the supplies in the cabinets under the sinks in the public bathrooms. And, surprising to no one, all of it got stolen after our first week in the new building. All our spare keyboards and monitors and phones and even our paper towels just walked out of the building. Because the CEO who had never worked a lower level job in his life wasn’t convinced closets were worth it.
fandom / fanon: sam is vegetarian / vegan :) bc he likes "rabbit food" and judges dean's "gross" "unhealthy" "bad" foods :)
canon: sam is continuously shown eating various meat / fish / dairy foods (and happily eats "dean foods" like the burgers dean makes him) throughout the entire show, yes all the way to late s15. however, he is shown to avoid certain foods / food groups at different points in time. usually as a form of control / to give himself a sense of internal purification. this is not a healthy relationship to food.
conclusion: the answer you are looking for to describe sam's eating habits is not vegetarian / vegan. it's "fad diet health guru disordered eating"
let’s talk about how they made it impossible to function without a phone and digitalised everything and then turned around and went “actually! these phone things aren’t safe for kids but it’s magically ok once you’re eighteen. guess you’ll have to have your life dictated by your parents now lol cause we’re gonna take the devices away from you. IT’S FOR YOUR OWN GOOD WHY ARE YOU COMPLAINING”
ok my apologies. take away my ability to buy anything too ig because these fuckass stores don’t accept cash anymore. take away my ability to communicate with people outside my house and school because I can’t text and I can’t email and I cant drive to them either and I can’t even fucking get public transport without a phone either. can’t order at a fucking restaurant without being asked to get a membership and install an app and also very sorry but you can only order through our online menu now! have you ever considered that it’s not just about instagram?
