I got em in my sights

[isaidgoodnight-blog]

@knivesnothingtoit

The stars are big and bright and beautiful, stretched out over their heads in black velvet. The horses are comfortable, nickering with enjoyment as they eat. The fire crackles, dinner begins to warm in the kettle. 

It’s just beans, but after a long day’s ride, it smells delicious. 

There’s an ease, a comfort that comes from being out here, so far away from society as a whole. Goody can’t hear any wolves or owls out here, only crickets and the sound of the stream a few miles north. 

Not for the first time, he wonders if this is what Heaven would be like for all those good, God fearing souls. Warm, comfortable. Wide open. At peace. 

Billy is watching him over the fire, and his brows say that Goodnight has been staring again. The quirk of his lip says he doesn’t mind the attention. 

It’s taken him a good many years to learn the language of Billy Rocks, to be able to decipher each breath and shift, to see the things that the English language could never give to his lover.

But English has done him a great many favors in his life. Like this speech in particular, as rehearsed as it may be. Goody pulls the carefully wrapped parcel from his bag, handing it over to Billy, who holds it gently.

(Such soft hands, for such a clever, talented man.)

“I realize that in our recovery after Rose Creek, I missed your birthday. Now rather than wait a whole calendar year for that day to come back around, I figured you’d give an old man his sentiment and let me celebrate today.”

Inside the parcel paper is a white porcelain cigarette case, inlaid with a design that looks strikingly similar to the one on Billy’s knives. 

“Happy Birthday, Pischouette.”

[isaidgoodnight-blog]

‘ it made me merciless. ’

“You found your way back.”

He can see the uncomfortable shift of his brother’s wings, the way his grace recoils and tries to fold in on itself. To protect itself. It has been a long time since Castiel kept company with someone who could see the truth of him, beyond how openly he wore his emotions across his vessel. 

Goodnight reaches out, hand curling over a shoulder and grace feathering against grace. Trying to offer up some kind of comfort where he could. 

“To err is to be human, little brother.”

His smile is a private thing, a barely there flit across his lips. But his grace glows with the warmth of it, with the light of love that keeps him moving in spite of all things. 

“And there is no greater goal to work towards than that.”

[isaidgoodnight-blog]

@sofaradaysogood ( x )

Faraday has been an anomaly since the day he was brought into the fold. One of the few that Goody washed his hands off. He knows a time bomb when he sees one, and irony notwithstanding, the Irish boy is a few seconds from midnight. 

(Maybe he sees a bit of himself in that funhouse mirror. Too much to think about.)

Goodnight raises his glass in salute, taking a careful sip. 

“You don’t get the thrill of not getting caught when you’re dead.”

[isaidgoodnight-blog]

‘ i do not exist. there is nothing left. ’

He’s never seen him like this, grief written in broad swathes across his stoic face. Goody doesn’t have to ask what happens. There’s only one thing that could break through all that ice and leave Billy so shaken. 

His brother is dead. 

Knuckles knock against the top of the car. (He knows where it’s safe to talk, where things haven’t been bugged. Not his apartment, not Billy’s. Their phones are tapped. But his car? It’s the safest place in the world.)

“Come on. I’ll buy you dinner.”

He can’t fix this. He can’t do anything to erase all that pain in Billy’s eyes. 

What surprises him is that he wants to. 

[girlaltar-a-blog]

anne carson sentence starters.

quotes are all taken from various poems and essays by the queen of aesthetes, anne carson. feel free to change pronouns/add things/etc if needed.

‘ you are not a god. ’

‘ we begin in the dark and birth is the death of us. ’

‘ now you’ve crowned yourself one final perfect time. ’

‘ [ name ] was a monster. everything about him was red. ’

‘ what are we made of but hunger and rage? ’

‘ i finally decided that understanding isn’t what grief is about. ’

‘ honey is the sleep of the just. ’

‘ it is perilous to live past the end of your myth. ’

‘ you remember too much. ’

‘ when i desire you a part of me is gone. ’

‘ humans in love are terrible. ’

‘ under the seams runs the pain. ’

‘ men know almost nothing about desire. ’

‘ sex is a substitute, like money or language. ’

‘ what is the holiness of conversation? ’

‘ —you burn me. ’

‘ i ask this one thing: let me go mad in my own way. ’

‘ sometimes i just want to stop seeing. ’

‘ we’re all mortal, you know. ’

‘ i am the shape you made me. filth teaches filth. ’

‘ why does tragedy exist? ’

‘ you’re a beauty. ’

‘ madness and witchery are conditions commonly associated with the female voice. ’

‘ it made me merciless. ’

‘ desire is no light thing. ’

‘ i do not exist. there is nothing left. ’

‘ gods are stubborn. so am i. ’

‘ we had been seduced into thinking that we were immortal. ’

‘ i am someone who did not die when i should have died. ’

‘ why are you so in love with things unbearable? ’

‘ everything can collapse. ’

‘ someone will remember us. even in another time. ’

‘ my mind is burning. ’

‘ each night, about this time, he puts on sadness like a garment and goes on writing. ’

‘ love does not make me gentle or kind. ’

‘ i can give you reasons not do die. ’

‘ passivity is killing her. ’

‘ they are victims of love, many of them. ’

‘ he is a young god. ’

‘ you touch my soul, you pain my mind. ’

‘ it’s something of a cliché to say that we all think we’re monsters. ’

‘ i fear your sorrows make your tongue grow wild. ’

‘ it’s what they call ‘ecstasy’. ’

‘ a man who can’t die is no tragic hero. ’ 

‘ i want everything. ’

‘ it was like a beautiful dance where your partner turns and stabs you to death. ’

‘ to survive you need an edge. ’

‘ girls are cruelest to themselves. ’

‘ we are dust. ’

bonus! further quotations from award-winning poet and author anne carson:

‘ i am a philosopher of sandwiches. ’

‘ pilgrims were people glad to take off their clothing, which was on fire. ’

‘ english is a bitch. ’

‘ i wish i were two dogs. then i could play with me. ’

[isaidgoodnight-blog]

@knivesnothingtoit told you I’d write it

The bar is about as white trash as you can get. The jukebox is tinny, playing old Alan Jackson songs and Garth Brooks. Goody’s beer is sweating where it’s sitting on wooden coaster. Everything about the night is lazy, the kind of soupy slowness that only Louisiana can bring.

This isn’t the frenetic motion and sound that comes with New Orleans. This is muddy bayou comfortable, even if the fabric of his t-shirt is dark with sweat between his shoulder blades.

He hasn’t been home in a long damn while, and he’s got no intention of driving the twenty miles west that he’d need to go to see the massive house, still crisp and white against the endless blue sky.

Too many questions out that way. And nothing he can answer.

What exactly do you do for a living, Michael? I get drug dealers killed and ruin shipments of cocaine, all in the name of Uncle Sam.

How come you’re not married, Michael? Because no woman has been able to weather my waking up screaming each night. And…

And.

His and is walking through the door right about now, a sore thumb in a sea of white men with his golden skin and ink dark hair. Billy Rocks is gorgeous in a way that none of these men will ever know in their wives or mistresses.

They’ve come a long way from the shell shocked, blood spattered Korean without a lick of English who they left him in an interrogation room with at Quantico. Goody always plays the good cop. He’s got one of those faces.

And in time, he earned Billy’s trust, just like he earned every other case’s trust.

The difference is that he wants to keep that trust, the kind of loyalty he once felt to the Central Intelligence Agency stirring in his gut. It’s a dangerous thing to feel for a man like him. He’s supposed to be dead inside. That’s the only way you did this job.

Billy takes the bar stool next to him, a quick smirk at the edges of his lips, but otherwise he ignores him.

It’s better this way.

Because no one suspects it when Goody takes the elevator up to the fifth floor and Billy is waiting in the shadows. They hit the hotel room door with the force of two bodies, lips and teeth and frantic tongue.

Billy kisses like he fights.

Dirty.

Goody’s cheap linen shirt is discarded once they get the keycard in the door. It’s tossed over the end table, his belt yanked free of his pants and chucked over the lamp. It’s a battle to get Billy to let him pull his shirt off, revealing an expanse of warm caramel muscle that should be illegal.

“Lord have mercy.” It comes out a prayer, and Billy just laughs.

But he’s not laughing when Goody hits his knees, belt unspooled only enough to yank down Billy’s zipper, to shove a hand into his boxers and pull his cock out, swallowing the half hard skin down like a man starved.

Billy’s quiet in the bedroom, even as he stumbles backwards, hands on the air conditioning unit for leverage as Goodnight clamps hands down on his hips and takes him deep enough to yank a wet gag out of him.

Warm fingers brushing his cheek, and Billy murmuring ‘don’t hurt yourself’. It doesn’t stop his hips from rolling forward, lazy and sinful.

Billy is his church, and Goodnight worships with everything he’s got, lashes dark against his hollowed cheeks. There’s a desperation in him when he’s down here that he can’t find anywhere else in his life, a need that burrows through his shell of indifference.

When Billy gets close, his breath hitches and speeds up. Goody doesn’t need the warning, doesn’t care if he gets one or not, salty heat against his tongue and he moans at the feel of it, Billy shuddering where he’s pushing into his slack mouth, one hand in salt and peppered dusted hair.

Goodnight doesn’t let him return the favor. He never does.. He likes this thin thread of tension. (Too afraid to break it, to say something he shouldn’t when he’s lost in the throes.)

He leaves the hotel first, no looking back and a meandering path through town, just in case he’s being followed.

You gotta be careful, when you’re being this reckless.

[isaidgoodnight-blog]

knivesnothingtoit:

You don’t know that.

Billy bites his tongue, watching Goody while his chest threatens to crack open with dread. He doesn’t want to lose this; this gentleness he’s found in soft blue eyes and calloused hands.

He eliminates the thought with a slow breath, and turns it into a vow.

“I stay with you.” Whether they live or die, Billy’s fate is tied to Goodnight’s. In life and in death, “No matter what. Wherever you go, I go.”

He’s been married four different times. And four different times he’s stood on an altar in a church in his dress greens, and made promises in front of his family and friends, and the Lord God himself to have and to hold, until death does them part. 

A part of him never meant it, and he’ll carry his regret for lying to those women for the rest of his days. 

But it settles in his chest, that one last piece to make his puzzle into a whole when he speaks. 

“We stay together. No matter what.”

He doesn’t need a church or expensive flowers, or even the Lord. This is a vow he damn well intends to keep. 

[isaidgoodnight-blog]

knivesnothingtoit:

“Goody…” He doesn’t have the strength to stop Goodnight from practically putting him to bed. The adrenaline rush that helped him reach Goody’s home is long gone now, and the hot shower only made pain and fatigue sink deeper into his bones.

Billy blinks, and when he opens his eyes again, there are more blankets on him than he remembers, and Goody is sitting next to him without his wet clothes on.

“Goody, we can’t stay.” He forces the words out through the cloud of sleep around his eyes, reaches out of his nest of blankets to grab Goody’s wrist, feel his pulse beneath his thumb.

“They’ll find us here.”

“They won’t.”

And if they do...well, there’s an open gun cabinet in his guest bedroom, and a rifle tucked up against the wall next to the bed. Goodnight has kept watch before, and it’s all too easy to fall into those habits again. 

God help the man that tries to come through that door to take Billy from him. 

“Now you get some sleep, you hear me? It’s time for you to rest. We’ll figure everything out in the morning.”

He chews on the inside of his cheek for a moment.

“If I bring you some pain medicine, will you take it for me? Lord knows you need it.”

[isaidgoodnight-blog]

knivesnothingtoit:

“Goody…” Billy rolls his eyes, but there’s a smile in his voice as he steps closer. Shaking his head, he takes gentle hold of Goody’s wrist. He’s been doing this more and more often, since Vasquez showed up with a bullet in his arm. But with the threat of loss looming closer every day, he needs this.

Goodnight’s pulse beneath his fingertips.

Proof of life. 

He’s read more than his fair share of books, especially while he was holed up in Germany, waiting to be cleared back to active duty. And when he tore through all the fiction he could find, he started in on non-fiction. Psychology books, those were his favorite.

It was a strange feeling, to understand the clinical reason for the foolish things you did. 

He raises his hand, placing a kiss to each of Billy’s knuckles.

“We’ll be fine.”

[isaidgoodnight-blog]

knivesnothingtoit:

The last day at Rose Creek, Billy remembers being close to death. He remembers his breath rattling loudly in his chest, the taste of iron in his mouth. He remembers looking at Goody’s flask — the broken railing where he fell.

He remembers saying Goody’s name.

And then Goodnight was there, kneeling over him with barely healed bullet wounds. The light in his eyes and his heart flickered like a candle in the wind, but still Goody pressed his hand to Billy’s chest and smiled, blood on his lips.

           'It’s not your time, pischouette.’

He remembers warmth, and light. It should have burned and torn at his skin, and yet all it did was take the pain away.

He remembers opening his eyes to find empty blue ones. Still kind, even in death. An empty vessel. Nothing of the angel he loved left inside it to heal those bullet wounds, or that broken leg.

The man known as Goodnight Robicheaux died in Rose Creek. And of Billy Rocks, the man who would have followed him to the very gates of Hell, nothing was left but a scream. A blood curdling roar that didn’t sound human.

And a silver hairpin held in Goody’s cold hands, pressed to his still heart.

That’s the last thing he remembers. The last time he was awake.

Until now, when a familiar light calls him back, a familiar voice.

The slow and bleary awareness that follows a century of sleep is broken by sharp recognition. Anger, relief, and happiness all at once — and between a moment and the next, the dokkaebi stands in front of the angel. The same clothes he was wearing in Rose Creek. Bullet holes, dried blood and dust. The same belt of knives.

Billy stares at Goody’s new vessel, a storm of emotion in his dark eyes.

Finally, for lack of a less deadly thing to use, he throws the ruined flask at him. Hard.

“I’m still angry with you.”

The flask bounces off of his chest, and Goodnight’s laugh bounces off of the boughs of the trees around them. He doesn’t mean to laugh, he knows it will only earn him more of Billy’s ire, but he’s just so damned fond. 

He holds up his hands, palms out in front of him. 

“Yes, dear. You’ve got every right to be.”

His apology is still carried on the wings of a smile, and maybe it chases some of the sentiment out of it. 

Goody hopes it’s more love than apology anyway. 

[isaidgoodnight-blog]

sofaradaysogood:

@isaidgoodnight

   “ – so is ‘long time, no see’ too cliche, or…?”

“Depends. Did you try that line on Billy already?”

[isaidgoodnight-blog]

ashxnfeathers:

It’s been so long since he felt this. Months, though it feels like years now— and how strange it is, to have succumbed to humanity’s notion of time—, since he felt another angel’s grace.

Even longer still, since there was anything other than disdain or fear in that familiar song. His wings shudder pitifully at his back as he turns to face his brother.

“Azrael.” His true voice slips through his vessel, unbidden, betrayed by surprise. “——I thought you died in the Fall.”

Now there’s a name he hasn’t heard in a good, long while. 

It is a heavy hand against his grace, shuddering and warm. Castiel has always been the intimate type, always seeking, always searching for some kind of connection. 

Goody is all too willing to oblige, grace answering in equal measure. 

“That’s what I wanted people to think, actually. It’s safer this way, you know.”

And what a sight they must be, standing indifferent from each other, Goody’s hands in his pockets while their souls embrace. 

I have missed you. 

[isaidgoodnight-blog]

@knivesnothingtoit

When Heaven’s gates spill open and they’re all thrust from the seat of God and out into his most favorite creation, it is a violent affair. He makes sure to keep to himself, to slink away from the painful crater of his Fall and suppress his grace until it is nary more than a flicker. 

Because he is a man on a mission. 

A flutter of wings takes him to Rose Creek, Minnesota. The museum is small, but lovingly curated and cared for. The woman at the desk smiles at him when he pays his entry fee, and he pretends not to see all the sin on her soul. 

The case he’s looking for is in the back, under a warm yellow spotlight. 

Goodnight smooths a finger across the glass. The hairpin settled on the velvet pillow shines in the light.

“It’s been too long, my friend.”

It’s all too easy to slip the glass case free and gather the hairpin into the heat of his palm before he’s in flight, stopping in the middle of a forest, nothing but the night all around them.

[isaidgoodnight-blog]

@ashxnfeathers

“Long time no see, little brother.”

He doesn’t bother with falsehoods, or with trying to keep anything to himself. His grace unfurls at the warmth and closeness of one of his brothers, the kind of comfort he hasn’t known in ages. 

(Billy is a vastly different kind of comfort.)

“You look tired.”

[isaidgoodnight-blog]

knivesnothingtoit:

Fear drowns the smile in Billy’s eyes when he looks at Goody. Because they’ve had this argument already. And no matter what he says, how many reasons he gives, he knows Goodnight will not change his mind. 

Goody can insist that he’s a soldier, that he’s seen war. But there are different types of war — and Goody doesn’t know this one.

He surrenders with a quiet breath, and joins Goodnight at the counter.

“I think chocolate will be enough.” And if that’s not the case, there’s leftovers in the fridge

“Billy Rocks, that’s not very Christian of you.”

He’s teasing, trying to ease some of that worry in his lover’s eyes. They’ll make it through, they always do. And come what may...God help him, Goodnight knows there’s no cost he wouldn’t pay to keep Billy in his life. 

(And maybe he’s a little fond of that lost soul of a soldier in his dining room and wants to protect him as well, though he can’t go around saying things like that.)

“It wouldn’t even take me thirty minutes to make some biscuits...”

He can hear the no coming already.

[isaidgoodnight-blog]

sofaradaysogood:

Whatever Faraday’s expecting from Goodnight, it’s not this.

He eyes the man, suspicion bright in his gaze – of Goodnight’s motives, of his apparent sudden lack of sense. It doesn’t quite feel like a cobbler and ice cream sort of situation.

“I’m not hungry,” is what he settles for.

His stomach is still a roiling mess of god-knows-what emotions, all jumbled up together. His fingers hurt – less, now that Billy’s iced and splinted them, but that ache remains – and his face hurts and so, too, does his soul.

“That’s fine. I’ll still make you a bowl. That way it doesn’t look so bad when I’m eating my own.” He tosses a wink back to Faraday and pulls the cobbler from the fridge, cutting two massive pieces and placing them into bowls in the microwave to heat them up.

“Your nose isn’t broken, so I suppose that’s ‘thank heaven for small favors’”

An impressive coop of vanilla bean on top, and he slides a bowl in front of Faraday before he sinks down to sit, adjusting his bad leg beneath him. 

“Go on, try a bite. You’ll hurt my feelings, otherwise.”

[isaidgoodnight-blog]

knivesnothingtoit:

His eyes keep drifting towards the wall, to the muffled sound of shouting. The few words he’s caught so far don’t really paint a nice picture, but it doesn’t seem like el Mateperro tried to kill Faraday. Though it definitely involves the cartel somehow.

“I don’t know, Goody.” Billy shakes his head with a sigh, and finally gives up trying to understand whatever Vasquez is yelling about. 

The can of hot cocoa on the counter earns Goody a raised eyebrow, the brief uptick of a smile. “They’ll explain later.”

“I’ve got nothing but time.”

He keeps his tone light, and airy. But there is steel behind those words. They’ve had this argument time and again. This was his home and Billy was his...well, his Billy. He wouldn’t be abandoning either one of those things, not to the likes of a jumped up contract killer. 

The lord God himself probably couldn’t get him to give up this ranch, and he sure wouldn’t give up Billy. 

“You think they’ll be hungry later?”