sastiel, for “Body Swap”!

“This is,” Castiel says, nudging minutely forward. “This is—“

“Nn,” Sam says, strangled.

“Sam, I— oh,” Castiel says breathlessly, eyes sliding shut. His face has a extraordinary expression on it at the moment— or, actually,

Sam’s

face does. Long, wild hair is sticking to the wet inside of his lip, and his cheeks are blotchy, face furrowed in concentration. Sam is trying not to stare, or think about what his own borrowed face looks like, with his mouth open and his eyelids getting heavier the deeper Cas gets.



Sam

,” Castiel sighs in Sam’s own voice, head tipping forward, and slides in another hot, solid inch.

“Shit,” Sam says weakly, arms tightening around him. “I—

really

don’t think this is going to work. Maybe we should—”

“No— no, it is,” Castiel says in a rush, looking up, “I’m sure it is,” and Sam would laugh if he wasn’t dying on the end of his own dick.

“Just—

fffuck,”

Sam gasps as Castiel crowds in closer, arms braced above Sam’s head, and his hipbones finally settle against Sam’s ass. “Oh, fuck

me

.”

“Good?” Castiel looks earnest and dazed, a little desperate. “Is that good?”

Good is maybe not the word Sam would use, but he can’t actually get words out around the gasping.

“I like hearing the noises you make,” Castiel whispers, right into the side of Sam’s head, breath unsteady and hot, “I love the way you sound, how you make me sound.”

“Oh, Je—

ah

, ah,

fuck,

” Sam pants. He knows exactly what Castiel means, because he’s never heard Castiel’s voice sound like this, stretched thin and breaking. When Castiel bucks in a little harder, Sam closes his eyes and moans out loud, hears

Castiel

moan out loud, and his own voice echo back at him.

star-anise:

stultiloquentia:

stultiloquentia:

I am reading scholarly works about Jane Austen and having hearteyes about obscure details in the Pemberley chapters of P&P that indicate Mr. Darcy’s sustainable land management praxis.

Okay, let’s talk about Pemberley!

Austen, as a rule, doesn’t spend many paragraphs describing locations. There’s often information to be gleaned from their names (Sense and Sensibility is full of lurking references to sexual scandals and Mansfield Park to slavery), but Longbourn just means “long stream” or “long boundary,” Netherfield means “lower field,” and Rosings’ original owner was a redhead. Meryton, a pun on “merry town,” is kind of fascinating, given the installment of the militia and the threat to stability and serenity they represent. Partying and shenanigans. Possibly a Shakespeare ref.

Longbourn barely gets any description at all. From the get-go, everyone who lives there is obsessed with other places, with getting out (except Mr. Bennet, who never wants to leave his library, never mind the house). Lady Catherine deems it small and mildly uncomfortable, which is in keeping with the theme of confinement, but also it’s Lady Catherine talking. Netherfield can’t tell us much about Bingley, who is only a tenant. Rosings is expensively, ostentatiously modern and gaudily furnished, though it has a handsome park that Lady Catherine and her stifled daughter never set foot in but Elizabeth and Darcy both frequently escape to during their stays.

So it’s notable and wonderful that Austen goes out of her way to describe Pemberley as an old-fashioned, highly successful, working estate. Its practical old Anglo-Saxon name means “Pember’s clearing.” A pember is a man who grows barley. Darcy most likely still does. As Elizabeth and the Gardiners approach and tour the house, they notice and admire its beautiful surrounding woods, and then when they wander outside, the specific word Austen uses is coppice woods. A coppice is a woodland filled with tree species that grow new shoots from their stumps when you chop them down. Darcy probably has oaks on a fifty-year cycle as well as faster-growing species such as hawthorn and hornbeam for firewood, timber and cattle fodder. Coppice forestry is functional and sustainable, and provides habitat for beasts and birds.

Darcy is the anti-John Dashwood (Dashwood, srsly), the brother in Sense and Sensibility who inherits Elinor and Marianne’s childhood estate of Norland, whose wife immediately starts making plans to hack down trees (not even coppice trees, but big, gorgeous, venerable hardwoods) to make way for a folly. Jane Austen hated follies. Also, it ought to be noted that timber was so valuable in Britain at the time that estates often had inheritance clauses that detailed who was and wasn’t allowed to chop down what.

Darcy’s a food producer and land conservator, prefers nature over fussy, ornamental landscape design, his servants and tenants like him, he gives money to the poor… and… he’s a trout fisherman! He shoots, too, as do Bingley and Hurst and Mr. Bennet, but it’s a particular mark in his favour that Austen singles him and Mr. Gardiner out as anglers. It’s a pastime that signifies a taste for contemplation and quietness and appreciation of nature, as blissfully described in The Compleat Angler; or, The Contemplative Man’s Recreation, a hugely popular travel book first published in the 1600s and reprinted often for 18th C libraries. The plot of The Compleat Angler is about the conversion of a hunter (pastime of the ultra-rich) to a fisherman who learns to love the peaceful sport. We receive ample evidence elsewhere that Darcy is a man capable of swift, decisive action and formidable effectiveness. But at Pemberley, Austen takes care to show us how he’s balanced.

Most of the information in this post comes from Margaret Doody’s Jane Austen’s Names

#follow for more soft darcy facts

Happy Halloween! Destiel for prompt 83? “Just Once.”

“And only once,” Dean croaks.

“I understand,” Castiel says, so seriously that Dean kind of wants to smack him. But besides being chronically earnest pain in his ass, Cas is also the only thing standing between him and days of rationing toilet-puking privileges with his brother at the Norfolk Motel 6, so he’ll allow it. Just this once.

It’s otherwise a nice day in Norfolk, bright and cooler. Dean squints into the sun, then looks back at the car, trying to gauge if he’ll make it all the way across the parking lot. Next to him, Castiel is peering intently at his face, fingers creeping towards his arm. Dean immediately holds up an unsteady hand.

“No.”

“But—”

Hell no. Do you see that?” Dean points, and his eyes are doing that weird doubling thing and he’s dizzy and sick but he thinks the blur crawling towards the Impala is Sam.

“There is absolutely no way I could have predicted that reaction,” Castiel says defensively.

Of course they’d tried the Magic Fingers first thing— it’d seemed logical at the time, to cure divinely-induced illness with your very own Christopher Lloyd in the outfield. Dean is so used to it by now the bright zing barely registers; he hadn’t given it a second thought. He’d even let Sam go first.

Sam, who’s currently on his hands and knees in the gravel, trying to get the Impala’s back door open without coming any further out of the fetal position, face a color Dean usually sees in corpses. Yeah, he’s not trying it no matter how sorry Cas looks.

“Sammy?” Dean calls, just checking.

“Bluugh,” Sam gurgles back, which is enough to finally send Dean wobbling down the wooden stairs after him.

“If we drive, I anticipate a further logistical difficulty,” Castiel says, following close behind. He’s festooned in extra clothes, gear bags, weapon cases, the works, because if Dean has to carry anything heavier than his own damn self right now he’s going down and not getting up. Sam can’t even do that much.

“God, Cas, just— figure it out,” Dean says, exhausted.

“But—”

“Please.” Ugh, the sun is so sunny, ugh. “Please, I am begging you, do not make me talk anymore.”

“… very well.”

The ‘further logistical difficulty’ is Sam, flopped all over the back seat like the giant fucking asshole he is. He’s facedown and unmoving, filling all available real estate with his legs sticking out the open door.

“Hey,” Dean says, kicking them. “Scoot up.”

Sam moans.

“Hey!”

“We could try to fly,” Castiel says, again, the world’s most obnoxious Clippy the Paperclip impersonator. “There’s nothing to suggest that you both will have the same response to it as to restoration.”

Sam moans louder. Dean says, “Restoration?”

Castiel sighs. “Please go sit in the front seat.”

This is how Dean ends up slumped low on passenger’s side, annoyed and so nauseous he can barely keep his head up. Castiel takes his sweet fucking time maneuvering all of Sam into the car, closing the doors and climbing behind the wheel. He’s talking in his low, calm ‘you dumbshits’ voice, explaining reconstiwhatnow— something about reversing rather than accelerating something something and how mortal bodies usually fared better if blah blah blah. Dean understands basically nothing. He’s too busy shivering and trying not to upchuck into the map pocket.

“Dean?” Castiel says, tone suggesting it’s not for the first time.

What,” Dean says, not opening his eyes.

“The keys. I’ll need the keys.”

“Fucking… pants pocket,” Dean mumbles, then bats away Castiel’s hand. “I’ll get ‘em, just…”

He cracks open an eye and sees Castiel leaning over him, eyebrows knitted and mouth curved down. “Dean…”

“Don’t fucking look at me like that,” Dean says, and manages to drag the keys from his jeans.

Sitting up is bad. Sitting up while the car is moving is horrible, worse than anything, and Dean screws his mouth and his eyes closed and manages to hang on for the first five miles or so before he calls uncle. Castiel pulls off next to a bridge and Dean makes it out of the car and into the ditch weeds, at least. While he’s folded over himself, contemplating the swirl of mud and bile in the water through watery eyes, another door opens behind him and there’s the sound of someone tossing their cookies out on the asphalt.  

“Sam, if you fuck up my finish, so help me Jesus,” Dean says, coughing miserably.

“You are not faring any better,” Castiel says from close behind him, and a hand grips Dean’s shoulder. “Water?”

The bottle is open and tepid but he drinks it all, after he rinses his mouth out. He stays in the cattails for a few more minutes to make sure everything’s out, then wipes cold sweat away from his forehead with his shirt and pointedly doesn’t let Castiel help him back to the car.

“You could lay down if you wanted,” Castiel says as the engine turns over.

“Unless you’re driving from the floor, no I can’t,” Dean says, huddled against the window. The seatbelt is digging into his chest but he’s not interested in moving for the next, oh, twenty years.

As they start picking up speed, there’s a click, and the pressure eases. Dean lifts his head and squints at Castiel as the sash loosens across his torso. Castiel’s eyes are on the road, but his hand is on Dean’s arm.

“Cas?”

Castiel starts to pull him over, slow but inexorable. “Lay down.”

Pulling against him is useless, or at least useless when Dean’s muscles feel like overboiled spaghetti. “Where? I told you, there’s no—”

Dean’s cheek hits cheap chinos and he stops talking, staring at the bottom of the dashboard.

“There,” Castiel says.

It’s a little uncomfortable, with his legs still in the footwell. It’s an angle Dean hasn’t seen in— decades, maybe. Probably. It takes him a second to find his voice back.

“Uh, Cas? What’re we doing here?”

“I am driving. You are resting,” Castiel says quietly.  His leg shifts under Dean’s head as he brakes for a curve.

There are marks in the plastic under the wheel, little knicks and scratches that are so familiar they make his eyes ache. It’s weird. Dean doesn’t remember the last time he was small enough to do this, that Dad would let him do this.

But… the engine is a sleepy rumble under Dean, and there’s a breeze coming through the open windows. It smells like yellow grass and country road dust. The sun slants in low and warm over the seats, spreading heat over his legs and his chest where his shirt is still damp.

He moves his shoulder in, so the angle for his neck isn’t so bad. A leg propped up on the seat helps too, and he sighs.

“Dean?”

A hand settles on his head, light but sure.

“Keep ‘em at ten and two, man. Don’t make me say it again,” Dean says, and closes his eyes.

Supernatural 86 Ellen/Mary 🎃

The last quiet drunk slips out of the bar while she’s not watching, and it’s almost three in the morning by the time Ellen looks up from a rerun of Gunsmoke and sees there’s just an empty glass at a far table, a faded dollar bill tucked under it.  She puts the dollar in her pocket, puts the chairs up, gets tired of mopping about halfway through and leaves the floors under the booths sticky. The dumpsters are frozen shut, so she leaves the trash bags on the lee side where the snow’s the thinnest; she doubts the coyotes will be interested in her garbage tonight.

The trek from there to the house is another icy Iditarod. Jo’s a good girl, and she’s done her dishes from dinner and left her mom half a can of Chef Boyardee in the fridge. Ellen stares at it, unable to even imagine completing the steps necessary to turn the cold tin into a warm bowl, and just shuts the door again.

She’s flat on her back on the couch, thinking about nothing and watching smoke drift silently towards the ceiling, when something thumps against the front door. She glances over in time to see the handle jiggle, and stubs out her cigarette as it starts to turn.

She doesn’t go for the gun safe in the closet. There’s a flat blackness outside the windows that speaks to the early, early hour, and there aren’t too many people with Harvelle keys who’d invite themselves in on the wrong side of dawn. Mary doesn’t look surprised to see Ellen on the other side of the threshold when it swings open, though Dean blinks big green eyes at her, mouth caught mid-yawn.

“Hey, El,” Mary says.

“Hey yourself. Hi, Dean.”

“‘Lo,” the kid mumbles.

Sammy is sacked out cold on Mary’s shoulder, the way only toddlers can be. “I’ve got a couple things to grab from the car,” she says, pulling his chubby little arms from around her neck. “Could you—?”

“Yeah,” Ellen says, already reaching out, and gets Sam settled against her chest as Mary gives Dean a nudge and heads back down the stairs. Sam snuffles in Ellen’s ear, a small whine before subsiding. She rubs his back a little, holds out her other hand to Dean. “You ready for bed, honey?”

“I’m okay,” Dean says, lip poking out. He’s clutching the strap of a backpack too big for him, bent over with the weight, and watching her hold Sam with a sulky frown. “I’m not tired.”

She smiles down at him, a little sad. “What about helping me with your brother, then?”

The two of them are buried in blankets on opposite ends of the couch by the time Mary comes back in. She looks grim. “Brought you a present,” she says, struggling to get her coat off, then bending to pull off her boots. She’s all snow up to her thighs, denim stiff with frost. “Would have taken care of it, but the ground’s frozen solid.”

“I could have told you that,” Ellen says, wondering what else is sheltering behind her dumpsters tonight. “We’ll get it in the morning.”

“I know, I just… damn it,” Mary says, yanking at her laces. “Damn it, damn it—”

“Mom?” Dean says sleepily from the couch.

“It’s nothing, honey. Go to sleep,” Ellen says while Mary stares blindly down at her feet, then jerks her head up when Ellen touches her elbow. “Kitchen?”

Ellen sits her down, grabs an old, open bottle of red from the stove and sets a glass in front of her. Instead of reaching for it, Mary inhales, then covers her face with her hands and breathes wetly for a moment. Ellen kneels on the linoleum to start working the icy knots open.

“We’re okay,” Mary says as the first boot comes off, and that’s familiar. God knows Dean isn’t getting his coping skills from John Winchester, the poor dead bastard. “Just had a little run in on the road.”

“I’m a little surprised to see you this far north, is all,” Ellen says. She tugs off the other boot and sets under the chair. “Thought you guys were making a go in Illinois. Dean started first grade this year, right?”

“First grade,” Mary says, hands slowly falling to her lap. “Right.”

She doesn’t say anything else at the table, just drinks what Ellen puts in front of her until the bottle is empty.  She doesn’t resist when Ellen tugs her out of the chair and down the hallway, past Jo’s door with the pink-tinted nightlight spilling out onto the carpet, and lets herself be pushed on the bed and bullied out of her wet jeans.

Ellen gets her an old shirt to sleep in, and strips out of her own stinking bar clothes. Her Roadhouse tee smells like grenadine and menthols.

“I don’t want to put you out,” Mary mumbles from the bed.

“You’re not going to,” Ellen says, peeling out of her bra, and grabs her favorite sleepshirt from the floor: Hard Rock Houston. Bill was a big man; it hits her halfway to the knee. “Budge up.”

They crawl under the cold sheets shivering together, and lie there while the flannel heats up around them. Mary is curled towards Ellen like a question mark, and Ellen answers by rolling in until their legs bump and she’s mostly on her stomach. Mary’s hand creeps out and tangles in the Hard Rock’s hem, and her breath is unsteady in Ellen’s ear.

“El, I—” She’s whispering, like a secret. “God. I don’t want it to be like this. Like my dad all over again. What would John think?”

Ellen thinks about that. “Don’t know. And neither do you. Can only do your best.”

Mary makes a low noise. “It doesn’t feel good enough, most nights.”

Ellen remembers the Boyardee in the bridge, feels the uncertain pinch in her belly that could be hunger, or nausea. “Yeah, well. You’ve got my best too, for what it’s worth.”

Silence, and then Mary’s body bends a little more, knees in against Ellen’s hip, her lips close to Ellen’s cheek. “Don’t sell yourself short, El.”

Sup punk – I didn’t know if you want me to make it an ask, but that Obi-wan/Padme falling in love as old people idea I had would still be awesome :-P Happy Halloween!

earlier:

how about star wars canon aU, padme lives and starts the rebellion, but has to sorta stay behind the scenes for obvious reasons, and be all stealthy and shit, and then i guess have obi-wan live or something? b/c i basically i want them falling in love as old ppl, like a “wow i never actually thought about u romantically at all” “but now when we’re both greying and old” “we should totally be together” like i dunno about the details, and how to make it work w/ canon

NEITHER DO I


“I must admit,” she says, “I rather thought you’d grow tired of sand.”

Obi-Wan has a rusted chuckle for that, and hot tea for her hands. She wears thin gloves and a cloak of the same deep color, either brown or red— impossible to tell in the dim light— which falls in folds around her shoulders, a sharp contrast to the startling white of her hair. Outside, the wind scours the desert clean of any sign of her arrival, wailing high and lonely through the bones of a thousand derelict ships.

Inside one of them, Padmé raises his rough clay cup to her lips and takes a delicate sip. “Have you grown to enjoy it, then?”

“The sand?” Obi-Wan eases himself onto the cushion opposite her, wincing a little as he settles. Old stuffing, older bones. “I suppose it’s a familiar enough nuisance. There are few perfect places in this universe.”

“Jedi,” she sighs, her eyes dipping closed. An unaccountably soft smile lingers behind the cup. “It’s amazing how unimaginative you all are. I still have trouble believing Master Yoda hid for years in a swamp.”

“Dagoba is a realm of holy relics,” Obi-Wan protests.

“A holy swamp,” Padmé says, utterly dry. “Ben, my closest friends, my own children had no idea I lived until we had managed the fall of the Empire. Somehow I escaped detection without spending those years nerf-herding in some Forcebarren sand pit.”

“You were never one to stand idly by,” Obi-Wan says, smiling.

She gives him an imperious look. “Certainly not. And I would have said the same of you, long ago.”

He scratches at his beard a little ruefully. “I wouldn’t call myself idle, precisely.”

Padmé sighs, and takes another sip. “Yes,” she says. “Let us talk about the girl.”

The moment Padmé had emerged from her shuttle, Rey had shown her best Jakkan manners and snarled like a rabid porg before darting away to hide.  She is currently crouched above them, watching from between gaps in the tangle of wires in the ceiling that make their salvaged ship habitable. Obi-Wan doesn’t know if Padmé is aware, and hasn’t glanced upwards in case it sends Rey scurrying away again.

“She helps me,” he said, spreading his hands. “She was indentured to a scrapper to pay her parents’ debts. There are many such children on this planet, unfortunately.”

“Are there.” Padmé rests the cup on her folded knees, thumbs idly stroking the rough sides. “On Tatooine, you chose to keep your solitude.”

He gives a glib shrug. “Solitude is much easier to keep when one has the faculties. For instance, Rey has proved to be very good bait for the nightwatcher worms. Also, digging latrines.”

“I have not!” the girl in question yells from above them, and Obi Wan looks up in feigned surprise. Her little face is red and scrunched into a furious scowl. “You’re the one who always knocks something over and makes them chase us!”

“That does sound like Ben,” Padmé says, and when he glances back at her she’s smiling at the ceiling. “Hello, Miss Rey.”

“Yes, hello Rey,” Obi Wan says. “Are you planning to join us?”

“‘M not a miss,” Rey mutters, and pulls back into her canopy of mechanical parts.

“But you are being very rude to our guest,” he observes. “Padmé is a dear friend and very important me. I would like to introduce you, so please come down from there.”

Rustling, and a glimpse of narrowed eyes through cabling. “She smells weird,” Rey announces, deeply suspicious, and Obi-Wan sighs.

“It’s perfume, darling,” Padmé says with a hint of laughter. “I imagine it does smell strange if you’ve never encountered it.”

There’s more movement above them, and Rey suddenly drops from an open panel. She crouches there like she might run off again at any moment. “Perfume?” she says skeptically. “The cantina viddiebots use perfume. They don’t smell like you.”

“I told you to never go in the cantina,” Obi Wan says, appalled, and Rey has the temerity to roll her eyes at him.

“It is from a different planet,” Padmé says diplomatically. “As I am. One a very long way away from Jakku.”

“Jakku is far away from everywhere,” Rey points out. “So why are you here?”

That is the question, isn’t it. Rey watches Padmé curiously and Obi Wan is curious too, in a sense, but he has known where this is leading since he realized a ship was inbound, and feeling a gentle sense of impending melancholy for weeks. Nostalgia for things not yet lost.

“I have been asked to investigate a vision,” Padmé says, turning her eyes to his. “Of a master not quite as lost as he seemed, and his new apprentice, hiding in the shadows of a war long finished.”

“I thought we weren’t supposed to talk about the ‘prentice stuff,” Rey says.

Obi Wan smiles at Padmé. “We weren’t. It appears we have been discovered anyway.”

“We can take her,” Rey says confidently, and Obi Wan is startled into a laugh.

“Of that I am certain,” Padmé says. “But you could also come with me.”

“Where?” Rey asks, suspicious again.

Padmé is still looking at Obi Wan. “Oh, many places. Coruscant, certainly. Perhaps Chandrila and Kashyyyk. Bespin when you’re older, I know many of the other apprentices like it.”

Obi Wan stares at her. “Other apprentices?”

“There are several, yes,” Padmé says. “I’m afraid I can’t give you exact numbers. More seem to appear every year.”

“And other masters have also arisen?” Obi Wan asks. “But from where?”

“There is only one master,” Padmé says. “For now, at least.”

“Oh,” Obi Wan says, seeing it unfold in gruesome detail in his mind’s eye. “Oh, no. Is he really?”

“I don’t need another master,” Rey declares. “Obi is bad enough!”

“And I am quite a bit better than the alternative,” he says, mostly to himself. “A child teaching children. There’s no chance that could end badly.”

“He would remain your sole master, I expect,” Padmé says to Rey. “But you would have fellow students, friends. A new home at the center of the galaxy. What do you think about that?”

Rey doesn’t have to think very hard about it at all. “With you and Obi?” she says, making a face. “No thanks.”

She disappears into the bowels of the junked ship and Padmé ducks her head, biting back a grin as Obi Wan glares in affront at Rey’s retreating back. “Luke was such a sunny child,” he says. “I don’t really know what went wrong with this one.”

“Luke was raised by two generous, loving parents,” Padmé tells him, shoulders starting to shake with suppressed laughter. “Whereas Rey appears to have turned out exactly as I imagined any offspring of yours might!”


“… she really does detest him, doesn’t she,” Padmé says, watching Rey grind her darling grandson’s face into a flower bed. She’s half his size, the poor boy, but vicious in a way Padmé’s spoiled little Ben has minimal experience with.

Obi-Wan sets his cup down on their finely-worked table, next to a gently-steaming pot and plate of sandwiches. It is proper tea, not the kind reconstituted from the last dusty insides of a faded tin, which even an ascetic should appreciate more than he seems too. “I wouldn’t say that,” he says. “I think she likes him.”

They’re sitting close together, his hand over hers, her head on his shoulder. “Hm,” she says. “And is showing it by destroying my gardens? Even for you, that is remarkably unperceptive.”

“What?” Obi-Wan protests. “The play-fighting? It seems tame, compared to what we got up to in the creche.” A piece of paving stone pries itself free and wavers menacingly into the air. “No permanent injuries, please!” he calls down to them.

“That explains so much,” Padmé murmurs, closing her eyes.

Stop it! I’m telling Grandmother!”

“She doesn’t care! She thinks you’re spoiled!”

“Am not!”

“Are so!”

“Still,” Padmé says. “A little humiliation might be good for him in the end.”


‘viddiebots’ are VD-bots and nightwatcher worms are a thing

☑ zebra please for ✉

kototyph:

1) i have no idea what this prompt was originally from/for
2) @annundriel​ and @marsastronomica​ have been filling my dash with detroit: become human art and what was I supposed to do, not write about the robot murderboys????
3) does RK900 have an actual name or nah


“God fucking– could you just speak? Out loud?”

It’s Designation “Reed, Detective Gavin” asking, so RK900’s aural subroutine automatically filters the question out in favor of continued analysis of the blue fluid splashing diagonally across a store display in front of him.  The venue sells several hundred types of android hardware modifications; this particular table is devoted to synthetic genitals of varying sizes and models— some clearly zoologically-inspired, some from human mythology and popular culture.

“Hey, chips-for-brains, I’m talking to you!”

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