#Spewing whatever the fuck is in my brain onto the internet

[thana-topsy]

Sitting alone in the silence of my house that I pay money to live in, staring blankly across the room, wildly hallucinating a universe in which Teldryn and Neloth are an old t4t couple.

#Is this what Twitter is supposed to be for? #Spewing whatever the fuck is in my brain onto the internet #so its not my problem anymore #topsy rambles #neloth/teldryn #silly goose hours

[letstalkaboutfandomsbaby]

i’ll take whatever your thoughts of shigaraki are, chubby/ neutral/ sfw/ nsfw. he’s my trash king

Babe

He's our trash king sksksk i hope this fulfills your Shiggy cravings 💕

Alrighty let's goooo

No but fr he really is just a trash king

Literally the "i'm the trash man" meme personified

Just a skinny lil toothpick nerd dummy dumdum dweeb

Fucking otaku twerp who probably jerks off onto those lil anime figurines

Im being mean, lemme stop bullying him sksksks

Let's be real: he's severely mentally ill

He's def not on meds and his brain is just so fucked up

The result is a depressed boy who can't communicate well and has a lot of anger issues

You'll probs end up being his therapist at the beginning of the relationship

He's not trying to dump all his problems onto you: you're just a really good listener and you're pretty and nice and he can't help but spew out too much information sksksk

Just loses his filter when he's around you and he has no clue why???

You just make him all flustered and mushy and suddenly he's blurting out how he bought Belle Delphine's GamerGirl bath water and—

Basically he ends up embarrassing himself more times than he likes to admit

But it's kinda cute how he gets all red and fumbles with his game controller and pulls his hood over his head to hide so it's not as weird as it sounds skksks

GOING BACK TO HIM BEING MENTALLY ILL

He def jerks off at least once a day to combat his shit mental health, probs more often 2 or 3 times a day bc he's an obsessive gamer and a loner and def has an anime body pillow that he cums on

Listen, I love Tomura dearly, but he's kind of a loser

Literally an incel sksksk

But he's not irredeemable

He was just raised by the internet and so he doesn't know how to be "nice" or "generous" or "how to respect people who aren't like him" so you're gonna have to teach him a couple of things

He's v protective (in a possessive, kind of scary way) but it's still sweet when someone is bothering you and Shiggy steps between the two of you and threatens to dust the jerk messing with you

He gets food delivered constantly and he'll get some food for you too

He always says it's bc he doesn't want to hear you complain about being hungry or that it's just easier to get you both food at the same time, but he's just trying to show that he cares, and since he sucks at communicating this is one of the best ways he can do that

He forces invites you to watch him play video games

Will definitely get you to sit in his lap somehow

Makes some kind of excuse that he can't concentrate unless he's holding his body pillow but it's in the wash no it's not it's hidden under his bed so you have to sit on his lap so he can beat the boss and win this stupid game

So what if he starts breathing heavily and you can feel something poking your ass? Just keep still so he can focus on his goddamn game

He'll reward you by having Kurogiri get your fav dessert or something

Dont ask why he kicks you out of his room after his game and locks the door and blasts his music he's totally not masturbating that would be weird and he's definitely not weird you guys i promise

He's not romantic by any means so dont expect chocolate or flowers or any of that stereotypical bullshit

Like yea he buys you stuff with AFO's credit card but half of it is stuff that HE benefits from

Like he'll buy you cosplay outfits of his favorite characters and take pictures without your knowledge, he's such a fucking whore jesus christ—

It takes a lot of time for him to trust you, but once he does you're STUCK, good luck trying to go anywhere without him, he won't even let you go to the bathroom without following you and waiting outside till you're done

Kind of like a disgruntled kitty cat

Like he definitely relies on you for comfort and basic necessities bc he doesn't know how to take care of himself, but will he ever let you know that? NO

Just a big ole tsundere

Could be cuddled up to you, practically begging you to pet his hair, but he will continue denying his feelings for you

OKAY LET'S GET INTO NSFW TERRITORY

He's so fucking touch-starved, like he needs to be touching you 24/7 or else he'll get really pouty and angry about not being with you

Every time you come back after going off to do whatever, he has to fuck you

Dummy dumdum just missed his baby so bad, like he kept worrying that you'd never come back or maybe you found someone else or what if someone hurt you—

The minute you walk in, completely fine, he drags you off to his bedroom and jackhammers into you for at least thirty minutes just to calm himself down

Has to cockwarm you after you have sex every time, he hates the idea of having to leave your warm tight body and be a leader again

He's so fucking needy all the time jesus christ it's almost annoying but lowkey super cute uwu

You're gonna have a permanent limp bc he fucks you daily and never holds back

Just a needy lil virgin who has waited so long to fuck someone and he's become addicted to you and your body

Lowkey he's a chubby chaser sksksk

Typical tall skinny guy who likes tiny chubby beauties

Wants to be completely smothered by his chubby s/o

PLEASE sit on his face, he wants to suffocate between those thick thighs

He's even needier if you're chubby bc you're like a big teddy bear and provide comfort just by letting him hold you

Once he gets stronger and creates the paranormal liberation front, he turns into a sugar daddy of sorts

Yea, he was sorta wimpy and annoying when yall first started going out, but now he's got money and can literally do whatever he wants SOOOOOOOO he's gonna treat you like royalty

So you're gonna be showered with gifts you dont even want bc thanks to AFO giving him everything except love and a stable home his love language is receiving gifts, so he's buying you so much shit to prove he loves you

At some point you'll sit down with him and explain that you don't need all of these things, you love him for him not what he can give you and that's never gonna change

WHEN I TELL YOU THIS DUMB LIL BOY JUST MELTS INTO YOU AND IS ON THE VERGE OF TEARS

He'll cuddle up to you the rest of the day, refusing to let you spend time without him

Although Shiggy's fucked up and emotionally unstable, i think he would be soft and kind with his s/o bc they're one of the only good things in his life and he just can't lose you 🥺

#ask #tomura shigaraki #shigaraki x reader #gn reader #chubby reader #just a lil bit sksksk #shigaraki tomura #shigaraki #☀️ fics #☀️ asks

[yikesharringrove]

the fic you wrote for my last prompt was amazing, ty 😭 can you do 50 + 56 this time please? and if you want to work in dyslexic!steve too that would be awesome! 🥰

You are speaking my fuckin’ language, dyslexic Steve is my ABSOLUTE jam. Honestly, whenever I write Steve, he’s dyslexic, although sometimes it’s not mentioned because it’s not important to Harry’s journey @ jk rowling

Thank you for your request! I’m really glad you liked the other one I wrote! You’re anonymous so I don’t know which one that is but I really enjoyed writing them all! Sorry for my manic energy rn.

Something a little different, it’s modern au! This is probably nothing like what you were thinking so I’m sorry, but I kinda love it ngl.

50: Secret Admirer

56: “I don’t know if I should be flattered or offended.”

Prompt list!

Billy spent three and a half hours reading through every single tweet on the account.

There were so fucking many of them. The earliest one was timestamped from four days ago, so obviously, this person had no life outside of tweeting.

Tweeting about Billy.

He had a few personal favorites. He had retweeted them to his account, figuring may as well play it up, make a joke outta everything.

@ImHardForHargrove: sorry WHOMST gave you the RIGHT to have eyes that fuckin blue im YELLING

@ImHardForHargrove: watchin u play basketball is a religious experience y are ur arms so BIG hhnnnng

And Billy’s absolute favorite, which he pinned right at the top of his account

@ImHardForHargrove: ass ass ass ass ass ass ass ass ass ass ass ass ass ass ass ass ass ass ass ass ass ass ass ass ass ass ass ass ass ass

Billy knew he looked good. Knew he turned heads wherever he went. He did that on purpose. But realizing someone at Hawkins High had set up a thirst account for him, well.

“I don’t know if I should be flattered or offended.” Billy had explained the situation to Robin, letting her go through the account on his phone. “Like, It’s kinda nice, whoever this guy is, he’s got a crush. But also like, It’s kinda creepy. Plus he’s objectifying me,” Billy was talking through his sandwich.

Robin made a face of disgust. “Why do you keep saying ‘he’? All of the girls in this fucking school are practically drooling for you.”

“Hard for Hargrove, Robin. I know you’re like, revolted by the peen and whatever but that does not excuse a lack of basic sexual education and anatomy.” She gagged at him. Honest to God, gagged. He thought she was gonna spew all over the table.

“If I ever hear you call it a peen ever again, it’s on sight Hargrove.” Heather plopped herself down next to Robin, kissing her cheek before zeroing in on Billy’s phone, still in Robin’s hand.

“Have you guys worked out who it could be yet?” Her eyes were wide at Billy.

“Billy says he thinks its a guy even though people with penises aren’t necessarily men.” Robin gave him a pointed look.

“Yeah Robin, I know that, but, I don’t know I just think it’s a guy penis-having person.”

Heather narrowed her eyes at him. “Do you actually think that, or are you just hoping in that goblin little brain of yours that this account is Steve Harrington’s.” Billy could feel the heat spread down his neck.

“Billy, I know Steve is like, the only out guy in this whole fucking town, but you can do way better than him.  PLUS, I feel like it makes more sense if the person running this account wasn’t out and had to channel their gay yearning through social media.”

“First of all Robin, you have this vendetta against Steve that I don’t get. He’s a nice guy. He’s kinda dopey, kinda dumb, but he’s like, sweet and shit. Second, I’m not out, so it still could be him because he doesn’t think I would, like, accept his advances or whatever. Hence, gay internet yearning.” The chime of the bell sent them packing their lunches, Billy’s phone vibrated in Robin’s hand. She rolled her eyes when he realized he turned on notifications for the account

“Get a fucking life you loser.” She slapped the phone into his hand. He opened the new tweet with embarrassing zeal.

@ImHardForHargrove: i saw u talking with ur mouth full and it was yucky but i was still  🥺🥺

His head shot up, trying to see who would have been facing him during lunch, but the cafeteria was almost empty.

The rest of the week Billy took deliberate care of every interaction he had with anyone. Observing who was in his surroundings, and making note of everything he did and said. He took extra caution around Steve, wanting to spot any minute detail that could give away who ran the account.

The account started blowing up. People were retweeting like fucking crazy. Everywhere he went, he was being asked if he’s seen it, like he doesn’t regularly retweet the good ones. The search for the owner of the account had spread throughout the whole school. A few girls even tried to claim the account was theirs, but every time that happened the account would tweet out something to discredit whoever made the claim, proving them a liar.

Billy was starting to lose hope it was Harrington. The tweets were coming at all different times, posted whenever the person thought about it, so Billy was losing track of who was near when he said or did something. And the tweets were always about stupid stuff Billy didn’t register doing. On Wednesday night the account said

@ImHardForHargrove: hi when you chew on your pencil and it makes me 🥴 that is all thx for comin to my ted talk

Friday afternoon gave them all:

@ImHardForHargrove: walked past ur classroom and u were asleep ive never wanted to CUDDLE someone so bad in my LIFE

But Saturday, Saturday renewed all hope for Harrington Billy could possibly have. Lauren Kranz was throwing a party. It was the first real rager in a while, so everyone was there, and everyone was sloshed. Everyone but Billy, who’d agreed to be designated driver for Robin and Heather like some kinda idiot.

He was brooding on the back porch when his phone went off. The account was active, and the owner was drunk.

@ImHardForHargrove: I can seeeeee u oyt the windw I wan u 2 FUC ME. RAW DOG.

@ImHardForHargrove: srry ur so beauitiful nd THICCC

@ImHardForHargrove: I wana shoot my shot but idk if u lik bois

@ImHardForHargrove: (ys i am boi)

@ImHardForHargrove: nd i dont wana get my heart broken agin 😥

He was right about it being a guy. He was right about him being too nervous to approach him outright. His brain was screaming stevestevesteve at him. Hawkins was shook when Steve came out as bisexual in his sophomore year. He was the golden boy, a real jock. He was NOT the kind of guy people would assume queer in a small midwestern town.

He was kind of a douchebag, dumping one girl for another, sleeping with her and never calling again. But then he settled down with this guy from the University of Indianapolis for a few months until Steve caught him cheating. Apparently, he had slashed the guy’s tires. Billy was impressed.

The next year came Wheeler, who only stuck around long enough to make sure Steve was nice and whipped before she fucked off on him too. So Steve retreated. Spent more time with middle schoolers than anybody else. Didn’t want to put his heart on the line anymore until he knew it wouldn’t be stomped on.  Billy could respect that.

Billy couldn’t risk being out in a town like Hawkins. Word always had a way of getting right back to his dad, and in a tiny hick town with nothing better to do than gossip, it was usually only a matter of hours before Neil heard something he didn’t like.

@ImHardForHargrove: srry 4 bad typing rn. drunk nd dysl exic ren’t a happy combo

Billy’s heart stopped. The drunken idiot was giving himself away. Maybe if he sat here staring at the account long enough, enough would be revealed he could figure it all out like a shitty drunk episode of Blue’s Clues.

He was so focused on Twitter, refreshing his feed, again and again, he didn’t notice a very drunk, and very unsteady Steve Harrington stumbling out the back door towards him. Until he crashed into his back.

“Sorry, Bill!” Billy had Steve by the shoulders trying to keep him upright. “Heyy I have a question for you.” Steve grabbed one of Billy’s hands and veered over to the table and chairs arranged neatly on the small patio. When they were sitting, Steve kept ahold of Billy’s hand.

“Hi.” Steve was smiling like a little kid. Billy was in fucking love.

“hey, Harrington. What was your question.”

“So-oo. I have this friend. A very good friend. Super close. And he has a big ol’ crush on you but he’s too scared to ask you himself because he keeps getting his heart fuckin’ broken so he wanted me to ask. Are you into guys?” It’s a miracle Billy understood any of that, every word blending into the next.

“That depends.” Billy leaned in, running his tongue along his bottom lip. He saw Steve take in a sharp breath, following the movement with his glazed eyes. He knew Steve was talking about himself, he just wanted to rile him up a little. Make him blush first. “This friend you’re talkin’ about. He’s our age? Like you’re not trying to set me up with one a’ your kids, right?” Steve physically recoiled.

“NO, you fuckin’ pedo. I’m NOT trying to set you up with a fuckin’, fuckin’ middle schooler. My friend is, uh eighteen. He’s a senior.” Unless Tommy fuckin’ H. suddenly had a penchant for dick Billy didn’t know about, Steve was 100% talking about himself.

“Well, if he’s as pretty as you are, I’d love to go out with him sometime.” Billy winked. Steve went red.

“Okay, but like, does that mean you’d go out with me? Like I’m as pretty as me, right? Because I was talking about me. Not ‘a friend’ I was talking about me. Steve.”

“Yeah, I kinda figured that out. You know, I was hoping it was you running that Twitter. Any time you’d tweet out something you wanted to do with me, I was always picturin’ doing it with you, Baby.” Billy was practically purring. “Especially all the shit you wanted me to do TO you.” Steve gave something between a whine and a groan and flopped himself onto Billy’s lap, straddling him with very little grace.

“Thank God. ‘Cause you’re so fucking hot I’d let you do anything to me. Anything, Bill.” Billy smiled softly at him.

“Then let me take you home. Let me put you in bed to sleep off all this. And let me take you to breakfast tomorrow. Something nice and greasy for your hangover tummy.” Steve was a puddle in Billy’s lap. “C’mon, Drunky, git your ass up.” Steve just giggled and muttered Drunky Skunky under his breath.

Billy sighed and stood up, hefting Steve up with him.

“Bil-ly,” Steve whined. “You’re so strong, this is so fucking hot. I gotta tweet about this.”

“Tweet it later, Sweet Thing.”

It took Billy for-fucking-ever to find Robin and Heather (they were making out in the basement with the stoners). But Steve chirped and cooed into his ear, so happy Billy could lift him and hold him like it was nothing.

The last tweet from the account was timestamped from Sunday evening.

@ImHardForHargrove: Hi this is Steve. Billy’s my boyfriend now 🥰#ThirstWorks

#I'm gonna reblog this in the morning too #Im v proud of it I want people to SEE IT #harringrove #steve harrington #steve harrington x billy hargrove #billy hargrove x steve harrington #billy hargorve #modern au #modern harringrove #yikes writes #harringrove prompts #Harringrove Prompts list #harringrove prompt fill #prompt fill #prompt fic

[theywontlistenunlessyoutry-blog]

Y’all Ain’t Woke (and Neither Am I)

Okay so, I’m not sure how to start this because I know that this is a subject that requires tact. Lots of tact. Tact that a lot of people on this website don’t have, but whatever. That’s not the point of this, not all of it anyway.

The point here is.

Y’all ain’t woke.

Every day I come on this website and I see nothing but mudslinging. Some of it is well deserved and some of it is not. That is again, not the point here. The point here is hypocrisy.

There’s a lot of it. From a lot of people. It’s part of the reason why I’m not giving any specifics onto my identity (I made this blog specifically for this and I may never use it again honestly), because the people on this website will find some way to invalidate me for it. I’m not saying this as a person of a specific identity. No gender. No sexuality. No race. Though I acknowledge that the person I am behind this screen will influence my writings no matter what, I will also try to acknowledge my specific bias’ as a type away at this on my tiny ass phone screen in a valiant attempt to get my opinion out into a great sea of voices.

I am here to acknowledge something that a lot of people on this website don’t seem to have.

Common human decency and understanding.

Now you may argue, “hey aren’t you making some pretty broad assumptions?!”  and, “isn’t saying something like that rude?!” Except perhaps with more explicit language. It is the internet. I will not judge you for using the fuck word. I will however judge you for using other words if you so choose to use them, and I’m sure some of you will. But back to the point.

Every day I come onto this site and I see hate spewed from every corner. Not from everyone, no, but from many. Some of this hate is valid and rational, as sometimes the world hurts you and you need a place to vent. A place to be yourself where no one knows who you really are behind the screen (except the FBI, but they don’t count). It is a comfort in a world that is out to deride you. Oppress you. Kill you, even.

Yes, the internet is a comfort.

Yet, so many people can not grasp that on the internet you are not alone.

On the internet you are connected to millions of people, all with vastly different life experiences. Different morals and values. Different world views. Many treat the internet like some alien dimension when in reality the internet is the closest reflection to the human subconscious that we have ever known.

And that is frightening.

There are hate groups at every corner, unchallenged by the rules of an uncaring and prejudiced algorithm made and maintained by people who could give less than two shits about you.

There are cults, out to snare vulnerable minds.

There are stalkers, rapist, abusers, law enforcement, corporations.

There are people out there and they are out to get you, and that is frightening. We are a frightened race for we cannot even trust the very people who had sworn to protect us in some way. Parents, teachers, cops. All have harmed you in some way, intentionally or unintentionally.

We live in a world built upon the backs of oppressed and enslaved people. Not just in America but all across the world, in every government system, in many forms, is a sickness. The sickness is wealth. The sickness it apathy. Perhaps the sickness is even privilege.

Ah yes, privilege.

It is a word that people on this site use to hide. Yes, even me.

We use privilege to invalidate, just as we try and invalidate the existence of privilege.

No, I am not just talking about the existence of white privilege, which most certainly exists though some may doubt it.

To all those who deny, let me tell you this.

One, privilege does not make you a bad person.

Two, almost everyone has privilege.

Yes, you heard me right, almost everyone has privilege.

Despite what some will have you believe, White Privilege is not the only privilege that exists.

Straight Privilege.

Cis Privilege.

Wealth Privilege.

Able Bodied Privilege.

Religious Privilege.

Education Privilege.

Hell, the privilege to even be able to access the internet in the first place.

All of these privileges exist and you have at least one of them. Having a privilege does not mean you’re a bad person, because no one asks to be handed these privileges at birth.

Many people do not even realize they have privilege, because that is how the system is formed. It is formed in such a way that those that have turn their backs on those that have not. That they ignore the plights of others because they do not see that they exist. That they lack empathy for those that are different and therefore turn on them because that is what society taught you to do.

We are all guilty of this.

No, it does not matter if you are Black or Asian, or Indigenous, or White, or any other race or ethnicity. Just as it does not matter if you lack a limb, or if your brain does not process information in the way that is considered standard, or if your body works without trouble.

Everyone has a bias against someone and it shows, yes, even on this website which supposedly teaches tolerance.

Let me assure you it does not.

I come onto here and all I see is hate.

Now, let me preface this with saying that you do not have to love those who have hurt you. Those who took their ignorance a step to far and left a mark on you that you feel will never heal. Those that leave a thousand little scratch marks on your soul every day until you can’t stand it anymore. Those that took your act of pent up suffering as an overreaction and needless anger and never once considered the source.

You do not have to love those that hurt you.

You just need to understand.

People on this website will take one look at you and invalidate your experience because you are white, or a cis man, or straight. Just as the outside world will take one look at you and invalidate your experience because you are black, or a trans woman, or gay, or any other marginalized community.

We do this and call it progressiveness. We do this and call it rebelling against our oppressors. We do this and assume we have the moral high ground because we love one kind of person while scorning the other.

We scorn our fellow humans, people who suffer just as we do in our own lives, if perhaps in different ways, because of the benefits a cruel society born on bloodshed dictated we have at birth.

This is not a movement towards the future, but a movement towards vengeance.

A movement that turns those who could be allies into monsters because they cannot understand the exact suffering you have gone through.

But that is unfair and close-minded.

No one can understand the exact life you have lived, not even those who fall into the same categories as you. No straight white able-bodied cis man’s story is the same, just as no gay black disabled trans woman’s story is the same.

But we can empathize.

We can empathize, should empathize, hold out hope that someone will empathize with our suffering.

I see wishes for empathy. I see people calling out for it. I see people perfectly capable of it.

Yet I see no empathy.

But, perhaps that is a generalization.

Not all people are like that.

Not all people.

Hmm.

Now doesn’t that sound familiar.

You hear it all the time don’t you.

“Not All Men!” or “Not All White People!”

It is a loud cry. It grates on you, because for years the kind of person who says this has been the same person who saw all women as sexualized meat sacks. Who saw Black people as thugs. Who saw Muslims as terrorists. Who saw Latin@ people as gangsters.

Or did they.

You see, here on this very website we look to the people who say these things as lesser. Incels, entitled White folx, White Feminists(not to be confused with White people who are feminists, of course). Yes, we use these words to deride people who have oppressed us, who have invalidated and hurts us over the years. Perhaps it is understandable in some cases (or always in the case of Nazis and White Supremacists), but that is not the point.

We say these things and then console ourselves with knowing that it is not oppression, for these people have been the oppressors for years. Our vitriolic words hold no power over them because of the institution which has deemed us lesser.

“It can’t be racism, the person who said it was Black!”

“It can’t be ableism, they’re in a wheelchair!”

“It can’t be biphobia, she’s a lesbian!”

But it is, and always has been.

You see, despite all the powers that we lack from the government, we all have one power which can be used to hurt others.

Our words.

Words are the gateway to belief, to rhetoric, to ideologies.

You may not believe that someone is hearing you because of your place in society, but I assure you that people are listening. That people are internalizing the things you have said in some way or another. Even if that person is just you.

Every time someone says “I Hate Men,” or “I Hate Straight People,” or “I Hate White People,” it is internalized and it hurts someone. Perhaps yourself, perhaps some lost soul looking for someone to hate, perhaps someone who falls under that wide umbrella and lacks self-esteem.

You may not have meant all of that specific demographic but someone will take it that way. You can clarify all you want, but the way you say things has power. Just as the way you ignore things does.

Intentionally or unintentionally, we are hardwired to internalize propaganda. That is why so many POC, or LGBT+, or disabled people get pushed out of inclusive spaces, spoken over. We have been hardwired to believe their words are less important by a society we are all suffering under, and everyday we must work to rewire ourselves to disbelieve that rhetoric.

Everyone must work for it.

Even me.

Even you.

Do not believe that you cannot be racist just because you are not White. You grew up in a society that valued whiteness over colour. That valued pale beauty over the deeper shades and tones that are just as beautiful.

Do not believe that you cannot be ableist just because you are in a wheelchair. Society has taught you to not value yourself or others who lack parts of their bodies or have their brain work a different way.

Do not believe that you cannot be sexist because you are a woman. One only needs to look at those called TERFs and Radfems to see the rampant transphobia that plagues them.

Do not believe that you cannot be prejudiced against someone else just because someone else is prejudiced against you.

Suffering is part of the human experience.

It simply manifests in different ways.

So many on here want a better, brighter future, and yet cannot envision one that does not come at the cost of someone else’s comfort and safety.

That is not progressiveness.

That is prejudice.

That is hate.

In order to have a better future, we must not pull someone else down to pull ourselves up. That future it not better it is oppression in a different form, it is vengeance for your hurts.

In order to have a better future you must separate those that have hurt you from the system that perpetuates their hate.

You do not have to forgive them.

You do not have to stop being angry or scared.

But you must look past them.

We cannot generalize your suffering and place them on the shoulders of other people. Just as we cannot speak over those suffering an experience that you have not, and then turn around and believe it does not exist. We must acknowledge and accept each other’s existence, but deny and dismantle hateful rhetoric and no matter who it is leveled towards.

We claim the future is together, and yet invalidate those that we perceive as having suffered less when in reality they have likely suffered in a different form.

We cannot dismantle the system that divides us apart, we cannot go alone and afraid of those who do not look or think or act like us. We must go together. If we do not then we will only be torn apart by those that wish to oppress us.

We must look inside ourselves and confront the monster that has grown inside of us. The monster of hate and division that causes us to look at our fellow human and deem them lesser for things out of our control.

We must overcome the bias that society has taught us.

We must be angry, but not at those who have not harmed you, but at the system which has poised our privileges at each other’s throats.

We must go forth but with awareness and acceptance of each other’s existence and suffering.

No one is alone on this planet.

No one is alone on this website.

Someone will hear you, but will what they hear help?

Or will it divide us further?

Only the future will tell, and I hope that future is a bright one.

#negativity #positivity #call out post #but for this entire website #im probably not saying anything new but maybe someone will listen #politics #equal rights #kindness #racism #anger #inequality #invalidation #poc #white people #white privilege #cis privilege #straight privilege #abled privilege #generalization #nazi #nazis #nazi mention #white supremacy #white supremisist #white supremicist #future #it gets a bit preachy sorry #culture #forgiveness #humanity

[welllpthisishappening]

Caught in Your Light (4/4)

Forever. It’s been forever. Or, possibly, longer.

It might honestly be longer.

Killian can’t remember a moment when he wasn’t hopelessly, head over heels in love with Emma. And it’s kind of becoming a problem. Because it’s been forever and they’ve always been friends, but now things are changing and traditions are ending and there’s just one more weekend.

This is it. So it’s time to do something about it. In Boston. With all their friends watching. It’ll be fine.

Rating: Mature. Swearing. Kissing. Rinse and repeat. Word Count: Seriously way too many. 9.3 this chapter. Lolz. AN: Here it is! This is the final part of my @csficformal​ gift for @idristardis​. This story was such a delight to write and I can’t thank you guys enough for continuing to enjoy when I slam keys and spew words at the internet. There are more baseball jokes and pop culture references and you should probably listen to Counting Stars by Augustana because that’s where the title comes from and I want everyone to love Augustana as much as I have since 2006.  Also on Ao3 if that’s how you roll. 

It takes him, approximately, forty-seven seconds to exhale.

He’s holding his breath, hoarding it like that will, somehow, make his brain work quicker or fire the appropriate neurons and the room is spinning a little bit. That might be because he’s not breathing properly.

Killian drags a hand over his face, licking his lips and he winces when his head snaps towards the door. Still closed. Or closed again. It doesn’t matter.

The only thing that does matter is that he’s standing alone in the middle of his apartment and he can’t seem to catch his breath.

He tries not to come up with another Marathon joke.

It doesn’t work.

And he’s not really sure what sound seems to just fall out of him, a mix of actual laughter and disbelief and something that feels almost like joy because he can’t seem to stop replaying Emma’s words in his head.

They echo in between horrible jokes and slightly bad puns and I love you seems to brand itself on the inside of his eyelids every time he blinks.

He keeps blinking – like that will make the scene change or prove that he’s still asleep and possibly dreaming, but if he were either one of those things he’d still be in bed with his arm wrapped around Emma’s waist and, really, that’s not all that bad of an alternative.

Killian sighs again, a rush of oxygen that probably deserved a little more time in his body if the burning in his lungs is any indication, and the room continues to shift on several different axises.

I love you.

His legs wobble a bit when he takes a step forward, not entirely sure where he’s going, but positive he needs to move. He has no idea where his phone is and half of Emma’s stuff is still strewn across his bedroom because she’s kind of a mess sometimes, but only when she’s comfortable and he’s always kind of loved that about her and--

“Oh fuck,” Killian breathes.

He throws his right hand out, a flash of pain rushing up his forearm and he’s only slightly concerned about the dent he’s left in whatever the goddamn wall is made out of because he’s fairly positive that won’t be covered in the renter’s insurance he absolutely has.

I love you.

And he stood there.

She kept talking and ranting and pacing and he stood there like a fucking statute staring at her while his mind tried to latch onto the idea that this could actually be reality.

He’s alone in his apartment and there’s still a frame sitting in the corner of his couch.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Killian mutters. He’s going to fix this. He’s going to...do something big and important and both of those things will probably freak Emma out so he can’t do either one, but he has to do something and just screaming I’ve loved you forever in her face probably isn’t the best course of action either.

He needs eighty-two mimosas and several plates of home fries.

Emma has a habit of stealing his home fries.

“God fucking hell, shit, damn,” Killian curses, nearly tripping over his own feet to get down his hallway and this whole weekend is some kind of complete disaster.

It’s not the quickest shower he’s ever taken, but it’s pretty close – the water barely getting hot before he’s out and trying to find a shirt and socks that match. He gives up on the sock thing in, like, ten seconds flat.

He’s half a step away from the door, mind racing and pulse racing and he knows Emma isn’t going to come back here –  home, he called it home and she called it home and he wants to call it home together in a collective way that means something and maybe he should lead with that when he finds her – but his phone is buzzing in his pocket and it feels as if his heart has leapt into his throat and fallen to his feet at the same time.

It’s not the worst feeling in the world, honestly.

His phone buzzes again.

And it’s not the name he’s expecting, or hoping, to see.

David Nolan, 1:05 p.m.: Do we need to stage a search and rescue? I’m not putting out an APB, so either you guys tell me where you are or I’m going to be super annoyed.

Killian squeezes the phone tight enough he’s only slightly worried about doing damage to it, but then it’s making more noise and Ruby has written a goddamn novel.

Ruby Lucas, 1:06 p.m.: Dear Detective David Nolan. CALM DOWN. You know the T runs weird on Sundays and we are not really that late. This cannot possibly be good for your blood pressure. Order something to drink. Come up with some reasons why the Red Sox are going to win the AL East this year to antagonize Jones. Drink the drink you ordered. Stare longingly at your wife. Rinse and repeat until the Boston public transportation system decides to stop being a massive dick on the weekends.

Killian laughs in spite of himself and his body’s seeming inability to do two things at once – like walk and read text messages at the same time. And there are already dots on his screen in the group text that will never end.

Merida Broch, 1:07 p.m.: Killian and Emma aren’t here yet.

Ruby Lucas, 1:07 p.m.: !!!

Ruby Lucas, 1:07 p.m.: WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAT?!?!

Mulan Fa, 1:08 p.m.: You should see her face. She’s doing an almost admirable job of looking genuinely surprised.

Merida Brock, 1:09 p.m.: A for effort, right M’s?

Mary Margaret Nolan, 1:10 p.m.: No comment.

Ruby Lucas, 1:10 p.m.: WHAT DOES THAT MEAN? WHAT. DOES. THAT MEAN?!

Killian’s not sure if it’s just his hand that’s shaking or his entire arm or, possibly, his entire being and it might be all three, but he’s not breathing again and that joy he’d felt before was obviously fleeting, inching closer to what feels like fury.

And frustration.

That’s less dramatic than fury.

Ruby Lucas, 1:12 p.m.: Why is no one answering me? We are three stops away. I need updates. I need information. Mary Margaret, I know things about you! I was there the first time you got drunk freshman and tried to do the hand jive in the middle of Beacon Street.

Merida Brock, 1:13 p.m.: The hand jive? David Nolan, 1:14 p.m.: From Grease. Ruby, stop talking.

Ruby sends back a string of emojis that are equal parts immature and impressive in their double entendres, but Killian’s legs have finally decided to be a functioning part of his body and he’s too busy jogging towards the stairwell to spend too much time lingering on meanings.

Or the hand jive.

He’d like to see Mary Margaret drunkenly do the hand jive some time.

If only to tell the story to future Nolan at some indeterminate point in the future.

That, however, will probably revoke his recently granted godparent’dom and maybe he should discuss his ideas with Emma first – just to double check. Or whatever. God damn.

David Nolan, 1:15 p.m.: Killian and Emma if you are not here in ten minutes, we’re going to order without you and I’m not going to let you get mimosas.

Mary Margaret Nolan, 1:16 p.m.: That’s not true. You can have all the mimosas you want. As many as you need.

Killian rolls his eyes, another door slamming behind him and he almost runs into a small family when he rounds the corner outside his apartment building. “Sorry, sorry, sorry,” he mumbles, holding both hands up and they stare at him like he’s lost his mind.

He kind of has.

And his phone doesn’t vibrate immediately, staying silent in his hand as he all but sprints towards the T a few blocks away. There appears to be an oxygen shortage in his neighborhood, a stitch in his side that feels as if it’s growing every second he stands on the platform.

He will, eventually, blame that for what he does next.

I’m going to order a mimosa every other minute and then I’m going to dump out every glass David tries to drink and make him pay for both of our meals.

It’s probably not the best response immediately following emotional declarations in his apartment or overly interfering friends, but he knows Emma and neither one of them responded to the group text.

So Killian waits – for the train and a response and several other things that he probably should have dealt with by now, but that would require any of them to act like adults and David was making mimosa-based threats a few minutes before, so by comparison, he feels like he’s doing a pretty ok job.

He’s not counting seconds or stops, but his heel taps impatiently, tucked into the corner of a car to avoid the influx of tourists because some website in February claimed Back Bay was an undiscovered and underexplored neighborhood and Killian nearly takes out a guy with his elbow when his phone makes noise.

Emma Swan, 1:24 p.m.: That’s a lot of mimosas. Can you get alcohol poisoning from shitty champagne?

Killian Jones, 1:25 p.m.: Don’t let Mary Margaret hear you call it shitty champagne. She’ll take umbrage at that and assume it’s an insult to her entire schedule and her questionable decision to pick brunch as her Final Jam choice.

Emma Swan, 1:25 p.m.: Good word.

Emma Swan, 1:27 p.m.: And it’s because Mary Margaret knows we all appreciate brunch, so she gave up her choice so we could have this plus everything else we wanted to do. Presumably because she’s a better person than all of us combined.

Killian Jones, 1:28 p.m.: I’m not disagreeing with you. Emma Swan: 1:29 p.m.: No? Killian Jones, 1:29 p.m.: I don’t think there are many things I’d disagree with you on, love.

He needs to stop breathing through his mouth – quiet sighs and not-so-quiet sighs and he’s going to sue that website because the tourists on the train keep shooting him slightly concerned glances when he can’t seem to stop making noise.

But his pulse is doing something medically impossible in his veins and he can almost hear Emma’s voice in his head, the way her eyes flicker up when she’s trying to make a joke and he wants to be anywhere except going to brunch.

Even if the champagne is good.

Mary Margaret wouldn’t pick a restaurant with shitty champagne.

The train lurches to a stop, tourists grumbling and everyone should be required to take a class on how to maintain their center of balance before getting on public transportation. Killian pushes his way through the door, doing his best to avoid toes and shoes and only kind of doing either, jogging down the stairs towards the restaurant he’s only slightly certain is the right one.

He hopes it’s the right one.

The half-formed plan in the back of his mind is not going to work if he shows up at the wrong restaurant.

Killian will never actually admit to running down Sudbury Street, but he would be lying if he said he didn’t, at least, jog briskly, weaving around people and families and one particularly large stroller making it way towards the patch of green masquerading as a park a few blocks away.

They’re sitting by the window – Merida’s hair making it all impossible to miss them, Ruby’s laugh a close second – and David waves his arms like Killian’s ignoring them and not just waiting for the light to turn.

“Where have you been?” David shouts. “I was almost genuinely worried.”

“Almost genuinely being the operative words here,” Mulan mutters, grinning despite the glare she gets in response and Ruby is fiddling with her phone.

She curses under her breath when the thing doesn’t do what she, apparently, wants it to, bumping a salt shaker in the process and Mary Margaret mumbles something about shoulders and good luck. “We don’t have time for that, M’s,” Ruby says, but Killian is more distracted by the music coming out of her phone.

“What the hell are you doing, Lucas?” It’s that song. Not the Dropkick Murphys, but some other song from the early 2000s about this city and sunsets and Emma absolutely knows all the lyrics.

Killian knows she knows all the lyrics.

She’ll never admit to knowing all the lyrics.

Ruby blinks, twisting her neck and looking for something that obviously isn’t there. Her shoulders sag noticeably. “What is going on?” she asks sharply, narrowing her eyes at Killian like any of this is his fault.

Ok, so some of it is his fault and he really should have said something back to Emma, but now he’s got, at least, three quarters of a plan and he’s going to fix it.

All of it.

In some great, big life-altering kind of way.

“I have no idea what you’re asking me, Lucas,” Killian admits and he’s still standing on the sidewalk. He has absolutely no intention of going in the restaurant.

“How is that possible? What did you do?” “Was it bad?” Mary Margaret asks, apparently joining the conversation that makes no sense whatsoever. “After we left, I mean? It looked like it could be ok. I had a good feeling.” “Wait, you guys saw Emma and Killian already?” Mulan asks. “This morning?” “We had some stuff.” “Stuff.” “Stuff,” David repeats intently and Killian makes a mental note to tell Emma about dad voice and the list of things he has to do keeps growing. “Seriously, Lucas, what is this music? You’re going to get us kicked out of the restaurant before we can order.” Ruby rolls her eyes, her gaze, somehow, never leaving Killian and if he felt like he was going to get grounded with Mary Margaret and David, he kind of feels like he’s going to get reprimanded for every decision he’s ever made now.

“Is this seriously not the moment?” Ruby sighs. “Because I have been waiting for this forever. Years. Actual years. I have schedules for this moment. Outlines.” “It’s been discussed,” Mulan adds, a smile on her face and Mary Margaret looks like she’s about start crying again. “In detail. More than once.” Merida tilts her head, eyeing them both over the top of a glass that is filled with something other than mimosa. “Is that weird? It feels like it should be weird.” “Please, you’re the one who wanted to bet on it.” “What?” Killian shouts, scaring several different members of the waitstaff. He’s fairly certain the hostess is actively trying to get someone else to come outside and ask him to sit down. “Bet on what, exactly?” David does his best to turn his laughter into a convincing cough, but he’s also trying to drink mimosa at the same time and it ends with him nearly choking and Merida cackling and Ruby must have that goddamn song on repeat.

Killian’s not sure if the heat on his cheeks is from the questionable amount of sun or something slightly more emotional.

Emma’s not there.

“Alright, alright,” Ruby says quickly, hooking her chin over Mulan’s still-shaking shoulders. “Tell me, honestly, were you not late because you were fine-tuning your speech? Where’s Emma?” “What speech?” Killian asks. “And I’m only about ninety-two percent certain about that second question.” Mary Margaret blinks, confusion obvious, which is fair. Killian tries to ignore her stare boring into the side of his face. Or David’s. He’s already got his phone out.

“The speech,” Ruby continues, like that makes any sense at all. “The big one. The important one. Where you tell us that you and Emma have been actually dating this entire time and we’re all not insane.” “I mean…” “Do not finish that sentence, Jones.”

He flashes her a smile, a strange twist of muscles and feeling considering the small tempest of emotions currently sitting in the pit of his stomach. Ruby looks stunned. Killian adds that to the list as well.

“I really thought this was the moment,” Ruby grumbles. “The mutual pining was cute for a while, but now it’s just starting to get kind of obnoxious.”

“It’s not obnoxious,” Mary Margaret corrects, but Ruby gags and Mulan mutters ehhhh under her breath and Killian’s not entirely sure where that other voice is coming from.

It might be Merida’s phone.

It is definitely Merida’s phone.

“I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about,” Killian admits, another lie that doesn’t entirely feel right on his tongue and he really needs to start coming up with more concise schedules if he’s going to keep having these kinds of conversations.

“Oh, that was bad,” Mulan mutters. “It didn’t even sound like you were trying.” Ruby hums knowingly. “That’s because he wasn’t. Something happened. Something big. With M’s and David and they’re all lying to us. To our faces. During Final Jam. That’s rude, Jones.” “What happened after we left?” David asks, another attempt at dad voice that falls a little short because Killian is not, in fact, a kid. Just possibly a lovesick teenager, for the last ten years, because he might have actually been in love with Emma for the last ten years and his friends have known the entire time.

Killian doesn’t answer immediately and it’s more than enough time for Ruby’s eyes to dart towards Mary Margaret, a smile curling on her mouth and her tongue pressed against the inside of her cheek and it’s, suddenly, almost believable that she has a schedule for this conversation.

“Just tell me one thing,” she says. “Have you guys been dating the whole time? Or just, like, recently? You’re not secretly married are you?” “I thought they were married,” the voice on the phone, which is definitely Mac, says and several different people at the table groan dramatically.

Killian closes his eyes. “Not married. Not dating. Friends.” “That’s a worse lie than the last one,” Mulan chuckles.

“And not entirely true,” Mary Margaret adds. Killian’s eyes snap open. “Oh, c’mon,” she says, disbelief in every letter and she sounds genuinely stunned. Ruby’s started laughing again. “Are you kidding me?” “That was almost close to being an insult,” Merida mumbles, most of her drink already gone. “He’s just slow on the uptake.” “I’m standing right here,” Killian hisses. “And you guys are fucking this up.” Ruby makes a noise that is somewhere between a guffaw and the sound a rocket makes when it takes off, leaping out of her chair and the salt is a lost cause at that point. “Did you tell her you’re stupid, crazy in love with her yet? I mean, not like in a Beyonce way, a you way. Is that why she’s not here? Is that why you weren’t here? Was I totally right?”

“What was it like?” Mary Margaret adds. “Epic? Romantic? Slightly cautious and vulnerable, but also incredibly sweet?” Killian’s slightly worried his face is going to freeze this way – twisted into surprise and concern at just how much thought his friends have put into this and he needs Mary Margaret to explain what the hell she meant before.

He doesn’t get the chance. “Oh my God, Mary Margaret, now is not the time,” Mulan says. “Look at him. He’s dying out there. He’s loitering and dying and probably thinking all kinds of things that aren’t true.”

“Ruby brought a soundtrack!” “To be fair, he hasn’t actually said anything,” David points out, earning several hums of agreement and Killian has dislocated his jaw. He’s positive. “But Mary Margaret is right. The friends thing is a joke. It’s been a joke forever, right? I mean since--” He cuts himself off, clamping his lips together tight enough that they all but disappear from his face. Ruby curses again.

The goddamn song won’t stop playing.

“What is that supposed to mean?” Killian asks and he’s not entirely sure who he’s directing the question to. He’s still not entirely sure the entire goddamn day hasn't been a very lucid and slightly convoluted dream. “I need someone to answer me right now. In complete sentences.” “Shit, I feel like I’m getting detention,” Ruby mutters.

“You get a lot of detention in high school, Lucas?” She flips him off, Mary Margaret mumbling oh my God as she tries to pull Ruby’s hand down and they’re going to have to leave a tip to every single person working in that restaurant. Killian’s eyes flit towards David, several empty mimosa glasses around him and both of them try to take a deep breath.

It doesn’t work.

“You’re an idiot,” David accuses. “Both of you are, but you’re the only one here so you can take the brunt of my insults.” “I”m not sure that’s how it works.”

“Too bad. Did anything else happen after that one Final Jam?” Killian’s entire body sags forward, like he’s been punched in the gut and had his legs kicked out from underneath him and David smiles smugly because he’s also an idiot. “Yeah, I figured,” he says. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think she remembers she told me. It was years ago and she’d gotten into some scrape with a skip and you didn’t answer your phone. There was morphine involved.” “And you never brought it up?”

“Why would I?”’

“What did she say?” “I’m not telling you that,” David says, sitting up straighter and slinging an arm around Mary Margaret’s shoulders. Killian doesn’t try to stop himself from rolling his eyes. “But what I am telling you is that you both have been idiots for years. The pining thing has been as stupid as any of the stupid shit we’ve all done. You’ve convinced yourselves you’re friends when you want to spend most of your time making out in public places again.” “What?” Ruby screams. Mary Margaret’s eyes widen to a size that cannot be appropriate for normal humans. Merida knocks over what’s left of her drink. Mulan appears to have frozen.  

“I’m going to say something,” Mary Margaret warns. “And it’s going to be sentimental. So I don’t want to hear any over the top groaning or anything like that, everyone understand?”

“Understood, Mrs. Nolan,” Killian mutters, mock saluting with two fingers.

“You two have been in love with each other forever. Before forever. But neither one of you is very good with maybe or what if. The thing is, though, neither one of you realized you were both dealing with definitely.” “These are not the complete sentences I demanded a few seconds ago.” “Then try and listen for a change. You love her. She loves you. It’s easy.”

“That’s stupid romantic, M’s,” Ruby grins and she’s got her arm around Mulan now as well, a smile on her face that could probably cut glass or something. Killian really needs to stop making all these science jokes when he doesn’t understand the facts behind them.

And his mind is still jumping from question to question, a string of hopes and optimism and a distinct lack of either because his phone has been almost painfully silent the entire time he’s been loitering on the sidewalk.

“Yeah, it is,” Mary Margaret agrees. “But Killian stares at Emma like she’s the center of the universe and she does the same thing right back, so maybe we’re all due for a little sweeping romance in our lives.” Ruby nods. “See, that’s why I was playing the song. You going to go sweep, Jones?”

He digs his teeth into his lower lip, tugging in a breath through is nose and Ruby only looks momentarily put out by the whole thing.

“Seriously,” David shrugs. “Mac’s not the only one who thinks you guys are married when he sees you. Most cognizant people think that. We’ve been waiting for you two to catch up for years. Have you?” It feels a little bit like a threat and a little bit like several different life-lessons from half a dozen different TV dad’s, the music actually swelling in the background like they’re living life to an early 2000s soundtrack. And Killian’s not entirely sure what the right answer is, standing in the middle of the sidewalk with the sun beating down on the back of his neck and cautious optimism surging through every inch of him.

But then he feels himself nodding and almost smiling and there are tears on Mary Margaret’s face. “Yeah, I think so,” Killian says. Mac actually whoops. Maybe they should invite him to Final Jam from now on. “Alright, listen, I’ve got, like, half a plan and several demands and then I’m done listening to you guys and your shitty sentence structure, ok?”

He doesn’t pause or give any of them a chance to interrupt, grabbing one of the mimosas a slightly frightened waiter leaves on the table when his mouth goes dry. Killian just keeps talking and drinking and there are a few nods and shared, slightly knowing smiles because he’s absolutely been staring at Emma like she’s the center of several different universes for the better part of the last decade.

Mac cheers when he finishes.

Killian grins, taking another swig of mimosa before nodding once and running away – again.

Only this time he feels like he’s running towards something and someone and, hopefully, everything, so that feels like an important distinction.

There is no jogging this time around.

It’s a flat-out sprint, past museums and monuments and he almost breaks both his ankles when his shoes refuse to find any traction on cobblestones.

There are so many cobblestones in Boston.

The entire goddamn city is a bit of a contradiction – as historic as America can get, really, the start of several different moments Killian can recite from memory and a major, metropolitan space with skyscrapers and fancy bridges that several different engineering shows Emma secretly likes to watch on the History Channel have claimed are modern marvels. It’s old and new and tradition and not and it feels like the metaphors are stabbing Killian in the side by the time he leaves the cobblestones behind, stepping on the incredibly green grass in Boston Common.

There are more tourists here – kites and picnic blankets and camera shutters – but he barely gives himself a chance to get his bearings or consider just how quickly he’s run half a mile, before he’s moving again.

It seems to take a small eternity and several lifetimes to cross the Common, eyes darting every direction on the off chance that he’s wrong. And it’s kind of pointless.

Killian knows he’s not wrong.

He knows exactly where Emma is.

There’s a huge line in front of the swan boats – kids shouting and screaming and slightly flustered parents trying to calm them, mixed in with disgruntled teenagers and grandparents and more camera shutters snapping – and he sees her before she realizes he’s standing there.

She’s leaning against the tree closest to the water, hair tugged over one of her shoulders and Killian can just make out the headphones stuck in her ears. They look oddly familiar. Probably because they’re his.

The realization does something stupid to every single facet of his being, standing stock-still in the middle of the pathway while he tries to remember a single letter of the English language.

A kid nearby shouts something, snapping Emma’s attention away from the phone in her hand and her eyes widen when she notices him standing there, lips parting almost audibly. Her shoulders shift slightly, like she’s trying to stay comfortable against the tree or, just, in general and Killian forgets any reason for any of the nerves he’s had all weekend.

She was right.

It was stupid. Is stupid.

Anything that isn’t telling her the absolute truth is stupidest thing he could possibly be doing.

That’s not a word.

“Hey,” she mutters, tugging one headphone out. “You’re uh...how’d you know I was here?”

Killian shakes his head and she’s got no idea.

She has no idea he loves her back.

“Shit,” Killian breathes, which is really not what he hoped to say at all. “Damnit, that’s not..Swan, where else were you going to go?”

Emma’s mouth snaps closed and a minimum-wage employee of the city of Boston is announcing that it’s time to all aboard before this Swan floats away. It draws a laugh out of both of them, eyes flitting towards each other and his feet are moving as soon as the thought lands in the back of his brain.

She’s still sitting when he moves into her space and Killian can just barely make out the NESN announcers coming through the headphone resting on her thigh. He’s going to keep laughing for the rest of the day.

Maybe after he kisses Emma.

He really, really wants to kiss Emma again.

“Are they winning?” Killian asks, nodding towards the phone and the game he can now see playing on her screen.

“Up four, zip and just about to start the second. The Red Sox offense is ridiculous.” “Or the Rays are really bad at pitching.” “Yeah, that too,” Emma says. She hasn’t tried to get up. Killian isn’t sure if that’s a good or bad thing. He’s also not sure if his knees will actually bend to sit next to her. “How come we didn’t make fun of Craig Kimbrel?” “What?” “Craig Kimbrel,” she repeats. “I feel like we missed a prime opportunity with that one. His windup is ridiculous and absurd and, honestly, just asking to be made fun of. Even with that wicked fastball.” Her eyes flash when she realizes what she’s said and Killian’s smile, somehow, gets even wider. “Ok, do not start,” Emma mutters. “That’s just part of city-wide vernacular.” “Pahrk the cah in Hahvard yahrd,” Killian says, exaggerating every vowel and adding in a few more for good measure.

Emma laughs.

It feels like a walk-off home run.

“That’s not funny,” she growls, but her eyes are still bright and he’s still jogging around the metaphorical bases. Emma huffs when his laughter doesn’t fade immediately, wringing her hands together and Killian is pleasantly surprised to find his knees do, in fact, still work.

Her hands are warm when he tugs her fingers apart, crouched in front of her with his own fingers laced through hers.

“It’s a little funny.” “You think way too highly of your own brand of humor.”

“Got you to almost laugh though, so…” Killian trails off, lifting his eyebrows and hoping and the Rays go down in order in the top of the second.

“We really should have made fun of Craig Kimbrel,” Emma whispers. “It’s so easy. I can’t believe we didn’t think about it.” He’s not an English teacher so he’s not entirely qualified to dissect the deeper meaning behind emotional conversations, but if Killian were writing an essay this would be the part of the story he’d highlight and critique.

Because Emma doesn’t let go of his hand and he’s balancing most of his weight on his heels, but neither one of them can pull their gaze away from the other and the next words out of his mouth feel almost poetic.

“Because it wasn’t a save situation, love. They didn’t need to bring in the closer if they were already winning.” Emma’s answering laugh seems to sink into every inch of him, and, selfishly, Killian hopes he hears that sound every day for the rest of his life because it might be his favorite sound in all of documented history.

He’s good at history.

Or so say several degrees and that one award he got three years ago when Emma flew in to be at the ceremony.

And he’s never really sure how he doesn’t fall on top of her, but Killian surges forward and Emma’s free hand flies into his hair and kissing her, for the third time, and it's better than the first two combined, plus some.

They move against each other like they’ve been doing this for years, a rhythm that’s new and not and as easy as hitting against the Tampa Bay Rays on bullpen day. Killian tilts his head, not entirely sure what he’s trying to get, but certain it’s just more in some kind of overwhelming way.

His hand shifts, brushing against Emma’s side until she’s sighing into his mouth and her whole body flinches when he brushes his tongue over her lower lip.

There’s a goddamn tree root digging into his left knee and Emma’s phone has, somehow, ended up perpendicular between both of them, but it’s as close to perfect as making out in public can be. Killian’s fairly certain they’ve scandalized the tourists.

He doesn’t care.

And Emma’s fingers in his hair might be his second-favorite thing – behind her laugh because, honestly, that’s just other-level.

She shifts, phone falling to the ground in the process, but then her arms are around his neck and they’re going to get arrested for public indecency.

It would probably be worth it.

David would bail them out. Probably.

Killian stops thinking about jail time, nipping at Emma’s lip instead and that manages to work a totally different sound out of her and maybe he’s an enormous creep because he likes that one a lot and might be making some kind of list of noise-type sounds.

“What?”

He blinks at the question, not sure how either one of them is breathing enough to actually form words, but Emma leans back slightly and Killian can’t help but smile at the look on her face – pupils blown wide and the other headphone has fallen out, the cord hanging over her left shoulder, and she kind of looks how he feels.

“You said words,” Emma says and for one jarring moment he’s legitimately worried this is all a dream. “I was just...I couldn’t really hear. I was…” “Preoccupied?” “Yeah, exactly.”

Killian shakes his head, trying to brush away anything that isn’t her and this and them and he dimly wonders if they can get kicked out of Boston Common. He ducks his head to kiss her first, appreciating the way she follows after him and maybe they’ll just stay in Boston Common forever.

“I love you,” he says and it’s the easiest sentence he’s uttered in his entire life. Emma’s breath hitches, tongue darting out between her lips and that's only slightly distracting, but his calves are, finally, starting to cramp and he’s got a plan. He’s going to stick to it.

“I love you....enough to make my head spin sometimes,” Killian continues, brushing his thumb over Emma’s cheek and just below the lip she’s still biting. “I have for as long as I can remember. I honestly can’t remember a time when I didn’t. And I don’t want to not be doing that.”

“God, that’s the worst English I’ve ever heard.” “Swan, I’m trying to get you to swoon here, love.”

She blushes, closing her eyes like she’s trying to preserve the moment, which, honestly is kind of silly because Killian has every intention of this moment just continuing for the rest of their lives, but it’s also kind of endearing and a little adorable and he keeps getting sidetracked by kissing her.

That seems to bode well for the future.

Their future.

As a collective unit.

“Ah, right, of course,” Emma laughs. “Don’t let me stop you.”

Killian makes a face – one side of his mouth tugging up and eyebrows shifting and he’s fairly certain the blush in Emma’s cheeks gets stronger. This whole moment is doing ridiculous things to his ego. “I love you,” he says again, like he’s been saying it and promising it forever and it’s only a little insane that he hasn’t. “And, uh...none of this is ending.” Emma narrows her eyes. “What?” “That’s kind of why I was late. I would have been here two seconds after you left otherwise, but I had, like, seven-eighths of a plan and--” “Seven-eighths? Good thing you’re not a math teacher.” “That’s an appropriate fraction, Swan. And a pretty hefty amount of plan.” “I can’t believe you just used the word hefty in actual conversation.” “Because you keep interrupting,” Killian says, tapping lightly on her chin. “That makes it difficult to stay on point.” She inhales sharply and the makeouts had done a good job of fogging some of his more recent memories. Like the one where she’d walked out of his apartment an hour before. “I’m sorry,” Emma whispers, meeting his wide-eyed stare with one of her own. “No, no, I’m...I know I’m interrupting and I promise I really am swooning here, but I just want to explain. So, let me explain ok?” Killian nods slowly, giving his calves some reprieve when he twists his legs to sit next to Emma. Her hand finds his almost immediately – or the other way around.

The semantics don’t matter.

English is a dumb language anyway.

“I meant it,” Emma starts. “The...whole emotional outburst and blowup and those are really horrible words for it, but I meant it. And that’s terrifying. Because I meant the other parts too. You’re you and you’re my best friend, don’t tell Mary Margaret that either though, but she probably knows already and it’s totally true and now Final Jam is going to end and things are going to change and I can’t cope with that and then you were…”

She takes a deep breath, licking her lips and it’s like the whole world takes a moment to give them this, sitting a few feet away from the swan boats with the sun and the breeze and the incredibly bright blue sky.

So naturally Emma surprises him.

“We are really, really good at making out,” she says, laugh shaky at best when Killian nearly chokes on a sudden surplus of oxygen. “It’s ridiculous how good we are at it.” “With room for improvement, I hope,” Killian mutters and they’re going to draw more curious stares for their inappropriate laughter than anything else.

“That’s not even a good line.” “Yeah, but I think you still want to make out with me, so…” Emma makes a noise in the back of her throat, but then there’s more kissing and it almost feels like he’s trying to breathe her in and his whole brain stops working for a moment. “It wasn’t fair of me,” she whispers, letting her forehead rest against his. There’s hair brushing against his lips. “Because I was scared of what would happen when this was gone and there weren’t any more schedules or plans and it’s exactly what happened the first time. I just wanted you to be mine for a second.”

Killian can just make out her slightly tremulous smile, eyes a bit glossier than normal and she turns her face into his palm when he rests it against her cheek.

It feels like his heart is going to explode.

“For as long as I can remember, Swan,” Killian says and the world pauses again, or possibly shifts slightly and everything seems to audibly fall into place.

It’s the best metaphor he’s come up with all weekend.

“But you never said.” “Yeah, well, neither did you.” Emma sighs, scrunching her nose. “That’s where the whole this is so stupid rant came from. It was like something snapped in my brain this morning. I woke up and you are freakishly warm, did you know that?” “I did not.” “You are! Crazy warm and it was all so easy and you didn’t argue about anything.” “Swan, if you think I’m ever going to argue about making out with you in my apartment or falling asleep next to you, despite your propensity to stealing blankets, then maybe this is as stupid as you keep saying it is.” “Are you just trying to impress me with your vocabulary at this point?” Killian shrugs. “Maybe. Is it working?” “Maybe.” “How come you came here, Swan?” “How come you knew I came here?” “Nuh uh,” Killian objects. “That’s not how this works. You can’t answer a question with another question. We’ve got to go point to point or we’re never going to get to everything else.” “What else is there?” “I told you, I had seven-eighths of a plan. It became a complete eighth when everyone else agreed with me.” Emma’s eyes widen in curiosity, but Killian shakes his head again. “Nope. An answer. Why’d you come here, love?” If she notices the change in endearment she doesn’t say anything, but her eyebrows shift slightly and her thumb hasn’t stopped moving since his hand found hers again. “You said it first, actually. And I really don’t think I steal blankets.” “You do. I said what?”

“Stick around.” Killian eyebrows pull low, confusion flashing down his spine and he’s been flying the seat of several metaphorical pants all morning, but he genuinely has no idea what the hell she’s talking about. Emma groans.

“Seriously?” she sighs. “You really don’t remember? Was it because you were having so much fun being a giant history nerd?” “I have no idea what you’re talking about. And I'm not a history nerd.” “You teach history!” “That does not, by default, make me a nerd.”

“Oh my God.” Emma shakes her head, twisting her lips and she kisses him quick enough that he hopes he didn’t imagine it. She’s smiling when she pulls away. “You were talking about Paul Revere and the Boston Massacre and you told me to stick around and I could learn more history facts, but I got kind of stuck on the first part and, well,” she shrugs, “did you mean it?” David was right. They are the world’s two biggest idiots.

Emma’s staring at him, lips pressed together and breathing shallow, but the muscles in Killian’s face are starting to ache from overuse. “Of course I did,” he says and every sentence is easier to say than the last.

He’s only slightly frustrated he hasn’t been saying them for the last ten years.

“Yeah, yes, fuck, Emma,” Killian continues. He has to take a breath before he says anything else, the weight of emotion pressing down on every inch of him and it’s absurd and probably impossible, but it’s felt like that kind of day. He’s only slightly positive he doesn’t shout in her face. “Stay here,” he says. “You can...I want you to stay here.”

The whole center of the universe joke has never felt more apt.

Something, something...like Killian is looking right into the sun.

“I really don’t want to go back to Chicago,” Emma says.

“So don’t.” “It’s not that easy.” “Why not?” She blinks. And blinks again. “It shouldn’t be, right? There’s got to be more than that.” “There’s not, Swan, I promise. We’ve already done enough of everything else, I think we should get some easy at this point, don’t you?” “Ah, well, when you put it like that.” “Exactly,” Killian says, reaching up to brush a wayward strand of hair behind her ear. Not touching her is insane. “Still swooning?” “Not when you have to double check on it. What are all eight parts of the plan?” “There aren’t eight parts. Just one.” “Which is?” “We’re uncancelling Final Jam.”

They’re loading another boat full of tourists and there’s a toddler having a complete meltdown over something a few feet away, but Killian doesn’t pull his gaze away from Emma – watching every shift in her expression as she realizes what he’s said.

He’s going to set some kind of record for continuous smiling in one emotionally-charged conversation.

“It doesn’t have to end, Swan,” Killian says. “Or, more to the point, it shouldn't end. None of us really want it to. We just kind of assumed it would, but that’s ridiculous and so I’ve decided we’re not.” “You’ve decided?” “Yeah.” “And that’s, like, Final Jam law now?” “Eventually we’ll decide that’s the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever said,” he laughs, catching Emma around the wrist when she swats at his chest. “And, no, that’s where I was. The rest of them agreed. It might be different and we might not be able to do the same weekend every year, but it’ll happen and we’ve got everything else too.” Emma quirks an eyebrow. “Everything else?” “I’m fairly positive we did agree to joint godparent’dom a few hours ago, love. And that’ll probably be easier if you’re in the same city, learning some incredibly not nerd-like history facts.”

“It’s not the worst plan I’ve ever heard.” “That’s definitely what I was aiming for.” She laughs, easier than it was at any point all weekend, like she’s breathing out at the same time and Killian’s optimism is just that, no lingering caution or unnecessary precursors. He kisses her – mostly because he can’t come up with a reason not to and because they’ve already wasted so much goddamn time.

And they’re really, really good at kissing each other.

“I love you,” Emma says, mumbling the words against his lips. Killian’s going to smile forever. “And I’m also crazy hungry.” They draw a few more stares and few glances when Killian’s entire body shakes from laughing, but he’s so goddamn happy it’s easy to ignore anything that isn’t how easily he and Emma fall back into normal. It is, some reasonable part of his mind is quick to point out, probably because they’ve been doing this forever.

David’s going to be insufferable.

“We can fix that, Swan,” Killian grins, standing up and holding his hand out. She takes it without a word.

They go to Dunkin Donuts, which is only slightly stereotypical Boston, but it’s still, technically, Final Jam and Killian’s kind of hungry too. They split an entire box of Munchkins and he mutters you’re going to burn your tongue when Emma tries to down her Dunkaccino in four gulps.

She sticks her tongue out at him.

And they’re definitely late by the time the Uber gets to the final event on the not-so-Final Final Jam schedule – Killian’s arm around Emma’s shoulders when they try and sneak into the tour group at Harpoon Brewery without anyone noticing.

Mary Margaret notices. It might be the least surprising thing that’s happened in the last seventy-two hours.

She barely contains her screech, one hand flying to her mouth while the other one swats at David’s side and Killian can feel Emma’s grin when she turns into his side. “Deep breaths, M’s,” Emma mutters, but it does no good and they’ve drawn another crowd.

The tour guide looks personally offended that they’ve shown up half an hour late.

“Aw, c’mon,” Ruby shouts. “We’re doing this now? Seriously?” “Play the music, Rubes,” Mary Margaret says, Emma mumbling what under her breath.

Killian rolls his eyes. And wonders if he can make up for the lack of mimosas that afternoon with a copious amount of craft beer samples. “Ignore them,” he says. “We’re not running on a schedule anymore.” “Living on the edge, huh, Jones?” Mulan asks. She’s already got an empty plastic cup in her hand while Merida is, clearly, trying to distract the tour guide by asking questions about hops that no one has ever even considered asking before.

“Something like that.” David is suspiciously silent, eyes darting from Emma back to Killian quickly enough that he’s probably going to give himself a headache. Emma doesn’t appear to be breathing.

“Everything ok there, Detective?”

His eyebrows jump up his forehead. “You tell me. I need to yell anymore?” “Did you yell before?” “He strongly implied,” Killian says. “I think he was trying to parent us a little bit.” “Ah, well, he’s got to practice on someone, I guess. Although I wouldn’t be totally opposed to him not doing that again.” David smiles – it’s not entirely what Killian expects and he’s not entirely opposed to it. Mary Margaret’s sniffle sounds impossibly loud in the middle of a brewery tour they’re ruining and whatever song Ruby’s tiny phone speakers are playing.

“Yeah, ok,” David says. “But if you guys are stupid again, I’m going to be really annoyed.” Mary Margaret sighs, eyes closed lightly and one hand on her stomach and the whole thing is so goddamn domestic it’s almost painful. Emma’s head is resting on Killian’s shoulder.

“What song is that?” she asks and half the tour has already moved on to a different part of the brewery.

“That ‘Boston’ band,” Ruby answers. “You know they were still making music in 2011?” “They’re actually called Boston band?” “No, no, I have no idea what their name is, but the music’s not half bad and it’s whatever was next on the YouTube playlist because you guys ruined my plans for the initial romantic sweep.” “I don’t think any of those words made sense in that order.” Ruby sighs. “You done deflecting? Because it’s been kind of annoying having to text both you and Jones.” “We’re still two different people, Lucas,” Killian mutters, but neither he nor Emma have voiced any actual objections to the new text message procedures. And Ruby totally knows.

“I made no claims otherwise. My point still stands” He glances at Emma, rolling his shoulder slightly to meet her eyes. She presses up on her toes, tugging lightly on the front of his shirt and Mary Margaret actually gets a good amount of air on her jump when she sees it. The blood visibly rushes out of David’s face.

“So, uh,” Merida laughs. “That seems like it’s ok to joint text then.” Killian nods. “Yeah, it’s ok. But, Nolan, seriously, stop jumping up and down. David’s going to pass out.” “Don’t you have CPR training?” David asks.

“Are you asking me to perform CPR on you?” “I mean, you know, in the event of an emergency. And I’ll feel better trusting you with my kid if you know CPR.” “This is the most morbid conversation anyone has ever had in a brewery,” Ruby says. “Shouldn’t we be getting drunk? Or at least buzzed? Sorry, M’s.” Mary Margaret waves a dismissive hand, the other still resting on her stomach and Killian feels Emma’s laugh before he hears it. He assumes there’s a scientific meaning for that. He does not care. “I know CPR too,” she says. “You know, just for the record.” David practically beams. “Noted. And, listen, Em’s, I’ve been thinking about that time vortex in Jones’ hallway and I realized we totally forgot a fandom for name ideas.” “Ah yeah, Doctor Who, God, how did we miss that?” “Because Luthien was better,” Killian mumbles, winking at Mary Margaret when she immediately starts to dispute the idea. “What do you think about T.A.R.D.I.S. as a name, Nolan?” “Didn’t she have a name in that one episode?” Merida asks. They’ve completely separated from the group now. “The one good part of that one season.” “Whoa, harsh opinion,” Ruby laughs.

“Don’t get me started.” “Idris,” Emma answers. “The T.A.R.D.I.S. in human form was named Idris. Idris Nolan? Not bad. Sounds kind of like a warrior princess.” Her eyes flit towards Mary Margaret, something in the back of Killian’s brain sparking with visions and wants and optimism that he’s nothing short of certain of now. He presses a kiss to Emma’s temple.

“We’ll consider it,” Mary Margaret promises.

They do, as Ruby suggested, get incredibly buzzed on free beer samples and the quiet happiness that comes from knowing things are changing, but still, somehow, staying the same. There are goodbyes eventually – Merida has to go save New York and Mulan’s already in the process of moving, which leads Ruby to almost giggling out loud in the middle of Fort Point – but Emma smiles when she tells David and Mary Margaret she’s going to stick around for awhile and Killian nearly slams his thumb through his phone trying to order an Uber back to his apartment.

They make out in the backseat.

It probably affects his rider rating.

But then they’re climbing out of the car and Emma’s hands are everywhere and they barely make it in the front door before Killian’s turning on her, lips dragging across her jaw and the side of her neck and they stand in the foyer for a solid fifteen minutes.

It’s some kind of race after that – stumbling their way up the stairs and getting another door open and Killian’s belt is half off by the time they make it into his apartment.

He can’t stop kissing her. Or the other way around.

They’re a mess of limbs and lips and laughter and the alliteration is absurd, a line of clothes left in their wake as they try to get back to his bedroom without dislocating or snapping anything.

It’s awfully close, the bed creaking underneath them when they both collapse on it, but there’s more laughter and more smiles and there’s so much skin between them it makes Killian’s heart sputter in his chest.

“Still with me?” Emma asks softly, trailing a finger across his arm. He can’t quite nod when he’s laying on top of a large pile of pillows, but Killian makes an admirable effort and everything feels so normal it’s like they’ve just woken up and settled into their lives.

He hopes that’s exactly what’s happened.

“Consistently, Swan,” he says. Emma doesn’t answer – he swears her eyes get greener, though, a fact he would have voiced if she didn’t catch his lips with hers, slinging a leg over his hips and, suddenly, there’s nowhere else he’d rather be.

The noise he makes when Emma rocks her hips is probably embarrassing, but he’s so far gone for her already it doesn’t make much of a difference. It’s easy and perfect and them in some kind of grand, sweeping way that he’s been waiting for since the very first day he saw her.

He might mutter I love you into her hair and under her jaw and the curve of her shoulder, a mantra that sounds even better when Emma repeats it.

More than once.

They order Chinese food eventually and eat it on his couch with Return of the King playing. Emma’s wearing one of his shirts.

And it’s easy to fall asleep, but exponentially harder to wake up – all of the blankets tugged to her side of the bed and tucked under her chin.

“C’mon, don’t move,” Emma mumbles, cracking one eye open when he slides out of bed. “You were so warm.” “How could you tell through your mountain of stolen blankets?” “Shut up.”

Killian chuckles, brushing his lips over the few inches of her that isn’t covered. It’s mostly hair. “I’ve got to go to work. Mold young minds and whatnot. Explain how fucked up the legislative branch of government is.” “You going to use that exact phrasing, then?” “Probably.” Emma opens her other eye, a small smile tugging on the corners of her lips. “Yeah, that’s definitely the right plan of attack. They’re all going to pass their AP exams, for sure.” “I’ll take even your sarcastic vote of confidence, love. Go back to sleep. I’ll be back later.” “I’ll be here,” she mutters, burrowing further into the blankets and Killian has to move or he’s never going to leave. “I’ll probably break your coffee maker, though.”

She is.

The coffee maker, meanwhile, is unscathed.

It makes him smile every time – settling into this life and this future and, eventually, when the boxes are unpacked and there’s a job lined up for her with David’s connections at Boston PD, they hang some frames on the wall.

There are only three, but Emma says they’re a good start and the one in the middle is his favorite. The sign’s still a little ripped, but there’s some tape involved and it looks pretty fantastic on the wall, the hand-written sentiment truer than ever.

Welcome home, Swan.

And they finally, both, are.

#cs ff #captain swan #cs #cs fic #captain swan ff #caught in your light #seriously craig kimbrel's wind up is so weird #it makes me laugh every single time #baseball puns with deeper true love meaning

[dangertomyself]

𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐓 𝐎𝐍𝐄:

“What do you mean, you don’t have anything done?”

My shoulders merely shrugged, the answer clear… What had been even more clear was the pinched look of careless indifference upon my face. We sat opposite one another within my main living room; only a single glass coffee table separated us as we lounged upon plush sofa cushions. While our critical situation may have been similar, our stance was utterly different. I, the man of the hour, had been relaxed with no urgent care for the critical matters at hand, while my personal manager Phil Goldsworth was alive with petty irritation. His hands shifted through the paperwork that splattered the table, shifting through the notes as if to discover something that was missing.

“There has to be something here that you can work with, Luke. Some bullshit that you can put together to give to the label by the end of the fucking week.” As the last words spit out, Phil’s hand flicked in anger, tossing papers onto the ground. Some had been business notes while others had been of my own creation. Lyrics, mental spewings… Anything to get my mind off of things.

I knew none of it was satisfactory enough for Phil. My manager sorely wanted a song; a concrete message to give to the record label to say that Luke Lennox was back on the bandwagon, ready for urgent action to be put out onto the world again. The pitch they were proving to exchange was rainbows, flowers, and bullshit. A lie fabricated and forced together with an elegant bow. Phil seemed inevitably to have stupidly forgotten one defiant message: I would under no circumstances be anyone’s Goddamn present.

“If you don’t like what I’ve suggested to you, Phil— I suggest you get out of my apartment. Go sell your bubblegum bullshit to someone else. If they don’t like what I have—”

Phil cut me off short, “You wouldn’t have this apartment if it were not for the label! Did you forget about that?” The shorter, nearly balding man, stood abruptly, nearly taking the table up with him in his brisk rampage. I looked to him in astonishment.

My manager continued: “What you have to give is the bullshit, Lennox. Or should I refer to you as Lucas Johnson? The poor piss of a kid that you were back in Missouri? Because that is what you are not. The same fucking waste. Only this time you’re strung out on pills and alcohol... Can’t even write a single word to save your life...”

As the comments mingled together, Phil struck the table as he walked impatiently past me and towards the door. Several more papers drifted to the ground. My sunken eyes fixated upon words I wrote as they drifted aimlessly through the air and onto the wood flooring— time for only a single moment managing to stand still long enough for me to pick up on a few particular words: waste of space in a faceless crowd. Isn’t that what I was in contrast, after all? If not for the fame, the money, the fortune… I was Lucas James Johnson. A waste of space in a crowd, with no distinctly outstanding talent except for that of an unhealthy ability to consume immense amounts of alcohol in short periods of time.

“I expect something by tomorrow morning, or you are done, Lennox. I swear, I mean it this time. You are cut. Done. I don’t care what happens to you, you will no longer be my problem to take care of.” Phil slammed the door forcibly closed upon exiting, the frames upon the wall shook uncontrollably in its wake. One nearly crashed to the floor in the violent aftermath, yet I produced no mind to it. My fixation lingered upon my calloused hands, balled into violent fits within the center of my lap. The skin of my palms ached as fingers pressed into the burning flesh. Hot flashes of anger distorted my vision like a black burst of lightning. One by one, the spark of darkness crashed through my gaze.

Each flash seemed to awake a new memory in my mind, like some valts unlocking with the twist of a key. The truth of each hidden safe was brought to the surface, glaring me right in the eyes. If I could not write a single word worth the approval of my recording label, I would be trashed. Even more so of a joke to the world than I already had been. I knew what people had thought of me— cruel malicious words that I already knew about myself ten times over. There was no one thing that I did not read on the internet that had not crossed my mind at least one or twice. A washed up star, someone better off alone, or the best… Someone not worth caring for at all. People would write cruel things about me daily at the expense of their own amusement, and for many nights, I knew they had been right. I was not good enough to write a song anymore. The only thing I was good for was drinking, snorting lines, and having a good time. The music, the joy, the bliss of giving people something to look forward to… That was all gone now.

The explosions of empty darkness seemed to ease, long enough for me to realize that my hands had been bleeding. Clenched into fists, my nails ripped through the surface of my skin and created little cuts. I could not even feel the pain— it felt empty to me now. There had not been a single time in the last eight months on my own that I had felt something worthwhile. Was it possible anymore? Or had I fried every cell within my brain like people would scream at me on the streets passing by? The empty feeling that knotted up into my throat was enough to make any normal person, man or woman, cry. Yet, there were no tears in my eyes. I couldn’t bring them even if I wanted to. This feeling was not something new— it was a friend— a loneliness that normally would have been eagerly accompanied by a bottle of Jack Daniels. The mere thought of it was like the opening of a window in a dark room, a stream of sunshine into my brain that I welcomed to desperately.

But I couldn’t go there again. I promised myself this time… It would be different. It had to be.

Without thinking, both hands still dripping in light trickles of blood, my hands of large proportions reached out to grab hold of the single paper that I had noticed earlier. My mind was drawn back to those little scribbles of words that I had thrown together days before. Waste of space in a faceless crowd. My mind began to put together more, and without question the words slipped from my vocals:

“Waste of space in a faceless crowd…

Tell me what I have to say…

If you know what’s right then you’ll walk away.”

What could I say to myself to get through that I had to put away the temptation of drinking? Of drugs? It was time to close that chapter of my book; the novel in that part of the series was well more than written. I knew how it ended if I did not finish what I started from the beginning. To take another drink, no matter how hard the temptation grew, would be that final end to everything I had ever built. The dream he once wanted as Lucas Johnson would have been for nothing. There were two parts of myself that seemed to always be at battle: the outer version the world saw, and the true man I was within. Two very different angles within the same reflection. I could only ever be one or the other. The hellion born to die, or the man that rises from the ashes of hell to meet my fate.

𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐓 𝐓𝐖𝐎:

“ I can get there on my own,

You can leave me here alone.

I'm just tryin' to do what's right...

Oh, a man ain't a man unless he's fought the fight. ”

Sitting in a four cornered room surrounded by three gentlemen, all looking at me as if I was a useless piece of meat for the eating was before them instead of a remarkable man. I pondered why I was there-- knowing full well that I could have walked gracefully into any recording company in the whole city of Los Angeles and gained myself an exclusive deal. It would have been effortless; anyone would have loved possessing me… As loud as the confidence was that rang in my heart like a beating drum, the whispered words of doubt managed to scream louder. This may have been my final shot at proving myself. Phil may have been right-- after all-- look at me now. A nearly thirty male with far too many wicked demons in my past than any one my age should. Doubt remained the driving factor leading me there with a guitar in hand, and a song significantly unique than anything else produced in my name.

“ I could never point you out...

Waste of space in a faceless crowd.

Tell me what I have to say,

If you know what's right then you'll walk away. ”

It was only myself and a melodic guitar now; stripped and vulnerable in a private room of careless men that did not give one single damn about me or my well being. To be sober enough to produce money for them had been enough of a factor to remain persuading the musician until he was at his breaking point. Nearly everyone in the cruel world knew I had reached my breaking point on more than one critical occasion. To listen to the words that poured from my mouth, anyone would discover the truth behind the song than I had written. It was a short, few cords ofy battle, my temptation with the few solitary things in life that I loved more than myself most days. A personal reflection of emotional pain, of forgotten truth… My truth. I had to walk away from the past, and start something new for the better. If not, I forever remain a waste of space in the miserable world for whatever numbed days I had left.

“ When the walls come down… ”

In a short period of over three minutes, I eased the strumming of the guitar out with the silence of the air and met the waiting eyes of the men sitting before me.

“This is all that you have?” Phil, my manager was the very first one to question. Breaking the silence with his curt comment. I did not know what they would say— their reactions possibly being anything under the sun. Yet Phil’s word’s did not surprise meat all.

“This is what I have for you. This… Or nothing.”

Phil scoffed, nearly opening his mouth to say something more, when the head of the company cut him short. “Rebranding. That is what I will call this. A new direction from someone who had been working with us for a very long time. A lot of artists branch out every now and again-- this is your chance. Your rebranding.” Mike Hardenburg was a thin man of nearly sixty years in age. He had watched me grow from the young boy I was when I first started until now. Hardenburg knew exactly what route to take in order to get the absolute most that he could out of me. To pass me up to the world would have been a mistake on his part… Therefore he had to turn what the musician brought him into something he could work with. Rebranding.

“I guess that is what we will call this…” Phil added, almost reluctantly. The two other men in suits nodded at his words. After all, Mike’s words had been the final say.

“We will go over this and get back to you as soon as possible, Mr. Lennox.” A man named Stephan added, turning to his boss Mike to add a few short words under his breath. The entire transaction was the epitome of a classic business exchange. Nothing personal or full of drive… A money wheel spinning at its finest. Simple short nods and goodbye’s were exchanged as the men all turned to leave. I thought that I was going to be the only man left in the room as I stood up from the four legged chair with my guitar when one of the men approached him.

Stephan Lewis gave me a warm handshake, but even through the touch I could feel the snake like scales of his reptile being underneath. Stehan was a money hungry mongul, someone who would sell out the likes of myself in a heartbeat if that meant he could further himself in any way. I hated people like him; the tux wearing, Audi driving, bully type, to push people down in order to get to where they needed to go. Squeezing my hand once in a firm grasp, I pulled mmy hand away and put it in my pocket. Meanwhile, the snake made his way over towards the opposite side of the room, slithering towards the open bar and pouring himself a single glass of Scotch. The fumes took over the air… Even if I was standing several feet away.

“I’ll tell you, Mr. Lennox… I was surprised at what you brought in for us today. A little… ” Pausing, he took a slow drink, eyes fixated upon me the entire time. The taller man’s eyes never faltered from a singular spot on the floor just where Stephan stood. I could not look to the man directly; to look at him would be to acknowledge the temptation. The snake was testing him. “Softer than what you’ve done in the past.”

“I don’t think there is anything wrong with a change.” I was quick to add, never faltering for a second.

Stephan gave a curt, almost cruel laugh. Suddenly, the distance between them grew shorter. The tail of the snake weaved his way back over to me… Drink in hand. Oh, how I wanted to strike. Attack the animal before the cobra could get me first. Seconds turned to hours as the suited reptile approached. I knew that i could not avoid the fear of what I wanted most forever. Without warning the lamb morphed into lion— facing the snake with power and dominance. I could feel the strength in the way my back stood straighter— shoulders pushing out to expose gallant chest muscles. The musician stood tall, but most of all, unafraid.

“Oh no, there isn’t anything wrong with it…” Stephan stood only a few inches away from me. The smell of the alcohol burned through my nose, nearly lighting my bloodstream on fire. I knew exactly how it would taste against the tip of my tongue, and the electric feeling it would give me just to give into the temptation only once. It would solve the anxiety I felt, cure the sleepless nights, and the aches of mybody after a long day. Alcohol wasn’t just a drink-- in many ways it had been the only thing that was there for me in my life. The only dependent thing to keep me going. “I just think change some times can be a little overrated. Especially when there are… Certain things in life that are familiar. Certain things you should stick to.”

Next to the chair where I had been originally sitting while I played was a lone table. Stephan’s hand with the glass reached out, setting the Scotch down right beside me, as if for me to take… I watched his movements the entire time, swallowing slowly.

“There are certain things that some people just do best,Luke . Don’t take it personally. We all have our calling.” Turning on the back of his heel, the reptile in a suit made his way towards the exit door before calling over his shoulder: “Be back here again next Friday. I’m interested to see what you’ll have for us then. I’d like to hear… Well, a little of the old you if I’m being honest. Have a good night.”

[strawberry-jules]

the fourth

hi again. it’s 10:41pm.

today was a fucking shit show. like appallingly so. my schedule was supposed to roughly look like this:

6-7am: get up, get ready, go get coffee

8-9: vet appt

9-10: breakfast, clean the kitchen for mom

10-11: post office, quick target run

11.30-4pm: read 2 chapters from textbook

4-5.30: run, shower, etc

5.30-7.30: read half a chapter, take some me time, idk

9pm-11pm: vibe time baybee

here’s how it turned out, roughly.

got coffee, it was very fun. barista is making it very hard to not have a crush on them by simply existing. how rude! took belle to the vet, everything was fine and dandy, as i figured. came home, had a bagel with spinach and eggs, cleaned the kitchen, it was fantastic. my brother ended up needing to ship out his christmas gift to his friend in croatia, but his classes weren’t over until 1:30, so i was like no worries! i’ll just go study for my final till your classes are over, just let me know. i ended up reading absolutely nothing and getting sucked into whatever fucking dumb shit exists on the internet. i also picked 3 therapists from our network and emailed them, introducing myself, and asking for quick interviews next week to see if we’re good fits, because i want to start going to therapy. 

i was very excited by this development. it’s taken me over a year of saying i would go to therapy for me to finally get the courage to reach out. at about 12, i went into my parents’ room and said “guess what? i’m finally starting therapy!” and my mother, without missing a beat, says “oh, sorry we did such a bad job raising you. why do you need therapy? i thought we did a great job.” i was fucking stunned. i was like, “woah, no! this isn’t a reflection of you. this is me finally taking care of myself, i have personal things i need to work through. however, i do think that therapy is useful to anyone, and i think everyone should try therapy, at least once,” to which she had the brilliant insight, “there’s nothing wrong with me. should i just make something up about my family and go talk to a stranger about it? is that what you’re doing?” and my dad was like, “hey, that’s not what she’s saying” and my mom basically went off saying that i was weird for thinking that everyone should try therapy, and that i didn’t actually need it, and that it’s weird that i’ve been to therapy twice now, wasn’t complaining to that high school counselor that my parents were so strict enough for me?

those quotes are as close to word for word as i can get, i’m pretty sure it’s exactly what was said. the conversation lasted less than a minute, before i said “i think i need to excuse myself,” and walked away. i came and sat at my desk for i don’t even know how long. i looked at myself in my phone camera, and my face had become so translucent, it was almost green from my blood veins. i walked up to my window and contemplated trying to take the screen out to climb out, but i realized that if i did jump, it would be in my neighbor’s driveway, and that felt really insensitive, so i walked away. i sat back down at my desk and contemplated all the reasons my mom was right, before i realized that she wasn’t right. i have finally realized that i’m not fine. 

i’m a depressed, suicidal 20 year old with undiagnosed adhd and ocd, a diagnosed eating disorder, and i’ve been a closeted lesbian for 13 years. i have every right to feel not okay. i didn’t need my mother’s permission to go to therapy, i have my own health insurance and i’m an adult who feels the need to ask for help, and that’s okay.

so i did what i do best, and spewed verbal diarrhea onto my private snap story about what happened and how i’ve been feeling these last few days. my brother’s classes ended early, so i took the opportunity to leave the house as soon as possible, and we took as long as possible to get to the fedex drop box, before i dropped him back at home and kept driving around, trying to process how i felt. i didn’t return either of my textbooks. i think i’m just going to send the one i bought in october after christmas, idk when it’s due but i can’t deal with the fucking lines at the post office anymore. i walked up to the post office, looked at the winding line into a building where the lovely hicks in my hometown refuse to wear masks, decided i wasn’t ready to get covid yet, and went to deposit cash so i could buy weed. i’ll just bite the $40 and buy the one that was due today, maybe i’ll give it to someone next semester. 

i got home and responded to my friends’ responses to my story. i got an overwhelmingly positive and loving response from my friends. every single one stuck up for me, supported me, and shared that they’ve been feeling similarly. which is heartbreaking, i can’t believe that all of us have been dealing with this so privately! but anyway, that’s a tomorrow issue. 

after i did that, i was ordering my weed when barista texted me, saying they had a question for me, which, when you have a major crush on a coworker with a girlfriend, is a very concerning text to receive. turns out, they just made me earrings! they walked their dog to my house and delivered the insanely cool polymer clay snake earrings. when i greeted them with a hug, they pulled me in so close, literally every part of their body was pressed against mine and my cheek rested on their head so perfectly. they’re on the shorter side, probably 3-4 inches shorter than me, but so strong. the way their arms felt around my back was wild, it was so tight but so gentle but so firm but so, so warm and soft. their hair was soft but frizzy and smelled like them and a little bit like an argan oil shampoo and a little like coffee. their eyes are so much more intensely ice blue in the sun. they hugged me the same way goodbye, and we chatted for a good portion of the evening, about our coworkers and being homeschooled and being nerdy high schoolers and the earrings.

i finally got one chapter done before dinner was ready at 8:30pm, which is late, even by our standards. after dinner, as i was decorating a sugar cookie named gerard, my parents kept making snarky comments about me being a stoner, and i was like yes, bold statements coming from the parents that just used my account to buy a tincture and edibles. anyway, i came upstairs and tried to read more but i’m too emotionally exhausted. eve ended up giving me a call, finally, and filled me in on her life, which is always crazy but i love to hear her voice, so it’s okay. then i learned a tiktok dance, which left me concerningly out of breath, considering it’s only been like 4 days since i ran and i can’t be that out of shape? but i showered and did my skincare routine and made sure my laundry was in the dryer before i sat down to start this. 

it’s now 11:20pm, and i’m very proud to report that i am no longer angry with my mother for what she said to me. i’m sad that it’s how she feels, but i recognize that what i’m going through is something she will never understand, as a straight woman who, while prudish, has a healthy relationship with drugs and sex. i love her, and i forgive her, but i’m going to talk to her tomorrow and hold her accountable for gaslighting her already unstable daughter. what she did wasn’t fair, and it hurt. i know she probably feels insecure because she definitely does have things she knows she should go to therapy for, i know for a fact that she faced a lot of childhood and adolescent trauma and i would personally love to make sure she’s in a healthy place with it. but i can’t force her to, obviously, so i have to just hope that she doesn’t project on to me too much in the coming weeks.

i’m exhausted, and i think i’ll go to bed. i feel good about how i handled today, i caught myself in time to think through my actions before i did something completely unwarranted and unhinged. i know that at the time, my brain was in flight mode and i couldn’t cope immediately so i just followed the “i want to die” instinct because it was the strongest, but i still had enough of my logical brain in gear to have forethought. look at you go, prefrontal cortex! knowing that the part of me that is still healthy and wants to live is strong enough to put the kibosh on that maneuver is enough to give me hope that i will be okay someday. i never thought that i would be someone to be experiencing things like this. i really thought that people were being dramatic, if i’m being totally honest. now that i’m experiencing it, i understand. i’m sorry that i didn’t have more empathy.

[ghosts-n-whores]

I’m drunk again and I’m sick and I feel like I have to tell this story and get all of this out of me before I fucking explode. Also this is hella fucking long. I tried to shorten it but frankly, all of these were big, life-altering moments. If i’m going to spew out a lifetime worth of unspoken trauma, I’m gonna tell it all. Let me have my moment.

The first time my weight was ever brought up as an issue I was 5 years old. Me, my mother, and my sister were getting ready to take family portraits at the church we attended. My father was too drunk and too ashamed to be a part of it. Dads drinking and drug use was the worst kept secret in the fucking world but mom did her best to put on a good show. It obviously embarrassed her though and when she gets upset anyone can become a target. Mom had dressed us all in matching purple shirts. As she put my shirt on me she stopped, poked me hard in the stomach, and with a look of disgust told me to make sure I sucked that in before the flash went off. When we got home that night I stood in front of the mirror for the first time and recognized the flaws in my reflection.

My parents divorced soon after and my new stepfather arrived, bringing with him a new era of torment and criticism. It wasn’t all reserved for me though. Suddenly my sister, who until that point had been the golden child and light of my mother’s life, was coming under fire too. Everyday I listened to how fat her ass had gotten, that they couldn’t understand how a 14 year old had so much cellulite. She was so skinny, so perfect before. What had happened? (Spoiler: puberty had happened. She had developed hips and ass. And for reference here, my sister was a size 4. She was, and still is, a knockout.) I, too, faced scrutiny of course. My mother still insisted on dressing me every morning. And every morning of my life I listened to how much weight I needed to lose, how big I had gotten, how many rolls I had. Body shaming had become my new normal. The morning of school pictures mom put me in a floral print dress. I hated it. I sobbed hysterically. In retrospect, there was nothing wrong with the dress. It was pretty. The problem was that I hated me in the dress. The square neckline and spaghetti straps made my shoulders look broad, showed off how big my arms were. I actually found those pictures a few years ago. I immediately noticed how bloodshot and swollen my eyes were, how I had hunched my shoulders together in a subconscious effort to make myself smaller. My mom gushed about how pretty I was but all I could think was “that poor girl.”

I have a mole/birth mark/something on the inside of my labia majora. Mom discovered it when dressing me one morning and proceeded to pin me to the bed so she could look at it. Now, I understand as a mother you want to make sure there’s not some cancerous growth on your kid. But fully pinning them down while they scream and cry, because you’ve taught them their entire life that that is a private part and no one should ever touch it, seems a bit extreme to me. What I felt was by no means a sexual violation. But it was a violation of my privacy, my trust in my mother, my bodily autonomy. I realized I was viewed by all the parental figures in my life as a possession for them to do with what they wanted. Children didn’t have rights in my household.

The first time I ever stood up to my mother was also the first time I was ever called a bitch. I was 7, mom was telling me how fat I was again, and something in me just kinda snapped. I told her she wasn’t exactly skinny either to which she replied “Well, Savannah I’m 40 years old, it’s a little different.” I told her that meant she’d had 40 years to lose it then, huh? She told me I was a bitch and to dress myself from now on.

Things continued in much the same way for the next several years. My sister developed a drug habit, my father’s worsened, and my mom and stepdad became the bane of my existence. My sister’s boyfriend had introduced me to MTV and eyeliner. I was deeply enthralled with all things early 2000s punk rock. It was the first time in my life I connected to something. But I soon discovered that, to my mother, the only thing worse than having a fat daughter was having a goth daughter.

Now, this is something I still don’t understand. My parents were the generation that grew up in the satanic panic of the 80s. As an adult I discovered my stepdad, who was obsessed with Ozzy Osborne as a teenager, found himself part of a small town scandal involving satanic rituals when he was in high school. The rumors were obviously never true, and we all know that satanic imagery was just Gen X’s way of conveying shock value and rebellion. But to have lived through that, with that knowledge, and still think there was something genuinely wrong with me for claiming my own version of it is just....fucking asinine to me. But honestly that whole experience is another story entirely.

Back to my point, one day I was clothes shopping with my mom at target. (I’ll preface this story by telling you this was the last time I stepped foot in a target with another person until I was 19 years old. And even then, he just showed up and I nearly had a panic attack.) She and I had went to try stuff on and she barged into the changing room behind me. I begged her to get out, that I wanted privacy. She demanded to see how the jeans fit. They didn’t. I already knew they wouldn’t when I went in there and knew what she’d say when she found out. She berated me, loudly, about how the seams were going to burst. How she couldn’t believe I couldn’t even button a pair of pants. When I had been sufficiently reduced to a crying mess on a changing room floor she slipped out and sweetly told me to let her know how everything else looked. This is what she does, brings you to your lowest point and then suddenly turn on this sickly sweet charm. It simultaneously drives it all home and makes you look insane for being upset. My father does the same thing. I’ve never been able to tell who learned it from who.

It was about this time that MySpace became a thing. Mom knew I had one but was too naive to ever look at it. Social media felt like a safe haven to me. It had my music, my friends. I could obsess over whatever new band was breaking onto the scene. I could be myself without ridicule. Until one night, anyway. A cousin of mine had seen my page, reported it to my grandmother, who immediately called mom to tell her she needed to look at the “sick shit” I was posted on the Internet. My mother burst into the room, threw me out of my chair, and proceeded to pour over my profile. It was all studded belts and black lipstick. My profile song was “My Sweet 666” by HIM. My sexual orientation was listed as bi. My mother and I both very nearly stroked the fuck out as she took it all in.

My brain, in a last ditch effort to save itself, has repressed most of the conversation that night. I’m thankful for that. It’s a lot of the reason I’ve never really told anyone what happened that night - I can’t fucking remember it. But I do remember my mother telling me how disgusting it would be to be bisexual, and how even if I was (and she was adamant that I couldn’t possibly know what it even meant), it would never be something to admit out loud. This was her moment to tell me all the horrible things she had ever thought about me. I don’t remember what all was said, but I remember lying on the floor begging for her to stop. That I loved her. That I was sorry I wasn’t what she wanted. She never stopped. Eventually, she came to my weight. Again, I don’t remember it all verbatim but I do remember being told that I ever did was “eat and gorge and eat and gorge.” To this day, I can still hear those words when I look in the mirror. Ive spent a lot of time shoving them out of my head, but my god are they loud sometimes.

We moved to the lake when I was 12. My mom had recently had my younger sister and was working 5am to well past midnight some nights. That left me and my stepdad at home. My school bus would only drop us off at the end of the road but my stepdad refused to pick me up like the other parents did. He told me it would be good for me to get the exercise and walk. Our house sat at the end of a 2 mile long gravel road. The heat rose well over 100° daily. I was head to toe in long, black layers. I passed out on that walk more than once. Even when I did make it to the house, he would lock the doors and windows. He told me to go run laps and when he felt like I had done enough, he would let me in the house. He was going to force the weight off of me if he had to.

I told my mother more than once and she either outright denied it, refused to deal with it, or sided with my stepfather. She sings a much different tune now that their marriage has fallen apart and she’s searching for reasons to hate him, but the fact remains...it was abuse. Neither of them ever actually cooked so I survived off of energy drinks and crackers. Mom would come into my room, find the wrappers, and tell me I would be 300lbs one day if I don’t stop funneling food into my face. It didn’t matter what I did though, the weight wouldn’t leave. This was partly due to the fact that I was fucking 12 years old, and partly due to the fact that, to all of our surprise, I had a thyroid condition. I also had faulty ovaries which only further threw off my hormonal balance. The rest of that summer they were kind to me. Shoved food at me, coddled me. I always imagined it was because they felt guilty. But it didn’t last.

That summer I moved back to my dad’s. Up until this point my father had always firmly been on my side in this battle against my mother. That changed immediately. He put me on the Atkins diet and I felt like I was dying every day. Fuck, I even gained weight. I resorted myself to the fact that I would never have a happy home life but school would be different. I didn’t take into account that I had just stepped back into a small town and I looked like an extra on a Marilyn Manson music video shoot. People I’d known since preschool, who all claimed to be excited to have me back, ostracized me in one glance. I was goth, I’d gotten fat, and I was immediately tossed in the reject pile. I attempted suicide for the first time that night, a month shy of my 13th birthday.

A lot of things happened in my teen years that aren’t entirely worth mentioning here because it’s all the same. My dad started looking into plastic surgeons because he was sure I would have grotesque, loose skin once I finally lost weight. He also became fixated on the idea that I must have something wrong with me because “all that extra weight has to be putting strain on your organs. You have to have diabetes or damage to your heart.” I was taken to every doctor in the tristate area it seemed, searching for a condition that was simply never there. When a doctor would start questioning his reasoning for this, we would move to another doctor. I’m not saying I was a victim of Munchausens by proxy, I’m just saying the line was getting a little blurry. We never found a problem with my heart but it all later manifested as crippling hypochondria.

Eventually I just started blocking it all out. I stopped engaging when someone called me fat and started focusing on just getting the fuck away from them all. I refused to put myself down, out loud at least. I was going to train my brain to love the body it inhabited. And I did, kind of, for a while. I realized I never really had an issue with my body. I had an issue with everyone else having an issue with my body. Therapists, teachers, friends, family. Everybody felt the need to make a comment. And looking back, I nearly throw up. I was barely overweight. I was 150lbs when my father had me do my first glucose test. I will never understand how someone can become so fucking obsessed with the size of other people.

All of this was going pretty well until I went back to working at the haunted house. When you’ve spent years disciplining your brain into not hating everything about yourself, you stop hating other people too. You become a little kinder, a little softer. I was still new to this though and my newfound confidence was fragile at best. My new family quickly started to remind me of my old one. They were negative, toxic people. They were bitter at the way life had panned out for them and projected that onto everyone around them. No one was safe, and no one was your friend. When you’ve been on red alert since birth, you learn to recognize this pretty quick. So again, I just didn’t engage. I heard the horrible things they’d say but I let it roll off. The one time, in a moment of unbridled rage that I did stand up, I was immediately shot down. They pretended to handle the cause of the problem, but they looked at me with distain. It pissed them off that they had to take time out of their day to deal with a fat girl. They never said anything to me directly, but they always made sure I was in earshot. If I didn’t want to be called a whale, lose weight it’s not that hard. Stop being so sensitive. A stronger me would’ve said something. Burned the place down. Something. But I felt defeated. I was exhausted. These were supposed to be my friends and no one, NO ONE stepped up for me. It became crystal clear to me that no one would ever defend me in this life. All that negativity started to creep in, no matter how hard I fought it.

But I did fall in love at the haunt. And for a while he made me feel beautiful. I remember telling a friend of mine that it was the first time I’d ever felt comfortable sitting naked in front of someone without posing. But it brought to light a lot of insecurities I didn’t realize I was still hanging on to. He used to ask me to model lingerie for him anytime I bought it. I remember feeling overwhelming flattered that he would even want to see it, but also fucking terrified. So I refused, no matter how badly I wanted to do it. He eventually stopped asking, and my anxiety riddled brain concluded that it was because he didn’t find me sexy anymore. This idea backed by the fact that he only told me I was beautiful or that he loved me when he was drunk. He remained friends with the people at the haunt who put me down. I was left to assume he agreed with them. I want it to be known I don’t blame him for this. He had no idea what I was dealing with or where it all came from. I was afraid to have the conversation and my inability to do so is my own fault. He did the best he knew how to with what I gave him. I know that.

Sex has always made me feel empowered. It felt like a reclamation of my body. It was truly my liberation, but it would also be my downfall. To be as sexual as I am, I often don’t enjoy sex. I can never do the things I want to do, take control the way I want to, cum the way I want to, if I cum at all. I am forever thinking of what I might look like to them. What I smell like, what I move like. A fun side effect of severe hormonal imbalance is hirsutism, skin conditions, thinning hair. So not only am I fat, I’m hairy AF, have acne, and the hair that I do want is falling out. Do you know how fucking mortifying it feels to not be able to let a guy grab your ass because you know you haven’t fucking shaved it recently? And even when you do the window for feeling hairless is smalllll. My ex boyfriend probably only truly grabbed my ass a handful of times (there’s a pun there somewhere). But I couldn’t have that conversation with him. Wouldn’t. This is why I got into cosmetology so early. Fuck, it’s why I got into the tattoo industry too if I’m honest. If you don’t like the house, you paint the fucking walls right? It was just another (and admittedly much healthier) way of reclaiming my body.

If I am not the height of femininity, if I don’t ooze sex appeal and porn star magic, they won’t want me. I started placing a lot of my self worth in how sexually desirable I could be. Sex, at best, is an ego boost. And not a very good one. Since becoming single I’ve come into contact with a menagerie of men. They too have all had something to say. And they all play on a loop in my head. Here’s a list:

- “I’ve been with women with perfect bodies and ya know *side eye* not so perfect bodies.”

- “Ya know, if you were just a few inches taller you’d actually have a decent body.”

- “You remind me of Lardi B and she’s hot. I’m really into big girls. Send me a picture of your fat pussy.”

- “You know you’re a catfish, right?”

- “I’ll fuck anything, I used to hate fat chicks but honestly if you wanna fuck I’d be down.”

- “I secretly have a thing for bigger girls, but I’d never date one.”

I’ve shot down every invitation to hook up for the past year. I get on tinder for 5 seconds, immediately hear that catfish line in my head, and close back out again. I’ve stopped wearing makeup unless I have to. I dress in leggings and oversized tunics almost daily. I’ve come to terms with the fact that I have an eating disorder but have discussed it with no one. I do not know how to proceed from this point. I’m not at my lowest, but I’m somewhere close. My insecurities are my own problem but I don’t know how to get the reassurance I need without making it somebody else’s. But telling someone to call me beautiful, to gas me up, to put my mind at ease negates the point. I can’t place my self esteem in someone else’s hands. But my healing requires the ability to have that conversation. And that’s the hardest part.

I’m a grown woman now and my mother still grabs my double chin, just in case I forgot it was there. She still balks at my stretch marks. She recently told me she admired me for the way I dress. Said if she was my size she could never because she would be too ashamed. It was meant as a compliment. Funny how backhanded those can be sometimes. I think about her a lot and what kind of mother I would want to be. Both of my parents struggled with eating disorders. My mom still does. I know it’s the root of all her criticism. But I don’t want to be her. I don’t want to project my own trauma into my children one day. I think a lot about what I would say to 7 year old me. I’ve written her letters. Told her I was sorry for not loving her, for not being kinder. That it wasn’t her fault that the adults in her life failed her. I think of what I would say to a daughter. To a son. I like to imagine that I tell them these stories one day and they look at me in disbelief. I want self love to be so deeply ingrained that the concept of body shaming is unrealistic to them. But I can’t give them what I don’t have. So for now, I’ll work on that.

There is no real conclusion to this tale, I just needed to bitch for a minute.