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valdomarx · 4 years

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Anon requested: Person A thinks that a proposal would be a great way to get out of a jam. Person B thinks it is a sincere proposal and accepts. Realizing it wasn't done from a genuine place leads to some upset.

In Jaskier’s defence, it had seemed like a good idea at the time.

“Marry me, Geralt!” he called, jogging over to his witcher, a little out of breath.

Geralt’s face pinched into something cross and Jaskier was sure he was about to be told to fuck entirely off.

“It’s the Belleteyn festival tonight,” he explained quickly. “I might have, erm, sown my seed a little more widely than would be advisable in the town.” Geralt scowled. “And there may have been some, ahem, threats against my person made by the local lord.“ Geralt’s scowl deepened. “But we can smooth it all over if we’re wed tonight. There’s some local custom -- forgiveness of past indiscretions for newly married couples on May Eve.“

Geralt was still glowering but he hadn’t said no yet. Jaskier pulled out his strongest move: He ducked his head, looked up at Geralt from under his lashes, and licked his lips. Geralt’s eyes followed the movement of his tongue almost imperceptibly.

“So marry me? Here. Tonight.”

It had been a lovely ceremony, as fake weddings go. There had been music and wine, dancing and merriment, and Geralt even allowed some of the local girls to braid flowers into his hair.

They’d only had enough coin for one ring, a simple silver band, so Jaskier had taken that and he’d given Geralt his father’s signet ring. He’d never have parted with it for anyone else, but it was Geralt. He knew without question he would keep it safe until this ruse was over with.

Perhaps there really was something magical in the air at that time of year, or maybe it was an evening spent at an increasingly raunchy celebration that did it. But after the festivities were over and the townsfolk returned to their homes, Geralt took Jaskier back to their campsite in the woods, laid him down on a bedroll with indescribable tenderness, and fucked him within an inch of his life.

It was everything Jaskier had been quietly fantasising about for years, except more because it was Geralt and even Jaskier’s profoundly vivid imagination couldn’t match the reality of his witcher, every glorious inch of muscle straining and taut, eyes blown wide with lust, taking Jaskier apart and piecing him back together again.

The next morning, Jaskier woke slowly, feeling the telling ache of a night well spent. Geralt was already up, packing up camp and loading their bags onto Roach.

“There’s oatmeal in the pot if you want breakfast,” Geralt grunted. “We should get going soon.” He turned back to his work.

Right. Okay. They just... weren’t going to talk about it then. Back to business as usual.

Jaskier shouldn’t have been surprised. Of course Geralt would be as pragmatic about sex as he was about everything else. A way to get some relief, to meet a need. No expectations.

Hell, it had taken Geralt over a decade to admit they were actually friends. Jaskier felt stupid for even hoping for more.

Sleeping together had been a one time deal, it seemed. Too bad.

Jaskier realised he was still wearing the ring a few hours later. He should take it off, get rid of it. Maybe sell it at the next town.

He should ask Geralt for his father’s ring back too. But it seemed somehow rude to ask, too needy.

And he... well, he sort of liked catching glimpses of it decorating Geralt’s finger, like a tiny piece of Jaskier was with him wherever he went.

Jaskier found his thumb rubbing over the silver band around his own finger over and over again. It was silly, he knew, but he liked the feel of it. He would keep it for now.

After that, things got weird. At lunch, Geralt tried to persuade Jaskier to eat the last of the apples, as if he didn’t know their supply was running low. And at dinner, Geralt hunted and prepared two squirrels for Jaskier instead of the customary one. Jaskier would eat just about anything in a pinch, but charred rodent was not something he felt the need for seconds of.

Everywhere they went, Geralt kept trying to foist food on him. Did he think that Jaskier was weak? That he wasn't able to keep up without extra supplies? Jaskier was, admittedly, not as young as he used to be, but he thought he still measured up pretty well in the fitness department. He didn’t love the implication that he was falling short in some way.

At night, Geralt would lay out their bedrolls close together. Close, but never touching. When he laid down, Jaskier could feel Geralt’s breath on the back of his neck, and his chest ached with want.

He waited every night for Geralt to sneak an arm around his waist and pull him close, or to lean forward and whisper an invitation in his ear. Jaskier would be on him in a second.

But he never did, and every night Jaskier berated himself again for being so foolish and tried to push the thoughts from his mind. It was hard being so close and yet so far from what he truly wanted, but he wouldn’t force Geralt into a situation he wasn’t comfortable with.

After a week of this Jaskier was truly beginning to lose his mind, and it was a relief when they came upon a small town where they could rest for the night. Jaskier could go out, find some company and distract himself from the hopeless longing settled in his bones, even if only for the night.

When he announced his intention to look around the town, Geralt said he would come along too. That wasn’t ideal for Jaskier’s plan of distraction, but he’d make it work. He always enjoyed Geralt’s company anyway.

There wasn't a lot going on in the town, but there was a pretty barmaid in the tavern, a cheerful red-haired lady with exuberant freckles and strong curves. She flashed a smile at Jaskier the moment they walked in.

Perfect. He smiled back, ordered two drinks, and set to flirting outrageously with her. She giggled and teased back, not seeming intimidated by Geralt‘s presence, even though he was growing notably testier as their interactions became more charged.

When she reached over the bar to twirl a finger through Jaskier’s hair, Geralt actually growled.

She backed off and looked at Geralt. “Didn’t mean any harm,” she said. “I’m just being friendly. Unless...” She looked down at their hands on the bar, apparently noting their rings, and then back to Jaskier. “Unless you’re spoken for. I wouldn’t want to intrude.”

“Oh, it’s nothing like that,” Jaskier said with a laugh, just as Geralt said, “Yes, actually, we’re married.”

Jaskier stared at Geralt. Geralt stared at Jaskier. The barmaid held her hands up in the universal gesture for “none of my business, nothing to see here” and backed away to wipe down a table.

Every muscle in Geralt’s neck was tense and throbbing, and Jaskier had no idea what to say.

“Geralt,” he began, carefully. “is this about the other day? The ceremony? Did you... Did you think that was for real?”

Something pained flashed across Geralt’s face, an expression more raw than any Jaskier had seen on him before. Then he stood, turned, and bolted from the tavern.

“Geralt!” Jaskier called, getting to his feet. “Geralt, wait!”

By the time Jaskier was out of the door, Geralt was already disappearing down the dirt road, not turning back.

Ahh, fuck.

Jaskier left the girl at the tavern with a hurried apology, pausing only to throw their various possessions into bags and to load up Roach before heading out after Geralt. He knew bugger all about tracking, but he knew the direction Geralt was heading, and after that he relied on Roach’s instincts. She at least seemed confident in what to do.

He caught up to Geralt less than a mile outside of town. He was sat alone in a copse of trees just off the road, staring at the leaves.

He didn’t flee as Jaskier approached, though he didn’t turn to look at him either. “Geralt? I’m sorry. I was thoughtless. Please don’t be mad at me.”

Geralt stood slowly and turned to face him, though he avoided making eye contact. “It was a misunderstanding.” Geralt’s face was carefully blank, a look Jaskier recognised from times he was trying very hard to hide his emotions. “A wrong assumption on my part about the seriousness of the ceremony at Belleteyn.”

“Holy hell, Geralt.” Jaskier’s mind reeled. Geralt thought they had really been getting married, and he had been okay with that? “Does that mean... Would you actually want to be married to me?”

“It was stupid,” Geralt gritted out. Anyone else would have thought he was angry, but Jaskier knew him well enough to see he was hurt. “To think it was anything more than a distraction.”

No no no, that wasn’t right at all. Jaskier tried to take Geralt’s chin in his hand but Geralt turned his face forcefully away.

“Is that why you’ve been acting strange?” Jaskier thought back on it: the gifts of food, the aborted attempts at closeness, the feeling Geralt’s eyes on him constantly, checking his well-being.

“I thought...” Geralt wouldn’t meet his eyes. “I thought you wanted things to be normal. Like they always were.”

“If I were married to you for real, I wouldn’t act like everything was normal!” Jaskier exploded. “Damn it, Geralt. I’d kiss you every morning and hold you every night. And I’d tell everyone we met -- everyone -- that I was the luckiest person on the continent, because this is my husband, the one and only Geralt of Rivia, and he’s the best man I’ve ever met.”

Jaskier shut his mouth. Too late, though. Too late to take any of that back.

Geralt’s brow was pinched, though it didn’t quite look like a frown. It almost made him look thoughtful.

Finally he looked at Jaskier raised an eyebrow. “Every morning?”

Jaskier felt all the fight leaving his body in one grand sweep. Geralt let him push him to his knees on the ground and allowed Jaskier to flop into his lap. Jaskier brushed a strand of hair from his face. “I’ve thought about kissing you every day for years,” Jaskier confessed.

And then he saw it -- one of Geralt’s oh-so-rare smiles. Not the forced grimace he adopted when he needed to look nonthreatening, or the tolerant lip twitch he’d give Jaskier when he was trying to be funny. No, this was a genuine Geralt smile, more precious than gemstones, the kind that lifted his entire face and reached his eyes.

Geralt threaded a hand into the back of his hair, brought their faces closer, and kissed him. At the touch of their lips every part of him went boneless, held up only by Geralt’s arms and a determination to make as much bodily contact as he possibly could.

His head was spinning by the time they pulled apart for air. Geralt’s eyes were sparkling, and Jaskier could have lost himself in that sight for the rest of his life and considered himself a lucky man.

Geralt leaned their foreheads together. “Will you stay with me?” he asked, very quietly. “Even if all I can offer you is charred squirrel and sleeping beneath the stars?”

“Always,” Jaskier promised, without a shadow of a doubt. “There’s nowhere I’d rather be.”

Through the good and the bad, the injuries and the pain, the plenty and the lean times. Through it all, he wanted to be with Geralt.

Jaskier took Geralt’s hand in his and slotted their fingers together. Their rings lay next to each other, the elaborate gold of Jaskier’s crest shining against Geralt’s pale skin and the smooth silver encircling his own finger like an embrace.

It was all startlingly clear. “Marry me, Geralt,” he said, his heart welling over. “For real this time.”

#as usual roach is holding the brain cell #geraskier #the witcher #my writing

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flightfoot · 3 years

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Divergent Points: Miraculer

AO3

Alya tossed and turned, groaning.

After some time (it felt like it must’ve been HOURS, but the clock said that only twenty minutes had passed. At this point she wondered whether Bunnix was messing with her), she sat up.

Fumbling around for her light switch, she finally found it and flicked it, flooding the room with light.

TOO. MUCH. LIGHT.

Instantly she buried her face underneath the covers again, squeezing her eyes shut until they’d adjusted to that small amount of light.

After a moment she removed the blanket from her face, a little at the time to allow for her eyes to adjust, wincing as the brightness assaulted her eyelids.

See, THIS was why she either stayed up super late or slept through until morning, when light was already creeping in and her eyes were adjusted to at least a little of it.

Unfortunately, her brain had refused to cooperate.

“Kit?” A sleepy voice asked.

Alya looked up to the space she’d cleared out on her bookshelf for the little kwami. “...you remember that salt universe I and the others got dragged into a few months ago?”

Trixx nodded. “Tikki was worried, but I knew you would break out of it. Any Holder of mine learns how to tell when illusions and trickery are afoot.”

Alya smiled, reaching out to scratch behind Trixx’s ears. The little fox gave a small giggle, wagging his tail.

“I was just remembering some stuff that happened there,” she said, curling her knees up against her chest.

Trixx cuddled up against her, rubbing against her cheek. “You’re safe now. Everyone is. That entity has gone elsewhere, and I can’t see her returning - not after Marinette sent her packing!”

Alya shook her head. “That’s not it. I mean… I feared that for a while and I kept on having flashbacks, but they’ve gone way down - especially with Lila gone.”

She may not have been responsible for what went on in that world, but Alya’s subconscious had still decided to latch onto her as a trigger, causing her extreme anxiety whenever she focused on Lila for too long. So she was pretty glad when Lila’s mother moved embassies again, taking her daughter with her. Part of her felt a little sorry for Lila for being forced to move such a short time after she’d gotten therapy, opened up and started presenting herself a little more honestly to people.

Most of her was just relieved.

Some of her classmates would stay in touch with her. Others never forgave her for deceiving them.

But at this point, it wasn’t something she needed to concern herself with. Lila could form her own future.

While Alya felt like the dark cloud that had been hanging over hers had evaporated.

“That’s not the problem,” she told Trixx. “Not this time.”

Trixx frowned. “Then what?”

Alya drummed her fingers against her bedframe. “One of the things that world showed me, one of the scenarios, was that weird flip between me and Chloe, with me becoming a bully and her turning into Marinette’s best friend and staunchest ally. One of the ways I - or Rena, I guess? that part of myself - pointed out the flaws in that scenario was by calling attention to how that scenario ignored how Chloe treated her ‘best friend’ in reality, that a lot of how that universe twisted me, tried to control me, what it tried to make me into, more closely resembled Chloe than it did myself. Especially with how it made me treat Marinette the way Chloe treated Sabrina - at least before the universe claimed that I ‘turned’ on Marinette.

“Pulling at that thread worked. It created a chink in the universe’s armor that I could use to unravel it the rest of the way. But it didn’t help the real Sabrina at all.”

Trixx’s eyes widened in understanding. “And with what happened today…”

Alya nodded. “Seeing Sabrina akumatized over Chloe again reminded me of their relationship. I generally see Chloe disparaging Sabrina less nowadays - actually, come to think of it, Chloe’s not going out of her way to be mean in general - ever since she became Queen Bee formally and had other things to focus on. But that doesn’t mean their relationship is anywhere near healthy.”

“Do you have a plan?”

Alya bit her lip. “...Maybe. I remember Marinette mentioning that she tried to get Sabrina to stand up for herself at some point. Obviously it didn’t work, but maybe she has some insight…”

-------

Marinette made a face. “Good luck.”

Alya tilted her head. “It went down that badly with Sabrina?”

“Not at first. Actually, it went a little TOO well,” Marinette said. “I pointed out that Chloe was taking advantage of Sabrina, making her do all the work, and that I’d rather have NO friends than be friends with Chloe.”

Her face fell slightly. “That last part I’d take back now. I’d always just slotted her in as a bully who existed to make my life miserable. Chloe can be awful sometimes - okay, a lot of the time - but… well, she has some reason for being the way she is. And as Ladybug, I’ve gotten to see a side of her I never knew existed. She really wants to prove herself to be valuable and useful, for other people to see her that way. I think she has some pretty bad abandonment issues from her mother leaving. Her mom disparaging her constantly and treating her like dirt didn’t help.”

“Do you think we could talk to Chloe about treating Sabrina better?” Alya asked. “Or at least, that you could. She listens to you, at least when you’re Ladybug.”

Marinette looked uncomfortable. “I dunno… I want her to be a better person, but I’m not sure that Ladybug coming in and just telling her that she needs to be nicer is gonna work. She didn’t seem that happy with me last night, and anyway, it takes more than that to get someone to change their personality and habits, the way they’ve interacted with the world for most of their life.”

“Oh yeah, Adrien tried that before, didn’t he?” Alya recalled.

Marinette nodded. “It made her give an effort for awhile, but if the only reason someone’s being nicer is to avoid punishment… it’s not likely to last. And I don’t think Adrien wants to dangle his friendship with her over her head.”

Alya grimaced. She’d been through that situation before when she was younger, before she’d even hit the double digits. Some of the neighborhood kids she was friends with liked to use the line “if you don’t do [X], I won’t be friends with you anymore!”

Being so young, she believed they were serious, until her mom convinced her that it wasn’t worth following their commands if they were going to make it an ultimatum like that.

Sure enough, an hour later her friend was at the door apologizing and they became friends again.

She’d tried using that line on Alya a couple more times, but at that point Alya knew she wasn’t serious and that she wouldn’t want to be friends with her if she was, and she gradually stopped using it.

Adrien may have had a far better reason for his ultimatum, but it still felt icky to her. She wouldn’t want to use that ultimatum on Chloe constantly either - on anyone really.

“That’s fair,” Alya said. “I wouldn’t want him to, either.”

“I’m hoping that with her mom back she doesn’t feel so abandoned,” Marinette continued. “And I’ve tried to reinforce when she does something good, like after Malediktator with celebrating Queen Bee. But, well… she just doesn’t do that very often.” She looked down. “I want to help her be better, I KNOW she can be better, especially with some of the stories Adrien’s told me of when the two of them were younger. But I can’t just- just MAKE her treat people better, to be someone who people WANT to spend time around.”

“That’s not your responsibility, you know that, right?” Alya pointed out. “She’s her own person. Whatever she does, it’s not on you.”

Marinette sighed. “I know, I know. Same goes for you too, though.”

Alya laughed. “We’re quite the pair huh? Both of us have a habit of sticking our noses in other people’s business.”

“Like a certain girl who, in her first few minutes at a new school, stood up to the resident bully for a girl she didn’t even know?” Marinette teased.

“I don’t like seeing people be picked on.” Alya said, putting her arm around Marinette. “Especially since, well… I’d just moved here. I was trying to decide who I wanted to be. Seeing Chloe putting you down like that? I decided that the person I wanted to be was someone brave. Someone who fought for the innocent. Who stood up when they saw an injustice, if they thought they could help. Whose primary concern was helping those in trouble.”

She winced. “I won’t pretend I’ve always been perfect about it, but… it’s an ideal I strive towards.”

“Not like you’re the only one,” Marinette told her. “Remember at Adrien’s party?”

Alya blinked. “What about it?”

Marinette rubbed the back of her neck. “Remember how, uh, conveniently the record the Bubbler was playing changed?”

“Wait, that was you?!”

Marinette laughed, chagrinned. “I didn’t like Chloe and Adrien dancing together.”

“To be fair, I don’t think he liked it either,” Alya said.

“Probably not,” Marinette agreed. “But… well, I’d be lying if I said that was my main motivation for changing the song.”

Alya snorted. “I’ve helped with your plans, girl. I KNOW.”

Marinette’s smile faded. “Unfortunately I don’t know what else can be done about Chloe, or even Chloe and Sabrina’s relationship.”

“What DID end up happening with Sabrina?” Alya asked. “You never finished telling that story. Obviously their fallout didn’t last.”

“Chloe tried to tempt her with a beret she’d bought, which she actually seemed to be considering until Evillustrator attacked. Kiiiinda had higher priorities at that point.”

“Yeah, being chased with a giant hair dryer tends to do that.”

Marinette laughed. “That it does. Sabrina caught up with me later at my house to work on the project. She actually did my geography homework for me. Unfortunately I didn’t have time to work on it right then, what with the fake date I set up with Evillustrator.”

“Still can’t believe you did that,” Alya said.

Marinette raised an eyebrow. “This from the girl whose immediate thought when seeing a supervillain was, ‘Ooh, I should bike after them so I can film whatever superhero shows up’?”

“Touché.”

“Sabrina immediately took offense when I told her I was busy,” Marinette continued. “Saying that Chloe used that excuse all the time and that the two of us are really similar, that I probably expected her to do all the work, too. I tried to protest, but she’d already made up her mind, grabbing the homework she’d done for me and stalking off. Next time I saw her she was with Chloe again, wearing the beret Chloe’d tempted her with earlier and delivering Chloe’s completed homework to her, calling her her BFF again. Basically, everything was back to normal.”

“I don’t get it,” Alya said, squinting as if that could help make things clearer. “If she thought that you were acting like Chloe - and I’ve seen Chloe, she’s WAY ruder about it - why would that make her think Chloe’s great? And why was that enough to drive her away so quickly? You’d only brushed her off once. Chloe does it regularly.”

Marinette shrugged. “I couldn’t figure that out myself. Maybe because she knew Chloe would take her back? I’d never really paid much attention to Sabrina and Chloe’s relationship before, I was more concerned with just trying to stay away from them so I didn’t fall into Chloe’s cross-hairs.”

“Hmmm…”

That sort of made sense, but… she really didn’t know whether Sabrina thought like that. What her mindset was in general. How she could be okay with just following after Chloe and doing whatever she was told to, with having THAT unequal of a “friendship”.

Maybe a little more reconnaissance was needed…

But who else could she ask?

Chloe?

Maybe, but she wasn’t exactly eager to talk to her. Probably wouldn’t get anything useful, either.

But there was one other person she knew who Sabrina was close to...

“Thanks, Marinette, you’ve been a big help.”

“You know of some way to help their relationship?” Marinette asked.

Alya shook her head. “Not yet. But I have an idea for who to ask next.”

------

Alya scanned the park.

Hm, where were they…

A shadow from above flew over the park.

Ah!

Craning her neck, she took a closer look.

Small? Check.

Grey? Check.

Followed by swarms of other birds heading the same direction? Check.

All converging on…

She looked down at a figure sitting on a park bench, feeding the pigeons.

A lot of people were at least somewhat familiar with Mr. Ramier by now. Kinda had to be, considering that Hawkmoth wouldn’t leave the poor guy alone.

“You know you’re banned from this park,” a stern voice called out.

Alya grimaced. Hawkmoth wasn’t the only one who wouldn’t leave Mr. Ramier alone. Granted, he WAS breaking the rules, but Roger could still give him some slack.

Well she was aiming to talk to Roger anyway, maybe she could spare Ladybug and Chat Noir having to fight Mr Pigeon yet AGAIN.

(Seriously she was beginning to think Hawkmoth had a crush on Mr. Ramier with how much he liked akumatizing the guy, even though he’d become less and less of a threat every time).

Waving her hands, she sprinted over to Roger and Mr. Ramier, just as Roger was starting in on his usual spiel. “Monsieur Roger?” she asked. “Could I talk to you for a minute?”

He waved her off. “After I’m done telling this criminal AGAIN that he’s not allowed in the park.”

“It’s about your daughter.”

Roger’s head shot up. “Sabrina? What’s wrong? Is she hurt?”

Alya shook her head. “No… well, not physically anyway. That’s what I want to talk to you about. Because I DO think she’s hurt, just… emotionally.”

Roger looked back at Mr. Ramier. He sighed, adjusting his cap before looking at Alya again. “Alright, miss. What’s going on with my daughter?”

“You know how she’s friends with Chloe, right?”

Roger grinned. “Of course! I’m so proud of her. Sabrina really follows the family motto. ‘Protect and serve,’ that’s what I always say! She’s always looking after anything Chloe needs, whether it’s homework help, tea, or anything else! They’re such close friends.”

Oooookay, she was beginning to see why Sabrina didn’t see anything wrong with her relationship with Chloe.

“Uh… Roger… you know that relationship’s really one-sided, right?” Alya asked awkwardly. “…have you paid attention to how Chloe treats Sabrina?”

Roger shrugged. “I know Chloe depends on Sabrina a lot. Sure she can be a little rough around the edges, but she still cares about her. She just shows she cares through presents, while Sabrina shows how she cares by helping her.”

Well… okay, that made SOME sense. Different people had different ways of showing they cared. But Roger was missing a really important piece of the picture.

“She might care about Sabrina on some level,” Alya admitted begrudgingly. “But she still treats her really badly. And I don’t just mean in a ‘she’s bad at expressing herself’ sort of way. Sure, helping friends is common, that’s fine. But Chloe just… she harangues Sabrina all the time, and even coerced her into breaking the law.”

It wasn’t terribly common, but Chloe HAD done it, and would likely be willing to do it again if it helped her achieve her goals.

Roger’s eyes hardened. “WHAT?! My Sabrina would never-!”

“You should try asking her about the time Chloe ran for Class representative,” Alya interrupted. “Chloe told Sabrina to steal Marinette’s diary so she could blackmail Marinette into dropping out.”

Roger growled. “That’s ridiculous. Chloe’s the mayor’s daughter, she wouldn’t try to get someone, especially my DAUGHTER, to break the law for her!”

“...Like that time Chloe pressured her dad into trying to force you to illegally search one of her classmate’s possessions?”

Roger froze. “I…”

“Just ask her, alright?” Alya said. “Just… just talk about it. And really look at Sabrina’s and Chloe’s relationship. Doing things for a friend is fine. Helping a friend in need is generally expected. But berating a friend for not doing a favor, or not doing it fast enough or well enough for their liking… that’s something to keep an eye on. Especially when that ‘friend’ is contemptuous of you, saying that you’re lucky to have them, that you’d have no other friends otherwise, that you’re a nobody.”

“...I’ll talk to her about it,” Roger said. “And she’ll prove all of this wrong, that she and Chloe have a great relationship!”

Well Sabrina may THINK they have a good relationship, but-

“Sabrina probably thinks so,” Alya said. “That doesn’t mean it’s true. I’m not sure Sabrina knows what SHE should expect out of a friendship, beyond just not being alone.”

“Isn’t that the most important thing?” Roger argued.

Alya grimaced. “Being lonely sucks. But some friendships are worse than being alone, especially if that friendship is cutting that person off from forming any other bonds. I’m not saying that Sabrina should cut all ties with Chloe, or that there’s no genuine affection between them. But I AM saying that their relationship may need a reorganization. At the very least, that she needs a chance to have a friendship network that extends beyond just Chloe.”

Sighing, Roger looked down, his cap covering his eyes. “I have noticed that she doesn’t really talk about or hang out with anyone else” he said begrudgingly. “I thought the two of them were just such great friends there was no need to.”

“Everyone needs more friends in their lives,” Alya said. “One person might be a best friend, but to only have one friend, period? Can be a problem. Even if it’s with the best person in the world. It makes that person entirely dependent on that one friend. So if an issue arises there are no other options, no one else to turn to. And everyone needs someone to turn to.”

------

Hm… which shade of red was best?

Comparing the picture on her phone to the different paint colors, she selected one of the brighter shades. It might not be entirely accurate, but next to the black of Chat Noir’s suit it would really pop.

*creak*

Alya looked up.

Chloe strutted through the door, Sabrina following behind her.

Something seemed different about Sabrina though. She looked uncomfortable and conflicted whenever she looked at Chloe, like she wasn’t sure how she should feel about her.

“Oh, Sabrina, look at this!” Chloe said, walking over to Alix’s latest street art masterpiece. “The little punk thinks vandalism is art!”

“Don’t you have something better to do?” Alix asked.

“Well of course, I always have something better to do. I just thought I’d grace you with my presence. No need to thank me. No, actually. DO thank me. It’s the least you can do.”

Alix rolled her eyes, getting back to her spray painting.

“Chloe, over here!”

Alya blinked, watching Adrien wave Chloe over.

Huh. That was unusual. Usually Adrien preferred to spend time with Marinette (granted she was at her own workstation sewing this time, while Adrien was working at a separate station). Chloe and Adrien may still be friends, but…

Adrien caught her eye.

And winked.

OOOOH.

“ADRIKINS!” Chloe squealed, running over to him and latching onto his arm.

As the two of them began talking earnestly, Alya noticed Marinette waving Sabrina over.

For the first time since she’d entered the classroom, a small smile graced Sabrina’s face.

Seeing Sabrina sitting next to Marinette, having a good time, Alya couldn’t help but smile as well.

-----

(A/N)

Just to make it clear, I don't think Lila's better than Chloe. But any sort of comeuppance or retribution that could be inflicted on Lila already HAS been in fics a hundredfold. At this point I just want her gone so I can pretend she doesn't exist.

Chloe's far more interesting. With her characterization she can be pulled in multiple different directions, can be developed in different ways without needing to break her character. Just having her be a stuck-up bully? There's plenty of canon to back that up. Want her to build herself up, to try to be... if not nice exactly, to at least be helpful, to protect the people she cares about? There's plenty to draw on there as well. She's easily the most versatile character in ML.

Still very annoyed at how often she gets the Draco in Leather Pants treatment while Alya and Adrien get Ron the Death Eater'd to make room for her, though. When it's just a Chloedemption I'm fine with that, but not when other, canonically kinder, more understanding characters have their characterization completely broken in order to make her look better by comparison.

Also her treatment of Sabrina really needs to be addressed. I do believe she's genuinely fond of Sabrina, but she still treats her very poorly. I hope season 4 develops Sabrina more so I can better understand her mindset, that was one of the most difficult parts of writing this. Just trying to understand why she sticks with Chloe, why she keeps going back to her.

I liked how the NY Special let Sabrina separate from Chloe to talk to that boy, to allow Sabrina to have some sort of relationship outside of Chloe. That's what I wanted for her here, for her to have a chance to form some new bonds and be less dependent on Chloe. I can't see her leaving Chloe entirely, but maybe Chloe will treat Sabrina better if Sabrina's more willing to distance herself when Chloe starts treating her badly, along with decreasing Sabrina's likelihood of being akumatized whenever that happens. So far both times Sabrina got akumatized (outside of Heroes Day) Chloe lashing out at her has facilitated it.

As for a Chloedemption, with what we've seen in the show, I just don't think we're there yet. We've had a few people try to intervene, pushing Chloe to be a better person.

Evillustrator: Marinette pointed out the issues in Chloe's and Sabrina's relaitonship, and Sabrina HERSELF called Chloe out for treating her like a slave.

Despair Bear: Adrien tried to push Chloe into being nicer, into making an effort.

Style Queen & Malediktator: Marinette got Chloe's mom to stick around and connect with her a little (albeit in a very unorthodox way), even having a heartfelt moment connecting with Chloe the next episode, getting a better glimpse of her insecurities and trying to help her with them by giving her a chance to show that she's definitely NOT useless, and to get appreciation that she genuinely earned.

I don't really have much more I can add to that to push Chloe over the redemption line. She's already had a lot of people working with her. So I wanted to give Sabrina a push instead. I dunno whether Roger gaining a better understanding of how skewed Chloe's and Sabrina's relationship is and talking to Sabrina about it, letting her know that "protect and serve" has limits, would actually happen or whether that would get Sabrina to reconsider what she should put up with, but I figure it's more likely than Chloe's parents shaping up, especially with how awful Audrey is. At least Roger showed some integrity in Rogercop.

#divergent points #ml fanfic #alya cesaire #marinette dupain cheng #sabrina raincomprix #Miraculous ladybug

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jemmahazelnut · 3 years

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Two broken hearts with matching sides - Chapter 7

Link: AO3

Here you can find Chapter One, Chapter Two, Chapter Three, Chapter Four, Chapter Five, Chapter Six.

Notes: I swear I will publish the next chapters faster.

First steps

Freed woke up with a slight headache. It could have been worse for him given how much he had drunk the day before. He yawned and got dressed noticing that it was now lunchtime. The night before he and Laxus had come home at four in the morning. After writing to all the people that had worried, Freed had gone to sleep with a mixed feeling of adrenaline and relief in his body. The chat with Laxus had definitely changed his perspective, but he still didn't know how to approach the blonde.

During the journey home they had decided to take things calmly so as not to repeat the mistake they had made years ago. Go out, see what it was like to be together after years and, if necessary, make things serious. It was the best he could hope for. They had also decided not to say anything to the others, merely saying that they had solved their problems.

Freed left his room and entered the kitchen, where the three roommates were already there. Evergreen was having tea while she read the news on the phone, Bickslow ate breakfast even though it was late now, and Laxus was making a coffee.

“Morning,” Freed greeted as he opened the fridge.

“Coffee?” Laxus asked. Freed smiled at him.

“Yes, thank you,” he replied, pleased to finally be able to have a normal conversation.

Evergreen and Bickslow looked up in surprise from the table at them.

“Have you solved your problems?” Bickslow asked.

“Yes, I'm still sorry about yesterday. I didn't mean to worry you,” Freed said taking the jar of jam and putting it on the table.

“I really hope for you two that you're done driving me crazy,” Evergreen commented in annoyance.

“Yes,” Freed replied. Evergreen was obviously curious now. Rightly so, since she had had to endure all their squabbles.

“So what was the problem?” she asked. Freed just kept quiet, not sure what he could say. They had decided not to give news around, mainly because they had just solved, they didn’t know how things were going to go between them.

“We had some misunderstandings and last night we solved” he just said after a while, since Laxus didn’t speak. Evergreen arched an eyebrow, not at all pleased with the answer.

“Misunderstanding?” she asked skeptically. She was about to ask for more but luckily Bickslow intervened.

“Well, as long as you don't leave home anymore. Honestly, I'm tired of running after you too,” he said calmer than the girl.

“I'll try not to,” Freed replied. Laxus set the cup of coffee in front of him and Freed took it with a slight smile on his face.

“How about going to billiards?” Laxus asked.

“Do you mean all together?” Evergreen asked that she still wanted to know more and she was scrutinizing them openly, looking for every little information. Laxus and Freed nodded.

“Great!” Bickslow exclaimed “Just like the old days.”

***

“You softened up in Germany,” Laxus smiled as he walked out of the bar with Freed for a moment to smoke. They were with Bickslow and Evergreen in the club they always went where they were teenagers and had decided to play a couple of games of pool. They both thought that going out with the two friends would make things less embarrassing, moreover, they both wanted to be forgiven by the two for behaving like assholes and that was the ideal opportunity.

“I wouldn't say, if it wasn't for Evergreen you would have already lost” Freed retorted closing the door behind him and then leaning against the wall.

“I don't think so,” the blond objected, lighting a cigarette.

“You haven't given up yet,” Freed commented and Laxus made a small grimace.

“I tried, and for a few months I even managed to quit, but then I started again,” Laxus replied taking a puff and avoiding saying that since Freed returned, he had increased the number of cigarettes he smoked per day. “So, what’s Germany like?” he asked.

“Everything is much better organized and people are not chaotic and rude like here. Just look at the streets and see how clean they are compared to ours,” Freed replied.

“The perfect place for you,” Laxus commented, glancing at him. In fact, there was also that problem to think about. When Freed finished his two years of university, would he go back to his father, or would he stay in Italy to live with his mother? Laxus hoped that he would choose the latter option, despite the fact that he knew that finding a job there would be more difficult. Also, perhaps Freed lived better in Germany.

“Maybe” said Freed “But I still prefer Italy, maybe just because I was born there,” he added with a slight frown. Then he began to tell some anecdotes and Laxus listened curiously.

The blond found himself staring at his friend -if he could define him that way again- thinking it was really nice to be able to talk to him again. Freed hadn't changed then so much, and even if there had been some embarrassing moments during the evening, the conversation had been easier than he had thought. Thinking that they were screwing everything up for nothing still made him weird, and knowing that Freed still had an interest in him excited him.

The temptation to behave like a teenager was so great, being physical, putting an arm around his shoulders, trying to make contact with him, it was something that came normal to them when they were high school. Now, however, he avoided doing it, partly because he didn’t know how Freed would react, partly because in the end they had solved only a few days before.

He finished his cigarette and continued to listen to Freed talking about a weekend in Berlin.

“So far I've only spoken, you haven't told me anything new,” Freed said after a while.

“I don't have much to say,” Laxus said with a shrug. “My life is always the same, the grandfather is getting older and more emotional. He also got a little dog. He always complains about it, I told him to get a goldfish if he really wanted an animal”. Freed laughed lightly at the joke and Laxus smiled.

“You always wanted a dog as a kid,” Freed recalled with a smile.

“Yes, and he never took it from me. Now that I'm gone, he takes it. I think he does it to piss me off,” the blond commented. “However, he’d like to see you again. If you want, we can go to him in the next few weeks,” he added hopefully. He didn't want to rush too much, but it was true that Makarov had asked him about Freed. Laxus had heard him on the phone and told him that he had talked to Freed, briefly telling him what had happened between the two of them. Freed nodded.

“Gladly,” he said and Laxus smiled in relief.

“Good”.

Freed looked down for a moment. “I'm really sorry I left without telling you anything.” Laxus looked at him in surprise. “I didn't say goodbye to anyone, even though my mother told me to”.

“Hey, we were both stupid. We should have clarified that time, but better late than never,” Laxus reassured him.

“Yes but… I left it all behind. I acted like an idiot, and the worst is that I was doing it up until a few weeks ago,” he snorted. “If you hadn't come to me, I wouldn't have talked to you.”

“I didn't make it easy for you,” Laxus objected.

“This isn’t the time when everyone takes the blame, is it?” Freed smiled slightly, perhaps to defuse the situation.

“Of course not, fault’s seventy percent yours,” Laxus replied. Freed looked up in surprise and the blond grinned. “But I’m good and I forgive you”.

“I'm talking seriously,” Freed said but then he smiled and shook his head. “It doesn't matter, let's go back and play,” he said. Laxus nodded and the two boys entered the club, joining Evergreen and Bickslow. The rest of the evening they spent with the two friends, joking like in the old days, almost as if not even a day had passed.

***

A few nights later the four boys decided to go to a bar together by joining the Strauss brothers. Freed had nothing to complain about, he knew that Elfman and Evergreen were together, and personally he liked Mirajane and Lisanna.

And spending time with Laxus was getting easier. After some initial awkwardness, it had been oddly easy to get back into a relationship similar to the one they had in high school. They weren't as close as they were back then, but they were working on it. And it was nice to know the blond liked him, even though they hadn't spoken since that evening. And Freed honestly didn't know how to move. Even if all instinct told him to throw himself on Laxus and kiss him, he tried to keep him in check with rationality. If Laxus wanted to take it slow, he was fine. And indeed, perhaps it was for the best.

“Guys, are you here too?” asked a voice behind them. Freed and Bickslow turned and saw Rufus. If the second smiled broadly, Freed instantly tensed. Rufus smiled at them and cast an interested look at Laxus. He was in the company of Minerva, Orga, Sting and Rogue.

“Hey! Do you want to join?” Bickslow asked. Freed hoped they would say no, but unfortunately the boys agreed. And unfortunately, Rufus sat right next to Laxus. He had to expect it, the presumptuous blond was obviously attracted to Laxus.

Actually Freed still hadn't figured out what was between them. He hadn't asked, but now he was actually morbidly curious. Were they engaged? Or had they just been dating for a short time? And how long? And why did Laxus go out with that blond? What the fuck did he like about Rufus? Hell, he was thinking like a jealous boy.

But with good reason, Rufus was clearly flirting with him and even though Laxus didn’t respond to his flirtations and tried to make him understand that whatever had been between them was now over, Rufus continued. Freed just bit his tongue so as not to spoil the evening. In reality, however, all he wanted to do was achieve the two and take those damned hands of Rufus off Laxus' shoulder.

“Well, it's funny to think that just a few years ago we all hated each other,” Sting commented suddenly.

“Yeah, Ever and Elfman didn't get along at all and look at them now,” Mirajane said with her eyes sparkling with joy. The two boys blushed slightly.

“Well, you and Minerva didn't get along quite well either,” Evergreen commented to get out of the situation.

“Yeah, you nearly bitten each other in the school corridors. You were two beasts, almost worse than men,” Sting commented cheerfully.

“Not to mention you and Natsu,” Rogue muttered.

“True. Hey, you two didn't get along very well either,” Sting commented, glancing from Freed to Rufus.

“Yeah, we were always competing for everything,” Rufus smiled. “But things change, by now we’ve put those disagreements behind us, right?”. Freed would have had a lot to say about that last statement. The last time they met Freed had yelled at him and was one step away from punching him and kicking him out of the apartment. And even at that moment Freed just felt the urge to insult him and remove that presumptuous attitude.

Instead, he just drank his drink. “Yeah. You and Laxus were always competing too,” he changed the subject. Orga laughed loudly and nodded. Fortunately, the discussion changed and no one paid him more attention.

Freed, however, continued to observe Rufus and how he spoke next to Laxus, approaching him and telling him who knows what. At that moment he regretted not sitting next to him. He had done it so as not to risk leaning on him and doing who knows what, but at that moment he just wanted to be in Rufus's place.

He honestly hoped that evening would be over quickly, because watching Rufus and Laxus so close was starting to get on his nerves. He tried to be rational, and told himself he had no reason to worry. Laxus had told him he wanted to go out with him, not with Rufus.

It didn't work at all.

The annoyance remained there and the fact of not knowing what had been there between those two was driving Freed out of his mind.

He tried to ignore that sense of annoyance and started talking to Rogue, while still glancing at the two boys. At one point the two stood up and Freed couldn’t help but follow them with his eyes. Laxus put a hand on his shoulder and Freed looked at him in surprise.

“I'm going to smoke, are you coming?” he asked. Freed nodded and stood up, a little relieved that he had asked him. Imagining those two alone would have been too difficult. Sting and Rogue also joined.

“Do you smoke?” Rufus asked.

“No,” Freed said. “But I want to get some fresh air,” he explained. Rufus didn’t reply and the three boys left the room.

While Laxus lit a cigarette and handed the lighter to Rogue who did the same, Rufus turned to Freed and asked him what it was like to be in Germany. Freed already had a malicious response on his tongue, but once again he decided to keep it to himself and began to tell something.

“So now you can speak German really well,” Rufus commented after a while.

I already knew how to speak well, Freed thought irritably, but he nodded. “You instead? What have you done in these years?” he asked actually not very interested.

“Since you left, Laxus and I have been going out often. Remember all the disagreements we had in high school? They disappeared into thin air,” Rufus began. Freed looked at him now pissed. He had thought that Rufus was starting to talk about his university, how he was still the best in the class and other bullshit like that. Instead he had begun, of everything, to talk about Laxus. He was doing it on purpose, it was clear.

“We found that we got along very well. By the way, I wanted to apologize for the last time we met. I didn't really want to wake you up, but we were so caught up in the situation that we didn't realize we were noisy”.

Freed’s irritation grew even more. Fucking asshole. He just wanted to answer him badly and get that smile off his face. But there were also Sting and Rogue, and he didn't want to ruin the evening.

“Old story,” he said coldly. Pretending indifferent was best.

“A bit like Rogue and I do, when passion takes over...” Sting intervened cheerfully.

“Nobody wants to know anything,” Rogue growled irritated silencing the blonde.

“However it seems that you’ve solved your problems. Everyone was wondering why you never talked to each other again and why you disappeared without anyone knowing,” Rufus began again. Now Freed was really going to tell him to fuck off.

“An old fight,” Laxus interjected, perhaps foreseeing Freed’s wrath. “It doesn't matter anymore.”

“I understand,” Rufus said and stared at them for a moment. “So you're friends again like you used to be,” he commented.

“Yes,” Laxus replied hastily. “I saw Yukino the other day, I learned that she takes the same course as you” he changed the subject.

Freed remained silent with pursed lips and nervousness that it went up more and more. They were friends. Right. Laxus apparently didn't want to talk about their relationship. Not that there was much to say, obviously for the moment they were just dating, it was obvious that he didn't want to talk about it. But with Rufus he didn't have much trouble making out in front of other people.

All the good times spent with Laxus in the last few days were covered by that new news and the bad mood grew more and more. Rufus's presence didn't help, because the blond really seemed to have some confidence with Laxus. He leaned on him, smiled clearly flirtatiously and chatted animatedly.

Either Laxus didn't notice because he was an idiot, or he wanted to make him nervous about something. Something Freed honestly didn't understand. Maybe he just wanted to show him what he had been missing in those three years? Or maybe he wanted to piss him off? Or maybe he was more interested in Rufus than he was.

Freed didn't say much all evening, and he chatted more with Rogue than the others until they finally left. Freed didn’t miss the 'See you these days' that Rufus said to Laxus, but he didn't comment on it and pretended not to have heard it as he headed towards the car.

#fraxus #freed justine #laxus dreyar #freed x laxus #fanfiction

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theschizoidblog · 4 years

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Schizoids at work – tips for schizoids and their employers

Blog 5: 22/09/2020

When it comes to Schizoid Personality Disorder, I find there’s so little info online on how to deal with it. While not all schizoids are comfortable holding jobs, many love to work for the income it provides, which in turn gives them the opportunity to have their own little haven without starving. (Ah, the joys of capitalism!) Some even really enjoy the challenge their job provides. Others suffer through jobs that aren’t a good match for them.

In this blog I want to give tips to employers about how to deal with schizoid employees, and to the schizoid employees themselves - don’t worry, you’re an asset!

(Also a quick note: covert schizoids are the ones you’re most likely to encounter on the workfloor, overt schizoids usually have it a little harder with fitting in.) (I can’t speak from experience there since I fall in the covert category.)

Now, the chance that an employee will tell you they’re schizoid, is minimal. First off, many don’t seek out therapy and thus don’t even know they are schizoid. (I didn’t know until I was 36.) Second, those that know they’re schizoid, will often feel like they can’t trust you with something as personal. Third, in some cultures it’s a big taboo to talk about mental health, especially if you have something that is labeled a ‘disorder’, and thus they will not tell you because they fear you would just fire them.

But in the rare occasion that your employee opens up to you about schizoid personality disorder, at least now you have this bit of advice from a schizoid who’s been employed in two countries (Belgium and the Netherlands), in a few different sectors and who has been in situations where the employer did not know, and is currently in one where the employer does know.

To the employer

First off, don’t be terrified or apprehensive if an employee tells you they are schizoid. Schizoids are better rooted in reality than most people and don’t suffer from delusions or paranoia like certain other personality disorders. They’re often quiet observers, analytical, witty… if they dare to open up in your company!

While it’s called a disorder, it doesn’t necessarily require medication or a great deal of therapy – it’s a state of being. If someone tells you they’re a schizoid, what they are saying is that company can drain them, that they are immune to most forms of peer pressure, that they don’t mind not talking to people.

Keep in mind that Schizoid Personality Disorder can be accompanied by depression, PTSD, anxiety and other comorbidities. While a schizoid seems emotionless most of the time, when your schizoid is suddenly crying at work, it’s possible you triggered some PTSD and that’s why they’re unable to perform well. But a schizoid without any comorbidities should, in theory, give you less trouble than any other employee.

You might think “humans are social beings”, but the same can’t be said for schizoids. We operate in a world where most people around us are just different from us, and accommodating to their social needs can exhaust us. (And in my experience that part gets worse with age.) We’re not very social beings. We get energy from being alone.

Consider us the ultimate introvert, while most managers and CEO’s I’ve met are on the other side of the spectrum, massive extraverts. To explain that bit: Did you find the lockdown horrible? Did you find it draining to talk to your employees online instead of at the coffee machine? Well, for a schizoid it’s often the other way around. Talking to colleagues through chat online is easier, more fun and less draining than talking to them at the coffee machine, and while you get energy from those conversations in the lunch room, they drain the schizoid person. We’re wired a little differently, so keep that in mind.

As an employer, you want to get the most out of your working relationship with anyone in your company. For schizoids, like other employees, you can just ask them what they feel or think, but in some cases schizoids will try to avoid conflict, and thus just say what you want to hear or not appear analytical at all. If they don’t trust you, I wish you the best of luck in getting them to open up. (You’ll need it.)

Especially young schizoids have not yet learned from experience to open up and might not indicate when things aren’t working out for them when they see it’s working out for their other colleagues. While immune to peer pressure (they might not eat the birthday cake everyone is having when they dislike it, or conform to the same clothing standard of the rest of the company when it’s not a strict rule), they will avoid conflict and thus they might not be fully upfront if the new work islands are ruining their concentration or when you place them among the loudest colleagues in the group and they just suffer quietly between them.

So in general, ask them whatever you like and be open and honest, and with any luck the schizoid will be self-critical, open and honest in return to you.

Ideal jobs for schizoids would be jobs they can do alone, like being a night guard, administrative jobs they can do from home, or jobs with animals or in nature. But that doesn’t mean that that’s all they’re good for. Plenty of schizoids work in retail, customer support, elderly homes, healthcare, IT, or are teachers, lawyers, even psychologists themselves! Having Schizoid Personality Disorder should never be an excuse to fire someone from a job, because it’s not a reason as long as the schizoid is doing their job well.

Practically

Feedback moments

Schizoids have their walls up very high, nearlly all the time. During feedback moments, that’s true as well. Give your feedback, but don’t expect to see shock, anger, sadness, relief or happiness on the face of the schizoid. They might not respond differently to your praise or criticism than if you were to recite the alphabet to them. Ask them what they will do about the issue and they’ll probably come up with a solution themselves or give you the acknowledgement that you wanted to hear that they understand the problem now.

Whatever you do, don’t get harder and meaner in your feedback because you see no response. Someone once did that to me and it triggered PTSD that I’ve been coping with for 15 years now. I did not realize why my employer was so mean to me, but now I realize that I must have sat there like a zombie, hardly acknowledging his feedback with any visual cues, and he felt a need to “drive it home” to the point where my body is now convinced I’m being sent to a war zone when my employer says it’s time for my yearly evaluation.

Control/manage

Schizoids don’t enjoy other people controlling everything they do. I’ve worked in helpdesk situations and do great in situations where I’m not given specific scripts to stick to. It makes for a better customer experience too and I get the job done and I get it done well. By forcing scripts on schizoids (but probably on plenty of regular folks too), you’re destroying motivation and only making the job harder. Let the schizoid do their job and use their magnificent brain, they’ll figure it out. Be there as a person they can come to for help. Tell them they can always ask for help or advice, and they’ll ask it if they need it, but don’t try to be too authoritarian, it usually doesn’t stick well with the schizoid and they’ll just learn to dodge you instead.

Flexibility in shifts

One of the biggest advantages of having a schizoid employee is that they might be willing to work Sundays or Saturdays or evenings or nights while others prefer to spend that time with family or going to the bar. I volunteered to work on Sundays and evenings because if I work on Sundays, I don’t have to go to carnival get-togethers with the family (huzzah!), and evenings because then I don’t have to work with all my colleagues together at once, but I just have one other colleague around and it’s quiet and I can listen to music.

I’m also the go-to-person for my colleagues when they have an evening shift they need to switch in case of emergency. I don’t mind switching from morning to evening. (I’m also an evening person so my efficiency will be better if I work late shifts compared to when I work early shifts.)

So while a schizoid person might not enjoy being in large groups, don’t say they’re not team players! They will gladly help out the company when they can, as long as they’re not being taken advantage of.

Dinners/parties/celebrations/team buildings

Every company has reason to celebrate at times and sometimes you want to thank your employees for their hard work with a nice party or event. A schizoid might not like every type of party or teambuilding though. I’ve been to a few I really enjoyed, but others where I was like “can I just work instead?” We did a very intimate speeddating teambuilding with our closest colleagues which I really enjoyed (wait, what, a schizoid enjoying a speeddating sort of thing? – I liked it because it wasn’t small talk but really witty questions that you could discuss with colleagues.), but there are sometimes also parties where the entire company is there and that are just too many people whose name I don’t know and whom I don’t fully trust, with music I don’t like and lots of drunk people, so I’ll rather bail out of those. Basically, my tip would be: definitely extend the invitation for the event, but if they say “no”, that’s that and don’t take it personal. (Also, they once didn’t ask me to go to a party because they know I never go anyways, and then I was a little sad they hadn’t asked me. I’d still like to say no and feel included. ;-))

Privacy

Most employees like to know a lot about the private life of their employers. Schizoids might not share a great deal. They like to keep work and private life separate, but let’s be real here: there’s often not a great deal going on either. Asking “What did you do in the weekend?” might result in a slightly annoyed schizoid. They probably didn’t do anything you’re interested in hearing. They probably had food. Watched shows or played games. Slept. A lot. And that’s what they might do for the next 51 weekends of the year as well. Don’t invite yourself over uninvited either, I never open the door unless I know someone’s coming. It’s not even something personal, it’s just that home is sacred and I wouldn’t even open the door to my elderly grandmother.

Someone else said that intrusion upon privacy is even something they consider offensive, so best not to do it!

But, if you’re patient, you will get to know your schizoid employee better. We just open up slower than most, so don’t pressure it, we’ll tell you what we want to tell you when the time is right.

Carpooling

I think carpooling is great for nature but from a personal point of view I hate it. Some companies are big on carpooling, sometimes to events. One schizoid told me she drove 6 hours to go to a company event because she didn’t want to take a flight and sit next to a talkative colleague. That’s how much we prefer to be alone when travelling sometimes. For some schizoids it’s the only time they have alone. At home they might not live alone, at work they’re never alone, and thus that time in the car is sacred to them, the only moment they can recharge a bit and be alone with their mind. (I have the same with lunch break, I usually take my lunch alone, just to recharge a bit. It’s nothing personal, I just need the me-time.)

Ambition

When asking a schizoid where he or she sees themselves in a few years, they might offer a blank answer. Schizoids don’t have a great deal of ambition. They will rarely say they see themselves as a manager or anything of the sort, instead they’ll express they’ll be good employees with a good knowledge of all systems and such. Don’t expect your schizoid to be ambitious – they might be perfectly happy with an entrance-level job.

Please do not mistake this as a sign they have no interest in the company or in their own career with the company. They just can’t imagine a lot of things changing very fast in their career path.

Mediators and Listeners

Schizoids are great mediators and listeners. If you have a problem, tell them the problem and wait for their pearls of wisdom. They’ve been observing society for their entire lives, even if they’re not very social people, they understand society better than most. They’re also very good listeners and will earn a lot of trust from their fellow colleagues that way if they open themselves up to them. Just be mindful at the same time that you’re not expecting them to do a specific job AND sit them down next to people that love to talk, because those people will love to take advantage of the fact they’re great listeners and get their own egg out of their system. Not a lot of work will get done then.

Bonding with colleagues

If you want a schizoid to bond with colleagues, it’s not really going to happen if they work 9 to 5 with 10 other colleagues in the same room. They’ll become part of the wallpaper. If you want them to bond, then let them work with other colleagues in 1-1 situations where it’s just the schizoid and the other colleague. For me, that’s during my late shifts and weekend shifts that I’m usually alone with one other colleague, and that way they get to know you in a non-intrusive way. For me it always works better that way then if I spent a regular 9 to 5 job among a large group of people.

Open Office

One of the hypes that I really dislike on the work floor are all the “islands” and “open workspaces” they have now. Everyone is stuck in the same room, often very close to one another, and it’s often loud (even when everyone is trying to be quiet) and distracting. A manager is like “but I want people to play off of one another!”, but to a schizoid it just means they can’t think properly and they lose track of what they’re doing and they need to listen to conversations from other colleagues about their kids that are going through college or the soccer match of their youngest. I once worked somewhere where not only half my colleagues were constantly on the phone, but the others were not allowed ear plugs to listen to music because the team lead wanted folks to listen and talk to one another. Needless to say, in a room of IT’ers that decision was not appreciated. IT’ers in generals are very introverted, at least allow them ear plugs to listen to music if they’re in a loud environment, you can’t afford to have them fuck up because they can’t focus. (Not to mention that now with covid a lot of open offices are like ‘oh, maybe we should not have had everyone in one big area, maybe we should have at least kept a few smaller offices with walls in between them….’)

Meetings

If you are having weekly meetings with your team, let me just tell you now, so your schizoid doesn’t need to tell you: your meetings are boring as hell and repetitive. It’s more efficient to have brief meetings when new things are happening or problems need fixing. Weekly meetings where you go over the same agenda each week aren’t really necessary, the neurotypicals are just abusing the fact they don’t have to work for an hour. :-P I felt like someone needed to say it, even if it’s not even a schizoid thing to remark. Sorry, managers. Monthly meetings are more than enough in most workplaces.

To the schizoid

Whether or not it’s wise to tell an employer that you have SPD depends on many things. I notice that culturally there are big differences. In Belgium and the Netherlands I feel like there’s a very open attitude among millennials regarding mental health. When I told my employer I was going to a therapist because I wanted to explain my anger outbursts and PTSD and I wanted to learn how to control them better, I got nothing but praise about how brave I was to take the first step and to talk about it so openly and to trust them with the news.

It took quite some time before I had the schizoid diagnosis, and after processing it myself, I also told the same team lead about what they’d found and what it meant. She’s a big extravert so it was rather funny comparing and explaining it to her, but she was intrigued and also confirmed that even if I am a schizoid, I’m still a teamplayer and my strengths are the weaknesses of others (and the other way around.)

When working in a team, there’s room for everyone and schizoids aren’t toxic people or anything of the sort. We can be barometers to sense the mood in a room and whether something is wrong in a team.

With all of us working from home with covid, my lead has also seen proof in my numbers that I perform better when alone at home than when I’m at the office in an open space. She’s also thinking of, when covid ends, letting me work from home several days a week and no longer having me come into the office four days a week. (On Sunday I always worked from home anyways.) Maybe when covid is over I’ll just be asked to come over one or two days a week.

Personally I think there are more advantages than disadvantages for companies that hire us.

However, it really depends on the company. Ten years ago, I’ve worked in a company where I saw people go if they had diagnosis of ADHD or other much milder things, where they were laid off and told to pack their stuff. Not necessarily the moment they opened up, but they never remained for longer than a year after that. Some companies do not welcome diversity or folks that decide to have such an open dialogue with their employers.

In my opinion, if you’re a schizoid and babyboomers are in charge, I don’t think it wise to open up. They do not like diversity or just folks that ask attention for their own mental health in the same way millennials do. They don’t see it as an advantage but as a disability to their own company. They don’t want folks to ask any work from them, they like it as a one-way street. They don’t want folks with labels. And some labels are more harmful than others. Personally I don’t think schizoid is a harmful label, as long as your employer does not confuse it with schizophrenic. And some employers will think a label, for the sake of having one, is already a bad thing.

How people look at personality disorders also depends on the country you are from. Belgium and the Netherlands are rather open (- especially the Netherlands). In the Netherlands they often say: “Alles is bespreekbaar”, which means that you can talk about anything, without judgement. If you admit something weird or extravert, you’re sooner called ‘brave’ than ‘weird’. Or you’re called both, affectionately.

Political climate at your job/in your country is also a means to predict how well it will be received when you admit to having a disorder. The more to the left, the less folks will make a fuss, the more to the right, the more they’ll think it better to exclude those that are different.

If you decide to never tell your employer, that’s perfectly fine. If you are happy in your job, why would you? If you are not in therapy or anything of the sort, there’s very little reason to tell them.

I’m very open about my current treatment as well, and now that I’m in EMDR treatment it’s possible I’ll have days of emotional turmoil and thus lessened productivity. I warned them in advance so that if it happened, they’d know about it. With my PTSD attacks increasing, we also agreed that I could just tell them “having an attack” or something of the sort, and then they’d know what I was doing to self-care and that I’d be back asap. (But it helps not having to explain everything from the start in that very moment, since that’s counterproductive.)

Or as we say in Dutch “goede afspraken maken goede vrienden” – meaning that good agreements make good friends. We got agreements on what to do in certain unexpected situations so that if a PTSD attack happens, they know exactly what to expect from me with just a word.

I realize such a good relationship with superiors at work is rare - I’ve had a lot of jobs before I landed this one and some were straight-out toxic. I would not recommend opening up in an environment where folks will use it as a means to pick on you. Luckily not all workplaces are like that, and I hope you find such a place!

Conclusion

Schizoids are hard workers that just want to make some money so they can support themselves. They might not be very social at work but they can make up for it by being a team player who doesn’t mind taking over unwanted shifts. They thrive when working at home, alone and don’t need constant supervision. They can be insightful and are good observers, and they are peacekeepers within the group. You won’t catch them having fights with colleagues. Since they read the mood in a room very well, if your schizoid is closing off completely or looking ill at ease, that’s probably a sign that the mood on your work floor isn’t great. There could be some toxic people out there that are preventing the schizoid from opening up at all and those same people could be ruining the mood for others as well. (Or worse: a toxic leadership style is also possible.)

If you have further tips or questions, my inbox is always open! I’m certain there are many more tips to give, and not every tip will be effective for every schizoid. (I suppose this is more for the covert schizoid, like myself, as opposed to tips for helping the overt schizoids.) None the less I hope it’s helpful and that if you have a schizoid employee, you now know there’s no reason to panic!

#spd #schizoid #schizoid personality disorder #ptsd #work #blog

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resilientdolan · 4 years

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Drown (G.D) - part 6

A/N: Grayson in this chapter is just so 🥺 I just can’t 😭

Summary: After the fight that night at the Dolan’s, Bianca got to meet Grayson once again. He finally noticed that he hurt her bad that night, so Grayson apologized and wanted to make it up to Bianca.

Word- count: 1.5k

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“Bianca, there’s no way he called you ‘bitch’!,” Hannah yells, reacting to Bianca’s story about what happened at the Dolan’s.

“He did, Hannah, just before we left,” She picks up her ripped jeans from her closet and throws it towards Hannah. “Is that good?,” she refers to the jeans. Fashion emergency. She’s having a date with Declan in the afternoon, and she needs her bestfriend to help her picking the ideal outfit.

“This one looks cool, though. How about the top?,” she hums. Bianca walks back into her closet to find something to match her jeans.

“Damn, bub. He ain’t shit, really. You don’t deserve that at all. You just want to try to move on and he doesn’t want you to? The fuck?,” Hannah protests.

“I think I hate him now,” Bianca throws her burgundy lace tank top towards Hannah. “What do you think?,” She asks her once again about the outfit.

“You’ll look bomb in it. Grayson could—“

“Stop. I don’t want to hear that name,” Bianca quickly cuts her off as she removes her t-shirt to change into the tank top.

“You sure you hate him now?,” Hannah seems unsure about her previous statement. There’s no way for her to get rid of the feelings that she has felt for years in a night.

This time, Bianca removes her shorts to replace it with her ripped jeans. “Uh, I think?,” She know that she’s not sure about that as well. “How do I look?,” She turns around to face her once again.

“Bomb, baby. Declan’s going to love it.”

Bianca takes a quick look at her reflection in the mirror once again, admiring the whole look. “Thanks for helping me. I know I can count on you.”

Hannah takes a quick look at her watch before she nods. “You got me, bub. Problem solved, now I need to leave, I have to pick up my sister from her ballet class,” Hannah groans.

“At least, it’s Saturday. Once you’re home you can chill and relax,” Bianca giggles as she follows her, heading downstairs to hear her Mom talking to someone.

Sounds familiar.

The voices come from the living room, so Bianca turns there to find her Mom talking to Ethan.

And Grayson too.

“Mom, Hannah’s leaving, she needs to pick her sister up from ballet class,” Bianca interrupts their conversation.

Her mom turns to face her and Hannah. “Ah, I see. Thanks for coming, Han. Take care, precious,” she gives Hannah a smile.

Bianca quickly drags Hannah out of the living room to head outside. A light sigh escapes her as they are out. “Shit, I had no idea that he’s here,” Bianca mumble.

“Just act cool, okay? Remember, you’re no longer crushing on him. You’re now Declan’s girl,” Hannah reminds her as she crawls into the driver seat. Bianca nods her head and waves her hand as her bestfriend leaves.

Back inside, Bianca heads back to the living room to join her Mom and the twins. She sits on the vacant spot beside her Mom.

“I didn’t know that you’re here,” Bianca gives Ethan a smile.

“Baby, I’m baking some brownies and I thought it’d be a good idea to share some. So I called Auntie Lisa, asking if she could pick it up, and said she got something to do, so she sent the twins instead to pick up the brownies here,” her Mom explains.

“Oh, I see,” Bianca nods, shifting her gaze back to her Mom quickly to avoid eye-contact with Grayson.

“Yes, and— wait, are you going somewhere? All dressed up?,” She notices her outfit.

“Um, yeah... I’m going to Penstock,” she answers.

“Alone?,” her Mom frowns.

“No, no... and a friend,” Bianca replies, hoping she’ll stop the interrogation.

“Ah, okay,” she stops. “Anyway, I’ll check on the brownies first. Ethan and Grayson, please make yourself at home,” she smiles before she disappears into the kitchen.

So there she is. Sitting with Ethan and Grayson in your living room. The most awkward situation she’s ever been.

“Have you ever been to Penstock?,” Bianca asks Ethan. “I’ve never been there before.”

“Oh, I’ve been there once. Their coffee tastes so good,” Ethan nods. “You’ll love it, Bi,” he adds. He knows that she’s so into coffee.

“Ooh, we’ll see!,” Bianca nods her head as she gives him a cheeky grin.

“Who’s taking you there?”

Her smile slowly fades as she hears Grayson speaking.

“Why?,” Bianca asks back in return.

“I’m asking you,” he replies. “I want an answer, not another question.”

“Why are you so nosy?,” she scoffs.

“That douche, huh?,” he guesses.

Not again, Grayson.

“His name is Declan, not ‘that douche’,” she sighs.

“You really aren’t going to listen to me, huh?”

“Grayson, don’t start it...,” Bianca mumbles.

“He’s not good for you, Bia—“

“What am I to you?,” She quickly stops him from telling her the same thing all over again. “Am I that important that you keep intervening?,” she adds.

“You’re my bestfriend, and a—“

“And a bitch to you?,” Her voice is shaking as her mind replays the scene where he called her a bitch before he slammed his door.

Grayson quickly shut his mouth, with his jaws clenched. He had no idea that she heard him calling her so.

Bianca sinks her teeth into her lower lip to hold her back from crying. “Answer me, Gray...,” she begs.

There is guilt in his face, but he remains silent for a moment. He turns his gaze back to hers as he replies, “No, I didn’t mean that—“

“Right, I’m a bitch,” Tears begin to roll down her cheeks as she gets up from her seat. She’s feeling so fed up of his excuse that she just wants to go back to your room.

“Bianca—“

“See you at school on Monday, guys,” she gently wipes the tears away with the back of her hand as she heads out of the room to head to the stairs.

And that’s when she feels a pair of arms pulling her into a hug.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it,” Grayson whispers as he wraps his muscular arms around her small torso, leaving Bianca trapped in his embrace.

“Am I a bitch to you?,” she looks up at him with teary eyes.

“No, no, I was angry... I’m sorry, Bi. You’re not a bitch,” he coos. This Grayson seems so different from that Grayson who called her a bitch that night.

“I’m sorry I’ve been acting such a jerk to you lately, especially since you told us that you’ve been talking to Declan,” his voice is so soft, with his hand rubbing her back gently. She buries her face into his chest as she inhales the scent of him. He smells sweet, like vanilla.

She’s weak. She’s really weak right now. Being trapped in his embrace, with him talking to her like that.

“I think I hate him now,” she still remembers the fact she said that to Hannah less than an hour ago, but here she is now, nearly melting because of Grayson hugging her this tight.

She’s not over him.

“Hey, hey, look at me,” Grayson’s voice brings her back to reality. She remains quiet, but shifting her gaze up to meet his. He’s so tall compared to her that she needs to tilt her head back a bit to get a better view of his face.

“Hm?”

“I feel like an ass for making you cry, how can I make it up to you?,” he asks.

“What do you mean?,” she arches her brow.

“Let me make it up to you, for making you sad. Are you free tonight?,” his gaze never leaving hers as he speaks.

“T—tonight?”

“Unless you have plans, then it’s fine.”

“No, no, I’m free,” Bianca quickly replies.

“Okay, let’s get some burgers, okay? Your favorite?,” he suggests.

He remembers her favorite one? She’s really weak right now.

“Sonic?,” Bianca suggests, after thinking for a while.

“You name it, anything, Bi. Anything,” he nods his head quickly.

“Okay, Sonic then... But your girl—“

“She’s in New York. She left this morning to do casting call there. She’ll be back here tomorrow, so we’re good,” sometimes Bianca forgets that the living-Barbie-doll Isla is an aspiring model. She’s a part of a local modeling agency; being a top model is in her top bucketlist.

“Oh...”

“So, it’s a yes, yeah?,” he gently squeezes her. She has no option, so she nods her head slowly.

“I’ll pick you up at 7.30, okay?”

“Alright, Gray.”

“Okay. Good,” by that time, Bianca hears the beep coming outside. It’s Declan. Grayson finally lets her go as he notices that Declan has arrived.

“I’ll see you tonight, Gray,” Bianca gives him a small smile as she grabs her purse from the end table. He nods his head.

“See you, Bianca.”

“Mom, I’m leaving, see you!,” Bianca quickly runs to the kitchen to give her Mom a kiss on her cheek to wave her goodbye. She smiles and nods her head.

As she heads outside, Bianca gives Grayson and Ethan another wave before she walks out to meet her first date.

Bianca Reine having two dates in a day? Unbelievable.

#grayson dolan #douche!gray #grayson blurb #grayson dolan fic #highschool!gray #tgabs'write

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allthebooksandcrannies · 4 years

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Just some thoughts on maturity...

This is going to get long so there’ll be more under the cut.

I saw a post the other day about how it can be tempting particularly for the older crowd on this website to judge or condescend those who seem to struggle with expressing or holding truly complex ideas and instead getting stuck in a binary mentality of good vs bad or us vs them. then the post went on to point out that its not really their fault considering that a major proportion of tumblr users are under 25 (according to this report, 39% of users are under 25 and 66% are under 35) and devopmentally this is really where we see the ability to hold complex feelings and accept the existence of multiple realities really start to develop and it was kind of an epiphany for me.

I don’t want to come across as condescending, after all, i’m part of that 39% myself and can admit that i’m still working on this skillset. But part of emotional maturity is being able to accept and understand that the world is a complicated or gray place and morality is, if not exactly relative, at least exists on a continuum (what is acceptable and even praise-worthy in one culture might be taboo or reprehensible in another [which is why we need to avoid judging past or foreign cultures by our own cultural norms/morals]).

Just as it is possible to do the wrong thing for the right reasons or the right thing for the wrong reasons and it be both right and wrong at the same time, there can be multiple truths and “realities” at the same time without either being more or less correct than the other. I know that might sound confusing or convoluted but let me explain. You’ve probably heard the expression that there are three truths: your truth, my truth, and the actual truth is somewhere in the middle. I agree with this to an extent. People can look at the same experience and come up with radically different narratives to explain what happened to themselves or others and generally they are both a little biased because the brain naturally works from an egocentric point of view (this isn’t necessarily the same thing as a selfish/arrogant pov, but that we tend to view things based on their relationships to ourselves even if they aren’t actually connected to us, ie a child that sees that their parent is upset about something that happened during their day but assumes that it is somehow their own fault, which gets into some theory of mind stuff that is honestly a whole other post and not really the point).

An example from my own life, is a common argument that my mother and i rehash a lot lately. Just going off of the things actually said aloud (which is only ever half the argument), my mom likes to ask for constant progress reports on things like my thesis or grad school applications or my love life and then proceeds to tell me what she thinks i should do. Sometimes i humor her and let it go, but other times i try to explain that talking about the things that i’m anxious about actually makes my anxiety related procrastination worse and that i would appreciate it if she wouldn’t ask as often. Those are the main events that lead up to it.

From what i can tell, she views her questions as good parenting. She has told me before that she felt hurt as a kid by how uninvolved her parents were in her own adolescence/early adulthood and doesn’t want to make same mistakes. She then takes my request not to ask as a rejection of her parenting, and usually responds by telling me that i should stop being bothered because she’s just trying to help and i’ll feel better if i just do what she’s suggesting (and then proceeds to say “see, aren’t you glad you have a mom who pushes you to do these things” once i finish a project.)

there really is no winning because my mother has never really learned that the things you do to be helpful can still be harmful. in her mind, she can’t be in the wrong because that would make her a bad mom and she can’t be a bad mom because she loves us. sure, she might be able to accept this idea in fiction or in the abstract, but isn’t able to put it into practice because that is a learned skill that she has never known to try to learn. i think a lot of people end up stuck there. tbh its still my first instinct a lot of the time and its only through a lot of courses geared towards developing critical thinking and empathy, a lot of fiction meta analysis, and reading about a million fanfics that each interpret the same canon event differently based on the author’s personal experiences coloring what they viewed as important.

my first instinct is to view my mother’s refusal to change her behavior as a disrespect/invalidation of my feelings. I feel guilty because i know that i should do the things she’s suggesting but that is never the issue, the issue is that i have trouble actually making myself do it. For a long time that egocentric worldview (and that instinct kids have to implicitly trust hteir gaurdians) told me that both the executive dsyfunction and the fighting were my fault. It felt like she was saying that if i was better or smarter or more mature surely i would be able to do this on my own. it felt like she was saying that if i was a better daughter i wouldn’t hurt her feelings like this.

But i’ve been learning that neither one of us were truly correct and we both were at the same time. Those feelings and concerns were real to us, even if we were both projecting our own insecurities onto the other person. Those feelings were valid and understandable but (and this is incredibly important) that did not give either one of us a free pass on how we acted on those insecurities. It didn’t make us bad people but it did mean that we were engaging in toxic behavior that just hurt both of us.

So, the question becomes “what do i do with that?” Now that i know we were both responding from a place of trauma and insecurity in the past, how do we change how we act in the future? I think we have to get to a point where we can look at a situation and truly try to understand the internal dialogue that the other side is experiencing in the moment (why they feel the way they feel, do we really have evidence that they feel what we think they feel or are we projecting, are they acting well-intentioned/malicious or are they even considering the ramifications at all/do they have any conscious intentions) and come to a point where we can truly empathize with them, not sympathize with them, not feel sorry for them, but truly see it from their side and understand where they are coming from. we should remember that we’re all a little broken. and we should be gracious and merciful.

That doesn’t mean we have to be happy about it. We don’t even need to think that they have a good point or that their pov is reasonable or forgivable (sometimes it just isn’t, and its important to understand that too). But it means not dehumanizing the enemy or oversimplifying their position into the general “bad guy” role. You can forgive without absolving and you can understand and show compassion without forgiving or accepting.

You need to set boundaries, and you need to accept that at the end of the day the way that they respond is not on you, not if you’ve acted based on that understanding we talked about earlier and treated them with at least the bare amount of dignity we are all entitled to as human beings.

Returning to the previous example, with my mother, i now make a point when we disagree of first summarizing and acknowledging the validity of what i understand her intent to be, making it clear that i appreciate that she cares and is trying to be helpful. Then i explain my point of view not as what she makes me feel (because that would come across as judgement that would prompt natural, though incredibly unhelpful defensiveness) but as to how i feel based on my interpretation of the action. I try to make this sound as nonjudgemental as possible without making it anyone’s fault, including my own (which i admit can be easier said than done). Then, i give an alternative suggestion for what would actually be helpful and then it is in her hands. It is up to her whether or not to accept the boundary i have set up.

In an ideal world she would respect my wishes and alter her behavior. after all, she is supposed to be the adult/parent in this relationship. the emotional labor isn’t supposed to be on the child, at least not the majority of it.

(side note: this goes for relationships of equals such as significant others, friends, siblings, extended families, and peers. in a healthy relationship of equals you should be splitting the emotional labor equally. if they aren’t trying as hard as you are, you probably need to have a conversation about that and based on the outcome then evaluate how much, if any, of yourself is safe/healthy to continue to pour into the relationship)

But because many people, adults and adolescents alike, have not reached this level of emotional maturity and can’t honestly/completely accept or acknowledge their own flaws and mistakes without their sense of self taking a hit, sometimes its not enough. My mother, no matter how respectfully i phrase my concerns and request, continues to insist on asking the same nagging questions that trigger a lot of my childhood emotional drama related to being good enough for my parents impossible standards. I understand why she behaves the way that she does but the fact of the matter is that she still continues to hurt me and no longer has plausible deniability in those situations. I have the right to be angry, though i do not have the right to lash out or respond in kind.

I do, however, have the right and the responsibility to myself to do what i can to protect myself from further harm. I still want a positive relationship with my mother, we have plenty of good moments and are very similar people. But i have to be willing and able to remove myself from unsafe situations. Usually that means making it clear that i won’t be answering the questions and not calling or texting with her until the point is made (even if this leaves her surly).

I had to lower my expectations for her as well. I had a high opinion of my mother because she can be very nurturing and compassionate, especially when we are in agreement. So i thought on some level that if i shared the information and the sources that prompted me to begin my own journey of self-actualization and personal growth in earnest that she would react similarly and understand why i needed her to at least try to do the same. Piece of advice, kiddos, it’s not your job to fix someone, no matter how much you love them nor how much potential they have. It needs to be on them, and they need to make that decision for themselves or it won’t work anyway.

I am trying to accept that unless she makes the decision on her own, she isn’t going to become the mother i want her to be. That’s an incredibly sad thing to realize about someone you love, but its true. If i don’t let that expectation go, our relationship will always be one of disappointment and eventually resentment. Instead, I've had to evaluate what conversations we are and are not able to have in a healthy manner, and just let things be what they will be. I know my own worth (when my brain chemistry cooperates) and i have a lot of good, healthy relationships in my life that i can turn to when i need something my mom doesn’t know how to give me.

It’s painful to grow and realize you’re leaving people behind in the process. You can offer them the tools to follow, and give them the support that they need to do so, but only if they want to.

But i promise you its worth it. When you accept your own worth with rather than despite your own flaws, when you learn to do the same with others, you realize that there’s a lot more hope for humanity than you thought. we are capable of so many great things if we are in an environment that fosters our best selves. and even when we are not, we are still capable of growing past our trauma and hurt so that we don’t have to continue the cycle of pain and misery. We can’t control everyone and everything around us, they still have a measure of personal responsibility to themselves and others that you can’t absolve them from. But you can be an example to them. You can show them through your own life and actions that things can be better, even if they weren’t aware of how much they need things to improve, or how much they deserve it. You deserve good things but you wait for someone to solve it for you. You have to fight for yourself and struggle against falling into the trap of the familiar. It is going to be scary, it is going to be confusing. there will be times when you don’t trust your own interpretations of your emotions and perceptions (especially if you weren’t taught to do so as a kid, its not your fault, but what happens next is up to you). When those times come you’re going to want to have good friends or mentors at your side or as a source of hope that things will be better and that there are people who can and will offer you the help you need along the way. No one can do it alone, and you don’t have to. For me, my college roommates were my first clue that maybe things weren’t as good with my mother as i assumed, they fostered my confidence and my self-worth and i was constantly afraid i was going to scare them away but they had my back. I didn’t think i deserved to be happy, i didn’t think i was worthy for anything outside what i could do or give for others and they showed me that i was worthy just as i was. it was creators like @goldkirk and @maychorian and @cdelphiki and @sohotthateveryonedied that taught me through their works what healthy family relationships (particularly between parent and child) should look like, what unhealthy relationships can do to you, and that families of choice are just as valuable as those of law or blood. And @goldkirk especially, i want you to know that reading your blog, be it the ups, or the downs, your knowledge of things like child development and mental health, and even the things that you find helpful and reblog have meant so much to me. I have a lot in common with your Tim and with you and you have given me so much hope and confirmation and affirmation that i’m not alone in my experiences and that i deserve to be happy, even if the road isn’t a straight line. and lately i have to say thank you to @mahpotatoequeen for just straight up deciding to be my new mom this summer. I don’t have the words for how much i appreciate you and how much it meant to me that in one of the worst crisis of my life that there was someone who saw the things i had posted just to get out of my system, things i had never said to anyone before and that came from a really broken and painful place, and reached out and stuck around rather than just continuing to scroll and go about their day.

But I digress. My point is that there are people out there that you can learn from and there are people out there who will care. And maybe we all owe it to each other to strive to become the healthiest version of ourselves, so that maybe someday we can be that for someone else. just a thought.

(I can’t find the original post i referenced earlier but if someone knows what i’m talking about plz send me the link so i can give credit where credit is due)

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hopesilverheart · 4 years

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Title: I loved your colours (before I loved you) Artist: @calliartss Rating: Explicit (Chapter 10 only) Pairings: Magnus Bane/Alec Lightwood, Alec Lightwood & Clary Fray, Clary Fray/Isabelle Lightwood Word Count: ~95k Summary: Magnus Bane is a journalist who's always dreamed of modelling for Lightwood Fashions. When the CEO Alec Lightwood starts looking for new models for their spring collection, he jumps on the occasion.

In the meantime, Alec Lightwood is struggling with the idea of finally announcing his role as co-designer. When Magnus Bane strolls into his life, Alec is torn between keeping his secret or throwing all caution to the wind.

This fic was created for the Malec Discord Mini Bang 2020.

Chapter 10: You’ll be flushed when you return

“So… Magnus.”

Alec wasn’t even sure who had spoken; it could have been Maia just as easily as it could have been Helen. However, he was sure that nothing good ever came out of a conversation that started with those two words.

It wasn’t that he didn’t like talking about Magnus, because he loved talking about his boyfriend and telling everyone about how lucky he was. He just didn’t necessarily enjoy discussing his private life in the middle of the work day when he was supposed to be focusing on the photo shoot happening in front of him.

“Do we have to do this right now?” He sighed, turning towards Helen – he could recognise that blond hair anywhere – immediately groaning when he caught sight of her mischievous smile. “I don’t know if you noticed, but we are a little bit busy with this Vogue shoot. You and I both know we need this to be as perfect as possible. And as much as I would love to talk to you about my boyfriend, I’m not sure now is the time.”

“Now is the perfect time!” Maia exclaimed from his other side, looping one of her arms around his shoulders and winking conspiratorially at Helen. “Don’t think it’s escaped our attention that you’ve been avoiding every single Fashion team bar night since you started dating Magnus. We thought you’d come more often now that you have someone to show off, but you’ve managed to disappoint us once again.”

“My dating status has never, not once, influenced my lack of interest in bar nights,” Alec pointed out. “I don’t like going out with large groups of people just to get drunk and having Magnus at my side won’t change that.”

Besides, he had definitely gone to a bar night less than a month ago, right before he and Magnus had started dating. He had hated every second of it and had only attended because Clary had dragged him there kicking and screaming, but he had still been present. That had to count for something. The unofficial rule was that every member of the team had to attend a bar night at least once a month, and Alec had filled his quota for February.

“The last time you came was in January,” Helen said wryly, raising her eyebrows at him and smirking smugly when he snapped his mouth shut, realising that she was probably right. Damn it. “So we expect you to come next week, alright? No pressure or anything, but we’re celebrating my three years with Aline, so…”

“I’ll be there!” Alec threw his hands in the air, hoping his word would be enough to placate his friends. “I can’t promise that I’ll bring Magnus, because heaven knows he can get very busy with all the work he has to do, but I’ll be there. I’ll clear my night, let Clary choose my outfit, and hang out with you for the four required hours. Does that sound nice?”

“That sounds perfect,” Maia grinned, high-fiving Helen behind Alec’s back. “Although that’s also not what we wanted to talk to you about. I mean, I’m glad we got that promise out of you, but we really did want to have a little conversation about Magnus. Lydia is worried that your relationship might have an impact on his efficiency on the job.”

“Has it caused any problems so far?” Alec frowned.

To be honest, he hadn’t really thought about what it meant for him to date his colleague – employee, technically – when he and Magnus had started going out. He had talked about intra-company relationships with his bosses and teams before, but he had never thought that it would apply to him, and he had… Well, he had been so caught up in Magnus that he had forgotten about that little detail.

However, he hadn’t had reason to believe that his relationship with Magnus would impact the way his boyfriend worked. Magnus was nothing if not a hard-worker – and a bit of a perfectionist – and Alec couldn’t imagine him slacking off just because he was dating the company’s CEO.

“Not so far, no,” Maia answered, waving over at Aline as the model sidled up to them and kissed her girlfriend on the cheek. “But you know how Lydia is. She likes to think about all the possibilities so she’s prepared were the worst case scenario to arise. She’s probably thinking about your break-up or whatever other nonsense situations she likes to create in her mind.”

“Well, Magnus and I aren’t going to break up any time soon,” Alec brushed their concerns off, fighting back a blush as he realised how true that statement was. Magnus and he hadn’t really talked about the future of their relationship, but Alec knew without a doubt that they were on the same track. “You both know I don’t do casual hook-ups, and I don’t think Magnus does either. We’re committed to each other and I don’t see how this could go wrong.”

“No one ever sees how things could go wrong,” Helen pointed out smartly. “That’s often how break-ups happen. They hit you right when you think you’re safe. It’s dangerous Alec, and you shouldn’t let your romantic ideals get in the way of reality.”

“Alright, well that got depressing,” Aline clapped her hands together. “How about we focus on something a little more light-hearted, huh? Like how gorgeous the models look today. And yes, I’m including myself in that category.”

“Well of course you are,” Helen smiled softly at her girlfriend, pressing a quick kiss to her lips before curling a possessive hand around her waist. “Prettiest girl in the room. Although Emily and Diana are looking quite stunning today, too. Have you seen them? They finished their shoots ten minutes ago and said they were going to change, but those outfits were spectacular. You really outdid yourself, Alec.”

“Thank you,” he blushed, glancing around the room to try and catch a glimpse of the models. Magnus had just stepped up to the photographers and was handling his poses expertly, but the women were nowhere to be seen. He could have sworn Izzy had been talking to Emily less than five minutes earlier, but-

“Emily!” Aline called out, waving the brunette over with a reassuring smile. The young woman looked vaguely terrified, but Alec knew that was mostly his fault. He had been so busy with life and work and his family that he had forgotten to spend time with the new models. Magnus had told him that he intimidated them, and he should have fixed that as soon as he had heard about it. “Hey, Em.”

“Hey guys,” the brunette said softly, grinning at Maia and Helen before flushing darkly as her eyes landed on Alec. “Hello, Mister Lightwood.”

“Oh, lord,” Helen breathed out. “This is worse than I thought.”

“Please call me Alec,” the designer insisted, grimacing at Emily’s obvious deference. “I’m sorry I didn’t take the time to talk to you before this, but my schedule has been even more packed than usual and I completely forgot about my usual CEO-model talk.”

“That’s a thing?” Aline’s eyebrows flew up. “How did I not know that was a thing? I’m pretty sure I never got a talk like that when I started working for you. Was I not good enough for it?”

“Aline, you’re my cousin,” Alec sighed tiredly. “You didn’t need a talk because you already knew me and had stopped being afraid of me long before you joined Lightwood Fashions. I assure you, Magnus didn’t – and won’t – get the talk either.”

“You sound like you’re talking about sex.” Lydia’s voice came out of nowhere and, before Alec could blink, the blonde woman was standing in front of them, looking at them with judgement in her eyes. “I can’t believe you’re talking about sex whilst we’re trying to get work done. It’s no wonder the models have been a little less concentrated lately.”

Emily made a small noise at the back of her throat, almost as though she was afraid Lydia was talking about her and was about to fire her or something equally as ridiculous, but Aline and Maia were quick to pat her on the back comfortingly.

“Sorry, Emily, I just mean that Isabelle, Meliorn, and Andrew have been harder to handle than usual today,” Lydia explained, pointing at the trio of models waiting to the side, looking down at the floor sheepishly. Clary was standing with them, arms crossed over her chest as she valiantly tried to act like she was scolding them, even though they all knew she was just staring at them menacingly whilst waiting for Lydia to come back.

“Well, we definitely weren’t talking about sex,” Maia shrugged. “Those three, however… We all know Izzy has finally caught her girl, so I wouldn’t be surprised if something was happening there. Meliorn is always distracted when we have evening shoots, and Andrew… You didn’t hear this from me, but I think he’s been sneaking around with a boy from another company. Very scandalous, if you ask me.”

The rest of the group blinked at Maia blankly. Alec had never understood how the woman managed to get so much information from people she barely knew, but it was a talent he reluctantly admired. Maia had all the gossip, all the time, and although the fashion team liked to act as though they didn’t care about scandals and other such nonsense, it wasn’t a secret that they all thrived on the drama.

“I’m still not completely convinced Izzy and Clary didn’t get up to something even before they were together,” Aline hummed thoughtfully, tilting her head to the side as she let her gaze rake up and down the two women in question. “There’s always been so much tension between them, and they spent a lot of time in close quarters, so…”

“So nothing,” Alec shook his head, chuckling at his friend’s subsequent pout. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, but those two were strictly platonic until they started dating. Since they have only been official for a few weeks, I’m not even sure they’ve slept together yet.”

“Does Clary not tell you these things?” Helen frowned. “Isn’t that what best friends are for?”

“Clary is currently dating my little sister,” Alec pointed out, grimacing at the mere thought of having to listen to his best friend talk about Izzy like that. “I’m very happy for the both of them, and I’m sure their romantic and sexual chemistry is off the charts, but I really don’t want to hear about it. I’m sure Clary will use one of you as her confidant when she finds herself in desperate need of sex talk.”

“I hope it’s me,” Aline sighed dreamily, earning herself a sharp nudge in the ribs from her girlfriend. “What?! I mean, just like, as friends. Besides, you have to admit those two are absolutely gorgeous. God, if they could have children…”

“Ours would be prettier,” Helen pouted. “But enough about Clary and Izzy. Those two are old news, even if their relationship is pretty new. I want to hear about this mysterious lover Andrew is sneaking around with. Do you have any details, or did you just conveniently overhead a conversation?”

“Sorry,” Maia shrugged. “I’ve got nothing.”

“I do.”

At once every single pair of eyes turned towards Emily, who was looking both embarrassed at being the centre of attention and smug at having more information than any of them. Which made sense, since she and Andrew had grown quite close since they had been hired.

“But I don’t want to say anything if it’ll get Andrew in trouble,” she bit down on her bottom lip, glancing over at her friend worriedly. “It’s not against the rules to date someone from another company, right? Even if that person is technically a Lightwood rival?”

“Ooh, is Andrew pulling a Romeo and Juliet?” Aline cackled gleefully, only calming down when Alec and Lydia sent her matching disapproving looks.

“No, Emily, it isn’t against the rules,” Lydia assured the model, a gleam of excitement entering her eyes when Emily perked up. “So, do you have a story for us, or are we going to have to go digging?”

“It’s Lorenzo Rey!” Emily blurted out, clapping her hands over her mouth as soon as she spoke and sending a panicked glance in Andrew’s direction, as though the man could have heard her from all the way across the room. “Please tell me you do this with everyone and that I didn’t just reveal one of my closest friend’s secrets for nothing.”

“Relax, Emily,” Maia chuckled. “We do this every time someone new joins the company, just to know whether or not we should be trying to set up dates or not. Someone would have stumbled upon him and his secret lover eventually, so you just saved us a lot of time and trouble. But seriously… Lorenzo Rey?”

“I always thought the guy was a complete dick,” Alec furrowed his brows. He had only met Rey a few times, and none of their meetings had been particularly pleasant. So to think about a man as sweet as Andrew dating someone as arrogant and self-absorbed as Fade Media’s Head Editor… It was a little disconcerting. “How on earth did it happen?”

“I have no idea,” Emily shrugged. “But he seems to really like Rey, even though he calls him an egotistical idiot almost every single time I bring him up. I don’t claim to understand what the hell they have going on.”

Alec and the girls all took a moment to ponder over the model’s words, but it wasn’t like they didn’t have their own improbable romances going on within the office. Izzy and Clary, for one, had one of the strangest relationships. Just because Alec didn’t see how Andrew and Rey could possibly fit together didn’t mean they didn’t care about each other.

“Hey, um…” Emily interrupted their collective moment of silence, shuffling her feet nervously. “Does this mean you guys also know about my love life?”

“Are you asking if we know about your little writer girlfriend?” Helen grinned, winking at Emily as the younger woman blushed brightly. “Yes, Em, we know that you’re going out with a girl from the media department. Izzy was the first one to catch you in the act, and then it was easy enough to put the pieces together. Good on you, though, I’m sure she’s a great person.”

“Yeah, she is,” Emily smiled softly, her eyes widening as she looked over Alec’s shoulder. “Oh my god.”

Next to her, Aline and Maia whistled in tandem, snickering quietly as Alec remembered just what was going on behind him and spun around, coming face to face with a shirtless Magnus. Well, technically his boyfriend was still a few feet away, finishing up his shoot with Raphael and the Vogue people, but he was also shirtless, and Alec…

Alec was a weak man. He swallowed reflexively as Magnus flexed his muscles and smirked at the camera, winking straight at the lens.

“Is now the right time to talk about sex?” Lydia murmured, grinning wickedly at Alec. “Because you know, it’s not every day a man as handsome and well-sculpted as Magnus gets to do a shirtless photoshoot right in front of us. Please tell me you’ve already gotten a piece of him.”

“Who are you and what have you done with Lydia?” Helen gaped, staring at the other blonde as though she had never seen her before. “I thought we weren’t supposed to discuss sexual relationships when there’s serious business going on.”

“We aren’t,” Lydia shrugged unrepentantly. “But Alec is far too easy to tease, and since he refuses to show up to bar nights, this might be our only chance to get something out of him. So if you have any questions for him, feel free to go ahead. I’ll pretend I didn’t hear any of this.”

Alec groaned loudly as three pairs of eyes – Lydia was too busy staring at Magnus, and Emily still looked a little uncomfortable around him – turned towards him. He loved his friends, but he had never been a fan of oversharing, and discussing his and Magnus’ sex life definitely felt like oversharing to him.

“Just tell us if you’ve slept with him,” Maia pleaded. “That’s all we want to know. I don’t care about the details, I just want confirmation that you finally took it upon yourself to sleep with the damn man.”

“Fine!” Alec exclaimed, lowering his voice when half of the room turned to look at him curiously. “Fine. Yes, we’ve slept together. No, I’m not telling you how many times or where or how it was. You got your answer, and now you’re going to kindly act as though I didn’t say anything out of the ordinary, alright?”

“That’s fine by me,” Aline snickered. “But you go, cousin! Seriously, congrats on landing one of the hottest men in the world. If I weren’t so in love with Helen and so into women, I might have even asked if you were open to sharing. Although I have a feeling Magnus really isn’t into that.”

“Why do you think that?” Alec asked, his voice breaking slightly as he remembered the possessive way Magnus had marked him the other night, breathlessly calling him mine over and over again.

“One, you’re not as good at covering up hickeys as you think you are,” Helen smirked. “Two, every time the photographers give him a break, his eyes are drawn to you and he looks like he’s a second away from marching over here and claiming you or something. I’m honestly impressed at how well he’s keeping it together when the cameras are on. He’s handling this a lot better than those three deviants over there.”

“I’m sure you’re exaggerating,” Alec huffed, although he pointedly didn’t look in Magnus’ direction, not wanting to add more fuel to the fire. “Besides, he’s almost done, isn’t he? I’m sure the pictures will turn out just fine and then we’ll be free to leave.”

“That sounded an awful lot like you’re about to leave this building and immediately have sex with your boyfriend,” Maia snorted. “You should be a little more careful with your words, Alec, it’s far too easy to misinterpret them.”

“Maybe there was nothing there to misinterpret,” Emily piped up, earning herself a look of deep respect from Lydia and Aline, as well as a betrayed glance from Alec. “I’m just saying, those words seemed to speak for themselves. Not that there’s anything to be ashamed of, sir- Alec! You’re allowed to sleep with your boyfriend whenever you want to.”

“Well said, Emily, well said.”

Six heads snapped around as Magnus walked towards them, a smirk curling at his lips and sweat dripping down his chest. He looked like he had just stepped out of one of Alec’s fantasies, and it took all of Alec’s self-control for him not to jump his ridiculously handsome model boyfriend right there and then.

“Right, I think we should leave,” Emily winked at Magnus, looking far more comfortable and confident around him than she had around the rest of the group. “I should go find Andrew, and the rest of you probably have work to do, so we should leave these two lovebirds alone.”

To their credit, none of the girls protested as Emily led them away from Magnus and Alec, smirking at Magnus one last time before sauntering off towards Andrew.

“Since when are the two of you such good friends?” Alec raised his eyebrows, pecking Magnus’ lips obediently when his boyfriend leaned forward. “I knew you enjoyed her company, but I wasn’t aware the two of you were on good enough terms to discuss your love and sex lives.”

“What can I say,” Magnus shrugged, looping his arm through Alec’s and not even bothering to put on a shirt as he headed towards the elevator. “She’s quite bold once you get to know her, and she’s never afraid to ask for details when I talk about the things I want to do to you. In fact, she gives as good as she gets, and our conversations are always rather interesting.”

“I really don’t think I needed to know that,” Alec blushed, a relieved sigh escaping when the elevator doors closed without anyone else stepping in. “Also, you do realise we can’t go out if you don’t have a shirt on, right? I’m all for sharing your wonderful body with the world, but I’m pretty sure it borders on illegal to go around looking like that.”

“You take all the fun out of life, Alexander,” Magnus pouted, although the mischievous glint in his eyes made Alec feel as though he were walking straight into a trap. “Why don’t we stop by Clary’s office? I know she keeps extra outfits in there from all her failed attempts at designing, and I seem to recall you telling me you had a few shirts hanging around there too.”

“Fine,” Alec sighed. “But if we’re going there, you’ll have to wait for me whilst I find the papers she was supposed to fill in two days ago and never gave in. You’re only delaying your own enjoyment by doing this.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Magnus grinned, letting one of his hands trail down Alec’s bicep teasingly and pressing a light kiss to the designer’s inner wrist when Alec’s breath caught in his chest. “You look delightful today, darling. Have I told you that already?”

“You-” Alec croaked, clearing his throat and trying again once he felt a little more collected. “You mentioned it, but I don’t mind hearing it again. Although I feel like you have me at a disadvantage, since you’re only wearing half of an outfit.”

“That’s easy enough to remedy,” Magnus grinned. Less than a second later, Alec’s shirt was being torn apart at the seams and he was being pushed out of the elevator and onto the fashion team’s main floor.

Luckily for them, the place was completely empty, everyone far too busy with the photoshoot to spend time in their offices. Still, Alec shivered at the thought of someone being able to walk onto the floor and be greeted by the sight of Alec and Magnus grinding against each other, their hands grappling for support in between them.

“Mag- Magnus,” Alec whined as his boyfriend tugged him towards Clary’s office, keeping one hand on the small of his back as the other drew meaningless patterns up and down his stomach. Heat pooled low in Alec’s gut, and he had to bite back a moan as Magnus finally pushed them into his best friend’s office – his best friend’s office, for god’s sake – and slammed the door shut behind them.

He was back in front of Alec less than a second later, smirking dangerously as he slipped the shirt off Alec’s shoulders and leaned in to bite at his collar bone hard enough that Alec knew that would leave a mark later. The mere thought of such a bruise had Alec keening and bucking his hips towards Magnus.

“What was that, Alexander?” The man purred, toying with Alec’s belt as he waited for the designer to give him instructions.

They had been over this the second time they had slept together; Magnus liked it when Alec told him what he wanted, and Alec got off on giving Magnus control over their interactions. Still, he bit down on his lip in an effort to keep in his desperate little noises for a while longer. There was no need for Magnus to know how eager he was to get taken apart in the middle of Clary’s workspace.

God, he should have been embarrassed. He should have been blushing and pushing Magnus away, telling him everything about this was completely inappropriate. Instead, he was shifting his hips so that his clothed dick brushed against Magnus’ every time one of them breathed, and he was seconds away from begging his boyfriend to do something.

“You’re going to have to speak if you want us to go any further than this, my lovely boy,” Magnus hummed lowly, shaking his head at Alec when the taller man let out a needy sound. “I know, I know you want this, but you need to use your words. I know you can do it, so come on. What do you want, Alexander? What do you want me to do to you? What do you want to do to me?”

“I want to blow you,” Alec blurted out, a tear rolling down his cheek as Magnus pressed up closer against him, sending his senses into overload. “Please, Magnus, I just want to taste you.”

“All you had to do was ask,” Magnus grinned wickedly, leaning away from Alec and unbuckling his belt in one smooth movement before pulling his pants down and revealing nothing but smooth skin. Because of course he hadn’t been wearing anything underneath his photoshoot outfit. Alec moaned loudly at the thought of Magnus posing for the photographers with nothing but those thin pants on.

Alec whined at the praise, bending down to press a swift and hungry kiss to Magnus’ mouth before spinning them around, slamming Magnus against the wall hard enough to have the model wincing slightly at the sudden burst of pain. Alec would have asked after him, but Magnus had told him in no uncertain terms that he had nothing – absolutely nothing – about being manhandled and bruised a little bit.

“I’ve never seen anyone as beautiful as you, Magnus,” Alec whispered against Magnus’ neck, slowly lowering himself to the ground and looking up at his boyfriend from underneath his lashes, wondering if he looked even half as alluring to Magnus as Magnus did to him. If the steady darkening of Magnus’ eyes was anything to go by, he probably did.

“God, you’re gorgeous,” Magnus breathed out.

Feeling more confident by the second – and more desperate, his dick aching to be let out of its confines – Alec licked his lips and breathed in Magnus’ heady scent for a moment before leaning in to lick a strip down the man’s cock.

“Alexander,” Magnus cried out, his hands coming up to grip Alec’s hair tightly, pulling on the strands harshly when Alec repeated the gesture, slowly but surely slicking Magnus up with his own spit. “Darling, I’m going to need you to go a little faster than that if you don’t want us to get caught.”

Half an hour earlier, Alec would have panicked at the thought of someone walking in on them and catching them in the act. Now, though, he could only gasp wantonly before fighting against Magnus’ grip and swallowing the head of his boyfriend’s dick, swirling his tongue around a few times before popping off, smacking his lips loudly as he bit softly at the inside of Magnus’ thigh.

The hands in his hair tightened even more, and Alec wasn’t surprised in the slightest when Magnus involuntarily snapped his hips forward, bucking towards Alec’s mouth as though he couldn’t resist him any longer.

“Either do something about this,” Magnus hissed, the sound turning into a moan as Alec hummed and nuzzled at the cock in front of him. “Or I’m going to take care of myself.”

“I’d like to see you try,” Alec breathed out, and then he was taking Magnus’ cock as far down his throat as he could manage.

His movements were precise and his right hand found the base of his boyfriend’s dick easily as his left fingers gripped Magnus’ hip tightly, stopping him from completely ravishing Alec’s face. He could tell Magnus wanted to, could tell he was trying to pick up the pace and make Alec lose control, but Alec wasn’t about to give in that easily.

He sucked Magnus off as slowly as he wanted to, relishing in his boyfriend’s taste and letting his rhythm pick up a few times only to slow it back down at the last second, turning Magnus into an unintelligible mess of words and desperate whines.

“Alexander, please,” Magnus begged. “Please let me fuck your mouth, please. You’ve made your point, I- I know you- You’re fantastic at this but- ah, Alec, fuck. Please.”

His words sounded so wrecked, so weak against the assault of Alec’s mouth, and Alec was only so strong. His boyfriend was pleading now, his thighs trembling as he tried to stay upright, and Alec had never seen anything quite as pretty as that.

His cock was throbbing in between his legs, still stuck in his pants and as eager for relief as Magnus clearly was. So instead of drawing it out for either of them any longer, Alec let go of Magnus’ hip, nodding at his boyfriend once with an encouraging smile before he went back down on the man, his now free hand unzipping his own fly as Magnus bucked into his mouth far more quickly than Alec had anticipated.

He choked on his own spit as Magnus somehow switched their positions around again. Alec was still on his knees, looking up at Magnus as he stroked his own dick with his left hand, but his back was now to the wall, pressed up so he had almost no way of getting away from his boyfriend’s grasp.

He should have been slightly terrified, should have felt trapped, but instead he whimpered enthusiastically and quickened his pace, bucking into his own hand as Magnus used his mouth for his own pleasure. They lost themselves in a sea of wrecked noises and pleas, Alec breathing heavily as Magnus praised him and tugged at his hair repeatedly, barely giving him enough time to catch his breath before he was fucking him again, and again, and again.

They reached their climax almost at the same time, Alec moaning loudly as he came and sending vibrations through Magnus’ body, making him spill into Alec’s mouth less than a second later. They both shook with the effort and the pleasure of finally having gotten what they wanted, and Alec milked every drop he could swallow before collapsing against the wall, taking deep breaths and looking up at his boyfriend dazedly.

“That was…” Alec started, cutting himself off as he realised he didn’t think a single word could encompass what had just happened. “Yeah, I- Thank you for that.”

“And thank you,” Magnus smiled, helping Alec up and pressing a soft kiss to his forehead, his temple, his nose, before finally kissing him on the lips, the gesture warm and caring and making Alec fall a little bit more for the man. “You were incredible, Alexander.”

“You weren’t too bad yourself,” Alec blushed, kissing Magnus once more before pulling away and quickly straightening his clothes, chuckling as Magnus did the same only to smile wryly at his half-nude state. “There really are shirts in here, you know? She usually keeps them in the closet over there, so I’m sure you’ll find something to your tastes. In the meantime, I’m going to try and find those papers.”

Magnus hummed absent-mindedly, already skipping over to the closet Alec had pointed at and going through the many shirts Alec had left behind on the nights he and Clary had spent in the building, pouring over designs and falling asleep at sunrise.

Just as Alec reached Clary’s desk and started going through her drawers, hoping she hadn’t lost the papers – again – the door to the office flew open and Clary stormed in, looking harried and a little crazy.

“Where did I- Holy shit!” She yelped, bringing her hands up to her heart as she spotted Alec. “What the hell are you doing here? Everyone told me you had gone home with Magnus to do tons of terrible things to him, so what are you still doing around… here.”

Her eyes widened as they settled on Magnus, who was in the process of tugging a shirt on over his head. Alec grimaced as his best friend turned back towards him with betrayal written all over her face.

“I can explain, okay, this isn’t what it- I mean, we didn’t- It’s not-” he stumbled over his words, knowing he was only making things worse. “I’m sorry?”

“I can’t believe you! I can’t believe this! I thought we had rules, Alec! I thought we respected each other enough not to- Nope, I don’t even want to think about it. I don’t want to know what happened, I don’t- Oh god, please tell me you didn’t do anything near my desk. Alec, please tell me my favourite desk has not been compromised by… Whatever the hell it is you were doing,” Clary scrunched her nose up in disgust, staring at her desk with horrified eyes.

“Your desk is fine,” Alec winced, realising what his words implied as soon as they were out of his mouth. “Everything is fine, I swear. Maybe just… The wall near the door might need a little disinfecting. Maybe the door too, just to be safe.”

“The door?” Clary yelled, glaring at Alec and Magnus dangerously. “You two are the absolute worst. But now that I know our offices aren’t off the table, I’d double check before stepping into yours.”

“Clary!” Alec cried out as Magnus looked on, clearly amused by the turn of events. “That’s completely different! You’re talking about my sister. You cannot have sex with my sister in my office! That is completely out of the question. If you really want to get revenge, please stick to Magnus’ office.”

“Magnus’ office is mostly made of glass walls,” Clary crossed her arms over her chest, looking distinctly unimpressed. “And if you didn’t want to have to think about Isabelle and I sleeping together in your office, maybe you shouldn’t have slept with your boyfriend in mine first!”

That being said, she grabbed a file from her desk, narrowed her eyes at Alec one last time, and walked back out of the room, shimmying past the door without touching it.

“Is she really mad at us?” Magnus asked once she was gone, lacing his fingers with Alec’s and gently guiding them out of the room, shutting the door behind them carefully. “Because if so, I’m sorry for putting you in that situation. I wasn’t really thinking about the consequences when I led us here, and…”

“She’s cool with it,” Alec rolled his eyes. “She just wants me to sweat a little as I wonder whether or not she’ll go through with her plan to take Izzy to my office for unspeakable acts.”

“Unspeakable acts?”

“This is my sister we’re talking about,” Alec reminded Magnus. “I’m not going to call it anything other than that or else I may be scarred for life. Now, enough about Clary and Izzy. How about we go back to your apartment?”

“Already up for round two?” Magnus grinned cheekily. “Why Alexander, I had no idea you were so eager to get your hands back on me. I might even start thinking you’re only using me for my body if we keep on going like this.”

“I was thinking more of a movie date, maybe dinner? But you know, whatever pleases you,” Alec chuckled. “After all, I’m happy no matter what we do as long as I’m with you.”

Magnus beamed brightly at him, leading him back to the elevator and chattering on about his day and the movies they could watch and how much fun he had had during – and after, he added with a wink – the photoshoot. And all along, Alec just watched him and smiled softly, feeling happier than he had in a very long time.

Not even Izzy’s late night call filled with screaming, squealing and an unhealthy amount of threats was enough to dampen his mood.

#malec #magnus bane #alec lightwood #fanfic #my writing

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positivlyfocused · 4 years

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Sometimes I Gotta Seethe In Rage

Three weeks ago I wrote how every negative situation is positive. Well this week brought such a crazy-ass example of that, I shared it with all my clients. Now I want to share it with you.

This story is hilarious. I almost wrote "unflattering", but you'll see at the end that this story flatters me in the sense that I saw how this infuriating situation was also a massive blessing.

Summer's sun, blue skies and Oregon's hot breezy air called me out again last weekend. I love working outside along the Willamette River shores. I enjoy Ospreys above and salmon jumping skyward likely avoiding sea lions and their chisel like teeth.

I decided I wanted more of that, so I packed my bike. I packed light, my portable chair, my iPad and nothing more. I planned to finish reading Ross Douthat's The Decadent Society, its insightful take on current reality had my attention for weeks now. I anticipated exploring Douthat's take while enjoying the Oregon summer.

^^The usual spot I work from on summer Oregon days...by the Willamette's beautiful shores...

That's not what happened though

Oregon's governor recently eased lockdown mandates. With her decree, all of Oregon made similar plans. I expected a few people riverside, but wasn't prepared for crowds that showed up.

A forty minute bike ride turned into an hour while I tried finding suitable, solitary rest stop. I finally decided on a rocky shore devoid of human for lack of any sand. But I had my chair. I didn't need sand.

I parked my bike, set up my chair then settled into Douthat's narrative. Thirty minutes later, a couple with two dogs showed up. The young, tattooed Portlanders led their dogs to the water's edge, unleashed them and threw tennis balls into the river. The larger of the two dogs, a pit-bull, leapt into the water while its smaller puppy companion barked in envy. Then the puppy eased into the water, found it agreeable and went for a swim. I smiled then turned back to Douthat.

Minutes later, the puppy was licking at my bare legs. I'm not a dog person, but I can appreciate a cute pooch. On this day though, I just wanted to read in quiet on a beautiful day. It annoyed me that this dog suddenly was licking my leg. But what annoyed me more was the fact that its owner hadn't done his legal duty of keeping his dog under control.

I lifted my legs away from the pooch, clearly annoyed, which the owner saw. He came bounding to my rescue, scooped up his dog with an apology and returned to his spot. There, he put it on a leash. His partner too re-leashed the Pit-bull.

All that was nice. But it was too late.

I got hooked in frustration-momentum

Momentum is a powerful thing. Especially negative momentum born of oft-told stories. I've harbored negative stories about dog owners who don't keep their dogs leashed and therefore under control as leash laws mandate. So much so it's one of my "pet peeves" (oh god! no pun intended!).

Recently when I read about a "Karen" from Central Park Manhattan who made a racist false police report against a fellow New Yorker who politely asked her to leash her dog in an area where a leash law was in force. The fellow New Yorker, a board member of the New York City Audubon Society who happens to be African American, recorded the whole incident. The recording went viral and popular outrage caused the woman to lose her job and her dog. Reportedly, New York is considering banning her permanently from Central Park and the District Attorney is considering pressing charges against her for making a false police report.

This story came to mind as that puppy slimed me. When its owner grabbed it and apologized, I mused whether he also thought about that Central Park incident.

The problem was, I didn't shake the association, which would have been in my best interest. Comparing my experience to what happened to the Audubon Board Member wasn't really fair. But old stories about my pet peeve combined with that viral Central Park experience in my head creating momentum that swept me up.

For the next half hour I couldn't focus on my reading. My mind swirled around the association, my indignation, my annoyance and frustration....

^^I don't hate dogs. Dogs love me as much as I love them...sometimes...🤣

What happened next was no surprise

The couple decided to pack up and leave, having I suppose, had enough time at the water's edge. As they walked to the bike path, I heard the woman say to someone I couldn't see "Sir, would you mind leashing your dog?"

The irony didn't escape me. "Cosmic Justice" I thought. Little did I know said justice was just getting started...

I couldn't hear the what the person she addressed said, but I heard what she was saying. I also got the annoyance in her tone:

"Why aren't you willing to put your dog on a leash sir?" She asked. I turned, hoping to see who she addressed. I couldn't see that person. She continued.

"My dog isn't friendly," she said. The person said something I didn't hear.

"How many years have you been around my dog sir?" She replied. "I'm telling you my dog is not friendly."

Apparently whoever she addressed had done nothing, so she reached down, picked up what looked like a 40 pound pit-bull and scrambled over rocks the rest of the way to the bike path with her male companion in tow.

I was thinking about karmic kickback, wondering how the couple felt now since they themselves hadn't controlled their (little) dog. Which is why I hadn't noticed that not seconds later another dog was sniffing at my leg!

It's my turn...

I turned in surprise, saw the Husky, then darted around looking for the owner. Presumably this was the same person the young woman spoke with earlier. Finally I saw him sitting in a chair he set up behind me on the bike path's edge.

My indignance increased. "Really?" I thought. "Twice in a row?" What did I expect? I create my reality. Here was the Universe serving me a big pile of pet peeve....a second helping if you will, this time via a Husky and yet another irresponsible owner.

But wait...it gets worse. Or rather, I got worse.

I should have known trying to get the owner to do anything about his scofflaw dog would be futile. After all I saw that play out just seconds ago. Never the less:

"Sir, would you please come get your dog!" I said with force ten annoyance.

The owner looked down at me, at his dog and said "he's alright."

"I'm not!" I said.

The owner said nothing.

At that, I'd had it!

Now I was fully in rage. That's right, I was so angry, I was shaking. I wanted to strangle that damn dog and murder the owner. But I also knew it wasn't the dog's fault. So I directed all my rage (in my mind) at the owner. I wanted to first strangle him, then murder him!

I should mention I had the presence of mind at this moment to see the ironic humor here. A part of me knew what I was doing was ridiculous. It's just a dog. But the principle folks, and the momentum of my pet peeve had me firm in its grip.

Clearly this guy wasn't going to do anything about his dog. There was no way I could recover my state of calm at this point, not to mention focusing on Douthat's prose. I decided then to gather my things and head home in a huff, which took all but a couple minutes.

But I couldn't let it end that way. Noooo.

As I pushed my bike up to the bike trail, I made my "offender" clearly: white male in his 40s, beer in hand, listening to a transistor radio, minding his own business and cool as a 🥒. Perfect contrast to my seething rage, which at this point, boiled over and out my mouth:

"YOU'RE EXACTLY THE KIND OF PERSON WHO GIVES DOG OWNERS A BAD NAME!" I yelled in his general direction. I hopped on my bike and peeled away on the momentum of my righteous indignation. 😂🤣😊

That wasn't the end of it.

A half-mile into my return trip, it struck me. What happened here? Why am I letting this situation shape how I feel? How I feel is more important than how I'm treated. In fact, I know by choosing how I interpret what happens in my life, I can create reality. Here I was doing what a noob at all this "you create your reality" business would do...

At this point, I should stop and say I know sometimes I'm going to get pissed. It's just part of what happens when an eternal being comes into physical reality.

Thinking an enlightened person doesn't get mad sometimes indicates misunderstanding about how physical reality works. Physical reality intentionally offers variety: things I want and things I don't want. After all, how am I to know what I want if I don't know what I don't want?

How am I to know what thoughts feel better than others, if I don't have a negative experience every now and then?

That's what I thought one half mile into my return ride. And that's when I decided I had the power here. I had choice.

So instead of continuing to seethe, I decided to put my attention on something else. Something more pleasing. So I noticed the blue sky. I noticed the green trees. I noticed how much I like riding my bike, how good the sun felt on my bare legs and arms, how good it feels on a Oregon summer day. In seconds I felt better. My feelings reminded me how wonderful it is working from Oregon's riversides:

youtube

That's when something amazing happened

The more I thought these thoughts, the better I felt. Then...

Ever had an experience where something happens, you react in a less than ideal way, then, later, you get a thought, an idea, an alternative way you could have responded that might have been more effective?

Well that's what happened. In my increasing happiness I received an alternative scenario that played out in my mind. Rather than throwing a tantrum at the guy, I saw my self calmly rise, gather my things and my chair, walk up to the guy and set up my chair right next to him. So close our chairs touched side by side. Then I sat down, looked at him and began politely talking his ear off.

That's when I burst out laughing, a belly laugh so strong it obliterated my anger. I let this alternative reality play through my mind, adding humorous bits here and there – I saw him looking at me surprised, then trying to ignore me, then suddenly packing up his things and stomping off, dog in tow off leash. I imagined him and I actually having a friendly conversation, chatting away like best friends. I imagined him and I sitting there, me chatting away and he trying to ignore my chatting tsunami in quiet annoyance...

And you know what happened next? The entire situation changed for me. No longer did I see him as the idiot epitome of bad dog ownership. Instead he became a shining example of what I could be.

Consider this:

This guy was doing his own thing, oblivious to what others thought and said about him

This guy was in his own reality, enjoying his life with his dog. So was the dog!

This guy had presence of mind, a centeredness so powerful, he appeared unphased by not only one, but two verbal aggressors trying to knock him off his rocker

As much as I want to vilify him, he demonstrated to me vibrational mastery. And at that point he went from villain to teacher.

I want to be like that. I want to be calm in the face of storms.

And, in fact I am, nearly all the time.

Which is another thing he taught me: that I am that nearly all the time. When I'm not, there's always something great in the experience I learn about myself and about my Positively Focused practice.

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australiandentalschools · 3 years

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5 life lessons I’ve learned from pulling teeth

Greetings from the sunny shores of Sydney! My name is Tyler and I am a dental student at the University of Sydney with less than a year to go until I am finished. Having been in school for a few years now, I’ve dabbled in all the dental disciplines. Though I’ve enjoyed endodontics (root canals) and prosthodontics (dentures and crowns), I have to say my favourite specialty is oral surgery so far.

While it is our last resort as dentists, sometimes an unsalvageable tooth requires an extraction and there’s something incredibly rewarding about removing an offending tooth, delivering this treatment pain-free and ultimately relieving the patient of discomfort at the end of the appointment. It is often one of the scariest things to have done to you, but I enjoy making the worst outcome a pleasant experience.

Today, I want to share with you some bite-sized lessons I’ve learned during my time spent in extraction clinics.

1. Do as you think, not as you’re told I’m not suggesting to be rebellious, I suppose a better way of saying that is to have a healthy dose of curiosity and objective skepticism.

I was once scheduled to extract a tooth from an older man whose hearing and English were not so good. Something didn’t add up as I was doing my tests: The tooth indicated on the notes to be removed was actually perfectly fine, which made me question whether I was somehow messing up my examination. That’s when I realized the radiograph was actually backwards—we were looking at a mirrored image of the x-ray, so essentially what we thought was the left side was actually the right. Someone wrote down the wrong tooth in the notes and it didn’t get picked up until I noticed it.

I always ask myself: Why should this tooth be removed? If I can agree, I continue. If I don’t, I question the instructions I’ve been given.

Even the best of us are prone to making mistakes, but that’s why it’s important to be judicious for even the most routine of decisions, especially when there’s no going back. Think twice, cut once!

2. Fake it ’til you make it No one ever feels truly confident starting something brand new. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either exceptionally gifted, a little bit delusional, or just straight-up lying. My extensive experiences as a kid pulling out my own baby teeth somehow did not prepare me adequately for the first few times I stepped up to my patient forceps in hand, about to pop out one of these chompers in our dental hospital’s exodontia clinic (exo = take out; dont = tooth).

If you didn’t know, the numbing “local anaesthetic” solution we give you only takes away the pain. But you still feel pressure… and the vibrations. The same kind of vibrations my patient is feeling as their head is rumbling as my forearms are visibly shaking from muscular fatigue as a result of gripping these instruments so hard trying to maintain the appropriate angulation, pressure, and technique as I’m coaxing this tooth out of the bony socket it’s called home for the last 50 years.

As I’m rehearsing in my head all the movements I need to do, memory runs wild trying to recall every bit of information I’ve learned to help me make it through the next few minutes as beads of sweat start trickling down my face like teardrops on Taylor’s guitar. I’m legitimately not even an anxious person, but in that moment, the panic is real. Not the most confidence-inspiring situation for the patient, let me tell you from second-hand experience. The seconds felt like minutes and the minutes felt like hours.

That was my first ever extraction, or an “exo” as we call it for short, and though it only lasted about 8 minutes, man oh man, it was the longest decade of my life. It didn’t help that my first-ever patient came in with dental anxiety, which made everything even more nerve-wracking from the start. But fortunately, every exo since then has been much better because I’ve learned that the patient panics when they see you panic. So the secret, whether you’re removing teeth, giving a speech, or coaching high school track kids (all true stories from my life by the way), is just pretending to know what you’re doing until you actually get there: Just fake it ’til you make it.

3. Plan for success but prepare for failure You have to have a plan. I always tell my patients that we need to do something called “treatment planning,” which is a fancy way of saying we need to take the entire first appointment to figure out where we’re were starting from and planning all the treatment they need to resolve their problems and fulfill their needs. It’s like planning a road trip with friends—you need to establish a roadmap of all the places we need to visit on our way to our dream destination. Yes, it’s important to hit all the tourist attractions, but there’s also necessary checkpoints like gas stations and Macca’s (Australian slang for McDonald’s) breaks if we want to survive the journey. It also doesn’t do anyone any good to set out without an idea of what direction you need to head in because driving fast in the wrong direction sets you back more than it propels you forward. Furthermore, despite our best intentions, things inevitably go wrong.

The reality of patient care (or life in general) is that almost nothing goes to plan. I am known in my cohort for being meticulous for my appointment plans. My treatments are always tailored to every individual patient with my procedures scheduled down to the minute. I take great pride in my preparation for clinics, and though I am getting much better at anticipating the unexpected twists and turns of healthcare, it’s not uncommon for appointments to not go to plan.

As you can imagine, there are a number of points during a surgical procedure where things can go wrong. The patient might fail to attend (FTA); the patient may have skipped their medications that day (resulting in excessively high blood pressure or blood sugar levels beyond what is safe to treat); maybe there’s a global pandemic shutting down the entire hospital for months on end. In short, you can’t do the procedure. Tough luck. The anaesthesia might not work (due to infection, due to natural resilience or desensitization due to drug use, due to operator error, due to accessory innervation). Maybe the tooth won’t come out; perhaps it’s trickier than the x-rays suggest. Maybe the roots flare too much, or perhaps the roots are ankylosed to the bone. And when you finally pull the tooth out, maybe a piece breaks off, or maybe a part of the floor of the maxillary sinus comes along with it and now you have an oroantral communication (OAC).

Of course, 💩 happens, but if you know the possible ways a plan can fall apart, you’ll be better prepared to handle things if and when that happens.

4. With great power comes great responsibility I think Uncle Ben said it best, but there’s an enormous amount of trust given to dentists because we’re specialists in a field and making judgment calls to proactively treat our patients. When this treatment comes with a high cost, there’s a natural tendency to question why a currently asymptomatic tooth requires preventative treatment when there’s nothing perceptibly wrong with it.

But there’s often a lot of problems we’re unaware of in our own mouths, and by the time you detect there’s something wrong (e.g., you’re experiencing pain or sensitivity or maybe you see/feel a hole in the tooth) it’s often far too late. In our quest in detecting and preventing problems, there is often a fine line between being reasonably cautious and overprescribing treatment. Even in student clinics, obviously there is no money involved, but I still try to educate my patients on why they need a filling replaced or a tooth removed.

Have you ever seen a radiograph of a tooth? Ever notice how the dentist always shows you this black and white image and explains it to you as though you can understand what’s going on? I really try to do my best to explain to my patients, but the reality is for a field that literally operates in black and white, we’re actually dealing in a lot of grey area. What one clinician may deem as being a cavity to drill and fill, a more conservative dentist may opt to wait and see. It’s a fine balance, one that I myself am trying to master. I strive to be the kind of dentist who is conservative, informative, and acting in the best interests for my patients as they can’t reliably decide for themselves what the best course of action is because they didn’t spend four years in dental school. I made myself a promise to do only what I think is needed and not more than what my patient requires—I promise to pull the tooth, the whole tooth, and nothing but the tooth.

5. Loss is a part of life Sometimes even despite our best intentions, things just don’t last. Whether we’re talking about relationships or our dentition, there comes a time when certain circumstances just don’t allow us to keep the things we hold dearest to our hearts (or our jaws). I’ve seen perfectly good teeth need removal just because of an unlucky accident. I’ve seen some pretty bad teeth hanging in long past their “expiry date.” There are always examples either way you look at it, but the reality is that we are doomed to lose that which we do not put the effort in to maintain.

Teeth are lost for a number of reasons, but the big ones are trauma, erosion, periodontal disease, and decay. These are natural processes for the most part, but they are indeed avoidable if only we put in a small effort every day to be diligent with good oral hygiene habits. Floss between your teeth before brushing. Brush your teeth twice a day (ideally 30 minutes after eating/drinking) and most importantly before going to bed. Use a fluoridated toothpaste. Spit—don’t rinse your toothpaste with water after brushing.

If you hate your dentist, do these three simple tricks to put them out of a job! It doesn’t take much, but for some reason, it takes a lot out of us at the end of a long day to invest just 5 minutes doing the simple stuff for our teeth. Missing a day here or there is not the end of the world, but missing a day here or there regularly, however, will indeed add up.

At some point, the teeth that have been neglected will come around to me to have to pull out in order to prevent further pain or infection. Prevention of the problem is always better (and less expensive) than treating the problem! By the time you notice there’s an issue, it’s generally getting to be too late.

Other things like watching what you eat (keep sugars and acidic foods/beverages low), snacking less, and drinking plenty of water will help save your teeth down the road. There are so many things we do on the daily that are bad for our teeth that the average person wouldn’t expect to have such drastic effects on our dentition… but we’ll save that info for another time.

OzTREKK Student Ambassador: Tyler Nguyen University: The University of Sydney Program: Doctor of Dental Medicine Follow Tyler on Instagram: @dmd.toothpics

#dentistry student #study dentistry #university of sydney #study abroad #dental schools

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scottadamsblog · 7 years

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The Worst Gun Control Arguments

I’m pro-gun, but mostly for selfish reasons. Some people (such as celebrities) are probably safer with defensive weapons nearby. But I acknowledge the reality that guns make people less safe in other situations. No two situations are alike. That’s partly why the issue can never be fully resolved. Both sides pretend they are arguing on principle, but neither side is. Both sides are arguing from their personal risk profiles, and those are simply different. Our risk profiles will never be the same across the entire population, so we will never agree on gun control.

That said, I want to call out the worst arguments I have seen on the issue of banning bump stocks. If you are new to the conversation, a bump stock is a $99 add-on to an AR rifle that turns it into an automatic-like weapon for greater kill power. The Vegas gunman used bump stocks. They are legal, whereas a fully automatic rifle is not.

Many pro-gun people in the debate seem to be confused about the purpose of laws in general. Laws are not designed to eliminate crime. Laws are designed to reduce crime. The most motivated criminals will always find a way, and law-abiding citizens will avoid causing trouble in the first place. Laws are only for the people in the middle who might -- under certain situations -- commit a crime. Any friction you introduce to that crowd has a statistical chance of making a difference.

Humans are lazy and stupid, on average. If you make something 20% harder to do, a lot of humans will pass. It doesn’t matter what topic you are discussing; if you introduce friction, fewer people do it. With that in mind, let’s look at the least-rational gun control arguments I am seeing lately.

Chicago Example

Gun advocates like to point out that Chicago has strict gun control laws yet high murder rates. This is an irrational argument. The only valid comparison would be Chicago with gun laws in 2017 versus Chicago without gun laws in 2017. Any comparison to other cities, or to other time frames, is pure nonsense. Nothing is a rational comparison to Chicago. There is only one Chicago. And because Chicagoans can easily buy guns from nearby places, the gun ban is probably useless in that case.

Gun opponents use a similarly irrational argument. For example, anti-gun folks might point out that London bans guns and has fewer gun crimes. That’s as irrational as the Chicago argument. There is only one London in 2017. You can’t compare it to anything.

In general, any argument that says, “Look at that one city” is irrational, anecdotal thinking. It has no place in policy decisions.

Criminals Will Break Gun Laws Anyway

As I explained up front, laws are not designed to stop the most motivated criminals. We’ve never seen a law in any realm that stopped all crime. At best, laws discourage the people on the margin. Gun control is no different. The objective is to add some friction and reduce the risk that someone angry enough to pick up an AR doesn’t also have a bump stock in the house.

The Vegas gunman had over 40 guns yet he used bump stocks on his weapons instead of buying illegal fully-automatic weapons in the first place. He also did not purchase grenade launchers, which would have been ideal for his purposes. The reason in both cases is that there was more friction for acquiring the illegal weapons. It wasn’t impossible. It was just harder.

You can Make a Bump Stock on a 3D Printer

No, I can’t. I don’t own a 3D printer. Neither do most criminals. What you mean is that the few people who own 3D printers and have the skill to use them can print bump stocks. Chances are, you’re not one of those people. Again, laws are not designed to stop the most motivated super-criminals. They have lots of ways to get weapons. A 3D printer might be an ideal solution for a few super-criminals. But it won’t have much impact for a number of years on the average person who flips out and wants to start shooting today.

Rubber Bands and other Bump Stock Workarounds

Yes, I know you saw on Youtube a video in which someone rigged an AR with a rubber band on the trigger, or some other clever device that increased the firing speed. I’m no weapons engineer, but I’m fairly certain the rubber band method is less reliable than the bump stock method. And the other workarounds have either more friction (it takes some talent and tools to make anything of that nature) or they are less reliable. I remind you that the goal is not to stop all crime; we’re just trying to add friction to discourage the lazy and less-resourceful types, of which there are many. And perhaps we can add some unreliability to their choice of weapons.

Yes, clever people can create bump stock workarounds that function well enough for making a Youtube video. But most people are not clever, and not terribly resourceful, and they probably haven’t personally tested the rubber band trick. Even a dumb mass murderer wants more reliability than a rubber band suggests. Personally, if I flipped out and decided to kill everyone in my workplace, and I had never tested the rubber band trick, I wouldn’t even consider using it for a real crime, no matter how cool it looked on Youtube.

That’s friction.

Hardly Anyone Has Ever Been Killed by Bump Stock Guns

True. Even if you include the Vegas tragedy, the total percentage of people killed by bump stock-modified guns is tiny. But many people apparently don’t realize that laws are not designed to change the past. Laws are forward-looking devices. And after the Vegas tragedy, 100% of adults have been trained by news organizations on how to procure and use a bump stock. We even know we need multiple rifles because they jam. Compared to last week, the friction for modifying a semi-automatic to an automatic just went from "some” to non-existent. The idea of passing a law banning bump stocks is to add friction to reduce future crimes, not to change the past.

Keep in mind that North Korea might nuke us in the future even though they have no record of nuking us in the past. Policies and laws are not designed to address past risks, only future risks. And our future risk from bump stocks just went through the roof because they are now universally known and also top of mind.

And before you say you already knew how to get a bump stock, just imagine me laughing at you for saying it. I know you already knew how to do that. You are not representative of the entire population of potential killers. No one is suggesting passing laws directed at you personally.

A Guy in Japan Once Killed 30 People With a Knife

The argument here is that motivated killers will find a way to do damage with or without a gun. But does anyone think the guy in Japan killed more people with a knife than he could have with an armory of automatic weapons? And I remind you (again and again) that laws are not designed to stop the most motivated criminals, such as the Japanese stabber. Laws are designed to add friction to the less-clever and less-motivated.

A week ago, a potential killer with low skills and motivation might not figure out how to turn an AR into an automatic rifle. Today -- thanks to the news -- almost every adult knows how to do it. The existing friction disappeared. You would need to make bump stocks illegal to reintroduce some friction.

Slippery Slope

Gun owners sometimes say banning any weapon leads to banning all of them. In general, the slippery slope argument is nonsense no matter what topic you are discussing. Things do lead to other things, but every decision stands on its own, and should. Banning personal use of grenade launchers did not lead to confiscation of hunting knives, and probably never will. The slippery slope idea inspires fear in gun lovers -- because creeping regulations feel like a risk -- but in the real world, each decision stands alone. The slippery slope is an irrational fear, not a reasonable factor in policy-making.

The President Can’t Ban Gun Stocks by Executive Order

Sure he can, but it might not be legal. Does that matter?

You think it matters, but it doesn’t. When the Commander-in-Chief makes a thoughtful military decision, and the decision is clearly in the interest of temporarily plugging a security hole during a time of war (with ISIS), that’s defensible no matter what the Constitution says. And you want it that way.

The Constitution grants the Commander-in-Chief a lot of power to make quick decisions on homeland security because speed often matters in such things. As time allows, Congress can do its work. Banning bump stocks until Congress can look into it would be pure Commander-in-Chiefing. It would be public and temporary. Would the Supreme Court overturn the illegal ban? Maybe, but not right away. Remember that the Constitution gives real power to We the People. As long as We the People see our Commander-in-Chief acting responsibly, we’re going to give him a pass, especially for something temporary until Congress gets going.

I acknowledge that the President has no legal authority to ban the sale of legal items. But he could do it anyway. And We the People would largely back him on it so long as it was temporary and clearly intended to give Congress time to address the question.

That’s how Thomas Jefferson would have played it. But he might have looked for a technical way to make his executive order seem legal. I’m sure such an argument exists because lawyers.

Update: The Vegas Killer Would Have Been MORE Deadly Without Bump Stocks

The argument here is that bump stocks make the weapon harder to aim, therefore less lethal. That probably makes sense in some instances, such as a sniper situation. It does not make sense when spraying a dense crowd from above, at long distance. In that case, speed beats accuracy every time.

In summary, I have genuine respect for both sides of the gun control debate. But the arguments I listed above should not be part of the conversation if we are trying to be rational about it.

Update: Readers asked me to describe the best argument in favor of the 2nd amendment. So I will.

Gun ownership protects citizens against the risk of a tyrant trying to take over.

At this point in the reading of this blog, half of you are laughing out loud because you imagine the massive U.S. military squaring off against some rag-tag militia group with rubber bands on their AR triggers. Not exactly a fair fight.

It’s also not the point.

The way private gun ownership protects citizens is by being a credible threat against all the civilians who might be in any way associated with a hypothetical tyrannical leader who uses the military against citizens. Citizens probably can’t get close to the leaders in such a scenario, but it would take about an hour to round up their families, and the families of supporters.

That would do it.

America is unconquerable.

---

I usually plug a product here. It doesn’t feel right today.

#bump stock

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skywailer · 7 years

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ahHHh could you do d/hr + "i mispelled an email to be your name & now we're penpals !! & actually hate each other irl" aka a 'you've got mail' type situation

this entire thing is just a really cute situation that turned into a 16 page situation, because i have NO CHILL

One-shot under the tab, but I like… I also put it on a03 to spare your eyes.

01:36 What book has you up so late? Feels like something I should read.

Hermione is still grinning, ten hours after such a mundane message was received, and a little too promptly opened, on her AOL account. Her cheeks are flourishing with all kinds of pinks and reds, and it’s absolutely embarrassing how she’s there, ten hours after the fact, after not replying - pretending to be asleep, what a ninny -, staring at this message. In her office. Her place of business.

“Oi, these documents aren’t going to sign themselves,” someone calls, and Hermione’s blush deepens the longer Harry stares. How long had she zoned out? Had she even seen him come into the room? He looks like he’s been sitting there, collecting dust for eons.

“Sorry, I was thinking about how to reply to this…” She fumbles, and hastily closes out of the chat window. “Very important email.”

“Oh, of course,” Harry says a little too certainly, with a little too much of a glint in his eyes. The spark of mischief is intensified through his glasses. He shuffles the files on his lap and places the cases of most importance on Hermione’s desk. Pretends to not notice how Hermione’s noticed that he’s noticed something.

It’s all very childish.

Her continuing blush, racing down the playground of her neck and chest is the most childish of all.

“Percy is really pushing to close the Stockton class action ASAP,” Harry continues a conversation Hermione had, in a way, been keeping up with despite her distractions. She rolls her eyes and nearly stabs her pen through the stack of other, paying, clientele dear Percy wants them to focus on.

“My one pro bono,” she mutters, “I wonder why.”

Harry grimaces, eyes wide with sarcastic wonder as he leans back in the chair. The leather complains enough for the both of them.

“It really is a wonder,” he replies, but his thoughts are already somewhere else, somewhere rather dangerous. He adjusts his glasses, as though to get a better, clearer look at Hermione.

“The real wonder, though, is what book kept you up so late? Do you feel it’s something he should read?”

“Do those glasses give you x-ray vision?” Hermione snaps in return to the husky mockery of her private life. Harry smirks. This is, after all, his favorite part of the day: torment Hermione hour- the hour that never actually ends.

As if it wasn’t his and his wife’s idea for Hermione to socialize more, to ‘put herself out there’. Ginny was the one who’d made her AOL account while she’d been away in the bathroom. She’s the only one who could think up the horrendous screenname: booksnob4life.

It’s a miracle anyone talked to her on that blasted thing.

“I wish,” Harry sighs. “You just have a nasty habit of leaving your computer screen on when you go to the bathroom.”

Like wife, like husband.

“You rotten little-!”

“I was just doing my job,” Harry defends himself, arms raised and pleading innocent until proven guilty. “Turning in the affidavit you needed, and there it all was.”

Hermione’s head is smack against the desk, affidavit stuck to her forehead, before he’s anywhere near done laughing.

“Who is this dashing i-object-to-idiots?” Harry’s voice is too bubbly and sweet; this moment is obviously just too rich for him. “He sounds devastatingly charming.”

She groans into the mountains of paperwork. Suddenly, they look much less painful than before- when compared to this.

“He’s actually quite charming, intellectual and witty, and someone I’ll never meet - if Percy has his way.”

That grants her a snort. She glares up from her slouched position; her back is already aching, and her hands itching to sort through the mess.

“Please, this mound will be gone by three,” Harry completely disregards her moans. Hones in on the nitty gritty detail: “So, you’re saying you’ve never met this guy?”

She frowns and sits up, corrects her posture and turns her attention to work, even if it’s the farthest thing from her partner’s mind. “Exactly.”

His ridicule and peaked curiosity is reverberating off the walls. “Have you made any plans to….?”

Hermione’s face is deadpanned, eyes dull with the blunt knowledge that: “We’re both lawyers. You figure out that algebraic mess.”

She’s already turning to her computer, opening an endless stream of Word and Excel pages. Anything to avoid that one beeping notification at the corner of her screen.

“You haven’t even brought it up, have you?”

“No.” Hermione doesn’t mean to sigh, but she does.

It’s rare: this feeling of disappointment and nervousness. It only pays a visit when she thinks about this faceless, nameless person who’s she’s confided in for the last six weeks. Who she wants to come face-to-face with, to see and hear in front of her, to not have to wait for her computer to connect to the internet before she can say hello to him.

Who she equally is afraid of ever meeting, of having the ideal cruelly extinguished by reality.

She deals in laws of man and nature, and facts. And that blinking little light on her computer screen is too artificial to trust.

“Well,” Harry replies, clucking his tongue as he stands up to leave; job done quite a while ago, and snark breaching his allowed, daily quotient. “You should at least give him a book to read while he waits.”

He’s laughing again at the sour patch look on Hermione’s face, as if her love life - or complete lack thereof, is such a freaking riot.

That blinking notification is winking at her now, insistently begging her to “notice me, notice me!” As if it isn’t constantly distracting her.

Hermione grimaces, thinking: maybe her love life is a freaking riot. If she can’t even reply to a simple book recommendation out of fear of “the ideal”.

She opens up the AOL interface and stares at that message again, thanking any and all gods that i-object-to-idiots is not online to witness this ridiculously late, and pathetic response.

Pushing down the equally pathetic anxiety over literary scrutiny, Hermione takes a deep breath and types her reply.

22:15 You in court must be a sight. Pitiful, really, the fool who goes up against you - this coming from personal experience. In fact, I’m still licking my wounds from the last duel; is it really so wrong to love Jack Kerouac as I do?

22:15 I wish I could see you in action.

22:19 Actually, I wish I could just see you.

22:21 You know what- screw it. Cup of coffee. You and me. Foreseeable objection completely overruled. I want to see you.

“Objection!”

Hermione’s voice fills the courtroom twice-fold, but its inhabitants - especially Judge McGonagall - are quite accustomed to the volume. The only one who seems bothered by it is the man standing opposite her; he is a smirk in a brown suede suit, reeking of wealth and privilege, defending the undefendable companies that seek to manipulate and exploit the disadvantaged populace.

In short: he is everything Hermione abhorrently opposes. Abhorrently. Did she mention: abhorrently?

“On what grounds, exactly?” Draco Malfoy drolls, his posture never once shifting away from the jury. He just barely turns his head in her general direction, silver locks carefully smoothed into place so as not to stir when he does. However, something about his demeanor has shifted. There’s a tightness to the usually casual smile on his face - he always tries to work the jury with his disgustingly transparent charm - and something crackles to life in his eyes.

He’s watching her intently, even if he doesn’t mean to.

She challenges his stare with one of her signature courtroom glares; quick, efficient, deadly as daggers. It’s gone before a single eye in the jury can detect something amiss about the darling, if a bit passionate, lawyer.

Everyone in the room has lost track of how many times they’ve run this bit.

“Besides the fact that you have blatantly disregarded giving us any notice of this new witness?” Hermione shoots across the court, directly between Draco’s narrowed eyes. “You’re clearly now leading said witness.”

The only response this apparently warrants is the laziest of smiles. Hermione catches a few jury members, men and women alike, melting at the sight. She holds in her vomit.

“Your honor, forgive me if I was too much of a gentleman,” Draco responds gracefully, ducking his head down in an adamant, completely false, display of embarrassment. “My witness is tired after a very long flight just to be here, and I’m simply trying to be helpful.”

Helpful.

Hermione’s nails dig into the case file in her hands. She can feel Harry’s eyes drinking it all in, unsure whether to be amused or utterly frustrated; this kind of back-and-forth banter and jury-fondling has been going on the entire week at trial, and months before then too.

Hermione’s feelings on the matter are quite settled: she hates this man with every fiber of her being; her very tolerant, open-minded, loving, I-see-through-your-bullshit-you-cunning-bastard being. Hatred and these very qualities can co-exist. Hermione’s determined for it to be so.

So yeah, she hates him.

Judge McGonagall doesn’t seem too easily persuaded either, and almost- almost rolls her eyes at him. Hermione stills the unprofessional smile that this wrongfully encourages.

“Mr. Malfoy, being a gentleman entails knowing when and how to speak. Talking a little less, and letting your witness speak more, would be much more helpful- don’t you think?” The judge responds calmly, if a bit exhausted by the ongoing banter. She adjusts her glasses, but remains lax and leaning in her seat. “Sustained. Jury is to strike the last question from the record.”

Now that got the smile out of Hermione. She’s grinning, a child winning the parent’s favor. Her gloating becomes very visible when Draco’s carefully placed, fresh-pressed for company smile twitches, unnerved. He seems to feel the happiness vibrating off Hermione in ridiculous waves because his steel eyes snap onto hers. Positively glowering.

She gets a sense that the hatred is mutual.

But either way, Hermione persuades her face to conduct itself professionally, and rolls her lips between her teeth to smooth them out. To compose herself. But she just hasn’t gotten this much joy from an opponent’s loss in ages.

Ridiculous as it is: she can’t wait to let her date know he has yet another fool to pity.

Perhaps it’s her giddiness to go, her impatience to meet a man she hardly knows, that makes today’s court appearance even snappier than usual. She allows Draco no leeway with his roundabout questions, and shows no mercy to those on the stand. She wants to close today’s testimonies as swiftly and efficiently as possible.

Harry has taken notice of the extra gasoline Hermione’s poured on her own fire.

“When was the last time you exhaled?” Harry mutters when she sits down.

“I told you, I don’t want the jury to siddle too long with his ‘experts’.”

Harry nods, his lips pursed in an odd twist of humor and affirmation. “Right, the quickfire approach. Has nothing to do with your rendezvous at 12 o'clock.”

Her eyes dart between the notes she’s scribbling down in a race against herself, and the opposing table. Draco has yet to stand up and approach the prosecution’s first expert, is still calmly and lazily glancing through the file she’d been forced to give his legal team, his client absolutely at ease- slender form lounging as though he’s got nothing in the world to lose, and she nearly snaps her pen in two.

“Sure, fine, it has something to do with that. But it also wouldn’t be so wild to want to keep today’s session back on track as much as possible. So we can have recess at the usual time, but it would seem Draco,” the name comes out in a nasty little whisper fuming with frustration, “once again is playing games.”

She’s glaring daggers again, and he must’ve sensed at some point her increased urgency, because today he’s being exceedingly tedious; more so than per usual.

“To think, I once thought the law school rivalry would die a graceful death.”

That comment bestows upon him quite the incredulous look from Hermione. She’s still got fireballs for eyes, and he nearly shrivels into dust.

“You know very well that’s not what this is, Harry,” she snaps, trying to keep the whisper low but Judge McGonagall is looking between both parties, and her watch.

“Mr. Malfoy, if you would so kindly hurry up,” the judge calls out, but Draco doesn’t even look up from the papers, and Hermione’s still stabbing into Harry’s psyche.

“We’ve been nurturing this case for years now, and then I find out he’s the one who takes up the defendant’s case? His family name attached once again to Tom Riddle? Don’t you dare belittle my issues down to a simple case of rivalry.”

Her head is practically in flames at this point and it’s a blessing no one is seated in the first few rows behind her. It’s a miracle Draco himself doesn’t hear. How Harry hasn’t combusted is impossible to understand.

You’d think she’d be in a cheery mood, what with her date and all. But it seems the first-time jitters are short-circuiting her patience and overall temperament.

“Your Honor, it would seem I need further time with these documents I’ve just been handed-”

That whips Hermione’s head nearly completely off her neck.

“Just handed? I personally delivered that to your legal team a week ago.”

“Really?” Draco muses, a damn-near playful lightness to his eyes and voice. “Strange, I only just got it now.”

It’s ten minutes to twelve, and Hermione is livid, and obviously that’s exactly Draco’s aim- he lives to see her explode in court. He’s about to get a show. “Your Honor, may I approach-”

“Your Honor,” he slides in, grinning at the judge. “I feel now would be a good time for a recess. If at all possible, could it be extended so I can get a proper look before my cross examination? Clearly, the prosecution has been rushing to get their expert on the stand today, and now with this-”

“You know what,” Hermione takes a turn at being rude. She mimics Draco’s smile and stands up. “Your Honor, a recess would be lovely.”

Judge McGonagall looks like she was praying for the exact same thing. She waves a hand at the both of them before they can say anymore.

“Alright. Heaven knows I need one. We will adjourn until two o’clock. At that time, I expect both legal councils to conduct themselves with civility. I don’t care for you two to be friends, but I care deeply about this migraine your squabbling has induced.”

With that, she drops the gavel and Hermione subsequently shoves all the paperwork at Harry. Who grumbles something predictable and unintelligible. Something Hermione doesn’t bother to snap back at. It will take her at least six minutes to get to the coffee shop and fix her disastrous hair (it was fine now, but once it touched the outdoors…). Not a second to waste.

And now she has two hours, instead of the measly one she’d expected.

Uncharacteristically bubbly and distracted, Hermione darts for the exit, only to slam right into the most dastardly obstacle. Who smells like the men’s section of Macy’s perfume maze.

With a cosmetically injected smile, Hermione backs away from the tailor-made jerk in front of her, and unfortunately away from the small gate that separates her from freedom.

“After you, Mr. Malfoy.” She means to sound polite. She sounds poisonous.

Draco is all thickly laid-on politeness, since the jury isn’t completely done filing out. He’s a performer ‘til the end. So, his smile only wavers just a tad, enough to let Hermione know, and only her, that he loathes her guts.

For everyone else, he takes a leisurely step back and waves a hand towards her one escape route.

“No, I insist. After you, Ms. Granger.” He means to sound polite. He sounds disgustingly sweet.

Not wanting to prolong the agony any longer, or chance an encounter with his chilling client, Hermione makes a break for it.

When she’s through the court doors, it’s like she’s opened a jar of butterflies in her stomach.

Shit.

Shit, shit, shit.

“Ron,” Hermione flails, eyes glued in horror to her computer screen. Ron doesn’t look up from the hellish paper sorting she’s chored him with. “Ron, Ron, it’s blinking. What does that mean?”

Finally, Ron decides this might just be a good enough distraction from his task and gets up from his place among the rubble. He walks behind Hermione’s desk, where her hand is waving at him. When he peers closer at the computer, thinking she’s having a virus attack - again -, Ron nods slowly.

“Right,” he murmurs,”that blinking little person means someone wants to talk to you.”

Hermione gapes. “What? Who?”

Despite her outraged cry, Ron leans in and guides the mouse to that little person, and clicks. “I-object-to-idiots, apparently. Are you telling me you have an AOL account, but you’ve never used it before?”

He’s laughing at her, on the inside. He knows better than to actually laugh out loud, this close in proximity to her talons.

Hermione scowls, and shoves his hand off the mouse. “Your sister set it up as a joke.”

To that, Ron just shrugs. He doesn’t make to return to his volunteer work. “Doesn’t mean you can’t have fun with it.”

“I don’t want to have fun. I have work to do.”

She hears Ron snoring at her mid-sentence, and glares at him. To think, she’d invited him into her safe workplace, to obediently do her busywork for her. And now he was revolting.

“Do you really think I have time to bother with someone called ‘i-object-to-idiots’?”

“Hmm,” he mock-wonders and leans back in to get a better look at the horrible username. She’s busy watching his thoughtful expression that she doesn’t notice when his fingers sneak around that hazardous mouse. “I don’t know, do you, booksnob4life?”

There’s a click, and a ding! And Hermione’s stomach drops from beneath her.

Before she can raise her arms to swat Ron away, he’s backing out of her range, laughing hysterically while her computer makes some alien clucking sound. She glances at the screen, petrified, as the notification comes: i-object-to-idiots is writing.

“Oh god, oh no. He’s writing something. What do I do?”

Her last encounter with a social life was… too long ago, she can’t accurately place a date on it, and God help her she’s barely ever interacted with the internet besides for research and school, and her ability to talk anything but law has shriveled dramatically these past few years-

“Respond, I’d hope,” Ron chuckles, and he’s not at all helpful-

There’s a gleeful swoosh!

“Oh, god.”

I-object-to-idiots wrote at 19:43 - A real book snob would never put the number ‘4’ in their username. Actually, I think the ‘4life’ bit is a dead giveaway that you are not who you say you are.

Without any rational thought behind it, Hermione slaps Ron’s hand where it lies on her desk.

“That’s exactly what I told Ginny!” She exclaims, oblivious to Ron’s painful yelp as he flinches away from her. He curls his hand against his chest, regretting all of tonight’s decisions- starting with picking up the phone and not instantly hanging up at the sound of Hermione’s voice.

His mouth opens to encourage a reply from Hermione, but her fingers are already attacking the keyboard. The grin on her face is the most earnest one he’s seen in weeks; her current caseload has kept her on a downward stress spiral.

It was one of the reasons why Ginny had hatched this devious internet scheme. Ron just hadn’t thought it would actually work.

He scoots away and plops back down in the seventh circle of hell- determined to sort through the files while Hermione, finally, sorts through her personal life.

Occasionally between rapid-fire typing, Hermione lets out a laugh or scoffs at something she’s read. She remains this way most of the night, completely forgetting she needed to fax so-and-so this-and-that by ten, sharp. She hasn’t had this much interest in the internet since she found out how to send mass emails.

She barely waves goodbye to Ron, and has to remind herself that she does have a hearing to attend bright and early the next morning- but before she can even type a goodbye-

i-object-to-idiots wrote at 23:01 - I’m extremely proud that I managed to distract you this badly, and for this long. You have something to do in the morning, I’m guessing? I should let you go?

you wrote at 23:02 - Am I to assume you didn’t have anything better to do?

I-object-to-idiots wrote at 23:02 - Better? No. But there is a closing statement I should be writing…

It’s a shame she can’t hear him, for she imagines he’s groaning. And she wishes he could hear her laughing. But it’s just a bunch of clicking.

you wrote at 23:04 - I should let you go, then.

He writes: Please don’t. I’d rather save myself the finger cramps and just wing it. I’m a pro at that.

Hermione’s hand hovers over the keyboard, biting down on a smile. She mistakenly takes a peek at the time stamp next to his message, and sighs as she writes back: I actually do have something to do in the morning…

He replies, “Oh,” and it’s like he’s sitting in her office, glump and unwilling to leave. She has no idea what he looks like, but yet she tries to picture this stranger all the same. There’s the outline of proud shoulders and he’s leaning back, leg hitched over the other. Hermione’s sure he’d be wearing something impeccable but she can’t quite put her finger on the brand. “Now why on earth did you have to go and plan that something? Not knowing you’d encounter an intellectual on the internet tonight?”

“An intellectual?” Hermione barks, her swivel chair twists and drifts back in mock confusion. “Where?”

Imagination is a dangerous business, especially hers, and it runs wild with assuming this stranger’s reaction. He places a hand upon his chest, wounded severely. “Ouch,” he sends across an immeasurable distance of intangible web.

It’s boggling to realize this conversation is being held both here, and somewhere completely unknown and unseen to her. Moreso to feel like they were in their own space, unknown and unseen to anyone else.

The chair she imagines him to sit in creaks, his body shifting unwillingly, preparing to make his leave- even though he wasn’t ever really here. “I should go, then. You’ve abused my ego enough for one night.”

For one night. Hermione’s pressed against her desk, probably too close to the glaring screen to be healthy at all, and it feels like one false scooch is all it’ll take to drop her off her chair. In one night, a few hours really, she’s become invested in conversation with a complete and utter stranger.

Despite the little, insistent whisper in her head that this is a terrible idea, and she should really focus on work-

She types: Round two, tomorrow night?

And waits.

23:10 Of course.

The jar of butterflies has become a vortex- a portal, if you will, to a butterfly-infested dimension.

She’s sure there is one butterfly for every message she’s ever sent her mystery man, and at least double that for every message he’s ever sent her. Weeks of confiding in anonymity to a stranger who couldn’t possible relate to her - yet did - swirl around in her chest. Suddenly, every conversation is replayed in her head: every Sunday banter about each and every overhyped, politically distressing and underrated novel clashed with late night confessions. The ones she’d never tell her friends: about how maybe her job has in fact consumed her, and how maybe she hadn’t realize how much of herself she’d have to give- how much she was willing to. He assured her, continues to in her mind, that yeah, it’s selfish but it’s okay to want to take a break from ‘doing good’ and just ‘do you, relax, have a day to yourself, have a way to define yourself outside of your job. Have a life.’

She wants to, she does, but the more she waits on life, the more she just wants to run back into her office.

Hermione clutches a searing cup of coffee in her hands, using the nagging nerves in her palm as a distraction from her ticking watch, from the crowded, humming room and the thump-thump-thumping of her heels against the stool she’s sitting on. The barista keeps glancing at the furniture, certain this extremely caffeinated customer has stabbed two holes into the stool pegs. Unfortunately, Hermione is not at all caffeinated. She wishes that was her excuse. It’d be more of the usual, and less of the absolutely absurd.

But no, the insanity continues.

There’s a quiet, almost indignant touch of expensive shoes to linoleum floor, and Hermione knows better than to look over her shoulder. She knows who it is before he opens his mouth to say something witty-

“Could you please?” She mutters with a quick flutter of the hand, shooing the pest away. Draco Malfoy is just getting comfortable, sliding into the one free stool the room has to offer. It’s supposed to be for someone else, but he obviously doesn’t know this, or care, from his complete lack of mobility.

He’s staring down at the book on the counter with a great deal of shock and curiosity, and Hermione is quick to snatch it away and place it on the other side of her. He still looks baffled, and is not in anyway moving. So, she clarifies her reason for not wanting him around this time, and stares him down all the while. Despite the redness nipping at her ears.

“I’m meeting someone.”

His stunned expression lingers, eyes observing her for a moment too long for her comfort, but she refuses to back down.

Now Draco’s frowning; the kind of face he’d make if he heard one of his clients had passed away before paying his legal fees.

He opens his mouth, but hesitates; lips twisting this way and that, as though struggling to form coherent words. Her request is that stupefying. “This is the one coffee shop with decent roasts, within walking distance,” he finally says, the words coming out slow and dubious, “and you want me to give it up because you are ‘meeting someone’?”

“Yes.”

“Well this is the only seat available, I’ve been standing all day, and I don’t care,” Draco briskly states, and it feels like he’s actually cemented his ass to the stool; posture perfected from years of practice (he used to slouch like a humpback whale in school), hands firmly planted to the counter, eyes determined to look out the window. He didn’t even have a coffee in hand, and Hermione is pretty sure he’d make the barista deliver it to him herself.

“Figures,” she mutters bitterly, and takes a sip from her cup- just to keep from spouting years’ worth of bitterness.

At least his arrival has extinguished all the pesky butterflies in her chest.

“I never took you for someone who’d go on a blind date.”

Hermione nearly spits onto the counter. Instead, she manages to somewhat gracefully swallow her coffee. She keeps her eyes out the window, watching strangers brush shoulders and never speak. Draco does the same.

“Who says I’m on a blind date?”

She hears him chuckle lightly, and she’s always hated the sound; it’s sincere, and reminds her of a time when- No, no. It didn’t do to think about then. It only served to disappoint her when she remembered now.

In the midst of her thoughts, Draco’s become animated and he’s pointing at the biography she snatched away from him. “You always take your coffee to go, but here you are, sitting close to the door, meeting someone but not scouting for that someone’s arrival. Interesting. Except, of course you wouldn’t be, because you don’t know what he or she looks like. To top it all off, you read that book a few weeks ago. You can’t possibly be rereading it, so you’re using it as a token for the person to identify you by. A blind date.”

Skin tingling with a good deal of embarrassment and annoyance, Hermione takes another sip of her coffee to soothe her nerves. But she can feel Draco watching her expectantly, waiting for validation. She glances over at him and raises an eyebrow in challenge. “Are you expecting applause?”

His lips go topsy-turvy, and he’s smiling in a way that’s nowhere near the falsities she’s used to. This isn’t a show Draco’s putting on for a crowd to appease or convince them. It’s not the one he practices in the mirror before greeting another smoke-clogged, greed-driven client or entering another ghastly and cold meeting at his father’s firm. It’s the lopsided smile of a young student she used to know, who was amused by her ability to amuse him. When they weren’t at each other’s throats.

“A ‘bravo’ will suffice,” he replies, and the mood is uncomfortably different than what she’s used to. The hostility of the courtroom had become second nature to her, almost a second home. This camaraderie was completely foreign ground. At least, now it was.

Five years ago, it wouldn’t have been so strange to see Draco Malfoy and Hermione Granger seated next to each other with a cup of joe. Practicing a mock trial they’d play out later that evening in class, swapping notes on the case their professor had them studying together, or arguing about the ‘favored’ results on one of their exams.

In law school, they hadn’t hated each other as much as they did now. It was, as Harry had put it, more of a rivalry than anything. And sometimes, their combative natures were fun to play off of, to bond over when they were mentally and physically wiped. But then-

“Why the nerves?” He asks, and for once it isn’t to tease her before a session or in front of a client.

Hermione sighs into her cup, watches the aromatic steam dance away from her and kiss the windowpane.

“I’m afraid he might be too ideal,” she confesses, her brain foggy like the glass in front of her. She shouldn’t be confiding in her opponent, but the coffee beans smell nostalgic of late night study runs and lazy libraries.

Draco’s whole face seems to be shocked by that, and the muscles pull back in confusion. “And you’d rather he wasn’t?”

Hermione groans and puts down the coffee, twists in the stool to turn away from, and then towards Draco. She’s incapable of making up her mind on him, on this subject, and it’s terribly bothersome.

“Yes, and no,” she offers to Draco’s furthered confusion. She rolls her eyes, mostly at her own incompetence, and runs a frustrated and firm hand through her curls. Another horrible decision on her part; she can feel the curls multiply and frizz. So much for fixing it up.

It says much about her worry over the ‘ideal’.

“I have an image in my head of who he is, and if he isn’t… It’s hard to get past what your mind builds up. But… if he is, if he’s exactly who I pictured him to be, and he’s as close to perfect for me as they come,” Hermione’s blabbering, and she knows it, but she can’t stop it now. She sighs. “That just means I get to ruin it. As I always, inevitably do.”

“You’re that bad at dating?” He’s scoffing, and it’s meant to be playful, but Hermione is quite serious when she eyes him.

“Yes, actually I am,” she replies, deadpanned, “because I’m dedicated to my job. And not many relationships can withstand it.”

Draco’s teasing smile falters the longer her eyes remain steady and stoic. She’s no fun like this. And he knows she can be fun.

“But he’s-” Draco’s mouth lags behind his words and he shakes his head, frustrated. “What’s his profession? Do you know?”

“Of course, I know,” Hermione shoots back defensively, simultaneously begging he doesn’t ask for a name. “He’s a lawyer.”

“Then he’ll understand.” He says it like it’s case closed, settled business. It says much about how little he knows of her personal file. She’s actually laughing at him, stunning him again for the millionth time that day.

“And so what if he does? I’ve dated within my profession before, and it doesn’t work out either. Not the way I want it to. My private and public life are built in two completely different fashions. It’s impossible to maintain them both, and maybe I don’t want to…” Hermione trails off, something in Draco’s eyes catching her unhealthy interest; she realizes he’s really paying attention to her, not tuning her out as he’s prone to doing in court (though he swears he’d never). He’s intent to discuss with her the intricacies of her private life, “and I don’t know why I’m telling you all this.”

“Isn’t it nice to talk about something other than work, for once?” There’s a sad hint in there of ‘like before?’ that Hermione isn’t lost on. And that’s the dangerous bit, really, because it almost pulls her in again, almost makes her forget:

Draco Malfoy has done this before.

“No, it’s not nice, actually,” and Hermione’s words are bricks building a wall between them. A wall she should’ve never brought down in the first place. Not again. The last time she’d done it, it had cost her dearly in court. And as he full-well knew: “My work is my life. Other people’s lives. It’s the only thing worth talking about, especially around you.”

The look on his face tells Hermione he takes her comment as he should: personally. Draco’s smile is scorched from his face, and he’s clearing his throat against ash, his gaze severe. “I take the cases that are put on my desk, same as you.”

“No, you choose them,” Hermione rejects his excuses; this imagined scenario where he has no choice. “You always have, Draco. Your father may own the firm, but you own yourself. At anytime, you could’ve walked away and done some good. You know I gave you a chance to. But instead, you’re defending a company- a sick, sick man who intentionally-” Draco opens his mouth, but Hermione’s hand shoots up to stop the nonsense- “intentionally poisons the water and pretends not to notice when it irreversibly damages, ends lives. You and your father have been defending Tom Riddle for years now, by choice. You chose this case, as did I. And if I can’t see that man behind bars for what he did, I sure as hell am going to get him for all he’s worth.”

Hermione thinks she’s done ranting, turns back to the pedestrians beyond the glass, glaring at an innocent passerby, but she’s still got something angry and bubbling inside her where butterflies once were.

“I once thought you wanted the same.”

Whatever that something is, it’s still bubbling. But she decides she’s done and focuses on the now lukewarm coffee in her hands.

The coffee is cold when Draco finally speaks up, ten minutes to two o’clock.

“Seems your date stood you up,” he says blandly after clearing his throat of something that’s been lodged in there for two hours now. She doesn’t even know why he’s bothered to stay in awkward, hostile silence next to her. She doesn’t know why she’s disappointed to see him go.

She does know, however, why her stomach has turned to concrete.

“I’m sure something came up,” she replies, and it’s pathetic because it’s mostly something she says to comfort herself and not him- because why would he care? If anything, he should be gloating that her personal life has, yet again, been a no-show.

Strangely enough, Draco looks as distraught as she feels.

He takes his leave, but she lingers. After all, it only takes six minutes to walk back to court.

She ends up two minutes late. She’s never late. At least, not before him. Yet Draco is devoid of any snide remarks, and Harry’s more bothered by the look on Tom Riddle’s face, so Hermione doesn’t think too much of it until she’s home. Until she’s home and seated at her computer, staring at the little blinking notification at the bottom of her screen.

Someone wants to talk to her.

For a moment, she thinks of ignoring him, of sitting on the couch and taking a moment for herself. But then she realizes she’s only thinking of relaxing because of his short, fleeting influence on her life.

So. Hermione gives into the blinking light and reads:

16:34 I’m so sorry. Something came up at work, and I couldn’t make it in time.

16:40 No, that’s a lie. I shouldn’t have said that. I should be honest. So, I’ll try, even if I’ve gotten very good at the lie. I stood you up. There are nicer ways to put it, that put me in a better light, but I want the light to be as plain and real as possible. I stood you up. I was the worst kind of coward because I’d made it to the door, I’d made it inside, but I couldn’t reveal myself to you.

16:41 You see, I’m afraid I’ve painted myself in a very particular pallette of colors that creates an ideal image, rather than a real human. And you deserve something, someone real. So, I still want to meet you, so badly, but not until I’ve proven myself to be flawed and ridiculous and real, and you’ve decided I still deserve your time.

16:42 Of course, you might be ignoring these messages completely because I, again, stood you up. I should probably stop typing that, but it’s the truth and you probably already knew that and are ignoring me. But I’ll keep messaging you, because I’m stubborn and selfish, two traits you should definitely know about me. So yeah, I’m really hoping you don’t think I’m completely spineless by the end of this, and will give me a chance to prove that I’m more than a waste of words on a screen.

16:42 I’ll stop typing now.

The glow from her screen is soft and warm, and the now cozy, familiar sound of talking keys fills her small apartment. There’s a click, and a swoosh! and she’s written:

I can’t wait to meet you.

#dhr #dramione #dramione fanfiction #dhr fanfiction #dhr;ff #i really do have no chill #beauxbaton

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kicksparkleaxe-blog · 5 years

Photo

These photos, in which I was using knives and other sharp objects to create an interactive art exhibit, that basically functioned as an escape room which encompassed my whole house, were created when I was in a manic state. Certainly when manic our expressions are hindered insofar as healthful functioning and adjustment to the traditional rhythms of society, but this doesn’t mean our intellectual or artistic capacity is impaired. I certainly used to be seduced by the notion of mania as a romantic and radiant capability, and used to believe I was a mutated and/or specially and perhaps divinely adapted individual above basic universal needs such as restive rituals and other acts associated with self-care, and adequate sleep. Now I realize that when one is manic, one is dangerous to one’s self and others. A manic individual essentially fires too brightly and impulsively, and this isolates them from others. The goal instead is to create a cascade and cadence where one connects with others on numerous planes to create a flowering and fluorescent flow within a group, when mania instead represents a single singe of self, which leads to a brilliant burnout obvious only outside of one’s egocentric self.

Here, I feel the juxtaposition of the giant knife in relation to the throw-away and minuscule matter of the blackberry pie is a metaphor for the mental acuity experienced during any bout of disordered eating, which unfortunately incentivizes further disordered behavior. That heightened obsessive capacity which I’ve experienced during long-term situations with childhood binge-eating disorder and obesity, and especially teenage anorexia nervosa, certainly involves the mind’s self-harming sharpness essentially gutting and rendering joyless all aspects of nutritious self-care.

The wine opener intersecting the picture of the bowl on the mindfulness while eating book could represent brief struggles I had with binge-drinking in my late teenage years, especially in situations where I felt socially anxious, which was basically any gathering involving more than a small group of three to five people; so basically, any “party”, especially any gatherings attended by Wade Kubat who I’ve mentioned before on this Tumblr as a former abusive ex-boyfriend, who was my most influential partner prior to coupling with my now-marriage partner JP.

These objects also interact with the “Toxic Parenting” book to illustrate that my parents have issues with alcohol. They usually drink at least five servings each of the substance daily, though this overuse fluctuates with personal resolve to overcome what is likely an addiction. How can one mindfully eat and care for the self in a familial environment rendered toxic by avoidable parental foibles? I’m sure all of us would like to know. I believe many of my family members also struggle with shades of narcissistic personality disorder. I’ve always been paranoid about my own measure in this category, though have actually scored much less than average despite my giftedness, (giftedness being random, absurd, and conferred at birth). My dad certainly has aggression issues, and my mother has panic disorder where she cannot drive by herself past a certain 20 minute radius from our adjacent houses in South Orange County, and I certainly struggle with both aggression and panic in my dual diagnoses of bipolar I disorder with psychosis, and complex PTSD.

When I am stable, which was rarely until recently, I can be aware of the maxim that one should not offer unsolicited emotional and/or mental health advice to anyone not asking, and that people who do not detect any problems are incapable of change. But when I am manic, psychotic, depressed, or basically agitated outside of mood states, I am very vocal to everyone’s detriment about habits that could be converted to better practices, almost always to deafened ears, and basically solicited screaming. I’m trying to accept now that you can analyze people insightfully at a distance, and never contact them or converse with them about definite issues you’ve observed them perpetrating in singularity or with others.

“The Store of the Worlds” is a book I haven’t yet read, but it is science fiction and the idea of “store” or “storage” reminds me of the slogan of Amazon.com as an “everything store”. Worlds as plural reminds me of the astrophysical theory of multiple universes. I also enjoyed the aesthetic consonance of the asphalt sphere and clouds, combined with the blackberry pie filling. The idea that material objects are objets de art in an interactive conceptual performance or game is very dear to me, as my partner studies video game design with a focus on virtual and augmented reality insofar as self-education, and also an internship at Anomaly, a media company specializing in augmented reality comic books and children’s books. JP will be beginning USC’s 3-year masters program in these topics next fall.

The vanilla Soylent is a reference to Soylent Green, a science-fiction food substance made of human remains in a post-apocalyptic future with basically no edible resources. I also chose Soylent due to its use mainly by Silicon Valley types from high entrepreneurs to desk drones, and how it encapsulates a workaholic mode of existence where one cannot enjoy the sensual pleasures of self-sufficiency and artistry in inventing infinity from rarefied resources. The cap says “crushed red pepper”, and when I hear the word “crush”, I think of crowds being contained against their will, and of romantic entanglements that are harmful to the soul such as Dante or Werther, and similar to basically all of my relationships before my marriage. Red reminds me of “Autobiography of Red”, which I still need to finish reading, but which was lent to me while I was an active student at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles a few years ago studying philosophy and comparative literature; (I am currently on extended medical leave, and am no longer friends with Michelle Bollinger who lent me the book due to attempting to kiss her while drunk at a Technicolor Tree Tribe party, to which she probably overreacted by ghosting me in partnership with our mutual friend Susan Lin, who studied gender/media, arts, and practice, and works in the Asian-American and female film and publishing industries). Essentially, the idea is that, should there be an apocalypse, the spiciest humans insofar as spirit shall rise to cap the vanilla monsoons, vanilla itself also having a fraught history as far as colonialist sourcing.

The trash bags are present, but not being used, to demonstrate a lack of present mind and mindfulness, and the wacky, whimsical whirlwind of mania. The green title is on “Overcoming Bipolar Disorder”, but is obviously not being used at this point in time. Also, the electronics equipment present, but disconnected, dark and ominous, represents a lack of self-awareness during mania and perhaps the absence of self-awareness which afflicts our entire generation. The black object to the right which is half in the frame is an empty cup-holder, so the cup is neither half full nor empty, but absent despite expectations once again. The scraps of paper include a page ripped out from The Great Courses catalogue, which offers academics-independent classes in all arenas and which I love, and a jury duty summons for my partner, which sums up the relation between what we ideally would prefer to invest our time in, versus the quantum quotidian wherein we are forced or pressured into activities which are thankless and stressful.

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depression-is-a-liar · 7 years

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Self-post #41

“The (supposed) virtues of boredom”

05.06.17

After pretty much a year and half of successfully staving of depression, I find myself concerned about whether I’m relapsing. Concerned? No, the correct word is in fact “TERRIFIED”. For some time I’ve felt so strong, so resilient, so capable. Basically normal. This is not something I was ever really acquainted with, having dealt with turbulent emotions and extreme self-critical attitudes for most my life. Three years of therapy really did help me work through so much; it made me come to terms with a lot of my past and learn to forgive myself for being less than perfect.

So what has changed? Why now?

I haven’t been able to see a therapist for 8 months since I left Nottingham. I’m so stretched financially these days, I can no longer afford it. I knew this might eventually become a problem for me, and it’s certainly not a decision I wanted to make, but this is a reality I had to reluctantly confront. It’s hard not having a safe pair of ears on hand to help me process all my crazy on a fairly consistent basis. Don’t get me wrong, I share with friends, I don’t hold back. But I am wary to never burden anyone on a regular basis. I can’t accept being a burden to someone again, and it isn’t anyone’s responsibility to shoulder that. I take responsibility for my own happiness. Unfortunately, I don’t see my friends nearly as often as I would like, so the face-to-face support I get is also limited, and I haven’t really made any friends here.

Nevertheless, I have no specific reasons to feel so blue. Money worries aside, there hasn’t been any insurmountable disappointment or trauma that’s transpired. How I’m feeling lately is somewhat distinct to prior episodes though. It’s not so much marked by an ever pervasive sense of self-hatred and disgust, but rather it’s a feeling of general emptiness. Boredom. Apathy. Sprinkled with just a small dose of melancholy and occasional despair. I’m struggling to understand the purpose to my daily existence. Have I lost my value? Did I ever have any? What’s the point of it all?

My current relationship isn’t helping I suppose. He’s pretty much been depressed for a while (albeit moderate and not severe), and so I was trying not follow suit and instead be the pillar (for once). I feel like my attempts are failing in that respect and that I’m not being as compassionate/empathetic enough as is required. I honestly feel like I’m failing in a lot of senses when it comes to being the partner that he deserves actually. It almost seems like more karmic retributition. Ask me about work, hobbies and friends and while there is more I could achieve in these areas, I know I’m doing the best I can. But as a girlfriend, I’m feeling like I’m just not cut out for this whole long-term monogamous relationship thing and all its limitations. I’d rather not get into that now though, but it’s occured to me that it really is like Alain de Botton says; the romantic hopes that a relationship could be the solution for existential loneliness, but of course it isn’t. You’re still alone at the end of the day. I felt less alone at the start (of the relationship), but the feeling has returned and now I act alarmed, when I really shouldn’t be. You can’t escape yourself and sooner or later you’re left feeling too exposed with your flaws laid bare.

My mood has shifted like a pendulum from one extreme to the next. Tom thinks it’s expected, but I don’t get it when I was doing so great. I had completed the introductory Buddhism course I had been meaning to do for years, and was onto the next one, finally grasping the principles of meditation. There were other people in the class that exuded a warmness and it was so refreshing to be beside other people who were openly vulnerable and engaged in their own journey of self improvement. Earlier this year I also started yoga, and then pilates. I still hate my body but at least I’m developing some form of more compassionate relationship with it. These have all been big steps for me, not to be dismissed. I’m very proud of myself. However, after the course ended, my state of mind seemed to take a sharp decline, and I’m finding myself worse now than when I started. It almost doesn’t make sense. Was it too many truths for me to handle? Is my ego in a war against me to retain its identity of suffering and chaos? Did the prapañca go up a few notches into hyperdrive in order to overcompensate?

Despair is not imminent yet, as I kinda know what needs to be done. So, this is my plan (it almost reads like a new year’s resolution list but let’s call it a quick recovery plan instead):

The second meditation course starts today (level 2), and this time the habit needs to stick. I need prescribe to my daily meditation in a near religious fashion. I can’t afford therapy but I can afford to sit still for 20 minutes a day and observe my mind. I got a glimpse of how out of control it was when going through the first course and I know my life needs this. My mind needs to be harnessed, especially since I’m aware it’s doing all it can to avoid being present. From reactivity to responsiveness.

Reduce the weed (I’m not even enjoying it anymore, it’s just an ingrained habit at this point). I’m working on it (three weeks without any!). I have a flatmate moving in tomorrow (another choice I didn’t want to have to make), which will force me to quit this daily habit. Hey, who knows, maybe the company won’t be such a bad thing either?

Get a flatmate to help with the financial burden of living in Cambridge (done).

Lower my expectations when it comes to what my boyfriend can do to help me through this. My happiness is my responsibility, no one elses. He’s going through his own struggle at the moment and I know how selfish depression can make you. I can’t take it personally or punish him for it.

Reconnect with old friends. Put myself in situations where I can meet new people and make new friends, even if it’s slightly unconventional and out of my comfort zone.

Write more. I stopped writing and I don’t think that’s been helpful when I don’t exactly have many other outlets. Who knows? Maybe my words can touch someone, make them feel less alone?

Lastly, stop resisting. The ebbs and flows are the natural cycle of life, and I musn’t get attached to any one state. It’s great to be happy, but it’s fine to be sad too (in a bittersweet kind of way). It’s all part of the experience. The more I try to resist my sadness (and boredom) the more I will suffer as a result. Therefore, I need to gently embrace it and pull it in a bit closer to me. Try and understand what is contained in its message – what growth is still required? What wounds have I neglected to address? Why is stillness linked to discomfort? Why do feelings of boredom comes up persistently as a theme?

Worst comes to worst I will track down a therapist nearby and use some of the money I get from renting out the spare room to go to forthnightly sessions again. I have debts to pay off though so it wouldn’t be ideal, but I refuse to allow myself to sink again. I deserve peace and contentment in this life. Secondary suffering isn’t necessary or productive.

#my posts #self posts #depression #recovery #healing

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legault · 7 years

Text

Perfect (Rarepair Week Day 3, Azama/Subaki, Curious)

Title: Perfect

Author: legault/pinksnowboots (fic blog)

Warnings: Brief mentions of blood, vague kink-related content, intentional self-injury (but not in the way that self-harm typically implies), generally unhealthy relationship, non-explicit mentions of sex

Words: 4,665

Summary: Every time Azama catches so much as a glimpse of Subaki, his fingers itch with the desire to take him apart, piece by camellia-scented piece.

An incredibly late contribution for Day 3 of @ferarepair-week2k17-I’m very glad to see that y’all are going to keep reblogging for a week or so because I still am trying to finish out all 7 days but I’m several days behind...whoops.

AO3 Link

Whenever people ask Azama why he decided to become a monk and devote his life to healing others, he tells them it’s because people say the most fascinating things when they think they’re about to die. Most people think it’s a dark joke and laugh uncomfortably, not realizing til much later that he’s entirely serious.

When he first meets Subaki, Subaki doesn’t laugh, just looks at him quizzically, like Azama is an animal that he’s seen before but he just can’t remember the name of.

“This is where most people laugh.” Azama supplies helpfully.

“Why would I laugh?” Subaki says, voice polished smooth as rocks in a stream and flowing like honey. “I didn’t think it was funny.”

Azama’s grin grows even wider. “Oh, it’s going to be very fun to know you.”

“I’m assuming you’re trying to say that it’s nice to meet me,” Subaki’s voice is the epitome of polite disinterest and Azama can’t wait to change that. “And for politeness’ sake, I say likewise to you. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to be off.”

Subaki retreats without so much as a glance back at Azama, leaving the scent of camellia blossoms in his wake.

Azama’s mother had been a basara and his father had been a clockmaker; their marriage was peaceful but not particularly joyful and Azama figured out from a young age that they stayed together because it was easier than starting over.

From his mother, Azama had inherited his mild talent for magic and his mild talent for lances. She tried to teach him both and he took to neither, remaining just mediocre enough that she eventually gave up on trying to make him care. His becoming a monk had been as much teenage rebellion against her idea of what he should be able to do as it had been anything else.

Azama had also inherited his father’s insatiable curiosity and propensity for taking things apart to see what makes them tick, the only difference being that Azama found humans infinitely more fascinating than clocks.

Getting under people’s skin in order to get to the machinery underneath was his dearest hobby, nay, his calling, and he never met someone who’s mind he wanted to get into more than Subaki. Every time Azama catches so much as a glimpse of Subaki, his fingers itch with the desire to take him apart, piece by camellia-scented piece.

“You’ve really got the perfect situation figures out with this whole perfection deal.” Azama says conversationally, without preamble. “If anyone ever points out your imperfections, you can brush them off because they are imperfect by sheer virtue of not being you. It’s quite clever, really.”

Subaki looks up from grooming his pegasus, annoyed. “Do you have a point, Azama?”

“Just making conversation. Since you’re perfect, I figured you would be a great conversation partner.”

“I am.” Subaki says. “Perhaps you’re just not cultured enough to appreciate it.”

“Arrogant and rude?” Azama tries to feign shock, but he’s enjoying himself too much. “Doesn’t sound very perfect to me.”

“There’s nothing wrong with confidence and a desire to be treated with respect.” Subaki says, brows furrowed.

“Ah ah, careful! If you leave your face like that, you’ll get wrinkles.” Azama warns gleefully.

Subaki’s face twitches as his desire to maintain his looks conflicts with his absolute annoyance with the entire situation and Azama can’t help laughing out loud.

“Well, I’m off to minister to the weary and cure the sick, but this has been lovely.” He says, giving Subaki a jaunty wave. “I’m still not convinced of the perfection of your conversational skills, so I hope we can chat again later.”

Azama asks almost every member of the Hoshidan court about Subaki. It’s a mixed bag in terms of results; Saizo looks at him as if he’s insane and also potentially suicidal, Oboro sneers and insults his hair, and Hana almost decks him, but he scrapes together some information from Hinata and Orochi.

Hinoka calls him in to ask him about it, looking weary as a mother with too many disobedient children. It is one of Azama’s favorite expressions, second only to her defiant rage.

“Why are you interrogating the whole court about Subaki?” She asks, face pinched in anticipation of the answer.

“I’m providing him with spiritual counseling.” Azama says. The more blatant the lie, the more likely it is to be believed. “The more I know about him, the better I can help him.”

Hinoka looks at him with a face that is part-reproach, part-disbelief, part-throwing her hands up and ridding herself of any responsibility for the situation. It is Azama’s fifth favorite Hinoka expression.

“Did anyone believe that load of pegasus shit?”

“Hinata.” Azama says, and Hinoka rolls her eyes because of course he did. “And Setsuna, of course. Sakura probably would have but I didn’t bother her out of respect for you, and Oboro might have believed me but she didn’t listen to me long enough to find out.”

“If you talked to all the retainers, you’re lucky you got out unscathed. I wouldn’t be responsible for your recovery if Hana put a hole in you.”

“Ah, but then you’d have to find a new retainer,” Azama says. “And I’m irreplaceable.”

“Unfortunately.” Hinoka mumbles, under her breath.

Azama finds out that Subaki had a younger sister who had thought that he could do no wrong, that he was perfect. They had been very close, but she had been killed along with his parents when their village was attacked by bandits. Subaki was the only one who survived long enough to be rescued by the Hoshidan sky knights. Without a home to go back to, he decided to join the sky knights and eventually worked his way up to being a royal retainer.

“You don’t have to worry about being perfect for your sister, you know.” Azama tells Subaki. He’s found that starting conversations with pleasantries does nothing but waste valuable time before Subaki storms off, annoyed.

His words have the desired effect. Subaki stiffens instantly, tension filling his frame.

“What are you talking about?” Subaki asks, voice low and dangerous.

“Your sister. I’m guessing your little perfection thing comes from her idolizing you when she was alive. You feel guilty that you couldn’t protect her and so you strive for perfection to live up to her expectations and to avoid the same thing happening to Lady Sakura, who you view as a proxy for your dead sister.” Azama says, breezily as if he were discussing the weather. “You shouldn’t worry about it though, since you’re sister’s dead and couldn’t care less about whether you’re perfect or not.”

“I prefer to think that my sister is still with me.” Subaki says, body still on high alert.

“You can prefer to think anything you want, but it won’t change the reality of the situation.” Azama says. “Dead is dead is dead. No point moping about it.”

“Aren’t you a monk?” Subaki asks, incredulous. “You’re supposed to believe in the afterlife and bringing peace into people’s lives, not taking it away.”

“Well, the church and I have a few fundamental disagreements, but that’s ok.” Azama says. “I took the job anyway because I look good in the robes.”

Subaki looks at him incredulously. “You’re unbelievable.”

“So I’ve been told.” Azama replies cheerfully.

“I hate you.” Subaki says, voice much more emotional than his normal smooth baritone.

“I think I can live with that. It means that you’re thinking about me.” Azama says, and leaves Subaki glaring and clenching his fists.

Azama has always known how to wield a lance, having been taught by his mother at an early age. But he finds inflicting violence much more boring than watching others do it and then healing them so they can inflict more violence, so when he becomes a monk he embraces the nonviolent lifestyle and pretends to be completely inept with weapons.

“Which end is the stabby end?” He asks Hinoka, holding one of her javelins upside down and tilting it like he would a staff.

“Don’t play dumb.” Hinoka rolls her eyes. “I’ve seen you cleaning my weapons, I can tell you know how to fight.”

“Perhaps.” Azama admits, thrusting with the blunt end of the javelin. “But I’ve taken a solemn vow of nonviolence, so cleaning lances is all I will do.”

“So you’re saying you’d prefer to let people die protecting you rather than fight alongside them?”

“You could interpret it that way, I suppose.” Azama says. “Ideally, they won’t die because I’ll heal them.”

He extends the javelin like he would a heal staff, but the javelin is much longer and the sharp end nicks his leg.

“Whoops.” Azama looks completely unconcerned that he’s bleeding onto his robes. Hinoka has that dumbfounded look on again, the one that she wears whenever she’s asking herself why the hell she choose such worthless retainers.

It’s an expression Azama sees a lot.

“Fine, have it your way.” She says, giving up. “But if we ever get into a situation where things are so dire that we need every last man, I want you to pick up a lance right side up and fight by my side.”

“Sure.” Azama agrees. “But only if I get to pretend that I’ve suddenly learned how to use lances thanks to the magic of master seals. I don’t get many chances to show off my theatrical ability.”

“Whatever.” Hinoka says. “As long as you fight with us afterwards, I couldn’t care less how you reveal it.”

Subaki hasn’t been talking to him lately, and Azama is mildly put out, even though he most likely deserves it. Luckily, Azama doesn’t believe in absolute morality; he also doesn’t believe in fate, which means that he has no problem tracking Subaki down instead of leaving it up to chance.

“Let’s spar.” Azama says as he walks up behind Subaki, who is grooming his pegasus.

Subaki jumps in surprise, turns around to glare at Azama. “What, are you going to hit me with a bloom festal?”

“No, with lances.” Azama says.

Subaki stares at him incredulously, a look that Azama has grown quite familiar with. Luckily, he likes it. “You don’t use lances.” He says, talking slowly like Azama is a child, or a very, very stupid adult.

“Then it should be easy for you to win.”

Subaki hesitates, thinking it over. “Fine.” He eventually agrees. “But only because I need to blow off steam, and you can’t get mad if I hurt you.”

"Same to you.” Azama shoots back.

Subaki leaves his pegasus behind as they head to the training grounds, because even though he is willing to fight someone who doesn’t know how to use a lance, he’s not willing to do so on a pegasus, because that would just be unfair. They both select practice lances and square off against each other, Subaki holding his lance fiercely with perfect form, while Azama waves it around like a flag.

“Ready?” Azama calls out.

“If you are.” Subaki says, and charges.

Much to Subaki’s surprise, Azama blocks his thrust, although he looks like he barely moved. Taking advantage of Subaki’s confusion, he counterstrikes, pushes him backwards. Subaki does not stay stunned for long but the few minutes for which he is are incredibly satisfying.

They trade blows back and forth; it is a good fight, but once Subaki recovers from the shock that Azama does know his way around a lance after all, it becomes clear that Subaki is still the more skilled of the two. He pushes Azama back until his back touches the wall, disarms him with a quick twist of his lance, and presses the end of his lance to Azama’s throat.

“I win.” Subaki says, breathing a little hard.

“Well,” Azama says, pushing the lance away with his hand as casually as if he were swatting a fly. “I suppose you had to at least once.”

“I’m surprised you’re not secretly an archer.” Subaki grumbles as he puts away his lance. “It would be just like you to want to bring me down to your level.”

Azama smiles, showing all his teeth. “I don’t need arrows to do that.”

Every few days, Azama gets bored and bugs Subaki about his perfection, listing ridiculous things upon ridiculous things in an attempt to make Subaki admit that he’s not perfect. Azama has little hope of succeeding, but the game itself is quite fun.

“We know that you take meticulous care of your hair and body.” Azama says. “And we know that you are a first-class Hoshidan Sky Knight. But there’s still so much about you that we don’t know.”

"What’s your point?” Subaki says curtly, unsure where this is going but sure that he is not going to like it.

“I just think it’s interesting that you claim to be perfect, but don’t give us any proof other than that you think you are, and since you’re perfect you can’t be wrong.” Azama shrugs. “It’s a little thing called circular logic, but since you’re perfect, I’m guessing you already know that.”

“Ok, name one flaw of mine.” Subaki challenges.

“That’s not really a fair challenge, because I haven’t gotten the chance to verify your qualities firsthand.” Azama says, voice deceptively light. “I know that you’re a skilled fighter, because we’ve sparred. I know that you have impressive social skills because I’ve observed you talking with others. I know that you have a beautiful face and a very attractive body, because I have eyes. But I don’t know whether you know how to use that body, so it wouldn’t really be fair to call you perfect, now would it?”

“What are you saying?” Subaki grits out, voice strained. “That you won’t admit that I’m perfect unless I fuck you?”

“Well, I’d personally prefer that I be the one to fuck you.” Azama says, casually as if he were discussing the weather. “But in essence, yes.”

“You’re crazy.” Subaki says.

Azama flashes a smile at him. “So I’ve been told.”

“Why do you think,” Subaki says desperately. “That I care what you think about me at all?”

“Maybe you don’t.” Azama shrugs again. “It’s just an offer.”

Subaki stares at him, fists clenched, thinking so hard that Azama can picture his brain working, gears whirring like the insides of a beautiful, beautiful clock that’s been wound much too tight. He doesn’t seem to be sure who he’s more concerned about arguing with, Azama or himself.

“Fine.” Subaki finally says, looking at Azama defiantly.

“What what that?”

“Fine.” Subaki repeats. “I’ll do it. But only to prove you wrong.”

To his surprise, Azama bursts out laughing, loud peals of laughter ringing out through the camp. Subaki looks around frantically, hoping that Azama’s cackling has not drawn the attention of anyone nearby.

“What’s so funny?” Subaki hisses.

“You never stop surprising me.” Azama replies. “I didn’t think you’d actually be willing to let me fuck you just to prove a point.”

“Maybe that shows that you should stop underestimating me.”

“Maybe. Well, this has been fun, but you can stop with the false bravado, I’m not going to call your bluff today.” Azama says. “I wouldn’t fuck someone who’s only agreed because he feels like he was cornered.”

“So you were the one bluffing!” Subaki exclaims, stuck somewhere between frustration and mad, wild relief.

“I wouldn’t say that. I’d be happy to carry through on my end of the deal, but as a man of the cloth, I do have a moral code to uphold, and consent is a very important part of that.” Azama grins toothily. “If you ever decide you want to take me up on the offer of your own free will, you know where I live.”

“Your morals force you to respect consent when it comes to sex, but they don’t prevent you from trying to psychologically torture everyone you meet?”

“What can I say?” Azama says. “The gods move in mysterious ways, and I am but their humble servant.”

Their battles grow fiercer and more frequent and Hinoka tells Azama that it is time for him to start pulling his weight and using an actual weapon like any other decent retainer, tossing a master seal at him and warning him not to make too big of a scene.

Azama takes full advantage of his fake class change, casting a faulty heal staff to create a burst of light as he pretends to activate the master seal. Before the light subsides, he slips the master seal into his robe and grabs a lance he’d stashed nearby.

“Oh my, I suddenly know how to use a lance!” Azama exclaims, making a few experimental thrusts. “How lovely!”

Subaki peers at him suspiciously from his position nearby. Azama may have chosen this location strategically, knowing that Subaki always cleans his lance hear at this time of day, but that’s neither here nor there.

“Why didn’t your clothes change when you used the master seal?” Subaki asks loudly.

Azama flashes Subaki a bright smile. “Maybe it’s because I’m already perfect, just the way I am.”

“Help me practice.” Azama tells Subaki, interrupting an incredibly boring conversation he and Hana were having about the merits of different types of metal used in forging weapons.

“You do realize that it’s considered good manners to greet someone before launching into a conversation?” Subaki says dryly, unamused. Hana glares at him.

“Manners are a construct created by humans attempting to bring order into a chaotic world by imposing arbitrary moral values onto it.” Azama replies. “But if it makes you feel better, good afternoon Subaki, I hope that you are faring well on this lovely wartime day. If it pleases you, I would greatly appreciate your help in practicing for the next battle.”

Hana looks like she is about to yell at him for deliberately ignoring her, but Subaki puts a hand on her shoulder and instead of yelling, she turns her glare onto Subaki, shrugs his hand off her shoulder, and flounces away.

Subaki looks at Hana’s retreating back, looks back at Azama, looks at Hana again. Azama figures there’s about a 50% chance that he can goad Subaki into doing what he wants, but that might get lower if Subaki’s chivalry thing kicks in.

“Fine.” Subaki says. “Let me go get my lance.”

“Only,” He adds quickly. “Because I’m angry at you and trying to stab you in the name of sparring sounds quite appealing right now.”

Azama follows Subaki to his tent and then to the clearing that the troops like to spar in, letting Subaki get out his lance and drop into fighting stance before saying. “Actually, I didn’t need your help with lances. I need your help to practice healing.”

Subaki looks like he wants to hurl his lance at Azama like a javelin. “What.” He says, intonation more like a threat than a question.

“Healing takes practice too, in case you didn’t realize.” Azama says. “A lot of non-healers think that the rod does all the work, but that’s not true. It takes concentration for the wielder to effectively channel his or her magic through the rod.”

“That doesn’t explain why you need me.”

“I can’t practice healing without wounds, and I can’t heal myself. It’s the rule, you know.” Azama says.

“What rule?” Subaki asks, suspicious.

“The rule of magic, of course.” Azama says. His moral code does not forbid lying, as long as the lies are so blatant that the listener is shocked into believing them.

“The rule of magic...” Subaki repeats incredulously, then shakes his head, deciding that it is not worth it. “So let me get this straight. You want me to injure myself so you can practice healing? Why on earth would I agree to this?”

“Because without practice, I cannot learn to heal more effectively. And my healing skills could make the difference between life and death on the battlefield. Your death, perhaps. Or even the death of Lady Sakura.” Azama says. “If you’d prefer, I can be the one to injure you.”

“No, I’ll do it myself.” Subaki replies quickly, then realizes what he has just said. “Wait, I never said I would do this at all!”

“I believe you just did. You can back out if you want, but I don’t know if that would be very perfect of you.”

Subaki is far too easy to back into a corner, and Azama loves it about him.

Subaki inspects his lance, as if trying to figure out the easiest way to cause an injury without it being too painful.

Azama hands him a knife. “Try this, it might be easier.”

Subaki takes it without meeting Azama’s eyes, holds it over his left forearm and after a moment’s hesitation, draws a shallow gash down his arm, wincing as the knife touches his skin.

Subaki stares at the thin red line as blood begins to well up, barely acknowledging Azama until he murmurs a few words and waves his bloom festal, making the wound close up before Subaki’s eyes, blood seeming to evaporate into thin air.

“This is wrong.” Subaki says, voice sounding far away. “This is not normal.”

“Sure it is.” Azama says. “All you have to do is redefine what you think is normal. Now, again.”

Subaki repeats the motion on the other arm this time, and Azama heals him so quickly that Subaki barely sees any red.

“That was too easy. Do another spot this time, and try to make it deeper.”

Subaki obeys as if entranced, rolling up one leg of his light cotton trousers to reveal the skin of his calf. He brings the knife to his skin again, and Azama can tell by the twitching in his face that he is pushing harder.

Azama heals him again, and Subaki moves onto the other leg without prompting, looking only at the wounds as they open and close without sparing a glance for Azama.

They continue the pattern of harming and healing several times, Subaki creating wounds and Azama making them disappear.

How symbolic. Azama thinks. Or maybe ironic.

With every glow of the bloom festal Subaki looks more and more distant, and Azama thinks that although his experiment has been quite fruitful, it may be time to bring Subaki back to earth.

“Only one more.” Azama says, and Subaki starts at the sound of his voice. “Let me do it this time.”

Wordlessly, Subaki hands him the knife.

Subaki’s shirt has a lower neckline than he usually wears, leaving his collarbone exposed. Azama chooses that spot to place the knife and Subaki shivers when he feels it touch his skin, then grows deathly still as Azama opens up a new wound, longer and deeper than the previous ones.

He puts down the knife and picks up the bloom festal, but pauses before casting the spell, gazing at Subaki as an artist might gaze at their work. Subaki does not shirk from his gaze this time, closes his eyes and runs his fingers along the wound as it closes.

Subaki does not open his eyes until the entire gash is healed.

“Will that leave a scar?” He asks, trying to get a good look at the skin that was just healed.

“No. For a wound that minor, an experienced healer like myself should have to problem healing without leaving a scar.”

“Good.” Subaki says, rubbing his fingers over his collarbone and looking disappointed.

“What do you think love is?” Azama asks Subaki, without preamble. It is a trite question with many stupid answers and few good ones, but Azama finds it interesting to hear which stupid answer people choose.

“Love is when you care for someone despite their flaws.” Subaki answers almost instantly.

It is a trite answer, but it is delicious anyways, and Azama savors it.

“But then, if you have no flaws, how will you ever know if anyone truly loves you?” Azama asks.

Subaki does not answer, and Azama reflects that Subaki’s flaws are what he likes the best.

The battles grow harsher and Azama’s hands become more accustomed to the feel of his lance than of his rod, although they certainly have need of both. Everyone is weary, and when Azama tries to goad Subaki into bickering with him, Subaki only glares.

“Be careful, you’ll get wrinkles!” Azama calls to him, enjoying the sight of Subaki’s furrowed brow.

But Subaki doesn't respond, just turns away in the direction of his tent, and Azama is much more bothered than he has any right to be.

During their next battle, Subaki is struck across the cheek with a shuriken coated with some kind of poison. The shuriken itself barely hurts him, but the poison makes his muscles seize up, and only the combination of Azura’s song and Azama’s staff restore him to a somewhat normal condition.

After the battle, Subaki glances into the reflection of Benny’s armor by accident and sees that the shuriken left a scar. He makes a strangled sound as his hand flies to his cheek, ignoring Benny’s concern.

Stunned, Subaki stables his pegasus, sheds half his armor, stares at himself in the small mirror he keeps in his tent, sheds the other half of his armor, breaks the mirror and does not clean up the pieces, and marches angrily to Azama’s tent.

Azama opens the tent flap before Subaki reaches it and for once, neither of them say anything as Subaki storms in, grabs Azama’s forearms, digging his nails in much too hard, and puts his mouth over Azama’s like a plea.

Even now, Subaki kisses gently and with refinement, the very epitome of a gentleman. It would be perfect for some youngest daughter of a noble family wanting to swept off her feet by a dashing night, but Azama is no blushing maiden. He does not like the way that Subaki kisses and so he does not let Subaki kiss him for long, choosing instead to move his mouth to Subaki’s neck and bite down, hard.

Subaki gasps breathlessly and his entire body shivers, and he lets Azama bite him again, lets Azama draw him down onto his tiny cot and undress him, lets Azama lay him bare and fuck him.

Azama peels off Subaki’s clothes meticulously and with mechanical precision, and Subaki feels his layers removed one by one until all that remains is the clockwork within, whirring madly as his heartbeat quickens every time Azama touches him.

Azama takes him apart with every touch, with deft fingers and chapped lips and sharp teeth unraveling more and more of the identity that Subaki has spent years weaving, and Subaki cannot help but cry out for more.

As he fucks Subaki, Azama caresses his face, surprisingly gentle, and whispers that he is so good, that he is perfect, and Subaki shudders under his touch because he knows that it is a lie.

“What about you? What do you think love is?” Subaki asks out of the blue one day, picking up a thread of conversation that has been hanging loose for weeks.

“If you even believe in love, that is.” He adds.

Azama considers it. “I believe in love, I’m just not sure it’s a concept that applies to me.”

Subaki’s face is contemplative, free of relief or disappointment.

“But if I did want to engage in the silly practice of defining abstract concepts.” Azama adds. “I think I’d say that love is when you never get bored.”

Subaki is naked when they next hear the horns that signal an ambush; he grabs his pants and Azama tosses him a shirt and they rush out of the tent, weapons in hand. Even disheveled and disoriented and pegasus-less, Subaki rushes to the front lines, recklessly brave and bravely reckless.

Azama hangs back and watches him charge into the fray, hair full of tangles, neck covered in bite marks, and mind full of Azama.

Perfect. He thinks.

#ferarepairweek2k17 #azama #subaki #fire emblem #fire emblem fates #azama/subaki #this fic has been stuck in my head for like 2 weeks now and i'm not quite sure if i'm satisfied with it...#anyway i think this is a true rarepair this is literally the second azama/subaki fic on ao3 #azama is tough to write

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mrsteveecook · 5 years

Text

my boss shakes men’s hands but fist-bumps women, streaming movies at work, and more

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…

1. My boss shakes hands with men, but fist-bumps with women

My manager does this thing that annoys me but I don’t know if I should address it or just let it go. Whenever he says goodbye to my male colleagues, he shakes their hand. Whenever he says goodbye to me (or any of my female colleagues), he opts for a fist bump. There are more men than women on our team so oftentimes there’s a whole bunch of handshakes and then I get an awkward fist bump. It’s frustrating because it makes me feel singled out and separate from the rest of the team. I’ve even tried sticking my hand out and forcing a handshake, but the next time I see him we’re back to the fist bump. (He did shake it when I essentially forced him to, but he looked a bit uncomfortable and there was definite awkward laughter.)

I have a decent relationship with him, but he doesn’t seem very aware of how women are treated differently in our very male-dominated workplace. I think I could address it with him, but it will be awkward and I don’t know if it’s worth the effort. Should I just let this go? Any advice?

Yes, address it. This is a workplace, and he shouldn’t be treating men and women differently, even with something like handshakes vs. fist bumps.

I’d simply raise it with him in private and say, “I’ve noticed you frequently shake the hands of the men here, but seem to avoid doing it with women. Any reason?”

There are some people who doesn’t shake hands with the opposite sex for religious reasons. If that’s the situation, it would have been better for him to explain that up-front rather than leaving you to wonder why he was treating you differently, but it’s also possible he thought he could avoid calling attention to it that way and thus lessen people’s discomfort, not realizing that the mystery was actually adding to it. (And really, if that’s the situation, he might be better off stopping the frequent hand-shaking altogether.)

But if that’s not the case, and it’s just some weird issue of his about Shaking the Delicate Hands of Ladies, then you can say, “When I’m at work, I’d like to be treated like everyone else and not seen as a woman first and a colleague second. So going forward, if hand-shaking is happening, can I ask that you not distinguish by gender?”

2. Streaming Netflix at work

I have a relatively low stakes sort of question I’d love to get your take on. What’s your position on streaming (Netflix, YouTube, and the like) at work? I work in an editorial position for a digital media company. More or less, I spend eight hours in front of my computer, editing articles, emailing writers, and dealing with our freelancer budget. Sometimes I’ll stream clips from Last Week Tonight or other late-night interview shows on my phone. I never use the company wifi (I’ve been blessed with a large unlimited data plan) and the content is safe for work. I walked past a coworker’s desk a few times the other day, and she was also watching a show on her phone. In my mind, I equate this to listening to music or a podcast, but I can see how some higher-ups might not love the idea of people catching up on TV while working.

I know everyone hates the word “optics,” but … this is a situation where optics matter. The reality is, if someone can see that you have a TV show playing while you work, to a lot of people it’s going to read as “not fully engaged in her work” — especially to people who don’t interact with you much or realize that the nature of your work lets you do this without impact. And the opinions of some of those people will matter, if they’re higher up than you and have influence over you directly or indirectly.

This is silly, because most people wouldn’t have the same reaction if you were listening to a podcast via headphones. (Actually, some people even feel uneasy about that — just not nearly as many of them.) But it’s a real reaction people have, and you need to factor it in.

When something is just about how something looks and doesn’t have any real work impact, there’s a temptation to say, “Well, screw it. People shouldn’t think that, and therefore I’m not going to cater to that.” And sometimes that makes sense. But when it’s about something like your ability to watch TV while you work — i.e., not hugely important or something with high stakes — sometimes you’re better off accepting the optics won’t be good and choosing a different option.

If lots of people in your office do it, then it’s fine in your culture. But if hardly anyone does, I’d stick with audio content instead.

3. My colleague is taking months off while his parent is ill, and I need him at work

I began a new job in February and am one of two people working full-time to start up a large, international project. My counterpart, Fergus, has been at the company for over 10 years, and is a wealth of knowledge at this critical time in the project inception.

My first two weeks, Fergus was on vacation, and on his last day of vacation he contacted our manager to say that his mother was very ill and he would be taking additional time off. Fergus’ mother is dying — it could be a matter of weeks or it could be many months. Fergus understandably wants to spend as much time with her as possible. Fergus is 50, so I assume his mother is in her 70s or 80s.

During my two months on the job, Fergus has been in the office three days, and is scheduled to be in the office for a couple of days in early April. Beyond that, it seems we’re operating on a “wait and see” basis when he will come back to work. I’m coordinating an international workshop to kick off our project in May (normally it would be both of us coordinating this workshop, with him taking the lead), but he has said that is his participation at the workshop is not guaranteed. We might not know until the very last minute whether he will be leading sessions, etc.

I’ve talked with my manager about having her take on some of Fergus’ tasks, which she has been willing to do and I’m very grateful. But I’m curious as to what the norm is in this type of situation. At what point do I insist on getting additional support to cover Fergus’ work? I’m trying to balance my compassion for Fergus (knowing that I, too, would ideally want to spend as much time as possible with my parent) with my own feelings of being swamped every day at work and not knowing when support may come. I feel like I can’t mention my work frustrations without coming across as an insensitive jerk. My company has a *very* generous leave policy, so this could conceivably go on for months. And if/when his mother does pass away, I expect Fergus will take bereavement leave as well. I just had my first performance review for my probation period, and I’m meeting expectations — but I had been hoping to excel in my new role, instead of just scraping by, overwhelmed. Any advice?

Talk to your boss. Your message here isn’t about Fergus at all; it’s not “he needs to come back” or “he’s shirking his work.” It’s “I’m still fairly new, and I’m overwhelmed covering this work while trying to excel at my own — what other resources can we bring in?”

It’s great that your company has such a generous leave policy. But the implementation of it can’t be “you take off all the time you want while your coworkers are under major strain.” Your company and your manager have an obligation to step in and help you figure out how to make things work while Fergus is out, which might mean hiring temp help, bringing in help from another part of the organization, pushing some work back or eliminating it altogether, or even just making it clear to you that your team is going to get by as best as it can right now but no one is expected to excel under this kind of strain. It sounds like the latter would be frustrating to you — you want to excel! — but it just might not be realistic right now. Or rather, you and your manager might both need to redefine what excelling looks like right now.

But lay out for your manager what you’re worried about and what you need. You can do that without saying “I’m frustrated Fergus is taking so much time off.” You can say something more like, “I had been counting on Fergus’s wealth of institutional knowledge around X and Y. With him gone and me still being new, I’m really concerned about projects like A and B. Can we talk about what other support I can pull in while he’s gone, since he was going to be taking the lead on those? Is it possible to bring in additional help?”

And you can also ask about redefining your goals for this period, saying something like, “Can we talk about what I should be aiming for in my own work over the next few months? I want to make sure we’re aligned on what I should be accomplishing, and what might not be realistic while we’re down our most senior person.”

4. My staff member assumes she’s invited to meetings when she isn’t

I supervise someone fabulous and wonderful, and I very much support her professional development. I go to great lengths to bring her into as many conversations and decision-making moments as possible. But sometimes it is not appropriate for her to be in certain meetings, especially ones organized or requested by external partners. Two recent examples have been with important funders (we are a nonprofit) who requested a meeting with me and weren’t responsive when I asked if they wanted her there, too. When I tell my staff member about the upcoming meeting as an FYI, she responds in a way that reads as though she assumes she is also invited.

I’m looking for an easy script to use when she assumes she is invited to these, and for some reason i am struggling with it.

Be straightforward and matter-of-fact! If you treat it as something delicate that you need to break to her gently, it’s more likely to be weird.

Ideally, you’d be as clear as you can when you first mention the meeting — saying “I am going to meet with X” rather than “we (meaning “our team”) are going to meet with X” and so forth. But if she responds in a way that sounds like she thinks she’s attending too, you can say something like, “This one will just be me and X, but I’ll update you when I get back about how it went.” Or, “Because we’re going to be mainly talking about Z, I’m going to go to this one on my own.”

If you notice she’s regularly bristling at that or seeming put out by it, you can address that head-on by explaining whatever context will help her understand — like that it’s normal for external partners to want to talk directly with a senior counterpart, but that you’ll bring her on later for X and Y elements (if that’s the case; you don’t have to find a way to make that be true if it otherwise wouldn’t be), or that you’re keeping a certain meeting small because the partner prefers that/it’s more efficient for this topic/you need her focused on Z right now/etc. Or you might frame it as a general “let’s talk through the times when I’ll ask you to attend and times when I may not, so that we’re both on the same page and you’re not wondering each individual time.”

5. Can I ask why I didn’t get an interview?

A couple months ago, I applied for a job that I thought I would be a very strong candidate for. I received an automated response saying that theh has received my application, but I didn’t receive an interview, nor am I expecting one anymore. But I feel thrown off! I didn’t think I was a shoe-in exactly, but I felt like I was much more qualified than many other candidates would be, and qualified for a first round interview at least.

How annoying would it be if I wrote to the hiring manager and gently requested information about why I wasn’t selected for an interview? If I made a grievous spelling error in my cover letter, or if she perceived that I was lacking experience in some field that I didn’t anticipate — no matter what the reason, it would be really useful for me to know why I wasn’t considered to be in the running.

You can try and it’s not terribly annoying to do that, but it’s rare to get a substantive response when you weren’t ever interviewed. (Even if you were interviewed, you won’t always get useful feedback, but you have a higher chance of it after they’ve actually spoken with you.)

But the thing is, it doesn’t really work the way you’ve laid it out here. For most jobs, you don’t automatically get an interview just because you are highly qualified. You get an interview if you’re one of the most qualified candidates. And if there are 30 highly qualified candidates, probably only four or five of them are getting interviews. If those four or five people were just stronger matches for some reason, then you’re getting rejected — and that doesn’t mean there was anything wrong with you as a candidate, just that others were better.

So it’s very likely that any feedback you get will be some version of “we went with candidates who were a better match.” That doesn’t mean that you can’t or shouldn’t try asking anyone, because occasionally there’s something else to be learned. But if you’re really just asking because you’re surprised a seemingly qualified candidate didn’t get interviewed … well, this is almost always the answer.