#if only we knew for sure when it was written and in what context | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

babydollmarauders · 6 months

Text

BALLAD OF A HOMESCHOOLED GIRL — JACK HUGHES

jack hughes x fem!reader

summary: in which y/n goes on a date with Jack and thinks she made a complete fool of herself

notes: obviously inspired by Ballad of a Homeschooled Girl by Olivia Rodrigo, not proofread and written on extreme sleepiness. (3.6k words)

third dates.

my mother always told me to have them in group settings.

she said the first date is to get to know each other; the second is to learn how he’d treat you in private; the third date is to learn how he’d treat you in front of his friends.

most guys seem to get intimidated when i ask about joining a hang out with his friends for the third date, but Jack was different. i had told Jack on our first about my rules.

first date in a public setting, but alone.

second date in private, his apartment or mine.

third date with a group of friends.

i hadn’t expected him to take it so well, nodding along as though even without context, it made sense. he didn’t ask for clarification, which was good because i had learned after my last relationship not to give any; lest they’ll act like a gentlemen in front of their friends until we start dating.

i honestly didn’t expect Jack to contact me again, fully awaiting the discovery that he’d ghosted me, possibly even blocked me to keep me from talking to him again. but then he texted me tonight.

“i know it’s last minute, but third date tonight? me and some guys from the team are going for drinks, would you wanna come?”

and now here i am, walking into a pretty secluded bar to meet Jack and about half a dozen other professional hockey players. to say i’m nervous would be a massive understatement.

i spent at least half an hour trying on various outfits, but nothing felt right. every article of clothing i tried on had something wrong with it; whether it be that it didn’t fit quite right, or it didn’t match the occasion, or i just deemed it didn’t look good on me, something was always wrong. so i finally settled on a nice sundress, despite the chilled air of the evening.

“y/n!” my head turns in search of the voice that called my name, locking eyes with Jack, where he sits at a high top table with five other guys. “i was starting to think you’d stood me up!”

my eyebrows furrow as i walk over to him, stopping at the end of the table. my stomach ties in knots at all of the eyes on me. i hate attention.

“why would i do that?” a few of the guys chuckle at my question, but i’m not sure i understand what’s so funny.

“i was joking.” Jack clarifies.

oh.

embarrassment washes over me and i can feel the blood rushing to my cheeks, but Jack just smiles sweetly, rising to his feet and pulling out the chair beside him.

“oh, thank you.” i take a seat and he returns to his, his hand settling on my knee as one of the guys begin to speak.

“so, you’re y/n?” my eyes go wide, and i glance over at Jack but he’s looking over at the other guy. “i’m Luke.”

“nice to meet you, Luke.” i give the curly headed boy a tight smile, “so, you play with Jack?”

the boy grins, nodding his head, “i guess you could say that.”

everyone snickers, and i fear i’ve made a mistake of some sort. my blood runs cold; i hate feeling like i’m on the outside of some giant inside joke.

maybe this was a mistake.

Jack squeezes my knee, and i look over at him with subtly pleading eyes, silently begging for him to save me.

“Luke is my younger brother, but he does play on the team with me.” there it is. that’s where i messed up.

“oh, i’m sorry.” i’m not sure what i’m apologizing for, but it seems like the right thing to do. i glance back at Luke, “i knew Jack had mentioned your name before but, he’s mentioned so many names that at this point they all jumble together in my head.”

Luke just shakes his head, waving it off. “nah, don’t worry, it’s okay.”

after that, i decide it’s better to go quiet; only really speaking when spoken to. i can’t embarrass myself if i’m not saying anything.

“hey.” Jack’s voice is soft, and at first, i don’t even realize he’s talking to me, until i tear my eyes from who i now know as Dawson, who’s telling a story with wildly gesturing hands. “do you wanna go get a drink?”

he nods his head over towards the bar, and i nod, desperately in need of something to ease my nerves, “yes, please.”

Jack and i rise from our seats, his hand going to my lower back to stabilize me as i stumble. my cheeks go red, but i decide it’s better not to acknowledge my clumsiness.

“and i— where are you guys going?” Dawson cuts himself off, drawing attention to Jack and i’s retreating pair. “did i bore you, y/n?”

i stop in my tracks, freezing up as guilt takes over me.

“i- what? n-no! Jack-” i stumble over my words in a panic, attempting to reassure him, but apparently i didn’t help my case.

“see, Merc! poor y/n even finds your story stupid.” John laughs and i shake my head wildly.

“no! i found it interesting!” Nico snickers at my words, his hand coming up to cover his mouth.

“interesting. that’s one way of putting it.”

oh god, i made it worse.

“guys, leave her alone.” Jack speaks up, rolling his eyes at his friends before he turns back to me. “c’mon, ignore them, they’re just raggin’ on you.”

my brows thread together in confusion, but i nod nonetheless, allowing him to use his hand that still rests on my back to guide me over to the bar.

“i’m sorry about them.” he sighs as we reach the counter, waiting for a bartender. “they have a stupid sense of humor.”

“no! no, it’s fine!” i assure him.

it’s not them, it’s me.

i’ve never been great at picking up on social cues, perhaps due to my odd lifestyle as a child.

when the bartender reaches us, Jack orders another beer before looking over at me, “oh, can i just get an aperol spritz, please?”

Jack hands over his card and when he gets it back he turns to me.

“i gotta run to the bathroom, are you okay waiting for the drinks? i’ll be back in a second.” i nod and he takes off towards the restroom, leaving me alone.

“so, you like him?” apparently not alone for long.

i turn my head in surprise, only to find Luke standing beside me. he asks the bartender who arrives back with Jack and i’s drinks for another beer and the man nods.

“hmm? Jack?” Luke nods and i smile looking down into my glass. “yeah, i really like him.”

“see, i said so!” my face scrunched in confusion as i look back at him.

“you said so?” i question.

“yeah! Johnny was trying to say you must not like him because you aren’t being very flirty, but i told him- i said you obviously like him if you’re on a third date.”

flirting.

i’ve never been great at that. and i haven’t needed to be, Jack is the one who approached me first, he’s the one who asked me out and he hasn’t given any indication that i have any reason to have to flirt to keep his attention.

“oh.”

Luke pays for his beer before retreating back to the table with a low “see you in a few.”

i’m quick to tear my phone out of my pocket, glancing over towards the restrooms for a moment to make sure my date isn’t coming back before making a quick google search.

this seems impossible.

“hey.” Jack reappears beside me and i hastily lock my phone, looking up at him as i go to slide it back into my pocket. but the combination of my fidgety hands, quick movements, and not paying attention to my surroundings doesn’t end well.

before i can even blink, my hand is knocking into my glass, the drink sliding off the bar top and onto the floor, shattering upon impact.

“oh my god!” i squeal, jumping back from the broken shards. i glance down at the mess before looking back up at Jack. “i am so sorry!”

i turn to the waitress who comes rushing towards us with a broom and towels, apologizing profusely and offering to clean it up myself.

“it’s no problem, happens all the time.” she tells me with a smile, but i still bury my face in my hands.

i’m making a fool of myself.

“can we get another aperol spritz?” i peek through my eyes at the sound of Jack’s voice, watching as he hands the bartender his card again.

“i am so sorry, Jack.” my voice is low and whimpered, my shoulders rising as though to protect myself. “i just wasted your money and made a huge mess.”

Jack smiles softly, shaking his head as he chuckles, “don’t worry about it. it’s seriously okay, y/n. accidents happen, don’t beat yourself up about it.”

i nod, but i truly feel horrible now.

this was a mistake. i should’ve just stayed home; watched a cheesy romance or read a true crime novel and gone to bed early.

the bartender hands me the new drink, and i thank him before Jack leads me back to the table.

“everything okay?” Timo questions as we return and Jack just nods as we settle back in our seats.

“yeah, just a little accident. it’s all good.” the guys chuckle but all turn back to their previous conversation, somehow now on the topic of the wildest things they did in school.

i stay silent, hoping and praying to any higher power that they don’t involve me in this conversation, but my luck runs out pretty quickly. although i’m not sure i’ve had any tonight in the first place.

“what about you, y/n?” Nico is the one to rope me in, “what’s the wildest thing you did in school?”

“i- uh-” i internally cringe, mentally preparing myself for their jokes, “i was homeschooled. so, i didn’t really get to do anything crazy like you guys.”

“ohh, you’re a homeschool kid.” Luke nods as if it makes sense.

“did you know that statistically speaking, homeschoolers are more likely to graduate than public schoolers?” John pipes up, and i shake my head.

“really?” Jack questions, his nose scrunched cutely in disbelief.

“no, i- uh, i didn’t know that.” John nods at my words.

“yeah, look it up!” he points to my phone, which never actually made it to my pocket after the broken glass fiasco and now resides face down on the table.

i pick it up and Jack and Dawson, who both reside on either respective side of me, lean in to see my phone screen, eager to find out whether their teammate is correct.

but when i unlock my phone, my eyes grow wide and i’m eagerly attempting to swipe out of the current window, but it’s as if the world is against me because this is the exact moment that my phone screen decides to freeze.

“does that say ‘how to flirt?’” Dawson chuckles and i bite my lip, giving up and slamming my phone face down onto my lap as the table bursts into laughter.

i’m blushing like a mad woman, squeezing my eyes shut as i bury my face into my hands for the second time that night.

“aww y/n, you really let John get to you, huh?” Luke teases, and i feel like i could cry of embarrassment.

everything i do is tragic.

suddenly my seat is moving, scooting further to my right, before an arm is spindling around my waist. i let my hands lower just slightly to peer up at Jack, who wears a happy grin, his cheeks tinged pink.

he glances down at me, smiling even wider when he sees that i’m already looking at him.

it’s like a cat’s got my tongue, too stunned by the overwhelming mortification of the situation to even get a word out to explain or defend myself.

but Jack doesn’t seem to mind, pulling me into his body until my head is against his collarbone as he changes the subject; bringing up a story about he and his older brother trying to free an infant Luke from his crib when they were younger.

i’m quiet as the group speaks, most of them speaking over each other, which in turn makes others get louder to try and be heard. my head aches and i need a break.

“i’m gonna go to the bathroom.” i whisper, freeing myself from Jack’s hold as he nods in understanding.

“okay. are you okay?” i give him a small smile, reassuring him that i’m fine before i leave.

my hands rest upon the bathroom sink, my eyes glaring into my reflection in the wonky bar mirror.

“get it together.” i try and tell myself, but it comes out in more of a whine.

why am i like this?

i run my hands through my hair, making sure it’s volumized, and heave out a sigh before i make my way back out of the restroom to join the table again.

on my way back, i can’t help but smile at the sight of Jack laughing with his friends.

he seems so carefree.

but i should’ve been watching where i was going, because halfway to the table, i’m tripping over someone’s heeled foot, landing on my knee on the hard ground.

“oh shit!” Jack’s voice echoes over the loudness of the music and bar-goers, and i can hear multiple chairs screech across the floor. “y/n, are you okay?”

oh god, i wanna curl up and die.

“yeah, i’m fine.” my voice is wavering and weak, so over making an idiot of myself tonight.

Jack appears in front of me, holding his hands out to help me up. his skin is soft as i slide my hands into his, allowing him to pull me up to my feet.

his friends stand behind him, a couple biting back laughs, but the others wide eyed in concern.

i let Jack guide me back to the table, and when i sit down, he’s kneeling in front of me, inspecting my knee for any immediate bruising or marks.

i sigh and he looks up at me, worry settled into his expression.

“that was a hell of a tumble.” Timo snickers, but he sobers up quickly as his eyes meet Jack’s, “you’re okay though, right?”

“physically? yes. mentally? questionable.” the table laughs, but i didn’t mean to joke, which only makes me press my lips together.

Jack finally deems my knee okay, settling back into his seat and letting his arm rest over the back of my chair.

“what were we talking about?” Jack asks, effectively diverting the attention away from my fall and back to the conversation from while i was gone.

“cheating.” John states, taking a sip from his beer.

i let out a little laugh, thinking he was just joking, but i sober up as i realize nobody else is.

“oh, you were serious.” i bite my lip as he nods.

“right!” Luke exclaims, “so people are saying he cheated on her?”

“yeah,” Dawson nods, and i’m a bit lost, “which i don’t understand, because all he did was hold hands with the other girl. we don’t know anything other than that. holding hands could have so many different meanings.”

i take a big gulp of my drink, listening intently as the guys debate cheating and what counts as cheating.

“i think, if one of you guys cheated on your girlfriend, i might ‘accidentally’ knock your teeth out on the ice.” Nico tells them, making the guys and i laugh. “i’m serious, you’d be bag skating until you physically drop from exhaustion.”

and like word vomit, before i can stop myself, i’m speaking, “my friend recently cheated on her boyfriend, and i can’t tell if i should tell him or let him find out on his own.”

their heads turn to me and i shrink in my seat as i realize what just escaped my lips.

“oh my god, i’m not supposed to be telling that to anyone.” my hand covers my mouth, and a few of the guys laugh at my actions.

“you should definitely tell him.” John shrugs, “he deserves to know.”

“i thought so too, but if i do tell him, does that make me a horrible friend?” the guys all start shouting different things along the same lines.

some telling me it doesn’t make me a bad friend, while others telling me that i shouldn’t be friends with her anymore anyways.

“has she done anything else?” Luke asks, and i scrunch my nose.

“cheating wise, no: just one drunken kiss with some guy.” i start. “but she told him she was sick to get out of meeting his parents.”

i clap my hand over my mouth again, shocked that these secrets are just tumbling out of me.

“fuck, i shouldn’t be telling you guys these things.”

the guys cackle and Dawson changes the subject, apparently just remembering a story of something that happened to him back home over the summer.

i remain quiet for the next fifteen or so minutes, just listening as the guys go back and forth, telling stories of their summers, until i feel Jack’s hand on my shoulder.

“hey, i’m heading home, do you want me to drop you off at your house?”

i eagerly accept his offer, happily willing to leave now and avoid paying for an uber during surge pricing. the both of us bid goodbye to his teammates and his brother, who says he’ll hitch a ride back to the apartment with Dawson, before we head out to his car.

i smile as he opens the car door for me, allowing me to climb in before he shuts the door again and jogs around the front of the car, slipping into the drivers side.

i don’t need to give him my address, our second date having been at my apartment, so i just clasp my hands tightly together in my lap, both of his on his steering wheel.

“i had fun tonight.” he tells me as we pull up to my apartment building.

“yeah, your friends are nice.”

not a complete lie. they are nice, i’m just not sure i got along with them, or more so, that they liked me.

“can i walk you up?” i accept his request and he exits the car, running around it to open my door before i get the chance to.

i mentally prepare myself on the silent elevator up to my apartment, readying myself to have him tell me that he doesn’t think we fit.

i was awkward tonight, breaking a glass, stumbling over my words, tripping, googling things that should be common knowledge, and telling secrets i had no business telling.

i couldn’t think of any worse ways to ruin a potential relationship.

when we reach my apartment, Jack stops me in front of my door, and before he gets the chance to belittle my dignity any further than i, myself, already have, i’m speaking up.

“i completely understand if you don’t wanna continue this.” i sigh, finding sudden interest in my shoes. “i made a complete fool of myself tonight.”

“why would you think i don’t wanna see you again?” he sounds hurt, his finger hooking under my chin and pulling my head up to look at him.

i chuckle lowly, “you can’t take me anywhere. every time i go out, it’s social suicide.”

“so you’re a bit clumsy and you need time to click with my friends and their humor, so what?” he shrugs, “i think you’re cute. and i’m incredibly honored that you wanted to flirt with me.”

i groan, my face flushing, and i tip my head back to look up at the ceiling.

“oh god, that was so embarrassing.” i whine.

“it was sweet.” Jack chuckles, pulling me into his chest. his arms wrap around me and i melt into his embrace, his chin resting on top of my head.

“i really like you, y/n. and tonight may not have gone the way you would’ve liked, and i can respect that, you’re allowed to feel that way, but i really liked it. i got a chance to figure out more about you and what you’re like, and it only solidified that i’d really like to keep getting to know you, see where this could lead.”

my head snaps up to look him in the eyes, “you would?”

he giggles at my actions, nodding his head. “yeah, i would.”

his head dips down and i suck in a breath as his lips near mine.

“can i kiss you?” he questions, and i nod.

“yes, please.”

his lips slot against mine, moving in sync and pulling me even closer to him if it’s possible. his hands slide up to cup the back of my neck, his tongue tracing my bottom lip and i part my lips to allow him entrance.

what starts slow and passionate, turns into something hot and heavy. i huff as he pulls away, my lips chasing after his and making him smile.

“do you wanna come inside?” i ask him, my voice low and sultry, and his eyes darken almost instantly.

he smirks, answering only by taking my keys from my hands and unlocking my door, leading me into my own apartment.

“ya know, i don’t think you needed that google search. you’re pretty good at luring me in all on your own.”

#jack hughes #jack hughes x reader #jack hughes imagine #jack hughes fic #jack hughes blurb #nj devils #nhl imagine #nhl fic #faithlynn’s writings <3

1K notes · View notes

confiscatedpeaches · 7 months

Text

William Afton Finds the Reader's Dirty Diary, and it's full of fantasies about him.

Minors DNI, Reader is assumed to be 18+. I tried to keep the reader gender neutral, but honestly I assumed them to be afab.

TW: Use of word "daddy" in a sexual context, breeding, smut, power imbalance, humiliation.

Life can be stressful sometimes. We all need some kind of escape, whether it be videogames, tv, or even knitting. Your escape just so happens to be a filthy little diary you keep in your bag at all times. And lately, that little guy has been full of dirty, nasty, no good fantasies about your latest crush (and boss) William Afton.

Honestly, you've always had a thing for older men. Once you stepped into his office for an interview you were hooked. You couldn't help but stare as his hands fiddled and played with his pens while he talked. You made a joke about the rainy weather you were having, and he actually laughed. God, what a laugh this man had. Infectious and giggly for someone his age. When he spoke you about melted on the spot. His accent wrapping itself around your name like a comfy sweater or delicate lingerie, taunting you with it's flourishes.

Poor thing, you were so nervous and flushed. You actually looked shocked when he offered you the job. Mouth hanging open (an invitation, really), eyes wide; you looked like a frightened little prey animal. A rabbit, even.

It started out small, just little urges and thoughts hastily written down. What it'd be like to kiss him, hold his hands, touch his hair, etc. Eventually these thoughts became much more... intimate.

--------

Monday: God, every time I step into his office for a chat I imagine him bending me over that desk of his and breeding me. I want to feel his cock balls deep inside of me. I want him to hold me down and break my back. Like, fuck me already Daddy please! Ugghhh! --------

Tuesday: Fuck, he's so hot. I heard him swear in frustration under his breath while fixing foxy. The thought of milking him dry with my tongue is intoxicating. I touched myself in the bathroom while thinking of him. Damn it, I'm so wet now. I want to swallow his cum so bad. He's so. fucking. hot. --------

Wednesday: Mr. Afton, if only you knew how bad I want you. Touching myself to you late at night, cumming while crying out your name. I want you to devour me. Let me be your little slut. I'd be so good for you Daddy if only you'd let me. Please like me back. I want him. I want him so bad.

--------

On and on, filling pages upon pages full of smut. Mentally letting him cuddle, kiss, fuck, and squeeze you endlessly. Of course, you knew he would never feel the same way about you. You were just a young little wage worker. You were nothing more than a typical employee. He was polite and kind to you, but never overly so. Sometimes it seemed like he was flirting, but honestly you chalked that up to you projecting your feelings onto him.

Earlier this morning for example, he called you into his office. He assured you that you weren't in any trouble, he just wanted to check up on you. You seemed a little of out it lately and he wanted to make sure you were okay. He even poured you a cup of coffee. He was such a nice older man, acting almost like a caring father figure. (So what, you have daddy issues, don't we all.) You wished he could be more than that, but you accepted this would have to do for now.

Before letting you return to work, he placed his hand on your shoulder and looked down into your eyes.

"I really like you, y/n. You're a good, loyal worker, and I deeply respect that."

You beamed up at him with a stupid smile on your face. Mr. Afton? Liking and respecting you? Dear god, you must have died and gone to heaven. The heat from his hand sunk down into your core. You imagined his fingers digging deep into your skin, holding you down. You imagined his tongue caressing your neck, lips sucking hungrily at your flesh, his chest pressed against you. Hot blood rushed to your cheeks engulfing your face. He hummed slightly at this before lifting his hand. The spot on your shoulder feeling empty and void at his absence.

"I should really be getting back to work." You stammer, before quickly grabbing your things and fleeing the suddenly humid and intimate office.

-----

About twenty minutes pass before you regain composure. The morning crowd passes by and things begin to slow into their regular routine. Still wet and horny from the crumb of attention he fed you, you rummaged through your bag for your diary, desperate to write down your latest fantasy. Strangely, it's not in it's usual pocket. It's not in the bigger pocket either. In fact, it doesn't appear to be in your bag at all.

No. No, no, no. There is no way you lost that diary. The filthy, disgusting, and embarrassing diary has managed to escape the confines of your bag and is now roaming about the pizzeria.

Panicked, you check the floor behind the counter. Nothing. You check the backrooms. Also, nothing. The kitchen: nothing. The bathrooms: nothing. After systematically checking every room in the entire god damn building you realize you left one room unchecked: Mr. Afton's office.

This cannot be happening.

Even if it is in his office, you made sure to put in bold letters "PROPERTY OF Y/N. PLEASE DO NOT READ" on the front. Everything is going to be okay, it's probably just sitting on his desk waiting for you to come looking for it.

With your heart in your throat, you knock on his office door.

"Who is it?" He asks from inside.

"Y/N." You respond.

"Oh, come in then."

Ah good, so he hasn't read it yet. You open the door.

Sitting with his feet up and crossed on his desk, with one hand rubbing at his croch, he sat. With his other hand, he held up your dirty little diary; holding it wide open. His face was obscured by the book, but he appeared to be deep into it's pages.

"Nice little diary you have here doll."

He tilts his head, revealing a wide and wicked grin.

"Aren't you curious about the real thing?"

You freeze. Unsure if you should respond, or run away and never come back. The room suddenly becomes hot and oppressive. Your chest tightens.

"Mr. Afton! It's not what you think! Please, give it back!"

He laughs.

"I think it is exactly what I think it is love. Got the hots for your boss, have you?"

"I... please... Please don't be angry."

"Oh I'm the opposite of angry love. Be a dear and shut the door behind you. We need to have a little 'chat'."

Swallowing hard, you click the door shut behind you. You find yourself alone with your boss and your filthy diary. He beckons you over. You obey without hesitation, mentally preparing yourself for the worst firing you'll ever experience. He pulls his legs from his desk before standing up from his chair. He completely towers over you. You realize you've never been this close to him before.

"Explain yourself. How exactly, is this not what I think it is?" He teases.

You look away, unable to meet his gaze. Looking down at the floor, you speak in a voice not much louder than a whisper.

"I... I... it's not... it's fiction... I didn't mean anything by it. I... don't mean what is written in there... it's not-"

"Well, it says here" He lifts up the journal and flips back a couple pages.

With absolute glee, he continues: "Ah yes, 'He is so attractive. Mr. Afton, please rail me and pound my tight little hole until I beg to cum. Fill me up and make me yours. Please Daddy, I need this. Let me be your little whore.'"

Shame fills your veins. Tears prick at the corners of your eyes. He actually read it. Every thought, every fantasy you've ever had about him was written in that diary. Now he knew them all.

"...please... let me go..."

He leans in close, his hot breath and lips grazing against your ear.

"No, I think it's too late for that dear."

One of his hands trails up your side and around your waist. The other teases your collar and travels down to your stomach.

"You know... I would love to fulfil each and every one of those filthy little fantasies." He says as his hand tugs the button free from your jeans.

"You just have to let me... you will let me, won't you?"

He kisses at your neck.

"Yes... please.." You coo into his ear.

In a flash, he lifts you up and sets you on his desk. His hand guiding you to lay back on the dark oak wood. Papers, pens, and trinkets fall to the floor. You look up at him and watch as he strips off your bottoms. He carelessly tosses them aside, his hands returning to part your legs. He looks down at your wet sex and bites his bottom lip. His eyes are full of desire, he looks like a starving man who has just found his next meal. A meal that has been perfectly dressed and prepared for him and him alone.

He pulls down his pants to reveal his fully erect cock. The tip red and glistening with precum. His veiny hands wrap around his shaft. He teases your opening with his tip, before giving it a good few pumps.

"Already so wet for me, but not wet enough."

His masculine hand reaches down as he slides in a finger. Curling up inside of you, he begins pumping your sweet spot. You moan and writhe under him. Just when you though it couldn't get anymore intense, he slips in another finger. He greedily tugs and pulls inside of you. Realizing how loud you're becoming, you cover your mouth. His free hand pulls your arm away.

"No, no no bunny. Let me hear you. Say my name"

"Will.. William Afton.. mmmphhhh..."

"Good bunny. Keep crying for me, begging for me."

Your body begins to shake. Your moans becoming louder and harder to understand as a mounting pressure builds within you.

"Williammm... Aft..ahhh..."

Hot sticky fluids gush out of you, covering his hand and dripping down your thighs. His hand pulls away, only to be replaced by the head of his cock. Slowly, he pushes himself into you. A guttural sound escapes him. He fills you up all the way until you feel his sack pressing against your hips hard.

Rhythmically, he thrusts into you. Soon his office is full of the wet sound of him slapping against you. His hands grab and dig into the fleshy sides of your hips. Leaning over you, he finds an angle to reach even further inside. His lips find yours, tongue welcoming itself into your mouth.

He moves faster and faster, like an animal desperate to reproduce. Desperate to breed you. You gasp for air.

"Mmm... cum inside of me please.... Daddy... ah..." You beg.

"Mgh... oh... don't worry angel.. I will..."

Your insides twist and coil, becoming hotter and tighter with each thrust. You arch your back, cumming on his cock. Unable to contain himself any longer, he shoots thick ropes deep into your guts.

You both lay there, panting and exhausted. Wrapped up in each other's embrace.

"Bloody hell... if only you knew how long I wanted this... bet you're glad I found that journal eh?" He laughs.

This was so much better than those fantasies. Much better.

#william afton x reader #william afton smut

794 notes · View notes

imhidingonceagain · 5 months

Text

Slimeriana and QSMP fans, we need to talk (really, I'm going to talk about a few things).

CW: nsfw

Warning: long post.

At this point I think majority of you guys know what happened with Mariana yesterday (especially because the fliporiana community is small compared to other ones).

I'm gonna write some stuff Mariana said and I'm gonna be explicit about it because I want you guys to understand the severity of the situation (this is your warning):

Context: He was curious to see if people actually posted nsfw stuff about him (and poor boy, he really thought he wouldn't find any).

And I quote what he said after seeing some posts: "No, no, no! Why's Slime penetrating me?!" (He was probably looking at a fanart)

"I'm not doing role like that with Slime anymore. I thought you guys found it funny (he was talking about the sex role in the QSMP) but it only fills your minds with shit"

"I'm gonna say it in English because I know there's QSMP fans who do it as well: Don't draw hentai about me, don't draw us fucking, that's being a pervert, that's wrong"

Some months ago I wrote a post when we got the first warning in regards of this topic.

Mariana and Slime have talked about fanart before and at the time they didn't seem uncomfortable about it (though it seems like Charlie's girlfriend was).

So I wrote: it's not necessary to stop doing fanart about them. Just be careful with what you draw and where you post it.

To me even "suggestive" fanarts are "okay" (but with suggestive I mean the characters looking at each other like they want to kiss each other so bad, that's it). But when and how did that translate to some of you thinking that drawing real people having sex and not only having sex (because there's always ways to show intercourse without being explicit or disgusting) but also showing private parts is okay?

Because it's obvious Mariana saw something super explicit by the way he reacted (because he doesn't get bothered too easily). My poor man was distressed!

And let me tell you something. This is not only about Mariana and Slimecicle. This is a REAL PROBLEM within the fandom. Let me give you some examples:

I love reading fanfiction and months ago I was scrolling through the QSMP section on AO3 and let me tell you something: the amount of fanfiction written about the eggs and their parents in a non platonic way is CONCERNING.

Especially Wilbur Soot's fandom seems to have a lot of rotten apples who think that writing abusive stories about q! Wilbur and Tallulah is fine.

I understand some people write stories like that not because they're crime apologists, but because that's their way to deal with trauma (and dealing with trauma through art is okay). But PLEASE remember that while the eggs are fictional, their "parents" are REAL people.

Use fictional characters, please. Stop writing real people into pedophilic or highly abusive situations. THAT'S HORRENDOUS.

Another example is the following: Some weeks ago people were reporting a Twitter account and I clicked on the account (I personally don't like reporting people without making sure they deserved) and it took me like three seconds of scrolling to see more than 5 Ccs being disrespected (including Slimecicle, Quackity, Cellbit, Roier and Badboyhalo). Explicit Pictures, videos and fanarts were being posted about these creators.

You know what I think? I think Cellbit made his character asexual not only for the representation (it's clear by now that q! Cellbit is a sex positive asexual which is still representation yay!) But because he has been on the internet since around 2011 and he knows how disrespectful people can be. I think he knew that his and Roier's ship was getting too popular and that makes them both unprotected to shit like this.

Sadly, it's clear that it didn't matter that Cellbit made his character asexual, people can't seem to respect that detail about his character and about himself as a real person.

To some people it doesn't matter if the Cc is ambiguous or completely clear about their boundaries, they still don't give a fuck.

Please remember that behind each character is a real person. I understand sometimes you guys want to see your favorite characters fuck -me too, honestly- but for people like streamers that's out of the questions because not only they're real people, but because their work is related to social media and the possibilities of them finding EVERYTHING we write and post about them are super high.

I don't know how to feel. It's obvious that Mariana has not been feeling the same about the server since Juanaflippa died. Maybe this will make him feel even worse about the QSMP but I hope I'm wrong.

#el mariana #elmariana #slimecicle #slimeriana #fliporiana #qsmp #elmariana fanart #qsmp fanart #wilbur soot #cellbit #Quackity

180 notes · View notes

am-i-the-asshole-official · 4 months

Note

AITA for writing a fic about a character who a plural friend has a fictive of in a way I know they wouldn't like?

I (25 he/him) have a friend (27 they/them) who is a system. I am a singlet, and there's a lot I don't understand, but I adopt an approach of being chill and respectful and educating myself as much as I can. My friend has a fictive in their system who is from a media property that I write fic for. This character is an antagonist in canon, but the fictive is not like that and my friend talks a lot about how much it sucks that fandom hates him and writes him being a villain. They especially have complained about fandom writing fics where this character's behaviour is more serious or violent than his behaviour in canon. A lot of 'I would not fucking say that' kind of comments.

I am writing a fic for this fandom where this character is the villain. It's nothing beyond what he did in canon, but he is very much the bad guy, and I lean into him being the bad guy. I have mentioned the fic to my friend in the past, BEFORE I knew about this fictive, but I did not mention this character's role in the fic. I am sure that they're going to see it when I post it, though, and I think it's extremely possible they might be upset at me for writing about this character in this way.

Why I think I might not be the asshole: Fictives and the source material character are not the same and I know that. I am not treating them like the same thing, and I know the character and my friend's headmate are not one and the same. I also can't imagine a situation in which I would find someone being mad about this a reasonable reaction. Also, this character is canonically an antagonist who has done terrible things. I'm not interested in discourse over liking villains or having fictives of villains. I only mention this because it is relevant to the context of my writing a fic in which he is a villain, because that is his canonical role, and I'm not changing anything or going out of my way to make him a bad guy, I am merely continuing the canon depiction of how he treats people and the things he does.

Why I think I might be the asshole: This IS a close friend, and I know they read my work, even if we don't usually talk about it. I just know they read what I post, and know that they would see that I'd written this. They have said seeing this character being the bad guy in fics bums them out and upsets them. Seeing several posts recently from people who have fictives in their systems or from fictives themselves about how 'I would not fucking say that' or 'I would never do that' - or otherwise complaining about characterization of the character they're a fictive of, positing that they're an authority because they Are That Character - has me on edge also, because I get very in my head about characterization and whether I should or shouldn't be writing something a lot.

So. AITA for writing this?

What are these acronyms?

#aita #am i the asshole

105 notes · View notes

steddieunderdogfics · 1 month

Text

This week’s writer spotlight feature is: Pricklywhicket/@messessentialist ! Prickleywhicket has four fics published to AO3 -- All in the Steddie tag!

Our anonymous nominator recommends the following works by pricklywhicket:

so let's sneak in from the cheap seats, honey

it's supposed to be fun (turning twenty-one)

start by pulling him out of the fire

"Sadie is so super talented in the way she describes literally everything. She is so good at writing and it's a shame that she's flown under the radar because she's not the quickest at putting things out there." -- Anonymous

Below the cut, Pricklywhicket answered some questions about their writing process and some of their recommended work!

Why do you write Steddie?

Why do any of us write anything? Because we want the story to exist in the world, and it doesn’t yet, so we gotta hike up our pants and do it ourselves!

What’s your favorite trope to READ?

Hurt/Comfort. I’m always a sucker for the blorbos taking care of one another, in whatever form that takes. This has always been true, across a truly astronomical number of fandoms I’ve found myself dabbling in over the years.

What’s your favorite trope to WRITE?

…actually, probably hurt/comfort! I just need to get those little dudes some validation and unconditional positive regard, okay?

What’s your favorite Steddie fic?

I’m sure I won’t be the first one to say this, but: I HAVE TO PICK ONE????? Okay, alright. I can do this. I’m gonna say…Sanctuary by SpicedSage.

Is there a trope you’re excited to explore in a future work but haven’t yet?

I’ve only written canon or canon-adjacent fic so far, so I’m eager to work on something that’s completely AU. I think there’s a unique challenge to keeping characters recognizable as themselves in a world that might not have all the same contexts that made them into that person.

What is your writing process like?

I would love to say it’s super organized and well-planned, but the truth is it’s mostly about routine and responsibility. I set aside time to do it every day, even if I can only tap out a few sentences. I’m not very strict about writing in a straight line - I can stop a scene if it’s giving me trouble, write a note about what I think happens in some [brackets], and move on to something that I have more fully fleshed-out ideas for. Sometimes writing the next scene helps you know more about what needs to happen in the current one.

Do you have any writing quirks?

I'm sure my betas would say yes 🙃 I tend to write a lot of dialogue - a lot of my revision process is going back through and realizing I have two pages of a conversation with no indication of what’s physically happening in the world around the speakers.

Do you prefer posting when you’ve finished writing or on a schedule?

Definitely when I’m finished. Prior to my ‘23 bang fic, I had never written anything chaptered. I knew going in that I could NOT start posting if it wasn’t finished, because I’ve been burned too many times by abandoned works. I didn’t want to do that to people reading my fic, and the best way to avoid it is to finish before you post.

Which fic are you most proud of?

Easily start by pulling him out of the fire. The biggest, most ambitious thing I’ve ever attempted - I still kind of can’t believe I wrote 85k.

How did you get the idea for start by pulling him out of the fire?

Like most terrible ideas, it was spawned in a fandom discord chat. We were discussing the tendency of Steddie fics to centralize the party at Steve’s house, because his parents are never there anyway. And then someone mentioned what if the parents came home and found their house occupied, and someone else mentioned Wayne being there, and it just sort of…spiraled out from there.

When writing start by pulling him out of the fire, what was something you didn’t expect?

I had no idea, going in, that I was going to write a comprehensive history of the Wayne and Eddie Munson relationship. I started writing it where I did to give some background on Wayne’s existing distaste for the elder Harrington, and then I just…kept writing. Over the course of a month or two I wrote 20k of WayneAndEddie that I had no idea was in me - it just kept coming.

What inspired it's supposed to be fun (turning twenty-one)?

@wynnyfryd. It was a gift for her birthday. We were talking about our mutual love of Letterkenny, and she mentioned that the episode was her favorite and wouldn’t it be funny if someone wrote… and the rest is history.

What was your favorite part to write from it's supposed to be fun (turning twenty-one)?

I had an unreasonable amount of fun with that one in general. But I think my favorite part was Eddie polling the party about what Steve means to them all. It was fun to sort of put myself in each character’s shoes and think about how they would answer. Plus y’know, any excuse to unironically love on Steve Harrington.

How do/did you feel writing so let's sneak in from the cheap seats, honey?

I believe my exact words upon deciding to write it were “jingles miserably to a blank google doc.” This was a classic case of saying “god I wish there was a fic where—” and having friends tell me that it was now my responsibility to write it. I’m glad I did, though. I love that story, and it proved to me that I could write sex and publish it and not burst into flames. I also just really, really love summer storms. And Wayne’s use of the singular ‘herpe.’

What was the most difficult part of writing so let's sneak in from the cheap seats honey?

Getting over the fear of publishing something E-rated. It was just something I hadn’t done, and I had a lot of anxiety that people were not going to respond well to it. I made three people individually review the sex scenes before I even asked anyone to beta the full fic. Of course I was worried for nothing, the reception for that fic was super lovely and gave me the confidence boost I needed to attempt start by pulling him out of the fire!

Do you have a favorite scene and/or line from any of your fics?

This is like asking me to pick a favorite child. I’ll say this: most of my favorite lines in start by pulling him out of the fire were taken directly from conversations @wormdebut and I had about the fic. She’s my number one cheerleader and sounding board, and sometimes she’s so goddamn funny that I just have to include it. You have her to thank, for instance, for Steve quite literally dropping his croissant when he first sees Eddie in glasses.

Do you have any upcoming projects or fics you’d like to share/promote?

I have a couple of irons in the fire, but nothing I’m ready to share just yet! I’ve been taking a breather from writing (blame baldur’s gate 3, okay) but my WIPs are still very much IP. Stay tuned!

Outside of these questions, Is there anything YOU would like to add?

Not that I can think of!

Thank you to our author, Pricklywhicket, and our anonymous nominator! See more of pricklywhicket's works featured on our page throughout the day!

Writer’s Spotlight is every Wednesday! Want to nominate an author? You can nominate them here!

#writer's wednesday #writers on tumblr #steddie writers #steddie #steddie fic recs #steve harrington #eddie munson #steve x eddie #stranger things

59 notes · View notes

thebroccolination · 7 months

Text

SO ABOUT KRIST. \:D/

I'm not sure how many people have seen this photo or know the context behind it.

It was taken by a fan (see watermark) at the final episode premiere for Be My Favorite in August. After we finished watching the episode, Krist and Gawin walked down the aisles of the theater singing their duet, and then they went to the front stage to give their closing speeches. Most of us expected Krist to cry because it doesn't take a lot to make that happen on a normal day. But a fan event for a series that he put his heart and soul into? That he had resting on his shoulders since it was announced in late 2021? Certified, guaranteed, written in stone.

Even expecting it, though, didn't prepare me for seeing Krist cry in person. Especially when it wasn't the crying I'm used to seeing from him. I didn't even need to understand what he was saying to feel affected by it. Being in the theater, hearing him struggle to speak, assuming what he must be talking about, hearing how absolutely earnest every word was, that was enough.

I read the translation later. Krist was talking about Gawin. That he's always wanted the focus of the series to be on Gawin, because it was Gawin's first main role, and Krist felt like he'd taint it. In the past six months, Krist has said more than once that his greatest achievement from Be My Favorite was meeting Gawin. In another interview, he said he didn't care if no one watched the series because he has Gawin in his life now, and that means more to him than the success of his work. He said meeting Gawin changed him and made him grow up.

I always knew that Krist would be good for Gawin's career. From the moment I saw the casting announcement, I knew that Krist would do what he does with all of his friends and colleagues: promote him, hype him, celebrate him. I just had no idea how close they would become. That they would both find strength in each other, and that they would develop the incredibly close friendship they have now.

And, man…ever since I saw that photo up there where Gawin is listening with tears in his eyes as his close friend and admired senior talks about him with such affection and respect, my disappointment in everyone who continues to spread misinformed hate against Krist is so much deeper.

But it's also calmer.

Because it won't last.

Krist is so widely loved by the people in his life and the people he's worked with, and he's so effusively loving in return. And I think more and more people are starting to see that. He cares so intensely all the time and he allows so much of his vulnerability to show, and he listens to people.

So whenever I see people scoffing, "How does he even have fans?" I know they haven't actually looked into who he is. I know they watched a TikTok or a YouTube video with the same five things taken out of context and it just doesn't hold up when you actually see him.

Because this is who he is:

At MUSICON, he and Gawin did a meet and greet, and this fan shared her experience talking to Krist. She had so much she wanted to say, but she couldn't stop crying, and he patted her gently on the shoulder to comfort her. She said he kept kindly looking into her eyes while she spoke, and she finished by hoping more and more people get to know him.

He's one of GMMTV's top stars who makes eye contact with his fans and engages with them. He's popular enough that he could just coast during these fan events, but he wants to listen and interact with his fans. He remembers us.

And, like, I already did a whole thing about how he's not homophobic.

Like, seriously, he isn't. During his solo concert in Cambodia, he made a beeline to this fanboy and giddily danced with him the same as he did with the women in the audience. And he wasn't the only guy he danced with, either.

Krist also got hit on in an airport by a whole European dude years ago and he was delighted. The dimple came out to play and everything.

There comes a point when people who say "he's just pretending he isn't homophobic to make money" start to sound like they just really, really want Krist to be homophobic because otherwise they have been mercilessly tormenting him for years over misinformation they didn't care enough to look into.

The man described his love scene with Gawin in Be My Favorite as a piece of art. Like. I think it's abundantly clear that he's not the monster interfans invented just to throw knives at.

So anyway.

Back to Gawin.

I'm glad Krist has Gawin in his life. Gawin who sees him, who appreciates him, and who gives back just as much affection as Krist gives to him.

And who honest-to-God looks like he wants to protect Krist just as much as any of us do.

So yeah!

I like Krist.

I think he's neat. \:D/

(And I totally hope he'll let Gawin and Singto do a skit making light of all the ship wars during his concert next weekend. GawinSingto jokes, come to me.)

#be my favorite #krist perawat #gawin caskey #gawinkrist

118 notes · View notes

centrally-unplanned · 2 months

Text

I was listening to this cast by The Weeb Crew, with SteveM as a guest, going through some other Evangelion video and dissecting the mythical memetic tropes it buys into. Which was a lot of fun, I recommend the cast, and the video they are critiquing is a bit of a grad-bag of zombie memes about Evangelion from the 2000's, which yeah have aged poorly.

One of the ones they get into is the idea that Evangelion's TV ending was "intensely unpopular", and Anno & crew were getting like bombarded with death threats and stuff. Which happened at some level sure, but certainly wasn't the median response. The video actually sites the "emails" shown on screen in End of Evangelion as evidence:

And like, bro those emails are fake! The staff wrote them for the movie, they didn't use real death threats or fan mail, that would be a huge legal liability. Not saying they are analytically useless or anything but, you know, you need to know that.

Anyway, SteveM mentions that of course there was pushback against Eva's ending, but actually the big wave wasn't interior to the fandom - instead it was sparked by Eva "going mainstream" discourse-wise. In particular a review essay by social critic Eiji Otuska (who is also a former lolicon creator ding ding ding) that was published after the finale aired sparked a widespread discussion in the media by other critics. He links to the essay in their discussion....except he doesn't. He thinks he did, and then when they look, its just someone else mentioning it in an article in 2003:

Bitter disputes broke out on online bulletin boards, with some critical of the producers for failing to provide a clear-cut end to the story, and others who praised the finish for being "typically Evangelion-like." But when commentator Eiji Otsuka sent a letter to the Yomiuri Shimbun, complaining about the end of the Evangelion series, the debate went nationwide. "The debate that erupted over the ending went way beyond our calculations," Gainax's Sato chuckles. "Anno probably knew what was going on. He realized that media other than anime had taken notice of Evangelion."

Which triggered in me the thought - why doesn't he have it? He references it in his own work after all. As you can guess, after some searching I am pretty sure I know why; no one has it. Its never been scanned or reprinted in an accessible format! It definitely is important in the history of Evangelion - I have seen this claim in other contexts, the essay that sparked a discourse, and you can find many works about Evangelion citing Otsuki (generally later works, like an article published in September of 1996 which you can buy) But what the article article said is only discernable via the clues dropped from second-hand accounts.

So can we find it?

First of all I need to figure out what is even being referenced. Searching through contemporary Japanese sources, I dug up an extremely handy find:

A somehow-still-existing 1997 fan page by a Japanese otaku (I'm giving you this stuff auto-translated btw, what would you do with a wall of kanji?) who extensively catalogued every media mention of Evangelion. I am sure they missed some, but they didn't miss a big one like the Otsuki letter - which we know from the above interview appeared in gigantic newspaper Yoimiuri Shimbun:

This gives us three candidates; given that we know it was written after the finale aired, and that was March 27th, 1996, our most likely candidate is the April 1st essay; I was able to find a secondary source mentioning the review was "immediately" after the finale, so I think that nails it.

Which alas does not bring up anything! Try as I might I cannot find any extant blog post, or scanned image, or long quoted form. But after trying the usual methods I did realize something - unlike my average document hunt, this is Yoimiuri Shimbum, a newspaper, a big newspaper. Which means they probably have their own archive, which I might be able to access. and low and behold, they do! And my university research services actually have an account!!

Incredibly blessed by this stroke of luck, I went digging for everything containing "Evangelion" and "Eiji Otsuka" in 1996, and found it:

And it's fucking blank. If the article is scanned or anything it will have that "Japanese Text" you see on the first result, or "Scanned Image" tag or something. I swear its like the only ones not scanned, all the random ads and list of best sellers are all there, but the entire cultural essays section is just an archival void. Shot in the skull right at the finish line.

Alas I am out of ideas of this one - its a newspaper, no one is selling this on Yahoo Auctions. Though hey, at least now we know the title:

"オウム」を超えるはずが... / It should surpass Aum...", 876 characters long.

"Aum" by the way is Aum Shinrikyo, the cult terrorist group that conducted the 1995 Tokyo subway sarin gas attack. Which you can imagine really took the chattering classes by storm; it was the culmination of a series of "extremist" actions that began in the 1980's that built up a narrative of societal decay and alarm. It really isn't surprising that Otsuka linked Evangelion to Aum Shinrikyo; the apocalyptic connections were obvious, there was even an episode of the show that had to be changed due to the attacks as the production team thought the events were too similar. And additionally, if this essay was gonna spark a "societal backlash", it has to say something controversial right? I have definitely seen other critics like Hiroki Azuma discussing Eva in relation to Aum as a "social phenomenon" - I am betting Otsuka is the source of that comparison being so ubiquitous.

From other sources like people on twitter and other articles, I can pick up a few other details on what it contained; apparently he referred to Evangelion's finale as a "self-help seminar" for otaku and lambasted the idea of airing one of those on TV. And from his other writings I think you can certainly piece it together - essentially seeing Evangelion's self-involvement and hyper-introspection as a product of the same societal malaise that birthed Aum Shinrikyo, while failing to deliver a solution that could "go beyond" that. Which, the shit you said about media in the 90's, I want a hit of what he's having! But while today its quite obvious that groups like Aum were, sure, saying something about society but turned out overwhelmingly to be fringe weirdos as opposed to canaries in the mental institute coal mine, at the time this was very much the zeitgeist.

Still, I don't really care all that much what it says - its an important artifact! It started the "Eva discourse boom" that broke out of otaku circles and launched Evangelion into a cross-societal phenomenon! We should have a record of it, it should be preserved. I will ruminate on it, and see if any other ideas pop up. And meanwhile if anyone out there happens to see what I missed definitely let me know.

#evangelion history #Ash anime deep dive bullshit #mini-essay

36 notes · View notes

crystalyssa35 · 7 months

Text

A General Guide to Writing Well, Now, & Consistently

In all my years writing, I have struggled with keeping writing as a fun and healthy habit. It took me five years (and many instances of writer's block and giving up) to actually have a basic set of guidelines to keep my writing going...

And I would like to share these "rules" with you all today!

Now, a bit of a disclaimer: developing the quality of your writing skills comes with time, research, and thinking. It may sound frustrating to hear, and you may hear it often, but the only way to get better at writing is to write and read often. Many times, just by jotting a silly thought down or reading fanfiction, you can spawn ideas without realizing it.

Now, to the list of tips that (I hope) will help you on your writing endeavors!

If you are not having fun writing your story, your readers will not have fun reading it. It sounds silly, but it's true! If you're enjoying your writing, you're more likely to write more and input more ideas into it!

Even if you have people to check your works, reread them on your own anyway. This may be a little frustrating tip for some, but let me tell you: I used to HATE checking my own stuff. The worst way I learned that personally checking it is a necessity was when my aunt checked it and pointed out tens of mistakes within my grammar, storyline, and characters. Check yo work, it will save you a LOT of embarrassment in the future.

Write anything. Read everything. As ambiguous and obscure as it will sound, it makes sense with context. As I mentioned before, the only way to get better at writing is to write and read often. Write anything your mind desires, that's simple enough. But read EVERYTHING; not only books, blogs, and articles, but also games, texts with friends, billboards, pictures with text, and (sorry, students) even homework as well. You'll be surprised how much your vocabulary expands when you actually pay attention to anything that is written (for me, it was video games. Seven-year old me knew vocabulary that I was taught in seventh grade because of it). And on that note...

Research what you don't know. Please, this one is genuinely important (I'm biased because it's one of my pet peeves). This includes words you don't know the definition of, spelling, and even generic, real-life information you want to add into your stories (e.g. I actually spent four hours researching how gemstones are categorized for my sci-fi story: Eco-Adstrum). Unfortunately, sometimes researching and fact-checking your ideas before writing them down can prove to be unmotivating, especially when you're wrong. But, it's always good to stay optimistic and be creative enough to twist the actual fact to mold it to your stories. Unless you're writing non-fiction, then maybe don't do that last bit.

If you have no ideas, keep wiggling your pencil. To those that recognize that phrase, yes, it is not my own. This is a piece of writing from former Tumblr user "officialtheonite" (I was only able to find the post because it has been reblogged multiple times) and their fifth grade writing teacher. Essentially, even if you have no ideas, keep writing. Write ANYTHING, even if it doesn't make sense. You will always be able to double-check it later and you will save yourself a lot of wasted time sitting around trying to stir the soup in your brain.

Balance the usage of your names and pronouns. To this day, I still struggle with this. I tend to use an abundance of pronouns when I'm referring to a character, so much so that sometimes, it becomes unclear on if we are still talking about aforementioned character or if we're talking about a different character entirely. Use names when the focus or action of a character is on stage; use pronouns if we are still talking about said character (even if we are talking about the same character, make sure you at least reiterate their name when there's a new paragraph).

I'll be editing and reworking this list as time goes on. I hope these tips can be of use so some of you all. Feel free to ask me any questions if needed. Enjoy writing and keep at it! I believe in you all!

#writing #writers on tumblr #writing tips #writing thoughts #creative writing #personal experience #ask me questions #writing advice #writer things #writeblr #writerscommunity

93 notes · View notes

am-i-interrupting · 10 months

Text

Focus

Description: You worked closely with Chief Ganondorf, you knew his plans and you knew you’d have to be careful in how you revealed to the King and Queen what would happen. It couldn’t be sudden, it would have to be gradual, one hint at a time.

Tags: 1.7k words, gerudo!reader, slight language barrier (written text), yearning, implied Ganondorf x Reader, inspired by an @alilbitlesbian post

Your fingernails drummed against the table as you looked over the paper in front of you. You forced yourself to focus on it. You had to focus on it.

It was all written in Hyrulian. You knew most. You knew enough to be considered fluent but you were no expert. You needed to give the words your full attention to piece together the puzzle that was context and figure out the meaning of words you didn’t understand.

You couldn’t be distracted. You had to focus.

They were right in front of you though. How could you be expected to do anything when they were right in front of you.

King Rauru and Queen Sonia of Hyrule, you’d heard their names before but only in tones filled with annoyance and occasional malice. What you’d been told of them did not prepare you to fit in front of them.

Rauru was tall with a thin coat of fur all over his body, barely an inch thick— if that. It was all a shade of gray save for his ears which were as white as his hair with longer, fluffier fur. You’d caught yourself wondering several times if his many earrings would jangle if you scratched those ears and you got your answer when he turned his head and a soft tinging was heard as they clicked together.

Sonia was a Hylian woman with similarly long hair to her husband though hers was blonde instead of white. Her eyes were a shade of vibrant green that was more colorful than the grass and flora you saw on the trek here. Those eyes were filled with understanding that you were left questioning, not sure what she saw when she looked at you that made her soften so much.

“Are you alright?” Rauru asked with your title at the end of his sentence.

“I’m well,” you told him. You let your fingers drum against the table a few moments more as you continued to stare at the words that muddled together on the page before you finally relented. “Though, if I’m completely honest, I do believe I’m having some. . . difficulty understanding. That is to say, I don’t know all of the words written.”

Sonia’s eyebrows rose and then fell as a soft smile came to her lips. She stood and walked over to you. Her hand went to rest between your shoulder blades as she bent a bit to get a better look at the paper.

You willed yourself to not think of how warm her hand was or how you could feel the very tips of her fingers against your skin.

“Let us take a look together, shall we?” she said.

With her help you realized that you did know most of these words and the ones you hadn’t were outlandishly lavish. There was simply the matter of spelling, different dialects and all. When you’d gone over the entirety of the paperwork, her hand still didn’t leave your back,

You cleared your throat and reached for a writing utensil. “I do believe that these are reasonable expectations,” you said. “The Gerudo will happily accept your request, King Rauru.”

“I’m pleased to hear,” he said as you signed the papers.

You slid the papers back to Rauru who took them so carefully. His fingers curled around the documents, only the pads of them touching it. He seemed almost wary of his nails, like they would pierce through the pages if he held them too harshly. Perhaps it’d happened before.

With a heavy feeling in your chest, you moved to stand. Sonia’s hand and warmth retreated from you as you did.

“If that is all, I should be off,” you said. “Sav'orq and sav'orr.”

“Are you sure you wish to go?” Sonia asked. “You’re welcome to stay. It’s getting late.”

She was right, of course. The sun had gone down and the moon was beginning to rise by the time you’d finished. However, you had to leave. You’d rather not deal with him thinking something had happened.

“It’s a multi day journey,” you reminded her. “One night won’t make a difference.”

“Then one hour shouldn’t either,” Rauru said. “We have the extra room. Please, if not for yourself than to ease our minds. There are many creatures of the night which could harm you. It’d be safer to turn in early and rise the same than to traverse far enough away from the towns and stables so if something happens, no one will know.”

You tried to focus on your goal. You knew that you really should leave now, get three to four hours of travel in tonight to make up for the lost time but they made a compelling argument.

You looked at them both. They should know they already won this bout of conversation. As soon as they’d asked the question, you knew the answer.

“If it’s not trouble,” you said.

“None at all,” Sonia said. “I’ll work on the arrangements.”

She left the room. Now it was just you and Rauru, alone in such a large room. There weren’t even guards. How trusting, how foolish.

“You should tighten your security,” you told him.

His brows raised. “Any particular reason?” he asked.

Oh, so many. Too many.

There was a reason Ganondorf had chosen you to come, because he knew you couldn’t say no to him. You hadn’t said no to him so many times and in so many different ways.

It wasn’t because you were weak or fragile. When push came to shove, you’d normally have no qualms telling him he was wrong. He’d even encouraged it, fond of the challenge. You simply knew when to keep your mouth shut for either safety or occasionally pleasure.

“Like you said, dangerous times,” you settled on saying.

He slowly inhaled and exhaled, a whirlwind of emotion hidden in his eyes.

He didn’t comment further. Instead, he changed the subject, “You must be famished, it’s been such a long day and we barely took a break. May I?”

You gestured for him to go ahead.

He led you down the halls of the castle to a kitchen area. He scooped several fruits you’d seen only briefly in your time here with Ganondorf but hadn’t tried onto a plate. Then he grabbed a pot filled with water and began preparing something.

It was so strange to see, a king making and preparing his own things. It didn’t seem right or rather normal. Especially in comparison to Ganondorf who practically used you as all his needs packed into one. You prepared his food. You stood watch to guard by his throne. You handled the townspeople’s squabbles. You did everything except the political work. That was until recently when you’d been thrown into that too.

“Oh, there you are,” Sonia said as she entered the room. “I couldn’t figure out where the two of you went.”

“My apologies,” Rauru said. “It simply occurred to me that none of us had eaten in our time together. I thought I’d rectify that.”

“A noble cause,” Sonia said as she reached over you for a golden, round fruit.

She bit into it with a small crunch sound. Her eyes fluttered closed for a mere second as something in her seemed to relax.

You could see the smallest droplet of something clear begin to try to roll down her lips and chin but you reached out to gather it with your thumb before it got the chance. It was sticky on your skin though that was to be expected.

Sonia’s hand nearly went to where yours had touched her but she stopped herself.

“I hadn’t realized how hungry I was until food was placed in front of me,” she said with a small smile.

“A common realization,” Rauru said.

He grabbed three cups. What was normal in your hands was dwarfed in his. It seemed so small, like an adult playing with a child’s toy.

He held them like he held the papers (not hard enough to pierce) and the fruit (not hard enough to bruise), not hard enough to crack.

He poured tea into the three cups. You reached for the one closest to you slowly.

“No one has ever made me tea before,” you admitted.

A flitter of sadness was quickly washed away with the hand placed on your arm and smile scratched across her lips as Sonia said, “Then you’re in for a treat, Rauru makes some of the best tea I’ve ever tasted.”

“Now, Sonia, you know better than to place false expectations in people’s heads,” Rauru said.

“And you know better than to lie,” she retorted.

You hide a smile at their banter with the cup before you took a sip.

“I’m afraid Queen Sonia is correct,” you said. “You’ve downplayed. It’s wonderful tea.”

“Thank you.”

“And please, simply call me Sonia.”

You arrived in Gerudo Town nearly four hours after the sun had descended from the sky. You took a moment to bask in the comfortable temperature inside the walls of the town (especially in contrast with the sharp chill of the outside) before you began to make your way to Ganondorf’s chambers.

“You’re late,” he said sternly.

“The meeting ran over,” you explained, not lying but not revealing the entire truth.

He scoffed lightly as he turned to look at you. He circled you, inspected you with critical eyes. He searched for any sign of damage. If there was the smallest scratch or faintest bruise on your skin you knew he’d find it and use it to his advantage. He found nothing.

“Would you like to make up for your lost time?” he asked.

“Of course.”

You followed him to wherever it was he led you. You knew what you were agreeing to. You did it willingly, probably would even if he wasn’t your higher up and simply a man on the street. However, he wasn’t the only person you’d found yourself drawn to in these ways recently. You couldn’t admit to that, however. At the very least not now.

Perhaps soon you’d be able to focus on more than just him and his wants. You dared to dream that maybe one day you could focus on your own.

#rauru x reader #king rauru x reader #king rauru x you #rauru x you #rauru x sonia x reader #Rauru x reader x Sonia #queen sonia x reader #queen sonia x you #sonia x reader #sonia x you

125 notes · View notes

hearthown · 15 days

Text

Nash's Letter

This series is for @pennyforyourthoughts345 (saw your post about the letters we never got to read) and was inspired to write fanfics about them!) Grayson's and Jameson's parts coming soon ✌️ PS, reread Chapter 87 of TIG if you want more context!

Nash watched as the lid of the box popped open. His eyes roved over the contents of the box. Five envelopes. Five names.

His eyes glazed. The last time he stood in Hawthorne House playing one of the old man's games, he'd been in his adolescent years. That was all before he made the decision to leave. To leave Hawthorne House. To leave the old man's legacy behind. To make his own stand.

He never cared for the money. Hell, he never even cared for any of the games. Nash knew that the him today knew better than the him that spent half of his life growing up in the house. They were all brought up to play. And when they played, they played to win.

But what was the point? Towards the end, he told himself that he would not let himself become a pawn in another one of the old man's games. And yet, here he stood. Back in Hawthorne House, caught up in the middle of another game.

Xander had asked for his presence in the tunnels not too long ago. Why did I come?

It was not that he missed playing his grandfather's games. No. It was more of a responsibility. If you need me, I'll be there. Just say the word.

A small smile escaped his lips. He thought back to the day he left, to the words he uttered to each of his brothers. At that time, he had already stopped caring about the old man's games and petty competitions. He was ready to be free. But deep down inside, Nash always knew that he would always care for his brothers, no matter what. Nothing could change that.

That was the reason he had come. Xander needed him. Avery needed him. In the short time since she arrived at Hawthorne House, Avery had become like a little sister to him. No, he didn't feel threatened by her presence like Grayson was. He felt the strange need to protect her from whatever plans the great Tobias Hawthorne had in store for her.

Nash knew that this probably wasn't the end to the game. That there was more. That Avery was probably just another pawn in the long game his grandfather liked to play. But he would worry about that later. What he should worry about was the envelope sitting in the box. His envelope with his name written in an elegant scrawl. His grandfather's handwriting.

Nash let Avery and his brothers take their envelopes first. Then, with uncanny synchronity, they opened their letters at the same time.

Nash,

Last game?

— T. T. H.

Nash swore under his breath. Even to the very end, even after his death, his grandfather had predicted that someday, he'd return to play for his own reasons. Somehow, he was sure that this wasn't the last game Tobias Hawthorne had up his sleeve, but it was the last words he would ever receive from him.

Last game? He repeated to himself.

Maybe not. He thought again, his gaze now moving to his brothers.

Note: I'm only using two words for all of their letters since in Avery's original letter, TTH only used two words and in Xander's letter, there were two words as well. Patterns are definitely a Tobias Hawthorne thing so two words for all the letters it is!

#the inheritance games #the hawthorne legacy #the final gambit #nash hawthorne #nash westbrook hawthorne #avery kylie grambs #avery grambs #tobias hawthorne

21 notes · View notes

moiraineswife · 7 months

Text

The Lies Our Broken Selves Tell Our Better Halves - A Siuaraine Fic

Title: The Lies Our Broken Selves Tell Our Better Halves

Warnings: Spoilers up to episode 3 of season 2. Safe for non-book readers. Trigger warnings: Mo's general mental state atm which is, as we know: Not Ideal. Mentions of rape/threatened rape in the context of forcing a bond.

Summary: Set/written after the first trio of episodes of season 2 to deal with Lan and Moiraine's dramatic bond-divorce via the power of Siuan Sanche, currently in possession of the only known braincell in Randland. AKA: Moiraine is making bad decisions, spiralling out of control, and smashing every 'self-destruct' button she comes across and she very badly needs Siuan to slam on the brakes before she yeets herself off a cliff. AKA: Moiraine needs a 'come to Jesus' talk so badly and who better to give it to her than the wizard pope/her wife?

Teaser:

'“Then Moiraine crumpled before her eyes. Her shoulders slumped, her mask fell away, revealing the agony and the empty exhaustion that lingered beneath. She covered her face with a shaking hand and moved blindly towards the bed, sinking down onto it as though she no longer had the strength left in her body to remain standing.

Siuan’s heart clenched painfully and the love in it for this woman caused a pang of regret to pulse through her. But she steeled herself and refused to give Moiraine an easy way out of this. It would be painful, but she needed it. Light but she needed it.'

Link: AO3 or Read Below:

“Where’s Lan?”

This simple, casual question instantly changed the atmosphere in the room the way a storm changed the feeling of the wind on the sea and instinctively made Siuan shiver.

Moiraine turned away, putting her back to Siuan, making a casual show of looking out of the window, the gesture effortlessly woven into the absent circles she was walking around the room anyway. But Siuan knew her too well for her to get away with that shit, and a flicker of anxiety immediately tightened in her stomach. She was far too calm for him to be ill or grievously injured, and if he was dead Siuan doubted she would even be upright, let alone coherent, but–

“At the Tower, I expect,” Moiraine replied lightly, absently tracing the delicate petals of a rose in the vase on the window ledge.

“At the Tower?” Siuan repeated, bewildered, “Why in the name of the Light is he there?”

“I sent him there,” Moiraine said, moving away from the window to continue her lazy, seemingly mindless circle around the room. "He should have arrived by now. No doubt he's enjoying reuniting with Nynaeve. Likely as we speak,” with the suggestion of a little smirk on her lips and a faint laugh. It was as flat and empty as her eyes, which remained cold and distant and sad throughout her little performance.

Enjoying reuniting with– Siuan opened her mouth to demand an answer to just such a question, but no. That was deliberate misdirection. Moiraine’s too casual air, that forced smile. She wanted her to focus on something, anything, other than what she should be focusing on. And that was an answer to the question of: what in the name of all that was bright had happened at Verin’s quaint little cottage? Clearly it’d grown more interesting since Siuan had last visited.

“What do you mean you ‘sent’ him?” Siuan asked, very quietly, and very intently, so Moiraine could not avoid the question unless she very obviously side-stepped it, thereby revealing it as a sore point.

Instead of further attempts at deflection, Moiraine returned with that false little smile that Siuan loathed. The one that held no humour at all and that she only used when she was trying to make light of a situation that could not have been darker if it was taking place within the Dark One’s own arsehole.

“I’m not really sure what’s causing you confusion,” Moiraine said with that mildly patronising inflection in her voice. “I sent him, that is to say I arranged for him to go from one place and to arrive in another of my choosing.”

Siuan might have throttled her, but she needed her hands to massage her temples to try and stave off the headache she felt coming on. Light and she’d thought this would be a simple question. She had forgotten that, when talking to Moiraine bloody Sedai, there was no such thing as ‘simple’.

Moiriane, the Light blind her, had the gall to add blithely, “couriers do that sort of thing, you know. I was sure you’d be familiar with the concept.”

Siuan snapped her eyes up to meet Moiraine’s as she cut in sharply, with no trace of amusement or indulgence of the little farce she’d just been forced to witness, “your Warder is not a package.”

The coldness in her voice brought Moiraine up short. Her false little smile faded as her expression hardened. Then she set her jaw in that way she’d picked up from Lan years ago, without either of them realising it and stared icily down at Siuan. As if that was going to put her off.

“That man cannot just be ‘sent’ anywhere,” Siuan continued, utterly unphased by Moiraine’s glare, “anymore than you can send a hurricane to ‘a place of your choosing’,” she repeated sardonically, each word snapping out harsher and faster than the last, until she was practically spitting the last ones. “He has been more devoted to you than a sailor who hasn’t seen a tavern in a year is devoted to his first mug of ale." Her eyes bored into Moiraine’s, and she met the stare defiant and unflinching as ever, so Siuan pressed harder, "I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d died and his corpse just got right back up and refused to stop following your fool self around," she said bluntly.

Then she paused for a moment, letting the implications of that sink in properly, watching the subtle nuances of Moiraine’s expression shift. It was like reading the currents of an ocean, something anyone unfamiliar would miss entirely, but were as obvious as words on parchment to those that knew. Siuan caught the slight twitch at the corner of her mouth, the flickering blink, there for half a heartbeat then gone, the slight tightening of the skin around her eyes, and felt as wary as she would spotting a cleverly hidden riptide beneath the waves.

“What happened, Moiraine?” she asked quietly, in the same stone voice, unbroken and unweathered by time or tide, every inch the one she used when she made a demand as the Amyrlin Seat. One that would be obeyed.

With a swirl of deep blue Cairhien skirts, Moiraine turned on her like a summer storm. Siuan held her ground, unmoved, even at the sight of the flare of anger that flashed in her partner's eyes. For a long, charged beat of tension they stared at each other, gazes locked, jaws clenched, heels dug in, both ready to go ‘til the last breath if needed.

Then Moiraine crumpled before her eyes. Her shoulders slumped, her mask fell away, revealing the agony and the empty exhaustion that lingered beneath. She covered her face with a shaking hand and moved blindly towards the bed, sinking down onto it as though she no longer had the strength left in her body to remain standing.

Instead, Siuan crossed the room and knelt down on the floor at her side, staying close, while still giving her the space she needed. Reaching out and gently twining their fingers, stopping Moiraine from agitating the already red and ragged skin around her nails that she’d been worrying at in her agitation. Siuan waited, patient, thumb stroking over the back of her hand, giving Moiraine time to gather her thoughts.

Finally, without warning, like a horse suddenly bolting for no flaming reason at all, as they did, Moiraine launched abruptly into speech.

“I tried for months to make him leave me,” she began, with an obvious frustration in her voice, punctuated by her little huff, “to make him see reason.” She sighed heavily, shaking her head and looking exasperated and hopeless at once. “Nothing I did worked,” she muttered impatiently, “no matter what I said, or what I did, aloof, or indifferent, or even cruel I was to him: it never made any difference. He can be damned stubborn when he wants to be,” she grimaced.

Siuan decided it was not wise to interrupt Moiraine now she’d finally started talking, and clearly had a lot to get off her chest, to point out the frankly hysterical level of irony and lack of self-awareness in her calling any other person in any turning of the Wheel ‘damned stubborn’, but she had to bite her tongue to manage it.

“The more I tried to push him away the more insistent he seemed to become on staying,” she frowned, as though unable to even fathom a suggestion of why he’d acted that way.

Siuan bit her tongue harder still to save bursting out a deeply sarcastic suggestion of why it might be that the man who had been the other half of her bloody soul for decades, and who loved her more than all the stars loved their sky, became more reluctant to abandon her the more clearly unwell and irrational she acted.

Something shifted in Moiraine and Siuan snapped her focus sharply back to her. The atmosphere around her became suddenly very cold and still. As though a funeral shroud had slipped down behind her eyes, they darkened, and she had to swallow to clear her throat before she could continue. Siuan reached up and placed her other hand gently on Moiraine’s side, feeling a need to anchor her against whatever memory threatened to pull her away in its current.

“What?” Siuan prompted as gently as she could, but she still felt the bite to the word that snapped out before she could stop it as concern flared in the pit of her stomach.

“That night, after I found out about the breaking of Lanfear's seal," she clarified quickly, clearly struggling to wrangle her thoughts into some semblance of order, "I left to set out for Cairhien and I–" she paused, mouth tightening and Siuan frowned, sensing her change her mind about what she'd been about to say. Before she could comment, Moiraine blurted out abruptly, "we were attacked by three Fades.”

Siuan swore she felt her soul attempt to leave her body for a moment at the horror of those words, but she wrestled it back down like a troublesome line. Though she knew that, clearly, they had both survived the ordeal, she couldn’t help herself gripping Moiraine’s hand with the fear that had gripped her.

“It was my fault.” Moiraine whispered unsteadily, that familiar shadow of self-loathing turning her sea blue eyes to chips of black ice, “entirely my fault.”

The hand Siuan was not holding curled into a too-tight fist she knew would make the nails bite painfully into her palm.

Mouth trembling, Moiraine went on with difficulty, “ “Lan was fighting, protecting me, but there were too many. It was too much,” she wiped away the tears that threatened in her eyes with a careless, impatient hand. “I was injured, just lying there on the ground like a discarded doll–” she choked on the word as disgust and frustration mingled and silenced her momentarily. “Pointless,” she spat out, words returning, along with her anger at herself. “I was useless, Siuan,” she breathed, shaking her head, “I was so useless. Like a frightened child in the middle of a warzone,” she shook her head again. Her voice was shaking so badly now that Siuan had to concentrate to make out her words. “They were going to kill him and I did nothing to save him, to help him, I– I couldn’t–”

She was crying now, tears streaming from her eyes, her anguish ignoring the hand she used to try and brush them away. Siuan squeezed her hand as her heart tightened in sympathy with her. Moiraine tried to speak several times, her efforts largely incoherent, though Siuan thought she heard the words ‘I tried to channel’, but in the end Moiraine gave up. Swallowing hard she finally just shook her head to indicate that the power had not come when she had needed it.

“I failed him,” she choked out bluntly, “utterly,” she added, ignoring Siuan shaking her head and opening her mouth to chastise her for that. She was still speaking, firm and matter-of-fact now, “I knew then that I had to get him away from me,” she whispered firmly, a new resolve giving her the strength to continue, though it shattered something within Siuan to hear her phrase it like that, as if she were a blight, infectious, corrupting, “whatever it took, I could no longer stand to keep him at my side, shackled to my danger, and my weakness.”

Siuan was quiet for a long moment, letting those words fade from ringing declarations of pain, to fading echoes, until they were mere memories of the agony they once held. Abruptly, Moiraine got to her feet, and moved away. Siuan made no move to stop her. She stayed quiet, watching Moiraine tremble herself to stillness again, the agitation slowly working its way out of her body as she hugged herself, pacing, before finally coming to a halt at the window again. One hand resting on the sil, she stared out of it with a posture and smoothness to her face that said she’d done this many times before, and took several slow, deep breaths, gradually regaining control. Her shoulders hunched slightly and her eyes seemed distant and exhausted again, as though this brief flicker of true emotion had drained her of what little strength she’d managed to cling to.

Finally, when she felt Moiraine was ready to hear it, Siuan broke the silence.

“Do you remember all those years ago,” she intoned softly, “when we agreed that you would search the world for the Dragon, and I would remain at the Tower to maintain our informant networks, and try and politic the bickering Ajahs into something that vaguely resembled a useful faction against the Dark One for when the time came?”

Moiraine nodded, looking too exhausted to speak, but she turned her head over a shoulder, watching, waiting for more.

“I told you that you needed a Warder,” Siuan went on calmly.

Moiraine nodded tiredly again, but with a slightly more impatient air, as though she felt an ‘I told you so’ twenty years after the fact was a little pointless. Siuan agreed, which was why that wasn’t at all what she was headed towards.

Unruffled, Siuan reminded, “you didn’t want one,” and heard a barely perceptible little sigh in response. “You told me that you didn’t want a Warder, didn’t want someone in your head, able to feel all of your fears, and your flaws, and your insecurities,” she went on doggedly, apparently oblivious to the disparaging little frown pinching Moiraine’s face. “You thought it would be invasive and unbearable, and that it wasn’t worth all that. But I insisted.”

‘Insisted’ was actually a very polite way of describing what she’d done. If memory served the conversation had been a lot closer to beating her over the head with a broom and demanding it than anything as polite or civilised as ‘insistence’. Moiraine looked too worn out to point this out, however. Siuan pushed through the worry she felt coiling in her stomach, determined to see this point through.

“So we observed, and we gathered information, and we made notes, and conducted thorough investigations into all of the Warders currently in training at the Tower to find someone who was suitable and competent,” she said, remembering their girlish excitement, their first spy mission undertaken together as budding Blues, “and, more to the point, someone that you might actually manage to stand without driving one or both of you to murder or suicide within a week,” she added wryly, a fondness now tugging at her heartstrings at the memory.

The corners of Moiraine’s mouth even dared to lift into something like a true smile, warm and real, her eyes softening, meeting Siuan’s gaze with such love at the recollection. Without seeming to consciously make a choice to do so, she crossed the room back towards Siuan and reached down twining their fingers together.

Siuan burst the romantic bubble blossoming between with customary brutality before Moiraine became concerned that such uncharacteristic behaviour meant her wife had been replaced by a Forsaken.

“Then you thoughtlessly toppled weeks of our hard work into a fire pit on your way out on that hairbrained scheme you had in mind when you left without so much as a ‘by your leave’,” Siuan grumbled, not missing the way Moiraine rolled her eyes. Undeterred, Siuan forged resolutely ahead. “One week later you waltzed back to the Tower with a man neither of us had ever met before in our lives and announced that you’d bloody gone and taken him as your Warder!” she concluded.

Siuan made sure that her words appropriately conveyed how distinctly incredulous, not to mean miffed, she’d felt at little Lady ‘no Warder is good enough for me’ Damodred pulling a stunt like that after rejecting every one of her carefully selected candidates.

Siuan shook her head in mock-disbelief, but couldn’t stop the smile that was starting to blossom on her lips, “I thought you were insane,” she said bluntly. “Couldn’t even have told me his favourite colour if I’d held a knife to your neck,” she snorted with derision, “but you’d gone and bonded the great stoic stone lump, eyes colder than a dead shark’s and all,” she muttered, fully smirking now.

In spite of the lightness of her tone, and the fact that Moiraine was well aware Siuan loved Lan in his own right after all these years, she did not miss the slight tension that flared for a moment at the insult to him, affectionate or otherwise.

Stroking her thumb soothingly over the back of Moiraine’s hand to stop her spikes making an appearance, Siuan continued, “I was wrong,” she said softly, “and I’ve never been as happy to be so, either,” she added for good measure. Moiraine looked down, as she looked up, their eyes meeting. A faint glint of tears reflected in Moiraine’s again as Siuan murmured, “that man is the best thing that’s happened to you since, well, since I did,” she teased, and was rewarded by a feeble, wobbly little attempt at a smile from Moiraine for her efforts. “And he is, without a doubt, the only reason you didn’t starve to death two months in because you forgot to eat for three weeks straight,” she added mildly.

Moiraine’s weak little smile had the audacity to shift at once into a much stronger little scowl, as though Siuan had claimed something utterly unreasonable or false when they both knew it was true.

“The day I met him, he didn’t know you from the next haughty little Aes Sedai,” Siuan continued, remembering this more clearly than what she’d eaten for breakfast that very morning, “but I knew that he would follow you wherever you led. I knew,” she insisted firmly, “that every step you took, he would be right there at your side, taking each one as you did.” A single tear slid down Moiraine’s cheek at those words, and she gave a tiny nod of affirmation. “I was right,” Siuan agreed, nodding herself, “that’s what he’s done every day for the last twenty years, Moiraine,” she reminded her pointedly, as though she had forgotten that she had lived them, or, perhaps, as though she had simply forgotten that she’d ever lived at all.

“Exactly,” Moiraine murmured and for a brief moment, if she hadn’t known her better, Siuan might have entertained the idea that the stubborn pain in her arse might have seen reason. Unfortunately, she knew her very well, and sensed this was too easy long before Moiraine proved it to her by insisting in a hollow, self-loathing little voice that didn’t suit her, “he has wasted enough of his life on me already.”

“I don’t think he sees it that way,” Siuan argued back, preparing herself for a long, agonising night of attempting to beat some sense into this woman.

Carefully worded logic rarely worked on her when she was like this. Typically she needed a good solid reality check with the approximate subtlety of a brick to the face. This sort of clobbering generally fell to Siuan since her Warder, for all his admirable qualities, was far too gentle with Moiraine for her own good sometimes.

“You can’t just ask someone like Lan, someone who lives and breathes for one single thing, one single goal, one single purpose,” she said, laying a steady emphasis on that final word, not missing the tightening around Moiraine’s eyes that said she knew very well what she was getting at, "to give all of that up and abandon you. He needs you, Moiraine,” she murmured quietly, “as surely as the stars need the sky.”

"He does not,” Moiraine half-growled and half- groaned back. She drew her hands from Siuan’s and took a few steps away from her, gazing unseeingly out of her window again at the night sky and the stars it held beyond. “He has never needed me,” she muttered, arms wrapping around herself, “except perhaps in needing me to stay away from him,” she added darkly.

"He would be dead without you,” Siuan countered bluntly. “If he'd never met you, and you'd never convinced him to trust you and become your Warder he would have died twenty years ago.”

She saw the flash of pain in Moiraine’s eyes at whatever memory of Lan, broken and hopeless as he’d been, and knew she felt the truth of her words. So she kept going, the moment before a catch broke the surface of the water at last was no point to slacken your grip on the line.

“Without you there would be no Lan,” she stated, clear and precise, with all the conviction of a simple truth. “Even if, by some miracle, he survived that suicide mission he set out on, he wouldn’t be the man he is today without you.” She gave that a moment, a brief handful of heartbeats, for Moiraine to come to terms with, then pressed on relentlessly. “And I know you love and trust and respect the man that he’s become at your side more than almost anyone in this world,” she all but growled, “And you know that he has more earned the right to choose to stay with you until the end."

"Enough, Siuan,” Moiraine snapped finally, rubbing the spot between her eyes that marked where the sharpest pain of the migraines that had plagued her since they were novices tended to gather when she was stressed. “I have listened to him argue with me about this every day for the last five months,” she muttered wearily, “I am not going to endure the same from you,” she said with an irritated little jerk of her head, obvious frustration in her.

Well if she was finally frustrating her that meant at least they were starting to get somewhere.

"You listened, did you?” Siuan retorted sceptically, eyebrows raised. “Did you actually listen to him and what he said to you?" she demanded knowingly, “or did you just pretend to hear him the way you do when you know someone is making a reasonable point that you don’t want to acknowledge?” she pressed relentlessly.

Moiraine turned and managed a scowl that looked positively like her old self as she said coldly, "I know what you're doing and it won't work. My mind is made up,” she bit out firmly, seeing Siuan open her mouth to reply.

Then she turned away, her eyes again on the window, and the world beyond, as though she could see through the buildings, and the trees, and the hills as if they too were glass, to the man that she had not been parted from this way in twenty years.

Lowering her head she added in an undertone, “even if you did it's too late now. It is done. It is broken. That is the end,” she concluded very softly, swallowing hard and looking down at her fingers, away from the window, cutting off the invisible thread Siuan had imagined joining her and Lan for a moment.

Siuan paused, pretending to actually deliberate and consider this idea, then she said evenly, “it could still be undone.” Moiraine took a very deep, very slow breath, lifting her chin very slightly towards the ceiling, as though silently begging the Light for patience. “It could be fixed, if you tried,” Siuan said, completely ignoring Moiraine’s reaction.

"Not everything that is broken can be fixed, Siuan," Moiraine replied, a new darkness gathering at the edges of her words, like night steadily swallowing the evening sun and all its warmth.

"No,” Siuan agreed, and she could not maintain her previous toneless, matter-of-fact even cadence now, not when she knew that Moiraine did not only mean to imply her fractured relationship with Lan, but also her fractured self. “Not perfectly or completely,” Siuan went on, made herself go on, made herself say those words, with the full force of the belief that lived behind them. “Maybe it can never be exactly as it once was. But it can always be better than it is now,” she said, and she felt her father’s voice echo in an unheard harmony alongside her own, his lessons, his wisdom, still a core of who she was and, more importantly, who she strived each day to be.

There's no such thing as perfection, so there's no excuse to ever stop trying to improve.

Her head and her heart were still full of his sayings. If they’d been rich, she’d often thought, he could have become one of the greatest philosophers of their age, quoted from Tear to the Two Rivers.

Usually Moiraine knew the feel and form of Berden’s little pearls of wisdom. Usually she would tease her and tell her that her accent became stronger, more Tairen, when she said them, as though her father truly was sharing his words with his daughter’s voice. Usually they coaxed a smile from her, and a pause to the ceaseless spinning of her mind. Usually they connected to her in the same place that she connected to Siuan, a tether to a welcome shore that promised a safe harbour.

This time nothing. No response. No acknowledgement at all. To the point that Siuan was sure she had barely even heard her speak, let alone what she’d said. She opened her mouth to say something more but Moiraine beat her to the catch,

“Not this,” she whispered, and she was staring at the window again, but this time she clearly didn’t see it, or anything at all for that matter, save whatever memory had gotten its hands about her throat and started to crush the breath from her. “Not after what I–” she began in a tremulous whisper.

Abruptly she broke off, as though remembering herself. Siuan watched as she reflexively corrected her posture, straightening her spine, standing tall and confident, the very image of a perfect Cairhien noblewoman. But though her face, as she turned back in Siuan’s direction, was perfectly calm and smooth, she would not meet her eyes.

Something went very cold and dark inside Siuan as she realised that she had made a damned rookie blunder and allowed Moiraine to distract her from the one key detail she clearly hadn’t wanted to discuss.

“How did you get him to agree to go to the Tower without you?” Siuan asked slowly, fear rising in her throat and choking the word near to silence. “You never answered me.”

She’d thought Moiraine had given Lan some false instruction asking him to fetch something for her that she could not, due to her exile. But no, Lan knew her far too well to fall for something like that. Especially after what Moiraine had done to him the night before she’d gone to the Eye of the World. And from the look in her eyes,, the hunch in her shoulders that all to clearly gave away her bone-deep guilt–

“Moiraine–” she began, unable to keep the warning from her voice.

Quiet engulfed them for a long, heavy moment, that seemed to press down with a greater weight than the world they’d carried between them all these years.

“I wrote to Alanna and asked her to meet me at the crossroads so that she might escort Lan to the Tower while I carried on alone to Cairhien” Moiraine answered at last, trying to speak stoutly and confidently, but Siuan could hear the tremors of the fracture lines she was close to breaking along, no matter how well she tried to hide them.

Narrowing her eyes, Siuan bit out, the words sharpened by the tension that was winding ever tighter in her, “it’s a good thing she has Ivhon and Maksim. I imagine that would make it much easier to bind and gag Lan and throw him over the back of his horse, which is the only bloody way I see him going to the Tower with Alanna while you ended up here.”

It could not have been clearer that Moiraine could not meet her eyes. She stared down at her clenched fingers, the skin of which was red raw from how she had agitated it during their conversation. All at once, it was as though she could not even stand to be in her own body, to be herself at all. So great was the guilt and pain and shame that seemed to physically press upon her as Siuan watched, that Siuan thought she might collapse between it. Their eyes met for the briefest moment, as they darted wildly about the room seeking another anchor point, and for that single beat of time, Siuan felt as though she glimpsed Moiraine’s true self, trapped and smothered within the cage of her bones, huddled and broken, given up on trying to break free.

“What the fuck did you do, Moiraine?” Siuan whispered, terrified, genuinely terrified, for the first time in years.

“I told him–” Moiraine began, then broke off, as if gagged by her oath, though Siuan knew there was a far simpler, far more human barrier between her and the words she struggled to speak this time. “I told him that if he refused to go willingly–”

Again she stopped, this time needing to take down a gasp of air as her whole body shook. Even then she seemed to be struggling to breathe, as though something constricted her throat, each word needing to be forced out past an ever-tightening noose, and Siuan suddenly felt dread grip the very heart of her. All at once she did not want to cross this line. She did not want to know into what darkness this woman she loved had fallen.

“I told him that I would have Alanna take his bond by force if I had to,” she whispered in a strangled little voice.

Siuan recoiled. The movement was instinctive, and she couldn’t have stopped it if she’d wanted to. Nor was she sure that she did. Light– That was– Light. Forcing a bond with someone against their will was one of the most invasive and horrific things it was possible to do with their power. It was not only a violation of the body, but of the mind, the very soul itself. For Moiraine to have even threatened that– Threatened Lan with it–

“I thought that you loved him,” Siuan said, horror and disgust rising in her words as well as the back of her throat. “I thought that he was family to you,” she breathed, revulsion forcing her, for the first time that she could remember, to step away from this woman that she had spent most of her life waiting to run to. “How could you do that to him?”

“I didn’t!” Moiraine cried, stricken, a burst of emotion rising in her, stronger than anything else she’d been able to muster as she stared at Siuan with desperate urgency. “Of course I would never have allowed it to get that far, but–”

“You threatened him with it!” Siuan interrupted, a snap in her voice, words rising to a shout in her disbelief and her anger and her horror.

That she had done this in what Siuan assumed, what she begged the very Wheel itself, was in a wild moment of utter desperation was one thing. But to stand here now in the cold aftermath and defend the choice?

Siuan felt as though she were looking into the eyes of a stranger, a nameless, unknown creature wearing her face. Because this could not be her Moiraine. The Eye of the World had taken that woman she had loved for decades, that woman she would have ripped the world apart seam by seam to protect, and spat out something else, something that looked like Moiraine, sounded like her, but could not be her in truth.

Still in disbelief, bile burning the back of her throat she went on, hoarse with shock and ever mounting rage, making her voice waver, “the fact that you actually managed to get those words out past the First Oath to spit in his face?” Her lip curled and she spared no effort at all to hide her disgust as she growled, “I think that’s far enough.”

“Why don’t you understand?” Moiraine whispered, staring at Siuan as though she barely recognised her either. As though they were two strangers seeing each other for the first time. "I was so sure that you would,” she murmured, her eyes going unfocused as she looked inward, seeing something that Siuan could neither see nor even fathom. “I was so sure that you–”

Flinching back with a sudden twist of contempt at that very suggestion, anger rose in her. “How could you ever think I would understand something like this?” she demanded, furious, “let alone accept it!”

“Because you know me!” Moiraine shouted a little wildly, her voice rising and wavering out of her control, like a loose sail stolen by a strong gust rippling and writhing as the rage of the ocean claimed it. “You know me, Siuan,” Moiraine whispered, thumping her palm flat against her chest, just over her heart in a broken display of utter desperation, “you know me better than anyone.”

“I thought I did,” Siuan breathed, her face still hard and cold as her heart had become, petrified and crumbling in the face of this unprecedented darkness in the woman she adored. “Before tonight I never would have believed you capable of this. Not for all the light in this world.”

Moiraine looked utterly broken for a moment, her face falling into lines of clear agony, her eyes closing against it. For a moment Siuan was sure that reason and sanity had returned, and it had hit her just how awful what she’d been suggesting was.

“I swear to you,” she breathed softly, “I swear to you on my father’s name that I did this for the right reasons,” she all but begged, her eyes wide and shining with tears, “I didn’t do it to hurt him, Siuan–” she began.

But Siuan’s anger flared once more and she cut in, “then I’m sure it wouldn’t have,” she snapped with a furious spite twisting each word, “I’m sure he wouldn’t have felt any pain, or violation, or betrayal at all,” she spat, the words firing from her mouth like crashing hailstones, “not as long as you made sure you had him raped with good intentions–”

Moiraine flinched violently at that word as though it was a physical lash Siuan had branded her with. But Siuan couldn’t find any pity for her. She had blinded herself with willful ignorance and justified this to herself somehow, but Siuan would be burned to ashes before she let her ignore the harsh reality of what she had held over the head of a man who had trusted her enough to dedicate his life to hers for two decades.

“I would never allow Alanna, or anyone else, to hurt him like that,” Moiraine snarled, anger deepening her voice so that it almost seemed to echo up to her from the depths of the ocean itself. “If I could not channel I would put a blade through their heart before they even tried to do such a thing to him,” she went on, emotion burning so palpably from her now that for a moment Siuan felt as though she stood beside a raging sun, “And if I had no blade then I would tear them apart with my bare hands before they even thought of harming him.”

There she was. Yes. That was Moiraine, her Moiraine. Without question. There was no mistaking the blazing intensity in her eyes, the strength of will that seemed to rise from every taut muscle and sinew of her body like a heat haze as she set out her goal and swore every fibre of her soul to see it done, as no one Siuan had ever met could do.

But again, Siuan saw her in the slight tremble of her mouth, the brightness of her eyes, the frightened woman who lived beneath that raging force that at times felt as if she could halt the Wheel itself by virtue of the strength and stubbornness of her command alone. The woman you could almost forget was there, fragile and afraid as any other mortal creature made of flesh and blood and foolish, foolish love.

“But I will not apologise for trying to save a good man from an unjust fate,” Moiraine whispered, the near overwhelming fire of her earlier words suddenly ash, and though there was a crack to her voice there was no less conviction or intent because of that, as she now met and held Siuan’s gaze.

Even now, after she had been emotionally beaten and branded for her choice, she maintained that, if it could not be called good, it could also never be called wrong.

Siuan wanted to shake her. She wanted to shake her and ask how she could have endured what she had at the Eye, how she could have felt someone use their Power to strip away her own. How she could know as keenly as it was possible to know what it was to be left behind, vulnerable, and violated, and helpless– how she could feel that pain, and then threaten someone she loved with the same in the name of protecting them.

But she had spoken one truth, amidst the rest of this shadowspawned blight: Siuan did know her. She had known her, and loved her, since they’d been little more than children in the Tower together. So she had to believe, if she believed that there was any light left at all in this forsaken world, that Moiraine had meant well, and could still be made to see some bloody reason.

“Explain,” she murmured tautly, with every flaming bit of restraint that she was still just clinging to.

“There is no chance that either of us will live to see the world we hope to save,” Moiraine said with an honesty that was as casually brutal as it was familiar; and it was as familiar to both of them as cold beds and lonely hearts. “Not until the Wheel turns us out together again in another life. You know that,” she said very quietly, her eyes never leaving Siuan’s, never dropping, never even blinking as they confronted this truth, and this tragedy, of their life, and their love again. “We both made our peace with that years ago when we started all of this. We knew what the price would be if we were to take this path. And we both agreed to pay it."

Siuan nodded, but her brow creased in a slight frown as she said slowly, "Lan would give his life for this, for you, just as willingly, without even thinking about it."

"Of course he would!” Moiraine snapped, sounding almost insulted on her Warder’s behalf, as though Siuan had implied the opposite.

Slamming her palm down against her thigh, frustration rankling through her, she lifted the same hand to press against her head, as though trying to help it resist some unendurable pain. Then she looked up at Siuan, her expression softening, the lines of tension and stress smoothed away, so she appeared half a child again, innocent, and naive, still able to find the hope they had begun this all with years ago.

“But he doesn't have to,” she whispered, the words near a plea, to her, or the Wheel itself, Siuan didn’t know. But it was as honest and as raw a prayer as she had ever heard pass this woman’s lips. “He is not bound to that fate as we are. He would give his life for it, without hesitation, I know he would, I do not question that. But he does not have to die for this unless I drag him into the grave that has already been dug for me.”

Light but there was still good in her, Siuan thought with gentle despair, her heart aching with it. Perhaps too much.

“He can still have this life, a good life,” Moiraine insisted, the words apparently sounding reasonable and fair to her, when to Siuan they just sounded like the nonsensical plea of a loved one to save a fallen friend who’s heart had long since stopped beating, “a life that he deserves at last. That is all I wanted for him, and everything I have done has been for that. For him,” she implored.

Siuan believed her. Light but she believed her.

“You hurt him,” Siuan said quietly, still adamant that she would get an acknowledgement on this point, before they went any further. “No matter why you did it, or what you hoped to achieve, you still hurt him, Moiraine. More than anyone else ever could, and more than you ever should,” she added firmly, because she understood now, but that did not mean she accepted.

“I know,” Moiraine said, something darkening in her eyes. Shame, Siuan realised, shame for what she had done.

All at once she seemed to fade before her, the ghost of the woman that had once stood in her place. She moved as though in a daze and sank down onto the edge of her bed again, head in her hands. Cautiously, Siuan moved to her side once more and sat down next to her.

Her presence seemed to give Moiraine the strength she needed to speak. Raising her head, she said softly, “I knew I was hurting him every day that I spoke to him so callously. Or looked at him as though he were a stranger I did not trust. I could see that pain in him, as clearly as I see you standing here before me. And it destroyed me, Siuan. You have to know that. But– He is no longer caught up within the threads of my Pattern, so he need not be hanged by them as I will be,” she said, her eyes wide, the words caught somewhere between a statement and a question; wanting it to be true, but needing Siuan to make it so.

“Moiraine,” Siuan said, achingly tender, the way she would have wrapped her last breath around her name before she rammed the dagger of mercy between her ribs to spare her a fate worse than death.

Moiraine trembled to hear that, and all the gentle agony it promised.

“Nothing in our Oaths keeps us safe from lying to ourselves,” Siuan murmured, combing her fingers through Moiraine’s hair, smoothing it back from her face. “It’s time,” she said softly, “you can’t hide from yourself anymore, love. You know, you’ve always known, in your heart, that you can’t do this alone.”

Moiraine’s face crumpled at those words, and she buried it against Siuan’s chest as she turned her face against her shoulder. Siuan cradled her, comforting her from the pain that she herself was inflicting with each word she spoke. Yet she spoke them still, feeling the weight of irony in each one, but knowing they were needed.

“You and Lan are bound together with something far more powerful and lasting than any Warder bond,” Siuan told her, sharing a truth she had seen the moment she had met Lan, standing at Moiraine’s side, and feeling, for the first time since they’d heard the prophecy, and chosen their paths, that Moiraine might be safe on hers, with him beside her. “Your Patterns are intertwined, absolutely and inextricably, and always have been,” she murmured, achingly gentle. “Your fate is his; and his yours.”

Moiraine’s whole body shook with the weight of the breaths that heaved through her chest as she struggled to bear yet another burden Siuan laid upon her back.

“I told you that there would be no Lan without you,” Siuan said, still cradling Moiraine in close to her body, “but equally there is no you without Lan,” she murmured.

As she spoke she rubbed Moiraine’s back in broad, soothing circles, trying to convey without words that it was nearly over. A few more words, and Moiraine would have survived the harshest torture that any person could know. That of having the deepest fears that gave your soul its shadow to contrast its light laid bare before you with simple, merciless truth.

“You need him, Moiraine,” she said, then again, one last time, to be sure, “you need him.”

Moiraine’s shoulders slumped, and she laid her head completely in Siuan’s lap, then shocked her by actually saying, very quietly, “I know.”

A pause while she trembled, and wiped furiously at her eyes and mouth with the back of her hand, obviously trying to regain a grip on herself. For a moment, it seemed that she might succeed. Then she wavered, taking several breaths that palpably shuddered through her whole body as she tried to contain the heavy sobs that Siuan could almost feel weighing her down before she managed to get out, “I miss him. I miss him so much.”

The shock of that hit Siuan like a brick to the face. She had expected her to talk about the Pattern, about the future, about the impossibility of the task that had been demanded of them, of the cruelty of the world, and the indifference of the Wheel. She realised now that this had been the last bit of strain needed to snap the entire line, and that everything Moiraine had been holding in since Lan had left, likely since she’d started pushing him away at all, had finally become too much for even her to bear.

“Oh Moiraine–” Siuan breathed sadly.

“I look to my left to catch his eye and seek out his approval before I remember that he’s not there,” she said, the words flowing from her as thick and fast and uncontrollable as her tears. “I hear his voice each morning telling me that I need to eat something before I start my day,” she said, as Siuan stroked her hair and let her weep, “I find it strange when my plate doesn’t have a little more potato or an extra bit of bacon on it than it did a moment before, because he’s slipped me some of his without my noticing.” Siuan smiled at that, at how simple, and ridiculous, and utterly Lan such a gesture was, how it was always the smallest, stupidest things that said ‘I love you’ without ever needing to use the words. “I pour out two cups of tea without even thinking about it. When it all feels too much, and the weight of the world is crushing me, and I do not know what is right or if I can even trust myself to tie my own shoes, I wait for his reassurance, for his hand on my shoulder, or his steadfastness through the bond but– but I–”

Siuan sensed that there was more, so much more, a lifetime’s worth of tiny moments and instinctive acts that had become as thoughtless as breathing, not noticed until they were gone, and then their absence was an agony worse than dying. But there were no more words left to her to speak them. The mask she’d clutched to her face and hidden behind all these months was little more than ash snatched at by the wind. She was bare, and barren, with no more shields to crouch behind, and no more barriers to break her fall. All she could do now was feel, feel every ounce of grief and pain she’d been pushing aside and struggling to ignore for months.

Moiraine broke, utterly and completely, and Siuan held her as she did. She rocked her gently in her arms as she sobbed and screamed until her throat was raw. She stroked her hair as she gasped and heaved and struggled for each breath she sucked in past her grief. She rubbed her back as she convulsed and trembled until at last her exhausted body could give no more, and it lay still and silent in Siuan’s arms.

Afterwards, Siuan remained quiet. Like the first breath the world took after the passing of a great storm, this was not for her to do, this was not her silence to break, only to keep watch over, until the time came. She knew that it would. Some things were inevitable that way, and she had learned patience as a babe strapped to her father’s back on his little fishing boat, waiting for the tides to carry them home. She had kept that patience for twenty long years, spending each day waiting for Moiraine’s return. She had patience now for this.

Wiping her eyes with that frustrated little gesture, sniffing repeatedly, Moiraine pushed herself tiredly into a sitting position, still leaning against Siuan’s shoulder to help keep her upright.

“I must sound so foolish,” she muttered, voice dulled by fatigue and exertion. Catching Siuan’s expression out of the corner of her eye, she seemed to realise that had not been entirely clear, for she clarified, “crying over cups of tea and potatoes when the Forsaken are stirring and the Dark One’s shadow spreads further each day across the entire world which may be lost if we cannot save it,” she said, with a truly admirable amount of dignity maintained between her hiccups.

Siuan smiled fondly, smoothing out Moiraine’s hair, “a bit,” she admitted, though she made it clear from her tone that it was meant to tease. Kissing the top of Moiraine’s head she sighed out a long resigned breath and said, “I think you need your cups of tea and potatoes and… whatever else,” she said, struggling to remember the precise details of Moiraine’s long, only mostly coherent list. Fortunately this lapse made Moiraine snort with suppressed laughter, knowing her far too well to feel aggrieved, so Siuan continued, “and that’s okay,” she murmured, giving Moiraine a bracing little squeeze. “It’s the same reason I still practise my nets and lures by hand every day,” she said, seeing the soft, fond smile and distant bob of Moiraine’s head in acknowledgement of this, “we need something to keep us sane while everything else goes mad around us.”

Moiraine considered that and then she said very quietly, “So many times, Lan has been the only thing protecting me from death, ever snapping at my heels. But he has also been my net,” she said with a watery smile, catching Siuan’s eyes, “keeping me from the insanity always clawing at the edges of my mind.”

Siuan nodded as Moiraine’s mouth trembled with the burden of the realisation Siuan had just watched settle heavy upon her soul. She stroked her cheek, anchoring her, but did not interrupt or say the words for her. She needed this, needed to purge herself of this truth as surely as if it were trolloc poison.

“I was selfish,” Moiraine managed to whisper at last. Siuan closed her eyes, a tension she had carried since she had asked Moiraine where Lan was at last allowed to leave her. “I convinced myself that the pain I caused him was worth it, if it kept him safe but… nothing in our Oaths keeps us safe from lying to ourselves, does it?” she murmured, repeating the wisdom Siuan had given her earlier. She closed her eyes, her face a mask of pain, and Siuan felt such pride, and such love, swell within her as she found the strength to confront the person she had been, and hold her accountable for what she had done. “I sought to break him, to break the love, and the loyalty I did not feel I deserved because I knew that it would break me to lose him as well.” Silent tears escaped her, sliding down her cheeks as she whispered, “I was so selfish.”

“I know,” Siuan said, the harsh simplicity of that truth balanced by the soothing tone in which it was spoken.

“He must hate me,” she said, unable to entirely smother the small sob that choked from her as she spoke those words.

“Maybe he should, for what you did to him,” Siuan said, as softly and gently as she had spoken her last truth.

She saw the reflexive flash of shock and betrayal in Moiraine’s eyes, before she blinked it away, along with the tears that had shone there, and nodded heavily.

"But I’d still stake my life on the bet that he doesn’t,” Siuan continued very quietly. Whether that made him a fool or a hero, she didn’t know, and perhaps it wasn’t her place to decide either way. “You know that’s not him. He will forgive you. Even for this. As long as you give him a reason to."

Moiraine looked up at her for a long moment then, finally, blessedly, she nodded. She looked utterly exhausted as she did so, but she did so, and that was enough for now. Siuan kissed her head. There was still more to say, on this, as well as the other events of the last six months, but Moiraine clearly wasn’t up to hearing so much as the day’s catch right now, let alone anything like that. So Siuan scooped her up and drew her down onto the bed beside her, stroking her hair and wiping away her latest tears.

“Rest now,” she told her softly. Moiraine started to open her mouth to protest, but Siuan just pressed a finger to her lips, “I will stay and shield your dreams,” she said quietly. It was a risk, she knew, not to return to the Palace, but Leane would make her excuses if that became necessary. Siuan judged that the hour-long grilling she would get from her Keeper about where she’d been and why was worth it to allow Moiraine to get a chance to actually recover some of her strength. “You need to sleep,” she insisted, in a tone that warned there would be no arguing of that point.

“You know so well what I need,” Moiraine growled huffily, the words barely distinguishable through the blanket Siuan was already pulling around her.

“I do,” Siuan agreed, as though Moiraine had spoken the words as a mere statement of fact, and not an obviously petulant complaint.

More grumpy sounds issued at this, though none were coherent enough to be made sense of, and were thus very easy to ignore, as Siuan bundled Moiraine up in the densest, heaviest blankets she could find, then wrapped her arms around her and held her close. She was asleep almost before Siuan had finished weaving the shield around her mind to protect her from Lanfear’s influence, at last safe enough to allow the sleep she so desperately needed to claim her.

There was still a ways to go, she knew, the shore was only just visible as a faint line upon the distant horizon, and their little boat still had a vast ocean to cross to reach it. But if things had not yet been fixed, they had been improved. Tomorrow they would improve again, and the day after, and the day after, and the day after. One step at a time. One foot in front of the other. Until the sand of the shore turned to earth, then to stone, and they reached a place where the turbulent sea was little more than myth, and the oar they carried was mistaken for a staff.

****

I'm friendly! In spite of the endless angsty content I produce! Please come talk to me!

#moiraine damodred #moiraine sedai #siuan sanche #siuanraine #molan #lan mandragoran #wheel of time #wot fic #siuaraine fic #molan fic #my fic #fic #long post #text post tag

54 notes · View notes

horseshoegirl · 10 months

Text

Way Down We Go

(Bradley Bradshaw OneShot from Damn Those Dog Tags)

💛 AN: Just a little bonus chapter; you do not have to read it if you do not want to. I hope you do, though, cause I did a thing I had not planned on doing with this (Not the smut). Liz is not written in the second person, as this can be read separately from Damn Those Dog Tags.

Special thank you to @desert-fern and @startrekfangirl2233 for checking this over while I was sick!

THIS IS PURE FILTH. SO WHEN I SAY STAY OUT IF YOU ARE UNDER 18, I MEAN IT!

❗18+ (Minors DNI!!), Strong language, Smut (Oral, Unprotected Sex), Original Female Character, Divorced Female Character, Mentions of Original child character, Bradley working through childhood trauma and the events of Part 13 of DTDT, mentions of name calling.

#8.7 K

📜 Rooster knows he fucked up. Badly. If it wasn't for Sadie kicking him out, the entire team standing with Jake was surely it. With nowhere else to go, Bradley finds himself knocking on the front door of the one person he knows he could confide in. Even if she tells him what he doesn't want to hear.

Sadie's teary-eyed face haunted Bradley the second he pulled out of Liz's driveway.

He couldn't escape it. No matter how much he stomped on the gas pedal or how loud he turned up the radio to blast 80s music, nothing could remove the sheer devasted look on her face as she told him to get out.

He knew he wasn't paying attention as he drove. Cars honked. Yellow stop lights went ignored. He forgot to turn his blinker on as he changed lanes or turned corners without so much as stopping.

It was a miracle no roadside police or highway patrol pulled him over. But Sadie, forgoing calling him her uncle or even by his callsign, hurt him badly. He couldn't have cared less if he obeyed the rules of the road.

It wasn't until he came to a stop sign at a four-way intersection Bradley suddenly slammed his brakes hard, the tires of his Bronco skidding to a halt. He hit his hands off the steering wheel, letting out a guttural roar of pure frustration.

Liz had lied. And the whole team had taken Hangman's side. Did they not get it? Did they not understand that Hangman would leave them out to dry the second he got what he wanted?

He had a tally. And Rooster could only remember the nights he watched every single one of the bartenders before Liz quit because Hangman broke their hearts.

It was only a matter of time before Liz was next. Before Sadie was next.

A broken heart over whatever her relationship was with him would be better than the alternative.

But he couldn't deny he was hurt. Was he angry at them? At Liz? Sadie, concussed and still sassing the hell out of him, because even a ten-year-old saw through his bullshit? Or was he angry at himself? Cause maybe deep down, Sadie doing exactly that made Bradley realize just how badly he had fucked up.

Staying at the intersection for a little while, Bradley rested his head against the top of the steering wheel, trying to control his breathing and fight the ache in his chest. Until he gathered the strength to lift his head and stare out at the roads in front of him, realizing the choice he needed to make.

He could turn back around, even if he shouldn't. He could turn left and go to Maverick. But Mav would call him out on what he said, and Bradley didn't want to relive the same look of utter disappointment that wrecked Sadie's face on Pete's.

Seeing it on one person he cared about was enough.

He could go straight and go home to be alone with his thoughts, with nothing but misery for company.

But looking right, Bradley realized he had a third option, despite only seeing her within the context of Liz and Sadie. An address stood out in the back of his mind. He had dropped Sadie off there enough times to remember the route without having to look it up, and he wasn't sure why he suddenly had the urge to seek her out now.

Maybe he knew she would listen to him when no one else would. And right now, the last thing Bradley wanted was to be alone.

The impulse was too strong. He decided to turn right.

Bradley found himself on auto-pilot as he drove, maybe a little more numb or spaced out than the road rage he had before. It wasn't until he pulled into the driveway of the little white-panelled house did his emotions suddenly seem to quiet down.

The wind had slightly picked up, rustling the red, white, and blue flag hanging off one of the support beams on the front porch. Bradley fixed his eyes on it as he climbed out of his Bronco and up the walkway, pausing at the first step.

She had a way of making him feel welcome since the first day he came to pick Sadie up from school. She made him laugh as she called him out on his shit or teased him for flirting with the other school moms as the pair waited for Will and Sadie.

The thought hurt, knowing Liz would probably follow through with her long-standing threat of revoking his Sadie privileges, not that she really needed to.

Sadie had made it clear enough. He was clearly unwanted.

But New Year’s Eve stood out in Bradley’s mind, the night he found himself thinking about repeatedly. If it wasn’t the quick celebratory pluck on the lips the two of them shared, it was the time they spent together simply talking in the hours afterwards. About everything and anything, no judgment whatsoever.

Bradley sometimes wondered what it would be like to kiss those lips again.

Properly this time.

The memory of that conversation led him to step up onto her porch and knock his knuckles against the door. But in waiting for her to open the door, he bit his bottom lip hard. What were the chances Liz had called her over the past hour, telling her everything he had done? Everything he had said? There was a good chance she wouldn’t even come to the door.

Pacing back and forth, he started questioning why he had decided to come here, wondering if he had enough time to leave without being caught. Once she found out what he said, there was no question she'd want to add her name to the growing list of people who never wanted to see him again.

But it was too late for him to turn around. Just as he went to take that first step toward the walkway, the door opened.

Alyssa, wrapped in a silky white robe, was shocked to see Bradley standing on the other side of her door. Not that she minded; she had been crushing hard on the piano-playing aviator since he started picking Sadie up from school. But outside of Sadie and Liz, Rooster didn't have very many reasons to seek her out.

The first thing she noticed about him was the pure look of devastation permanently etched across his face as he turned to face her. His eyes were rimmed red, and his hair was a mess like he had raked his fingers through the strains multiple times. Even the confidence she always found to radiate off him was absent, and she wouldn't be surprised to learn he had paced across the deck multiple times before deciding to knock.

It was that one look that told her everything she needed to know.

"What did you fuck up?"

Bradley reared back. "That obvious?"

"You show up on my doorstep close to nine at night with your tail between your legs. You wouldn't be coming to me, of all people, had you not done something to piss off your entire team. Liz included."

He looked past her and into her front hallway. "Where's Will?"

"At his father's," she said unamused, crossing her arms over her chest and staring at him pointedly.

Taking one look at her, Bradley suddenly felt small. Alyssa was Liz’s friend. She would no doubt side with her.

"I can leave," he said, his voice full of resignation. With his hands raised, he stepped backwards, proceeding down the two steps of her front porch.

Alyssa frowned. "I asked you a question, Bradley. That's not me kicking you off my front porch."

Bradley froze, his face crumbling at her words. It made Alyssa pause, wondering if she had been a little too harsh. Whatever happened, it was clear Bradley had nobody else.

He wouldn’t have come to her otherwise.

Without taking her eyes off him, she stepped backwards, leaving her front door open and walked towards her kitchen. "I've got tea on the stove," she called out, voice carrying out the front door. "Or I have something stronger if that suits you better."

Bradley hesitated, watching her retreat back inside. Something about that open door was calling to him, beckoning him to take her up on her offer. He knew he'd have to explain what happened to her, and at one point on his drive over, he knew it was possible she'd react exactly the same way Sadie did.

But instead, she was here, willing to listen.

It was enough.

Stepping back up those front two steps, Bradley found himself walking through her open door, quietly shutting it behind him. Rounding the corner of her hallway, Alyssa had her back to him, taking a bright red kettle off the stove. She reached up to a cupboard above her head, opening the door to pull out a white mug before turning around to greet him.

"Pick your poison."

He eyed her mug. "So long as it's not tea. I can't handle something that weak."

Alyssa scoffed, turning back around to pour the hot water into the mug. She was methodical as she worked, adding her tea bag and unscrewing a jar of honey, taking a spoon through the gooey liquid before adding it to her tea.

"Who said I take this weak?" she remarked, walking over and reaching for the bottle of whiskey she had tucked away in the back corner. "Clearly, you've never had a hot toddy before."

She unscrewed the cap as she walked, pouring a good amount into her drink. If Bradley showed up at her door wanting to talk, she was clearly going to need some liquid courage to help her through whatever problems he brought with him.

Alyssa poured Bradley his own glass, approaching him with her arm outstretched and placing it into his hand.

"Spill Bradshaw," She remarked, picking up her mug and cradling it in between her hands, leaning over her island next to him. "We got all night."

Bradley looked down, sloshing the liquid around in the glass before bringing it up to his lips. He tilted his head back, allowing himself to relish in the burn down the back of his throat.

He told her what happened—all of it.

The booth on New Year's Eve. Why Hangman was at the Hard Deck on a Friday afternoon when the rest of the Squad was elsewhere. At the hospital. How he hesitated to leave Sadie's hospital room, turning back around only to see Hangman with his arms wrapped tightly around Liz in an intimate manner.

Alyssa listened the best she could, as much as she wanted to pick up one of her cookbooks and whack him over the head at his stupidity. She, instead, stared down at her tea, biting her lip as she resisted the urge to butt in. It was clear Bradley had nobody to talk to about how he felt about all this.

He had bottled this up for far too long, and she knew if she did anything to make him stop, he'd never come to her or trust her again.

But Alyssa didn't know if it was out of pity or a reaction to his sheer idiocy when she poured him a second drink when he got to the fight—being invited to dinner. Hangman interacting with Liz. Sadie curled so tightly into his side as she slept. It didn't make sense how he suddenly fit in with the two of them. So when Sadie asked to be excused, he saw his opportunity to get the answers he so desperately wanted. He had followed her inside, wanting to find out what she knew.

Only he never made it.

Because the door to Liz's bedroom was left wide open, and the presence of a bag lying open next to the bed was enough. He had seen that bag enough times on deployments to know it was Jake's.

Bradley saw red; its presence confirmed every single lie Liz had told him, every aversion or subject change when answering his questions. She had lied to him, and he felt betrayed. Storming out of her hallway, he saw Jake talking with Nat, Liz's name on his lips.

Nothing else mattered when he stormed down her hallway, Bradley shouting in Jake's face. Jake had pushed him back. Nat got between the two of them. Then Liz appeared, and her concern for Sadie was more important than the reason why he might be yelling.

Bradley couldn't stop rambling, recounting each yell, each shout, that echoed in Liz’s front hallway. It was like someone turned on a tap and broke the handle, Bradley hardly stopping to breathe. The whole team had known and defended the relationship. It would have been one thing for Liz to have lied and slept with him; it was another to find Jake’s bag in her room and verbal confirmation it was more than just a tumble in the sheets.

And Liz, so furious, ripping into him. How she backed him into an imaginary corner, opened him up piece by piece, and got him on the edge of admitting his friction with Jake, with his involvement with her, was more than an extension of their professional rivalry.

Bringing up his father. His mother.

He couldn't even look Alyssa in the eye when he told her what he said to Liz. The gasp was enough, reminding him of the damage he wrought. And Sadie, who had been watching, who stepped out from behind Bob while clearly in pain, gripping Hangman’s leg and demanding he leave.

Alyssa couldn't help but smile into her mug when Bradley told her Sadie had kicked him out. By the time he had finished his story, Bradley was out of breath, tipping back the rest of his whiskey in one angry gulp.

"Well, that's fucked up."

"That she choose Hangman?"

"Not her, you, you fucking idiot!" Reaching over her island, she pushed him hard on his shoulder. "Liz isn't like that!

Bradley gripped his glass precariously by the tips of his fingers, dangling it back and forth while staring into the empty glass, preparing himself for the verbal punishment he knew he deserved.

"Seriously, why the hell would you say something like that, Bradley? Heaven forbid we need to change your last name to Bradshit."

He rolled his eyes. "Nice."

"You deserve it! God, you're worse than most of the kids in Will's class!"

"His bag was right there!"

"Because fucking Tyler!" She shouted. "I didn't hear you offering to stay with them! Liz feels the safest when she's with people, you damn well know this!"

He did know it. Liz wouldn’t have survived if he and Nat had not volunteered to go with her when Ridley passed away.

Alyssa was angry at him. Rightly so, in her opinion. She couldn't even look him in the face, turning to walk away and place her mug in her kitchen sink when she spat, "I know you and Jake don't see eye to eye on things, but you're not Liz's keeper. If she wants to date him, let alone fuck him, then stay the hell out of her way."

It’s unusual for Bradley to be this silent, especially when he was the one being discussed, always willing to pitch in and be a storyteller. Or when there was a large crowd, especially at the hard deck, he’d find a way or sit at the piano, turning everyone's heads to be the centre of their attention.

Alyssa thought maybe he was contemplating the consequences of his actions when she added, “Liz might be shit at handling her emotions, but she’d never put Sadie at risk. Why the hell would you compare her to your mom?”

She knows she’s rambling. Raging even. And yet, Bradley hasn’t said a word. She sighs, knowing Bradley would continue with the silent treatment if she continued yelling at him like this.

Turning around, Bradley had his back to her, head hanging low as he leaned against the counter. Then the first jolt racked his body, and Alyssa realized he was crying.

"Bradley..." she cooed softly. Leaving her mug on the counter, she slid her hand along the cool surface as she walked, settling herself next to Bradley by leaning upon the granite and balancing herself against her hands.

Standing beside him, she realized just how much bigger he was than her, towering over her with broad shoulders and biceps almost the size of her head. And looking down at both of their hands, side by side, she knew without a doubt his entire hand would engulf hers. However, she's never felt small in her life standing next to a man, let alone next to a complicated one such as Bradley.

"I'm going to tell you something. Something Liz would kill me for, but you need to know."

Bradley turns his head at her voice, still keeping it low, hoping she couldn't see his tears. Alyssa sighs once before admitting, "Liz is a virgin, Bradley. She hasn't slept with anyone. And Jake knows this."

It doesn't come as a surprise to Bradley that she knew. But he still shakes his head. He really was the last to know everything.

"You knew. Like everyone else."

"I'm her friend, Bradley," she rolled her eyes. "Of course, I knew."

She saw it coming a mile away. If it wasn't the night at the Hard Deck, it was Jake picking up Sadie from school. And Sadie's attempts at matchmaking, but Bradley didn't need to know that.

"Why are you telling me all of this?" he asks, voice cumbersome.

"Because you've only seen what you've wanted to see."

“What I’m seeing now after hearing that is Liz being heartbroken when she gives him her first time and he leaves her.”

"Why are you so caught up on the idea that Jake is going to leave her?" she asks heatedly, ignoring his comment. "Don't you think he would have run for the fucking hills by this point, given everything that has happened?"

Her line of questioning was logical, and it only made it worse for Bradley. Because he couldn't come up with any response to counter her that wouldn’t sound childish. Yet, he still couldn't help but recite the words, "He's not good for them."

"And you aren't?" she scoffed. "Cause it's sure as hell not looking that way. Not if Sadie has to kick you out."

Clearly, that had been the wrong thing to say. He sniffled, biting his lip as a fresh wave of tears made their way down his face at the memory. This time, Alyssa does see his face and is suddenly filled with guilt for being so harsh.

"Bradley," she said his name softly, taking him into her arms. He folded into her, glass clinking on the countertop as he turned, letting it go to bracket his arms across her upper back and burying his head into the corner of her neck.

Alyssa slowly rubbed up and down his spine, shushing him similarly to how she'd comforted Will after a nightmare. Bradley's hot tears were trailing under the hem of her rob as he whimpered quietly, and she couldn't help but place a comforting kiss on his cheek.

He had clearly reached his breaking point.

"You can tell me what's wrong," she whispered gently into his ear. "You don't have to go through whatever this is alone, Roo."

His grip on her lessened, but he didn't let her go. Lifting his head, he shuttered out a breath, hand sliding down her back until it rested against her hip. She felt the warm air caressing her face, finding herself tilting her head just a little, her nose rubbing alongside his.

His moustache tickled her upper lip as Bradley opened his mouth slightly as she slid her hand across his side and up to his chest, flat against his pec. The air was thick and hot, and she wasn't sure whether it was tension or anticipation flooding her stomach.

But then Bradley pressed his lips to hers ever so delicately, a light graze of skin upon skin, and Alyssa froze. Her brain was still trying to register the touch of his lips upon hers when he started to deepen the kiss, moving his mouth more firmly against hers. Then it became a desperate kiss, all teeth and tongue, Bradley gripping her tighter as if she'd float away.

But as soon as she whimpered in the kiss, he pulled back with a harsh pant, shocked at his actions. "I'm sorry," he says, his voice low and hoarse, letting her go. "I shouldn't have."

His back hits the edge of the island as he steps away from her, forcing himself to grip the edge so he doesn’t reach out and touch her. It's not enough distance for Alyssa to lose her grip on his shirt, holding it tight to balance herself.

Yes, maybe he shouldn't have kissed her while he was so strung up on his emotions. But she also knew if Bradley didn't admit to himself what was really bothering him soon, it might be too late the next time something happened like this.

Because if there was one thing she absolutely knew about Bradley, it was that he never understood the weight of his actions, nor did he acknowledge the consequences until it was too late, blinded by the anger and the hurt of his own feelings.

He needed to calm down, and he needed to now. And if that kiss was any indication, she knew just how to do it.

Alyssa slowly let her hand fall from Bradley's chest as she sauntered away, walking toward her bedroom. She had left the door open, intending to return with her cup of tea after her shower and a good book before he had shown up. Bradley's eyes followed her curiously but with worry, thinking she was horrified at his actions.

But she stopped halfway inside her room.

And let her robe drop to the floor.

His breath hitched. She had been wearing absolutely nothing underneath, and Bradley's knuckles whitened on the counter as he took in the curve of her naked back.

Alyssa slyly looked over her shoulder, eyes inciting him to join her. Bradley's never left her as he pushed himself away from the island, each step slow and steady. She watched him stalk forward out of the corner of her eye, anticipation and pure want starting to build in the pit of her stomach.

Calloused hands lightly grabbed her hips, fingers sliding across her stomach. Alyssa hummed as Bradley's breath warmed her neck, smelling the remnants of his whisky as her hand gently held his wrist.

He breathed against the shell of her ear hotly. "Can I fuck you?"

She leaned back against him, head turning to rasp against his mouth, "Why the hell did I drop my robe for you?"

Bradley is on her instantly, desperately moulding his lips to hers, moaning against her mouth. His hand tightened across her stomach as Alyssa reached behind his head, carting her fingers through his hair. She's still gripping his wrist, nails biting into his skin as he starts sliding his hand downwards, cupping her core.

He tastes whiskey and honey on his tongue, tracing it along the inside of her mouth. Alyssa moans against his lips when Bradley’s fingers slide down and spread her open, clit burning with the exposure to the cool air. She pulls away but hover’s her mouth over his, harsh pants echoing in the space between them.

There’s some quick retort forming in her mind, ready to egg him on into following through. But it dies before she even manages to voice it.

His pointer finger is rubbing tight, firm circles against her clit, and she gasps, mouth falling away from Bradley’s as she wobbles, legs on the verge of giving out. He doesn’t stop, encouraged by her reaction to keep going, even sliding down to gather some of her wetness on the pad of his finger before returning to his previous task.

Suddenly, his other hand slides up from her hip and across her torso to grip one of her breasts. His hold is tight, almost rough, as he pulls her against his front.

She feels like she is on display this way, Bradley caressing and groping her body as if she was being made into one of those marble Greek statues featured at a museum. An artist watching how each flick of his hand and accompanying pant twisted her body, or how a particular twist of his hand caused her hips to clash backwards into his.

It was too much. In a second, Alyssa turned in Bradley's tight hold, reaching up to hold either side of his neck to press a desperate kiss to his lips. Bradley matches her with the same intensity, working his tongue into her mouth as he takes hold of the skin at her hip.

His chest is being racked with harsh pants as he walks her backwards, a single hand on her neck. Her knees hit the edge of her bed, and she falters. Bradley tilts them both forward, making them fall into the bed. Alyssa lands with a single bounce, Bradley slotting his thigh between her legs with the movement and catching himself above her with each hand on either side of her head.

Staring up at him, she can see the pure want in his eyes. The desperation as he takes her in lying underneath him. Slowly, he lowers himself down, grinding his denim-covered thigh purposely into her bare cunt. Panting at the feeling, she slid her hands across his abs under his shirt, feeling the sculpted muscles ripple under her touch before she felt him press his forehead to hers, hot breath filling the space between their mouths.

He doesn't kiss her. Bradley purposely avoids her lips, his hot breath warming her skin as he makes his way down her body, deliberately pausing whenever he exhales. Each is long, heavy, and lewd - at the curve of her neck, above her breast, around her nipple. The further down he went, the greater Alyssa tugged at her comforter, both hands gripping the fabric as if she'd float away.

And then he pauses when he reaches her cunt, grasping the bend of her knees and pushing them open. She parts her legs willingly, slightly unsure of his intentions but hoping to god it involved an orgasm or two.

When his fingers move to part her folds, Alyssa's eyes widen. Holding her open, Bradley dove in, licking firm strips up her folds before his mouth enclosed her clit, hands holding her hips still and keeping her against his mouth as he sucked.

He's relentless, moaning into her with deep rumbles that vibrate against her clit, a wanton cry of his name crawling deep from within her chest at the sensations it caused. Bradley lets her go with a wet sound, only to hook two fingers and ease them into her, his tongue following in kind.

Alyssa tightens around his fingers and whimpers at the roughness of his tongue and how he's frantically lapping at her. Like he was in a desert, and she was the only source of water.

She can’t help but slide her hand into his hair, gripping the short strands in a vice grip to tug him closer. But instead, he manages to pull back a few inches only to breathe out, “You taste so fucking sweet.”

Her body jolts at the praise, Bradley back to licking at her with long broad strokes, tongue darting up every so often to nudge at her clit. His fingers press hard against her g-spot while the other brackets across her stomach, holding her hips down as she buckles them into his mouth. Till she feels the tightening in her stomach, and she knows she’s close.

“Fuck Bradley, I’m so close,’ she sobs.

“Cum for me,” he snarls in one breath. “Prove how much you want me.”

Alyssa never knew she needed to know the answer to the question of whether or not someone could orgasm from hearing someone’s voice. If it hadn’t been for how he was working her, she was damn sure he would have confirmed it by saying those words to her alone.

Because she was shaking, sparks flying across her body and her legs clamping down around Bradley’s head as she reached her peak. His fingers eased in their rhythm, working her through the aftermath as he took her in.

Back arched. Head gasping into her pillow and her hands gripping the sheets. Chest heaving. All because of him. And it caused desperation to grow within his chest as he sat back, placing his hand on her thigh in silent comfort.

When her pleasure finally levelled out, Alyssa looked down at Bradley between her thighs, his eyes blown wide and desperate, staring up at her.

It’s the tiniest of nods from Alyssa that makes him move. He stands, the sound of a zipper and a buckle being undone, of heavy fabric hitting the floor, and a rhythmic clink of his dog tags as he removes his shirt. Then he's crawling on the bed over her, pressing kisses up her stomach, sucking her breast into his mouth and licking a path up from the centre of her chest to her collarbone.

There’s a quick brush of his hand against the inside of her thigh before he’s reaching for his cock, rubbing the tip against her entrance. She tilts her head back into her pillow, moaning at the feeling. Bradley follows her, panting as he seeks out her mouth.

"Do you want this?" he gasps around her lips. "Do you want me?"

She smiles. "Me letting you eat me out wasn't enough consent for you?"

Bradley doesn't laugh at her quip. Instead, he presses forward just a bit, the head of his cock just barely slipping inside. She whimpers, fingernails digging into his back.

"I said," he grunts out a little more firmly. "Do you want me?"

She doesn't want to give him the satisfaction of seeing her give in. Turning her head, she gasps into his mouth, "Just shut up and fuck me, Brad-shit."

In two seconds, Bradley growls, pushing his cock the rest of the way in, making Alyssa mewl.

He's big. Bigger than anything she's ever had before, and it takes her a moment to adjust. She's grateful Bradley is giving her that chance. He looks unhinged, holding himself above her, his face red, an angry vein protruding from his forehead.

Yet, despite the wrecked look on his face, he starts thrusting slowly when she grips his shoulder, small shifts of his hips that have her whimpering at the feel of his cock sliding in and out of her.

She cannot help but think he is going too slow.

“More,” she whines, wriggling underneath him.

“More?” he asked through a rough gasp. “More of what?”

Bowing his head, Bradley kisses a path down between her breasts, hand bunching one in his grasp before taking the nipple into his mouth. He sucks, tongue darting around the peak before letting it go with a loud pop.

“More of this?” he accentuates with a hard thrust that has her gasping into his mouth, and he cannot help but kiss her once. Twice.

"More of my lips on yours?" he uttered throatily, trailing his lips down the outline of her jaw to the soft skin behind her ear. "More of my teeth marking you up?"

All of that, she thinks to herself as the fire builds in her stomach and the sounds of wet slaps fill the room.

"No," he grunts thickly. "It's not any of those things. It's me, isn't it?"

Bradley doesn't give her the option of replying, suddenly sitting back on his haunches and seizing her hips. She fell further down the bed as he tugged, arms dropping beside her head as he started to pick up the pace.

"It's me you want," he growls. "Me thrusting into you. Me making you feel this way. Me making you feel wanted. Me fucking you. Isn't it?"

She doesn't answer him, too enthralled by the feeling of him to manage to voice a single word. So he stops, letting go of one hip to lean forward on the bed and roar, "Isn't it!?"

“Yes, you,” she whimpers, finally allowing herself to give in to him. “All of you. I want all of you, Bradley.”

A growl escapes Bradley’s body, his eyes turning feral. His thrusts lose any semblance of rhythm as he begins to rock into her with wild abandon.

There is nothing slow or gentle to Bradley's movements, dragging out each reaction he could from her. He's gripping her tightly as he sets his pace with harsh, fast strokes, her breath catching in her throat. She's sure she is going on a hunt for several interestingly shaped bruises across her body in the morning. But she didn't care.

Not when Bradley was pounding into her like it was his last night alive.

Not when he was holding her wrists down on to the bed.

Not when he was suddenly over her, biting up her neck, only to take her ear lobe into his mouth and suck, when his hands were grabbing at her skin, and his cock was hitting all the right places.

Where?" he grunts, the sound vibrating in her ear. It's then she realizes the two of them were so caught up in the pleasure that neither one of them stopped to consider protection. It doesn't change her answer, though.

"Inside," she turns to gasp into his mouth. "Safe."

Her words trigger something in Bradley's mind. His pace increases in a desperate need to finish. His hand lets go of her wrist in favour of sliding down between their bodies, going straight for her clit and drawing figure eights as he thrusts, and Alssya digs her nails into his back at the added pleasure.

Bradley collapses, shuttering out a chat of fucks and digging his head into her collarbone as he drops his entire weight onto her. Alyssa curled her legs up, locking them around his waist, hands digging into his shoulder blades as she wailed at the intensity.

Then, he's cumming, hands gripping the underside of her shoulders, pulling her even further onto his length as he fills her with a groan, mouth hanging open by the side of her neck. Alyssa squeals, the sound muffled by her teeth biting down on his shoulder, legs tightening around his waist as she follows him over the edge, clamping down on him hard and milking him for all he's worth.

It's quiet in her bedroom, save for their shared gasps of breath and her wall clock ticking away the seconds. There’s a haze filling the room, making everything and anything impossible. Bradley hasn't let her go, sagging his weight down into her, keeping her pinned to the bed.

She should feel suffocated. Maybe even a little gross. The both of them are covered in slick, and sweat, and she’s sure both of their releases are smearing the insides of her thighs, leaking onto her sheets as she uncurls them from around his waist.

But it's in the haze she finally sees her chance. Bradley’s mind would be calm enough now, maybe less resistant to finally admitting the reason he was so upset. Because while Jake, Liz and Sadie were at the root of the issue, they were only the scapegoat for something much deeper.

"She had every right to kick you out, Bradley," she panted, stroking the back of his head. "Sadie was right. You were being a bully."

Bradley rolls off of her as soon as she finishes her sentence, Alyssa hissing as he pulls out. She’s sore, her core aching at the absence of his cock, but it doesn’t stop her from following him, laying a hand on his chest as he rests on his back.

She was done with the harsh remarks over glasses of whiskey. Bradley needed nothing but the truth.

"I know Liz hurt your feelings, Bradley, but there's more to this than not liking the fact Liz is dating Hangman."

He went to get out of bed, but Alyssa managed to swing her leg over, trapping him under. Groaning with the ache in her cunt, she placed her hands firmly on his chest. "Nope. You're not running from this."

"Lyssa..." he protests, halting at her weight, hands gripping the sheets on either side of her bare legs. A part of him realizes she did this on purpose, making him fall into bed with her so he'd be more compliant, more vulnerable. But another part wants to give in to her, a smaller part desperately crying out to be heard.

It's why he stops, his back collapsing into her headboard as she settles herself on top of him. Because right now, he's at the center of her attention, and she's fighting for him to stay.

“Hush,” she chimes back.

"Hangman is not a good guy. He's arrogant, selfish, and reckless... He's.."

"None of those things to Liz and Sadie," she interrupted him. "Would you call what he did for Sadie leaving her out to dry? How he listened to Liz, handcuffed to the floor, telling him to leave her?"

Bradley knows she's right. But it doesn't stop him from biting his lip and avoiding her eyes. It makes Alyssa grab the side of his face, pulling his head up. Bradley lets her but closes his eyes, not ready for the words he knows she's about to say.

"Look at me, Bradley."

He makes a noise of protest, his face scrunching up in a last-ditch attempt at refusal. But Alyssa's grip on his face remains firm, gentle and absolute.

"Roo, look at me," she tries again, this time softer. “What is the real reason you are upset?”

He opens his eyes, confusion written across his face. "I told you."

She shook her head. "You told me the what and the how. You didn't tell me the why."

Bradley didn't say anything, choosing to stare at the clock behind her head. It encouraged her to continue with her point. "Jake hangs people out to dry. Liz is too good-hearted. Sadie and her will be hurt. We know all this. But it's more than that with you, Roo."

She knows Bradley has given up on escaping when he lets her gently stroke her fingers across his brow in a comforting manner. “I think this has less to do with Liz dating or sleeping with Jake and more about Sadie. But not in the way you've been making us believe.”

As her fingers slid down the side of his face, she pressed on. "I also think Liz was right when she said this has to do with your mom."

Her acknowledgement of his mom is softer than Liz's outburst. And unlike that time, it doesn't hurt as much when she brings it up. But it doesn't stop him from flexing his grip on her bare legs, subconsciously knowing she's getting closer and closer to uncovering the truth.

"Because if it were any other person who Liz decided to date, you wouldn't be reacting as hard as you are right now. Because with every reason you've given me for being upset, they all have one thing in common, "She pauses, a pensive look on her face, before she asks," What is it about the Navy that's making you act this way?"

Bradley knows he's finally been caught.

Whether he wanted to or not, Alyssa wasn’t going to let this go. He could easily get up, push her off, and walk out the door. Continue to bury the weight of the fear that's haunted him all of his life.

But he doesn't want to.

Alyssa looks at him in a way that tells him nothing he would say would change her opinion of him. That, for every fault and bad decision he's ever made, his fear wouldn't make her run away. And unlike the Daggers, who stood with Hangman in the aftermath of his outburst, he gets the feeling Alyssa would be the one to stand with him, even if she disagreed with his actions.

So for the first time since Jake was invited to that first Saturday Night, Bradley decides to be honest.

Maybe even to himself.

Sighing once, Bradley reaches for the Dog Tags lying in the middle of his chest. Hooking his thumb around the balled chain, he slid it down till the three thin pieces of metal sat in the palm of his hand. He’s staring down at them, and Alyssa follows his gaze.

It takes her a second, but she realizes he added the third tag. She’s seen enough of the military men gracing the beach, let alone divorcing one, to know there were only supposed to be two.

“Do you know why they give us dog tags?” he asks her without looking up. Alyssa nods with a sallow, cupping the underside of Bradley’s hand holding the precious metal. “If something happens, they can identify you.”

“Do you know why they give us two?”

She does—two dog tags, one to take and one to leave.

And suddenly, everything about Bradley’s reaction to his fight with Liz makes sense. Bradley was protecting Sadie from the circumstances of Jake's very possible someday. Protecting Liz from suffering through the grief of losing another person she loved dearly.

Because there’s no question whose name graced that third tag hanging around Bradley’s neck.

She reaches with her free hand, picking up the tag not connected to the others. The metal is old, withered and roughed up. But she can still make out the name imprinted on one side as she flips it over.

Nick "Goose" Bradshaw.

Bradley’s father.

“Mav was flying when my dad hit the canopy of their plane. They didn’t need to identify him but took the tag anyway,” he sniffed, tears making their way down his face. “Mav didn’t give two shits about rules back then when he swiped it. Still doesn’t.”

Unhooking his thumb from the chain, Bradley twisted his hand, gently taking hold of Alyssa’s wrist as she held his father’s tag. “It’s all we have left when we burn in. All that remains.”

He lets her wrist go in favour of grasping the tag, Alyssa delicately letting it go when she realizes he wants to hold it. Holding the tag between his two fingers, he held it up in front of his face.

"I grew up watching my mom cry over this dog tag, whether it was around her neck or hanging on the mirror of her vanity. And I tried to help her. But her grief was just too much."

He lets the tag fall back to his chest, watching it go, keeping his gaze downward.

"When Liz's sister passed away, she shut down. Sadie knew it too," his eyes glaze over as he remembers finding Sadie pulling at strains of grass. "I found her in Liz's backyard a few weeks after we brought her home. She was trying to hide away because she didn't want Liz to know she was struggling to accept her mom was gone - because Liz had been trying her damn hardest not to cave, and Sadie knew, so she felt she had to do the same."

He shakes his head, trying to remove the memory from his head. Alyssa reached up to stroke along his shoulder and up and down his arm, hoping he would find the strength to continue.

"Jake flies like he has nothing to lose," he states through a harsh pant. "He's reckless and doesn't think about anyone else but himself. And in our line of work?" he scoffs. "He doesn't realize he has everything to lose now. At first, it was about trying to protect Liz and Sadie from him. From his reputation and cause, well, he's an asshole."

Bradley chuckles to himself softly, thinking back to the day on the soccer field. "Liz had no idea what was coming for her when Hangman returned from Texas. He went through every single female bartender Penny hired, and within a week, they were gone. I wasn't going to see Liz fall to the same fate. Even though she said she could handle it, I needed to be there for her."

Alyssa sees her chance to speak amongst his reminiscing, stating something she desperately knows to be true. "Because she cares. More than any average person."

Bradley closes his eyes and smiles softly, nodding once.

And Sadie?" he laughed. "I wasn't expecting her to invite him to own of our Saturday nights, to her hike, which none of unless had the privilege of. And it dawned on me it wasn't just Liz who needed I needed to protect."

His tears are back, tracking down the outside of his face, and Alssya doesn't resist the urge to wipe them away, cradling his cheek.

"I see so much of myself in her, Lyssa," he whimpers. "She has the whole world on her shoulders." He still has his eyes closed, tilting his head back to her ceiling, knocking his head against the headboard.

"But being in the Navy? It's a fucking death sentence. A promise." Bradley opens his eyes but doesn't look at her face, fixating on the tattoo on her collarbone, the small cursive font spelling out her Son's name. "When I say I'm mad at Liz, Mad at the fact they are together, I'm scared for the future Sade will have to bare. Because one day, it will be Sadie trying to pick Liz up from the bathroom floor, dealing with her own grief, wondering if she is enough."

Alyssa cannot help her silent tears hearing Bradley's story. She cannot imagine the weight he had to carry growing up or how fast he had to grow up. She's not surprised he would be drawing comparisons between himself and Sadie, both of them being dealt almost the same shitty hand in life.

She often thought about Will and what he might go through should Bradley's description of a possible someday happen to her ex-husband.

But in projecting his own emotional trauma, Bradley is missing something. He usually always does, too caught up in his initial hurt to see the bigger picture. Because never once in his explanation did he mention where he fits into all this.

She has a good idea why.

There are no scathing remarks, unkind words or judgments when Bradley finally decides to look at her. Instead, Alyssa looks sad, biting her lip as she gently reaches out to stroke his brow.

"Whose to say Sadie won't mourn you too?"

Her question guts him. So much so that Bradley breaks, his chin dropping to his chest as the first sob worked its way up his throat. Because the image is being painted so vividly in his mind.

It's not Ridley Sadie's crying over in that backyard, and it's not his hand she's holding while standing over her mother's grave. He can see her looking down at him, trembling lip as she grips Liz's hand.

It's not Ridley's death she's grieving. Or even Hangman's.

It's his.

"It's too late for that now," he manages to say through tears. "What I said, what I implied..."

Alssya smiles sadly, brushing away some of his tears, knowing Bradley would still harbour feelings of hatred towards Jake. "The both of them are going to forgive you. They just need time."

"Who is to say they won't?"

He says it so dejectedly that Alyssa feels she can't do anything else but take his face between her hands and place her forehead to his.

"Sadie doesn't pick favourites. She loves everyone equally," she explained, and Bradley knew she meant he was never a risk of losing Sadie's love. "And Liz... Well, you're family, Bradley. They are always going to need you."

Bradley shook his head, urging Alyssa to say something that cracked and glued his heart back together within the same sentence.

"You're never going to be unwanted, Bradley Bradshaw."

A weight, buried so deep, lifted from Bradley's chest. A burden he knew he'd been carrying since childhood but hadn't acknowledged until the aftermath of Mav pulling his papers. Because Maverick was one of the very few people Bradley had in his life supporting him when his mother passed away. And in one second, his support system was gone.

Once Bradley did get into the Navy, he spent the better half of his Naval career burying his feelings under the hatred he felt for Pete. He avoided every instance or mention of the man if he could help it. Then he was called back to Top Gun. Forced to confront every single thing he had spent years ignoring.

The aftermath of the Urainium mission brought back his support system. It brought him Liz, who showed up at the bar one day with a friendly smile and an interest in hearing everyone's stories as she poured them a drink from behind Penny's bar, never once treating them any differently because they were in the Navy, flirting with death each time they went up in the air.

Bradley couldn’t remember the last time someone had treated him like that. He was worth her time; he was worth being her friend.

It also brought him Sadie, who took one look within seconds of meeting him and decided he was someone she wanted in her life. Her struggle with grief led him to believe that maybe everything he went through could be used to help this ten-year-old girl and her aunt get through it. It gave him purpose.

And his burden lessened.

Then Hangman returned from Texas, waltzing in months after Liz's sister passed away and Sadie had firmly cemented herself into all their lives. Suddenly, the progress he had made meant nothing.

Because Sadie inviting Hangman to that Saturday night triggered Bradley in ways he didn't know he could be, bringing him back to the days and nights, he'd sit with his mom as she tried to process her grief, wondering if he could help her. If he was doing enough or if his presence only reminded her of his father.

But Bradley cannot deny the truth behind Alyssa's words. He was so caught up in worrying, projecting his fears onto Liz and Sadie, he had failed to recognize it for what it was.

When the day came that Hangman did leave them out to dry or his someday came where he burned in, Bradley swore he would try to be there for them. In the way he was there when Liz's Sister passed away.

Because Bradley was no longer haunted by the ghosts of his past, wondering if he had done enough. If he tried hard enough.

Alyssa reminded him that he was wanted.

Worth it.

And in some ways, even loved.

Reaching up, he grasped one of her wrists gently, turning his head to place a soft kiss on her skin. "I should have come to you sooner, Lyssa."

"Yeah, well, when you have to compete against Urusula on the blacktop for your attention," she shrugged, playing off the hidden meaning behind her words. But Bradley caught on, smirking as he rolled them over, trapping Alyssa underneath him and going straight for her neck.

"She's got nothing on you," he murmured, kissing the soft spot below her ear. Alyssa smiled coyly, stroking her free hand up the bare skin of his arm. "Oh really? Your tendency to gravitate towards her whenever you pick Sadie up says otherwise, full of Brad-shit."

"Have you seen those nails?" he remarked, grazing his moschate up the side of her neck. Alyssa threw her head back, nails scratching down his back.

"A fighter pilot, risking his life and daring greatly in the face of danger, brought to his knees by the head of the P.T.A. and her manicured nails," she laughed, feeling the bristles tickle her skin. "How terrifying."

"Terrified," he remarked, pressing kiss after kiss down her neck. "Utterly terrifying."

Trailing down to her chest, Bradley took one of her nipples into his mouth, sucking hard and letting it go with a pop before whispering huskily, "But you? I think I'll take my chances."

Wrapping her legs around Bradley's waist, Alyssa pressed herself up against his hardening length, lifting her mouth to his ear to remark teasingly, "Why don't you prove it, Lieutenant Bradshaw?"

He did.

Many times over that night.

Are you all going to be mad at me because Rooster got some after what he did? 😬👀 It's not all sunshine and rainbows about his opinion regarding Jake, though.

Part 14 of DTDT might be a little bit longer. I've been battling a really bad stomach bug, and the weather where I live has been great for producing migraines. So that's the reason for the delay.

Hopefully, soon!

Wickett ;)

Tag List for DTDT:

@blue-aconite @tinytotontheoversizedpony @djs8891 @caitsymichelle13 @startrekfangirl2233

@mayhemmanaged @ereardon @dempy @shanimallina87 @teacupsandtopgun @daggerspare-standingby

@phantomxoxo @formulapierre @eli2447 @fulla02 @blckgrl-sunflower @mizzzpink @ohgodnotagainn

@bubblegumbeautyqueen @sarahsmi13s @desert-fern @lynnestra44 @memoriesat30 @penwieldingdreamer @mxlanciia

@bradleybeachbabe @bobby-r2d2-floyd @lavenderbradshaw @roosters-girl @lovinglyeternal @kmc1989 @gigisimsonmars @dakotakazansky

@keyrani @craftytrashprincess @hisredheadedgoddess28 @abzidabzy @seitmai

For those who found this and are interested in checking out the story this one shot is based on, check out the below:

Masterlist For Damn Those Dog Tags

104 notes · View notes

reflections-in-a-critical-eye · 7 months

Text

I've asked myself many times over the course of three years about how would I react to information that comes to contradict a specific image I have about people. And the answer would differ, more or less, depending on a myriad of factors, such as my mental wellbeing, my attitude toward the fandom, the group, the members, etc. The truth is, I only knew how I would respond the moment it happens and I was pleasantly surprised in a way. I see it as a sign that I'm doing better or at least I'm on the path of doing better.

These are things that I didn't want to allow to come to surface in the way I used to handle the BTM blog. Perhaps because the point was to create a platform in which I could offer the rational, researched perspective which I considered to be the correct one. I'm not retracting any of that. I still believe that it is possible to offer a more complex perspective if I can back it up with knowledge from various fields, but it was also one of my defense mechanisms.

Without expanding on the personal reasons, it has become very easy for me to separate my rational and emotional side. So much, that even when I should be staying in the moment and let my emotions take space, I can't really do it, I need to come up with a rational explanation so it can make sense. I then applied this to BTS as well. I couldn't just say I like this group when someone would ask, I would have to tell them about all the studies I read and how my fascination is mostly intelectual, when in truth it was both. I used to talk about jikook only in the context of analysis, be it GCF through semiotics or various types of interpretations when it came to their performances or fandom reception in terms of their dynamics. It had to be in the context of rational fascination and curiosity because I was merely trying to justify myself on why I care that much about two strangers that I look at on my phone. Again, my intellectual curiosity is real, but that has always been only one side if the coin, but it was one that I pushed.

It's about shame actually. I can't actually accept that I have such an interest. It doesn't fit with the idea I have of myself. And sometimes I don't like it because it makes me question my intellect, my critical thinking. How can I be so good academically and at the same time I fear that I've fallen into a fandom trap? I'm smart, right? Right?

I'm sure a lot of people have dealt with or ar going through this process of cognitive dissonance. How does one deal with the mere idea that something they believe in based on their understanding of the world, their ability of decoding (not in a conspiracy sense, but in a Saussurean way) can turn out to be wrong? We see something that resembles a specific behavior that we are surrounded with our entire lives, sometimes we ourselves engage with, but we've identified it wrong on others? Of course, it's through the visual medium, one that is edited. It's a puzzle with large chunks missing, but we're getting a general idea of it. But we can be wrong. So how do we deal with that? Well, I don't have a correct answer.

Me in 2020/2021 would have been more affected because my mental health was not good. I was functionally depressed and I clinged so much onto BTS, Jikook and the small community that I found myself in at that time, that I would have felt a lot more torn than I am now.

A couple of years later and having to actually go through a situation in which my understanding of people's relationship might not be accurate, I realized I'm fine. And I think it's because it made me really register just now that I finally learned how to have fun with it. It took me three years. By having fun, I mean genuinely being able to simply enjoy the little things. I'm still on the path of not being ashamed for liking kpop or spending time talking about the dynamic/relationship of two people.

What prompted this post was reading what is currently being written in the jikook tag. Yes, I had this big introductory chunk that perhaps people won't bother reading, but I'm doing it for myself. If I can't be honest while writing stuff into the void for strangers to read, then what is the point?

I get frustrated very easily. I like debates and contradictory points of view, but not always. And that's because I like to be right. Almost all the time. So when I see something that I believe it lacks logic or I find it absurd, then my fingers are itching. I don't comment or DM people, I can control myself. I'd rather get out of the app and do something else.

What I want to say is I was surprised at how much fanfiction is being written. More that usual. Shipping contains a big deal of fanfiction by its nature. Gestures and events taking place at different times are interpreted and having information added that fills the gaps. People do that because they have to make sense of what they see.

They like to make relationship timelines. They speculate on first kisses and first sexual experiences. That's their imagination. None of us has any way of knowing. The element of fiction is heighted when people feel like they are losing control of the narrative. When they are unsure of what they are seeing. Which is what usually happens in the shipping community on a yearly basis. Anons flooding the bloggers' inboxes because they need confirmation or they didn't get any ship content in a month or two which means something is wrong.

There's this understanding that the shipper/supporter is delusional while the one who stops shipping is the rational one. From what I've observed throughout time and mostly now, that is a false distinction. The so-called rational fan makes use of fiction just as the shipper. The difference is in purpose. One talks about why the supposed romantic relationship is real and the other tries to refute that. But both categories seem to need fiction in order to build their arguments. That is because none of them have access to someone's private life and relationship, so the gaps need to be filled with speculation. There is no right or wrong version here, despite how much the idea is being pushed. And me writing about this won't make a difference. It's simply how the fandom works. The one who position themselves on the side of anti-delulu will always be seen as the less crazy one. The similarities will fade for the collective consciousness of the fandom.

I think it's difficult for a lot of people, regardless on which side they find themselves on, to accept that the option of simply not knowing is enough as well. Or knowing, but without getting anal about it. But it's hard and they write posts after posts, anons are sending asks over asks because there has to be a firm answer. Only a few allow themselves to be in between lines.

I'll bring back something that I always used to say. Shipping and involvement in the fandom is a lot more about us and less about the people we're talking about. It's about fullfiling some needs, of needing a community, of focusing on the idea of love. Those things can still be done in a way that still makes the experience enjoyable. But not everyone can and I'm not blaming it.

There's a way to just like how people behave with each other and imagine things without adding so much weight to it. Regardless of the true nature. It's our imagination, there's no need for a moral inquisition to tell anyone how to think or that they should stop thinking a certain way. Touching some grass is a cliche and an expression I ended up hating, but I do believe that being connected to discourse on a daily basis can really alter our sense of reality and what we consider to be real issues. We really should pay more attention to that and take some distance if necessary.

#m thoughts #jikook #kpop shipping #bts shipping #fandom discourse

52 notes · View notes

sizzlingpatrolfox · 5 days

Note

Thinking about JK and seven's success in the context of Taylor's recent streams bomb is fascinating. Yes her numbers are crazy but let's think about it - everyone on social media is talking about her and the album and they have been for weeks. I was listening to a political podcast and they signed off with the guy saying he's going to listen to the album ahead of time to make sure it's ok for his 5 year old daughter to listen to. She's literally a household name - even in households like mine where my parents do not keep up with with western artists. Yeah a lot of her numbers are stacked because of versions and payola and every platform pushing the hell out of her BUT STILL - there's something behind that push. People are tuned in! Everyone who's tuned into the cultural zeitgeist knew TTPD was coming. Same with Olivia Rodrigo - yes she has an aura of industry plantness - getting pushed right out of the gate and becoming a darling of critics everywhere for your debut album doesn't just happen. But again, her albums are GOOD. The songs are well written and she was clearly deeply involved in every step of the way. Everyone knows driving license and the story behind it. Payola as a concept is annoying especially when so many deserving artists get ignored because they don't have it but it's undeniable that after artists like TS and OR get all this payola, their songs become the moment. Everyone's buzzing about them and listening to their albums.

What is seven? It's numbers are at TS and OR levels right? If you think about it seven debuted with more streams than djo's end of the beginning did and it's charted higher for longer. But which song launched who as a solo artist to the GP that Hybe desperately wants? A song with numbers at that level but what is the ground level reality of its popularity? The most telling thing is that after that completely insane debut seven had, if it was really such a great song that everyone incl the GP had tuned in for, those people should've at least checked golden out. That is the point. That was scooters strategy. Have seven become the next baby or driving license and capture the GP interest so it sustains for the rest of his debut.

The point is that people will compare his numbers to other kpop acts but he didn't get a kpop debut. He got the kind of debut and platform push TS and OR get. So his numbers are good at a kpop level but did it achieve the objective? I have to imagine the objective was that JK became the next JB or the next OR or....as Hybe keeps trying to do, it was for him to become the next BTS. No, Hybe can keep trying to push a particular narrative because JK is their sunk cost fallacy, but inspite of goldens streams and sales eclipsing others, his debut was not successful.

It is irony because people can and will bring up his numbers in relation to Jimin or Tae or lesserafim or whoever and act like JK is doing amazing but I'm telling you now that the reason JK's debut makes me so angry is because if Jimin had had that world cup stage for a solo debut, that humongous deal wouldn't have just been a footnote of cool places BTS have performed at. It would have been a noteworthy performance. We have ten years of his solo stage to prove that. It's this wasted potential that gets me so heated up about JK because of all the opportunities he got. Compare the payola put in versus results gotten and the mediocrity is staggering considering what I mentioned other artists have achieved with that payola level in my first paragraph. The only reason I think about JK is because of this - it drives me mad.

Sorry this got...long and ranty 😭

i must've said this last year already but yes, he had a bigger debut and numbers (after debut) compared to other kpop or korean acts, but he was really nowhere people like Taylor or Harry, to whom everyone compared him to. Let's not even talk about Michael Jackson and how hard they tried that he'd be namedropped alongside Jungkook.

The most important difference to me is that people RESPECT Taylor. They respect Harry, and they respect Michael even so many years after his death. Soloist Jungkook doesn't have that respect. BTS might've gotten really close to have it, but not them as soloists. Part of it might be because he's korean, sure; but more than anything, he doesn't have people's respect because he has not earned it. Period. He hasn't done anything that would gain him people's respect or admiration.

Taylor had a moment where she lost people's respect too - she went completely MIA, didn't show her face in public for years, she was the laugh of the town. Granted, a lot of it was pushed by this insane, psychopathic hate culture and spurred on by Kanye West and Kim Kardashian simply because they're people who just like to get involved in shit. Taylor's never really had a scandal (she's actually a really sweet girl and so incredibly smart too), but because they -the Kardashians/Wests- thought it was fun to hate on her, they did it and everyone jumped on the bandwagon because if there's something people on the internet lack, that's a personality of their own.

Now she's regained all the success and people's affection she had before that, and ten thousands times more. The haters moved on, found jobs probably, Kim Kardashian isn't even that "big" anymore, nobody talks about her and Kanye is an unmedicated man roaming around with seemingly no direction whatsoever. Taylor came out of that being in a great space in her personal life, had spent a couple of years inside her home with someone who loved her, wrote and release lover and everyone flocked to it.

Then came folklore and evermore, which were the albums that really did it for her; those albums are crazy good and so different from everything else everybody was putting out that moment. Many people who'd previously thought she was too bubblegum pop, or that her songs were silly, changed their mind, started taking her seriously as a writer/singer and became fans after listening to folklore and evermore; and those people stayed. Those people are still listening to her music. This isn't something I see on the internet, but I went to her concert last November and everyone I talked to had become a fan in 2019 or after.

But she also knows how fickle it all is, and she's talked about it. Is she wrong for wanting to protect what she's worked all her life to build?

She's a business woman, it's true. And many "stans" on the internet hate that, for some reason that I really don't understand. Because taking the reins in their own careers is the only way people are able to survive in music, literally. I don't remember where she said it, but it was Beyonce precisely who said once that she didn't have a seat at the table, so instead she built her own table. That's Taylor, too. Not because Taylor was underprivileged or anything, and but in the business sense. These women don't become billionaires because they "only do music", there's millions of people out there, doing music on the streets. They become billionaires because they're doing business too.

Most people don't want others to be successful, or at the very least they aren't really hoping and praying you'll do well. Mostly they just don't care. And I've said this a lot of times in relation to BTS too - that all the members were looking out for themselves and their own solo careers and that was it. I've said before that Jimin is not a business man, and I don't expect him to ever be one, but I also wish for him to have at least one person standing by him and his decisions. It'd be great to believe doing arts today is all glitter and parties, but it's a business as much as being a wall street guy is.

Maybe it's so overwhelming to me because I've been a Taylor fan since 2008 right before fearless came out, but people really don't get how unprecedented her career is. I was 13 in 2008, the year my sister was born. Now, it's 2024 my sister is 16 and she's a Taylor fan. Without me even intervening, mind you, because we don't live together. We went to the concert because she wanted to go.

How many people can you say they had a career in music 20 years ago and not only are they still at it, but they're getting bigger with each passing year? Because I honestly couldn't name you one single person apart from Taylor.

Maybe I could say BTS if they were active right now, but that it's yet to be seen because the fandom did go downhill after butter. PTD wasn't as successful as butter or dynamite were, and let me not even mention the group songs that came after because that was embarrassing for them.

Also, another point but men rarely -if ever- bring anything new to the table. Armys, especially those who like Jungkook or Yoongi, are the epitome of hypocrisy because what has Jungkook done that's spectacular? Be shirtless? Please.

His songs were mid, the singing was mid, the dancing was below mid. They really are in no position to speak and shouldn't be taken seriously. And this takes me back to the respect thing and how he really didn't do anything to gain it.

For some reason I'm also thinking of Lana del Rey who was literally BEGGING people to listen to her album, and even said that she'd hoped her album would go viral and not that photo of her working in some fast food place. You have loser gays on twitter going lana this lana that, but they don't really respect her either.

This is something I've said before, too; but time really is the only proof of how "impactful" an artist is. Olivia's had a great run so far, but will people remember her or talk about her 10 years down the line? Is she still gonna be relevant? Is BTS still gonna be revelant? Is Jungkook gonna be relevant? Great debuts are great and all, but in the end it doesn't make an artist, as well as a bad debut doesn't break one either. I've also said this about Jimin before; that if he still wants to have a solo career after military, the only way to go should be up. This Taylor type of career where you get bigger with each release is literally everyone's dream and it actually proves that whatever you've been doing until that moment has worked and people can't get enough of you.

17 notes · View notes

tiny-sassy-aggressive · 2 months

Text

After watching We’re All Doomed, the comedy show by Daniel Howell, I need to take moment to write out how that show made me take a step back in my own life and evaluate progress and positive growth in my life as I realized that his timelines/feelings could be foiled in a meaningful way to my life. I was particularly inspired to write this while watching the scenes on the screen of the moments of joy people were experiencing. I swear I had chills and I started to tear up. As he spoke about not only embracing the void, but finding the courage to exist, but not just exist, but to live and find those moments of joy, I was reminded about how that moment in searching for why life was worth living was how I came (back) to Catholicism. I don’t intend this post to encourage others to or away from the Church. I simply was inspired by Dan to share how I got to a place of accepting that life is worth living and how I hope to move forward.

I want to first tw cancer, death, feelings of not wanting to exist, and mentions of suicide. Nothing is explicitly discussed in great detail but only mentioned. I have never written out my story before, barely talk about it even to this day. Tried therapy a few times but it wasn’t for me, but that’s neither here nor there. This is a safe space for me to share something I just wouldn’t with family and friends. Though, I must apologize in advance, like Dan, I talk/write way too much so this will be a very long post.

Thank you to all those who take the time to read my random story and I hope to hear from others how Dan’s story and/or show have affected you so we can share in those feelings as a community.

I am chronically depressed and anxious. Always have been as it runs in the family. However, the problem was my parents, or really, I should just say my mom because my dad was never around in an emotional capacity that mattered, didn’t necessarily believe in mental health. Sure they knew depression and anxiety were real, but those were just emotions people felt and there wasn’t anything to do but continue on and try your best to keep going no matter what. It’ll be fine, just keep moving and working, right? Well when I was 12/13 I was getting bullied really badly. It got to the point where I was having panic attacks before going to school, crying at night, constantly feeling nauseous, and worst of all, I would refuse to leave my moms side, so school got to be pretty difficult. My mom was fully aware of what was going on so she went in immediately and got the bullying handled (as much as she could, middle schoolers are brutal. It never really went away but it was less of a nuisance) but she did not understand why I still felt ill and didn’t want to leave her side. She found me a therapist and I went twice. I knew we had financial struggles and I started to feel better so I stopped going. I was still sad and scared but those were normal feelings, right? I could go to school and play my flute, talk to friends, and sure I was writing songs about being trapped in a cage and having no one hear my screams but I was just an edgy teen, I wasn’t depressed. That’s just me being me. No mental illness here! I’m fine. Spoiler alert- I was not fine and it was only going to get worse.

When I was 14 I found Dan and Phil! I was a huge o2l fan so I followed Connor Franta and he posted Internet Trivia with Dan and Phil and I absolutely fell in love with them and fell down the rabbit hole of their channels and the gaming channel. I loved them both but I definitely had a bias towards Dan because he wore all black and was edgy. Watching Existential Crisis for the first time gave me a phrase to the weird feelings I had. Both affirmed and disproved the fact I was mentally ill but I still didn’t have the words for it so I just thought I was mentally different from other people. Watching that video back with all the context of 2024 and 2024 Dan, that video covered an extraordinarily heavy topic but he never mentioned the word depression or mentally ill because, at that point, why would he? Since he was the only person who voiced those feelings that I also shared, I took them to heart, but I could only take those words to heart as I had no reference to infer what else all that meant. So I kept all my feelings to myself. After all, this guy said he had all these big feelings but was fine. Call me naïve, I was 14, so I believed I could be okay and still feel existential. It was normalized, plus nothing else in my life was being affected, I was doing well in school, I had friends, I had hobbies, I was fine. How could I complain?

A few months after the start my freshmen year of high school, my older brother was diagnosed with leukemia and everything changed. He was sick and had to stay in the hospital for months, one of my parents would always be at the hospital, and me and my little brother would visit on the weekends when we could. My mom really stressed the importance of keeping a normal schedule so we did. School, extracurriculars, piano, just keep moving and everything will be alright. I didn’t cry, I couldn’t cry. I had to remain okay, fine, an unbreakable force because I couldn’t have anyone worrying about me because we all had to worry about my brother. Which we did! I never wanted to be a burden or not okay because I wanted all attention and time focused on his wellbeing. I don’t remember talking to anyone about anything emotional. Sure as hell not my parents. Not my brothers. Not even my friends. So I watched videos and removed myself and all emotions from my being so I didn’t have to think or be.

When he was first diagnosed I felt lost and confused. So I did the one thing my private, catholic school taught me to do. I found God and prayed. Except, I can say certainly looking back, it was not a meaningful relationship I created. It was one forged in fear, confusion, and a misunderstanding of how to pray. Ironically, for a catholic school, they didn’t know how to teach someone to come to God, they just expected you to understand, but that’s beside the point and a different conversation. But that’s what I did! I prayed, every morning and night, Lord, Please heal my brother. Please. Tried devotionals I didn’t get, muttered words I didnt understand, and played the part. I watched everyone else around me do it so I did it too, to the point where I believed I needed to be perfect or else my prayers would fail, which, I cannot express enough, was not the appropriate mentality, but that’s what I thought was necessary.

About 7 months later, my brother was in remission and he came home! He was okay! We got through the summer, he came back to school, we were in band and choir together again. It was fun!! We were all okay again. The dark spots in my head were still there but they were probably just left over from how scary last year was. How could I not be happy with my brother back home and alright again. At this point, my prayers were answered so I slowed down my prayers. I was okay so I felt as if I did not need my relationship with God as intensely anymore because I felt fine. Plus, when I was sad or scared those were just normal reactions that were not taking over my life so why dwell on them.

In 2017, Dan released Daniel and Depression. And I don’t exactly remember my reaction. But at that point in my life, I remember coming around to the idea that maybe I was not as mentally sound as I thought. But even listening to what he had to say, I was still convinced I was not depressed, I was just traumatized from what had happened to my brother and to my family. I had spent that time living through hell and I never stopped, I did not lay in bed wallowing, I didn’t not brush my teeth or not take care of myself. I was a high functioning nearly straight a student through and through. I was not depressed.

I don’t know why that was such a dirty word for me. Or maybe it wasn’t a dirty word, but it was something I didn’t want associated with myself. My school didn’t believe in mental health because all you had to do was pray and “you can’t be depressed and be with God” - Which by the way is completely inaccurate and harmful for young people to grow up learning. On the other hand, my parents lived in a hospital with my sick brother for months, I shouldn’t be depressed or talk about the weird sadness I was experiencing after everything they went through. It’d be selfish of me to not be alright.

Two months after Dan posted his depression video, my brother got sick again, the cancer came back. I prayed fervently once again. Knowing it worked once it could work again. Every morning and every night in the depths of my dark room where no one could see or hear because everyone else in my family was not religious or was too angry at God to believe. I put it on myself to pray and to be good so he can be healed again. But I failed. He died 4 months later on my 17th birthday. Years later, a therapist would tell me that happened because he didn’t want me to forget about him, well jokes on the therapist I was never going to forget anyway. I failed, it was my fault he died. If I prayed more, if I was a better person, if I just focused I could have saved him. But I wasn’t enough, I was not good enough to save him. This wasn’t true, of course, nor how religion/prayer works. But I didn’t know what else to do or think. So I blamed myself. I wasn’t even there when he died. My parents told my little brother and I that he wasn’t ever coming home and a few days later, on my birthday, we went to school and when my dad picked us up from school he drove us home and my mom was sitting there and that’s when I knew. My little brother was so cute, he later admitted he just thought my mom had come home to see me for my birthday but I knew immediately. I still don’t know how my dad just picked us up that day and didn’t say anything.

A part of me died that day. How could it not have? It was a strange night. We cried. I ate a pre-bought cupcake. My brother went to lacrosse practice and the next day we both went to school. Because that’s just what we did. We just kept going. Let me tell you, you’ll get the strangest looks from people when they see you at school after they just heard over the loud speaker that your brother had died the previous day. Because really, what were we doing there? We were the highest functioning traumatized students you had ever seen. I was only 2 minutes late to my first class of the day, math. I went to the chapel in the school with my really close friend to cry and listen to adoration music and just wonder why, why, why? 2 minutes wasn’t too bad, the teacher was surprised to see me and I failed the math quiz we had. She was nice, she offered to not have me take it, but I was already there and it was math quiz time so I took the quiz. She let me redo it too. She was nice, I needed it. It felt normal so I felt fine.

And that was all the rest of the 2018 school year was. Fine. Went to class, studied, did my extracurriculars, performed in all the shows, hell, I even went to prom with said super close friend from earlier. It was obvious I was traumatized and sad but how could I not be? But I was doing everything a normal student would be doing so what was the problem?

The problem was I felt alone, hell, I was alone. My family was broken, shattered into a million a pieces. My dad was distant, my mom cried, my bothers and I weren’t talking in any meaningful way. I talked to one person, the guy who held me in the chapel the day after my brother died and who took me to prom. I loved him, we loved each other. He was the only person who I felt actually saw me. I always had some barriers up but I felt free with him and I know he just wanted me to be okay even in the midst of tragedy. We were friendly for 2 years but we got close right before my brother was diagnosed again. Those months meant so much to me and I thought we would always be close. But 1 month after my brother died. He told me he did not want to continue our relationship or friendship. He said I was too much to handle or had too much going on. In all honesty, I don’t remember his exact words because I most definitely mentally blacked out. And he broke what little part of me was left.

(About 2 1/2 years later he ended up calling me and after not really speaking to him at all since that moment, I picked up, more out of curiosity then trying to rekindle anything. He told me that, unbeknownst to me back in 2018, he went to our Moral Theology teacher (yes- private catholic school) to ask for advice because he saw how much pain I was in and he did not know how to help me. Instead of this teacher, a literal adult, going to our schools counselor, my mother, or even me and addressing this 17 year old boys concerns about ME, he told him that he should just give me space because of the mental weight of the tragedy I was living through. His advice to this boy was to essentially isolate me. Looking back, I do feel bad for this boy. He tried so hard to do the right thing for me but didn’t have the right directions. And on the other hand I am so mad at the teacher because that was the worst advice he could have ever given ever. Thanks! Real talk though, I loved that boy and he always meant the world to me. We didn’t keep in touch afterward that 2020 conversation but I kept tabs on him through mutual friends and he always listened to my music on Spotify. He went through a tough time and he committed suicide in 2022. I really do miss him and wish things were different for all aspects of his story, my story, and what might have been our story. It felt wrong to exclude his memory in this post because he truly played such a crucial role and he meant so much to me even years later)

Back to 2018, after he abandoned me. I was completely and utterly alone. And now, I feared opening up at all to anyone because I didn’t want to be perceived as the burden I truly was. So I swallowed every once of trauma, depression, and anxiety so I was perceived as a functioning, fine, human being who didn’t need anyone to worry about her. I didn’t want anyone to worry or care for me because they thought I was fragile or broken because I now had proof that I would become too much to handle and that anyone would just leave me just as he had. And that was it. I smiled, I laughed, I spent the next year completing every senior year milestone and graduated high school. And I didn’t feel one emotion. I was fine.

Summer 2019 was when things started to shift a bit and here’s where I think the foiling begins. For one, Dan had just released Basically, I’m Gay and he started to live his truth being out of the closet. I truly don’t want to nor feel like I can comment anymore on this topic because that was his own personal journey and I don’t want to speculate on anything he said. He did so quite clearly and explicitly. But the point I am making was that in the middle of 2019, he began living his truth. This one thing he didn’t talk about that is so quintessential to his character was now a public part of him and he got to experience that joy of being out. There was a shift in his character, anyone who watched his video could tell, he was happy, he seemed excited. He went to pride, did promotional videos, and he just seemed like he was living in a brighter light. It was beautiful to watch and I’m grateful he let us share in those moments of joy with him.

Before I get too deep into this section, I want to preface and state that I do not remember large chunks of time between 2018-2021. All the trauma and depression have made me forget nearly everything, and it’s a very weird sensation to have little to no memories of 3/4 years of time. I can recall general feelings and most memories I can see are from a third person pov so I can see what was happening, but I see it happening to me, not me actually experiencing the memory.

For me, summer 2019 meant leaving for college. Now, in hindsight, I made a major error. I was going to the same college my brother had been at before he died. I don’t know what I was thinking or why I thought it was a good idea but the school gave me money so I would have been a fool to take on more student loans than necessary, plus, I knew I wanted to transfer the next year and move half way across the country so I had an end goal in sight, just had to get through the year.

I also started to go to church again. There was a cute little church about a half mile down from my school so it was an easy walk. I don’t consider this change/new addition a mistake, but I do often wonder what was I thinking exactly. I don’t recall my exact process but remember two dueling trains of thought. For one, I still 100% felt weird about religion/God because I blamed myself for my brother dying because I wasn’t praying enough and wasn’t good enough to save him. But on the other hand, I did not feel right to never enter a church again and a part of me wanted to return because it felt like the right thing to do. I spent my entire formative years at a private catholic school. I knew all the prayers, scripture, the saints (I was confirmed taking St. Rose Philippine Duchesne), and my senior year religion class was dedicated to teaching us how to explain/teach the faith to non-believers. And I believed in all of it! I had faith, so how could I not be going to church. Call it guilt, or whatever you want to call it, but I couldn’t turn my back on the church after everything I had learned so I went back. It was the truth I believed in and the truth I wanted to live by. I told myself that eventually I would just feel better, I’d continue to pray to heal and keep going through the motions until it stuck. At this point, I had fully embraced the void I was living in. I accepted that I was depressed, I accepted that I was depressed long before the trauma began so I was battling undiagnosed depression alongside the after effects of the trauma, and I accepted that I am an incredibly anxious person. That was alot for an 18 year old to take in but I finally accepted what my truth was. I admit it and that’s the first step right? I know I am mentally ill so I started some therapy, and I continued going to church and praying because every thing I read and was told said those were the best things I could do to help myself. So things could only get better from here, right?

Not necessarily. The end of 2019 flew by and before we knew it we were in the throes of a global pandemic. Within 3 months in 2020, my parents divorced (finally), my grandmother died from the same cancer that my brother had which was sick was twisted if you ask me, and my mom, little brother, and I moved half way across the country. Oh and I transferred colleges in all that too. Besides every single bad thing we experienced, moving was supposed to be our new start. A new place, new schools, new adventures. No longer living in the state with every bad memory we had or the house we essentially grew up in. It was new and fresh, almost the perfect situation to start a mental health journey in, besides the recent trauma I still don’t think I have processed fully and a global pandemic. I just thought I would be getting better.

I remember the part of We’re All Doomed when Dan mentioned 2019 being so important because he started to live his truth and I felt so similarly. I thought once I accepted what was going on in my head I’d feel better. But then 2019-2021 for both of us seemed to be one of our worse times mentally, which is oddly terrifying because of the emphasis that was present on wanting to feel improved.

Between 2019-2021, I struggled with the concept of existing. I did not understand why I was here and others weren’t, what I was meant to do, and why I was meant to do it. I didn’t want to exist. I simply didn’t have the energy. I couldn’t conjure up emotions, nothing real anyway. I just felt nothing. I never felt suicidal, never did anything to harm myself, never wanted to. I knew and continue to know that I never wanted to die. I really just wanted to feel quiet, numb, not of the earth and those are very scary feelings. I could barely put them into words for when I talked to my therapist but I tried, but all she could tell me was to find distractions for myself. Distract, distract, distract, well that’s all I’ve been doing and I don’t feel better. I listened to music, wrote music, talked to my mom, pray, do my class work, scroll through social media, but what then? When alls said and done, the music is off, the conversation is over, the work done, the phone turned off, I was left with myself and I didn’t even recognize her. My mom said she saw a light in my eyes she hasn’t seen in a while but I had no idea what she was talking about. Whatever was on the outside wasn’t being transferred to the inside because I didn’t even know who was staring back at me in the mirror. I just knew she didn’t want to be here anymore. So what now?

When Dan showed us the calendar with the little emoji emotions over the days of the month, I swear my heart stopped for a moment because it reminded me of what I started doing for myself during that same time period, that very same year he was referring to in the show. I had downloaded this app, Hallow, it’s a catholic prayer app. Scripture, guided prayers, saints stories, the whole nine yards. I liked the little guided prayers. Helped me focus I guess. And every night I’d ask for the same thing. To feel better. To be healed. It also had a little section where you could track your mood for the day so I started doing that everyday. I wasn’t thinking too hard about it I just hit the emoji I felt and moved on. Until I started noticing a pattern of hitting, sad, anxious, worried, or unsure. Soon enough I had months upon months, just days filled with those same emojis. When I actually took a step back, just like Dan did, to stare at how my months were covered in little sad emojis it broke me more than I thought it ever could. Was this all that was left for me? Days that left me feeling dejected and dark? Why wasn’t anything I was doing enough to make me feel better, to make me feel something for my life, for this world around me. Every night pleading the same questions to God, why, why, why? Just begging to be healed.

One day in 2021, I felt hopeless, I was tired, drained, and I truly did not know what to do. I just wanted to feel. So I stopped begging God to fix me and I started talking instead. And I talked and talked about everything and nothing all at once. I told Him about my day and what had happened. I told Him about the little anecdotes, my classes, the walk I went on. I told Him what I felt during the day, the big feelings and the little feelings. As I recounted my day and all the little details, I know it sounds ridiculous, but I felt lighter. For the first time in a long time, I was not focused on the big scary black hole of my mind, the void, I spent time talking about what my day had looked like and what I knew was on my schedule for tomorrow. It grounded me. And it was just that. I wasn’t focused on the void, I was focused on the living I was doing despite the void and there was something beautiful about that realization I have never been able to put into words until I watched Dan’s show. God was not not healing me because I did not deserve it or because I was so helpless, for it was only when I was at my lowest that I let myself let go and speak freely outside the confines of asking for the same thing over and over again without changing my mindset. It was only through those open ended conversations that I found and was confronted with the events of my life, no matter how big or small. The void, my depression, my traumas, whatever I want to call them, they are always going to exist, they are a part of my and I can’t change anything about that. But my life, my 24 hours a day, that time will pass regardless of if I choose to dwell on the darkness or not, so might as well spend my time enjoying the light that clearly exists as well. So that is what I started to do.

It is a choice that I have to make each day when I wake up. To decide to be an active participant in my life rather than a passive bystander. But like all things, it’s an attitude that can be learned, adapted, and over time it did not feel like a chore to make that choice, but a pleasure. For once, I started to look forward to the future and excited for what I could do. I found a church where I could attend mass so I would stop sitting in my room and watching online, I started to push myself to make plans outside my comfort zone and learned to not just like my own company, but enjoy the silence of being alone. The one project I am particularly proud of is my second Instagram account dedicated to romanticizing my life. Everyday, for now nearly 2 1/2 years, I have posted a photo on that account of the places I’ve been, clothes I’ve worn, and experiences I have been on. It’s my own personal photo diary proving that I have been living and that I will be continuing to live.

Photos and daily reflection have been the cornerstone of my improvement which was why that segment of Dan’s show impacted me so greatly. Each small clip he shared was probably only a second or so long but each moment held such great joy and emotions that could not be contained. It was and will continue to be a reminder that there will always be moments of joy and moments of happiness that will exist even in the face of adversity, we just have to work to see them, and choose to accept them as our own. Some days can certainly be harder than others, but after years of feeling nothing but the heavy weight of despair, even just the memories of joy are enough to encourage me to move forward. I’m alive for a reason and I believe and trust in God’s plan for me, so I choose and, now, feel empowered to continue on.

Dan was right when he said that we are all doomed. And there is this void in my life that I have learned to embrace and not just ignore. But this life was not meant to be survived, but to be lived. And I, now, have the courage to choose to live everyday.

Thank you to @danielhowell for sharing a part of yourself with the world. For creating a show that encourages us to acknowledge every part of our lives, the good, the bad, the ugly, and to show the importance of embracing every aspect of our lives while we continue our journey. Thank you for encouraging me to share my story and my journey through mental health. I have never shared my story like this before and it has been an unbelievably cathartic experience and I feel renewed in my promise to continue to choose to live.

Thank you🖤

#dan and phil #dnp #daniel howell #dan howell #danisnotonfire #dan and phil renaissance #we’re all doomed #embrace the void #have the courage to exist #embrace life #finding purpose #catholic #catholiscism #mental health #mental illness #how to be a human being #we aren’t alone #thank you

23 notes · View notes