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nereidprinc3ss · 18 days

Text

come on home

in which the only person who can comfort you after your breakup with spencer reid, is spencer reid

inspired by the song "summer's end" by the artist currently known as phoebe bridgers

wc 2857

warnings: gn!reader (correct me if im wrong), minor mommy issues, angst, happy ending

a/n: thank you to the person who requested this:) u r an angel and I listened to this song the whole time i wrote (if you haven't heard, listen!!) i sincerely hope you enjoy, i like this one a lot<3

She hung up on you.

Forty-seven minutes of being insulted and berated after you’d called her looking for comfort, and you put up with every single cruel word—just for your mother to hang up on you. And it’s exactly the kind of thing she’d do, so you shouldn’t be surprised. An ache, you’d expect—but it shouldn’t sting like this. You thought you knew better.

Now you’re in a ball on your couch, clutching your phone to your chest and crying. There’s no point hiding it. Your roommate is out with her girlfriend for the evening—which is too bad because even though you feel like being alone, you’re sure that’s the wrong call. Your other friends are out having fun tonight, too. They’d even invited you, but you turned them down. Look where that had gotten you. Obviously, your mother is not the person you’re about to run to for comfort, either.

You try to pretend, while you’re thinking of all these people who have ever cared for you, that Spencer Reid isn’t on your mind at all. You try to pretend like you don’t care that the person who loved you until you believed you actually deserved it is a contact going stale deep in the bowels of your text cache. With bleary eyes you scroll down, looking for your conversation where it gathers dust—the end of your relationship was a mutual decision, and you’re friendly, but you haven’t texted in a few weeks. Probably because every time the conversation starts to feel a little too easy, or the phone call lasts a little too long, that aching void in your chest gets worse and worse. Like pain in a phantom limb, you become acutely aware of what you do not have and how much it hurts.

So blame it on the tears, or the mind-muddling melodrama of your relationship with your mother, blame it on anything but the truth—when your thumb drops on that call button like the plunger on a syringe, you don’t regret it.

What you’re not expecting is for him to answer after the first ring.

“Hi,” you say with a snuffle before Spencer can get a word in. There’s a brief interlude, in which you pick at your nails, comfortable to just sit in silence if that’s what he wants. As long as he’s there.

“Hi.” Hearing his voice instantly melts a bit of the weight you hadn’t realized you were carrying. Another pause, for which you remain silent, because you can feel him formulating a question—and you’d like to hear him speak again. “...am I allowed to ask if you’re okay?”

Your lips purse and twist to the side, pained and comforted by how easily he can tell that you’re distraught. One word across a tinny connection, and he knows.

“No. Yes. I mean... I guess that’s why I called you. But you don’t have to ask me about it.” You sniff again and take a deep breath. “How was your day? What state are you in?”

“I’m in the district,” he answers after a moment, easing into a casualness that he likely doesn’t feel for your sake. Wind crunches through the speaker. He probably just got out of work. “My day was... it was good. I got to talk about my job to a bunch of elementary schoolers, which is always a confidence boost.”

You chuckle, still laying on your side on the couch and watching storm clouds gathering outside.

“Nice, nice. What else?”

“Let’s see... I forgot lunch, so I had three oranges, and they were actually pretty good. I reread Game of Thrones—I don’t know why I did that. I’m never going to like that book.”

“Masochist,” you smile. He laughs, and you hear the sound of a car door opening.

“Oh! I talked to my mom. Believe it or not, she says hi.”

A completely inadvertent snort constitutes your response. It’s not what you meant to do, and out of context it’s sort of mean, but you actually think it’s incredibly endearing that he still talks to his mother about you. He scrambles to explain himself.

“I swear, we barely talked about you this time. Mostly we talked about her new boyfriend Leonard.”

“No, no, that’s not... I’m sorry, I’m not laughing at you or your mom. That’s really sweet, actually. Tell her I say hi too.”

When he next speaks, you can hear the smile in his voice.

“I will.” Another long pause. You imagine him sitting in the parking lot at Quantico, keys vertical in the ignition of his old car and feeling the silence just as much as you are. He surprises you by not ending the conversation—instead he asks a question. It is concern, poorly disguised with nervous humor. Or maybe you just know him too well. “Do I get to find out what’s on your mind, or are you leaving me in suspense here?”

You bite the inside of your cheek.

“Um... well, actually, I just got off the phone with my mom, too. It didn’t go so well,” you laugh halfheartedly, “I know it was dumb to try and have an actual conversation with her, but... you know me. Always following blind optimism to the depths of hell.”

“Why’d you call your mom?” he asks, so gently it brings a fresh round of tears to your eyes. Still, you attempt to put a cheerful affect on your strained voice.

“Mm, you know. Just needed someone to talk to.”

Spencer’s knowing sigh does little to make you feel better.

“You know you can always talk to me, right? I know it’s... it’s different now, but... I care about you a lot. And, you know, I receive very few phone calls, so the line is pretty much always open.”

Your laugh quickly devolves into a cry.

“I appreciate that, but I can’t talk to you about everything.”

“Why not?” he pleads immediately, voice thin and desperate like it’s his most burning question. A million lies dance over the tip of your tongue. A million things that feel safer to say than the truth. But in the end, it comes out anyway—choked, and so quiet, but aloud nonetheless.

“Because I’m trying really hard to stop missing you so much.”

Another long beat of silence. The back of your throat feels dry and hollow—a cage for your hummingbird heart.

“If it hurts too much to talk to me, you don’t need to do that to yourself. But I also don’t want you to hurt yourself thinking you’re alone. You are... so important to me. I will always try to take care of you the best I can—whether that means staying away or being at your front door. If you ever need me, or even... vaguely want me, I will be there.”

Each word caves your resolve. Each syllable is a slap in the face to progress you’d been pretending to make. You can be strong—you've proven that over the past ten weeks. You can be stone-faced and slash at your heart until the scar tissue is thick and jagged, and eventually it won’t hurt anymore. But maybe, by letting someone tend to the wounds, they’ll heal a little nicer. A little kinder. Even if you can’t undo the damage, maybe one day you’ll be soft again.

“What if I vaguely want you right now?” you sniffle.

Finally, you hear the silver jingle of keys turning. The sputter and rumble of an old engine coming to life.

“Then I’m on my way.”

Twenty four minutes later, there’s a soft knock at your door.

After the call had ended, you’d wondered if you made it all up. Surely your ex-boyfriend wasn’t actually about to show up at your apartment. Someone you’ve grieved for can’t just come back—there are countless horror novels and movies based upon that very tenet. Does it matter if they ever actually died? How long is ten weeks, really? It feels like a lifetime.

You shuffle across the room, wiping under your eyes with your already damp sleeves, and undoing all the locks Spencer had conditioned you to start using. When the door cracks open, and you see Spencer standing there, windswept and concerned, for the first time in months, it hits you like a tidal wave. You are, beyond a shadow of a doubt, still just as in love with him as you ever were. The relief that floods your veins as he looks down at you with so much care in his eyes is like sinking into warm water. It’s a dead giveaway, and maybe it makes this whole thing a terrible idea, but you can’t seem to care very much. You open the door wider, and he enters, and he stands in your kitchen with his hands in his coat pocket as you shut the door and he’s perfect. It dawns on you that for the first time since the breakup, you feel safe. Like you don’t have to be a stone pillar anymore. This, of course, translates into even more tears, which you try to hide as you face away, re-locking the door.

“Sweetheart...” he sighs, because you can’t hide anything from him. Hearing the resonance of his voice so close to you once more is overwhelming. In an instant you’re rushing into his arms, and he accepts you without hesitation. You bury your teary face in the vetiver safety of his button-up and slip your arms under his coat, as if you could absorb his warmth and forever hide from the world that way. He pulls you even closer. It’s terrible and cruel how much he is exactly what you needed. “What’s wrong? What did she say?”

You shake your head and gasp a small sob.

Truthfully, you’re not really crying about the petty insults from your mother anymore. You’re back to square one, the reason you’d called your mother to begin with—you miss the man whose arms are currently wound around your shoulders.

His hand smooths over the back of your hair.

“Okay. That’s okay. We don’t have to talk about it.”

You stay like that—content even as you cry because being with him feels so much safer than being alone. It feels right—or perhaps it’s just familiar. You don’t know which is worse.

Spencer is rubbing soothing lines up and down your back as you cling to him, soaking him up in all his ephemeral, comforting glory. He surprises you by chuckling—it vibrates through his chest, buzzing against your ear.

“Nice Magritte print. I bet the person who bought that has fantastic taste.”

“Are you gonna ask for it back?” you mumble into the fabric of his suit jacket. He is, of course, referring to the painting you’d more or less stolen from his apartment seven months ago. You really don’t want him to take it home. It’s the most overt Spencer memorabilia you’d allowed yourself to keep in plain sight.

“No, baby. You can keep it.” The words are low, and kind, and they settle you some, but you can’t seem to get him close enough. “What can I do?” he whispers after a moment, helpless as you take a shuddering breath. “Can I make you tea? Have you eaten?”

“Will you just... stay for a little bit? I’ll—I promise I’ll stop crying.”

There is an unexpected lull where you thought you’d receive pretty immediate agreement, but before you can pull back and ask what’s wrong, he murmurs, “yeah. I can stay for a while. But you have to kick me out before it gets too late.”

You wonder if you’re imagining the double-entendre that seems to underline his words in bold red ink. Spencer is too smart to have not noticed a thing like that. You don’t mention it—it all boils down to the same unspoken idea.

Don’t let me stay, because I might not leave.

“I will,” you sniff, finally stepping back and wiping your own tears. It hurts to lose his touch, but at least you know he’s not going anywhere for the next few hours. This, as opposed to everything else lately, can be a beginning instead of an end.

At least, until he goes home.

Three and a half hours later, after tea, an impromptu dinner comprised mostly of cheese and crackers, and several vinyl changes on your record player (which served only as background noise for your long, ambling conversations), things are seeming to wind down to a natural stopping point. Which you hate. The whole time you’d had a dull ache in your chest because talking to him was easier than breathing and you knew it wouldn’t last. There had been one or two false bottoms already—the first when you’d yawned around nine, and the second when you’d gotten up to do your skincare and brush your teeth half an hour later. Even then he’d just leaned against the doorframe, watching your reflection above the sink as you talked for fifteen more minutes. Now you stand across from each other in the kitchen, plates restacked and everything in order. Of course he’d insisted on helping you clean up.

“I should go,” he says, with a soft sort of finality in his voice.

“Is your carriage turning into a pumpkin?” you tease gently, to hide how much you don’t want him to leave. He smiles—a small, weary thing—but genuinely and endlessly charmed by you.

“That among other things.”

“Would you—would you walk me to my room first?”

The hesitance is clear in his eyes and the way his lips part as if to say, ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea’, but you're sure he’s really going to leave in a moment and you’re also sure he won’t deny you this one small thing before he does.

“Okay.”

It’s a short, silent walk through the living room and down the hall to your bedroom door, but you can feel him trailing behind you the whole way. You stop in front of your open door, turning face to face with him.

“Thanks,” you murmur.

His lips pull into a melancholy smile.

“Anytime.”

There’s nothing left to do but wrap your arms around each other once more, tuck yourself into the you-sized space between his head and shoulder and hold on for as long as he’ll let you. The hug lingers for longer than is wise. Spencer adjusts his arms looped around your waist, pulling you closer, and you nuzzle against his neck, grateful that at least he seems as reluctant to let this end as you are.

But eventually, it relaxes. Your hold on each other loosens. His face is just inches from yours, and you get to study every plane and valley and line like you’d thought you never would again. It seems he’s doing the same—losing himself in the luxury of seeing you up close.

“Will you kiss me goodnight?” you whisper, unable to muster any self-consciousness though you know it’s a fool’s errand. Spencer strokes your waist.

“I can’t do that, honey.”

“Why not?”

His voice is just as quiet as yours. It falters slightly as he speaks, so gently, so patiently.

“Because we’re not together anymore.”

“Why not?”

Your feeble, desperate supplication sounds pitiable even to you. You’re not proud, but you can’t find it in yourself to be ashamed, either. All you want is an answer. But it’s like a child asking why the sky is blue, or the earth is round. There is a definitive explanation, but mostly, the adult will shrug, and say, that’s just how it is.

Spencer’s eyes squeeze shut. His head tilts down.

“We can’t do this again, sweetheart. You know why we’re not together.”

In theory—yes. You’d had so many conversations when you’d broken up. It had been a long, painful process, spanning multiple all-nighters at his kitchen table, nursing coffee and trying to convince each other and yourselves that it was the right choice. But it just feels like a horrible, horrible mistake. You feel desperate to explain this to him before he slips away again—the words come out flustered, inelegant as you cling to him.

“But I don’t think I’m getting better without you. I tried, I tried so hard to be good on my own, but everything is worse and harder and—and we weren’t sure about it then, and I don’t think it was the right choice, because I still really need you. Like, all the time. I’m—it’s not getting better without you. Nothing got better.”

He swallows, eyes darting between yours for an infinite second. You’re breathless and your heart is pounding after your confession—you can feel your eyes stinging with the few tears that managed to escape as you spoke.

“Everything is worse,” he agrees shakily. “Everything. I’m—I’m getting disciplinary infractions from Hotch like I’m a child because I can’t focus on anything. Game of Thrones is the most complex literature I can comprehend right now. I had to use a calculator the other day.”

You want to laugh, but nothing is funny until he’s yours again.

“Then come back. Please come back, Spencer.”

Finally, he leans closer, until your heads are pressed together, and his nose bumps yours, feather light. You're dizzy. You exhale. He inhales.

“I don’t think I knew how to leave in the first place.”

When he kisses you, it feels like home.

#spencer reid #spencer reid fanfic #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid x fem!reader #spencer reid x self insert #spencer reid imagine #spencer reid fic #spencer reid angst #spencer reid fluff #criminal minds x reader #criminal minds imagine #criminal minds

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seethesin · 6 months

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Hazel x vampire!reader?

"Have some of my blood. "

pairing: Hazel Callahan x Vampire!F!Reader

tags/warnings: sexual content, hazel & reader are 18+, supernatural/vampire au, cunnilingus, biting, blood play, fingering (18+, mdni)

a/n: AYO im obsessed with this like????

The roar of Hazel's blood pumps in your ears as her thighs squeeze around your face. It was obvious how much she was enjoying this and her sweet, honeyed, scent goaded you further. You refrain from breaking skin, no matter how badly you want to tear her apart.

Your fingernails dig into the meat of her thighs, tugging her closer to your ravenous mouth. Your lips envelop her clit and suck eagerly, causing her back to arch off the mattress. A strangled gasp pushes from her throat, dissolving into satisfied moans with every swipe of your tongue.

"Baby," Hazel whines and you press a smirk into her cunt, chuckling innocently. Your warm breath on her labia makes her shudder and she ruts against your tongue desparately.

"Words, handsome," you taunt, drinking her frustrated expression the same way you ached to drink from her veins.

Blunt fingernails thread into your hair and tug petulantly. Your mouth shifts to the delicate skin of her inner thigh. As a warning, your fangs snap against the flesh, making Hazel jolt forward.

"Baby," she starts again and you hum expectantly. "Have some of my blood."

That was not what you were anticipating.

You freeze, tongue peeking from your lips as her voice goes ragged. Your gaze darts to hers, watching with heavy lids as one hand loosens its grip from your hair. Slowly, her hand slides down to her right thigh so it could be at eye level with you. Gently, she motions to her pale skin, as if on display.

"Yeah?" you whisper and Hazel only nods.

That was enough for you.

Before she could change her mind, your teeth sink into her skin. Like a leaky faucet, her blood sprays across your lips and down your chin. The only thing you can comprehend is the now amplified scent and taste of honey emitting from Hazel's blood.

You need more.

Your grip tightens and, forgetting your own strength, you shove her legs apart by her knees. Greedily, you suck from the open wound, refusing to waste a single drop gushing into your mouth.

Hazel keens above you, eyes squeezed shut in a combination of pain and pleasure. Both hands are back in your hair; her death grip is unwavering. She yanks you forward and you move without resistance.

"Baby," Hazel's sweet voice momentarily pulls you away from your frenzied feeding. Your gaze is back on hers, pupils no doubt dilated wide from your arousal and hunger. She stares back at you, jaw going slack as you become acutely aware of the red ichor currently dripping from your chin. You flush, embarrassed. A lecture about playing with your food seemed fitting at this moment.

"Can you touch me while you do that?"

Your eyes nearly roll back into your skull over Hazel's request.

That and more, you want to reply, but you don't trust your voice. Instead, you unceremoniously sheath two fingers into Hazel's pussy—at this point, she was wet enough for the both of you—watching the way she trembles above you. Licking your lips, you curl your fingers towards yourself and Hazel nearly levitates off the mattress.

"I'm gonna cum soon," she chokes out, disappointment dripping from each word. It's adorable how focused she was on pleasing you; it makes you want to grab her face and pepper kisses all over her precious pout.

Instead, you offer her a devil-may-care smile before teasingly stroking your thumb against her clit. She gasps, teetering back and forth before pressing into your touch. Slowly, you duck back between her thighs, arched forward like a stalking wildcat. Your tongue flickers against the wound you created, as if to soothe it.

"No one said we had to stop at one, handsome. I don't know about you but..."

Slowly, you kiss from Hazel's right thigh, across her quivering cunt before landing on her left thigh. She's panting from the anticipation and pleasure, practically fucking herself into your fingers. A delighted giggle bubbles from your throat and you're convinced you heard Hazel growl from above you. You liked coaxing the animalistic side of her out.

The two of you weren't so different after all.

"I'm in no rush to stop tonight."

#hazel callahan #hazel callahan x reader #hazel callahan x you #bottoms 2023 #bottoms movie

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scintillyyy · 1 year

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okay, here it is--the PT initial evaluation for jack drake lmao. this would probably be about prodigal era/what dana would see based on what little we know/see about his recovery at this point: he appears to have very good of his arms and only seems to need a little help from tim getting into bed. i guessed his dominant side cause im not sure if there's a canon consensus on that. didn't put current medications because i have no idea what dosages would be but given the CNS damage my guess would be gabapentin for neural pain, baclofen for tone, an anti-seizure medication, possibly an anti-depressant or anti-anxiety medication, possibly a blood pressure medication based on CNS damage and otc medications such as tylenol and ibuprofen for muscle pain. enjoy.

Physical Therapy Initial Evaluation

Subjective

Onset Date: 12/20XX

Chief Complaint: lower extremity weakness, impaired ability to ambulate, impaired balance

History of Current Problem/Pt Narrative: Pt is a pleasant and agreeable 40 year old male presenting today for PT evaluation following severe neurologic damage of the central nervous system. Pt states that his problem started December 20XX when he was kidnapped for a ransom demand overseas in Haiti. States that he was "held hostage for multiple days" before being saved from kidnappers "by Batman". However, pt then drank water that had been unknowingly poisoned by the kidnappers which caused severe and significant damage to his central nervous system and paralysis of the limbs. Pt states he was brought to a local hospital in Haiti for medical stabilization and poison antidote before being lifeflighted to Gotham City Hospital. Upon arrival in Gotham City, pt underwent immediate emergency craniotomy to reduce intracranial pressure. Following injury, pt was in coma for ~6 weeks. Upon awakening, pt had very limited use of both upper and lower extremities. Pt was in hospital for long-term acute care for ~1 month until medically stable and able to discharge to inpatient rehab. Pt was then in inpatient rehab for about 1 month. Pt received PT/OT/ST services to address mobility, ADLs, memory/cognition, and swallowing issues. Pt fitted for wheelchair in inpatient rehab due to limited ability to ambulate independently and ongoing need for mobility assist upon return home. Pt states that in inpatient, he was able to ambulate ~30 feet with assist of Solo-Step and use of wheeled walker. States that upon return home, he received outpatient physical therapy for a ~6 weeks where he started to get return of sensation in limbs and increased motor function in upper and lower extremities. Pt states that previous outpatient PT ended when pt and his PT were "kidnapped and held hostage for a few weeks". Pt states he felt like his limited strength declined during this time, but sensation of the limbs continued to improve. States he was rescued and brought to hospital in London for a few days for monitoring prior to return home. Upon return home, pt followed up with his neurologist for medical evaluation and clearance. States neurologist felt that there was no further damage to the nervous system at this time and medically cleared pt to return to outpatient PT to continue to progress strength and balance impairments. Pt presents today for physical therapy evaluation and treatment of his lower limb weakness.

Current Level of Function: Bed Mobility: Patient able to roll R and L and scoot in bed without assist. Able to perform supine <> sit mobilities at a mod I level with use of bedrail, however when fatigued requires a little help from his son or housekeeper to get into and out of bed. Transfers: Pt able to perform sit <> stand and bed <> wheelchair transfers at mod I level with heavy use of upper extremities to assist, but when fatigued states he needs a little help with this. Standing: Pt states he's able to stand ~5 minutes with use of assistive device. Gait: Pt states he has not attempted walking since discharge from rehab Stairs: Unable to perform at this time. Household Chores/Yardwork: Pt unable to perform at this time. Pt has live-in housekeeper to assist with chores. Driving: Pt unable to drive, currently uses driver service or "my son has his provisional license and can drive me as needed".

Prior Level of Function: Independent with all ADLs and IADLs.

Past Medical History: No significant PMH prior to injury.

Social History: Patient is widowed, wife passed away in same incident that caused patient injury. Has one son, age 14 who is able to provide some physical assist as needed.

Sleep: Pt states he has a hard time falling asleep at night. States he wakes up 2-3 times a night.

Pain: Patient denies pain at rest. Pt states that he will get pain on occasion. States that pain is generalized body pain, describes it as achy and stiff with occasional burning. States his pain can get up to 6/10. Pain tends to peak in morning upon first waking up, alleviates throughout the day as he moves, and gets more intense again at night as his muscles get tired. Aggravating factors include "being up all day", "laying in one position all night". Alleviating factors include medication, stretching, movement.

Pt is right side dominant.

Pt does not exhibit fear avoidance behavior.

Red Flags: none

Employment: Pt is currently not working during his recovery. States prior to injury, he was the CEO of his company Drake Industries. States his job was very sedentary, a lot of sitting and computer work. No heavy lifting "unless he feels like it". States he was also an amateur archeologist. Notes that that job was more labor intensive and consisted of more standing, squatting, lifting, digging activities.

Living Arrangements/Home Environment:

Pt lives in a two story house with basement.

Home has 3 steps to enter, no railing. Inside home there are 15 stairs to second floor, 15 stairs to basement. Pt does not currently have to go up or down stairs at this time, bedroom/bathroom available on main level.

Hallways and doorways wide enough to accommodate wheelchair.

Bathroom has raised toilet seat, walk-in shower with shower chair available.

Pt's goal for physical therapy: "to get back to normal" "to be able to walk again"

Next appt with referring provider: ~4 weeks

Objective

ADLs/Functional Mobilities: Pt performs rolling L and rolling R independently. Pt performs supine <> sit by using UEs to assist with getting legs in and out of bed. Pt performs sit <> stand with heavy use of UE support to push into standing and help control transfer on descent. Decreased quad control noted with functional transfer. Pt locks knees into hyperextension upon standing to increase stability of stand along with support of front wheeled walker. Pt able to stand 5 minutes with support. Pt performs bed to chair transfer with use of wheeled walker and small side steps and stand by assist for safety.

5x sit to stand: 52 seconds (balance dysfunction <60 years old cut off: 10 seconds)

Gait: Pt ambulates with front wheeled walker, gait belt donned, and min A of therapist for safety. Pt demonstrates short step length and decreased foot clearance with full foot strike versus heel strike bilaterally. Decreased hip and knee flexion during swing phase. Occasional ataxic foot placement noted. Wide base of support. Frequent standing rest breaks given with ambulation.

Pt able to go up and down 3 steps with use of bilateral rails and mod A of therapist. Step-to pattern.

2 minute walk test: 74 feet (gait speed = 0.18 m/s)

Functional Gait Assessment: 5/30 (cut off for falls <=22/30)

Range of Motion: B LE range of motion noted to be grossly WFL with passive testing.

Strength:

Abdominals: 3/5

Back Extension: 3/5

Hip Flexion: Left: 2-/5; Right: 2-/5

Hip Extension: Left: 2/5; Right: 2-/5

Hip Abduction: Left: 2/5; Right: 2/5

Hip Adduction: Left: 3/5; Right: 3-/5

Knee Extension: Left: 3-/5; Right: 2+/5

Knee Flexion: Left: 3-/5; Right: 2+/5

Ankle Dorsiflexion: Left: 2+/5; Right: 2+/5

Ankle Plantarflexion: Left: 3+/5; Right: 3/5

Ankle Inversion: Left: 2-/5; Right: 2-/5

Ankle Eversion: Left: 2-/5; Right: 2-/5

Balance:

Berg Balance Scale: 22/56

Cranial Nerves: CNI-XII grossly intact

Sensation:

Light Touch: Sensation to light touch grossly intact on BLE.

Sharp/Dull: Intact sharp/dull sensation on upper thighs. 80% accuracy on lower legs and feet B.

Proprioception: Ankle dorsiflexion/plantarflexion intact on L, 9/10 accuracy on R.

Coordination:

Alternating toe taps: Impaired B

Heel-to-Shin: Intact B

Tone:

*Graded based on Modified Ashworth Scale:

Hip Flexor: Left: 0; Right: 0

Quad: Left: 1; Right 1+

Gastroc: Left: 1; Right: 1+

No notable clonus with testing.

Functional Outcomes:

Patient Specific Functional Scale: (Patient asked to choose up to 5 activities and rate on a scale of 0 to 10, where 0 is unable to perform activity and 10 is able to perform at same level as before injury)

Walking: 1

Stair Negotiation: 0

Driving: 0

Getting Into and Out of a Chair: 3

Assessment

Stand at Counter to Shave: 3

Total Avg = 1.4

Therapy Diagnosis: impaired functional mobility, balance, gait, and endurance (Z74.09)

Medical Diagnosis: generalized weakness (R53.1)

Pt is a 40 year old male referred to physical therapy and seen today in clinic for initial evaluation. Pt presents with deficits in lower extremity and trunk strength, balance, gait mechanics and speed, tone, sensation, coordination, and pain. These deficits contribute to the following functional limitations: impaired ability to get in and out of bed safely and independently, impaired ability to get onto and off a chair or toilet safely and independently, impaired ability to ambulate household or community distances safely and independently, impaired ability to go up and down stairs to get into and out of his home or up to his second floor, impaired ability to perform household chores or yardwork, impaired ability to stand at a counter and perform personal care tasks, impaired ability to drive, increased risk of falls and injury, and impaired ability to sleep at night. Based on his listed impairments and functional limitations, pt has demonstrated a significant decline from his independent prior level of functioning and would benefit from ongoing skilled physical therapy intervention. Pt demonstrates good rehab potential due to excellent motivation, good family suppory, and has started to show recovery from injury in sensation and strength thus far. No significant barriers to service noted at this time, though pt may he somewhat limited in recovery by chronicity of impairments and severity of initial injury. Recommend pt be seen 2-3x/week for 4-5 months to address listed deficits and functional limitations.

Plan

Goals to be achieved by discharge from physical therapy.

Pt will demonstrate the following by discharge:

Pt will perform supine <> sit mobility independently to demonstrate increased safety and independence with getting in and out of bed.

Pt will be seen 2-3x/week for 4-5 months for 48-60 visits from initial evaluation for the following interventions to address pt impairments:

Pt will perform sit <> stand independently with no use of hands to demonstrate improved ability to get onto and off of chairs and toilets at home.

Pt will be able to ambulate at least 400 feet with least restrictive assistive device to demonstrate improved ability to navigate his household distances.

Pt will be able to go up and down 15 stairs with single rail support and step-through pattern to demonstrate improved safety and independence with household stair negotiation.

Pt will demonstrate a 5x sit to stand time of <=15 seconds to demonstrate improved muscle power for improved ability to perform functional transfers independently.

Pt will demonstrate a 2 minute walk test of >=350 feet to demonstrate improved gait speed and endurance for improved ability to perform community ambulation activities.

Pt will demonstrate a Functional Gait Assessment of >=23/30 to demonstrate reduced risk of falls with community ambulation activities.

Pt will demonstrate a Berg Balace Scale score of >=50/56 to demonstrate overall improved balance for reduced risk of falls and injury.

Pt will demonstrate trunk and B LE strength of >=4/5 throughout to demonstrate improved postural and lower extremity strength for improved ability to participate in household tasks and yardwork as needed.

Pt will demonstrate a PSFS average acore >=7 to demonstrate improved ability to perform tasks such as standing at a counter to shave.

Pt will report pain on average <=3/10 to demonstrate improved ability to sleep at night.

Therapeutic Exercise to address strength, flexibility, and endurance

Therapeutic Activities to improve functional mobilities and transfers

Neuromuscular Re-education to improve static and dynamic balance, postural strength, motor control, and coordination

Gait Training to improve functional ambulation and stair negotiation

Manual Therapy to improve muscle tightness and tone as needed

Modalities such as electrical stimulation or ultrasound for pain as needed

Precautions: fall

Treatment may be altered and goals updated based on patient progression with physical therapy. Reviewed plan of care with patient, patient verbalized understanding of plan of care and all questions answered. Pt consented to all treatment and testing today.

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*jack's likely around 39-40 at the time of the injury, based on his obituary which places him at 43 at his death.

**jack might be a bad dad, but he would be an objectively good patient. he might say eye-rolly things on occasion, but he's a friendly and motivated guy who has led an interesting life.

***bro can't believe i just wrote goals """""for fun"""""

#this subjective portion would in fact have the therapist be sitting there with a horrified expression #amyways this would be a very long rehab #forgive any mistakes im not used to freehanding entire fake evaluations here lol

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transfemjoker · 1 year

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I ❤️ ur Joker so much can I hear ur hcs for her? 😼 also maybe some batjokes hcs sprinkled in there heh

this FANTASTIC ask has been rotting in my inbox for months so here’s my current wealth of joker hcs. written on paper. in unintelligible handwriting

im sooo normal and regular about her <3 (transcript below cut)

thinking soo hard about my au joker. he's consuming my every waking thought! he lives in my brain!

soo I talked about her a little already but he's intersex and uses he/she pronouns :) his gender doesn't really exist she just does what she wants (whatever's funniest)

anyways she looks predominantly physically male - flat-chested, long-limbed, laryngeal prominence, etc. - but his hormone balance isn't super testosterone-heavy. like she can't grow bodily or facial hair (he does have eyebrows/eyelashes and a full head of hair though) and i believe he has a set of ovaries (but he can't get pregnant lol. he's sterile and doesn't have a vagina so they're kind of just in there)

other biological quirks include faster cell growth - like wounds heal faster and hair + nail growth is sped up - she also has a VERY strong immune system and rarely ever gets sick, has weird reactions to fear toxin + ivy's pheromones (+ a lot of prescription drugs and medical anaesthetics don't really work on him), she has a ridiculously high pain tolerance but feels it really acutely (he can just deal with a lot of it), has a lot of chronic nerve pain like a constant crackling surface pain (stolen from that one LKOE dracze fic) and part of her masochistic streak relates to the fact that strong pain breaks up the nerve pain (that and marginally faulty wiring), and she for some reason has reflective retinas like an animal! which is real spooky

her bleached skin is really thin + pale and you can see a lot of veins under it so he looks like a deep sea creature → she's also incredibly emaciated and looks real skeletal - his body mass is super low + it's kind of a medical mystery that he doesn't have some kind of fatigue disorder. I think it's something to do with how his body processes and stores nutrients. idk

before her first outing as 'the joker', he used to stalk bruce around the city when he was on patrol. she did this for maybe a year, and bruce would sometimes see him stood in alleys, perched on rooftops, watching him. bruce spotted her maybe a total of 12-15 times, and kind of doubted that he wasn't just hallucinating; it would've been an eerie image - a figure, ghostly white, skeletal, dressed in a hospital gown + sporting dead eyes and a head of long, straggly green hair - and bruce had only been on the job for about 2 years so he wasn't quite as paranoid yet. when joker first came to prevalence that's when bruce realised it was her :) idk i just want him to haunt bruce in a way that he can't shake similarly to the memory of her fall at ACE

also! some details from canon that I'd like to insert: ↓

- the birthday gifts thing: I really liked that idea and think it's a very joker thing to do - she also celebrates anniversaries (eg. their first fight, bruce's first outing as batman, joker's first major crime, the incident at ACE, etc.) he's sentimental :) - his affection for crossdressing (it isn't really crossdressing in this context but. whatever the instances of it are canon) i think it's neat idk i like seeing her visibly gnc - I wanna keep the wide shapes of a lot of storylines like europa + snyder's stuff (the bench universe, dotf and endgame, etc.) + devil's advocate + joker's apprentice + maybe chunks of deadly duo + broken city + other things - might contain (while credited) some stuff from fit as well bc i'm a total loser ← currently writing fic (like two step and you're by excuse to travel by synthwave + maybe sucker for pain by transformatron + green the colour of greed by distortopia + something these angels wear and with my toes on the edge by cultivation + chunks from other stuff) idk it's kind of difficult to ascertain the speed at which i want their relationship to escalate. we'll see! i definitely want something to have happened during europa (and I'm treating that dracze fic set in the bench universe as canon) but like. they might just be trapped in perpetual hell like in the comics. thanks bruce's morality - i also want to note that in this au literally most everything else is the same as in canon. I'm gonna be drawn to include my headcanons for all the characters and whatever but the batfamily is still constructed the same + jace still dies and babs is still paralysed + the JL is still established + at its core it's still the same thing :) while i'm here i want say though that it's likely i'll take the telltale route with bruce's parents having mob ties because i think that throws a fun moral wrench in the works for him to deal with - much of my interpretation of the joker is based on a grant morrison's interpretation of him. morrison is such a majorly influential writer for me and their description of joker in the arkham asylum cut script notes was tbh my major inspiration for this version of joker :) like that thing they said: "pale and emaciated, he should look simply grotesque but standing there, hand on thrust-out hip, he projects an absolute confidence that confers upon him a bizarre kind of attractiveness and sexuality. it is the attraction of the perverse and the forbidden." - btw. i wanna make a point to include matches malone in my canon. bruce actively uses the matches persona :)

i wanted to detail her weird physical appearance mostly for the sake of the image of him in Arkham; no makeup, no costume, no way for her to dress himself up. he struggles a lot with her image + not feeling attractive or desirable (very 'if i gave up on being pretty i wouldn't know how to be alive') and arkham makes him very unstable because he has no way of controlling the way he's seen

he also has a prosthetic eye like in the comics :) i'd like to think she lost her eye in an altercation with bruce and it helps tie bruce's morality to the joker - whenever bruce sees him, it reminds him of how much harm he causes. lol! i LOVE torturing bruce he's such an interesting character giggles :)

btw for the record i'd also like to state that i consider bruce and joker's relationship to be inherently sadomasochistic in nature. considering joker's canonically a masochist and gets off on what bruce does to him + bruce recognises this and continues to pursue her just the same. they're SO interesting to me

i also believe the thing from the comics about joker's worldview; that she believes he and batman are the only real people in the whole universe. i think it provides such an interesting perspective on his actions - (in that context) he crucially doesn't see the people he kills as people, but rather like. tools. symbols. i think it really communicates the central conflict of his character idk i think it's interesting

on a less deep note, he has a thing for clothing and makeup. she has HEAPS of it stored in warehouses + stuff. he's really good at concealing her safehouses so a lot of it goes undiscovered. he gets his foundation from japanese theatre companies bc they're the only places that do it light enough lol. also important to note that he wears garters + sock suspenders + shirt stays + corseting + structured undergarments + heels + super complex layers of clothing. he prides herself on the craft of it :)

she really takes pride in her performance + the way she's seen - her whole life, his whole career is one big performance. there's very little underneath 'the joker'. he doesn't know who she is, he has no life before bruce, no name, no identity, nothing outside of her fixation on the batman. he was ther at ACE that night (she believes he is - or at least his negligence is - what made her) and joker really clings to batman as a point of stability and focus because, unlike bruce, he has nothing outside of his persona. the batman is bruce wayne (shocker) - he has a life, people he loves - but joker has nothing. that's part of the reason joker's so desperate to ignore that bruce has a 'real identity' and is so defensive of people discovering it; as well as meaning the destruction of batman, it would also remove joker of her ability to deny that there is a person behind batman. he wants so badly to believe that this is all bruce has - that HE is all bruce has - just as is true for him. beneath it all, she just wants to be loved. she just wants to not be alone.

sigh! that was a lot! i don't wanna make him just a deep, dark, brooding character that's BORING that's bruce's job lol. loser. anyways she can be silly too he has whimsy in her soul as well :) i believe soo intensely in DC's ability to be a silly universe because it's inherently so stupid as a concept so to me silly guy joker is real <3 they can have fun

joker getting roped in on justice league stuff is soo personal to me let her be helpful let him make fun of the JL and their stupid missions :)

btw. for future reference he is in no way attracted to women (sorry yuri joker) his relationship with harley (+ MAYBE punchline. strong maybe. only as his protégé) is PURELY manipulative and joker NEVER thought of or treated her sexually or romantically. there's still gonna be animosity there though lol because he still abused and manipulated harley and she still thought joker loved her, but the fact remains that he isn't even vaguely attracted to women so! idc punchline likers so somewhere else lol

another thing from canon (devil's advocate) i'd like to steal is the fact that joker sleeps with his henchmen :) it's real to me

she has a lot of silly pseudo-crushes on a lot of other characters (like lex luthor + bane + lobo + killer croc + superman + what have you. he's a slut what can i say) but none of them will EVER be bats! they know their place and it's NOT in murder-suicide love with her

kicks feet idk i have so many thoughts about joker even though i feel so cringe writing them down. idgaf this is important work

#anyways. im the normallest girl in the world #and so is she! (the joker)#hcs #also transcript isn’t finished so! don’t press read more yet or you’ll be greeted with only 4 pages worth of text #og

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skunkg1rll · 20 days

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in times like these i get overwhelming suicidal feelings bc like... what even is my life? just pain after pain after pain. between chronic knee pain, upper nd lower back pain, stiff neck nd stiff shoulders, tension headaches nd migraines, stomach aches, acid reflux + heartburn w chest pains, gallbladder disease, tooth pain, acute neck pain, lumbago etc etc etc im always in pain. i never get a break from it nd it's so exhausting. i was just starting to recover from my gallbladder surgery, nd boom all of a sudden i have tooth pain 24/7!!!!!!!!!! like what the fuck... why cant i ever get to rest??? im so sick of it all. nd im supposed to have the mental capacity to go to school nd do my assignments. ppl keep telling me it'll pass. like yeah even if my current tooth pain wont last forever, whats next???? there id always some illness or pain waiting for me around the corner. it honestly makes me wanna die. i know other ppl have way way worse conditions nd illnesses but for me i just cant deal w it. with my mental nd psychological issues i cant deal or cope w all the pain i have to be in. that pain takes over nd becomes everything i am. my tooth ache now is the only thing that makes me me nd it will last forever. thats what it's like in my head. it just makes me wanna die, bc when i think of my future... do i gotta be in pain for all of it? bc in that case i dont wanna do this anymore

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figgyblossom · 10 months

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Ugh yall my pain and general energy levels have been garbage the last few days.. im so exhausted even tho I'm sleeping between 10 and 12 hrs a night, and I'm currently sitting in my rocking chair, acutely aware of the throbbing in my elbow that's sending pain radiating through my arm in both directions :') my head hurts, my jaw is tight, I'm so tired.

#i think its bcuz im still adjusting to the increase in my medication but damn dog #figgy vents #chronic pain #cest moi

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avalovesindie · 2 years

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this is pretty much the best place to vent where there’s some chance of someone seeing it but not basically forcing anyone to respond or whatever

im mourning a better world that I know I’ll never get to. There’s so much in my personal life I’m sad about but rn the #1 thing bothering me is the world. I’m so goddamn scared. And also so upset, I feel like every tragedy that’s ever happened is constantly weighing me down. I just want everyone to be okay but it’s never going to happen. Some things seem so easy to fix but we just aren’t. I wish I could beam compassion and sense into everyone. I wish I was never born to witness this. It’s too much for me. But I can’t die because I’m so utterly terrified for what comes after. And I know that me dying would only bring more misery, which is the last thing I want, but it’s getting so hard. I’m so lonely and I don’t know who to talk to about all this. My best friend blocked me last year and I’m still not over it. My special interest is like half my life even though it brings me so much stress. I don’t think anyone will ever really find me attractive. Living in this world is exhausting and I have to grieve it every day. My current best friend i don’t even know what he thinks of me and I keep embarrassing myself in front of him. I know climate change or a nuclear war is gonna ruin everything and I’m trying to enjoy what time I have before that but it’s really hard. It’s so hard to feel every emotion so acutely. I don’t think I’m strong enough to fight. I think of the ways that would be the least painful to die. I can’t deal with any pain. I don’t know why my one friend is ignoring me. I know he only uses me as someone to talk at- not to- and doesn’t really care for me anymore. I don’t feel empty I am uncomfortably full. I’m so stupid and I’m not joking around or anything I just really am. why can’t everyone just have a warm place to sleep with food always available. Why can’t we get there already. What’s stopping us. Why

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dear-tay-tay · 2 years

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Hello Swiftie . I'm Esther and I'm sending this to you on behalf of my girlfriend(NiNi), who have been diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML).

She's been on chemo for weeks. But we need to raise money against her bone marrow transplant, The good thing is we found a match early, the bad thing is We currently are not financially capable to pay for it. Nini's condition is not so good and we hope she gets better and that's why I'm pleading for your support towards Nini's treatment. We'd appreciate your donation if you can, i've chosen a platform which accepts as low as $1, this shows how urgent and desperate we her to continue her treatments. On my pinned post is her story, latest update on her treatment and link to donate. Kindly spare some bucks if you can. I'd also appreciate your reblog to reach larger audience. If you're LGBTQ+ please tag any fellow LGBTQ person/community, who you think might help one of their own. Sorry if you're not, I strongly believe in the love and support from the community and everyone at large. btw NINI IS A SWIFTIE TOO.

Thank you.

sadly there is not much i can do to help, but if reblogging this helps somehow then that´s what im doing. praying and hoping for an easy and pain free recovery <33 please try to donate something if you can, it's always worth it when it helps another person to have a happier and better life. I firmly believe that life gets easier, even when it doesn't seem like it will, but one day you'll be remembering this as just an old and dark memory.

Sending love

#taylor swift #taylor nation #swifties #red taylor’s version #all too well 10 minutes

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steebtiny · 4 years

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i swear to god, rdj without a goatee still throws me off so much. like who is this???? i don’t know who this man is, i mean he could be walking down the street i wouldn’t- i wouldn’t know a thing. like tonky stank is that you????

#excuse me and my usual rambling about shit #its been a trying day #im currently in acute pain #rdj #mcu #tony stark #robert downey jr #marvel #iron man

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bellwitchfaggot · 2 years

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I had my second ever like full physical sensation (including pain), auditory, cognitive, and emotional flashback that I can recall experiencing earlier (like, FULLY 100% reliving the actual immediate sensation of the traumatic experience all connected and aware of like what exactly was happening in my head and I gotta say. Probably one of the worst experiences in yhe entire world and I understand why I had to cope with it in the past by falling into full acute paranoid delusions rather processing it as the result of real life trauma ive experienced . The things I know about myself now. Like. Im barely fucking dealing at this point in my life I literally understand how the experience of sort of organically starting to process certain things in the past periodically for so long resulted in absolute insane person behavior and eventual recompartmentalizing of all of it, over and over again, for basically the past decade at Least. Im currently in an exhibiting absolute insane person behavior era but this is the first time I spend probably the majority of my time like actually aware and able to connect the pieces for the most part and like connected enough to my past experiences to recognize patterns of behavior and like connect and understand them all at a higher level so. Cautiously hopeful that maybe this time instead of recompartmentalizing everything and accidentally finding myself in the same retraumatizing patterns forever without understanding how I got there or what I need to do to get out of them, I will actually be able to retain like a level of context about my life and experiences to continue making the decisions necessary to really start to finally remove myself from those patterns.

I am still finding myself exhibiting trauma behaviors I cant explain a lot of the time (like... I was supposed to start my job today and instead I literally blacked out for hours and had one of the most severe dissociative episodes ive had in a very long time) but there is an observable difference in how I am reacting to those behaviors and like reducing the harm they may cause my day to day life and goals (finally figured out how to voice my needs to my partner so they could help me understand and process what was happening, finally met myself wjere I was at with grace and compassion so instead of literally ghosting yhe job and having to restart the whole process like I have in the past in a situation like this I ended up contacting my manager and explaining there was an emergency and I still totally have my job, and I also like finally made the step to get in contact with a new therapist who works specifically with trauma processing and integration efforts)

#rj is going to move here in like 5 weeks and im going to get out of this fucking nightmare trauma house and start enforcing much stricter #boundaries with my family in order to be able to really start working through really processing and contextualizing whatever the fuck #caused me to literally become a polyfragmented did system #and maybe in like the spring or summer time i will ask certain friends of mine if they wanna go on dates with me and maybe i will #even kiss those friends #did log #dl8r

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whumpzone · 4 years

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Tomas and Rowe - Part 10

thank you all for your patience. these updates will probably because fortnightly rather than weekly since im swamped with uni work now, but i still love my boys dearly and i love YOU all for reading!

Masterpost

taglist: @sola-whumping @just-another-whumper @misspelledwitch @looptheloup @briars7 @black-polarf @zipadeedooda-drabbles @just-a-whumping-racoon-with-wifi @rosesareviolentlyread @thingsthatgo-whump-inthenight @jazz-0307 @kestrelsparverius @whumpsy-daisies @whumpersworld @memoriesneverforget @sky-or-something-idfk @ghostcomit @cupcakes-and-pain @frankieswhump @ihaventwritteninsolong @mybrokenlittletoy @kiretto-laorentze @morelikepainsley (please ask to be added or removed!

CW: pet whumpee, hospitals, dehumanisation, burning

It would have been a great mercy for Rowe to drift slowly awake, pulled towards lucidity by his aching legs. Instead, in an instant he was wide awake and screaming as unfamiliar hands touched and gripped and pulled. Rowe weakly pushed them away before he realised what was going on. How could I- I was trained to never resist. How can this happen? What is wrong with me?

‘’See how far non-compliance gets you,’’ came a voice. Rowe squinted against the light to see two people in elbow-length gloves, with masks and cold eyes looking back at him. One of them- the taller of the two- reached to either side of him to click open what looked like handcuffs. ‘’In. If you don’t make a fuss I won’t clip your legs. You wouldn’t want that with the state they’re in, would you?’’

Rowe shook his head desperately. He could barely listen through the terrible pain, but he was programmed to understand commands, and had learned to understand threats. The tall one gave a little grunt and spread Rowe’s arms wide, locking them in place on either side of the thin mattress he was laying on. Rowe vaguely considered that Master Tomas had given him an especially nice mattress at home.

His bed at home. His room. The nice carpet soaked with his blood while he lay there, helpless, Kasia swinging the hammer down again and again, and Rowe able to feel his hatred with every impact. Master had found him, Rowe remembered. He had taken him here. Was he being put down?

He felt something trickling down his temples. Tears. When did I start crying?

He shook his head, trying to push all these questions out of his head. Pets don’t cry. I don’t cry- I shouldn’t cry. I’m just a thing that feels pain and serves. I can lie here and take this. Master left me here; this is what he wants.

‘’Right…’’ The tall one said. Rowe blinked quickly and saw her inspecting his wounds. ‘‘When did you get these?’’

‘’Th-this afternoon, I-‘’

Rowe’s voice died away when he saw the look she was giving the short doctor, who bent to grab something from the compartment strapped to the end of the bedframe.

‘’Oh dear. I don’t remember you having permission to speak. Muzzle, if you please, Dr Clerval.’’

The shorter doctor- Clerval- handed it to her and Rowe went limp reflexively. This muzzle looked sharp, and cruel, and as the taller doctor fastened it to Rowe’s face he felt it cut into the skin around his ears and the corners of his mouth. The bit was cold, keeping his tongue pinned down.

‘’Now,’’ she said, ‘’you’re going to be a good Pet, aren’t you? We’re doing you a kindness, after all.’’

Rowe nodded, lowering his eyes. The tall doctor smiled, and Rowe saw her push some sort of sharp instrument into him, and then he started screaming.

The woman who had summoned Tomas introduced herself as Gwen. Her Mary Janes echoed through the corridor as they spoke.

‘’Can I see him?’’

‘’Your Pet? I’m sorry, sir, he won’t be out for a while.’’

‘’Then… what did you want me for?’’

‘’We actually had a few issues with your paperwork and just need a few signatures off you, if you don’t mind. Right in here, please.’’

They entered a warm office and Gwen gestured for Tomas to sit in a plush, deep buttoned chair.

‘’Okay. I have here your Pet’s file, but it seems you’re not the official owner.’’

‘’Huh?’’

‘’When you received your Pet, did you sign any paperwork?’’

‘’No… I didn’t.’’

‘’Well, your P-‘’

‘’His name is Rowe. Sorry- for interrupting, but he has a name. If that’s easier.’’

Gwen gave him the gentle smile of a vet explaining to a child why their sweet pet had to be put down. ‘’Of course, Mr Grz- may I call you Tomas? Great. Currently Rowe is listed as unclaimed, under the legal ownership of a Pet rehoming organisation. Is this where you got him from?’’

‘’Yeah. I have a friend who works there.’’

‘’I see. Well your friend has forgotten to give you the appropriate paperwork. What this means is that Rowe is not officially your property yet- you can’t take people to court if they damage or steal him.’’

‘’Right. Shit. How do I get this paperwork?’’

‘’I have it here, since you need to be the legal owner to submit him for medical treatment. This will establish that you are Rowe’s acting owner, but you need to get your friend to sign too, okay?’’

Gwen handed Tomas a single sheet of paper and a pen. So simple, Tomas thought. One bit of A4 for the right to Rowe’s life.

‘’Thank you,’’ he said as he signed, printing his name below it in his delicate script.

‘’Great,’’ beamed Gwen. ‘’And now we can discuss your payment.’’

‘’Payment? Isn’t this… isn’t this on the NHS?’’

‘’No,’’ she said patiently, ‘’just as animals aren’t covered, neither are Pets.’’

Tomas’s goodwill towards Gwen was dissipating quickly. He would pay, of course. But for Rowe- his Rowe- to be considered closer to an animal than a human made him stiffen. Gwen seemed to notice this and pressed on.

‘’Oh, but don’t worry, it’s not going to be expensive. Pet treatment is far simpler than treating a human.’’

Gwen didn’t elaborate, and Tomas didn’t enquire, if only to preserve his own sanity. The floor, he noticed, was the same shade of cream as Rowe’s room. He looked away quickly. He could still smell the blood- could still hear the way Rowe had screamed and moaned when he lifted him up. Tomas didn’t even know how conscious he had been then. Did he think Tomas was hurting him more on purpose? Would he think Tomas was angry? Probably. Tomas would have to be very, very patient when Rowe was discharged and started begging for forgiveness for wasting his Master’s time.

The muzzle only hurt when Rowe shifted, now. It had sunk into his flesh and stayed there, and Rowe could ignore the pain up until a movement made it flare. In a way, he was happy that he couldn’t speak- he always made things worse by speaking, and although he did his best to make Master Tomas happy, he sometimes wished he would be granted a muzzle and the safety of silence.

He had stopped screaming, mostly. The bit had sliced his tongue so badly he wondered if he would even be able to speak once it was taken off. As Dr Clerval and the other doctor, whose name was Easton, dug into his calves, he just moaned and spasmed involuntarily. His chest, still brightly lined with Kasia’s cuts, strained and lifted with every new jolt of pain.

The pain was awful- acute pain- different to the wide, messy whacks of the hammer. Rowe could feel every stab of the instrument, a million precise cuts, sinking into his skin and then leaving just as quickly. He hoped he wouldn’t throw up. He tried to focus on the fact that he wasn’t being put down, at least.

He had never been to hospital before. When his old master had whipped him, or poured boiling water on him, or beaten him unconscious, he had always had the night to recover and then it was back to work. If he couldn’t do that, he was given the morning off and forced to sleep outside for the next week as penance. He was always so grateful when old master allowed him that.

Anaesthetic wasn’t wasted on Pets, Rowe knew that. Master Tomas knew that too, undoubtedly. Don’t worry sir, no need to punish your Pet yourself. After all, you’ve already wasted enough time on it. We’ll make sure it suffers so it knows not to bother you again.

More stabbings in his legs. It felt like he was being stitched up. That made sense, at least. Rowe’s old master was kind, far kinder than Rowe deserved, and would always tell him why he was being hurt. He felt the same amount of comfort here. He was being hurt for a reason. Kasia’s beating had been made all the more unbearable because he hadn’t cited any insolence, any misstep. He had barely said anything at all.

On either side of him were dark green curtains, but beyond them he could hear screams, and wails. He wondered how many injured Pets were in here with him, just out of sight. He had never met another Pet before.

Another jolt of pain brought him back to the present. Dr Easton was looming over him with a- a- Rowe’s head went dizzy with fear. Dr Easton had a thick metal rod in one gloved hand, and the end was white-hot and smouldering. She held it near Rowe’s face and he pulled away as far as he could against his restraints, the whites of his eyes glinting in the sterile light. He could tell that underneath her mask was a wicked smile.

‘’We’ve got one or two pesky wounds that might get infected. But we’ll see to that. Do you know what cauterisation is?’’

Rowe nodded, and this seemed to be the right answer, because the rod was taken away from his face. Before he could relax, though, Easton pressed the burning end into Rowe’s calf.

His eyes rolled into his head as he bucked and thrashed, his screams mixed with desperate, anguished sobs. His thoughts were running wild with helpless pleas- not this not this not this, I’ll do anything to make the pain stop, please Master I’m so sorry, please I’ll do anything, just not this, not this.

It didn’t calm down when the rod lifted from his leg, after the longest few seconds of Rowe’s life. No sooner had he even registered the change was the pain was transferred to another wound, further up the same leg. He felt like a wild animal, screaming in a way he had never screamed before, guttural and horribly altered due to the muzzle. Rowe didn’t even recognise the sounds. The pain was worse, so much worse than the boiling water or the whip, he couldn’t even form coherent thoughts anymore, he couldn’t see, everything he knew in that moment was pure, awful pain.

Eventually, the cauterisation was done. Rowe felt exhausted, and more than anything, he felt scared. He missed Master Tomas so, so badly. As he drifted in and out of consciousness, he dreamed of being back in Master’s living room. His legs worked, and he wasn’t damaged goods. He was pretty. He was a good Pet and Master ruffled his hair. Good boy.

Master never said that to him. He told him he was good, but no more. He had ruffled Rowe’s hair, and hugged him once when he was drunk, but he never ordered Rowe to kneel at his feet and let himself be pet. For all that he was terrified of his old master, Rowe cherished the days where he was good and allowed to lay his head on old master’s thigh and feel his rough hands card through his hair.

Rowe knew it was still early- he hadn’t been Master Tomas’s property for even a fortnight yet- but he couldn’t help wondering sometimes what he was doing wrong. He fucked up so much, but Master never got mad, and told him he was good, but never went further than that.

But right now, in the space between awake and asleep, Rowe indulged in his most gentle fantasy. He felt Master stroke his hair, a million miles away from the blood-stained mattress and his calves wrinkled with stitches like seaweed on the ocean floor.

#tomas and rowe #i love my boy:( i love him so much:(#oh also clerval = henry clerval from frankenstein #and easton = william easton from saw 6 #no deep character significance i just like them and hence stole their names #pet whumpee #whump #whump fic #pet whump #master/pet #dehumanisation #begging #medical whump

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autispec-hours · 3 years

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hi call me corvid or don

welcome to my neurodivergence blog ^^

CURRENTLY OBSESSED WITH : all of Dimension 20’s campaigns and also Dropout in general but the Unsleeping City is still the fave

y’all i love the idea of cody and pete dating but i find it just a little bit suspicious that you consistently ignore that pete is in a canon t4t relationship . literally just make them poly it’s not fucking hard

some things about me:

im an adult

i’m autistic & have adhd

i collect SpIns and hyperfixations like candy. help there’s so many idk how to function

some of the SpIns in question are : pokemon , visual & written art , art & media analysis , rise of the tmnt , psychology / sociology , cryptozoology , warrior cats , biology ( particularly dinosaur biology ( including birds , ) but all creachers are good creachers ) <- i keep adding to this list bc i forget my SpIns sometimes tbh . and if you’re wondering how i can do that . it’s because i also have adhd

fandom blogs : @don-stan-tinople for tmnt content @rat-king-kugrash for d20 & dropout & @cotton-pikkin for pokemon stuff !!

also follow my art blog @corvidsart

anything i post / reblog that has to do w a special interest more than it does neurodivergence will be tagged #un-tism

i have trauma , & much of it . this & my neurodivergence may pepper my interactions with people , so being clear abt your tone is very helpful to me when interacting w my posts . tone indicators are helpful , but not compulsory !

i am physically disabled , with chronic pain & chronic migraines , which i believe is enhanced by my sensory processing being more acute than the average person’s

i am not someone who’s opposed to teaching or answering questions about my experience , but rudeness , pettiness , and bigotry will no be tolerated

thank you for your time ^^

#actually autistic #actuallyautistic #autism #autistic culture #autistic spectrum #xenogender #mogai gender #autie #autistic pride #autist #autistic #autistic experiences #autistic life #being autistic #actually neurodiverse #actually neurodivergent #actually nd #red instead #spoonie

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flowerslut · 3 years

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BONUS DAY: Quarantine Rated: T for language. Words: 9,064

A/N: My favorite prompt, “suddenly human” was somehow NOT chosen for Jalice week. So I took some liberties here by combining a shitload of prompts together. Brace yourselves.

WHUMPTOBER CROSSOVER—No. 13: OXYGEN MASK & No. 21: INFECTION

Alice and Jasper face immortality together.

I’LL JUST LAY HERE WITH YOU

Twenty-nine days ago they were celebrating.

Birthdays weren’t something they acknowledged often. After Bella had been with them for a decade, their newest vampire had firmly put her foot down. She’d barely tolerated them as a human, but as an immortal being she’d loathed the parties.

Thankfully, there was still Renesmee and her milestones to keep track of. Of course, she hadn’t changed much since her eighth birthday, but apparently even human-vampire hybrids weren’t immune to the desire for a Sweet Sixteen.

Jasper had never seen Alice so elated to have someone so willing to plan a celebration with her. And she and Rosalie had once spent three years planning one of Rose and Emmett’s more elaborate weddings.

It started with a vision.

Turning the knob on the stove, Jasper cut the heat, ignoring the way his throat burned at the aroma that was wafting through the kitchen. It had been embarrassing, having to listen to Carlisle and Bella give him step by step instructions on how to light the gas stove over the phone, but if Alice had witnessed him struggle in a passing vision, she neglected to mention it to him.

He checked his phone then, knowing that no messages awaited him, but still hoping for a notification nonetheless. Someone would be dropping off more supplies today, and he needed to know where exactly to go in order to receive them.

He couldn’t risk interacting with any of his family directly. Not until they figured out what was going on.

It started with a vision.

Jasper reached forward, grabbing the canister from the boiling water, and began to wipe it dry. He knew it was warm enough due to smell alone. He hadn’t once used the food thermometer they’d stuck in their last delivery. While Alice’s condition had worsened, it hadn’t gotten so bad that she’d be at risk of being burnt.

He eyed a bag on the kitchen table, and at the assortment of crazy straws poking against the plastic, and rolled his eyes as he exited the room. Leave it to Emmett to try to find something to joke about with the situation.

He’d been pissed at the bonus items during that particular delivery—surely Edward and Rosalie hadn’t known Emmett was sneaking some extras into the package—but it had made Alice crack a real, genuine smile.

And those were so hard to come by now.

It started with a vision.

Twenty nine days ago they’d been celebrating Renesmee’s birthday. That included balloons and streamers and cake and human food and humans and an assortment of emotion that, by the party’s conclusion, had given Jasper whiplash. The headache he had that day didn’t ebb until late that night. Alice had been too preoccupied with clean-up to notice.

And Jasper had been too preoccupied with his headache to notice when Alice’s emotions caused the climate of the house to take a nosedive.

Walking through room after room Jasper eventually reached the stairs and began to slowly climb, focusing hard on the low buzz of the equipment running upstairs. With every step his misery intensified until he was struggling to keep the emotion at bay. Whether it was a good thing or not, Alice was too out of it most days to be able to tell.

Still, he didn’t want to slip up and accidentally physically share his current emotions with her.

“Jazz?” He heard her voice call when he was halfway up the stairs. And when her panic struck him he cleared the rest of the staircase in an instant.

“I’m right here,” he spoke, the canister already resting on the nightstand as he reached out for her, hyperaware of all the wires as he maneuvered her into an embrace. “Just wanted to get you something to drink.” Pulling back he focused intently on her face. Her eyes hadn’t been golden in days, despite the regular meals he supplied her with. Instead, her eyes were slowly darkening, a brown amber color taking over.

Her sigh of relief sounded more like a rasp, and when her face scrunched up in pain, Jasper felt his entire being ache. Reaching forward he readjusted the oxygen tube on her face, resting his hand firmly against her cheek as he watched her squeeze her eyes tight and focus on taking a few long, even breaths.

She felt just slightly warmer than she had the day before. The temporal thermometer that lay within the nightstand was suddenly at the forefront of his mind. Another one of the tools Carlisle had armed him with in their first supply drop off. Jasper had refused to grab the device until someone (Rosalie) explicitly and unkindly asked him what her temperature was that day.

He didn’t want to think about how she was warming every day.

“Let’s sit you up,” Jasper spoke quietly as he moved, pulling her fragile body into a sitting position against the headboard, tucking the blankets snuggly around her as she blinked herself into awareness.

“How long was I out?” She rasped again, wincing as she shifted. Lifting a hand she scratched at her ear. The hair had grown infinitesimally over the past several weeks, but it was one of Alice’s biggest complaints. After living a hundred years with her hair the exact same, the instant it began to grow she’d panicked.

And Jasper had added another thing to the list of symptoms she was experiencing.

“Only a couple of hours,” he moved back toward the night stand, retrieving the canister. “This is the last of it,” he commented as she accepted the stainless steel canister with her bare hands. Barely a second later she was wincing, the container falling to the blankets that were lying across her lap.

Jasper had grabbed it and returned it to the table in an instant. “Alice!”

“I’m fine,” Alice hissed, holding her shaking hands to her chest “It’s not hot, I swear. Seriously,” then, she showed him her palms. They didn’t appear to look any different than usual, but still, Jasper was mortified. Maybe he should’ve been using the culinary thermometer after all… “Jasper. It’s fine,” she assured him between hurried breaths. “I’m not burnt or anything. It just really hurts to grip things today.”

“I’m sorry,” he still apologized quietly, knowing how much she hated hearing the words from him. “I didn’t know.”

“Another symptom for Carlisle,” she half-smiled, and Jasper felt his heart clench at the sight. Those smiles never reached her eyes.

Twenty-nine days ago Alice had been putting stringed lights back into storage containers when the first vision struck. Jasper had been distracted, up in his study, re-reading one of his many comfort books to try and curb the pain in his skull.

Jasper never felt Alice’s initial shock. What he felt was Edward’s powerful fear, and acute mortification.

By the time Jasper was in the living room, Alice was screaming.

Picking the canister back up, Jasper moved to sit back on the bed besides Alice. But when she saw what he was about to do she lifted up a hand, placing it against his arm. “Jazz, no. It’s fine. Give me a few minutes and I can do it myself.”

“I can help,” he insisted, his words quiet as he prepared to hold his breath and twist the canister open.

The human blood was a new addition to her diet. One that Carlisle had suggested after her body had rejected animal blood for the second time. She’d been wholly unable to hunt since the beginning, but she’d still been able to drink from whatever animal Jasper could grab that day.

When her teeth began to, quite literally, lose their edge, their family had been forced to improvise. Jasper didn’t know how they’d attained the initial bags of animal blood, but he was thankful for their efforts. He’d ruined the carpet in the den attempting to exsanguinate a deer, and had only salvaged less than a pint for her. After that, Carlisle had figured something out.

The first time she’d been sick—the animal blood violently expelling itself from her tiny body from the way it came, and ruining the couch in his study—was the first night she slept. Jasper called Carlisle, hysterical and screaming, thinking that whatever was happening had finally killed her.

She’d woken up less than ten minutes later, disoriented but alive. That had been two weeks ago, and Jasper hadn’t left her side for more than ten minutes since, even for a supply pickup.

“You said it’s the last of it,” Alice spoke, her frown deepening when Jasper fully screwed the lid off the bottle, “does that mean it’s a supply day?”

He nodded as he pressed the edge of the container to her mouth and tipped it back, trying hard to look away as she gulped down the blood. His thirst had been killing him the past few days, but he knew that he’d rather starve than deprive Alice of even one drop of sustenance.

“Her body is trying to replenish itself,” Carlisle theorized to him just the day before over the phone, “try and pay attention to what blood type she favors. It might become useful information.”

Her eyes hadn’t changed to red the way he’d expected them to—the way he’d hoped—but instead, every day, they darkened slightly, more orange-ish brown than anything.

It was an almost-human color.

Twenty-nine days ago they’d been celebrating. And then Jasper was in the living room and Alice was shrieking, demanding that everyone get out and that no one come near her and that they get out now and leave.

“Alice,” Jasper had flickered to her side, terrified at the emotions coming from her. But she’d pushed him away so hard he put a dent in the wall, the wood and plaster crumbling beneath his back.

“No!” She’d sobbed, “Stay away! Edward! Get them out! Explain later! Go, now!”

But even Edward, who knew what she was thinking and who had seen what she’d seen, couldn’t bring his feet to move. “Alice, hold on a second.”

Jasper felt Alice’s emotions blank and then come back full-force; it was the tell-tale sign of another vision stealing her attention. And when Edward’s terror trumped Alice’s, Jasper found himself staring helplessly at the redhead.

“Go,” the boy turned toward the family and barked the orders, “everyone get out, now.”

“What is it?” Jasper demanded, his frustration mounting. He trusted Alice with his life, but he’d never felt a heartbreaking fear like this from her before. “What’s going on?”

“Jasper,” Edward yelled as Esme and Bella—who had come to see what the commotion was about—ran off with Renesmee. Emmett and Carlisle were on a hunt and wouldn’t be back for a few hours. “I’ll explain later, we have to go.”

But when Jasper tried to approach Alice again—he’d leave as long as she was by his side—she screamed at him, backing away like a frightened animal.

“NO! Don’t come near me!”

“Jasper! Stop! Let’s go!”

“I’m not leaving until someone tells me what’s going on!” His heart broke as Alice looked at him with fear in her eyes. But as an empath, he knew she wasn’t afraid of him as much as she was afraid at what she’d seen.

“Jazz, please, please, please don’t come near me,” Alice begged as he slowly approached anyways. And the closer he got to Alice the farther Edward inched toward the back doors, his terror permeating the room.

“Alice, please…”

“You have to go before it’s too late.”

“Jasper, stand back!”

“I’m not leaving you,” Jasper spoke directly to Alice, barely an arms-length away now. “Whatever is going on, I’m not leaving you here.” Whether the Volturi were coming for her, or whether some freak natural disaster was set to swallow their neighborhood whole, he didn’t care. He’d rather die than leave Alice to face whatever it was that she and Edward were so terrified of currently.

“I can’t let you,” she shook her head firmly, her expression full of devastation as she backed up against the far wall. “Jasper, please, I don’t want you to get sick.”

“Sick?”

And when thick, silver liquid began to stream down Alice’s face, venom pooling in her eyes, Jasper’s entire world shifted.

By the time Jasper reached forward, wiping the venom from her face and confirming that yes, this was real, and no, this was not good, Edward had vanished, running after their family into the dead of night.

“No,” Alice sobbed, shaking her head as Jasper gathered her up in his arms, “No, not you, too. I don’t want you to die, too.”

“Please hunt today,” Alice spoke after Jasper recapped the now-empty canister. “Please. When you go to get the next shipment. I can’t stand to see you like this.” Reaching out she rested her hand against his cheek, her thumb brushing the bruise-like shadows beneath his eyes as she gazed at him with love and concern.

Jasper shook his head. “Carlisle is sending some more animal blood with the next one, that way I don’t have to leave the house.”

“That’s not going to be enough to sustain you,” Alice frowned, pulling her hand back into her lap. Jasper didn’t miss the way she was lightly massaging her palm. Even the slight affections she showed him pained her now.

“I’ll make it work.”

“How are you supposed to take care of me if you can’t take care of yourself?” The words were gentle, but they struck Jasper like a physical blow.

“I’ll take care of you no matter what.”

Alice sighed, and then there was a pause. “I can’t see them.”

He stared at her blankly, waiting for her too elaborate. “Who?”

“Anyone. I can’t see Carlisle or Esme. Or Bella or,” her voice cracked, “or anyone. I’m even struggling to see you now.”

Jasper nodded calmly, not wanting any of his reactions to worry her further. He would have a moment to himself soon enough. “And your dreams?”

“They’re getting a little less fuzzy. But Jazz,” and her fear in that moment was very real, “if I can’t pull visions up the way I used to, I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

And truthfully, he didn’t know what they were going to do either.

They didn’t know what was eating away at Alice or what sickness she was afflicted with. They don’t know what caused it or how it had struck her. The only thing they knew—and only because of Alice’s first few visions—was that there was a chance it was contagious, and it would very likely kill her.

He’d kissed her through her tears after the third day, when she finally confessed that she very likely had sentenced him to death just with her proximity alone.

But Jasper would walk through the fires of hell day in and day out if it meant he wouldn’t be leaving Alice to face this sickness alone. Whether he lived or died he didn’t care. And if Alice did die… well… he could only hope it was as contagious as they feared…

Leaning forward he pressed a kiss to the side of her head. Alice tilted her head up, lifting a hand to hold his face still so she could plant her own kiss firmly on his lips.

“I love you,” he spoke softly against her lips before kissing her again, “and even if the visions go, you’ll still have me.”

“I’m scared,” she whispered, and when Jasper focused back on her expression, he realized her eyes were closed tight again. Setting the empty canister on the bed-side table, Jasper was careful as he climbed into the bed to lie alongside her. He didn’t want to unplug a single wire.

The electrocardiogram wasn’t registering anything—as it shouldn’t; Alice’s heart had been still for a century now—but Carlisle wanted her hooked up to the device regardless.

“Just in case,” the other man had said over the phone as Jasper had sorted through that delivery. “I know you don’t want to hear this, but if she continues to display more symptoms like this, she may be human before the new year.”

Jasper pushed the memory from his mind as he pulled Alice close, allowing her to snuggle closely, still wrapped tightly in layers of blankets. Even with the thermostat on 80, Alice shivered day in and out.

The wetness that dampened the collar of his shirt made his heart ache.

They remained like that, lying next to one another as Alice’s oxygen concentrator hummed. Jasper hated how he just knew she was warmer. Not as warm as humans were, but even through the layers separating them he could feel the warmth of her body.

She wasn’t indestructible anymore, and Jasper didn’t know how to handle that. Even with her body pressed tight against his, he worried. What if one day he kissed her and hurt her? Or if he squeezed her hand to comfort her and broke her fingers?

He could finally feel some measure of empathy for Edward while he’d been dating Bella all those years ago. The fear of hurting her was prominent in his every move.

Her cardiovascular system was still in limbo, and even as her body warmed and her cheeks slowly filled with color after every meal, her heart was still not beating. Against all odds though, her lungs were operating normally. No longer could Alice simply sit, not thinking about how her lungs didn’t require oxygen unless she needed to speak.

The day that symptom presented itself, she’d gasped for hours, uncomfortable and panicking. Jasper had been on the phone with Carlisle, desperate for guidance, and in hours they’d delivered the necessary equipment.

Hooking up the machine and wrapping the oxygen tube around his wife’s delicate face had made Jasper feel insane. As if this wasn’t real, and he was hallucinating this.

It had felt like the beginning of the end.

Eventually, he pressed a kiss to her head and left the room with the promise to return quickly.

He answered his buzzing phone as he flitted down the stairs.

“I’m on my way.” He spoke without looking to see who it was.

“Carlisle wants you to bring the empty oxygen canisters.”

It was Edward. Jasper shook his head at the request. “I have no way of cleaning them. And even if I do sanitize them I don’t want to risk it.”

Whatever it was that was warming Alice and that he potentially carried, Jasper didn’t want it transferring to any of his family.

“Just bring them. We can leave them to sit for a couple of weeks and then one of us will bring them back.” Edward commented.

Jasper sighed, already half-way out the front door, before turning back to the kitchen. “I don’t have time for this,” he growled impatiently into the phone. The tanks were unnecessary now that Alice was on a concentrator. Jasper thought it was a stupid risk but he’d been low on patience for days now and wasn’t about to argue now.

Grabbing a single empty tank he turned back and was out the door in an instant.

“Where are you?” Jasper spoke into the receiver.

“At the end of the driveway.”

Jasper paused at that, his feet grinding to a halt in the grass. He was suddenly reminded of the last time he’d met up one of them at the end of the driveway, two and a half weeks prior. “You better be alone.” It was dangerous enough for him to interact with any of his family members even at a distance, but whenever they showed up in groups it ignited his anger.

As far as Carlisle was aware, everyone else was either asymptomatic or simply wasn’t sick like Alice. But Jasper wasn’t about to be the one that passed… this on to their family.

“I am,” Edward snapped back, as if Jasper’s words, and not just his ability, could inspire a quick jump to irritation. “I couldn’t exactly carry everything in this shipment. Forgive me for bringing a car.”

Jasper hung up the phone then and made off quickly toward the end of their long driveway. It was a quick run, but Jasper was looking forward to getting this exchange over with. Edward was already wasting precious seconds by requesting an old oxygen tank. He wasn’t about to waste anymore time arguing with the younger vampire.

He saw the car before he saw Edward. It was a deep green color with a matte finish. Jasper could tell just by looking at it that this must’ve been the pet project Rosalie had taken up after they’d left for their Baltimore house back further east.

“She needs anything to focus on that’s not this,” Emmett’s words, like always, lacked proper tact, but while Jasper had glared at his brother over the FaceTime call, Alice had nodded understandably.

A car like this would surely stick out like a sore thumb in Martinsburg.

When the car door opened, Edward’s voice rang out. “She’s already moved on to another one. This one is going in storage after this drop off.”

Jasper didn’t nod, but he did watch carefully as his brother began to quietly empty the contents of the trunk of the car onto the pavement. A few large crates, and some smaller paper bags. When Jasper inhaled deeply, he furrowed his brow in confusion.

“Food?”

Edward closed the trunk and turned back toward Jasper, his expression grim. “Carlisle thinks it might help.”

“Help how?” It didn’t even matter that Jasper didn’t know the first damn thing about making and preparing human food. And it was irrelevant that oftentimes just the smell of human food left Jasper in a foul mood. What mattered was that having to feed his wife human food felt like another insane task he’d been given, and he didn’t know how the fuck he was supposed to just nod and go along with it all.

“I’m sure you can guess.” Even though they were standing quite far apart—at least ten meters—Jasper could clearly see the frustrated furrow of Edward’s brow. Jasper knew he hadn’t been the most pleasant person to interact with over the past month—it was one of the reasons Rosalie elected to tinker in her garage instead of sit on calls or volunteer for supply drop-offs, and it was why Esme had done one, and only one.

But Jasper wasn’t looking to snap at anyone today. He simply wanted to get what he needed (although today’s delivery would take a couple of trips) and go back home to his ailing wife.

“Are her visions still wavering?”

Jasper forced himself to swallow the lump in his throat. Looking away from Edward, he instead stared at the grocery bags piled beside the crates. “They’re nearly gone. She can only see me while awake, and others when she sleeps.”

Edward nodded, and Jasper hated how he knew the boy was digging through his thoughts, collecting images of Alice’s deteriorating, weakening body, and hearing the very real doubts Jasper had currently. Jasper gestured to the tank he was holding. “What do you want me to do with this? I’m not giving it to you.”

“Just toss it over there,” he gestured vaguely to a patch of bushes beside the driveway. “I or Emmett or whoever will pick it up in a couple of weeks.”

Jasper tossed the heavy item to the side without a second glance, his eyes still trained on the supplies. “Is there…?”

“Human and animal blood, yes.” Edward tapped the crate in the front with a foot.

Jasper nodded, swallowing the venom that pooled in his mouth, knowing that he’d be able to drink soon. When surprise and curiosity pulsated off of the boy, Jasper finally met his eyes. “What?”

“You seem fine.” Edward observed with half of a shrug. “I mean, physically. There’s a chance this actually isn’t contagious—”

“Stop,” Now. Jasper would turn and go straight back to the house without another word if Edward kept it up. With his fury just hiding beneath the surface, Jasper thought pointedly. Alice knew her visions would fail. Alice knew you guys would want to come help. But as long as we have those few, early visions of hers we need to be careful. I can handle things over here. When Carlisle finishes analyzing her venom and finds actual fucking answers, let me know. Until they, stay put. I’m fine, and I’m handling things. “Don’t you dare put yourselves in danger. Not until we figure this out.”

The two stared at each other for a few long seconds before Jasper felt himself start to get antsy. He’d only been away from the house for barely more than five minutes, but the more time passed the more afraid he was that Alice would fall asleep and wake again, scared and disoriented, with him nowhere in sight.

“I’ll go,” Edward finally nodded toward the house as he walked back toward the driver’s side and opened the door. “Please text Carlisle her temperature when you get back. And yesterday’s summary, too. Please, Jasper. We’re doing our best.”

And with that, he climbed into the car, started the quiet engine, and pulled off. Jasper waited until the car pulled around a bend in the distance, a thick patch of trees obscuring the vehicle from sight before he ran forward and grabbed the first crate, and in seconds he was rushing back toward the house.

He was still several hundred meters from the house when the sound of hacking reached his ears. Jasper nearly dropped the crate to the ground as he rushed through the front door and flickered up the stairs and into Alice’s bedroom, only to find her crumbled in a heap on the floor, wheezing and coughing.

“Hey, hey,” he swept her up into his arms quickly, wondering why on Earth she’d decided to pluck all the electrodes off and find herself a spot on the floor, far from her oxygen. But before he could ask what she was doing, he felt the dampness that covered her thin flannel pajamas and his heart broke.

Her gasping came from her attempts at crying without her oxygen tube. Jasper maneuvered her back onto the bed—being aware to avoid the wet spot in the center of the bedding—and placed the tube around her head, shushing her.

Two hours, one bath, and a change of bedding later, Alice was fast asleep in the bed, her hand limply clinging to Jasper’s as he typed a long text with one hand.

Things are worse, he began the text. I don’t know what to do.

It started with a vision.

On day thirty-two, Alice ate her first human meal she could ever recall. It wasn’t much; a thin soup that he’d unpacked and warmed from the last shipment. She sipped it slowly, getting some of it down her front. It was hard, she admitted quietly to Jasper, to use a spoon when all she had ever known was biting down on flesh and sucking down blood with force.

She’d managed to eat a single cracker before breaking down in tears, broken up over the very fact that it didn’t taste entirely repulsive to her anymore.

On day thirty-four, Jasper picked up another shipment. Emmett was in a somber mood as he dropped the small delivery off. Groceries for Alice, mainly.

“Tell me you have any news at all.”

Jasper raised an eyebrow at that, watching from a distance as his adopted brother shuffled and frowned. Sadness never suited Emmett, who was one of the brightest personalities Jasper had ever known; the guy had radiated positivity ever since the former-solder had known him.

“I don’t.”

Emmett shrugged at that, and Jasper hated how the taller man’s mood dampened further at those words. “Well, they always say no news is good news.”

Jasper met his sad golden gaze with a severe one of his own. “If I had good news we wouldn’t be doing this, Emmett.”

On day thirty-five, while Jasper read aloud to her, Alice accidentally scratched herself. Much like her hair, her nails were also beginning to grow at a snail’s pace. Along with that, they were more brittle than she was used to. While reaching over and adjusting the zipper to Jasper’s jacket she’d broken a nail, chipping the edge slightly. Then, she’d reached up to tuck a strand of hair behind her head, scratching the now-delicate skin on her face.

It didn’t bleed, but Jasper could still smell the blood, resting idly beneath the surface.

On day thirty-seven they finally sat down and acknowledged what was happening. Jasper refused to say the word ‘human’ but Alice spoke it with a sad resignation, knowing that her body was somehow de-petrifying. “I don’t know if I’ll survive,” she whispered to him as he held her closely, tracing soothing shapes against her back. “In some visions it all ends here, in this bed. In others I can see myself all warm and pink, but the visions don’t go much farther than that, no matter what I do.

“I’m almost positive that I die, Jazz.” She whispered into the silent room. It remained silent for a while after that conversation, until Alice quietly informed Jasper that she needed to use the restroom, and he carried her out of the room, his mind still miles away.

On day forty-one, Alice’s temperature spiked. She slept seventeen hours that day, shivering for most of it, and crying out occasionally, with visions now only plaguing her in her sleep. Jasper held the thermometer against her head and when it registered 96.1 he threw the device, smashing it to pieces against the far wall of the bedroom. Alice didn’t budge.

On day forty-two, Alice woke up, her memory foggy. “Mom?” She called out, sitting up disoriented before Jasper could plant himself in her line of sight. When she flinched at the sight of him, gasping loudly, her shock smacked Jasper across the face. It took several long seconds for her to calm herself, recognition registering to Jasper before it showed on her face. “I’m sorry,” she gasped, hand against her chest as she struggled to regulate her breathing. “I’m sorry Jasper.”

On day forty-three Alice kissed him, harder than she’d kissed him in over a month. It was when her hands found the first button on his shirt that he stopped her, her name only a warning on his lips.

“Please,” she whispered as she kissed her way down his neck, her hands finding a different button as she pressed herself against him, “Jasper, please. I don’t know when we’ll ever be able to again.”

On day forty-three Alice and Jasper spent the entire day in bed. They’d pause in their lovemaking periodically for Alice to use the restroom, or eat a meal, or take a nap, and then resume in between. Jasper was used to handling her with care, but now it truly felt like his wife was made of glass. He was as careful as he dared, knowing that the second he hurt her in his passion would be the end of their physical relationship as far as either of them knew it.

It was early in the morning when Alice kissed him firmly and pulled away with a wince. “I think I need to stop,” and something akin to perspiration was beginning to gather on her forehead, her growing hair sticking to it firmly, “I’m… aching.”

And then, that was that.

On day forty-five she woke up with wide-eyes and was immediately unresponsive. Jasper spent several horrifically long minutes talking to her, checking her vitals, gently massaging and tapping her shoulders and limbs, trying to get her to come back to him, to speak, to do anything other than lie there, stare, and breathe.

He was seconds away from giving up and sending another hysterical phone call Carlisle’s way when she blinked twice and lifted her hand up, blindly reaching toward him.

“Alice, Alice, oh thank God,” Jasper pressed her warm hand against his cheek, inhaling slowly in order to collect himself and prevent his ability from affecting her. “It’s okay, it’s…”

But when Alice forced her eyes to look at him—warm, dark brown eyes—Jasper froze as he felt her wipe wetness from his cheeks.

“I’m so, so sorry,” she whispered as he jerked back, his hands wiping the venom from his face with a panic.

For two days, Jasper’s gift was hard to control. Meaning that now, to his complete and utter dismay, Alice was just as miserable as he was.

It wasn’t that he cared about being a vampire. Sure, the power it supplied him with to protect Alice and his family was something he wouldn’t trade for anything, and with Alice slowly reverting back into a human he felt comforted that at the very least he could keep her safe.

But how was he supposed to protect her from all the dangers that were out there when he, too, would be human in time?

Forty-seven days after their family ran and they barricaded themselves in the house, confined to their West Virginia property, Alice broke.

“I wanted you to run,” she sobbed with all her might, yanking wires and throwing anything she could get her hands on across the room. “I wanted you to go with them. I didn’t want you to die, too. It’s my fault this is happening, it’s all my fault.”

She wouldn’t let Jasper anywhere near her that day. Even when she slept, her emotions were a turbulent storm, making it difficult for Jasper to even sit at her bedside while she tossed and turned and shivered.

On day forty-eight Alice spent the day apologizing profusely. For everything and anything under the sun. Jasper simply shook his head, kissed away her tears, and held her close. All while assuring her that she had nothing to apologize for.

It wasn’t her fault they were dying, after all.

On day fifty-eight, Jasper had a sobering phone call with Carlisle and Edward.

“I reached out to Aro,” and Carlisle didn’t even pause in his sentence when Jasper hissed ferociously, “to see if he could provide any help, or any answers.”

“If anyone wants Alice alive as much as we do, it’s Aro, Jasper. Stop,” Edward spoke up loudly. And although the boy couldn’t hear Jasper’s thoughts he had decades of knowledge of his inner-thought process to know precisely where this conversation was heading. “It wasn’t anything we wanted to do, with Alice as weak as she is—”

“She said so herself,” Carlisle chimed in, not giving Jasper time to verbalize a response, “she doesn’t think she’ll make it out of this. And with you sick, too, we aren’t left with many other options.”

“The Volturi have far more resources than we could ever dream of having,” Edward spoke. “If this is something that’s ever been documented before, they’ll be able to find it.”

“But as far as Aro is aware, he’s never heard of anything like this happening before. Especially something that can be contracted by other vampires, too. We’re all in the dark here.”

Jasper refused to update them on his own state that day. It was bad enough that Alice had gone behind his back—quite literally—and texted Carlisle that Jasper’s first symptoms had begun to materialize the other day, but he didn’t want anyone’s attention on him. Alice was the priority. Alice would always be the priority, and Jasper refused to give any information to his family on his own state entirely.

But still, he knew that Alice was very likely texting Esme right now while he listened to Edward and Carlisle prattle on about their research and findings, and about how ultimately, they’d come up with no solutions.

If Alice died, Jasper knew he wouldn’t have to wait for this sickness to kill him in order to join her.

And with this thought it was as if Edward was truly there, in person. “Jasper. Hang in there. We’re going to figure something out,” the boy insisted after a length of silence had fallen across the line. “Don’t do anything foolish.”

On day sixty, she fell asleep and didn’t wake up.

Jasper sat by her bedside and waited. After the first day, he called Carlisle, only for Esme to pick up the phone and ask him what was wrong. The sound of her voice, so caring and full of love, caused him to finally break down. He found himself crying venomous tears for nearly an hour as he listened to her soothing words.

“The best thing you can do is stay with her,” she said eventually. “Talk to her maybe. If its anything like our transformations, she can likely hear you. Tell her you love her, and stay close.”

So that’s what he did. For the entirety of that second day, when he wasn’t on the phone with a member of their family, he sat at her bedside and talked. About her. About their relationship. About how devastated he was that this illness had struck her. He reminisced out loud about their first meeting, his many regrets, and about how even though now human blood had been introduced back into his diet (his body had begun to reject animal blood days ago) it felt completely and utterly ridiculous that it was what had driven him to madness time and time again.

He talked about how much he loved her. About how she was everything to him. The reason for his attempts at interacting with the public, the reason he abstained from human blood in the first place, and the reason he consistently pushed through his thirst. She was the reason he’d stopped hating his appearance, scars still prominent on every inch of his skin. She was the reason he’d given peace a chance, and the reason he now had a family to call his own.

She’d given him everything beyond what he could have ever hoped for in this cursed afterlife of his, and he told her such as she lay there, the only movement coming from her chest slowly and steadily rising and falling. He talked more that day than he’d spoken in a long, long time.

“I suppose all that ‘playing human’ should’ve helped us out better for this, huh?” He spoke out loud into an empty room sometime after midnight on the second day. “You’d think it would’ve prepared us for something crazy like this, instead of sending us to the brink of hopelessness.”

On the third day, Alice’s temperature skyrocketed, registering a fever that Jasper could do nothing to break. He cycled through damp rags, always keeping a cool, fresh one pressed against the burning skin of her forehead, being careful not to bump any of the wires, old and new.

Carlisle had to talk him through the insertion of the IV the night before. Now that her body required human food and water, Carlisle explained that it was vital in keeping her healthy and alive. Still, it had felt alien to poke at her skinny, fragile arm, looking around for a vein that hadn’t pumped blood in over a hundred years.

Eventually he placed it somewhere Carlisle—who’d been video called to assist—approved, but even still, Alice did not budge.

On the third day, Jasper climbed into bed with her and carefully pulled her close to him. His own temperature wasn’t as cool as it once was, but he hoped that even in her unconscious state it would help to soothe her somewhat. He closed his eyes and focused hard on her slow, even breaths, combined with the low buzz of her oxygen concentrator.

And in minutes Jasper was asleep for the first time since the nineteenth century.

He woke up with a start, mind immediately aware of Alice’s prone form beside him as he moved himself up and out of the bed. His entire body was shaking as his mind caught up with what was happening. His entire head felt foggy but despite not having slept in well over a century he knew that something had woken him up.

It started with a vision.

On day sixty-three Alice’s heart began to beat.

It was a slow, steady rhythm. With one hand Jasper quickly dialed Carlisle and with another he reached out, resting his fingers against her wrist as he counted the beats. Feeling a pulse flutter beneath his fingers didn’t help to combat the dizziness Jasper was still fighting, but he knew that he had to pay close attention. Alice’s life—Alice with her beating heart and blood-filled cheeks and her fragile skin and bones—now hung in the balance.

“It’s beating,” he spoke in lieu of a greeting, “her heart. It just started back up. About,” he focused for a few seconds, “seventeen beats per minute. She still isn’t awake, but she… there’s a pulse.”

“Oh my—hold on; Grandpa!” A familiar voice yelled in the background of the call, and Jasper’s dizziness increased as he realized Renesmee had answered Carlisle’s phone. “Mom! Aunt Rosie! Where’s Grandpa! It’s an emergency! Uncle Jasper says—”

“What’s going on?” Rosalie was on the phone immediately, and Jasper had to close his eyes and rest his head against the side of the bed as he focused, forcing himself to concentrate on counting Alice’s heart beats. “Jasper?”

“Her heart is beating, Rose,” he spoke miserably. “Not fast. And she’s not awake.”

“Ness is getting Carlisle now,” Jasper could hear how it felt like suddenly Rosalie was moving around quickly. “What’s her respiratory rate?”

Jasper looked up then, eyeing the silent machines with confusion. Horror fell over him when he realized that not only were they silent, not even registering Alice’s slow pulse, but they were completely shut off. It wasn’t something he’d noticed before he fell asleep. He’d been too preoccupied with fussing over her unconsciousness and babbling on about nothing to notice.

There was no way he’d unplugged anything, on accident or even on purpose. In fact, the last time he’d recalled the bright numbers and words being lit on either of the machines was—

“I hate that beeping,” Alice had commented the day before she’d lost consciousness, “it’s so disturbing. Can’t we set it up to only alarm when things are working, instead of when they’re not?”

In an instant he’d rounded the bed and lifted the chords attached to the machines, finding them unplugged from the wall. In seconds they were plugged back in and Jasper was quickly examining Alice, ensuring that everything was hooked up properly.

At the sound of Rosalie still demanding things through the phone that he’d abandoned on the bed, Jasper reached out and pressed the speaker button. “She unplugged everything. I just—give me a minute.”

And the instant the machines began to register her vitals, the alarms began to blare.

“Her blood pressure isn’t going to register normally, but you have to pay attention to her heart and respiratory rates. If she’s human now you can’t let either of them drop down below what they are now. Do you hear me Jasper? Jasper!”

“I hear you,” he spoke miserably as he watched Alice’s chest rise and fall.

“The instant they begin to dip you say something. Now, whatever you do now you’re not going to get off this phone, you hear me?”

“Yeah,” he rasped, feeling the sting of tears begin to pull to the surface, “I won’t.”

Then, there was shuffling in the background and Carlisle was on the line. “I heard the news. Just stay on the line Jasper. Is your thirst manageable?”

“I’m not going to fucking hurt her,” he snapped, his nerves wound up so tightly that he couldn’t even hold the words back before they were being spat. “Forget me, Carlisle, how do I keep her alive?”

“Keep her heart beating, and if anything at all changes, you say something. Now, go over her vitals for me please.”

The next hour felt like the longest period of time Jasper could recall in his entire existence. He swore that the minutes ticked by like hours. He didn’t touch the phone once. It sat just where he left it on the edge of the bed, and sat at Alice’s side, listening and watching her with an unstoppable focus. Of course he registered the sound of his family talking, even if he wasn’t registering their words half of the time. Knowing that they were connected was enough to calm him to the point where he could apply his single-minded concentration fully to Alice.

He would do damn near everything he could to keep her alive, her visions be damned.

At some point he acknowledged that her IV bag had been empty for a few hours, which prompted a nearly-ten minute long argument in which Rosalie was demanding—and Carlisle was pleading—for him to leave Alice for a few seconds and go into the next room and retrieve a new one. Eventually he gave in, but only after Rosalie yelled, “Don’t be fucking stupid, get it so she doesn’t die and throw your tantrum later.”

(No matter how angry it made him, deep down he knew she was right.)

“Alice,” he whispered to her as he reached out and caressed her warm face, “how did this happen?” But the only signs of life from her were the slight rise-and-fall of her chest and the beeping of the electrocardiograph. And that was exactly what they were now: signs of life.

Jasper himself had been ignoring the uncomfortable feeling that was beginning to plague him whenever he went more than a few seconds without taking a breath. After his first symptoms had appeared he had started forcing himself to breathe normally, timing his breaths along with Alice’s without her noticing. Practicing for the day when his respiratory system would start acting like a human’s again.

He couldn’t even waste time thinking about what it meant to be human again. He couldn’t care about his warming body or the fact that he was weakening more and more every day. The only thing that mattered was that Alice made it out of this alive. Everything else was an afterthought. It was all for her.

Jasper didn’t realize his phone had died until Alice’s started ringing. He almost ignored it until he realized it was Carlisle’s number, and when he looked toward his own phone, and the blank, empty screen, he felt foolish as he reached forward and plucked Alice’s phone from her side.

He quickly muttered an apology and an explanation before placing the phone back down on the bed, speaker activated so he could go back to ignoring that device, too. A part of him knew that he should’ve grabbed one of the chargers that was just barely out of arm’s reach, but he didn’t dare move too far from Alice’s side.

He held her hand firmly in his, and waited.

“How is she?” Carlisle asked the question the second that the tempo of one of her monitors changed.

“Twenty beats per minute. Her breathing is…”

There was a beat of silence where Jasper stared from Alice’s prone body to the face of the screens on the machines hooked up to her. Something wasn’t right.

And then Alice’s respiratory rate took a nose-dive, alarms started blaring, and all hell broke loose.

There was a flurry of panic on the other side of the phone while Jasper stood fully, hovering helplessly over Alice’s body. This was it, he knew instantly even without ever seeing the vision himself. This was what Alice had foreseen. Her body, pink and fragile and human, slowly deteriorating in this very bed in this very room.

Alice had been wrong. She hadn’t cursed Jasper to his own fate by transferring whatever illness was de-petrifying their stone bodies. The curse itself lay in the fact that Jasper had been foreseen to watch the deterioration and death of the woman he loved more than anything else in the universe.

She had only ever apologized to him for getting him sick, as if that was something that was her fault. As if that were worse than this.

Rosalie’s voice broke through the yelling on the other side.

“Jasper! Listen to me! Keep her breathing.”

He’d watched and read every piece of instruction material Carlisle and Edward had sent his way, so he knew exactly what to do. But performing rescue breathing and watching it be done were two entirely different things. Having to force air into Alice’s lungs was the most agonizing thing he’d done in months.

Please don’t die, please don’t die, he thought the phrase over and over again as he focused on counting through each breath, being careful to only give her lungs the air they needed and not a bit more. It was after about a minute when he pulled back and actually looked at her, when he began to panic. The color that had been so steadily restored to her face was slowly fading away.

“She’s turning blue,” he shouted at the phone before gently tilting her head back again, plugging her nose, and giving a few more slow breaths, “Carlisle!”

There was chaos across the line and for a moment Jasper was afraid that the call had dropped as silence hung in the air. Then, what sounded like someone picking up a fallen phone. “We’re almost there, just hold on,” Esme’s voice spoke quickly.

That’s when the noises behind her began to make sense. The low pur of a car’s engine, the tell-tale sound of a vehicle speeding down the road. Jasper didn’t know how he’d missed the signs.

“No,” he pleaded desperately when he realized what that meant. “You’ll die.”

“No we won’t, sweetheart.” The smile in her voice nearly brought tears to his eyes. “Focus on Alice. It’ll all be okay.”

But for several long agonizing minutes he forced air into Alice’s weak lungs, and the alarms still blared. And when her already-weak pulse began to drop, he was beginning to think he’d failed. That he wouldn’t be able to do it. That Alice would be dead and it was all because he couldn’t protect her and—

The noise of glass shattering registered with his senses just as he was mid-breath, his mouth placed around Alice’s as he futilely attempted to bring her back. Hands were on his shoulders and when he was pulled away firmly he could only look up and shudder with relief over the sight of Carlisle and Rosalie working over Alice’s tiny, fragile body.

“I’ve got you man,” it was Emmett, “it’s going to be okay now.”

Jasper shook his head as he stumbled. But Emmett’s arms wrapped were around him from behind and he was pulling the blond backward far enough to give Carlisle and Rosalie space.

“You can’t,” Jasper protested weakly, feeling the tears that he’d been keeping at bay finally begin to spill over, “Alice didn’t want you to come.”

Emmett gave him a good shake, still not releasing him. “Well, too damn bad. Come on.”

Jasper didn’t have the strength to fight him as he was dragged from the room. He was sure that if he did, he wouldn’t be able to. Each day he’d grown weaker and weaker as more and more symptoms presented themselves. But when Emmett tried to force him down the stairs Jasper dug his feet into the carpet as hard as he could. (The fact that it didn’t force the wood to buckle beneath his feet was enough evidence of his own illness.)

“I can’t be far, please, Em.”

The sound of tires screeching to a stop outside of the house bought both of their attention toward the foyer, and when Esme burst through the front door, flickering up the stairs before stopping in front of the men, Jasper felt his knees begin to shake.

They’d surely all die now, too. Carlisle and Rosalie, who were hard at work trying to hook Alice up to whatever new device they’d jumped out of the car to sprint to the house. And Emmett and Esme, who were looking at him as if he were the one made of glass, and the one that was seconds away from shattering.

He wasn’t the one who needed putting back together.

“You’ll die,” he spoke, his voice rough with emotion as Esme reached up and placed her hands on his face, her own expression absolutely broken at the sight of him. “You’re all going to get sick now, too.”

When Esme smiled up at him, he felt his knees buckle. Thankfully, Emmett’s arms still trapping him like a cage kept him standing. “Alice made her choice in trying to keep us safe. Now, we’re making our choice. We aren’t going to leave you two to suffer alone anymore.”

“Carlisle and Rose are going to do whatever they can, man.” Emmett tightened his grip, perhaps sensing that he was the only thing keeping Jasper from hitting the floor.

A loud noise caused their heads to turn back toward Alice’s room and suddenly, there was calm. The only noises now were from the machines that were beeping calmly. And just under all of it, they could all hear the noise of a heartbeat, steady and strong.

“It’s going to be okay,” Esme whispered again when Jasper’s tears started anew. Slowly, Emmett released his grip, lowering Jasper to the ground where Esme wrapped her arms around him. “She’ll be alright. We’ve got you now. It’s alright.”

And the sound of that steady heartbeat was all Jasper could focus on as he buried his face against Esme’s shoulder and cried.

It started with a vision. And now they were past it, and Alice was still alive.

Eventually they helped him walk back into the bedroom, and when he climbed into bed beside Alice—his warm, pink, human wife—they simply let him.

He pressed a kiss to her forehead before grabbing her hand in his and closing his eyes. There would be time to discuss things with his family later, and to acknowledge the weight of what had happened tonight and what had been done. But for now, he laid beside Alice, and Jasper slept.

#jaliceweek20 #Alice cullen #jasper hale #twilight fanfiction #jalice fanfiction #the twilight saga #this is my FAVORITE from this week even if it is what? almost two weeks later??#who cares my parents came to town and now the US it attempting to remove a fascist from office #my priorities have been SCATTERED lads

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