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makeste · 3 years

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BnHA Chapter 305: Worst Intervention Ever

Previously on BnHA: Shinomori, whose name took me an entire week to memorize, was all, “nice to meet you Deku, I’m ten feet tall, do you want to know how I died?” and without waiting for an answer explained that he kicked it from old age at forty thanks to good ol’ OFA. Deku was all “wait a minute, then how come All Might, who’s fifty-five and is definitely dyeing his gray hair, is still alive?” First and Shino were all, “we really have no fucking clue but we think it’s cuz he’s quirkless, JUST LIKE YOU!” So basically, since quirkless people don’t exactly grow on trees these days, Deku is probably going to be the last user of OFA. The chapter ended with Nana being all, “psst, Deku, about my grandson. Uh, can you kill him?” which is sure to lead to a very interesting conversation this week.

Today on BnHA: Nana And The Gang are all “so, Deku, how can we put this delicately. The thing is, we’re pretty sure that AFO really fucked my grandson up, so on the off chance you can’t save him, how would you feel about, you know... [throat slitting gesture].” Deku is all “idk you guys, I kinda feel like he’s really just a traumatized child at heart and he’s in a lot of pain and stuff and so I should try to help him.” The Vestiges are all “BUT WHAT IF YOU CAN’T” and Deku is all “BUT I WANT TO TRY, DAMMIT” and the Vestiges are all “well when you put it that way, we, uh, were just testing you, so congrats, you passed!” The chapter ends with First being all, “ANYWAY SO WHY DON’T YOU TWO SHY BOYS STANDING OVER THERE IN THE SHADOWS COME SAY HELLO” before we CUT AWAY FOR ANOTHER WEEK, goddammit.

seriously, Nana

just... have you met Deku?? look, if you really want Tomura dead, just sic him on the U.A. first years and tell Shouto and Honenuki that it’s a training exercise

oh my god lmao

we’re too far away to see Nana’s face here so I will just assume that she turned and is staring DIRECTLY INTO THE CAMERA for this one line lmao. “I just wanted to clarify in case anyone felt inclined to take my dialogue out of context and spend an entire week complaining about it”

oh my god?! are you all purposely trying to make me sad??

someone stop me before I launch into an impromptu rant about all my Tomura feels. WHY IS NOBODY STOPPING ME. oh my god but yes, exactly. he’s just in pain all the time. this is exactly why I think Tomura has such high redemption potential even though so far he seems to lack so many of the redemption arc essentials such as feeling remorse, wanting to change, and taking responsibility for his actions. the reason why I’m willing to overlook all that in his case is because Tomura has essentially had zero agency his entire life. AFO molded him into a killer by making sure he was in constant mental agony, and making it so that the only thing that even slightly relieved that agony was killing peeps. like, please don’t think I’m making excuses for him or anything, but if you take a child and manipulate their existence to make it virtually impossible for that child to grow up as anything other than a killer, and basically never give him the chance to be anything else, then no shit he’s gonna be a killer?? he’s basically never had the choice not to be. it’s never been an option for him. anyways I feel like I am EXPLAINING MYSELF SO BADLY but nonetheless I am prepared to die on this hill

anyway so now Nana is all “that’s a rhetorical question btw because Our Hearts And Minds Are One so we can feel everything you feel bro.” so yeah, that’s interesting

now Banjou is getting started on the “let’s try and talk Deku out of wanting to save Tomura because it’s insane” part of their OFA Mystical Space Void Reunion agenda

look, Banjou, I feel you, I really do. you guys don’t think it’s realistic that Deku can defeat Tomura without killing him. so if it’s a choice between killing Tomura vs letting Deku and everyone else in the entire world die, then duh, you think Deku should kill him. I get it! and if this were a real life mass murderer I’d totally agree with you. but the problem is that this isn’t real life, this is a sympathetic shounen villain with a tragic past who might as well have FUTURE REDEMPTION ARC RECEIPIENT stamped on his forehead at this point

so First is all “look, there’s absolutely no doubt my brother has fucked this kid up good and proper by now”, which, again, fair

though, that’s kind of exactly my point though. everything that Tomura is, everything he’s done, he’s done because of AFO. AFO has so effectively shaped his personality and his worldview by this point that it’s all but impossible to penetrate that. he’s AFO’s puppet. but the problem is that rather than treating him like a victim, you all are treating him like a casualty. like he’s already a lost cause. but good luck trying to convince Deku of that

WHOA WHAT, RANDOM SUPER-IMPORTANT AND BIZARRELY UNRELATED EXPOSITION DROPPED IN JUST LIKE THAT??

way to still not reveal Sixth’s name, btw. THE PEOPLE WANT TO KNOW, DAMMIT. but also so this confirms something we basically already knew already, which is that not even AFO can steal OFA. it literally can’t be taken away by anyone unless the owner wills it. SO SUCK ON THAT AFO YOU EGG

(ETA: so I have no idea why this was omitted from this translation, but apparently the Sixth’s name was revealed as “En”, which is obviously not his full name but at least it’s something. also he most likely has a fire or smoke-related quirk based on the kanji used, 煙.)

so Banjou is saying that Deku’s “lack of an iron will” could be a disadvantage against AFO. hahaha what?? Midoriya “I’ll break all of my bones without blinking an eye just to protect someone” Izuku lacks an iron will? do tell

he says this is going to be a test of Deku’s determination. well yeah, no shit. but just not in the way you guys think

OH HELLO AGAIN

darker hair again here! but I don’t trust the contrast in these scans at all after last week. his coveralls are way darker than they looked before too, and you can clearly see he’s standing in the shadows now

(ETA: yep, once again the raw shows that his hair is considerably lighter than what’s shown in these scans here. although there’s no mistaking now that his hair is consistently being colored in this slightly darker shade, and it’s not just the lighting.)

anyways lol First was saying something about how AFO can’t steal OFA, and they’ve spent all this time cultivating it as the ultimate weapon against AFO, and blah blah blah. go on then, keep lecturing

NANA GODDAMMIT NONE OF THIS IS YOUR FAULT

girl what?? you did everything in your power to protect your family, and AFO, fucked up man that he is, targeted them anyway. there is one person and one person only to blame for what’s happened to Tomura, and that potato-faced asshole needs a good kick in the balls

NANA GODDAMMIT DON’T MAKE ME COME OVER THERE

SO HELP ME GOD!! I WILL GIVE YOU THE BIGGEST HUG YOU’VE EVER HAD!! THAT IS A THREAT

so now Nana is all “I’m just going to call my grandson a Thing to ensure that fandom has only the freshest, grass-fed no-hormones-added discourse this week”

I don’t even need to drop into the tags to know exactly which specific people are going to respond to this, and what kind of posts they are going to write lmao. everyone’s all caught up in the “that thing”, and meanwhile I’m over here completely hung up on this “nay” that’s appeared out of NOWHERE you guys. look at that. she really said “NAY”

Nana, my love, my dearest, I feel you girl I really do. but he’s not an unforgivable manifestation of pure evil, Deku is exactly right actually, he’s a boy in pain. you guys need to stop questioning Deku’s shounen protagonist instincts here and just let him work his sparkly magic. “let’s try and convince Midoriya Fucking Izuku that he can’t save someone” is a plan that is NEVER going to turn out well you guys

“DEKU GODDAMMIT WHAT IF WE CAN’T SAVE HIM” lmao it’s like an intervention

“DAMMIT DEKU JUST ADMIT YOU HAVE A SAVING PEOPLE PROBLEM!”

RED ALERT IT’S ANOTHER CLOSE-UP OF THE BACK OF MISTER TWO BON CLAY’S HEAD OMG

(ETA: I was too distracted with freaking out about Two and Three to really appreciate how ridiculously handsome First looks in this panel. but on my second readthrough it stood out so much that I had to go back and add an extra bullet point just to talk about how hot he is. look at him. wtf.)

THAT IS DEFINITELY AN UNDERCUT. THE PLOT THICKENSSSS. also those are fucking exhaust vents on Mister Three’s neck. MISTER THREE COULD YOU POSSIBLY BE RELATED TO THE IIDAS, PLEASE TELL ME YOUR SECRETS I’M DYING OVER HERE

so now Deku is launching into what will undoubtedly be a “saving people problems require SAVING PEOPLE SOLUTIONS” heroic counter-speech!

I mean, they can already feel the “lol nah I’m gonna try and save him” feelings running through him lol. ~OuR hEaRtS aNd MiNdS aRe CoNnEcTeD~ and all that. this is just a formality, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love a good shounen protag speech

oh wait hold up, do you mean to tell me that the whole “hearts and minds are connected” thing I was just mocking just a paragraph ago actually allowed Deku to feel what Tomura was feeling?? like literally feel it??

YET AGAIN these Tomura feels are pounding on my front door you guys?? they just will not quit?? people my house is already full of feels, does it look like I need you to sell me any more of them?? -- what do you mean, they’re free??

AW YISS THAT’S IT DEKU. THAT’S SOME GOOD SPEECH RIGHT THERE

I appreciate the contrast here between the Douchebag Triumvirate of Overhaul, Muscular, and Stain versus the Misguided Twosome of Gentle and La Brava. never let it be said that Deku doesn’t know the difference between a redeemable villain and an unredeemable one

OH NO -- OH MY GOD

someone please help me I need directions to the OFA Spooky Galactic Nebula Realm in this fictional Japanese manga land. it’s not on google maps. I need to give these two babies a big hug and wrap them up in a blanket and treat them to some McDonalds Happy Meals please help

other things: (1) ENDEAVOR CHILLING OUT IN DEKU’S “PEOPLE I HOLD DEAR” PANEL LMAO NEON DISCOURSE EXTRAVAGANZA, (2) “ONE FOR ALL IS A POWER TO SAVE, NOT TO KILL” I’M ABOUT TO CRY DEKU I LOVE YOU SO MUCH HOW IS IT EVEN POSSIBLE TO FEEL ALL THIS LOVE, (3) [SLAMS HANDS ON TABLE] THERE’S YOUR MOTHERFUCKING IRON WILL!!!!!!!! -- I’m sorry, please don’t call security, I’ll be good

I just randomly remembered that Deku is still saying all of this in his muffled “FMMPHHMMPHMM” voice and I’m somehow cracking up lol. so actually it’s a very good thing Their Hearts And Minds Are Connected, otherwise they’d no doubt be all, “...what?”

(ETA: so I completely missed this on account of it literally not being visible in the scan at all, but in the raw you can clearly see Baby Kacchan and Baby Shouto fanboying over All Might in two of these panels, and excuse me, ma’am??

thank you very much Deku for including them in your montage, particularly since you’ve never seen Baby Shouto before lol. amazingly accurate image you managed to conjure up, all things considered.)

SDKFJLSKHG -- AS IF ON CUE???

HE’S SO ADORABLE HELP?? Trippy Space All Might looks like he’s about to cry, and First is all “don’t crack a smile... you have to be Firm and Serious here... dammit, don’t smile” omg

anyways! YOU GO DEKU. “MY QUIRK MY RULES, BITCHES” damn, son

KLJLKKHLG TRIPPY SPACE ALL MIGHT LITERALLY ACTUALLY IS CRYING ALL MIGHT HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME

“I JUST... [CLENCHES FIST] REALLY LOVE SAVING PEOPLE” FUCKING HELL LMAO THIS IS THE WORST INTERVENTION OF ALL TIME

Deku is literally all “sure, maybe I’ll have to kill him, but have you guys also considered, MAYBE NOT??” it’s no use Nana he’s too powerful

LMAO FIRST

“like I’ve been saying this whole time, you should definitely try saving Shigaraki Tomura.” “but, uh... First, didn’t you just -- ” “shut up”

(ETA: clearly it’s not just his brother who inherited those smooth-talking genes.)

so now Deku has turned back into a sixteen year old and his clothes have gone missing again. just OFA things

dskljdlsklgk

yes... sure... “testing” you...

HEY

FIRST OF ALL, DAMN YOU HORIKOSHI YOU MADE NANA CRY. even if I’m pretty sure they’re actually tears of happiness/relief. and SECOND OF ALL, “TELL MY BOYFRIEND I SAID HI” DJSKDLKJJL ANYWAY MAYBE GRAN, NANA, AND MR. SHIMURA WERE IN A THROUPLE

[SCREAMS]

WHY WOULD YOU END IT THERE?? WHY WOULD YOU END IT THERE!!!!!

(ETA: and two-to-one odds that we cut away to some other scene once they finally start to turn around next week. I’M CALLING IT NOW. giving myself a week to brace myself for the rage.)

fucking hell. well if anyone needs me I will be adding Horikoshi fucking Kouhei to the list of irredeemable villains, peace

#bnha 305 #midoriya izuku #shigaraki tomura #shimura tenko #shimura nana #ofa the first #banjou daigorou #bnha #boku no hero academia #bnha spoilers #mha spoilers #bnha manga spoilers #makeste reads bnha #'deku. sweetheart. your other vestiges and I just want what's best for you'#'have you tried... *not* saving people?'#only to backpedal SPECTACULARLY when he was all 'WHAT DO YOU MEAN NOT SAVING THEM'#yeah okay guys #you're not fooling anyone #but it's okay I still love you

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blackxkatt · 3 years

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I need this out and I don’t know where else to put it because if I put it anywhere where people might see, I’m giving more ammunition to the idea that I’m just some monster or something, and I'm tired of having to hedge every bit of opening up about this with, "I know I fucked up, too". It's time for me to be able to tell my story without diminishing my own experiences.

I used to vent to the void on tumblr a lot so I figure this is a good place to do so. Writing out stuff like this is a good therapy technique, and I don’t hurt anyone this way. Okay here goes

My relationship with Becky was awful. In hindsight, I should have ended it so much sooner than I did, but I kept trying to force it because I wanted it to work. We were awful for each other. We made each other worse people. It needed to end.

I did everything I could thing of to make the break up smooth for her. I avoided Easter so that I wasn’t marring a holiday. I asked Tanner to cancel D&D for the day (little did I know, I was canceling that game forever) so that she’d have a week until we had to exist in the same space again, even virtually. I drove to her house, so she wouldn't have to deal with a drive before or after. I knew she had therapy the next day, so that she’d have time to process and professional help soon. I didn’t bring up anything either of us did and didn’t bring up any blame. I said we were just incompatible, because we were. I told her I understood if she didn’t want to be friends -- she said she did. I said if that changes, just let me know. I held her while she cried, walked her dog with her, and went home.

Over the next week, she began to escalate attacks towards me with no warning. On the morning of our D&D game, 2 hours before we had to coexist in front of our friends, she sent me a list of grievances during our relationship and demanded an apology for them, to help her healing. I wanted to be done with this, I had thought that the break up meant we could finally be done with it. I apologized regardless, because I knew I wasn’t perfect and had admitted when I’d fucked up before in the relationship, but not for all of it because some of it plainly wasn’t true. I asked if I could respond and ask for an apology for my own healing. She said no, she didn’t care, and that she wouldn’t let me make it all about myself.

She demanded Tanner message her practically every second of every day, elsewise she’d melt down that he was spending time with me instead of her, when we live together. She literally got pissed off that I visited his Animal Crossing island before her. Tanner couldn’t even mention me neutrally without her going on a tirade about how awful I am and how he shouldn’t defend me, let alone mention that I was hurt, too.

Eventually, she blocked me. I had spent the entire time keeping the door open and trying to maintain a friendship, both because I didn’t want to lose that, and for Tanner’s sake, and meanwhile she was nuking the bridge. I couldn’t handle it anymore. I couldn’t see myself being metamours with someone who so clearly and actively hated me.

Tanner, on advice from a counselor, sat us both down to talk about our abusive tendencies and how this was affecting him. The first thing she did was give me the most disgusted look when she walked in. She nodded vigorously during the entire bit where Tanner raised his issues with my behavior.

Almost all of what Tanner talked to me about were things we’d worked on in the past, that I’d been fine on, that I’d backslid on since dating Becky. Others we’d discussed before and he’d been fine with, but had changed since. The rest, he later apologized for, because he realized he was being abusive in those expectations and hadn’t been concerned with fairness at the time. Almost all of what he brought up wasn't new, because Tanner and I have checked in with each other and worked on our relationship for almost 7 years.

Meanwhile, Becky continued to be abusive to him, in the same ways she had been to me, amped up to 1000. And I had to sit and let it happen. I left my own house for hours at a time for them to have dates. I canceled or moved my own plans for her. I had a festering wound I was hoping would heal, because Becky continued to insist to me that we’d forgive each other some day, but I was the only one working towards it, while she cursed me at every opportunity.

This all culminated in her calling Tanner one day, during our date, to demand that he choose between us. To try to convince him to be monogamous with her. To tell him how awful I am and that she can’t believe he would choose me. To guilt him for daring to do so, even though she’d forced the choice.

I beat myself up, like I was the reason for the break up. But I wasn’t. Even if I wasn’t in the picture, she was abusive and had continued to be without pause. It was her own jealousy and refusal to heal that ended their relationship. I know that now. But it took awhile for my anger to set in. It did once I found out she messaged him more times after that to try to convince him, once again, to leave me, and once again getting upset with him when he wouldn’t.

I waited for a while before asking Tanner if he was alright with me cutting Becky out, since after those instances, I didn’t see our relationship being positive again, at least not for quite awhile, and I’d spent months swallowing my pain for the sake of their relationship and couldn’t do it anymore. That was when I found out, from him, that Becky had already cut me out with no intention to recover. She had remained in all of our group chats, so that was news to me. It was power I was not willing to let her hold over me any longer, pretending she was the bigger person for being silent in the chats but not leaving them. I won’t be made into a monster for defining and defending my boundaries for the first time since the break up. It was unfair of her to remain in every single chat when she’d made it clear she was cutting us, or at least me, out, forcing me to face that trigger every day, giving me almost to reprieve or space to vent about my own pain. I asked friends to remove her from those shared chats, and they did, and I refuse to be made into a villain for being the one to cut the last of the bridge she’d torched. The last one is the d&d game that wasn’t destroyed with our relationship, and it’s the last thorn in my wound keeping me from healing, but Tanner and I are both scared that group will fall apart, too, if she’s removed, due to reactions in another chat she was removed from. So, I have to continue to swallow that, for who knows how long.

Now that that story is out, I’m going to list what I can about my and Becky’s relationship -- her abuse, her gaslighting, making sense of it all and getting out what she never let me.

-A lot of our problems stemmed from the fact that I didn’t react how she wanted. She would be abusive or demanding, and instead of reacting like Tanner, who would submit for the sake of keeping the peace, I would push back, either calmly or not so calmly due to it triggering me. Both elicited negative responses. We triggered each other this way often.

-She was racist to me. She weaponized the exact racism I told her I had experienced from almost every white person I’d ever known, even my loved ones. She promised she never would and then did exactly it, armed with the knowledge of how to shut me down. She told me I *was* aggressive, actually, that she’d surveyed my friends and they all agreed that I was aggressive, and by insisting that I wasn’t, by defending myself, I was gaslighting her. Oh, and she only used the word aggressive because that was the word I’d used, not that she actually thought I was aggressive. Why did I think she thought I was aggressive? That was my own fault. I constantly made myself smaller for her, like I had for so many racist people in my life. I could no longer be all of me anymore.

-She insisted I was incapable of calm discussion (see the racism above), that I deserved her anger and brought it upon myself because it was the only way I listened. Never once in our relationship did she ever say, “can we talk about this?” or anything along those lines, which I would have responded to (and have in other relationships). It was always blowing up out of nowhere because I said the slight wrong thing or didn’t say the right thing or because she’d misunderstood me.

-On misunderstanding, she admitted that she constantly misread me and misunderstood my words due to her past trauma and expectation of negativity. Once upon a time, she told me that if she took what I said in the most positive light, she understood me finally. Yet, later in our relationship, she started insisting that every misunderstanding was my fault, that all poor communication was on me, that I was an anomaly, that I somehow experienced less emotions than other people. When I would refuse any of these accusations or point out what I had actually said, she told me I lacked critical thinking or was gaslighting her.

-Tanner said something that made so many of our problems click: Becky didn’t want a relationship, she wanted codependence. Something she admitted she struggled with, something her family struggles with, and yet I never put it together. She wanted all of our attention, all of the time. Every triad date we had was centered on her. My healthy independence was a threat to her. She insisted I was lying if I didn’t have some deep issue to discuss with her every day. She insisted I was lying when I promised her I wasn’t hiding my life from her, that I just sincerely didn’t have any crisis or something to discuss. My refusal to enable any of her bad habits or abusive behaviors upset her. When we broke up, and she could no longer guarantee all emotional energy was given to her, she spiraled.

-Of many things we’d previously discussed and she said she understood, group chats take less energy for me to participate in, and I was always happy to interact with her in group chats if I couldn’t handle a 1 on 1 chat. Eventually, I was scared to interact in group chats, post online, show any presence that I wasn’t busy or asleep, because she would become upset with me for not messaging her individually.

-The biggest red flag I ignored, one that terrified me so much I told no one about it until I was considering the break up, was when she asked me to choose between herself and my best friend. When I told her I couldn’t do that and was uncomfortable that she’d even asked, she got upset, and I ended up comforting her instead of addressing it any further. And without even realizing it, I began to feel anxious and guilty whenever I interacted with Dan. I would fear even mentioning them to her, because it inevitably resulted in her jealousy. I began to interact with them less (notice a pattern? Interacting with my best friend less, interacting with my group chats less, interacting online in general less...)

-Every concern I brought up ended the same way: she’d say I was gaslighting her, or she’d get upset and I would have to comfort her.

-She was never polyamorous; this is obvious in hindsight. She was a monogamous person who happened to form a crush on two polyamorous people. She would consistently try to persuade me away from polyamory and into maintaining a closed triad, and would get upset with me when I expressed that wasn’t what I wanted. She’d often remind me that she’d be extremely jealous of anyone I ever dated and that they couldn’t be as important as her.

-She said she understood it would take Tanner and I time to feel as close to her as we do with each other. Yet, she was constantly jealous of us and became more and more angry as time went on. She seemed to expect a timescale of months to level out a 7 year relationship with a 7 month one, when it would have taken years.

-Along with codependence, she was looking for a therapist in her SOs. She would have a new breakdown to discuss daily, and a myriad of untreated phobias and illnesses. She’d consistently complain about her therapist; when I made suggestions to tell her therapists her concerns or get a new one, she’d brush it off or insist it wasn’t that bad. If Tanner or I didn’t enable her phobias, she’d get upset with us. We could neither make plans for just us two(though she hates being left out) nor bring her (she hates crowds and spontaneous plans). She’d say she’d come, we’d just have to deal with her crying the whole time. I’d express that we want her to have fun, not suffer, and she’d say she’d suffer either way. We were guilted out of most plans.

-Most of the end of our relationship, that finally made me realize we needed to break up, was a slow change that I’m not sure how it happened. At some point, Becky stopped seeing me; she only saw what fit her preconceived notions of me. She made assumptions about me, my thoughts, my character, who I was. She made up situations in her head and got angry at me for them out of nowhere, with no communication, and the one time she did listen that she'd made up the situation (because Tanner told her), she spiraled into self-hatred, not an apology. She twisted everything I said into some kind of attack against her and insisted every clarification, explanation, or evidence was an excuse. When I would point any of this out, that some of what she said was just plain untrue, she’d once again insist I was gaslighting her. I was trapped. She refused to see the changes I made for her, and was coming up with her own reality of our relationship. Nothing I did mattered anymore; even Tanner told me he saw it. He told me that I had done a lot of work but he didn’t see the same improvement on her end, and that she needed to meet me in the middle if we were going to work. But she only saw the monster she’d made me. I couldn’t continue to date someone who was so committed to misunderstanding me. This is why I only apologized for most of what she said in her list of grievances -- because some was simply untrue. I never lied to her, I never gave her half-apologies -- never in my life have I given anyone an “I’m sorry you feel that way” apology. I apologized for things that didn’t even merit apology. I regressed and backslid on so much healing I had done. She mentally sent me back to high school, convinced me I was who I was as a child, when that was completely untrue. So much of the relationship had become this perfect trap -- where it was damned if I do, damned if I don’t. I ended it because I couldn’t live like that anymore, and I wanted our friendship back. We were awful romantic partners, but such good friends. Not anymore, I guess.

-Every trauma I ever did confide in her, she eventually weaponized against me. She'd recreate every one, or bring them up to silence me. She'd use every moment of vulnerability to further convince me I was an inherently awful person and push me to back slide and regress into trauma I'd grown beyond. Any questioning was met with, yup, I'm gaslighting her or lack introspection.

-She said I never showed interest in her, and I still don't know where that came from. We'd talk about life goals, the world, our ideas. I told her I loved seeing her creative projects and that progress. I read her fan fiction and bragged about it. I don't know when she stopped seeing it, when she stopped seeing me. I introduced her to all of my friends, integrated her into all of my friend groups, because I thought I was building a future with her. But now I'm the villain because she wanted to hold my social life and the friends I'd introduced her to hostage.

-One comment that stuck with me was that she said we weren't even dating, just friends who kissed. She said it again in our last argument before we broke up. I literally didn't know what to do to prove to her that I cared about her, to make her believe me when I said she was my girlfriend. I even came out to my parents about her to try to prove it and it wasn't enough. I got to the point where I almost finally had sex with her just because she wanted it, just to see if that would finally be enough for her to believe me. I'm very glad I didn't.

-She was consistently passive aggressive. She would always say something was fine, then clearly be upset when I'd do it. I'd have to press for there to be any chance of her admitting she didn't like it. There were clear "correct" answers to all of her questions and suggestions, and whenever I refused to acquiesce, it would become an argument.

-Intentions don't matter and all that, but they do. They do, because that's shorthand. She'd constantly use that as a shield, telling me my intentions didn't matter, when at a certain point, she had to be responsible for refusing to hear me. And while intentions don't matter, I never intentionally hurt her, but she intentionally hurt me several times, almost never apologized for it, and in fact insisted to me that I deserved it and had brought it upon myself.

-And I defended her. I continued to defend her for so long, from so many people. I knew she had trauma, and I knew she was in an environment that wasn’t suited to her healing. I convinced myself that I just had to endure until post-pandemic, or until she moved out, or until she got medication she could take, or, or ,or-- and Dan gave me the wake up call that if I was walking on eggshells with her, the environment we were in would only change where I was walking on eggshells with her. Tanner gave me the wake up call that we aren’t even sure she *wants* to leave that house with her family, because of that toxic codependence.

-I’m still terrified of how quickly she turned on me. How quickly she made me a monster. Our break up didn’t have any villains; break ups don’t always need villains. But like a light switch flipping, she turned hatred upon me. She told me that she doesn’t feel empathy and only performs goodness because of a moral code she made for herself, but I never considered what it would be like if she designated me an enemy in that moral code.

Some of this I realized towards the end of our relationship. Some of this I realized after. I’ll add to this post whenever I need to as I parse out more, or remember what I’ve forgotten to add.

I’m not the monster she made me in her story. I’m not responsible for her version of me anymore. I won’t be made to feel guilty or like a villain for finally enforcing my boundaries. I’m still angry that I can’t be open about all of this without continuing to fall into this trap she’s made, of me being awful and hateful instead of abused and rightfully angry. But Tanner and I are the happiest we’ve been in a year. I deeply regret that relationship, but I’m so happy now that I’m out of it, even if it didn’t end how I’d hoped. And I think that says I made the right decision.

#blah blah

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shadowsfiguresfigments-blog · 3 years

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A good place to die Chapter 26 (smut)

Warning: Harsh language, violence, smut

He was all over me, literally. Whilst he kept my lips and tongue busy with his, his hands roamed across my body, gently caressing every square inch of it. The last tattered remains of my clothes fell off, but his silken gloves kept me warm against the cold air. I sucked on his lower lip to encourage him further, and in response he leaned into me. The sensation of his touch multiplied, and during a breath pause to draw breath I opened my eyes. Penny had sprouted another two pairs of arms, giving him a slightly spider-like appearance.

Whilst he played with my hair, he simultaneously worjed my erect nipples, kneading them; pinching them just enough to illicit a sweet stinging pain. And all the while his hands wandered down further, along my hips, in between my thighs. I pressed harder against him, the familiar desperate yearning overcoming any sense of self-control I had left. There needn’t be any more barriers between us, nothing to separate us – I had been inside him, literally, for fuck’s sake – and I tore at his clothes, fighting against the last veil of silk that stood between us.

His chuckle was barely audible, more of a deep rumble that went through his body right into mine. The hands in my hair disappeared and the pressure against me lessened, but before I could protest his fingers slipped inside me. My insides clamped down on him in an unconscious effort to pull him further along, and their effort was rewarded; Penny’s finger went deeper and deeper into me, as if they were growing in length. The weirdest sensation filled my stomach – his gloves, he must have popped his gloves – and a heartbeat later he touched that sweet, sweet spot.

I screamed as the orgasm hit me like a sledge hammer, but Penny was nowhere near done. His body pressed back against mine, finally rid of clothes and all decency, and he held me so tight I was no longer able to breathe properly. He was still mercilessly working my pussy, but another hand made its way between my ass cheeks. I briefly and very feebly thought about protesting, but in response he pressed against my G-spot again. Whether it was because I was dripping wet or by some transformation of his, his fingers quickly spread some hot liquid around my asshole. Then he inserted one.

One moment, there was the sensation of having soiled myself; then he pushed through the barrier and there was some pain. It didn’t last long, though, as having him inside both front and back quickly overwhelmed me. Still, it wasn’t enough for him. His tongue swelled up, almost forcing my jaws apart, and picked up the rhythm of his fingers as it thrust deeper and deeper into me. As he had swallowed me whole, enveloping me completely, he now filled my up with himself in every way possible. I no longer could feel any ending to my body, nor the beginning of his; all of my senses were filled with him alone.

Again, there was a brief pause as he withdrew his fingers from my pussy, then he shoved his dick into me. I came immediately, and this time it lasted. Wave after wave hit me, eroding my sense of self further and further. Something was different from all the times we had had sex before – something inside me had changed. It resonated with Penny in a way that was difficult to understand – like two sound waves with just the right frequency to suddenly amplify each other.

That resonance almost tore me apart, and I screamed on the top of my lungs as Penny shuddered and came.

The following week was entirely governed by the last minute preparations for both Bee’s return as well as the store opening, which would coincide. With Auntie’s help I fought my way through the rooms and seemingly unending layers of garbage and dirt. Thankfully Bee had already declared her intentions to renovate the whole apartment by herself, and she had spent countless hours picking colors and some new furniture from catalogs. The little insurance money she got wouldn’t allow for much more, but her DIY-attitude had significantly improved over the last days. We just made sure the dirt was gone and that the facilities worked; which they did. Still, by the time I was done every evening I did little more than hit the shower and fall into bed.

Penny found his own way to keep me company – he usually waited in my room, made good use of the phone I had gotten him, and occasionally accompanied me on my ways in the form of a big orange tabby. At night he would cradle me in his arms, making our fight seem like nothing more than a bad dream.

I didn’t have the energy to discuss it any further, either; nor could I bring myself to tell him I still felt rather overwhelmed by the sex we had had. It was a weird, uncomfortable balance that I just couldn’t deal with.

He had carried me home that night, wrapped into silk-like sheets he had miraculously produced, and he had washed me in our tiny shower. I was still entirely beside myself – I didn’t even spend a thought on auntie – and just stood there as he rinsed away his cum that poured out of my body.

He even tucked me into bed.

When the big day finally arrived, I was too tired to feel the least bit excited. I almost fell asleep twice during school, but fortunately no one noticed. It was Friday, and I was excused for the last lesson (P.E.), so I got to leave early. That also meant there was no chance of any potential bully waiting for me, and I didn’t bother checking my bike for any manipulations, as there hadn’t been any for quite a while. Of course, that didn’t turn out too well – somebody had opened the valves of my tires, and by the time I got to the shop, there was no air left in them. I didn’t care, though, as I had to prepare the little buffet auntie had organized for me (nothing major, just some tea and coffee, and some cupcakes she had surprised me with in the morning). After I finished that, I went through the registry and my documents for the last time, in a desperate attempt to not think about Penny and focus on the task at hand.

A quick glance at my watch told me that I had about fifteen minutes left before the official opening hours started. I briefly wondered whether anyone would show up at all – Auntie and I had invested in some flyers, and we had distributed them both at her working place as well as my school. I had also thrown the remaining ones into random mail boxes on my various ways. Despite that, my reputation might very well end up keeping any potential customer from actually seeking the store – my store, I reminded myself – out.

For the first time in a long while I thought back to Yaneesha, Shot and the other idiots that despised me so much. The reason for their unwavering hate was still very much of a mystery to me, but I couldn’t bring myself to wish them harm. After all, they had ultimately suffered bigger losses than I did, and ever since Yaneesha had left school, I hadn’t been physically attacked anymore.

At least not by humans.

I sighed and unlocked the doors.

To my big surprise a couple of people entered while I was putting out the huge board I had painted. They roamed around the shelves, and a tiny silver-hair lady even told me how happy she was that the store was open again. I vaguely remembered her face and came to the conclusion that she was one of the very few somewhat regular visitors. Didn’t she have a fondness for novels? I directed her towards some new arrivals, which prompted my first successful sale.

It was somewhat difficult to believe, and the whole situation felt unreal. Something about the ordinariness was quite at odds with the crazy circus my life had become. I answered questions, recommended books, and made a couple of other sales. It wasn’t much, but still a whole lot more than what I’d expected – nothing.

Auntie joined me after I had been open for ninety minutes, and I could tell how tired she was. We both forced smiles, and despite my best efforts, she insisted on staying with me, though her face grew paler by the minute. Just when I had convinced her to sit down and stop fussing, her face lit up with recognition.

“Oh, you didn’t tell me he was coming. How nice!”

I whirled around just to see Benny-Penny standing outside the store, a red balloon on a string in his hands. For some reason that really touched me – I was just glad auntie sat behind me, so she couldn’t see the stupid smile spreading across my face. I rushed out and grasped his hands.

“I’m so glad you’re here”, I gushed. “I can’t believe you’re willing to go through this… Are you okay?”

He nodded, a familiar twinkle in his eyes, and handed me the balloon. It even read “Congratulations” on it. After quickly wiping my eyes I ushered him inside, ignoring the weird vibrations that built up in my stomach.

Penny looked utterly out of place, a wonderful mixture of awkwardness and otherworldly beauty that was just a tick off – probably not enough for anyone to realize but enough to cause the other visitors to show signs of unease. It was almost comical – a guy in a rather fancy suit started fiddling with his tie, a young girl put her jacket back on, and a group of teens moved closer together. Despite the fact that it wasn’t a good thing unnerve the people who I was supposed to sell to, it was still entertaining to observe. And I couldn’t help myself but marvel at his human form; the way his muscles visibly moved beneath the thin, tight sweater he was wearing; the way that ass looked in that pair of jeans; the way his movements were still the same as in his clown form.

I quickly went into the back room and tied the balloon to my backpack, not wanting to leave Penny alone for too long; but by the time I had returned he sat beside auntie and they chatted away merrily. He laughed – that wonderful, over-the-top crazy laugh of his, and shook his head. Auntie smiled, said something and started chuckling. For a moment she looked much younger, the stress lines fading, and my heart started hurting again.

How I wished I could see her like that every day.

I joined them, but I admittedly didn’t pay much attention, nor contribute much to the conversation – I was just content to see auntie and Benny-Penny happy. My odd behavior wasn’t noticed, though; Benny told one joke after another, and soon, my costumers had circled around us, joining in on the laughs. From time to time I could have sworn I saw a glint of something in Benny’s eyes, but it always disappeared so quickly I couldn’t be sure.

It was a rather pleasant experience to have him around. Time flew by quickly, and making sales felt like something I did on the side whilst I was mainly focusing on Benny. Finally the last pulk of people left the store, and I waved after them. Auntie stood up and started cleaning the buffet table; throwing away crumbled napkins and stacking plates. I offered to help, but she refused me; so I started counting the money I had made. When she left to bring the plates upstairs to the apartment, I dropped all pretence and threw myself into Benny’s arms.

“Thank you for coming”, I whispered, somewhat at a loss at how to convey the deep gratitude I felt.

He just patted my head, but I could feel how exhausted he was. I understood all too well – being around other humans and having to act normally was difficult enough for me, and I was part of their race. I reached up and cradled his cheek in my hand.

“I will make this up to you, I promise.”

Benny’s head shot up so fast I didn’t realize he had moved for a second.

Something was wrong.

His face had become devoid of emotion, the smile that had just been there completely gone, and there was an orange hue in his eyes. He stood utterly still.

“What’s the matter?”

“One of them is coming closer.”

“Who?”

“One of them.”

It took me a second to put his words and his behavior together.

“You mean… the ones that hurt you?”

He nodded, his eyes turning ever more orange. I took his hands and pulled him around to face me.

“Listen, if you need to get out of here, go. But I don’t think you’re in danger – you look like a human, you’re in a fucking bookstore, and besides, I’m not going to let anyone hurt you, okay?” That had absolutely no effect whatsoever. He was still as tense as before. “Penny, I promise, you’re safe.”

He slowly lowered his eyes, exhaling loudly. Not even a second later, he tensed up again. This time, he was watching someone outside. I turned around and saw two young men walking down the street. They held brown paper bags and yelled loudly, pushing each other constantly. My somewhat rusty instinct for bad situations told me they were trouble.

“They want to trash your shop.”

I didn’t even question him; I was too focused on the fact that they had changed direction and were now clearly walking up to us.

“I won’t allow that.” I reached into my pocket for my phone, with every intention to call the cops, but this time, Penny grabbed my hands. He had the weirdest little smile, and his left eye started drifting to the side. For some reason, I got goosebumps. I could only watch as he left me and stood in front of the duo. They shouted something, he replied, and the three of them walked away.

What was I supposed to do? I still had my phone in my hand, and I contemplated dialing 911. But what should I say? That I had possibly evaded big trouble? That my killer clown boyfriend had just left with the troublemakers and they’d better start searching for the leftovers, if there would be any? And that Pennywise might be in danger? Hello officer, you know, there’s this creature that kills and feeds on humans, and I love him very much, and he got spooked, so could you please start an investigation, and by the way, clean up after him?

“Where’d he go?”

Auntie had come back to me and looked out the door. I shook my head, gathering my jumbled thoughts.

“Oh, his mom called, he’s supposed to help her with something.”

“It was nice of him to stop by.”

“Yeah, very nice.” I still stared at the corner around which they had disappeared, as if I could make my gaze bend around it to follow them and make sure everything was okay.

“Is everything alright? Did you quarrel?”

“Oh no, I guess I’m just… a little overwhelmed with everything.” My attempt at a reassuring smile was bad at best, but somehow auntie bought it.

“Oh well, it’s been some hectic weeks for both of us.”

I nodded. A quick glance at my phone told me it was time to close down. That, thankfully, wouldn’t take long. However, there was still-

“Look who’s come!”

For the second time that day, a very welcome visitor approached the store. This time it wasn’t my favorite alien killer clown, it was Bee; with a large suitcase in hand and a warm smile on her face.

#pennywise #pennywise fanfiction #agptd

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tae-cup · 4 years

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Give Me Love | KNJ Oneshot

Inspired by: Ed Sheeran’s “Give Me Love”

Pairing: non idol!Kim Namjoon x Cupid!Reader

Summary: You spent your life, destined to be alone, putting two pieces together. Suddenly, you meet someone that just refuses to be struck by your arrow.

Warnings: Angst, Fluff

Word Count: 3.3k Words

A/N: I’m sorry, I wrote this at like 1 am so it’s a little rushed. My brain just threw up onto the page and I couldn’t stop myself. Ahhhhhhh school is back and I’m dying. Pardon me for slow updates!

Other: Masterlist

Give me love like never before 'Cause lately I've been craving more And it's been a while but I still feel the same Maybe I should let you go

The string bends with ease despite the thousands of years you have used it. No one saw the golden light shimmering around you. In fact, most people passed you by without a second thought. No one paid a second of their time to watch the odd girl pulling back her arms like she were drawing an arrow back. You just felt it would be better if people thought you crazy instead of seeing your bow and think they were about to die. Die of love, maybe. You shot the arrow into the unsuspecting woman and then wrapped the red string from the previous arrow around the end of a new one. Once both were securely tied together, you pulled the string back and hit the front of a man walking in the other direction.

They met, fell in love, blah blah blah, the rest is history. You shouldered your arrows and continued on the way to work. You had to check in for a new assignment today. The goddess had proclaimed it was of the utmost importance.

You weren’t exactly the warmest person, but you weren’t cold. After all, your job was to make people fall in love with each other. You obviously had to love love. There were many cupids who could be content with this, you were one of them. Watching others fall in love should be a replacement for your own hole. That’s what the mentors had always said.

Well, you excelled at that. Despite the loneliness, at least you were immortal and at least you could live a somewhat normal life. The goddess of love herself gifted all her cupids expensive apartments and, despite being immortal, gave them unlimited spending money. What for? Who knew. However, she always looked kindly upon those who were frugal and modest. You somehow managed to convince her that you were one of those cupids. So, you could get away with quite a bit of rule breaking.

Such as procrastinating on assignments and sweeping them under the rug if you felt like it. As long as you got it done before the deadline, you were in the clear. You owned exactly half of Seoul. The other half was run by Jimin, an excitable cupid with high hopes.

Together, you two oversaw all love affairs in Seoul, Korea. Jimin dealt with the more northern side while you handled the more southern side. Which was why it was a shock to have the packet of a Mr. Kim Namjoon thrown in front of you. Not only was this a task better fitted for an experienced cupid, not that you didn’t have 45,000 years of experience, but it also took place on Jimin’s turf.

“Who is this and why?” You demanded.

“Read the file and you’ll learn about him. Now, I won’t tell you why, that would spoil the fun.” The goddess’ eyes twinkled. “However, I want you to remember your contract, Y/N.”

“You’re just teasing me now. I can’t fall in love. You don’t need to remind me.” You frowned, glancing at the paper. The man was handsome, you’d give him that. Whoever is his soulmate is a lucky person.

It was tricky, the whole cupid business. Mainly because soulmates are decided by the cupids. It’s an immediate draw. You just know. If a cupid messed up...well, that’s why there was divorce. Just two people who weren’t meant to be. Those cupids were always reprimanded and depending on the severity, maybe even fired. You had a squeaky clean track record and had learned to close yourself off rather quickly.

All new cupids go through a period of depression, hopelessness, longing. It was simply because they were born into a contract that prohibited the thing all beings so innately desire; love. A cupid cannot love and give love at the same time. It distracted from the job and made you blind.

Kim Namjoon is an odd fella. You thought to yourself as you observed him. You needed to know everything you could about him in order to correctly match him. Yes, you may get the sense, but cupids that solely used their sense had often been fired.

Eternity can be boring too, but you wanted to see what the world looked like in a thousand years, or even a hundred. That’s what kept you going. You had been watching Namjoon from a distance for the past month. He traveled around Seoul a lot, often for work, and you had yet to feel his soulmate’s presence. When you did get close, there was a pleasant tingle in your stomach that spread to the rest of your limbs. It disgusted you.

You had experienced love enough to know that feeling, but it was impossible. So you pushed it down, full well knowing it would never go away. Perhaps if you just matched him with another woman who had similar compatibility, you could get away with that. And even if they divorced, surely it would be okay to have just one strike on your record?

In all honesty, you were terrified of love. But as you observed him day after day, each one marching towards the deadline, you couldn’t help starting to like him. You noticed the little things.

Like how he always ordered his coffee; black with two creams and no sugar. The way he smiled with the smallest of dimples, the way his knee moved up and down when he was nervous. How he always leaned in and gave you his undivided attention. It was the little things that made this so hard. Could you even find someone who would notice them as you had?

It was much to your happiness, or dismay, when he ran into a nice looking girl at the coffee shop. You watched their interaction. The girl was obviously interested, pretty looking too, while she brushed a strand of hair out of her face. Perfect. You looked at your watch. You had two weeks and this had already taken too long. You needed two weeks to show that a match worked before it was approved by superiors. Y/N, you’ve got to do this now.

Your hands shook but you drew the arrow back. Despite the nerves, you never missed. You tied the end of a red string to your arrow and then the other end to another. With a deep breath you aimed eyes squinting against the sunlight’s glare as it hit the big windows of the coffee shop. Just as you were about to let fly, he turned and looked at you, surprise written across his face.

Impossible. But that wasn’t the first time you had used that word in correlation to Namjoon. You let fly, your hands not fidgeting, as you tried to shake off his gaze. It missed. It crashed into the wall before disintegrating entirely.

Your mouth went dry as you watched him turn to look at the wall and back to you. He didn’t seem scared and when his eyes met yours, you felt...calm. Namjoon mouthed something to the girl and exited the coffee shop. As quickly as you could, you shouldered your bag and ran. Your heart thumped wildly against your chest as you raced away. I’ll get him another day. It must have been a trick of the light. And yet you weren’t quite sure if the quickened pace of your heart was because of the running or you chance encounter with the man that could ruin your life.

You tried your best to remain a silent observer, but that was proving harder as the deadline drew closer. Every morning you would wake up with a splitting headache and the strong urge to find something missing. But there’s nothing that’s missing! You thought as you gathered your bow and arrows. At first, you just thought he was clumsy or that you were nervous. But it became apparent as the days stretched on that you just couldn’t hit him. It was frustrating, but you just couldn’t bring yourself to admit the truth or to match him with someone he so obviously wouldn’t be right for.

Namjoon was watching out his car window. His fingers drummed against the steering wheel in his parking space. He had felt the eyes of someone watching him for a long time. It made him paranoid. Then he saw..you. He didn’t know who you were or why you were watching him, but he needed to find out.

Somehow, he never felt uncomfortable under your gaze. You even relaxed him sometimes, a supporting presence from far away. Namjoon himself felt like a lost cause. Most of his nights were spent at a club, trying to fill the hole in his chest or drowning in his own bile while swallowing drink after drink. With your presence, he just didn’t feel the need to and if you were being forced to watch him, he didn’t think it was fair to drag you to that noisy place every night.

Yet, he just needed to meet you, talk to you. Every fiber of his being was calling out for you. It had been a dull ache, but now that he saw you, he couldn’t take his mind off it. The pain had a name, the pain had a face, the pain had a voice. And he wanted to know all of it. He wanted to devour the information, to get to know every inch of you.

It was so silly. Namjoon was an impulsive person, but he was never this stupid with his emotions. The ache didn’t go away, as much as he pushed it down. Sitting in his car, thinking, and watching the passing cars, made his mind up. He was going to figure out who the hell you were.

So here you were, quite literally an angel in the darkness. Slipping through the dense cluster of bodies on the technicolor dance floor and ignore the bass that pounded into your bones. You followed him, a man far too clumsy to be in such a place. He pushed into the crowd, and therefore you did as well. Your arrow was in hand. I surely cannot miss at such a close distance. You could feel yourself getting lost in the music.

You tried your best to pay attention solely to the man disappearing in front of you and the breathing in your own chest. Clubs always made you dizzy, like you were about to lose your goddamn mind. Your fingers splayed, reaching out to grasp his arm. Your hand found purchase on his shirt and you tugged, pulling him back towards you.

“It’s about time.” He smirked. You let your hand fall. You’re not supposed to directly interact with assignments, remember? Well, you had just fucked that up big time. You had been played.

“So who are you? Some angel? A soulmate? What’s with the arrow?” He shouted over the music. Ah, Namjoon, ever the curious one. If you spoke now, would you be able to take it back? But your mouth was moving faster than your brain.

“Well, technically, I’m a cupid.” You explained lamely. “I’m supposed to find your soulmate, but you refuse to be struck and-wait you can see this?” You held up the slim arrow in your hand.

“Uh, yeah.” He shrugged. “You’re holding a goddamn arrow.”

“Most people can’t.” You murmured inaudibly. The pulsing music made your head feel fuzzy, out of control, and though you wanted to pull away from him, he held onto your waist.

“So you’re a cupid? Tell me more.” Namjoon grinned, unbothered by the new information. He had a feeling you were something supernatural with the arrows, the presence, and watchful eyes.

“I make people fall in love.” You tried to be vague, but he made you want to open up about yourself. He made you want to pour out all your heartache, the pain of watching others but never having that joy for yourself. It was a curse you were blessed with, a certain pain that had been pushed down.

“So why haven’t I?”

“You’re...difficult.” You faltered in your words. “The arrow misses you every time.”

“Is that possible?”

“My aim has never been off. It must be the fates.”

“Am I destined to be loveless?”

“Join the club.” You smiled softly, your gaze long broken.

“Well, you’ll always have love in your life as a cupid, right?” His hand gripped your waist tightly. He leaned in, his lips dangerously close. You shouldn’t kiss him, you shouldn’t even be interacting, but here you were, unable to pull away.

“I’m not allowed to.” You turned away. There was only one way you could do this, and you weren’t sure if you wanted it to be that way. The goddess of love always allowed one night stands for her cupids, but nothing more. She was merciful. That’s what they always said.

“Then how about tonight, no strings attached?” But the look in his eyes said otherwise. You frowned. Did you want him for only one night, never to touch again? Yes.

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea.” You murmured, pulling away abruptly and rushing to the exit. The room was heating up, the music was too loud, the place was too crowded. You felt nauseous.

“Wait!” He shouted, chasing you out into the street. “What’s your name?”

You turned your head, pausing as you thought it over. It wouldn’t be too bad, right? After all, you knew everything about him and he knew nothing about you. Your hair whipped around in the breeze of the night.

“Y/N.” The cars passed by and you were gone.

You had never failed a mission so poorly. Your superior didn’t look very happy as she watched you shift uncomfortably.

“You could’ve had a one night, you know? But no, you made him a liability. You told him the name of a cupid. Your name, yes, but a name nonetheless. You need to find his soulmate, not meddle in his business.”

“I just...” You twiddled your thumbs awkwardly. “I just get this feeling that his business is my business.” You placed a hand over your heart. “There’s a pain, right here.”

“Ridiculous, Cupids don’t have soulmates. That’s how the goddess makes sure we are doing our jobs.” She scoffed and stood, pulling out his file. “Unless you want to leave behind your job as a cupid, you won’t be going anywhere any time soon.”

As she left the room, stating the rules plainly, you couldn’t help but wonder ‘Is the unknown future more important than my present?’ Death scared you shitless. You actually admired humans for this. They had death thrown at them at every angle and yet they lived on, oblivious. How foolish, humans were. Or maybe you were foolish for having one as your soulmate.

The future was bleak, but at least you could hope for a future. Your hands felt over your waist, caressed the spots he touched. His lips that were so tantalizingly close that night. You pressed two fingers over your mouth, wondering what it would feel like if he had just leaned in a little closer. But proximity was the biggest worry. You just needed to avoid him and it would all be fine.

Avoiding him proved harder than you thought. He was somehow always where you were. Most of the time it was easy to lose him in a crowd or walk right past him in the street, but there were certain times where that got a lot harder.

“Y/N? Y/N?” The barista called your name and set your drink down. Two people looked up. You. And Namjoon. With a sigh, you stood from your seat and grabbed your drink. When you turned around, he was standing right there.

“Did I do something wrong, cupid?” His smirk was not helping your racing heart.

“I can’t talk to you right now.” You said quickly, pretending like you had somewhere to be.

“Fine. But can I at least take you out for dinner sometime? I get it, you’re one of those girls who doesn’t do one night stands. It’s okay.” He rambled. “I’ve been getting better at that as well.”

“I’ve got to go.” You physically couldn’t bring yourself to say no. It was terrifying and...exhilarating. You wanted to go on that date, you wanted to get to know him better. The longing made your chest hurt. But alas, things just don’t work out sometimes. You pulled away once more, trying to ignore the ghost touches on your hands, your hips, your waist. His breath against your face, like a warm caress. You needed to distance yourself and once he was dead, it would all be over.

200 Years Later

Things were good. The hole in your heart was back, but at least you were seeing the future, you lived another day.

Do You believe in reincarnation? The words rung in your head. The goddess had asked you just yesterday, but now you knew what she meant. Your heart was aching, chest pounding. It was hard to breathe.

You turned from your spot in the coffee shop, breath halting. Those dimples, that smile, those eyes. The hands that touched you, once again far away. He turned, he saw you, he smiled.

You waved and he waved back with a confused look. It was him.

“Namjoon?” You walked towards him, the slightest of trembles in your voice. You couldn’t do this again. Last time, you avoided him successfully, but this time, you knew you wouldn’t be so lucky. The soulmate bond was back and it was bigger than ever. It felt like your heart might carve out of your chest if you didn’t do something.

“Do I know you?” His expression was of pain, a confusion you wished upon no one. Would he remember you? Of course not, but you could start again. If it wasn’t meant to be in that time, maybe now? But you were a cupid and he was a human.

“Yes, you do.” You said firmly. And you weren’t going to let him go so easily this time. You hesitantly reached out and laced your fingers together. “But I’d like to get to know you better.”

He wasn’t sure why he followed you, but he knew it was right. It was like all he ever wanted was laid out in front of him and he was left trailing like a lost puppy.

But last time isn’t this time. You smiled across from him at dinner. The restaurant was cozy, but the atmosphere was not.

“Wait so you’re a cupid and you’re breaking your contract...just to be with me?” He tilted his head. “Now that makes no sense. Soulmate or not, this just doesn’t seem like the right move for you.”

“I told you, I already met you, 200 years ago. You were a little different, but mostly the same.” You tried to explain. You just wanted to get through with this date and kiss him, but you had to remind yourself that you had 200 years to think and pine over him while he had about six hours.

“Okay...” He mulled it over, the pasta growing cold. “I think I know you, I can feel it.” He murmured. “But I’m going to have to think this over.”

“Of course, take all the time you need.” Just not too long. You watched him carefully. “Hey Namjoon?”

“Yeah?”

“Wanna get out of here?”

One Year Later

Mortality was...endless. Death was a finality that forced you to live until you could no longer. Mortality brought you closer to him.

“Namjoon, wait up!” You shouted, racing across the street as he got out of his car.

“Y/N!” He lit up, waving at you as he grabbed his things. It was warm like a summer’s day, despite the season being winter. When you reached him, he swung you around, an arm wrapping around your waist as he pulled you in.

Your lips touched, an explosion of galaxies. Moving against each other like waves lapping upon the beach. he’s here. And he’s with you. That’s all you could think of as you pulled away. Your cheeks were flushed as he smiled at you.

“Hi.” You said breathlessly.

“Hi.” He responded, in a similar state.

Your heart let out a kick, the butterflies gathered. Impossible. You had once thought it impossible for someone like you to feel it...love. Yet, impossible was a word you often associated with Namjoon. And you wanted more.

You tied a red string to the end of an arrow. The last two arrows your goddess gifted you. She claimed you had to use it for something ‘worth it’ As she said. You took out the arrow and pointed it at him.

“You ready?”

“Ready as ever.” He grinned, staring at the sharp tip. You nodded and shot him a gentle smile as you stepped forward, closing your lips around his once more as you plunged the arrow into him. He didn’t make a sound, it felt like a soft touch, not an arrow plunging into his skin. You tied the string to the end of the other arrow and pulled away. You placed the tip to your chest and his heart leapt at the image. The red string hummed with energy.

You took a deep breath and pressed the tip into your chest. The arrows disappeared and a red string glowed vibrantly in between you two before slowly fading. You wanted his love, wanted more of him. And you didn’t have to hide it anymore.

He stepped forward cautiously and then swept you up in his arms.

“It feels like I’ve been waiting years for that.” He said huskily.

“You don’t even know how long I’ve waited.”

Give a little time to me or burn this out We'll play hide and seek to turn this around All I want is the taste that your lips allow My, my, my, my, oh give me love My, my, my, my, oh give me love

#bts #bts x reader #Cupid #Give Me Love #Oneshot #tatafics #non idol au #namjoon #Kim Namjoon #Namjoon x reader #fluff #angst #I'm so sorry it's so messy #castlebangtan

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ilguna · 4 years

Text

Belamour - Epilogue (f.o)

summary: they say the odds tend to favor those who need them. well, they were wrong.

warnings; swearing, death/murder mention.

wc; 10k

NOTES: i give reader a last name to fit the world.

–

After you won the Hunger Games, you were fully convinced that you would never get a moment of silence ever again. Elysia didn’t tell you until after you’d arrived in District Four--back when you had just come home from the games--that you’d be busy for weeks after. Your life wouldn’t return back to normal immediately, it would be gradual.

On top of all the celebrations that you were required to attend, like the Banquet with all the expensive people in and outside of your district. In your opinion, that was probably the worst to attend, and it was only slightly better because Finnick was there to help you. Then there was a holiday where entertainers from the Capitol and food was provided for everyone. And finally, the first Parcel Day, where families would all receive their own package of food for bringing home a tribute. The best part? There’s one Parcel Day for every month.

Not to mention, you spent every waking moment with Finnick. If you weren’t with Finnick, you were with some Capitol reporters that came around regularly to check up on you and your family. For a while, it seemed like they weren’t going to leave at all, which started to get Reed irritated.

He just wanted to have a get together with Caspian’s family to finally have a small celebration between you all, but it was practically impossible when you were constantly being hounded. Finnick felt the same way, it made him squirm but he never said anything that might turn the reporters away. Reed was a whole different story.

And even after his meltdown, they didn’t consider leaving you alone until some dumbass made the mistake of trying to surprise you from behind. In return for flipping the reporter onto their back and nearly killing them after, you were then signed up for the best therapist that Reed could find.

He says that it isn’t permanent, but you need to be going every week for a while. The Hunger Games did a number on you, and it was only obvious when you had literally treated the reporter like another tribute inside of the games. In the end, you bruised Mox’s rib and nearly broke Reed’s nose.

You felt horrible for a while after, but they weren’t mad at you. It’s not your fault, you didn’t ask for any of this, it just came along with the already-shitty package. You’re just lucky that the reporters weren’t allowed to say anything on it. Otherwise, the image that the Capitol constructed for you, would be completely ruined.

So, really, you spent about a month and a half after the games, celebrating and trying not to look too terribly bad in front of the reporters. It wasn’t at all glamorous, you woke up every morning feeling worse than the last. When everything cooled down, you told Reed, Mox and Finnick that you’d need a while to yourself before even considering being around others.

Finnick felt the same. You guys spoke when you could, but the conversations weren’t very long. By the time you came around to each other again, you’d already been moved into Victor’s Village, right next to Mags. Finnick is placed next to Anchor. The houses are huge, with more bedrooms than you know what to do with. If you really wanted to, you could fit Naida’s entire family in here. And she has five kids, one girl and four boys.

The house would be an absolute disaster, of course. But you’d still be able to fit their entire family, and maybe even Finnick’s, if you’re squeezing. Finnick only has a younger brother, Orion. Since your winning of the games, you’ve got significantly closer with his family. A lot more than you had been originally.

You thought that you were close before, when he’d bring you cookies and walk you home from school in the rain. That was really nothing, compared to this. At least once a week, you two meet up to have lunch or dinner or something, just to keep you all close. And once every two to three weeks, your two families and Naida’s will meet up in your house to have dinner.

Fifteen people, all sat at one table. When it comes to cooking, practically everyone is working together. The younger kids are all playing together in one of the spare bedrooms, and even then, there’s still people left over, with no clue what to do. It tends to be you, Finnick and Alyssum that are left alone the most often. Either in your living room or out front. The house can be quite loud a lot of the time.

After the two of you won the games, it hasn’t been the exact same as it was before. You knew that there would be differences, you’d already seen it when you had gone home for the first time with your family. The way that the neighbors, the ones you’ve known for years, would shut their curtains and for good measure, their blinds too. It made for a lonely neighborhood.

You can’t just ask them why they have the sudden change of heart, but you suppose you could guess. As if you’ve been repeating to yourself for months now, you’re the fifteen year old girl who won the Hunger Games with one fourteen year old boy. He was the youngest victor, together you found out that you’re the youngest pair to win together. You once lived in poverty, and now you’re practically royalty.

People are just waiting for you to stop being humble, but it’s hard to forget your roots, especially when they’re deeply embedded. You remember the nights of eating dinner by the candlelight, and the cold winters and sweltering summers. You remember the stomach pains when you had to give up your dinner for Alyssum.

You wish you could tell all of them that you’re the same. You’ve always been the same person, and you don’t have the slightest intention of changing. Not as you get older, not as your money starts piling. You’re still the same girl who used to go to The Square for soaps and ugly dresses and beat down shoes when there was no other place to go.

Maybe it isn’t you who’s changed, it’s the people around you.

Sounds like something cheesy, straight out of some romance novel.

Well, back to what you were saying about being fully convinced that you’d never get a moment left to your thoughts ever again; there’s about to be a rinse and repeat. You’ve managed to survive a couple of normal months, and it’s just about to get hectic. The winter Victory Tour is here.

The Victory Tour happens six months after the end of the Hunger Games. So, not only do districts have time to mourn and heal from the wounds of their tributes being killed, they’re now forced to reopen those wounds. And you’re going to be required to rub it in their faces.

The only reason why the Victory Tour takes place so long after the actual games is because it’s a reminder that the districts can’t fully escape the games. Sure, your tributes might have been killed in the summer, but just because it’s winter, doesn’t mean you get to have a moment of peace. What kind of ridiculous thinking is that?

It just means you’re about to spend another couple of weeks away from home. About a day in every district, starting in District Twelve and ending in District Four, since you skip over your home district. So, it would technically go from Twelve, Eleven, Ten, etc all the way to Five, then it would be Three, the career districts, and then a celebration at home. Again.

Needless to say, you hope that you’ll never have to celebrate another thing ever again in your life after this. You’re tired of the big dinners and the pats on the backs. You just want everything to return back to normal.

“Think we should head back, yet?” Finnick asks, skipping another rock across the water. He’s knee-deep, pants rolled up to keep them from getting wet, but he doesn’t care anyway. You’ll be taking a shower when you get home.

“Probably.” you tell him, but neither of you move. Finnick rubs his thumb over a smooth gray stone, showing it to you.

You barely look over in time to catch that it’s the shape of a heart. Instead of doing something romantic, like handing it to you, Finnick straight throws it, not even trying to skip the rock. It soars through the air, going pretty far into the water. When it lands, it causes a minor splash. You’d say that’s swimming deep, you wouldn’t be able to stand up anymore.

“Can’t wait until this is all over.” you say.

“Tell me about it.” he skips another rock, it hits the surface once, twice, thrice, four times before it sinks, “I just keep thinking about how the other kids at school are reacting.”

“Reed was actually considering homeschooling me.” you tell him.

He pauses, looking over at you, “You can’t do that, then I’d be at the school by myself.”

You give him a small grin, “So? Won’t it be like before, when we didn’t really talk?”

“I hope not.” Finnick laughs, “We’re in it for life, we have to be. Plus, you live on the same street as I do, so there’s no avoiding me.”

“I can try.” you push yourself up from the rock beach, crossing your arms over your chest, “I think we’ll grow sick of each other eventually.”

“If they keep pushing us together, I do too.” Finnick holds out a rock for you. You take it, weighing it in your palm before skipping it. It dies after bouncing twice.

He throws his last rock, this one goes the farthest so far. When it sinks too, he brushes off his hands and turns around, getting out of the water. You pull your dirty tennis shoes on again. Finnick dries his feet with his towel, throws said towel over his shoulder, then slides his feet into his sandals. After that, you’re on your way back.

“At least we get to see our prep teams again, I missed them.”

“I didn’t.” Finnick makes a face, shaking his head, “Too touchy for my liking, even before we won.”

“Gross, wish I could give you mine instead.”

“No, you don’t.” Finnick makes a face, and then the two of you laugh.

The walk to Victor’s Village is far, since you and Finnick purposely tried to find a spot that would be hard to find, if anyone came looking. You don’t think anyone has, but then again, you won’t know until you get back to the houses. You and Finnick fill the silence by talking about what you think will actually happen when school gets started up again. You guess sashays to wear, and finnick bets on crowns.

And sure enough, when you get back to the village, you’re able to see the cars parked on the cobblestone pathways. There’s cameras being set up outside, and two separate nervous parents waiting. For Finnick, this would be his mother, Laoise, who comes rushing down the steps immediately.

“Where have the two of you been?” she asks, then doesn’t wait for an answer as she starts yanking Finnick towards his house.

You wave him goodbye before heading towards your parent, Reed. He’s not upset, as far as you can tell. You head inside with him to see that your prep team definitely is. Cleo lets out the biggest whine you’ve heard come from her, and Leo sighs loudly to let you know that he isn’t happy. Beth, on the other hand, starts towards your bathroom to get a shower started.

You’re not allowed a single conversation with Anchor, or Elysia who seems to be bouncing back and forth between houses. You’re drowned in water, hair washed swiftly just to make it shiny and clean-looking again. You smell like fruit and flowers at the end of the shower, being swept right into your bedroom after.

This is when they start to work like they did beforehand. Cleo gets to work on your nails, Leo heads right in with fixing your eyebrows and plucking every little hair, washing your face down, and starting over to make sure you’re to his liking. While Beth, as usual, takes her time with drying and styling your hair to make sure that it looks good enough. Out of the three of them, she’s luckiest since her job isn’t that hard.

Cleo’s going on about how the entire Capitol is excited to see you again. This is when you remember that you’ll be visiting the Capitol again. You bite your tongue, since you’re not excited. You wonder if this means you’ll be onsaughted by reporters again, going back to weeks of non-normalcy.

“Laurel doesn’t want to see you until you’re fully dressed.” Cleo says, raising from the floor, “I’ll grab your clothes.”

She leaves the room, Leo and Beth pack up their things, “You’ll be wearing warm clothes tonight. I wouldn’t get used to it if I were you. You’ll be in dresses for the entire tour.” Leo says.

“Great.” you give him a smile, “Thank you, both.”

Cleo comes back in a moment later, and has you getting dressed immediately. Obviously they’re going for cool tones, because they place you in thick white pants and a long-sleeved, light blue shirt. After that is the jacket, the second that it’s zipped up, you can feel yourself start to sweat. It’s safe to say that you won’t be feeling the cold outside. They place you in warm shoes too, and you’re forced to stand still while they readjust.

In the end, they take the jacket off and tell you that you’ll be wearing it later. For now, you can go ahead and see everyone else downstairs. You take your time going down the steps, not really in a hurry. There’s no way you guys are going to be on time as much as you had wanted to earlier.

“There she is!” Anchor stands in your hallway, motioning to you.

Laurel comes out of your living room, looking over you from head to toe, “Where’s the jacket?”

“With Cleo, she said I could wear it later.” you say, “How do I look?”

“Like how you should.” she says, and then moves on. If you could take a guess, you think she’s annoyed that you did make them behind schedule. Finnick’s probably receiving the same cold treatment that you are.

Elysia comes in through the door, holding it wide open. Behind her is the camera crew, who come in and make themselves comfortable in the living room. Soon, the downstairs manages to crowd. The camera crew, Elysia, the prep team, your siblings, Anchor and Laurel. With the amount of people in the house, the volume starts to increase.

You reach for your pinky to find that the ring is missing. In the middle of instructions from Anchor, you turn without a single word and head up the staircase. If you’re going to do this, you’re going to need the ring. If Anchor is bothered, he doesn’t say anything, he just lets you go.

In your room, you shut the door to muffle the sound and get some privacy. If you heard Elysia correctly, you should have five minutes or so before you present your hobby to the camera crew, which they’ll be editing and showing the public later. When it came to picking one out, you and Finnick were pretty stumped.

The choices were obvious, you were going to rock, paper, scissors to see who would get fishing or knots, when Mags came through with some ideas. Most of them were stupid, Finnick can’t play a guitar and you’ve never really liked gardening. Then Anchor suggested a two part skill, photography and modeling.

You wanted to shut down the idea, especially when Finnick was all for taking the pictures. If you have professional pictures of yourself, people are going to think you’re vain. So, Finnick switched the roles and decided that he could be the model and you could be the photographer.

It took some practice, the first couple of pictures that you’d taken with the Capitol-bought camera were horrible. But as time went on over the few months, you managed to get a hang of it. And Finnick decided that he liked to model a lot more than he thought he did. And just like that, the problem was solved.

While Finnick’s living room is covered in pictures of himself that you took in various places, your living room has cameras and a few scenery and portrait pictures to show. Needless to say, this is another example of how you and Finnick have been complimenting each other since the beginning.

You find your ring where Beth had placed it to get it out of the way during the bath. You pick it up and slip it on. By the time you get downstairs, they’re ready for you to start talking about yourself and not shut up until you’ve covered everything. After, you’ll narrate from notecards that Elysia wrote for you.

You think Anchor might’ve told Reed and Mox that you were overwhelmed or something, because it’s clear there’s been a change. Elysia is gone completely, Laurel and the prep team stand in the dining room, away from where you are. The camera crew inside of the living room is spread out enough to give you breathing room. The only people standing close are your brothers.

Just before you’re on camera, you stand taller and give a smile. Once they give you the cue, you go ahead and start explaining your hobby. The cameras, the pictures, how Finnick is your partner in crime with this. You make sure to explain what you do exactly with the pictures. When you’re done, you read the notecards as peppy as you can, then they push you out so they can get the living room by itself.

Reed and Mox aren’t excluded from the event, they’re actually pulled on camera together, which leaves you to hold onto Alyssum for the time being. You expected her to be pretty alert, but in the end, she lays her head on your shoulder while you sway. As soon as they’re done, things start moving quickly.

You hand Alyssum over, and Anchor comes back around with instructions. Laurel pulls the jacket onto you, which has you feeling like a furnace again, but you don’t complain. You nod and him and try to pay attention the best you can. All you seem to remember now is that you need to look as excited as possible when seeing Finnick.

Elysia then stops you in front of the door, tells you to be careful, and then opens the door. You step out, ignoring the sound of the door shutting behind you when you go down the steps. A smile spreads over your face at the sight of Finnick, who looks just as ridiculous as you feel because of how bundled you are. Especially since he was wearing shorts in freezing cold water just a couple of hours ago.

“Finnick!” you shout, opening your arms up wide.

Finnick hugs you tightly, pulling you flush against his chest. He presses a warm kiss against your cold cheeks and laughs, “Missed me that much?”

“Of course!” you laugh too.

Everything you’d been building up to today, is over just like that. It was only to get an outside shot of you and Finnick greeting each other for the first time during the Victory Tour.

The goodbyes to your family and friends takes place outside. Finnick says goodbye to his parents and his brother, Orion. You say goodbye to your brothers, sister and Naida’s family, since they wanted to see you one last time before you go. Everyone from the Capitol piles into their cars, the Capitol people take off first. You, Finnick, Elysia and your mentors get into the last car. You wave goodbye to your brothers before you go.

At the train station, you wave goodbye and board the train. Elysia doesn’t stop the grind there, as she gets you guys into the dining room to have supper. The prep team doesn’t join you guys when you eat. You and Finnick have to take it easy, since the food is so unbearably rich. Even with you trying to make sure that you don’t eat too much, you still manage to feel pretty nauseous after.

After that, you’re left to your own devices. Laurel and Pleurisy disappear, Elysia says to be ready to get up early tomorrow, and your mentors head straight to bed. It leaves just you and Finnick as always. For a while, you two just stare at each other as if you don’t have a clue on what to say.

Then, Finnick gives a smile, “Sleepover?”

You grin, “Oh, hell yeah. I’ll just take a shower first.”

“Meet you there, then.” Finnick says.

You two split, with Finnick going to his own room. In yours, you go ahead and pick out your pajamas, and then shut the door to the bathroom to make sure that Finnick won’t accidentally walk in on anything. With the ring in a safe place, you step into the shower to wash off all of the prep team’s work. Once the water starts running clear again, you step out.

Finnick’s got his spot next to the wall all sorted out. He’s got a blanket laid out, a pillow and then a second bigger blanket to actually use. Obviously he banked on your shower idea, because his hair is wet too. You slip the ring into the bowl at your bedside and then fall back onto your bed.

“Tired?” Finnick jokes.

“Compared to you, yeah.” you look at him, “They’ve got to do a lot more with me than you. You heard Elysia, you get to sleep in.”

Finnick scoffs, “You think I sleep?” he tries to keep a straight face after, but it doesn’t work. The two of you crack up.

“Anyway, I’m going to bed.” you tell him.

“Sounds good to me.” Finnick says, settling in next to the wall.

The two of you lay in silence for a while. Despite feeling completely exhausted, you can’t bring yourself to fall asleep. You curl yourself up, rock yourself, spread out, roll over but there’s nothing that works. Finnick falls asleep faster than you do, you can hear his heavy breathing.

You eventually settle for staring at the ceiling, feeling a sense of deja vu. It’s exactly like how you’d tried to fall asleep the night before you got home. Only then, you were nervous and excited and now you’re just… upset? You just want to be back to normal. You get that you’ll be mentoring again in the spring/summer, but for now, you should be able to relax.

You think you fall asleep sometime in the middle of the night. You wake up to Elysia rocking you and telling you it’s time to get started. She helps you get dressed into something comfortable, and you decide to leave your ring on the bedside table. When you leave the bedroom, Finnick is still sleeping comfortably next to the wall.

He won’t have to get up for a couple of hours. He’s only got so much that needs to be done, while you on the other hand have to go through everything the Capitol did initially. Your skin is going to be sore for the first time in a long time. You were just getting used to finally looking like the other girls in your grade, too.

Your prep team is already in the dining car when you get there. You assume your regular spot and watch as the team slowly comes to life. It’s obvious that they never have to get up this early, ever. You watch as they drink cup after cup of coffee, and then popping brightly colored pills into their mouths as they go.

Cleo does the most out of all of them, which solves the mystery as to why she’s so energetic. In no time, she’s looking awake and chatting with Leo animatedly. You eat quietly and try not to engage in conversation with them just yet. You wonder how they’re going to rebuild you if Finnick’s sleeping in your room.

You finish your breakfast, and figure that if you’re going to wake up Finnick in the process, you might as well bring him something as a gift. With the help of Elysia, you pack a plate full of foods that he enjoys. Cleo and Leo try not to be loud--Beth isn’t ever a problem--but they end up waking Finnick anyway.

“Here.” you set the tray onto the floor, “I’ve got to get started.”

He’s tired, but at least there’s no bags beneath his eyes, “Have fun.”

“Thanks.”

Beth shuts the door the most of the way, and then they all turn on you like a pack of wild dogs. You’re stripped for the most part, and they start with waxing your legs. Finnick occasionally talks to you on the other side of the door, enjoying his breakfast. By the time you’re being bathed the second time, Elysia comes around to collect Finnick.

They’re all unusually quiet during this, even Cleo. You guess that the coffee and weird pills didn’t do their job good enough. They shower you one last time, try your skin and then lather you in the healing lotion. Immediately, you begin to feel better. You thank them for their efforts, get dressed and meet everyone else in the dining car again. It’s lunch time.

Elysia lays out the plan for you guys during this time. For the Victory Tour, you’ll be starting in District Twelve, which is another day’s train ride from here. By tomorrow afternoon, you should be there. She outlines the protocols and tells you what you should expect from the district, there’s not a single nice thing she says after that.

“It’s not all that bad.” Anchor says, he’s finished with his lunch already, just occupying a spot to keep you all company, “They’re going to be upset like they are every year.”

You share a look with Finnick, though. As much as Anchor and Mags can try and comfort you two, you think they’ve forgotten who the two tributes died to. You killed the boy, drowned him unfairly in water he doesn’t know how to swim in. And Finnick killed the girl a couple days later. You don’t know if you can even consider that self-defense.

In fact, the more you think about it, the more you begin to realize that every stop you’ll be making over the course of the next few weeks will be completely miserable. You and Finnick got an even split of murders, both of you have six, which in total makes twelve. Almost every stop will have one tribute you killed.

Anchor says that the districts are going to be upset, but that’s such an understatement. They’re going to be pissed, the only one that might be a warm welcome is going to be District Three, because of Verda and Blaire. Otherwise, you’re absolutely hated.

Finnick recognizes this too, his face is twisted, the two of you stare at each other for a moment. You wonder who’s going to be the one to point this fact out, but neither of you speak. You just let the topic drop, he goes back to picking at his sweet roll.

“Alright well, I’m going to take a nap. Wake me when it’s supper.” you say.

A few of them bid you a goodbye, you drag your feet all the way to your room. Really, you’re not all that tired, you just don’t want to hear Elysia call another district dirty and ungrateful again. In your room, Finnick’s belongings are gone, so there’s no chance that you’ll be interrupted.

Instead of laying down, you find yourself heading towards the chair that you’d first occupied on your way to the Capitol during the summer. You sit in it, sinking into the plush cushion, and stare into the room. It’s a moment before you remember that magazine from your first time around.

You open up the nightstand drawer and find that there’s a new issue. And right on the front is a picture of you and Finnick that you took for the victory tour.

Inside is probably your worst nightmare. There’s information about yourself, all spilled out onto the page. Your birthday, your age, stuff about your family, how both of your parents died… it just keeps going.

Finnick’s page isn’t nearly as bad as yours. In fact, when you read over it, you’re sure that the Capitol publishers purposely did this. When you begin to feel sick, you rip it into shreds and throw it into the bathroom garbage can so that you don’t have to see it.

This is when you decide that it’s a good time to fall through on taking the nap. You pull the blanket above your head to shield yourself from the light. It takes some time, you still toss and turn but sticking to the idea works. The next time you wake up is to Elysia at the door, telling you that supper is ready.

Even after catching a look at yourself in the mirror, you decide that you could care less. You’re going right back to bed after this, you’re fucking exhausted. Everyone is sitting at the table when you get out there, and spirits seem to be pretty high. The prep teams carry most of the conversation.

You pick at your food in the beginning, not entirely hungry since you just woke up. You squint, each as much as you can, and sit at the table until you decide that it’s an appropriate time to get up and leave. You and Finnick are reminded that you’ll be up early tomorrow by Elysia. After that, you’re free to go.

Finnick stays at the table, but you go ahead and leave. You change into proper pajamas and roll over. You don’t fall asleep as quickly as you had hoped. In fact, you’re stuck thinking about the families of the kids that you had killed in the arena.

District Twelve, Tassel and Fodille. Tassel being the thirteen year-old boy that you had killed, and Fodille being the twelve year-old girl that Finnick had killed. You could try to play it off as self defense with Tassel, but you knew exactly what you were doing when you turned your back to him. It was bait, you wanted him to step out so that you could kill him. And it worked, you just didn’t expect him to jump on your back like that.

As for Finnick, you can’t imagine what he’d done to get Fodille to go after him. Or maybe he just came across her and decided that he might as well kill her.

Either way, in the end, you wake up screaming. For a good second, while you stare off into the pitch black room, you’re sure that you’ve died. But the moment you take in a deep breath from your nose, you’re reminded that even that would be a dream. Your throat is sore, your cheeks are soaked. You reach for a pillow and bury your face in it, sobbing, wondering how long you’ll have to suffer like this.

You’re so fucking tired. You miss the period of time when you didn’t have nightmares or worried about people approaching you from certain angles because you might accidentally kill them in a fit of blind arena flashbacks.

You scream into the pillow, and then throw it across the room. You watch as it hits the only glass frame in the room, knocking it off the wall. You get up from the bed, take your ring from the bowl and go to the bathroom. You don’t bother to turn on the light, but you hesitate putting water on your face.

It wouldn’t be a bright idea, especially not after the nightmare, but you do it anyway, multiple times. Even after the cold water, you still feel stuffy, so you go to leave the bedroom. Just as you step on the carpet near the door, a searing hot pain goes right through your foot.

You stifle a scream, gritting your teeth as tears reappear in your eyes. Your hand falls against the wall, holding all of your bodyweight, while the other cradles your foot. Even in the darkness, you can see the dark liquid coming from your foot. You struggle to find the lightswitch, and find yourself blinded in yellow light when you turn it on.

It takes a while of blinking for you to be able to see, and when you do, you’re not surprised. The frame had shattered, giant glass and small glass shards are all over the carpet. In your foot is a pretty big one, around it are much smaller pieces. Blood comes out of every one of them, staining the white carpet red.

Now is the time to start looking for the help call button. You go over the one panel near the door, squinting and rubbing your eyes. The pain in your foot is distracting, the light is hard to see through. You end up pressing the red one and hope that it works.

It does, it’s only a matter of seconds before the door is opening and you’re met with multiple Capitol attendants at the door. They take in the scene, the glass, your foot, the disorientation in your face. And without a single word, two of them help you so that you don’t have to walk on the foot, another goes to clean up the mess.

They take you into the main room and sit you on a chair, “Would you like for us to wake Elysia or one of the mentors?”

You shake your head, eyes trained on the first aid. You’re pretty sure that you’re going to need stitches, “No, can you just tell Elysia when she gets up?”

They agree, bring around the medical expert. They sit in a chair opposite to you, prop your foot onto their thigh and gently get to work. They pull out each individual shard, starting with the smallest, and working their way up to the bigger ones. You close your eyes and dig your nails into your hands when they start pulling out the worst one. You try not to move much but you still end up curling your foot.

You were right about the stitches, the person numbs your foot first and then works on the needle. Since you can’t feel it, it’s easier to watch them go through it. You bleed a lot, and even with the stitches, they wrap a bandage around your foot and have to half-carry you back to your room.

In the hallway is Finnick, he’s shirtless and has got his arms crossed over his chest. He looks over you, the two Capitol attendants, and then down at your foot. The serious expression on his face drops, as well as his arms, “What happened?”

“Broke a frame and stepped on glass, had to get stitches. I’ll be fine, you don’t need to worry about me.”

“She can stay in my room.” Finnick insists, holding his arms out for you.

You don’t argue, letting him hold onto you, “Thank you, can you tell Elysia that I’ll be in his room, too?”

“Yes, of course. Call if you have any more problems.” they say.

Finnick brings you into his room, which is almost a mirror of yours. His bed is unkempt, he was obviously sleeping. You wonder if it was your screaming and sobbing that woke him up, or the Capitol people helping you that did it. Either way, he shuts the door and helps you to his bed.

“I can sleep on the floor.” you tell him.

“There’s a hammock.” Finnick says, motioning to the corner.

Your eyes follow, and you find that he’s not lying. A white-roped hammock hangs in the corner of the room. He throws in a pillow, lays a blanket down as a base and then helps you into it. It’s a lot more comfortable than you thought it would be, and you laugh when he throws another, softer blanket on top of you.

Before he goes to lay back down, for the first time in months, he presses a gentle kiss to your lips, “I’m right here if you need anything, okay?”

“Yeah, thank you.”

He lays down in the bed, back turned to you, blanket pulled over his shoulder. You lay your head against the pillow and stare at the ceiling of his room. Your foot throbs painfully. Even with how he set you up comfortably, you don’t fall asleep. You go over the different scenarios in which everyone will have to work around your hurt foot.

During your daydreaming, you manage to doze off. Before you know it, Finnick is shaking you awake, telling you that you two should eat lunch real quick before you get ready for District Twelve. It’s the afternoon, they’ve let you sleep in considerably. Finnick helps you out of the hammock and lets you lean on him while the two of you make your way to the dining car.

Everyone is at the table already, dressed and ready for what Twelve will have to offer. Before you can even get halfway into the room, all eyes are on you and Finnick. Suddenly, the topic is on your hurt foot.

“Let’s see it.” Laurel says, motioning for you to head towards her.

Finnick helps, you lean against the table with one hand so Finnick can go and sit down and start eating. You watch as Laurel unravels the bandage to take in the damage.

“Well, I’ll certainly say that I’m surprised.” Elysia says, sitting up a bit on her chair to see over the table.

“What happened, again?” Anchor asks, looking right at you.

“I uh--” you make a face, “The Capitol attendant didn’t tell you?”

“They didn’t tell us much of anything.” Cleo says, sipping on her coffee, “Did you get any sleep last night.”

Leo huffs, “That’s going to be hard to cover up.

“Well, what happened?” Laurel presses, looking at you now. If she thinks that your foot looks bad, she doesn’t say anything.

“A glass picture frame broke by the door last night.” you decide that you’ll keep the fact that you broke it, to yourself.

“How?” Cleo asks.

You open your mouth, going to come up with some bullshit excuse, but Elysia has her own reason.

“I bet it was how hard the train braked last night during the refuel. Did any of you feel it?”

“I did.” Cleo and Leo say at the same time.

“Makes sense.” Pleurisy says, “They should’ve nailed it onto the wall better. What’re you thinking, Laurel?”

“She’s going to have to use numbing cream and wear flats for the rest of the trip.” Laurel turns to an attendant, “Can you clean and rebandage her foot?”

You get a new place to sit, away from the table, while your foot is reprepared. At least you’ve gotten yourself out of wearing heels, but you can’t imagine that the pain in your foot is nearly worth it. Plus, you’ll still be walking funky, so there’s no doubt that someone is going to point it out.

You have to eat quickly because you’re behind schedule. This time, you manage to feel just fine, which means that you won’t have to take a ten minute breather to make sure that you won’t puke. Cleo, Beth and Leo work together to make you look nice. They pull your hair down, making it look nice with as many products as possible.

Laurel comes around with your clothes. Since it’s snowing in District Twelve, you put on a dark purple jacket, black pants, snow boots and a hat to keep your ears warm. You think it’s overkill until you finally look outside. Even Finnick is dressed up to be warm, and he hardly ever gets cold.

The train gets dark for a long moment as you pass through a tunnel. When light comes back, you can see that District Twelve has tall walls. As soon as you can see into the district, the first word that comes to mind is ‘gloomy’. You immediately feel bad for the people because they have to stand outside while you receive plaques for murdering their tributes.

You and Finnick are brought into the main room, you’re on more of a time crunch than you had originally thought. Laurel applies the finishing touches here, fixing stray hairs and helping you walk in the boots with your hurt foot. Right as you pull into the train station, Elysia tells you that there won’t be a ride through the city, so there’s nothing to worry about there. But there are cameras at the station, waiting to see you two.

And just like that, the doors open and you’re exposed to said cameras. You hold onto Finnick’s arm tightly, trying not to make your limp super noticeable. Even with the numbing cream, you can feel the stitches oddly move. You’re really afraid of accidentally tearing them.

You’re directed into a car by a couple of peacekeepers. Making sure to thank them, you head inside first, Mags follows, then it’s Finnick, Anchor and Elysia. On the way to the Justice Building, Elysia gives you the cards to read off of, just in case you forget some lines.

From the car, you’re inside of the main building. You hardly get a few steps inside when you can smell a particular scent that must be exclusive to their district. As well as see all the dust that has collected onto tabletops they have not used in months. You can at least smell something cooking.

There’s a few seconds before you have to go outside and face the families of Tassel and Fodille. It really hits you now, you take deep breaths and try to ease the panic attack that’s rising. But it’s coming, and you don’t know how to stop it. With the anthem already playing, you’re fucked.

“(Y/n), breathe.” Finnick says, making you face him, “Tell me one thing you smell.”

“The dinner.”

“Two things you feel.” he says.

“You touching me and the stitches.” you take a deep breath.

“Three things you hear.”

“Your voice, the anthem and my heartbeat.” it’s loud in your ears, almost louder than the anthem that’s playing outside.

“Your heartbeat is constant, it’s not going away.” Finnick says, “Focus on it, okay?”

You nod, sniffing. He gives you a small smile. Microphones are clipped to your bodies so that you’ll be heard. Finnick offers his arm and you wrap your hands around it, just like how you did on the chariot ride. The mayor of District Twelve is introducing you when the doors open.

“You’ve got this.” Elysia urges.

You two move forward, the applause from Twelve feels apprehensive. You walk together, you rely on Finnick to find the right spot on where to stop. He does, and you’re finally able to take in what the district looks like. You were right about the gloomy idea, because this does not nearly radiate the same energy that District Four does.

The space in front of the Justice Building is packed with people, all who don’t look thrilled that they have to entertain you two. There’s been two stages that have been constructed for the families of Tassel and Fodille. You don’t want to look. You have to.

Tassel’s parents are pretty young, but they don’t have any other kids, Tassel was their only child. His parents are straight-faced and angry, no doubt at you. Fodille’s family isn’t much better, she only has a younger sister that has to be half the age that Fodille was… so many six, seven?

The clapping dissolves, the mayor has to give a speech in your honor. You hate standing here and awkwardly staring into their district like this. You killed Tassel, you killed their only son. There’s a number of circumstances that go through your mind, none of which you like.

Two girls hand off large bouquets of flowers to you and Finnick. You make sure to thank them, and then Finnick is reciting the customary reply. It’s nothing interesting, just a thank you. You say your part next, which is practically a repeat of what he just did.

The last part is up to you and Finnick, since it’s your personal comments. It might have been approved by Elysia, Anchor and Mags, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t any less specially structured for their tributes. Unfortunately for you, you and Finnick came to the agreement that you two would switch on and off for who starts first and who goes second.

You clear your throat slightly, staring at Tassel’s family, because everything that you had written down, doesn’t come to mind. You open your mouth, draw your eyebrows in and breathe out.

You can’t say anything staring at them like this. You close your eyes, and find it much easier this way, “Last night I dreamt that I had been perched in bushes by a pond, watching as two older tributes came around to gather water. I barely moved, but made noise nonetheless. The boy came to investigate, thought that he’d heard something but turned his back to me. I thought it was the perfect opportunity.

“I jumped onto his back, arms and legs wrapped around him and thought victory was mine because I had the high ground. How would he get away from this? He couldn’t possibly. When he reached for his sword, I pulled his hair and went to go choke him. I didn’t take into consideration how clever the boy was, as he fell backwards into the pond on purpose.

“I wasn’t worried for a second.” you breathe out all the air you’re holding, “But I panicked when the water washed over me, when I realized that I didn’t know how to swim and I couldn’t hold my breath for long. I panicked when the boy held me in place to make sure that I would die. I wanted to cry when I thought about how I would be breathing in water in no time.

“It was worse when he wouldn’t let me go, no matter how desperate I was. I thought it was unfair, how he could be so big and so much stronger than me. It was an unfair advantage that I hadn’t taken into consideration. When I opened my mouth to breathe, unable to hold my breath any longer, I inhaled water. The boy let me go, and left me in the darkness of that pond, to sink to the bottom and drown.”

You open your eyes, looking at Tassel’s family, “I died in the dark, cold and in pain, worried about how my family would be able to pay for funeral expenses.” you shake your head, “I have been waking up to this nightmare for weeks. Since the end of the games, I have not slept soundly since. Your son’s face haunts me, and I know that means nothing to you, and I’m sorry. It’s not a proud moment of mine, his face never escapes me in my happiest moments.”

It’s done it, his mother is crying, burying her face into her husband’s shoulder. His father nods once at you, but you don’t think that’s good enough. You could give this speech a hundred times to them, apologize over and over, but it will never compare to what it feels like to lose family. Especially not a son that they had raised.

Finnick gives his rehearsed speech to Fodille’s family, which turns out to be just as emotional. You two are given big plaques to accompany your bouquets. You listen to the clapping of the district, which somehow sounds louder than the first time around. The mayor wraps up your appearance, and then you’re brought back into the Justice Building, where everyone is waiting.

Elysia praises you guys, hardly making a comment on how you went off-script. Anchor gives you an approving nod, and suddenly you’re being readied for the dinner. You get washed completely so that you’re a blank canvas, and the prep teams work back up from there. Cleo and Leo are excited to be attending tonight’s dinner, and all the future ones too. You don’t see the big fuss.

They keep with the purple theme. They place you in a dress that reaches your calves, and a pair of black flats with white socks after more numbing cream is applied. Laurel comes around for finishing touches, which is when she pulls a black cardigan over your shoulders to keep you extra warm. You thank her.

“Try not to play with the ring too much, okay?” Laurel says, standing you in front of the mirror so that you can see yourself. You’ve begun to get used to the fact that you’re pretty unrecognizable after every makeover, “The Capitol is starting to take notice.”

“Okay.” your hands drop, you smooth out the dress, “Are we ready to go?”

“Yeah, make sure to smile.” she says.

The prep teams head out first, Elysia counts every step, and warns you guys to count too. Next is Laurel and Pleurisy, who look good naturally and have big smiles on their faces. Anchor has Mags hold onto him so that she’s able to move quicker and so that they don’t fall behind.

“How are you feeling?” Finnick asks.

“Tired, what about you?”

“Hungry.” he says, and the two of you grin.

You start walking.

It’s a rinse and repeat for every district. Your speeches start to blur, as does the faces. District Eight is hard for Finnick because both of the tributes died to him, that night he wakes up sobbing. You hold your breath and the next time you’re fully able to breathe is District Three, where Verda and Blaire’s families are more than forgiving. You can’t thank Blaire’s family enough, when you leave, you think that you’ve finally come to peace with Blaire’s sacrifice.

After your visit in District Two--which had ended badly, the word ‘traitor’ is what you’re labeled as there--Finnick comes up with the idea of making your own training facilities.

“What the hell do you mean?” you ask, looking at Finnick. He’s sitting on his bed, sprawled out and staring at the ceiling. You’re in his hammock.

Finnick sits up, “Think about it, we get a building, invest our own money into it. We get families in on it, advertise it quietly, start training kids to be prepared. If we can win at fourteen and fifteen, other kids can win at fourteen and fifteen, maybe even younger!”

“They just need an opportunity.” you say, he nods, a grin is spreading over his face. “We’ve got a problem though, your mom is going to say no, and my brothers would never approve of it.”

“I’ve got a solution to that too. What if we ask Anchor and Mags to put their names down? But only us and Anchor train the tributes, since we’re the youngest.”

You smile a bit, “You better be the one to suggest it to them.”

“Okay!” he agrees, getting up from the bed, “Let’s go now, then.”

Mags and Anchor approve the idea almost immediately, and for the rest of the night, you’re subjected to laying out the plans with them. Mags has got years worth of money built up, and decides that she’ll take on the bulk of the expenses. Anchor agrees to be a trainer, as do you and Finnick, on top of being mentors.

“You know this means you won’t be home often, right?” Anchor says.

“At least we’ll be in the same district.” you tell him.

Conversation keeps moving. You point out that there’s an expensive building on the rich side of District Four. It’s big, and you think it served as some sort of hotel or warehouse. It’s going to need repairs, but you write the address down anyway and hand it off to Mags.

Finnick says that you two will start advertising it as soon as you get back home, there’s no doubt that there’s going to be some takers. No one wants their kids to die in the games, and if they’ve been preparing for years, their odds increase. By the time you reach District One, you’re feeling better about everything, and take District One with a brave smile.

The Capitol is the same way. You and Finnick stay in the Tribute Center, on your regular floor. The following night, you’re brought to the stage with Caesar to be questioned on how you and Finnick were feeling during the tour. He keeps it going smoothly, there’s not a moment you feel uncomfortable.

“And finally, what are your plans for the future?” he asks, sitting back in his chair, “Two young mentors, next summer will be your first time with tributes. What are your thoughts?”

“Our plans are secret.” you say outright, which has Finnick smirking.

The audience likes this, all on the edge of their seat. No matter how hard Caesar prys, neither you or Finnick say anything. To admit the idea of illegally training tributes could mean big trouble for District Four.

“You have to give me something.” Caesar says, “To give us something.”

Finnick gives him a fun smile, “Let’s just say that District Four just inherited the best mentors they could ask for.”

The interview ends, you and Finnick are brought to a large banquet. There’s music, soft chairs, tables with more food than you could ever imagine. The floors are polished, the ceiling is dark. You and Finnick are on camera the entire time, so you have to work together if you want to do anything. You two find your spot at the dessert table, and continue to sample the cakes, cookies, cupcakes, puddings, among other things. Finnick and you bet on who will get sick first, and you end up losing.

Eventually it gets out that you’re stationed at the dessert table, because people start coming around. You take pictures, and exchange names and conversation. You try to be polite and friendly, you’re just glad that they move on relatively quickly to allow others get their say.

Finnick enjoys his second slice of raspberry cheesecake, you get a cold bowl of ice cream and find a new spot to stand. You silently wish they served dishes like this back home. You wonder if someone has a cookbook, you’ll start cooking like this if you can. You’ve got the money for the ingredients, you just need the recipe.

Anchor and Mags come around to check on you and Finnick, and then suggest that you get real food into you besides all the sweets. They warn you to stay away from the drinks that’ll make you puke up your food, and wish you good luck on your next round of fans. You and Finnick go to a table with soups that warm the throat and make you feel hungrier than you were before.

When the music picks up to something more upbeat, you decide that it won’t hurt to dance once. You try to follow what Elysia had taught you two, but give up halfway through and decide for a more traditional dance from Four. It works, you and Finnick have more fun than you were before.

“Had you come up with that idea earlier into the victory tour, I can’t imagine how giddy we would have been throughout the whole tour.” you say, letting Finnick spin you.

“It would have been criminal.” he laughs, you join, “District One seemed like a pretty bad place to begin with.”

“Yeah, you’re right.” you agree. Considering that Trink and Lennox were the last two tributes that could have won. Their families weren’t very thrilled to see you two, either.

At this point, you don’t really care. How are they going to significantly affect you? Do they think them glaring at you is really going to do anything? The only time you’re afraid of Lennox in your nightmares is when he’s choking and beating you to death. If you could go back and do it all again, you’d kill Allio in his sleep and move on with your life.

He was stupid and egotistical. It’s his own fault that you’re alive and he isn’t. The Hunger Games is a fight to the death, a survival of the fittest. It’s an embarrassment to him that he had trained for years and still wasn’t fit enough to win. Him, seventeen, you, fifteen.

After dancing, you and Finnick take a break and wait for Elysia to come around. She picks you two up around midnight, the two of you go around and say your goodbyes and collect the prep teams, stylists and mentors. After that, you all get into separate cars to get back onto the train on time.

The prep teams are drunk and go to bed immediately. The rest of you stand around for a little while, talking about how tomorrow will go. Just before you go to bed, Elysia presents you with a recipe book straight from the kitchen. You thank her, bid everyone goodnight, but find yourself with Finnick in your room, going over what you’ll be making.

In the morning, you’re prepared for cameras again. You make sure to give a big smile and wave when you see Four again, glad to be home. Unfortunately, you’re not allowed to see your family until dinner. Everyone is brought to Mayor Burrula’s house to get ready for tonight’s celebration.

You’ve never been inside of his house before, but it’s huge. Three floors, the third is where you’re brought. You’re prepared, just like you’ve been for every evening for the past couple of weeks. You’re dressed in a knee-length, navy blue and silver dress. You’re still not allowed heels, so Laurel settles for leather sandals and begs you to not do anything that might make your foot bleed.

When you’re done, you have about an hour to wander around the house. You don’t exactly feel comfortable, but Finnick goes right ahead. He holds onto your hand and brings you through each and every floor. On the second one, you come across Mayor Burrula’s twins.

They’re both eighteen now, seniors. Ameer and Mirza are the most popular in their grade, and considering that they’re both boys, they’ve got a bigger voice than you could ever have with Finnick. It’s an easy business opportunity, and it doesn’t take long before Finnick catches on. Neither of you mention it, instead you take the hour to get close to them.

When the hour is up, you’re brought around to be with your teams again. Elysia reminds you what you’re supposed to do, you and Finnick are fussed over for the final time. Once again, everyone slowly descends down the stairs and outside, where the district is loud with whistling and clapping.

The prep teams, Elysia, the stylists and finally, your mentors all leave. In the end, it’s just you and Finnick standing there.

The tour is almost over.

Finnick offers his arm to you, “One last celebration.” he says.

You slip your arm into his, leaning over to give him a kiss.

“One last celebration.”

#ilguna #finnick odair #finnick odair imagine #finnick odair oneshot #finnick odair fanfic #finnick odair x reader #finnick odair lacuna #lacuna

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tiliamericana · 3 years

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Muay Thai: 1.09

Nairi double checked the address Linden had texted her and looked back up at the set of buildings. They were squat and stuck together, looking kind of like a demountable set up someone had made permanent as best they could. The foundation was brickwork that looked more recent than the dirty siding, and about halfway up the wall it was all old windows, half of which were propped open.

The number she was looking for was around the side and about halfway down, and Nairi could smell cleaning supplies and cooking food, and hear discordant music as she walked up the ramp towards the door she was looking for. It was propped open a couple of inches by a worn paint can filled with concrete, a little angry face painted on it in red. She knocked on the window panel in the door. “Linden?”

The door swung all the way open, and Linden poked her head out, smiling at her. “There you are! Found it okay?”

She was completely bare faced for the first time since Nairi had met her, and while the denim cut offs were a familiar part of her wardrobe rotation, the oversize grey t-shirt was new, shapeless and paint spattered. There was also paint all along her forearms, some of which had managed to get onto her legs as well.

“Yeah,” said Nairi, holding up the paper bag. “And I brought lunch, as requested.”

“Oh, I’ll have to keep you around,” said Linden, grinning as she stepped back and opened the door properly to let Nairi in. She took the bag as Nairi stepped past her, digging in to retrieve her enchilada with a pleased noise.

“Having a… productive Tuesday?” asked Nairi as Linden let the door fall back into the paint can with a muffled clang.

Even with all of the windows propped open and the extractor fan wheezing loudly, the room still stunk of turpentine, paint, and something else chemical and sweet that she couldn’t quite identify. There was an unfinished counter running along one side of the room, cluttered with tubs of paint and half-filled bottles of oil, dirty jars and mugs, with an industrial sink at the end with an old microwaved plugged in next to it. One of its hinges was held on with electrical tape. The shelves under the counter had a lot of plastic tubs filling the space, labelled in masking tape and marker.

Linden crossed the room to a section where the floor was covered by an old bedsheet, sitting down on a wheeled office chair with the back broken off in front of an easel holding a canvas that was mostly pale green. She nodded as she picked up a tall ceramic mug with a lid, and she drank deeply from it, gesturing at a ratty couch under the windows on the wall. The mug had a strip of masking tape wrapped around it, ‘NO TURPS >:|’ scrawled on it in thick marker.

“Yeah, I got my wash layer down for the base of this bad boy,” said Linden, setting the mug back down and jerking her thumb over her shoulder at the canvas. “I spent a good chunk of last week fucking around with thumbnails, but your housewarming gift is officially on the way as of now.”

Nairi, sat on the couch. A strut creaked under her, threatening to crack. “You don’t have to—”

Linden waved her off. “I told you, your walls are too bare, and this is literally my area of expertise. How was your morning anyway?”

Nairi shrugged. “Okay, I guess? I really only got out of bed when you texted me.”

“Nice for some,” said Linden, grinning at her. “Layabout! How do you and Aggy get anything scheduled? She’s up by six and in bed by ten sharp.”

Nairi shrugged, unwrapping her own lunch and shifting uncomfortably on the terrible couch. “I guess we’ll find out; I’m having dinner at her apartment tonight.”

“Co-sy,” said Linden sarcastically, setting her enchilada on the folding table next to her ‘not turpentine’ and a clear jar filled with what was presumably turpentine. She picked up a flat paintbrush and dabbed it at her palette, rolling her chair forward and making a couple of light, decisive strokes on the green. “You two are enjoying yourselves, then?”

“I think so,” said Nairi, not entirely certain if she’d messed something up or was missing something. “Have you got plans for the night then? Or are you working?”

“Both,” said Linden promptly. “Got a hot date with a cool hook up, and then a much hotter date with the rest of next month’s rent check. Can I ask you a favour?”

“Sure,” said Nairi, chewing slowly. “For your cool hook up or next month’s rent?”

Linden turned her head and bounced her eyebrows at Nairi. “Next month’s rent check. Si’s kind of a dickhead, but he’s only dangerous if you don’t like T.S. Eliot or are allergic to, like, papercuts, or lignin, or something. I need a safety check in for when I finish my job. I have a couple of people I’d usually ask, but the one I normally go to during the week has a daughter in hospital for her appendix, and Flo takes melatonin to keep her schedule, like, regulated during semester so asking her to wait up on a school night is a no-go.”

“I should be able to do that,” said Nairi, nodding, partially because her only other option was asking what the hell ‘lignin’ was. “What do you need for it?”

“It’s just waiting for me to call when I’m finished with my job, or calling to check in, just to make sure I haven’t been murdered or whatever,” said Linden, leaning back a little to scan the lines she’d marked out on the canvas. “I’m booked for eleven, so I should be done before one. I’ll like, send you the address and the number for my work phone and stuff.”

Nairi nodded again. “Okay, sounds easy. So, if I can’t reach you by one, what do I need to do?”

“I’d tell you to call Nick, but he’d only call the cops so you can probably just cut him out of the equation and go straight to them. I’d like, rather not with them, like at all, ever,” she emphasised this with a slashing motion of her paintbrush, “but if it comes to that, then tell them like, I’m on a first date with a guy my dad thinks is creepy and I promised to check in or something, I don’t know.”

If she had the address, then… well. “Why would Nicholas call the cops if he knows you’d hate it?”

Linden rolled her eyes extravagantly and set her brush down, going for her enchilada again. “Because he believes in the power of the system, doesn’t approve of my job, is convinced that one day cops will magically stop being shitty to me, and also he apparently still thinks I’m sixteen.”

“Right,” said Nairi, slowly balling up the foil and paper of her lunch. “He uh, cares a lot about you, huh?”

“Yeah, he’s an old friend of my dad’s,” said Linden, nodding and swallowing. “Looked out for me when I was a teenager, you know? He’s still convinced that every time he turns around I’m gonna run off and nearly get myself killed again, it’s a real pain in the ass.”

“Again?”

A rueful smile flickered across Linden’s face. “Yeah, I ran away from home when I was about fifteen. Jim’s the one who found me and got me off the streets at first, but Edie and Nick were the ones who really made sure I got on my feet.”

“Right,” said Nairi, and she hesitated. “Jim’s a friend of theirs?”

“Was, yeah,” said Linden, glancing down at her lap to brush off an invisible crumb. “He died when I was about nineteen. Lung cancer, you know. It happens.”

“Damn,” said Nairi, not sure what to say in the face of that. “I’m sorry.”

“Me too, sometimes,” said Linden, her smile a little lopsided as she looked up. “It was a long time ago, though—water under the bridge and all that.”

“Yeah,” said Nairi, glancing at her hands briefly. “So what, Nicholas is worried that you’ll end up in a gutter?”

“Street corner, more like,” said Linden, dryness creeping back into her tone as she popped the last piece of her enchilada into her mouth, shaking her head. “He was pretty pissed off when I got out of college and went straight back to hooking.”

Nairi snorted. “Yeah, he doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy who’d ‘approve’ of that.”

“Real stick up his ass, yeah,” said Linden, nodding again. “Edithwas the fun one when I was a teenager, so you can imagine what a downer life was back then.”

“A little, yeah,” said Nairi, her mouth twitching. “I didn’t know anyone like that as a teenager, maybe it would’ve helped me out some.”

“Oh, I know that feeling,” said Linden with a laugh, giving Nairi a carefully measured side-eye. “He’s very useful to have around sometimes—my taxes get filed on time every year and all that.”

Nairi laughed. “Nothing shows you care like robust budgeting, huh?”

Linden cackled with laughter, a loud, startled noise. “Yes! Exactly—god, you should have seen him when I got my first apartment. He came with me to sign the lease and he interrogated my landlord, did his own goddamn tour, took his own photos of the place when I moved in and hunted the guy down to sign that he’d seen them, made copies of my bond payment, and thenhe was on me every single month to make sure I had a receipt for my rent.”

“Ferocious,” said Nairi, grinning at her.

“And wildly disappointed in me the first time I got evicted,” said Linden, grinning back at her.

Nairi laughed without expecting it, the lines around her eyes creasing. “You’re a menace, then?”

Linden was smiling with bright eyes; head tilted a little. “Damn right I am. Nick’s been putting up with my shit for ten years, I really thought he’d’ve clued in by now.”

“Maybe he thinks you can be better than shit?” suggested Nairi.

Linden’s smile softened a little as she picked up the paintbrush again. “No, he’s a little better at managing his expectations than that. I mean, he sticks up for me with dad, but it’s not like I get away scot free when I fuck up!”

“Your dad’s not a fan of the hooking I take it?”

Linden made a wheezing sort of noise as she went for her paint again. “Oh god, no, my dad doesn’t know about the hooking, he’s an attorney, he’d kill me. That’s part of why Nick fucking hates it, he doesn’t like lying for anything, least of all my sorry ass.”

Nairi nodded again. “Okay, so, your dad’s just kind of a dick, huh?”

Linden paused and turned her head to look at Nairi, giving her an annoyed look. “No, he’s fine. We don’t get along that well, is all. And that whole thing where I was a missing teenager for four years and then came back queer and punk didn’t exactly help things either. We’re fine, I’m going up for dinner with him in a couple of weeks, actually.”

“Right, sorry,” said Nairi, holding up a hand. “I never met my parents, I don’t know what’s like, normal or whatever.”

“It’s fine,” said Linden, shrugging at her. “People get the wrong impression sometimes, is all.”

Somehow Nairi wasn’t shocked by this. “Will I hit another pothole if I ask about your mom?” she said instead.

Linden laughed. “I never knew her. I asked about her a bunch when I was a kid, but my dad was kind of really evasive and I stopped asking—I sort of got the impression she died when I was extra small or something. Edie reckons that whoever she was they were never really, like ‘together’, ‘cause apparently I was a surprise baby for everyone who knew him.”

“Oh, I don’t think kids work well as surprises,” said Nairi with a wince.

“Definitely not,” said Linden, grinning widely. “He did okay, though.”

Nairi shifted uncomfortably on the couch again. “You turned out okay, so he must have.”

Linden snorted.

Nairi’s phone chirped in her back pocket and she tugged it out to check the message. The couch creaked ominously as she shifted again, and she paused, glancing down at it. “Just out of curiosity, how much did you pay for this couch?”

“I didn’t, I nicked it from a guy who was throwing it out,” said Linden, taking a drink of not turps as Nairi’s phone chirped again. “Who’s texting?”

Nairi glanced down at her screen, tapping open the messaging inbox. “Agatha. She’s just checking that we’re still on for tonight.”

“You’re not gonna disappoint her, are you?” teased Linden.

Nairi looked up at her, not sure what to make of the way her tone had dipped. “No?”

Linden hummed, her mouth twitching. “Well, don’t party too hard then,” she said in the same tone again, and she turned her attention back to her canvas.

#serial fiction #lgbt fiction #109 #series honey tree #book muay thai #book 1

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coastaldragon · 3 years

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Dragon Diary 1/7/21

So...this is my resolution for the year.

I wanted to start a kin-related diary. I found myself missing how often I used to muse about myself and my experiences here, and have long since felt...detached from myself. Stuck in the loop of going through the motions of “human.”

A week late on my first entry, but so it goes.

These entries will just be flow-of-consciousness blabbles for the most part. I’ll talk about any kin-related thoughts I’ve had that day, how I’ve been feeling, how my otherkinity has affected my day, etc.

I have a lot of catching-up to do with you all, so the first few entries may seem disjointed and a little long. Lets get started. This is long. And a bit negative. But hopefully they won’t all be.

cw for death and drug mention and health talk like needles and stuff

I don’t quite remember why I dropped Tumblr like I did. I think I was getting annoyed at all the UI changes, and just overall very busy with “real life.” These things happen. I slowly drift away from a platform. Sometimes for weeks, months, or years in this case. Then I’ll drift back. Kind of like a scrap of wood on the waves.

In the time I’ve been gone life has been...interesting. The source of the stress that caused me to awaken in the first place is gone. He OD’d in...2014? 2015? Some time around there. My grasp of time is worse than ever.

We hadn’t even known he’d be using anything. Turned out he was stealing my late father’s remaining fentanyl supply. One of those guys who preys on widows like my mother. He lied about everything. His entire past as we knew it was a lie. And he was just leeching off of us.

It was...hard. I was the one who found his body upon getting home from work. My mother is still traumatized, even now. Even after all he did. She did love him.

I think all that hardened me quite a bit. And I’m sad for it. I’m still trying to soften myself again, but my trust has never been shattered like that before or since.

My now health is...poor. I had a great job working at an independent pack-and-mail sort of place for a few years. Very laid back, when the customers were nice. Helped me build a lot of strength and muscle. Quite enjoyed showing off by hefting 50lb boxes onto my shoulders. Helped me feel less weak in this squishy human body of mine.

But about...2 or 3 years ago [again, time is a myth to my brain] I woke up and my shoulders were just.

Locked.

It felt like someone had stuck paint spanners under my shoulder blades or something. Not only that, but I was weak. I barely had the strength in my arms to lift a half gallon of milk in the morning.

We thought I’d just hurt myself showing off, somehow. So we gave it some time. Took ibuprofen, used pain creams. Took a few days off work.

But it didn’t get better. It got painful. And the moreso. And moreso. And then my back began to have trouble as well. It was spreading. I felt...ill.

So. Doctors. Tests. More bloodwork than I’ve ever had in my entire life. [10 vials at once for one appt!]

My primary, who is a garbage person I never wish to see again, insisted it was just a sprain. Or something. Whatever. But I knew it wasn’t. My mother knew it wasn’t. Everyone I knew knew it wasn’t.

Specialist time! At the behest of my cousin, who has a litany of autoimmune disorders, we hooked up with a rheumatologist. Who I will call Dr.M.

Dr.M is an angel on Earth. I am convinced of it. A full year he spent with me, ordering tests, trying treatments, working with me to figure out what the hell was going on. And we did. And what a mouthful it is.

Ankylosing spondylitis. No, it’s not a dinosaur. [Though I do think I’m ‘hearted for ankylosaurines...I don’t think it’s related lol!]

You can look it up if you like. But basically: My immune system is fucking crazy and attacks all the things. Most places describe it as being a lower spine disorder, and while that is certainly where its centralized in most folks, that’s not all it is.

For example mine is, obviously, centralized in my shoulders and upper back. But it does aaaaaaaaaaall sorts of crazy shit. Every day is different. Joint pain, exhaustion, GI trouble, stomach upset, lack of appetite, murderous migraines. The usual for an autoimmune illness. But also wacky shit like costochondritis [painful inflammation of the cartilage of the ribs], random organ inflammation like in my kidneys [not fun], lungs [I had a 3-month stint of chronic bronchitis last winter], and even my heart [very not fun.] Sometimes it likes to attack my “integumentary system” aka shit like my skin and hair meaning I’ll have weeks where my hair just. Sheds. Like a damn cat. It gets everywhere and w/ my long-ass quarantine hair it’s so annoying.

This attack dog immune system does mean it’s unlikely for me to catch little bugs like your common colds and stuff, which is appreciated. But it also likes to maul anything else it deems foreign. Like medication! I took Humira shots for a few months and had a “paradoxical reaction” aka it did the literal opposite of what it was meant to, because the injections pissed off my immune system so much it went scorched-earth on whatever it could. Mostly my thighs, since that’s where the injections were. I still get stabbing pain in them and it’s been over a year. [No, I don’t think I can sue Humira over this. Though I have discussed it w/ my Dr.]

This also means that if I do get sick, it’s bad news. Something strong and unique like COVID? Death. Deaaaaaaaaath. Would likely trigger something called a “cytokine storm” aka my immune system nukes everything and my organs die and so do I.

So guess whoooooooo’s been locked up at home for almost a full year now? :’)

I luckily am able to work from home, though it barely pays the bills, and my health has suffered from a lack of being able to Do Stuff I normally would.

As a result I decided to get back in touch with myself.

It started with Second Life, because of course it did. A new dragon avatar came out. Shiny and mesh and easy [by SL standards] to modify. So me and a few friends [some kin, some not] made a group for sharing stuff for the av and just hanging out. It’s fallen by the wayside unfortunately but those nights spent chilling in SL with a bunch of other dragons roaring and goofing off felt really really good.

And then I made a kin Twitter. [And found some exceptionally cool kinfolk in the process.]

Then came Othercon the virtual otherkin convention and OtherConnect, the Discord spawned from the community that rapidly formed within the con. Othercon felt incredible. Panels and lectures about the history of otherkinity and alterhumanity and how we are today and rep in the media and just so! Much! Cool! Stuff! And tons of great kinfolk too!

To not only be within a community but seeing others like me and speaking with them, not just typing back at words on a screen. It was...so very, very reaffirming. It felt like a second awakening almost. I wanted to cry for finally, truly not feeling alone.

And now I’m here. Because I need to be. Because something, deep down, is telling me I’m going to be needing myself sometime soon. So I’d better get started.

I hope I don’t drift away on the tide again. I’ve missed this site, worse for wear as it is.

But I’m a bit tired today. A nasty headache lingering from yesterday’s nastier flare up. Accursed cold fronts. I used to enjoy them but not so much these days. Ah well.

I know there wasn’t much kin talk in this first entry, but as I said, we had a lot of catching-up to do!

#Diary 2021 #dragonkin #otherkin #I'll tag these for now but if folks would rather I didn't I'll keep them to myself. :>

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theinnerhalf · 3 years

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2019 in Review: Highlights

Making a venture back into writing again with this “year in review”. I guess I’m slightly less damaged than I was last year and have finally built the courage to write about how this year was for me, even some dark times included. Thank you 2019, for not much, but I guess thank you. A “fuck you” would be more appropriate but regardless, I’m grateful. Let’s do this.

January 2019

An extremely slow start to the new year, as it usually is when it comes to me. My January’s tend to be bleak, gray, and cold especially considering the coming down from a constant holiday high. I spent this first month with friends I could call my family, regularly going out as much as we could while the two military guys (EJ and James) are here for the time being. In this month as well, I got to finally meet up with my ex who I can now proudly call a friend. Diana and I were able to catch up extensively to make up for all the lost time, talking about things like how we’ve been, the changes, the constants, and occasionally reminiscing. I know I’ve felt at peace before already, for having her back into my life rather than staying a bittersweet memory, but getting to catch up like this was a whole other type of joy I didn’t know I needed. As for the picture of the pants, I finally made the decision to buy a pair of jeans that I wanted soooo so bad from one of my favorite designers.

February

Goodness...Where do I even start for this month?...Like January, February for me is usually bleak. Regardless it being a month for “love”, it sucked. Maybe the worst for me in the year. The start of this month wasn’t all too bad though! There was a fashion show that Celine was walking/modeling for held at Rice University in order to celebrate Asian cultures and Chinese New Year. The show overall was alright...I guess it was just nice to be out supporting Celine and whatnot. I thought this month would at least provide a break for me, but just five days later, my grandma was sent to the ICU after suffering from a stroke...It happened so suddenly...Celine and I were at an outing when the two of us came back to my place and ran into my dad who was leaving in a hurry. He had a lost look on his face, as well as panicky and shifty eyes. He broke the news to us and had the sinking feeling in me hit so fast. The next thing I know, we’re at the hospital waiting room, anxiously waiting to be briefed with (hopefully) good news. I remember disassociating when the doctor had finally came to us, thinking that this really couldn’t be happening...not to us...not to my dad. I remember thinking that this isn’t fair...We literally had just gotten her into our lives’ and now we’re losing her.

We spent the following week trading stays at the hospital between my siblings and cousins. I can’t remember the proper psychology term for the feeling of false hope and security for an event that seems to be too horrible to be true, but that was what I had felt for the entire time. There’s no way that my family could lose our grandma like this...and not this soon. Just a day before my grandma’s stroke happened, she was asking when my younger sister and I were going to get married. The two of us looked at each other like, “What the fuuuu--? Where is this coming from?” My grandma explained shortly after that she felt as if she didn’t have much longer for her time here with us, and that she wanted to have the honor to make the dresses and suits for Lacel’s or my wedding. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I couldn’t stop thinking about how cruel and merciless the world could be, but also at the same time, that I should’ve known better and that I should be used to this...I should be but I would rather not. I think it was after a week and a half where I found that my grandma would be transferred to a hospice. My family had told me this and I was under the impression that hospices were for people who had recovered enough that they don’t need to be in a hospital but still needed professional caretakers. I told this to Andrew and Quin and they both shared painful and shocked expressions with each other. I asked why they were looking at each other like that and then they broke it to me that hospices were for people who didn’t have much time left. I remember crying in front of them that day during work.

Virginia Barreda passed away, February 19, 2019. My family grieved separately and in different ways. I slept off the entire day...The picture of the room was how my grandma left the room right before she was taken to the hospital and was left untouched for the entire duration of the situation. I embarrassingly and shamefully made a gofundme to help raise money so that my family and I could attend her final farewell back home in the Philippines. I thought it wouldn’t get anywhere...but my heart...I was so surprised to see the amount of love and support that friends and even strangers had decided to put out, and I was touched beyond anything I had ever expected. A big thank you to those who donated and have come across this post by any way. You have my sincerest gratitude and even with that, I cannot thank you enough.

To end the note on a positive note at least, Celine and I hit one year at the end of this month. Amazing.

March

My family and I were in such a weird head space entering this month. There was a lot of recovering to be made and coming out of the state of denial from my grandma’s passing. It was like a new chapter of our lives abruptly opened itself onto us and we all did not know how to proceed. My dad was stressing out over medical expenses and how we were going to afford to bring the entire family to Philippines for my grandma’s final resting place. I did my best to keep the gofundme a secret from him, because knowing my dad, he would not accept the money under any condition. He only came to find out about it because some of his friends and relatives came across it, donated, and then told him about how sentimental and touching my gofundme passage was. He just asked why, and I regrettably said that it was because we were struggling out here and all I wanted to do was help. After some convincing with the help of my two sister’s, my dad accepted the help and agreed that we can now at least afford to take my dad for the initial ceremony while the rest of us would follow-up, hopefully in the summer or late 2019.

The first picture in this month’s set is of the Pieta in Italy, taken by Lacel. Lacel was on a two week school trip, while in the second picture is the view my dad had while his two week stay in the Philippines. Both my older sister and I stayed at home while envying our dad’s and Lacel’s experiences. Their trips only served as motivation for me to save up a lot more for Japan and I really wanted to make that happen no matter what. Even if it meant me going alone, I was ready to accept it.

The following pictures of Lacel are when they came back from Italy and celebrated their two years of being clean/no relapses. I know I rarely ever let it be known, but I really do care and love my younger sister a lot, and to see them make it this far in the span of two years meant so much to me. I’m glad that my family was able to celebrate that milestone in Lacel’s life because it was definitely quite the journey. The last photo is of my car’s fourth brake light functioning again with Travis’ help and was fixed just in time for the long drive to Marfa.

April

Really, the only one significant highlight for this month, which I am incredibly excited to share, was the moderately spontaneous trip I took out to Marfa, Texas with Yentl. I do have to say, the two of us were quite ambitious for taking on this trip by leaving Houston around 12am shortly, after grabbing oh my gogi and some boba. With the help of a trenta iced coffee, I was able to knock out 6 hours of the 8 hour drive. While the drive was a lot of fun, I started getting really sleepy around the 4 hour mark but it started raining extremely hard after we had passed San Antonio. I was so reluctant to switch over to Yentl driving because I had been losing traction every now and then. It was only until the sun rose that we finally had passed the rain. I shortly knocked out after the switch.

I woke up to Yentl ecstatically saying, “We’re heeeeere!” I opened my eyes and was immediately blinded, forgetting that daytime was a thing. But from the short time my eyes were open, I saw a railroad and buildings styled from days of the past. I fought to keep my eyes open only to tell myself, maybe five more minutes. As soon as we parked, Yentl and I took the opportunity to walk around.The weather was pleasant, not too hot and not too cold either. The humidity that seems to be a pestering presence in Houston was nowhere to be found in Marfa, so the daytime stroll was bliss. The two of us checked out Marfa’s welcome sign, the city hall (only from the outside because it was closed), a couple of local shops and art galleries, and the hotel Paisano, a hotel best known for having a movie shot in it.

All the walking had made us hungry...That and the only thing inside of us were boba and caffeine. Yentl and I checked out a place called Aster’s that was primarily a breakfast joint recommended to us by a person working at the welcome center. We both got an egg’s benedict. Me with a lemonade, and her an iced coffee. After eating, we proceeded to go to our Airbnb located 30 minutes away at another small town called Alpine. The Airbnb’s neighborhood was located in some rural area with cliffs surrounding it all. The Airbnb itself was a small and cute place that was divided into just three small parts: the bedroom, living room, and a bathroom. Yentl and I freshened up, put on the new fits, and made our way back to Marfa.

Headed back, we decided that we would first go see the outlandish Prada store located in the middle of the desert. The Prada store itself is a permanent art installation by artists Elmgreen and Dragset, built with the concept of using biodegradable materials so that the art installation could eventually return and be reclaimed back to Earth as all things eventually do. The drive to Prada, Marfa was an unexpectedly longer drive than I thought. It was a non-stop view of your textbook Western landscape...Desolate, scattered with ordinary desert shrubbery, and one thing to set it apart, a lonely, silver blimp just casually floating at the wind’s mercy.

When we finally arrived, it looked surreal to say the least. The building was so unexpectedly placed, yet at the same time, it wasn’t intrusive to the desert landscape. There were less people there than I had thought, which made it easier for Yentl and I to take the photos we wanted. What a pleasant oddity it was, I thought, to even drive eight hours just to see this left me with a sense of fulfillment knowing that this had been on my personal bucket list for quite some time.

The two of us made our way back to the city to kill some more time before it was time to see the mystery Marfa lights. We checked out a bookstore placed in the lobby of a hotel, wandered around the from one edge of the town to the other, checked out some more art galleries, and ate dinner at a local BBQ place. The sun was on the verge of setting so we headed to the viewing area that was located right beside the highway. We got there conveniently early and was able to secure a good parking spot as there was not even a designated parking lot. Yentl and I situated ourselves onto a bench with a clear view of the field. We both sat there in amazement of the sunset…layers on layers of colors dancing in the sky, almost a love letter to us from the sun itself, as it sank over the horizon, tucking itself in to say goodnight. The two of us couldn’t wrap our heads around the fact that we actually did this, an 8-hour drive to see some art and an unexplained natural phenomenon that happens in the desert at night. We really did this.

The sky turned from its calm lilac tones to an enveloping darkness and what followed were gasps of oooooh’s and aaaaah’s. It was finally happening. We peered over the horizon, somewhat confused, and there it was. Beside a constant blinking red light, appeared the mystery lights, bobbing up and down inconsistently, disappearing and reappearing on a whims notice. Yentl and I watched in awe and pondered about the mysteries of life like, does the supernatural exist, are there aliens out there, and what does it truly mean to love? Apart from the mystery lights themselves, the stars overhead was truly a sight to take in. The indescribable feeling of being small while looking up at the stars happens to be a favorite sensation of mine, but only this time, I was overwhelmed by it. I found a completely empty bench to lay down on just to look up. It must have been the most relaxed I have been since forever and I never wanted the feeling to end…But as all good things do, it did. Yentl and I made our way back to our Airbnb after catching what seemed to be a UFO flying above us. Marfa truly was surreal.

The two of us rested for the night, packed our stuff the next day, and made our way on the long journey back home.

May

The start of this month initially started incredibly slow. Not much has been done aside from learning how to shoot better on film which I spent a lot of my time on. I would keep pestering my friends to let me use them as models and surprisingly, they agreed! The first three photos are just a few of the pictures taken. This was also the month that the restaurant I work at, Noon (previously known as Verts, also previously known as Vertskebap), had undergone the change to being Daphne’s Greek Mediterranean. The change allowed us to finally get tips trough credit cards and no longer just cash tips. This allowed me to leave my shifts with a lot more money in hand.

It occurred to me…with this I could finally make my Japan trip a reality…In the span of just a week, I was able to raise 100 dollars in just tips alone (I know this doesn’t sound like a lot, but this is a big difference coming from leaving work with no more than 50 cents to 5 dollars on a busy day). I decided that the tip money would be strictly set aside for Japan and Japan only. I thought at the rate it was going, a 100 dollars per week would be sufficient for a trip set out in October/November. The rough estimate was at least around 2000 dollars if I decided I would really stay true to my word and not touch this extra money.

In this month also, my little sister got their associates degree in art, which I am really proud of! They then decided that they would be continuing their education at the university of Texas at Dallas. The last picture is a picture of one of my favorite musicians, blackbear, taken at a concert for his DEAD 2 THE WORLD tour. It was my second time getting to see him perform live, and while he was not in the best health to perform my favorite song the way that he usually does, it was still quite the experience. I would be more than happy to see him perform live again, and hopefully in better health.

June

Ahhh June. What better way to start of this month by getting into an accident…My neighbor ran into the passenger side door of my car while they were reversing and failed to see that I had already pulled out first. Extremely disappointing knowing how much my car means to me…What followed shortly after were series of looking for a trustworthy and affordable auto body and collision shop to do the work while being able to get covered by the person at fault’s insurance. Was honestly such a convoluted process and was so stressful that a part of me decided that maybe I would just leave and live with it. I ended up finding a shop called legendary auto and agreed to the other person’s insurance’s choice to only cover 80 percent of the costs because I allegedly had some “preventative measure” on stopping the collision from happening. Me, tired and not in the mood for a disagreement, agreed. I just wanted my car back to the way it was before.

The next highlight for this month was for an overnight camping trip I took out with my family and other family friends somewhere near Austin. It was a lot of fun! Everything was nearly perfect with the trip aside from the sweltering heat combined with a THICK humidity that made its dominance extremely clear. I remember there being so much good food…and with family friends that you’ve grown up with, there was never a shortage of people telling you to eat more when you just downed three plates of crawfish, bbq, and rice. There were boats and a tractor with a little tow for people to ride on in the back, a working NES system, a basketball court, playground, and an entire forest to explore. We spent our time playing card/board games, held a basketball competition, the dads versus the boys, a bonfire complete with smores, and a sad attempt at a Marvin’s room music video, complete with a hot tub and color changing lights.

Spending your time consistently outdoors resets your internal clock, and so by 9, everyone had started to get ready for bed. I remember being outside on the campgrounds and it being pitch black. Not being able to see past 15 feet in front of me at the most. One look at the sky in this setting and there was the full moon. Brighter than I had ever witnessed it…almost blinding to be honest. The older “kids” were cooped up in the RV designated for more kids to sleep in and were there playing monopoly deal. I joined in and found ourselves playing monopoly deal until 2am until I called it a night. I woke up the next day, sad to leave earlier than we’d have to because I had a shift at work to attend to even with all the begging I did with my other coworkers to cover for me.

As for the rest of this month’s highlights, I finally got the see the Van Gogh exhibit that was here at the Museum of Fine Arts. It was the most packed I have ever seen the MFAH in a long time and was glad that I was able to see Van Gogh’s work as art is always inspiring to me…Sad that the starry night wasn’t there but that’s alright. I also got to visit and hang out with Yentl this month during a trip I made to Dallas for Lacel’s scholarship interview. I haven’t seen her since our trip to Marfa and we got to talking about the Japan trip we’d be potentially taking out in the fall. We had Gyu-kaku (which she covered for like BRUH) and went over the possible itinerary that I had been researching for months now. As usual, it was always nice to see her, and I left Dallas feeling even more hopeful and motivated for the trip.

July

After one long month, I finally got my car back in perfect condition! So exciting to see my car just the way it used to be…Marwan and the rest of his team over at Legendary auto have all my gratitude for doing a stellar job. Could not thank them enough. For this month also, my family and I visited Galveston for the 4th of July, mainly for a parade and pleasure pier. It was a really nice experience getting to spend a whole outing with my family which we aren’t able to do often considering how busy we all are. Even more so with Lacel going to school soon in an entirely different city the following month. As for the final highlight of this month, I got to catch up on life with Lexi as we talk about the occurrences of life and sometimes even the past and how much we’ve grown from it. Always an experience to see her and it’s so interesting to see how I get to hang out with her during my days in college when in high school, we weren’t all that close.

August

I kicked off this month by helping my younger sister pack and move into their apartment in Dallas. We had to rent a car for all their stuff to fit because the 86 definitely was not able to carry everything that Lacel was bringing. It was a quick and pretty emotional ordeal, having one last dinner together as a family, and then having to say goodbye. I thought that would be the last time I would see my sister for a long time, but soon enough, I found myself making a trip to Dallas once a week for five weeks straight haha.

For the next highlight, it’s just a picture of me reveling in the fact that I had finally mustered the courage to go and change my major from nursing to journalism. I was shocked by how much easier it would’ve been for me to finish my associates if I had done this so much sooner. I found myself with only two more semesters, and maybe even just one if I had dedicated myself to just school. Also, in August, I had been unemployed for about two months prior. Shoutout to Daphne’s for pulling the rug from underneath my friends and I without any warning whatsoever. A double-edged sword might I admit, because while it left me unemployed suddenly, the closing of Daphne’s allowed to me find more opportunities and finally be free from the comfort of familiarity that the restaurant had provided me for about four years. Being in H-E-B made me realize how much I was missing out on such a good work environment. Everyone was absurdly and unbelievably nice…The customers in my H-E-B are also nothing compared to the customers I dealt with in food service and my goodness, it was such a nice change of pace. Happy to be here, cause after all, “here, everything’s better.”

For the last highlight of this month, Celine threw an e-boi/girl themed late birthday party. It was honestly really well set up, especially with the Airbnb and the vibes it had come with. They were constantly anxious about how their party would end up and I was always telling them that it would be a lot of fun! Which in fact, it did turn out to be a lot fun and it was so interesting to see everyone so dedicated to the theme of the party. Seeing Celine around a lot of the people they care about was really something, and to see them have such a fun and good time was all that mattered.

A little later into this month, Celine and I decided to end things on a mutual note. Things had been comfortable for a while, and while there may have still been feelings, things have stagnated…A lot…My mental health at this point of our relationship wasn’t anywhere close to where I’d want it and things haven’t been okay with me for a long time. I spent a lot of my time getting triggered over the past and my thought process started falling towards methods of self-destruction rather than dealing with things head on. I found myself either in a constant state of anger or depression over not knowing how to deal with the thoughts eating away at me. Had I waited any longer, I’m not sure what I would have done.

Sad as that may have been…It was ultimately for the better. At least I hoped it was…

September

(Insert obligatory “Do you remember”) September was thankfully one of the better and more eventful months out of the year and kicked it off with Yentl’s birthday party. I remember making the 4-hour drive for the second year in a row just to celebrate a dear friend’s birthday. I arrived later than most and found myself in the middle of a really nice neighborhood where the Airbnb was located. Interesting, I thought. The area was devoid of streetlights with a lake nearby and made me hopeful that maybe a getaway like tonight could really take me away from all that was going on in my head. I’ll drink to that.

I shyly walked in, asking people where Yentl was. I was led to the kitchen where she was and found her already multiple drinks in. Received a tight hug from her and was cordially invited to start drinking haha. I told her that I’ll a eat a little bit, maybe get re-acquainted with everyone and the Airbnb first, properly settling in before I find myself trying to drown my demons lurking behind the corner, waiting to make themselves present in my conscience. I held my trusty detox water, comprised of lemon and limes, tightly, hoping it’d be my saving grace for this party. The objective for the night: Survive…But have a good time. I chatted up with people I haven’t seen in so long…probably since Yentl’s last birthday but I guess because of the vibes the party had, it felt incredibly easy to converse.

I made my way to the pool where everyone happened to be in the meantime. Too self-conscious to jump in so I just snapshotted everyone on film for the most part. Took the liberty and made myself the party’s personal photographer for the night. I went back inside to admire the Airbnb a little bit more or sneak a drink by myself but was ushered to take shots of someone’s personal tequila concoction. “I hate tequila”, I thought…but why not? The vibe was right and the goal was to get out of my mind one way or another. I downed it, regrettably. The burn of the tequila was reminiscent of the nights I spent uncoordinated, lacking self-control, and being passed out in a fetal position beside a toilet fighting for dear life. After recollecting myself after that shot, I was immediately handed another one while not realizing it. Everybody started bracing themselves for the shot, gathering their chasers and mentally preparing for the hit while I on the other hand, looked at everybody and the cup in my possession utterly appalled at the situation unfolding in front of me. Three…two…one…cheers.

After that, the rest of the night was a blur. There came I point where I nearly blacked out because my vision had nearly gone, but after two full servings of my detox water, I was all good to go. I spent the rest of the night just talking, occasionally grooving to Jayson’s live mixing, playing smash bros and leaving undefeated, making conversations, and trying my best to stay out of my head. The party had started to slow down so I went outside to sit by the pool with a glass of wine and admire the quiet and stillness of the night. The backyard overlooked a lake and I was reminded by how nice this Airbnb really was. The moon wasn’t out so it was extra dark and allowed for some reflecting on a couple things, like the break-up…maybe on how lonely I was feeling. I watched some ducks pass by and called it a night. I went back inside and saw Yentl passed out on one of the couches. Made sure she was okay, and we had a conversation about several things, like the break-up…and how lonely I was feeling. Eventually the conversation ventured onto more positive things like how nice this Airbnb is, how nice this party was, some unwanted drama that happened during this party, and the upcoming Japan trip.

After just spending a little more time with each other, and a disagreement on who would take the last bed and sleep on the couch, we said goodnight as she had declared I get the bed. Had to respect the birthday girl’s wishes, even when it was her who had paid for the entirety of this Airbnb…Not to disclose that information or anything, but it was a LOT. I woke up, surprisingly not hungover all thanks to the detox water. As much as I had wanted to stay for any further hangouts of the day, I had to leave for a shift at 2pm. I drove the four-hour drive back home hastily, only to find out that I wasn’t needed for work and that I could actually take the day off…Amazing. Thankful that I was able to attend the party in the first place and see Yentl at all.

The following highlight was a concert I attended in Dallas for the artist Aries’ Welcome Home tour and was a largely anticipated experience for both my younger sister and I. Aries had grown to be one of my favorite artists because of how new and refreshing his sound was. I also happened to find his music during a defining point in my life, specifically during a three hour mindless drive leading to nowhere and found myself halfway to San Antonio and has become the mood and aesthetic I had been living in for a quite a while now. Months prior, my sister and I had been listening to him constantly in preparation for this concert. My only concern was that since Aries is a smaller artist, the concert might only end up being more like a listening party rather than him actually performing. By listening party, I mean that his songs are playing in the background and is overpowering his vocals or that he’s not performing for majority of the time.

My sister and I arrived at the venue with the discovery of a line that wrapped around the entire block. The suspense was too real. The feeling of knowing that I just happened to stumble upon Aries from a YouTube video of him remixing a Post Malone song into a lo-fi one, to him suddenly having the anthem of the entire spectrum of my anger and the prolonging bitterness that dwelled inside me. His music is definitely a trigger, but in a different way. His music gets me angry but doesn’t drive me to a seething, blinding rage the way I see anything remotely related to skateboarding, tall fuckboys with curly hair, or the name Kevin (fuck you Kevin…fuck you!). If anything, his music was a testament to the three months of mental and emotional anguish I had undergone earlier in 2018. I was more than ready to yell my heart and lungs out to the lyrics, “fuck your friend, that man’s a bitch, probably wish I don’t exist”, and “Promise that I will stay out of reach, far gone, cause the shit still bothers me.”

The concert left me speechless by how much energy there was from the crowd, the hype man, and Aries himself. While it may only have been just over an hour, it was the most invigorating concert I have attended by far. Probably the most fun too. As Lacel and I headed out after taking pictures with the venue and our tour merch, we were suddenly told that Aries had came out to greet people. We rushed back in and just stayed around, somewhat awkwardly, casually standing by as fans took pictures with or of him. He was able to sign a piece of paper that Lacel handed to him and he left shortly after taking a big group picture with the fans that were present. We left soon after, put on his Welcome Home album to relive the concert in the car, and got lost driving around Dallas for maybe another hour to end the night.

The last highlight for this month was Quin’s birthday celebration that him and his closest friends organized. The initial plan was to pre-game at Marian’s place and then follow up by going out to Washington Ave. which is notoriously known for Houston’s night life scene. I arrived at Marian’s apartment for the pre-game, and even before I could greet anyone, a friend came by me with a bottle of Hennessy and started pouring some in my mouth. “So it’s gonna be that type of night”, I thought haha. I finally got around to greeting everyone including the birthday boy who was in the middle of taking a shot and was then shortly handed one to take alongside Quin and a handful of other friends.

We eventually made our way to Washington Ave. in different Ubers and arrived at Concrete Cowboy. The whole group lined up and waited for our turn to get in. As we neared the entrance, I pulled out my ID in anticipation as I’m used to being told that I don’t look older than 19 most of the time. The bouncer let my friends in but said something to me that I couldn’t quite make out over the music blasting from inside. I said excuse me, thinking like, hello…my ID is legit, I promise you I’m legal and this is a valid ID haha. “No air forces”, he said. “What?”, “No air forces…”, he repeated. Back to the line I went, astonished that this was even a problem in the first place. I received a bunch of texts from my friends asking where I was and exclaimed to them that I was denied access because of the shoes I was wearing. I went to the little fence that Concrete had and exchanged my air force 1’s with Andrew’s dress shoes and lined up once more.

Eventually that was all a waste because the group ended up leaving Concrete Cowboy…WITHOUT the birthday boy. We crossed the street to another club/bar that escapes my memory but this time around they let me in regardless of my shoes. Immediately, this was already better than the experience with Concrete, from the music, the general vibe, to how less packed it was. Ruben bought everyone two rounds of shots for some reason, and it really helped loosen everybody up. While the group was having a lot of fun in this bar, a handful of us felt guilty that we were having this much fun without Quin and decided we should go back to Concrete to go celebrate with the person this night was originally dedicated to. We left to go line back up across the street, only to find others that also separated from Quin to come join us over where we were at…We all found ourselves back in the same bar/club we just left haha.

Feeling guilty of admitting to this, but we were having an absolute blast at the place we were at. My friends and I ended up having the biggest floor presence and had even started a cypher with the occasional strangers jumping in who had actual dance experience as well. My friends and I shook hands and even made friends with these strangers after finding out we had mutual dance friends and connections to major Houston dance studios like soundbox and soreal. 2PM had finally snuck its way into the night and it was time to go back to Marian’s to regroup. We arrived at Marian’s apartment to find out that Quin had gotten shitfaced at Concrete Cowboy. Quin! The same Quin who took 20+ shots on his 21st birthday, just to be fully coherent, coordinated, and mentally sound to take care of other people rather than being taken care of. There he was, bent over the toilet, clutching it for dear life. It was an absolute sight to behold, and one we would never let Quin live down. It was finally our turn to take care of him, and as friends that love Quin, we were more than happy to finally get the opportunity to pay the favor back.

October

My birth month. My favorite month too and well deserved so. October for me is the transition from the Hell that is Houston’s summer to those cool crisp Autumn afternoons. A transition from bright yellow and blue hues to the golden, orange, and amber tones that coincide with everything regarding the season of fall. Fall is Halloween. Fall is Thanksgiving. Fall is pumpkin picking and carving, apple pies, and the metaphorical dusk of the year, while interestingly sharing the same colors as a sunset. This month was surprisingly uneventful but was largely a pre-cursor for what was coming up in November: Yentl’s and my Japan trip.

The first highlight for this month was this photoshoot/hang out with fellow FRZ86 owners, Lily and Ray. I was meeting both of them for the first time and was excited that they both agreed to be models for further practice with my film camera. Really happy with how the shots came out, I felt ready for taking pictures in Japan and grew more confident in this new profound hobby. The following highlight for this month but not pictured for privacy reasons, was my approval for my travel visa. The news had me beaming. After days of gut-wrenching anxiety at the thought of refunding my airfare, the Airbnb, and all the plans just going to waste if I was not approved, the good news was a major sigh of relief. It had finally cemented the trip, and the only thing that was left, was to save as much as I can in this last month.

My money saving process for the rest of this month involved eating four slices of a day for lunch (only when I was at work), refusing to hang out, and reducing my eating out budget to just under 30 dollars. I was determined. My will power, incorruptible. I attended a hang out that involved eating, and I only spent my money on a drink. My savings were not going to be stopped…My birthday eventually came around and my family and I found ourselves in Dallas…for the second year in a row. I don’t remember exactly why we were celebrating MY birthday in Dallas just to hang out with my younger sister, but that’s just what went down. We went to Gen Korean BBQ for lunch, and followed up with boba (a must). We hung around a Kinokuniya for a little bit to kill time and were deciding on what we should do now. I just threw in that maybe we could stop by the Dallas galleria to just waste even more time, while in the back of my head, I had a burning desire to finally pull the trigger on something I’ve been wanting since the summer of 2017: a Gucci ghost ring.

I only mentioned my intentions to my younger sister because I knew my idea would be met with opposition and disappointment from my dad. After several times being asked why we had decided to go here, I mentioned that I was buying the ring, as a big gesture to myself for making it this far and as a final accessory to bring along to Japan for the outfits I had planned. Ran me back $250 dollars, but did I mind? Not one bit. So much for saving…haha.

To close out October, I departed for Dallas to pick up my sister and Yentl. The plan was to pick up Yentl from Dallas, drive back to Houston because that’s where we’ll be departing for Japan, have a layover BACK in Dallas, and after an 8-hour flight, arriving at Narita airport in Tokyo weirdly at the same time we had left from Dallas due to time zones. The plan sounds counterintuitive with the layover being in Dallas and all…but departing from Dallas added an extra 400 dollars to the airfare. It also worked because it meant that neither of us would have to make a 4-hour drive back home to our respective cities due to another layover in Dallas on the way back home.

November

This month will have an entire separate post dedicated to Japan.

Enjoy these pictures for the meantime.

December

After Japan. I had spent the rest of November coming down from the high I had experienced from my vacation. I had to deal with the come down as well as the seasonal depression that comes along with the shorter days of Winter, despite always being fond of the season. It’s going to sound a little silly to admit, but things really did start to lose meaning. I had this goal of traveling to Japan for as long as I could remember, and it was finally fulfilled! The long workdays, forty-hour work weeks, the months of research and planning, and just everything I had been doing was for the sake of trip.

Not wanting to feel as if my life had lost meaning, I forced myself to get into the holiday spirit…Or at least I tried. In the first highlight presented for this month was Travis’ Christmas present to me. A bunch of treats…and a gun. Yes, a gun. Looks like just a random assortment of food but in reality, has a ton of sentimental ties to it. As described by Travis himself, the honey buns were given because of one time we were in the campus cafeteria and I was craving honey buns. The campus was charging 2+ dollars for a single one and Travis was like, “Don’t waste your money here smh”, and told me he had spent just a little over a dollar for a multipack. The oreo thins were given because I had an obsession with oreos, the gummies because whatever, and the limon lays for a callback when Andrew, Travis, and I would have consecutive movie nights together on the summer of 2017 where we would pick our usual snacks from out midnight Walmart runs. Lastly, but definitely not least, the gun. Travis was concerned by how often I would go to so many places during the middle of the night and was also tired of being my personal protection considering he himself was armed.

The gifts left me speechless and admittedly, a little teary eyed by how thoughtful it really was. During the brief period of trying to take the moment all in, Andrew pulls out his very own and the entire room goes up in screams and laughter. Travis bought guns for the two of us! Unbelievable and entirely wild of him. I love that man to death.

The following highlight of the drink and the board game was when I finally had a first successful meeting from a connection I had on a dating app haha. Wooo Ral finally stepping out there after multiple awkward matches and getting ghosted on several platforms. The two of us met up in Dallas at a videogame restaurant bar thing, where we can eat/drink while playing on a console! Pretty cool idea and props to her for actually catering to what my interests were. Ended making a cool friend out of that meet up since. The rest of the following highlights were just more Christmas festivities such as, baking Christmas themed cookies, secret Santa with the OG5 + DJ, H-E-B white elephant Christmas party, and seeing Christmas lights with Jackie at the River Oaks neighborhood.

Just like this year in review itself, I was so eager to get the year over and done with. 2019 seemed to be bad year for the world, myself included, but finishing writing this up in 2021…I only wish I had treasured the moments just a little longer, not knowing what I will be missing the following year.

P.S. If you’re just a person randomly coming through this, thank you for your time to scroll/read

#year in review #2019

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hailey-halstead · 4 years

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Merry Christmas everyone!!! hope you enjoy your present: this fic!! I don’t own anything :) and as always, i take prompts!! two weeks until the winter hiatus is over!!!

—————

With Book on the ground, Hailey felt her guard begin to lower. This caused her adrenaline to decrease as well.

“Shit,” She swore, raising her hand to clutch her head. She didn’t remember hitting her head when the car crashed, but nonetheless the pain was excruciating.

Her hand was covered with blood when she brought it back down.

Well, this wasn’t good.

Cameron was then in her line of vision. “Fuck, Hailey,” His hand reached out to touch her forehead.

She was sure he meant well, but his touch made the pain even worse.

“I’m fine.” She stepped away from him, not having the heart to tell him that his comforting didn’t help. She even had to bite her cheek to keep herself from making a noise from the pain.

“You should go to a hospital—“

She probably should. But they literally were in the middle of a case, for god sakes a dead man was a few feet away from them, so she wasn’t in any hurry.

Before she could brush off his concerns again, the rest of Intelligence showed up. Well, more like Jay showed up and got into Cameron’s face.

“What was that?” Jay demanded, pushing her CI in the chest.

“Woah man, I didn’t do anything—“

“What was that?” Cameron was ignored, as Jay repeated his question. But it was clear he wasn’t looking for an answer, paying no mind to any rebuttal coming out of Cameron’s mouth.

“You put her in danger—“

While she was hoping a distraction would deter attention away from her injury, this wasn’t exactly what she had in mind. In fact she would rather be getting checked out at Chicago Med than witness her partner and CI fighting in the middle of a crime scene.

“I didn’t know he was gonna do that!”

“Well you should have!”

Without considering the consequences, Hailey inserted herself between Jay and Cameron and gave her own push to Jay’s chest.

“You need to calm down!” It was louder than intended, given the environment, but necessary due to Jay’s intensity.

The yelling from Jay stopped. His pissed off expression on his face began to change as he realized Hailey was in front of him instead of Cameron.

Of course his attention went straight to her forehead. Before she could attempt to convince him that she was fine, his fingers were already holding her cheek.

His fingers felt featherlight against her skin. Almost that she wouldn’t have been able to tell they were there if he wasn’t tilting her head gently to the side to get a better look at her cut.

She couldn’t keep her face from reddening. The combination of Jay’s hand against her cheek and the amount of people around witnessing made her feel incredibly vulnerable.

“It’s just a cut, Jay.”

His fingers gently prodded around her wound. At one point he pressed too much for her comfort, causing her to let out a small gasp of pain.

“Sorry.” He softly murmured, dropping his hand. His mouth was twisted down into a frown. “You need to go to the hospital though.”

She extended an olive branch. “I’ll go after shift,” Not wanting to discuss her injury any further, she turned her attention to the dead Book.

She presumed someone had already called the incident in. And while she was aware of the toxic chemicals that had been exposed, she still took a cautious step forward, wanting to get a better look for the sake of the case.

But when she took that step, she stumbled. Jay’s hand quickly wrapped around her arm, preventing her from meeting the pavement.

“Yeah, we’re going to the hospital.” There was finality in his voice.

Hailey didn’t resist being guided to one of their cars. She wasn’t happy about going to the hospital, being prodded at and cared for, but knew she couldn’t do her job in this condition.

When he tried to help her get in though, she stopped him. “I can get in by myself.” She told him, barely managing to keep her frustration out of her voice.

She hated being prodded over. She knew Jay was just concerned, and she appreciated that, but it was easy for her to get irritated despite the good intentions.

He stepped back with his hands up, giving her space. And, to Hailey’s relief, didn’t say anything when she took her time getting in.

That was one of the things she loved about Jay. He cared but at the same time gave her space and trusted her to make her own decisions.

As soon as she relaxed into the seat she was able to discern the pain she was feeling more accurately. She thought it was from her cut, but realized she felt it through her entire head.

She started to lean her head against the window and close her eyes. Jay’s hand shot out to grab her thigh, jolting her back to her original position.

“Don’t sleep.” He didn’t even have the audacity to look at her when he made the order, looking to his left as he made a turn.

Ignoring how good his hand wrapped around her thigh felt, Hailey focused on his words and replied back with irritation. “I was just resting my eyes.”

Jay was unfazed by her bite. “You can’t go to sleep after having a head injury.” He pointed out, finally turning his head to face her.

Seeing the concern on his face made her less defensive. He wasn’t trying to boss her around, he was only worried about her.

“I forgot that you are practically a doctor because your brother is one.” Being more relaxed, she found herself able to tease him like normal.

“It’s on my resume.” He quipped back.

Hailey snorted. Doing so unfortunately caused her head to hurt worse. “Ow.” She couldn’t help but slip out a vocal compliant, raising her hand to tenderly hold the back of her head.

“Okay, stop being funny. Noted.” Jay said. Hailey had to press her lips together to keep herself from laughing again.

Neither of them acknowledged the fact he pressed down more on the accelerator.

———

Will Halstead was the first person they saw as they walked through the emergency room doors.

Hailey resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Jay had to have informed his brother that they were arriving. There was no other possible explanation. She only had a cut on her forehead, Will should be treating far more important patients.

“Please tell me you are having a medical student do this.” Hailey gestured to her head.

Will only looked to Jay, ignoring her. She sighed, realizing that Jay not only informed his brother, but requested that he would have Hailey as his patient.

She opened her mouth to complain, but quickly closed it. Better for her to get this over with. Then Will can get back to his actual work.

The three of them went into an empty room, where Hailey was directed to get on the hospital bed by Will.

“That’s a pretty nasty cut, Hailey.”

She watched as he pulled on a pair of gloves. “This won’t take that long, right?” Her and Jay could possibly make it back to work with only being gone for an hour.

“I’ll just need to stitch it up and then you’ll be good to go.”

Hailey gave Will a relieved smile.

But Jay decided to pipe in. “I think she has a concussion too, Will.”

Traitor. She threw her partner a glare, which he ignored.

Will became more concerned at the news. “Then I’ll be sure to check after I stitch this up.” He gestured to her cut.

Hailey nodded, swallowing her disappointment of most likely missing the rest of shift. And resisted throwing Jay a stink eye. He was only thinking of her best interests, and even though a part of her wanted to ignore a possible concussion, she needed to take care of herself.

She’d be back working in no time, she told herself.

Hailey jumped in surprise when a wet cloth was pressed against her forehead.

“Sorry,” Will dabbed the cloth gently around and on the wound. “Just cleaning the cut.”

“It’s fine.”

She suppressed another flinch when he began to suture her cut. To ignore the pain, she focused her attention on Jay in front of her.

It was unnecessary for him to be in the room, but he was still here. He didn’t seem to notice her looking, his eyes instead on Will’s hands patching her up.

Once Will stepped back, presumably done stitching her back together, Hailey let go of a breath she didn’t realize she was holding.

She wasn’t a fan of hospitals. The dislike only heightened when she was the patient as well.

A few seconds passed but Will didn’t return to the wound. Relieved, she leapt out of the bed, ready to head out.

Her vision got hazy as her feet hit the floor. She stumbled, similar to earlier, and once again Jay caught her before she could fall.

“He needs to check your head, remember?”

His voice was soft, almost a whisper. The one they used when they were talking to a person in distress.

And one he used with her at times. When they were disclosing with each other or wanting to get a certain point across.

If it was anyone else, she would feel babied, prodded over. But this was Jay. With him it just felt natural.

They weren’t alone though, Will was in the room, which made Hailey instinctively shrug off Jay’s arm.

Knowing she didn’t have anything helping her stay steady, her hands grabbed onto the side of the bed.

Yeah, she most definitely had a concussion. Finding that properly diagnosing would be counterproductive, she suggested to omit that.

The Halstead brothers didn’t like that idea. And of course, Jay spoke up before the actual doctor in the room. “We need to make sure there’s nothing else going on. What if you have a brain bleed?”

Before Hailey could remind her partner that he was, in fact, not a doctor, Will spoke up.

“It pains me to say it,” Will shared a shit-eating grin with his brother, who rolled his eyes in return. “But Jay is right.”

Hailey internally deflated. More time spent in the hospital then. Which inevitably included at least some kind of test.

Her negative thoughts quickly came to a halt as Jay dragged a chair against the tile floor. The screeching caused by the friction wasn’t particularly welcomed though.

Especially with her head injury. She must have made a face, as Jay quickly gave an apology. “Not quite doctor material.” He said, squeezing her shoulder with a grimace.

Jay’s presence was substantial to keeping her grounded, much like when they were on the job. She couldn’t imagine being here without him.

Of course Will had to burst her bubble with the news of separating them. “I’ll be taking you up for a CT. And you’ll wait here.” He directed the last part to Jay, with a warning tone to his voice.

“Shouldn’t I change?”

Will tilted his head towards a perfectly folded hospital gown next to her bed, giving her a nonverbal answer. He then left the room and closed the door behind him, presumably to give her privacy.

However, he did leave her alone with Jay. Which was interesting. And odd.

Speaking of Jay, he turned his head away, his own version of giving her privacy.

Admittedly, she was glad. She was a fall risk right now and she’d rather Jay catch her naked or almost naked body than the other Halstead.

Thankfully she didn’t have much trouble changing, choosing to sit on the bed when doing so.

She had the gown on but was having trouble tying it together. Focusing on tying the strings was making her head hurt. Sighing, she turned to Jay, admitting defeat.

“Can you tie the back?” She said, turning back around again to avoid seeing his face. There was no need to make this more awkward than it already was.

The next thing she knew, his fingers were on the first set of strings.

He tied them quickly, as he moved down her back to tie the second set. His fingertips brushed against her spine. If she wasn’t aware of what he was doing, it would have taken her a second to realize what she was feeling.

But still it was enough to give her goosebumps.

“Cold?” She could hear the smile in his voice as he asked. He was messing with her.

“You’re insufferable.” Was all she said, now once again facing him. She began to pull on the hospital socks that were next to the gown.

When she looked up, Jay’s head was down checking his phone. His face was full of concentration—it was clear whatever he was preoccupied with was work related.

Guilt filled her chest. Having Jay with her was selfish. It wasn’t like she was in a critical condition, she had a measly cut and a possible concussion.

“You should go.” She spoke up, fiddling with the bedsheet. Internally she was yelling at herself to stop, to not say anything and allow Jay to stay with her.

But Intelligence was working two people down. Getting Jay back would be hugely beneficial to the case.

He rolled his eyes in response. It was as if her suggestion was the most ridiculous thing in the world. “It’s fine.”

“It’s not fine. Our unit is working two men down right now—“

The door opened. Will was back, coming in right during the middle of Hailey’s rant. He was unfazed, in complete doctor mode. “Alright, I’m going to take you up for the CT scan now.”

She noticed a wheelchair behind him. Like clockwork, her mouth opened, the words of how she was fine, that she could walk by herself, were on the tip of her tongue. But she closed her mouth. There was no need to beat a dead horse.

So she took the arm Jay offered, giving him a grateful smile as he helped her into the chair.

As Will was wheeling her out, she grabbed hold of the doorframe. “You better be gone by the time I get back!”

Another eye roll, paired this time with a laugh. Hailey sighed, knowing she will be seeing Jay Halstead in the same exact spot when she came back into the room.

————

“Okay, now you can leave.” Hailey said once they were inside her apartment.

The CT scan didn’t show anything concerning, so she was allowed to go home. Per Will’s orders she was off the job for at least a week, with a lot of rest.

Jay grabbed his chest, feigning offense. “You really want to get rid of me that badly?”

Hailey rolled her eyes, not giving him a verbal answer. There was no use to continue pressing when he wasn’t going to head back to work.

“You heard your brother, Jay.” She started to walk through her apartment, heading towards her bedroom. Jay was close behind, right on her heels. “All I need now is rest. Which doesn’t require your assistance.”

He continued to follow her despite her reassurances. Once she reached her bed, she whirled around, her face inches away from his chest.

Annoyance was brimming at the surface. “All right,” She crossed her arms and tilted her chin up to meet Jay’s eyes. “If you won’t leave, at least tell me why.”

At that Jay became visibly uncomfortable. He broke eye contact with her, choosing instead to look everywhere and anywhere else. His tongue also dragged across his top lip, which Hailey found to be particularly distracting.

“When the car crashed earlier....” For the first time since his confrontation with Cameron, Hailey was seeing Jay’s emotions unravel. But instead of anger, he was expressing fear. “...I was really worried, Hailey.”

She reached out to grab his hands. They were shaking, she realized, only stilling when she held them.

Before she could comfort him, Jay continued talking. “And then the gunshots going off...”

She felt his hands forming into fists. Her fingers rubbed gently over his knuckles, wanting to help him release his tight hand muscles.

After a few strokes, the tension began to slowly leave. Despite this she continued her motions, finding it to ground her own self as well.

#my post #upstead #upstead fic

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anonymous-girl37 · 4 years

Text

Here is my story.

Most stories tend to start with things being normal, however, for this one, it is honestly a clusterfuck of bullshit with a little bit of normalcy thrown in to give me the illusion of stability. Even when I was only nine, I remember fun and family activities were never really with just her and us- it was always with somebody else there to motivate her. I sort of had to raise Katie and Kylie on my own at some points. She took care of us technically speaking; she didn’t starve us or anything, she just wasn’t available for the emotional side of being a parent. The parts that kids grow up to remember, unfortunately for us.

One of the best examples of her neglectful care for us was around that time... Me being around age… eight? Nine? It all blurs together at some points, but the point is I was young.

My mom always takes naps, they last a whole ten minutes sometimes, but she’s always tired, maybe she’s sick. Whenever she’s sleeping, she says I get to play house with my sisters and pretend I’m the mom. My favorite is when she drives to the store for candy for us because then I make the rules for extra long. I get to make them lunch and play outside. Sometimes she lets me read them stories before their nap time, which is mommy’s relaxing time, so I get the whole rest of the house to myself. I get to make all the rules, dad never lets me do that. He doesn’t know, mommy said it’s our secret. I hate when she doesn’t get her naps in because then she’s grumpy. She went away for a whole week and she hasn’t taken a nap or been grumpy since she got back, maybe the doctors did surgery and fixed her. She’s even taking us to the park while dad’s at work tomorrow.

It’s been a week now, mommy was going to take us swimming but she said her head hurt too much, and the next day we were supposed to play in the woods but she needed to take a nap, and it was almost time for dinner when she woke up. Dad couldn’t know she was napping again, or he’d make her go away for a long time she said. She tells me I’m a good secret keeper. Maybe tomorrow she will let us go swimming.

Mommy’s been back home for two weeks and her medicine already stopped working, I wish it worked for longer cause I miss when mommy was fun. Mommy loves when I play house with my little sisters, but sometimes I get tired of it. I have to listen to her anyway. She’s better than dad because she doesn’t have any stupid rules. All dad ever does is work, we only get to play with him for a little bit after work and on the weekends.

It wasn’t something that stopped, her shitty “parenting” if you can even call it that, never improved. I was 12 years old popping Klonopin like candy, with her permission of course. Not only was she okay with me taking drugs, but she also fueled my addiction with her prescription. At least she was generous with her pills, however, she had plenty enough to share. She got a script of 90 a month from one doctor and 60 a month from another. She was good at pretending to have illnesses for drugs, and trust me, it’s extremely escalated since then. I don’t know who else she gave them away to, but when she ran out she always found a way to get more. Pills were more important to her than us having new clothes, and undergarments. She cared more about pills than saving money to do fun stuff with my sisters and me. She only ever wanted to be high, and she was so good at hiding it. She had our whole family fooled for years. She lived and still does live a life of lies. She sucks the life out of everyone she’s near. She sucked the life out of me. She had me becoming friends with kids who dealt drugs, It was a messy situation all around, I hung around people much older than me, I did drugs with men almost twice my age, however, usually Nicole was around for that part. At least she didn’t leave me alone with strange men, before the age of 13, I guess that was the cut-off. She decided I was mature enough, old enough, to hang out with men 8 years older than me. Luckily I had someone to protect me. Anthony tried to at least, to help me become my best. He wasn’t much better off than me in regards to a mother and he had a terrible drug problem. We experienced the same things in different ways. It felt like everything I went through, he did before me. Our lives were nowhere near identical. He grew up with his grandfather who fucked him out of his childhood, quite literally. I was addicted to Xanax, but that was nowhere near strong enough for his need to forget. Heroin was his kryptonite, he couldn’t get enough of it, but no matter how high he was, or how dope sick he was because he couldn’t find any, he made sure I was okay, he told me he loved me. Every day, that was the first thing I would hear him say. Our entire lives were straight ahead of us. He was poetic and artistic, and everything he said to me sounded like a quote from a book. He wanted his story heard, and he wanted me to be the one to hear it. It feels like I’m now responsible for telling the world. He never wanted anyone to know him, just who he was. He wasn’t all happy, and nice, he was a total asshole sometimes, I’m not sure that he was even aware. The love we had was one I’ll never forget though.

I’ve dropped my bottle and there’s broken glass on the ground now. I guess that’s what I get for being lost in these thoughts. It cut my leg but I can’t feel it. The glass reminds me of him. It reminds me of the night all of us got drunk and they were smashing glass bottles on the concrete. He screams “whoever runs through it gets $20 and this” as he’s holding a ½ empty bottle of rum. And some other guy told him he’d give home $100.00 to do it. So he runs through the things, falls, and has glass stuck from his feet to his knees. I’ll never forget that smell, blood, and vodka. I spent damn near two hours pulling glass out of his legs and feet and bandaging them up.

July Summer 2017

Today had to have been the best day of my life. Anthony took me to our spot, and we talked for hours, about nothing and everything, as always. We’re getting sober together. We’re going to do it. We promised. Today marks 1 day clean. Weed is an exception because fuck quitting that. I would do anything to make this man happy. I’ve known for a long time that he loves me, but today made me realize how much I truly love him too. I’m happy with him. My life is chaotic right now, but he’s my calm. He’s my peace. I can’t wait for the day we never have to leave each other again.

August 11 summer 2017

We’ve been sober for a month today. I want to go to this back to school party but Anthony is being a little bitch about it. I’ll convince him to go.

August 12 summer 2017

He died. On purpose. I made him go to the party and he overdosed. I thought he was just drunk. We cuddled on the porch swing until he fell over into my lap. He laid in my lap for 20 minutes before I knew. He had no pulse. He left a note in my back pocket. I can’t bring myself to look at it. I want to get rid of it.

My god damn room is a mess. Today marks 3 years since I lost the love of my life. I'm already drunk and it’s only 10 a.m. and of course, I, the drug addict, would take pills on a day like today. He would be so disappointed, but it’s finally come the time I read his suicide note, it’s finally the day, I’ve worked up the courage, I can do it. I need to do it. I must lock my door again, I can’t have another interruption. The door could’ve become unlocked. It’s locked, I’ve re-locked it twice now. I never imagined sitting on my bed, reading his note, his last words, whilst I’m a high and drunk mess. You’ll have that though, one of the greatest things Nicole ever taught me was to mask my feelings with drugs. I owe it to him. To read his last words. His voice still deserves to be heard.

Katrina,

I’m so sorry. I can’t keep doing this. I still kneel in the shower, and put my face down, letting the water puddle in my hands as if they could grow big enough to protect me from myself. The pain hits me randomly, it’s like I know I have lungs and I must be able to breathe, but I can’t, the air refuses to come. To this day, I get flashbacks, and I hate the feeling. It’s not normal. These are things you can’t forget. You want to rot because it’s better than being beat than being hurt. I have trouble believing anyone when they tell me they love me, but it’s easier with you. You told me I was your happiness and I gave you butterflies. My depression, my struggle, and my addiction gave you the determination to fight to make me happy. I’m sorry, but things are getting bad again. I should have never begun putting you through my pain. I don’t want help, I don’t want you to kill yourself fighting to save me, and I know you would if I didn’t stop you. You may not see it, and I doubt you will agree, but I’m doing what’s best. You have given me the greatest possible love, you have so much going for you, and you’re still so full of life, don’t lose that. Stay clean for me. I can’t fight anymore. Maybe that makes me a coward, but being a coward to the world is better than the pain that never leaves me, I’m tired of living in my hell. My eyes are full of tears writing this, and I can barely read. I owe my temporary feelings of joy to you. Anyone who knows me knows that if someone out there was going to save me, it would have been you. I can’t go on showering you in my pain, I can see the hurt in your eyes when you look at me. I hurt you because I’m so hurt I don’t know how to breathe anymore. If I die tonight, know that it’s for the best. Know that I haven’t truly been alive in a long time, that’s if I ever was at all. Don’t ruin yourself over me. Tell yourself what we had wasn’t real. Repeat to yourself that I never really loved you until you believe it. I treated you like a project, I manipulated you. Fool yourself into hating me. Because you’re going to see me in every single person. You’ll see some piece of me In everyone you meet. I know you, you’re going to look for me, whether you know you are or not, you’re going to seek me. If all of the words you said were true, you’re never going to give up looking for someone like me, you won’t find him. Find someone better. Find someone who fulfills you. You deserve a man who gives you the world even when he is falling apart. You deserve a love that doesn’t end, I want you to have those feelings again. I’m begging you not to look for me, I’m gone. I’m sorry that you’re never going to stop seeing pieces of me. Look for the good qualities, but I’m sure you’ll find the bad ones too. You’ll find my sense of humor in every funny movie, and all the chick flicks will remind you of our love. You’ll find my eyes in the face of a stranger and you’ll see my smile on little kids playing at the park. I’ll always be here for you whether I’m physically present or not. I was never sober. I told you I was because I knew if I got you started I could live with myself for leaving.

In reading this I thought I’d feel relieved, possibly ready to let the last of him go. But now I’m lost, more so than before. Now I’m angry, not with him, but with the world. You can’t hate someone for killing themselves, but you can hate the world for making them do it. You can hate the god or goddess or gods or goddesses you do or don’t believe in for letting it happen. I want to hate him, but I can’t because he’s not here, he took away my power to hate him, and so now I hate everything else. I hate everyone else. He wasn’t lying when he said I would see him in everyone. I see his good qualities somewhere in everyone, I see his bad qualities in every bad person but, I see him in everyone. It’s like when he died he became the universe, the universe swallowed him whole and he left a part of him in everyone. He picked who got his best qualities as if he knew I would find them. I do see his smile on the little kids playing at the park. I see his eyes in the only other man I’ve ever truly loved, they’re not the same, but the feelings in them are similar. I find his humor in every comedy. Sometimes I think maybe what he said was true, that he’d always be there for me whether physically present or not, because sometimes, on some of my worst days, I feel him. For just a minute, I can let myself pretend he isn’t gone. I can let myself pretend he never left this earth. Then my whole world comes crashing right back down. He swore to me he was sober. He promised. I think he only lied so I would be okay. I resent him for telling me to hate him. Because I can’t hate him, I want to so badly, but It’s impossible. Any pain he put me through was nothing compared to how he felt.

That's enough about him for now, as we're going to have to re-open that discussion later. Peach vodka sounds fantastic right now, I'll have a whipped pinnacle and peach smoothie. I could not have possibly made it any stronger than it is. Thank god for mind-altering substances, because quite frankly, I would be dead without them.

Nicole, if you're reading this, how did you do what you did? How were you content with yourself in the way you raised my sisters and me? Did you plan it all, or did you just go with the flow and lie when necessary? You never left a bruise, hell, you never even hit us. You scarred us permanently though, my sisters may not see it yet, but I do. Instead of giving us scars that would heal physically and show your crimes, you gave us invisible ones. The ones that people will deny us having for the rest of our lives. The ones that will always haunt us when we see you. You gave us scars that we can't get covered up with a pretty tattoo. You may not have hurt them as badly as me, but they don't deserve your games. I don't want them to experience even half of what I did.

Her games have left me empty, shallow, broken, and confused. I'm not confused about what she did or who she is, I'm confused about why. Why wasn't I good enough to deserve her love and compassion? What did I do so wrong? Why was I the one chosen to take on her role and try to fix my own life, and protect myself from someone who was supposed to protect and love me? I was forced to grow up so she could go backward. She wanted to live vicariously through me as if she wanted to become me. Everything I did, she did too. All the drugs I did, she just had to try, sometimes do them with me. Nothing was too far for her. She never told my dad though, "don't let your father find out" she would constantly imbed that into my head, it got to the point where I had become two people. One for my mother and one for my father. I remember breaking down one day, crying to myself because I felt like no one knew me and I didn't know who I was, and it was at that moment that I lost my sense of self. I'll probably never know who I am, or why. I have no clue who I want to be. I don't know how to become someone for myself, I've learned to feel as if I must adapt to everyone else.

Nicole told me everything and I mean everything. You may think, "oh that's not so bad, she's being open." Perhaps there are some things you should never tell your children. Some people should never be parents.

She loved to tell me how she was going to be so lost and sad when her "babies"(children all over the age of 10) leave her(by this she meant to grow up and go to school). How she liked sleeping around with all kinds of different men because it was fun and she was good at manipulating them. She told me about her sexual experiences and I wish she wouldn't have sometimes. She told me all kinds of things about her sex life, even asked for my commentary on the experience. Then later she changed many of her stories and said she was raped which had made me feel responsible if that's what had happened because I knew so maybe I should have known. She told me about the men she was dating and even introduced me to some, made sure I knew them well. Her 38-year-old boyfriend talked dirty to me, and the 36-year-old boyfriend did drugs with me, while we were living with him. He was a big mess, but not abusive. However, as soon as she got tired of him she claimed he beat her. She claimed he was abusive so that everyone would pity her. But, she was a liar. He never hurt her. I would have seen it, I would have known. Once again, she had made me question my entire life.

I know about everyone she hates though there aren't many. Now whether it was authentic or a horrible attempt at making me feel sympathy for her, I truly didn't know. I hate knowing everything and having been forced to be her diary, being forced to let her live through me, but she changed me to be what her idea of a kid was. It wasn't a kid at all. She refused to fix any of her problems, no matter how hard I tried to help her, she just wanted to be responsibility-free forever, and I got in the way of that, so she made me her excuse to act like a child. She forced herself to puke and bragged about it. Talking about how much weight she could lose and how quickly. It gave me my sort of eating disorder of feeling strong or like I achieved something by how much I was able to puke up. Still to this day, it's some stupid competition in my head. Drugs are her favorite, they were then too. At Least then it was just Benzos, weed, and hallucinogens. I was the only one who knew, that was stressful, keeping that secret. She constantly made me be someone I wasn't, and she forced me to be someone else for my dad. But I never did know who I was. There was "party secret keeper" me and there was "the most innocent child to exist" me, but I never knew who "me" was without being forced to put on an act one way or another.

chapter 3: The worst of you.

You broke my heart, but I should have known it was coming. It was too often that I looked into your pretty green-blue ocean eyes just to find them glazed over in a drug-induced haze. The last month with you made up for the years of torture. The torture of not knowing where you were or who you were with. Watching you burst into nothing but rage because you couldn’t find your next fix. I never wanted anything but to save you. And when you offered to be sober so long as I was, of course, I took you upon it. I thought you meant it, though I always had my doubts. 3 am is when most of our story was told. You called me every morning at 3, without a doubt, I could always expect that.

July 21st, 2017.

Time 3:00 am

I wake up in your arms and lay there silently as I’m sure you dream peaceful dreams that match the calm state of your face, I still see the shadow of mental exhaustion under your eyes. I breathe slowly, as to not disrupt your sweet dreams. I love you.

July 22nd, 2017

Time 3:00 am

You open your beautiful ocean blue-green eyes to start the beginning of your new adventure. Our fingers intertwined, our eyes locked as if we couldn’t look away. I couldn't ask for a better feeling. I love you.

July 23rd, 2017

Time 3:00 am

The scent of chocolate fills the room. It happens to be your favorite drink, surprisingly, hot chocolate, a drink no one would expect someone like you to like. A half-smile spreads across your face, the smile that tells me at this moment you’re happy. I love you.

July 24th, 2017

Time 3:00 am

I hold you close, but maybe not close enough, feeling the warmth and comfort of your body against mine made me happy though. You make me feel complete. I love you.

July 25th, 2017

Time 3:00 am

You wake me up with a small forehead kiss. You seem to be happy today. That makes me smile. I love you.

July 26th, 2017

Time 3:00 am

The ring sits perfectly on my finger. With it, I promise you I’ll be okay, and I’ll follow our dreams. You have to leave soon, but I don't want you to leave. I never do. I love you.

August 5th, 2017

Time 3:00 am

You're restlessly tossing and turning, I’m sure you haven't slept yet, you’re still withdrawing. I lean over and put my arm across you and place my body against yours. I worry because I wake up to the sound of you crying every time we sleep together. I try to pull you into me and you rest your head on my chest and quietly sob, pretending you’re just sleeping so I won’t notice. You’re stuck in this terrible life. I’m sorry. I love you.

August 6th, 2017

Time 3:00 am

Laying on the couch. I could see you staring at the wall, I felt you caressing my hand, softly. You kiss my cheek softly and then give me a warm smile. I see the pain in your eyes. It shatters my soul more every single second I look at you. You have to leave again soon. I want you to stay with me. I love you.

August 7th, 2017

Time 3:00 am

You look like you've been crying for hours. I'm afraid you’re not okay again. I know you won’t tell me. I love you

August 8th, 2017

Time 3:00 am

you tell me that you don't want to get out of bed today. You tell me that you love me and that you're gonna be okay. I should know better but I believe you because I want to. I love you.

August 9th, 2017

Time 3:00 am

You look like you’re on drugs again, but you won’t tell me that. Your face is pale and you’re always shivering. I love you.

August 10th, 2017

Time 3:00 am

I have yet to see you smile. You look at me over video chat and I know that you're fighting it, you can’t wait to congratulate me on one month of sobriety, and I can’t wait to congratulate you. In-person. Your kisses are always soft but lately, they have a chill to them. The warmth from you has disappeared, I’m worried that you want drugs again. You told me “I’ll always be here for you whether I’m physically present or not.” That makes me feel better. Maybe a party will cheer you up, I have a surprise planned for you tonight. I love you.

August 11, 2017

Time 6:00 am

You died at 1:53 am

I tried to wake you up but you don't stir. The party went silent. The pain in my chest is excruciating. I shook you and your rubber-banded bag fell to the floor. I hugged you harder as if it could bring you back. There is nothing I could do but cry. 15 minutes later I dialed 9-1-1 but I couldn’t speak, I cried so hard that no sound could even come out anymore. The sobs were so quiet they were loud. The ambulance got there, they put you on a stretcher. At first, I refused to let go of you, holding onto your hand, hugging your body with mine as if I could give you the life in me. It was so cold. D.O.A. I love you... The bed feels empty with you gone. The couch feels too big without you next to me. And the porch swing looks like a grave. I can’t go to the party house anymore. My hands feel cold without yours in them. I cried all night. The tears stopped coming out after a while, but I still sobbed. Your scent fills my nose and I cry more. I could have saved you. I'm empty without you. I should have known better. Your last words haunt me. I’m not sober anymore, I’m sorry. The note you left, I don’t think I can ever read it. I love you.

August 3rd, 2018

Time 3:00 am

I had a dream about you. You looked so happy, your wings matched your darkness. But Seeing your smile, your real one, made me feel good, so good that you are no longer only a dark spot in my memory.

August 5th, 2018

Time 3:00 am

I made your favorite, hot chocolate, and a bacon peanut butter sandwich. I wish you had a grave, but they turned you to ash and put you god knows where. Even though you aren't here, the universe still reminds me of you. Even though I know you won't be waking up this time. I love you.

August 10th, 2018

Time 3:00 am

I went to our spot today. I cried when I got home, I hurt so bad. I miss you more than anything. I love you. It's almost been a year.

August 11th, 2018

Time 3:00 am

The first anniversary of losing you. I refuse to accept that you’re gone. Just tell me you’re coming for me. Tell me you’re in some 3rd world country just hiding out like we always talked about, and you’re gonna come find me when I’m 18. I want this to all be a bad dream.

August 12th, 2018

Time 3:00 am

It's getting too hard to sleep. I slept in one of your t-shirts. It smelled just like your favorite cologne. I held it just like I would have held you. I love you. I miss you.

August 13th, 2018

Time 3:00 am

Your mom called to make sure I was okay, your parents are back in New England now. They miss you, it hurt to hear her cry. I guess she did love you in her way. I love you.

August 14th, 2018

Time 3:00 am

I'm going crazy without you. This isn’t allowed to be real. I miss you. I miss your smell. I want you back. I love you.

August 15th, 2018

Time 3:00 am

I visited our spot again yesterday. Remember what you told me? “I’ll always be here for you whether I’m physically present or not”. Those words haunt me, you spoke them the day before left me forever. I should have known. I wish I knew. Maybe then I could have saved you. I love you.

August 16th, 2018

Time 3:00 am

I can't stand being without you anymore. I love you.

August 11th, 2019

Time 3:00 am

It’s been two years. I miss you more than I ever thought was humanly possible. Please come back. I think I’m in love again. It scares me, but I know you’d like him.

August 12th, 2019

Time 3:00 am

No one gets that you weren’t the best thing in the universe, that you were an asshole sometimes, you weren’t always a good person. But you were good. You made life something more than it was and you showed me who I could be. You showed me who I am, in your own fucked up way that included you dying. And for that, I owe you.

August 3rd, 2020

Time 3:00 am

I've finally read the note you left me. I read it over and over. I’m crying so much writing this I can’t even see. Come back. I miss you. I love you.

August 5th, 2020

Time 3:00 am

Why did you have to go and do that? This all must be a fucking joke. I love you.

August 8th, 2020

Time 3:00 am

The day that marks 3 years since you left me is coming up quickly. I don’t want it to come. I don’t want it to happen. I don’t want to accept this. I miss our talks at our spot. I love you.

August 11th, 2020

Time 1:53 am

It’s been 3 years. Today is terrible. Come back. I love you.

I guess your anger is just as much a part of your story as your love. You loved me, that much everyone who knew you knew, but you had a funny way of showing it sometimes. The drugs clouded your memory, or at least you wanted me to think they did. Like the time you shot at someone who stole off of you. Your excuse was being high, but not until you knew how much it scared me. I’m not sure what you thought would happen had you shot him, but I don’t think you cared regardless. Maybe you always knew what you were doing, and you were too tired to control yourself. No matter what, a part of me will always be infatuated with you and a piece of my heart will always belong to you. Our story is one I can never forget, but as time goes on I see more flaws, I find more wrongdoings, and I learn to love you less.

Chapter 4

How have we gotten to this point? I woke up today in a great mood, but of course, Nicole couldn’t allow that. It’s been months since I spoke to her, but she’s pinned my best friend and his mother against me. She and her so-called husband say I told them I was going to turn them in. My best friend who deals drugs, and his mother who condones it and takes part. I know what you’re thinking, why the fuck are you, friends, with these people? Quite frankly, I don’t know, I guess I always have been. My best friend, Aaron, was the first guy I ever had a crush on. He was the only person who showed up to my 13th birthday party and he never did me wrong. He took my weed virginity, and he stuck up for me. He didn’t let kids bully me, though they sure tried. He didn’t back down, sometimes it felt like he was the only person on my side. If it weren’t for him my middle school experience would not have been nearly as mediocre as it was. At some points in life, he was all I had, and still, to this day, I can go to him with whatever and he does his best to help. Though, ever since Nicole started her bullshit and I told the police about her abuse, she has been trying to sway him to take her side. She’s good at doing that, she knows how to manipulate just about anyone. She had our entire family fooled for years, had them convinced she wasn’t a terrible person or on drugs.

I guess now is a good time to bring up Josh, the man who took my virginity, if you want to put it that nicely. By that I mean the 19-year-old who forcibly had sex with 13-year-old me, whilst I was high on pills in Victoria’s closet. Victoria was my BFF, we did everything together, mostly drugs. Sometimes random friends of friends would stay at her house, and one time we made a huge mistake. I still remember the feeling, being dragged from bed and onto the ground, through the closet doors. I can still hear how loud the sliding door shut. I remember how it felt, my clothes being ripped off of me, sloppily and just good enough for him to get to where he wanted. He clasped his hand around my throat to keep me pinned down as if I wasn’t already paralyzed by the pills he offered me. Surely I took them, I was too high to know better. I didn’t feel anything, but that was the torture of it. I knew what was happening, and I was unable to stop it. My body was motionless, but he got off on it. His evil grin and cold eyes are permanently ingrained in my brain, I’ll never forget his face because that’s all I could look at. I’ll never forget it because I’m forced to remember. Good thing I never felt it, I’m sure that would be a whole other nightmare. I’m sure you’re wondering how this relates to Nicole, but let me tell you, I told her about the invasion of my body, and she doubted me. I told her what happened and she told me I was wrong. She told me I wasn’t that high, I could have stopped it if I didn’t want it. She told me I wanted it. I the 13-year-old, of course, believed my mom, only to figure out it was sexual assault 2 years later. Nicole of course did absolutely nothing, as per usual. She could have saved me that night. I called her, I wanted to go home because I didn’t feel safe and I thought I was too high, she came and saw me, she told all the people there I was fine, even went as far as saying I was faking it. Maybe she’s the reason I got raped that night, maybe he took my silence as consent because he thought I was sober. Maybe he was rough because he thought my silence meant I liked it. Maybe I only imagined saying stop, perhaps it never came out of my mouth. Or perhaps my pleas to stop convinced him to continue. How could I know anyways? I was in a drug-fueled haze, maybe I remember wrong and I never said stop. I guess that’s the downfall of getting high, you never know what happened. Everything is foggy and the details are blurry. It’s like trying to remember a dream after you wake up, you wonder what happened and the longer you’re awake the blurrier the memory gets. The longer you’re sober, the blurrier your high adventures become. Just because I’ve been thinking about this long enough to write it down, anxiety is jolting through my veins. It starts at the back of my throat, pushing its way up from the inside out, a sting that becomes so much more. The line between what is fear and what is real is becoming blurrier by the second. It feels as if my words are stuck in my throat, stopping me from screaming, from letting my feelings out. This is my brain's way of telling me my words aren’t worth much right now, quite frankly it’s not wrong. He tore my soul to pieces as my pleas ran through his mind as “convince me” “keep going” “I like it”. I can still see his cold, hungry eyes in my dreams sometimes. Imagining his face sends shivers down my spine as I continually play what he did to me over and over again as if something could change the more I think into it. He broke me, crushed my being, my soul, and outright stole my voice. I can’t possibly continue to look at myself in disgust over this man, because it is he who should rot, not me. I’m worth more than becoming the perfect victim, I choose to be a victor. Sometimes I don't think I can do it, my motivation is wanting to be further in life than anyone who has ever hurt me, and I'm already there.

Chapter 5: The Man Who Loved Me Once

The man who loved me once, the one who broke my heart into pieces. Leo tore me to pieces, but I thought I was in love with him. It took a month in a psychiatric facility to conclude that he never loved me. I was 15 with a 21-year-old man. He convinced me it was okay along with Nicole constantly praising me for it. “Damn haha you are just like me”

February 3rd, 2018

I told him to stop, I told him no. I told him I didn't want to do this. I begged and pleaded but that meant nothing to him. He didn't stop, he didn't understand “no”, my begs and pleads for him to stop rang through his ears as “convince me”. His right hand roamed my body, It made me shiver. His left hand went between covering my mouth to shut me up, and pushing me back up against the brick wall. He kissed my lips roughly to silence me, pushing me hard against the wall. His fingers scratched into my skin, making me squirm. I couldn't move much though, the pills he put in my drink prevented me from doing that, what a lovely redo of the last man who hurt me. This one at least did not do it with people around, though it was dark, we were in a public place. He called me baby girl and told me "I am going to fuck you so good". I showered 3 times today, and no one questioned it. I did not eat anything for a few days, and no one questioned it. Maybe you did not mean to hurt me, maybe you thought I liked it. I still love you.

February 27th, 2018

He hit me today, it's not the first time. Hell, it is not even the second or third time, honestly, I have lost count. He loves me. He apologized and then we cuddled and watched a movie. He will change, I know I can fix him. He never means to hurt me. He is a good man and people do not want to try to understand. I have to cover the bruises, good thing it is winter and I can wear a hoodie every day. He makes me sad but he does not mean it. He loves me and I know it.

March 15th, 2018

Today he took me to meet his parents. I had to lie and say I was 18. I pretended I was in college. He made me. He just did not want his parents to give him shit like they always do. He said it was fine that we had an age difference. I trust him, I would do anything for him. I love him.

March 28th, 2018

Today he tried to drown me. It was my fault. I remember passing out and waking up with no clothes. I guess he put them in the dryer because they were wet. He wasn't himself when he did it, I am sure there is just something going on mentally. I can fix him. I can help him. I know he loves me. I know he can get help, I want to help him.

April 3, 2018

I saw him today, our visit was cut short because Nicole wanted me to come home. She knows about him and me, she just missed me because I have been at friends’ houses and with Leo all week. He was pretty mean today, he grabbed me by the throat and I am beginning to think that he needs more help than I can give him. My throat is sore and it is bruised on the side. I will have to wear my hair down. He loves me so much that the pain is worth it. I do not want to lose him. The way he strokes my hair and holds me, while he is apologizing after he has done something that harmed me is so sweet. I love it when he buys me flowers and sometimes he is good for a while. The pain is worth it for the love.

April 8th, 2018

He raped me. He put a glass bottle inside of me, and my vagina bled. He got me drunk, and we started making out, then he fucked me, relentlessly, roughly. He bruised me. In between my legs. My dad picked me up, it was the worst experience of my life. I still love him and I do not want to anymore. I am being punished for it because Nicole will not tell my dad she knew everything. I am being punished for being raped. I am broken. I need help.

April 24th, 2018

I spent nearly a month in a psychiatric facility, it has helped me a lot. My roommate was awesome. I had a nurse in there, a youngish, beautiful, and kind African American woman, she is the reason I am still alive. I am so grateful to have met that woman and another one of the therapists there. It has helped me so incredibly much. I hate that I am still being punished for being raped because I was not, not allowed there. I had permission. I did not do anything without my mom's permission, yet she and my dad punished me for being raped. As in it was my fault. As if I did it to myself. How was I supposed to know any better with Nicole telling me it was okay? I have grown to hate my dad, I make sure he knows it and I feel no remorse for what I say. He sucks and I wish I was just with my mom. I still love Leo, but he never loved me, except once.

I have grown so much since then. I used to think so highly of Nicole. I thought it was awesome to have a mom that helps you sneak around and break rules. I thought so highly of her and I wanted to be exactly like her. I wanted to smoke and drink and be high all of the time because I thought it was so cool. I thought it was normal at that. I just could not realize that she was no good. My dad was the only one who wanted what was best for me, and still to this day he does. He was the one who saw how poorly I was doing and made an effort towards getting me better. He did not even know half of it and from the time he found out and forward, he gave me all of the acceptance and care and love I needed. I regret ever being so mean to him. I know you are wondering what the hell I said to him, so I will make a list.

-I hate you

-You are a terrible dad

-I will never speak to you again

-You are the reason I am so messed up

-I never want to see you again, you suck and I fucking hate you, don't you dare tell me to watch my mouth, you don't get to tell me what to do because you aren't my dad anymore {then I called him by his first name}

-I do not want you in my life

I hate myself for the things I said to my dad. He is one of the kindest, most caring, and genuinely good human beings I know. He does everything he can to make sure my sisters and I can have what we want. He has a job therefore a steady income. He gets us any reasonable thing we want. I am so lucky to have a dad like him because not everyone gets a good dad, I love my dad. He and I finally have an amazing father, daughter relationship and I feel so much better. I wish I never said those hurtful awful things to him, I wish that Nicole never ingrained my brain with lies about him making him seem bad. Now my sisters are saying very similar but even meaner hurtful things to my dad. He does so well for them and they hate him because Nicole is good at brainwashing.

Dad, if you are reading this, I want you to know, it was never your fault for anything that happened. You could not have known, Nicole manipulates well. I love you and you are an awesome dad.

My mind is in a muddle. I can not seem to think straight for some reason. Nicole manipulated me so much I question my trauma. she told my dad and me that I faked being raped so I would not be in trouble. When I went to the party, she said it was real for a while, until it was no longer convenient for her to use. "My poor baby, I feel so bad seeing my daughter shower 5 times a day". Then when it was not getting her attention anymore, she said I was lying.

I wish I knew what to do with the thoughts that are flooding my brain right now. Once you become happy, and you come to be at peace with yourself, you can be okay. However, your demons stick with you forever. Once an addict, always an addict, but that does not make you a bad person. It shows how strong you are when you get sober. Your demons follow you, but you can restrain them, you can imprison them and throw them into the back of your brain. That alone makes you a survivor. Being a victim of rape and having PTSD is just the same. It is hard to suppress the memories, and it is even harder to work through them, but it is possible, I know it is because I am doing it. Your demons follow you, you have to realize that they do not own you.

Nicole is part of the reason I am mentally ill. I hate her for that. I hate her for many things. I wish her the worst. However, I am not going to let her win. I do not hate her, I hate what she did, I hate the way she groomed me into her idea of a good daughter. I hate how she manipulated me into believing my dad was no good, and he drank too much and he ignored us on the weekends for shooting/hunting. I regret not letting my dad have a relationship with me for years. She is not winning this one. I hate everything she did, but I will leave it to someone else to hate her because I am sure other people do.

I have always been in love with Leo, but as time passes by, I realize that nothing he did was good or okay. He was only ever "nice" to manipulate me. I wish I had known then what I know now. I am slowly getting over him and trying to ignore the intrusive thoughts about him. He was like a drug, and I got addicted.

My current boyfriend is amazing, and I could not have asked for someone better.

Chapter 6: This Is Today

Hypomania can be nice, I was hypomanic for like a month, keyword fucking “was”. I’d like to clear the misconception that mania means you’re happy, it doesn’t. I can’t be confrontational right now because no matter what it’s about I’m approaching it like a fight even if you’re approaching it like a discussion. It’s one hell of a fucking high and if you’ve ever done hard drugs you know that it’s usually not good the whole time you’re on a binge after a week or so. You know it’s more intense the more you do and the less you can function. Mania is such an intense thing that it makes you feel like you are on drugs when you aren’t, and as someone who used to do a lot of them, that’s scary, because it brings back so many memories, and for me, that fuels the mania more, it is just feeding the fire. Okay, so imagine like a 2-month long drug binge or drinking (alcohol) binge with the given random withdrawals and mood swings, The comedowns, and the intense parts where you think you’re on top of the world and life could not possibly get better.. Okay? Now imagine having no control over when you feel like you’re coming down when you feel high or drunk when you feel hungover when you are high or drunk at all. Imagine 24/7 constant torture of not knowing what’s next. Don’t fucking romanticize mania, don’t romanticize this. Here I am, in my bathtub, with a bottle of cheap vodka that tastes more like the smell of hand sanitizer than any alcohol at all, and I’m on 2 bars of Xanax (I was coming up on a year sober). Here I am, hot water pouring onto my trembling body in hope that it will ease my trembling, it feels like I’ve been in here for days and it’s only been hours, yet all of my tears are gone. I’ve drained myself of tears and I can’t seem to cry anymore. It's just a dull sob, heavy breathing, shaky hands, a blotchy face, and a trembling body. You think my symptoms would be numbed but I feel like they’re more lifelike now. I feel trapped within them, as if they own me, just like he owned me. I wish I could say he never did but for a while there I was stuck in his abyss. I haven’t slept in way too fucking long. Yes, I am on meds, no they are not working. I’m talking to my psychiatrist as soon as I can. Last night and these past few hours(it’s 3:48 a.m.) have been terrible, I’ve been up talking and pacing and shaking and crying all night in utter paranoia full of what I'm self-aware enough to know are only delusions, going from laughter to crying excessively to panic attacks that feel like the end of the world, to pouring my heart out to a girl I’ve been friends with for a week and telling her all of my trauma(shout out to you dude thank you) to trying to buy fucking animals(specifically a monkey) off of the Internet. Even though I only collectively have $6.00. Mania is embarrassing yourself publicly or even just within your household and not fucking remembering what you did or how you did it or why. Mania is bad life choices and excessive cleaning and exhaustion and impulsivity, for example: “wanna get drunk” yeah I’m drunk rn but sure why not. “Wanna have sex?” Yeah okay “ I don’t have a condom” that’s cool just pull out or don’t I don’t care. Mania is hurting the people you love because they can see how lost you are and how broken you are and how you can’t see that you need help. Mania is researching, stalking, fucking obsessively trying to find your abuser/rapist on the internet because you’re curious as to how he’s doing. Mania is trying to convince everyone around you that you’re fine because you want to be fine because you don’t want it to happen again until you’re so not fine you can’t avoid it anymore. Sometimes you just get stuck in fucking mania and you can’t get out. Sometimes you get hypomanic and start a book then as it progresses into mania you write more and more *cough* me *cough*.

Life has never exactly been easy, and I’ve always had difficulties concluding that nothing that’s happened is my fault, and truly it is not. However, blaming myself has always been easier than blaming everyone else. In complete honesty, Nicole ruined so much of my life and damaged my psyche. The way I view the world will never be innocent, my innocence is gone and I’m not sure I could get it back if I tried to. How much of my life would have been different had I not been an addict? What if Nicole never was abusive? What if I was never raped? What if I did fewer drugs? What if I never told my dad about Nicole? I could go on with the questions, but that probably won’t get us anywhere. It’s funny to think of who I could have become. Maybe I would be a sheltered little bitch with no sense of humor or sense of self. Maybe I would still to this day be a drug addict. The what if’s don’t matter, because they are simply that, what if’s. They don’t mean anything, but my past means everything. I don’t hold grudges against anyone for anything, I try not to hate, but I do strongly dislike Nicole. I do wish she wasn’t such a raging bitch. I wish she could just stop being a piece of shit. I wish my life wasn’t destroyed, yet I am beyond thankful for how beautifully broken I am.

I'll have such loud intrusive thoughts that they feel like voices. It's like there are two people in my head sometimes 3 or 4, constantly talking over one other, and then me trying to get them to stop long enough for me to hear myself think. I will also have snippets of words, phrases, phantom sounds, or music. I begin to hear whole words, phrases, even random sounds, and parts of songs. Sometimes I don’t even know the songs. “Just shut up, no one likes you”

“do it anyway, don’t be a pussy”

“they’ll think you’re crazy, be careful who you tell”

“secret secret secret”

“stop thinking about him”

“don’t stop thinking about it”

I’m sure the thoughts, the voices I’m hearing don’t sound all that terrible, but they are. You’re probably wondering why I let them bother me.

Just imagine constantly hearing the same things over and over and over and instead of letting the voice become a redundant muttering, it becomes more meaningful every time you hear it. They become more hurtful. They become louder with every waking breath. This form of existence is painful. The world wants me to be the same thing I want to be, but I don’t know if this is even me.

I struggle a lot with that. It makes me feel like I led two lives and honestly you’re one of the only people who heard about a lot of my “high adventures” I’ll call them, and I do apologize for telling you about me doing drugs and stuff, you were too young to be hearing about that(you aren’t too young now). However, because I am an addict I’ve made a lot of mistakes. And I did drugs to cope with my existence and how secret I had to keep anything that had to do with Nicole.

The voices in my head won’t shut up. They scream and yell, and go in circles taking turns talking, seeing who can be the loudest. My head is constantly racing. There is constantly something going on in my head. I just want it all to stop. The only things to drown them out are drugs. Maybe I will start taking benzos again, that calmed them last time.

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sm-entertain-me · 5 years

Text

Here and Now (M)

Requested by @weirdest-who: Heeey I was on a vacation but I'm back 💜💜💜 and as always I wanted to request a rm shot where you go visit him to his studio, he tells you to wait bf you two leave but you're too needy and start distracting him. You straddle him in his chair and he fucks you sofa. If it can have spanking, slut shaming, rough sex, body glorification and squirting. Please don't rush and take all the time you need. 😊

Contains: Kim Namjoon x (f) reader, adult language, smut, sexual themes, spanking, degradation, fingering, squirting, rough sex, choking, facial, cum swallowing, body glorification.

Synopsis: You know how busy Namjoon is with the new album coming out and him always making music, but you can’t help it when he looks so hot when he’s focused.

“Baby not now,” Namjoon cooed as you walked behind him, wrapping your arms around the back of the chair and holding him close. Namjoon had been working on the album for the last few weeks and he had rarely been home, so you decided to come to the studio and spend time with him, but you didn’t think he would be so grumpy about it.

You huffed at Namjoon’s denial of the simplest forms of affection, so you walked back to the couch that sat behind his recording chair while he messed with the sounds of the melodies that were about to appear on Persona. While you were very proud of him and the boys and how far they had come, you couldn’t help but fee like second best to Bangtan. Sure, you knew what you signed up for when you agreed to date Namjoon, but you didn’t know just how lonely you would be. And let’s not even bring up all the nights you had to spend at the mercy of your own fingers.

Oh god, the nights you spent alone. All you wanted to do when you were stuffed into your room at night was imagine the way Namjoon would pin you down and fuck you so hard that the imprint of your body could be seen for days. The way his lips would trail down your neck and end up slipping around your nipples, tongue swirling quickly to help you achieve your high. Of course your fingers couldn’t bring you the same pleasure Namjoon always could, but you didn’t really have a choice some days.

As you were in your thoughts, you couldn’t help but rub your thighs together while your eyes focused on the back of Namjoon’s shoulders and how they would rise and fall with each steady breath he took. Your legs found themselves again as you stood up and walked over to Namjoon, nothing but lust on your mind. Namjoon could see you moving out of the corner of his eyes but didn’t bother asking since you were your own person and could do what you wanted, until he found you on his lap and rubbing against his cock.

“Y/N, what do you think you’re doing?” Namjoon growled out at you as his hands remained on the controls, looking up at you with a hardened gaze. He was never keen on you messing with him during recording sessions or sound mixing, so this was particularly annoying to him. But you couldn’t help it, you needed something from him. Literally anything would suffice at this point.

“Please,” You begged, grinding your wet core along the slight hardness in his jeans, throwing your head back whenever his button or zipper would catch on your clit and make you moan. “I need you Here and Now.” The look on your face had Namjoon completely transfixed as he watched the way your mouth hung open, whispering expletives out to the ceiling as the pace on his cock increased.

Namjoon wet his lips with his tongue as he held onto each of your hips with his hands, ultimately giving in to your extremely convincing ways. “Fuck you look so hot,” Namjoon groaned out as his eyes focused on your core rubbing on him in just the right ways, applying enough friction to his cock to make him that much harder in his pants, almost to the point where it was painful for him. Even though you were really cutting into his recording time, he had no problem allowing you to use him for your own personal gain, especially in this kind of way.

But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t like to play games with you.

While your hips ground down on his cock, feeling your orgasm growing closer and closer with each movement, you were suddenly pushed off of Namjoon’s lap. A big thud could be heard from when your ass hit the ground as you groaned out from both the pain and the uncomfortable throbbing inside of you. Before you could even question what the hell Namjoon was thinking, you were being dragged over to the couch with his hand wrapped tightly around your wrist.

It didn’t take long for Namjoon to place you over the peaks of his knees, your stomach being pierced slightly by the irritating bones. A soft groan could be heard from your lips as you tried to get comfortable while Namjoon held one hand on the nape of your neck and the other worked at the beltline of your shorts, yanking them over the swell of your ass and off of your legs completely. You could practically feel Namjoon smirking as he admired the sate of your body, you being laid out all over his lap while he held you in place for the hellish spanking he would give you.

“Joonie can you-,” You tried to speak but were then cut off by Namjoon’s hand raining down on your ass, slapping so hard that it nearly took the wind out of you. As you were wincing through the pleasurable pain of your steadily reddening ass, Namjoon’s hands would caress the soft flesh in between his fingers, soothing the skin in order to apply another.

Namjoon chuckled lightly at you, pinching the reddened skin as he spoke, “Did I say you could talk? Little whores like you don’t speak unless spoken to. Do I make myself clear?” You nodded but didn’t respond, thinking that was the kind of response he wanted from you, but the second slap to your ass indicated otherwise as Namjoon’s hand slipped into your hair and yanked you backwards. His eyes hardened as he looked into your eyes, the sexiest smirk you had ever seen brandishing his perfect lips, “Speak, whore. I said, do I make myself clear?”

“Y-Yes sir,” You stammered as you bit back the tears welling in your eyes from the spankings Namjoon dealt out regularly to you. Usually you could take his spankings with no problem, but something was off with him today. You couldn’t quite determine if the harsher punishments were from getting him more worked up than usual or if he was that frustrated with you.

It honestly didn’t matter as Namjoon interrupted your thoughts by slipping two of his digits into your folds harshly, pulling them out in unison to scissor you and wipe the quizzical look off of your face. Once he saw you bite your lip, Namjoon continued to fuck you open with his fingers, prodding at your heat and becoming infatuated by the way your walls would clench around him. “I can’t believe how fucking turned on you are by just my fingers. But of course, little sluts like you can take much more than my fingers,” Namjoon bit as he forced his fingers knuckle deep into your dripping pussy, playing with the wetness that slipped out and watching the way it would slide down your thighs.

You were steadily becoming undone as your hands gripped onto his muscular thighs, still laying across his lap as Namjoon fucked you open with just two fingers. “Namjoon I’m gonna- fuck, I c-can’t,” You cried out as you began to arch along his lap, ultimately allowing for his fingers to have more access and for his thumb to latch onto your clit, sending you completely over.

The minute you came on Namjoon’s fingers, you could feel your thighs shaking against him and a steady flow of your juices fall out of you to coat Namjoon’s entire hand. Namjoon was immediately intrigued as he continued to dig himself deeper into you, coaxing you to squirt even more on him since he loved the fact he could make you cum that hard from just his fingers. It constantly made him wonder how much more you could take or how much would actually come out of you. But that would be an experiment for a different time. Right now, he needed to be balls deep inside of you until you were screaming for him.

Namjoon was always quick to undress for you, mostly because he wanted you to still feel the burn of overstimulation taking over your body whenever he shoved himself inside of you. Although he would usually rip your clothes off just as fast as he did his, Namjoon took his time with you in spite of the painful erection he had on display for you. His hands slipped off your top and bra slowly, his eyes taking in your body in all of its splendor, his eyes softening as a smile appeared on his face.

“Everything about you is so... beautiful,” Namjoon breathed out as he joined you on the couch, settling in between your thighs to line himself up properly. Namjoon then reached out to grip your thighs, squeezing them softly and admiring the way the flesh conformed to his movements. Namjoon always loved your body and would constantly worship you, no matter what state it was in. Even if you were marked head to toe in his love bites and hickies, or if you felt a little bloated that day, Namjoon would litter your stomach with kisses and whisper praises into your ear. But that easily gets replaced by him fucking you so hard into the mattress that you can’t move by yourself anymore and swear off walking down stairs for a solid hour.

At first Namjoon was slow in his strokes, throwing his head back and relishing in the feeling of how your walls would still be tight around his cock before he would bury himself balls deep into you, stretching you out to painful lengths. “F-Fuck,” Namjoon groaned as his hands gripped tightly at your ass, pulling you up to reach an angle he knew would have you crying out in pleasure no matter what he would do to you. Namjoon’s eyes remained honed in on your face as he thrust deep into you, smirking at how your mouth would hang open and mutter expletives in your mother tongue.

It didn’t take long for Namjoon to wrap his hand around your throat while his other hand pinned your hip to the couch, thrusting so hard into you that you swore the couch was moving across the floor. “You like it when I choke you huh? You love it when I fuck you like the little slut you are, don’t you?” Namjoon grunted as his hips slammed into yours, forcing his cock deeper inside of you with every word.

You were in no place to answer him as you simply gripped the hand that rested on your throat and licked your lips, a smirk forming on your face as you looked deep into his eyes. You knew just how to get Namjoon all riled up, and that was the number one way as Namjoon’s grip on your throat tightened to restrict airflow to the point where it was nothing short of orgasmic, his hips ramming into you with such force that the creaking of the wood in the couch could be heard outside of the studio. But you didn’t care, you needed this. You deserved this.

“Namjoon! Right there! Yes, fuck. Oh gooooddddd!” You cried out in a hoarse voice thanks to Namjoon choking you, arching your body against his torso as you came all on his cock. White heat rippled through your entire body as pleasure consumed you, your breathing becoming the heaviest it had gotten all night and your legs shaking uncontrollably around Namjoon’s toned waist. The sight of your face alone was enough to get Namjoon to cum, but he was able to hold out and pull out of you, ordering you to open your mouth.

Of course, you did what was asked of you and opened wide for the cum shot, sticking your tongue out and laying it flat to cover all the necessary parts of your face. “Sluts, don’t get to have, my cum in their filthy pussies. Fuck,” Namjoon cursed as he pumped himself violently, you watching in fascination at how red and swollen his cock looked in his hand, moaning out from the degradation that made your pussy shiver. Before you could even say anything, your tongue and cheeks were coated in Namjoon’s thick and sticky cum, a slight salty tang covering a large portion of your tongue.

Once Namjoon had blown his load all over your face, he ran his finger over your cheeks and made sure to collect as much as he could before sticking his fingers into your mouth, running it along your already slick tongue from the cum that managed to enter you that way. You looked up at him with fond eyes as your tongue circled his digits, lapping up the salty liquid and swallowing for him. Namjoon smiled down at you as he finally relaxed into the couch cushions, inviting you to cuddle with him to calm down properly.

“Hey,” Namjoon whispered tenderly as his fingers played with the strands of hair that were askew on your scalp, trying to put them in place again. You looked up at him, waiting for a response with softened eyes, indicating you were wanting to go home and sleep. Namjoon sighed down at your cute face, planting a kiss on the top of your head before he followed up with, “I’m sorry I’ve been so busy. I’ll never neglect my poor baby again.” Little did he know that this one time more than makes up for your long nights alone, but you’ll never tell him that.

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rolandfaunte · 5 years

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The Story of Sewing Kit

I guess it kind of starts in the fall of 2016. Up until this point I had had some issues with anxiety/depression, and huge issues with sleep, but nothing that I would have considered to be an emergency. All of the sudden it seemed like accomplishments were becoming less frequent. Before this, when I was happy, each thought that came about in regards to an obligation was accompanied by a bit of energy that could be used to do it. That energy stopped showing up and the list of things that needed to be done began to grow as the likelihood of those tasks being completed began to shrink. I think of it like a car. Before these issues, when the car was required to drive a certain distance, gas would simply appear in the tank. Now, those same distances were required, but the gas no longer appeared. In this metaphor, the gas is provided by the subconscious, or just “the sub” as I like to call it. When you’re hungry, the sub gives you a bit of gas to go to the kitchen or order something. When you’re hungry but depressed, that gas never arrives. What then? Can you create you own? I’ve come to think of consciously-generated fuel as will power, and I didn’t really seem to have any at that time. The truth of the matter is that the sub was getting sick and, as a result, I started slowly dissolving into a pathetic mess. After sleep and motivation were gone, the disease began to target my self-worth. By the disease, I mean the bipolar disorder that at the time I was unaware of but would soon be diagnosed. The pattern of life I was developing mostly consisted of doing nothing or crying. At this point my life sill wasn’t necessarily all that bad, because I would only spend a few hours per day in a truly horrible place and would otherwise just be numb and fragile. This would be changing soon but the issue was still manageable enough that I didn’t do anything about it. In this time period, a typical day would begin with a skipped class and inactivity until around 5 o’clock, when I would retreat to my room and cry for a while about nothing and then just be numb again. My sense of self-worth was very low but I was yet to have any suicidal thoughts or full disconnections from reality. It was bad of course, but nothing compared to what was to come. In the context of the future that I’m now aware of, it’s hard to see this time period as so terrible, though it was certainly worse than anything that had preceded it. In the fall of 2016 I was introduced to Dr. K. We tried a few standard ssris and I took them religiously, thinking that they could bring back an older version of myself but they didn’t work very well. We tried a few different combinations but my decline was accelerating at an alarming rate. Each day of this time period would be the best day I would have for months to come. The episodes of tearfulness and misery became the standard mode of my life. I kept these things mostly private from those I knew well because I found them to be embarrassing and extremely confusing. After a while of this, in the springtime, a new type of episode began to emerge. It was one of infinite bliss and unstable happiness. My self-worth inflated to an amazing degree and I was filled with what felt like an infinite love and sense of connection to all things. I would create things at an alarming pace that all turned out to be of terrible quality but at the time seemed to me to be far more important than anything else in the history of the world. These were my first true experiences with hypomania. These episodes would break ferociously. I remember walking to campus in a state of absolute ecstasy, being extremely impressed with myself and all of the amazing things I would come to accomplish. My genius was absolute and my understanding of the world was absolutely messianic. The introduction of mania made for an incredibly ridiculous life, in which I was either overflowing with energy and ecstasy or begging a god I didn’t believe in to bring about some accident that would kill me. Neither version of the brain could remember the other, and I never seemed to spend any time in between them. I told my doctor of these things and he asked me to more elaborately journal during these moments, which I proceeded to do. When I next went to visit him he said he thought I might have a bipolar disorder and wanted to try a different tact medically. One med, Latuda, was very successful but left me with an unacceptable side-effect called akathisia. When I went to see him after a few weeks we had a lengthy conversation about my sense of the future and my hope for recovery and he regretfully informed me that I was ill to a point at which out-patient treatment wouldn’t be enough and it was time for me to be admitted. On the day I was admitted, I remember laying in some sort of examination room when a nurse entered and asked how I was feeling. Through tears I informed her, “I’m never going to be happy ever again.” I meant that. I was sure of it in ways I’ve never been sure of anything else. At some point before the Latuda I had begun to lose my relationship with reality but it was now gone entirely. I had no sense of what was real and was entirely possessed by the darkest thoughts imaginable, or perhaps even worse than that depending on who is being asked. For those who haven’t been depressed, these types of thoughts remain beyond imagination. When entering the ward I was presented with a line on which I needed to sign my name and write the date. I paused at the part of the paper that required the date and looked up to the nurse in confusion. Her and I were both visibly surprised by the fact that, not only did I not know what month it was, I also didn’t know whether it was 2015 or 2016. I can’t explain how or why, but I simply did not know. It was like looking at a bill at a restaurant and your brain just refusing the put in the effort to calculate a tip, except mine couldn’t even put in the effort to tell me what year it was. In that hospital I felt as though I was joining the ranks of those to whom I was truly similar. The broken and unproductive elements of society who were unable to do anything other than consume resources and spread misery and chaos. I looked at the outlets that fed energy to the medical machines, the nurses and the attendants, the food we ate, and the light that let us see it and saw them all as a waste. Why wouldn’t they just let us destroy ourselves? Why did they insist on keeping us in places where suicide was impossible when it was obviously the best thing for anyone who ended up here? I’ve never in my life spent so much time staring at a clock. The issues with sleep had made a vengeful reemergence and the time spent in the hospital truly felt like an eternity. I remember looking out of the window at a woman walking to work and thinking “I will literally never do that. I will never have a job. I will never contribute. I will never be useful enough to have to be anywhere ever.” When I was discharged, things improved in the sense that I no longer had to live my entire life on one hallway but my life was, to me at least, objectively and inarguably worse than death. I remember saying to myself that I would trade literally anyone’s life for my own. I would become anyone else and do whatever they had to do as long as it wasn’t this. I spent most of my time daydreaming about eternal nothingness. If I were to, today, right now as I write this, compile a list of reasons to not kill myself, it would be long to a point where I would get bored with the task. At that time the list consisted of two things: my family, and the girl I loved. One of the things I’ve come to realize about the disease is that it is a logical genius, and was able to provide me with an unending collection of reasons why those two elements did not belong there. Its mission was to empty the list. As for my family, one of its favorite arguments was that, over time, I would come to bring them far more harm than they could currently imagine. I would suck the goodness from their lives as they tried to care for me, exhaust them emotionally, consume their resources, and burden them infinitely. I would spoil our family’s good name and make them hate me. In a net, long term evaluation of their pain, it would be best for them to deal with my death for a few years and recover rather than have me drain them of life until I finally submitted at a later date, which I was convinced I would. As for my girlfriend, the argument was a bit different. The disease didn’t need me to necessarily excuse my suicide to her but rather find a way to remove her from my life. It told me that she only stayed with me out of a moral obligation, that she resented me secretly for how unimpressive and obviously useless I was. It told me that if I truly cared about her, I would end things between us and allow her to be free of that entanglement which, according to the disease, was something she wanted but could not bring herself to execute. These were two on the list of endless arguments in favor of me emptying the list of reasons not to do what the disease wanted me to. Both elements of the list stood stead-fast, but the disease is a beast against which arguments cannot be won while it still exists, the arguments are perpetual. The memories of that summer are quiet because I wasn’t quite there when they were made. I spent nearly the entirety of every day inside my own head, consumed by some mixture of panic, pain, dread, anger, or sadness, among others. I would wake up in the morning and simply think to myself “I can’t believe I have to do this for another day. I can’t. I can’t fucking do this anymore.” I remember thinking about how I wouldn’t wish it upon my very worst enemy. This was a punishment far worse than death, and yet somehow I had ended up inside of it without ever having committed any obvious crime. I remember sitting by the river with my best friend. This was my favorite place, next to my favorite person, and I felt nothing. It was gone and so was I. That summer moved forward into the fall when I was introduced to a physical miracle by the name of Seroquel. It brought me the most consistent sleep I had had in years, but the dosage was high to a point where my life was extremely muted and I was very dull. Next to depression, this was a miracle. When the dose of Seroquel was lowered and my mind was clearing up I began the process of trying to move these experiences out of my memories and into words and music. Unfortunately, I had never done any sort of recording before so I truly had no idea what I was doing. I was starting from scratch, with no outside help other than google. I learned how to use the different pieces of equipment very slowly, and still had only ever played piano and guitar. I listened to drums more closely to try and figure out how best to use them, as with bass, and finally started using other instruments to supplement the songs. Altogether, the process was absolutely grueling and nearly drove me out of my mind. I can’t even count how many times I worked from the early afternoon until the waking hours only to delete everything I had done. If I had to put a number on how much time was actually put into that album, including the learning process, I would start at 500 hours. Over the months I began to think of Sewing Kit as a potential weapon against future depression, thinking that when the next episode hit and the disease asked “what value do you bring?” I would have something to gesture towards and be able to confidently say “I made something that was worth making.” And that’s that. That’s Sewing Kit.

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constantlylostinmyhead · 4 years

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Life Story Word Vomit

Trigger warning: Suicide, Self harm, Drug/Alcohol abuse, and sexual assault

My life has been one constant rollercoaster I can’t seem to get off. I grew up in a small town in Washington, My parents got divorced when I was 8 and both remarried not super long after. I had a lot of issues with my mother growing up. It always seemed like she wasn't there, and when she was, it never really felt like she really was. In the weeks following my dad walking out on us, my mom kept me from seeing him. I have always been and always will be a daddy girl, I’ve resented my mom for holding me hostage when I needed my dad the most. When my dad got remarried, I had an awful relationship with my new step mom. We never saw eye to eye and butted heads a lot. After many years of resenting her for no viable reason, I took a step back and realized she was one of the best people I've ever had walk into my life. She brought my two amazing little siblings into my life, and showed me what a loving relationship should look like. My life was looking up. Middle school is when things started getting weird in my life. In 6th grade my school caught on fire, they sent us back to an elementary school to ride out the rest of the year. The following year they transferred us to a different middle school, the school with the worst reputation, I was terrified. I didn't want to be there. I ended up making some of my very best friends and making great memories that year. Then 8th grade came. They had rebuilt my original middle school and I was transferred back. After several months of severe bullying and teachers that didn't seem to care, I convinced my parents to transfer me back to the school I had gone to the previous year. After that life was great, I had so many friends that ended up following me into adulthood. When 9th grade rolled around I was at a school that I would learn would change my life. I still had great friends, got my first boyfriend (who was a drug dealer--oof) I was doing okay in school , and I thought my life would only go up from there. Then the summer before 10th grade I met the love of my life. Little did I know it was the beginning of my first toxic relationship. I started 10th grade off hopeful that it was going to be even better than the year before, and it was until I suffered a pretty severe brain seizure. Other than that it was great until October 23rd, 2013. I was in my English class redoing a test I had scored poorly on. My phone kept going off and I eventually stepped out to return the call from one of my best friends, after several missed calls. She was sobbing. She didn't want to be alive anymore and there was nothing I could do to stop her, and she was right. She lived across the country. Then, She shot herself. I didn't know what to do. I walked back into my classroom and walked up to my teacher and barely told him what happened before I collapsed. What was happening? How could I be going through this right now? How does someone put a gun to their head and end their life at 14? I started ditching school, it was too painful to be around and talk to people. It pulled me under so far that I eventually decided maybe the world would be better off without me too. A few weeks later I decided that I was going to hang myself before my parents got home. I didn't even make it out of school before I was pulled from school and brought to my counselor, and eventually the emergency room. I had never seen my dad look at me like that, there was so much pain in his eyes. My mom ended up leaving an hour or so after I got there. My dad sat by my side until they let me go home over 9 hours later. I started counseling and life started getting better. December rolled around and a guy in my yoga class started getting very physical with me, I had never been so uncomfortable. But he was 2 years older and I didn't want a bad rep so I kept quiet. We ended up having a yoga field trip and they were 2 seats short on the bus, the guy offered to drive me to the falls since there weren't any seats and I didn't have it in me to say no. When I got into his car he started touching my leg and trying to pull my pants down. I told him he was making me uncomfortable but he didn't care, I lost my virginity that day, in the most painful and humiliating way. He told me if I told anyone he'd beat the shit out of me. He even told my boyfriend at the time that he'd do it again. I pushed that memory to the deepest part of my brain and tried to move on. January came and a girl that I grew up with was tragically killed in a car accident over the weekend. One of the kindest and most selfless people I've ever met. The school was silent for a long time. Everybody was in shock. After that I thought “there's no way things could get worse, Ive already lost two friends, and been raped. there's no way”. Then July rolled around. I was 10 days from my 16th birthday when my great grandma passed. I had never loved anyone more than her. She was my rock. If you'd ever met her you'd know why. It shattered me. I had been through hell and back but that was my breaking point. I started cutting, small scratches turned into gashes across my thighs. The scars never went away. That year had taught me a lot. I went through literal hell, and I decided to learn from those tragedies and made it my mission to never let anyone ever feel like they were unloved or less then. That I would love everyone I ever met wholeheartedly. I joined choir, and it ended up being the best experience of my life. I made so many lifelong friends and memories. Choir quite literally saved my life. I started masking my depression because who would want to be friends with the suicidal girl? I poured myself into every friendship I had, and depleted myself before I could take care of my own problems. The rest of high school went pretty well considering the trauma I was still carrying around. After I graduated I started taking pills and drinking, I wasn't in a good place. Then I stared dating a guy I had been friends with since elementary school, it was great. I was so happy but things started going wrong, He found out about my opioid problem and ended up dumping me at the fair. I started working on beating my addiction but it took about 2 years. In September of 2017 I was finally coming out on top, I landed an amazing job that paid me more than I ever thought I could make without a degree. I had also met a guy that I thought was amazing. He was older, and I thought he really cared about me. I spent 2.5 years (on and off) with him. He introduced me to his friends, and I had never been introduced as the girlfriend before, I was elated. His friends slowly became my friends, and eventually became family. I was so blinded by the good things that I never took off my rose colored glasses long enough to realize that behind everything good was a bunch of lies, cheating, and gaslighting. Life started getting pretty overwhelming for me. I started counseling again and was officially diagnosed with Depression, anxiety, ptsd, and borderline personality disorder. I switched to a more comprehensive therapy that dealt specifically with PTSD and BPD. I started improving, very quickly. I was happy and I felt like myself again. I decided I wanted to take a trip to escape and reflect for a while. My friend had been traveling through South America for 6 months and I decided to visit her. In March of 2019 I took a 10 day trip to Ecuador that forever changed my perspective. I learned so much about myself on that trip and can't wait to go back and learn more. I eventually broke up with the guy after I had realized how toxic and abusive it was. That was September of 2019. I kept getting this feeling that I needed to leave. I couldn't shake it and I didn't know where I would even go. In January of 2020 I decided that LA is where my heart was, I ended up landing a job interview and flew down and was hired on the spot. A month later I packed up my entire life and drove to LA to start my new life. I've been here for a little over a month and its been a rollercoaster with the virus going around and the lockdown, But I've never been more excited to see what this new chapter has in store for me.

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stephfights · 4 years

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First post...waiting for my fate

You have a lump. Wait, what? My entire life was about to change. But let me back up and tell you what has led me to this point. At 38 years old I have been relatively healthy my whole life. Mean as a snake, country as cornbread and loyal to a fault....that’s me. But not sick. I married my soulmate, Chris, in 2003 and had our son (my angel), Clayton, in 2007. I was a stay at home mom for the first 8 years of Clayton’s life. I then decided it was time for me to get out of the house and I have now been working at Kroger for over 4 years. I have a wonderful family, the BEST friends ever and the most awesome customers anyone could ask for.

In the last couple of years my hair seems to be thinning more that it always has. I am always hot...not warm....HOT! I sweat uncontrollably...mostly from my head/face/neck by just doing simple tasks. I don’t sleep well. I have gained quite a bit of weight that will not go away. And I have more acne now than I ever had in high school! But...I am that person....that person who doesn’t really care for doctors and thinks nothing bad will ever happen to them. I am the strong one. I take care of everyone else. I guess that is what has gotten me to where I am today. I have spent so many years taking care of everyone else that I put myself on the back burner.

Fast forward to May 2019. I wake up with a horrible case of vertigo. Drunk as pet monkey and vomiting I go to the local family physician’s office that I have been going to for 5 years (only for small things like the flu) Of course...there was a new nurse practitioner. This was about the 5th different one in the last 3 years. He started asking me questions about my medical history...and wanted to know why I hadn’t had a well care check up in years. I told him I didn’t have time...and I didn’t really see the point. At this time my husband shows up at the office. He has left work because he thinks his wife, who never gets sick, must be on her last leg. He made me promise before I left that I would come back and have that visit. Then he lectured me about smoking. That’s right, I have been a cigarette smoker for 22 years. I smiled and thanked him and went on my way.

Over the summer Chris starts riding my ass about my promise to the NP to have a well care check up. He then proceeds to tell my best friend, Amber, who also rides my ass. After getting tired of listening to them I finally agree just to get them to shut up!

August 2019. I go for my well care visit. I decide if I’m going to do this I might as well tell him every little thing that I think is “wrong” with me. I have had a large thyroid for many years (thanks Dad) but never had any problems with it. I haven’t had a thyroid ultrasound or blood work in 10 years. He thinks that may be the cause of some of the symptoms I am having. So I agree to do both. The blood work comes back perfectly normal. The ultrasound shows a goiter and 2 small cysts. No big deal really. He didn’t do anything else. He doesn’t do pap smears or breast exams. So I think I am home free! But he wants me to see a specialist. Just to see what they think. I am referred by one of my customers to an Endochronologist at Vanderbilt. Of course I can’t get in until November 4th. I was pissed but what could I do. I wanted to see the best.

November 4th comes. Chris takes off work to go with me. I have to admit...I was SO nervous. I don’t know why. I just don’t like doctors. After self diagnosing on the internet (don’t EVER do that) I was convinced I had a brain tumor. Dr. Craig Sussman comes in and is the nicest man I have ever met. Like Mr. Rogers nice. I was totally at ease. He asked about a million questions and answered any questions I had. He wants to do an exam from the waste up. I’m like okay...whatever floats your boat. So I put on a lovely (enter sarcasm) gown and he comes back in to do a breast and thyroid exam. Right breast...all good. Left breast....he finds a lump. I couldn’t believe it! I made him show me where it was. Then he showed Chris where it was. Damn, it was large! Where did that come from and how did we miss that? Even though I had not been to a female doctor in about 8 years I still did a self breast exam. A lot of times at night while I was laying in bed watching TV. Dr. S then does a thyroid exam but doesn’t really feel anything worrisome. I can tell his worry is about that lump. He wants to schedule a diagnostic mammogram and ultrasound. Of course...he tells me it is probably a cyst. I still had a super uneasy feeling. My mom has had several breast cysts and I think maybe I have inherited it from her. So I schedule the tests....and wait for 2 weeks until that appointment.

November 18th. I have dreaded this for 2 weeks. I have heard all of the horror stories about how horrible and painful a mammogram is. I do not like pain...in fact...I’m kind of a wuss. I ask Chris what if the scans do show something. But he doesn’t really want to think about that. I am hoping he can come back with me for the tests....of course they will not let him. I am literally shivering with tears in my eyes waiting for my mamm. The tech, Jessica, is so wonderful. She tries to calm my nerves and gets me in position for the first picture. Beep...that’s it? Yep....a mammogram is nothing. I thought they were going to try to squeeze my boobies as flat as a pancake. I knew that wasn’t going to work! But it is literally as easy as an xray. Jessica laughs and we go on and finish all of the scans. You have to have a lot more pictures with a diagnostic mammogram as opposed to a screening mammogram. Then onto the ultrasound. It’s your typical u/s with the sticky gel and them pushing on you with the little flat scope. I watch as she measures and pauses. Then she goes up into my arm pit. I’m thinking hey...I know my boobs are not perky anymore and they ain’t way up there, but I let her do what she’s doing. Trying not focus on the weird position she has me in and the cramp that is developing in my shoulder. She then goes and gets the radiologist. I know something must be up...but maybe it’s just my fat non perky boobs not cooperating. She pushes and pauses, pushes and pauses and they whisper back and forth. Telling me that they are just looking for certain things. After they finally get done...they ask if my husband is with me. They are going to give me my results today. Yippee...I don’t have to wait another flipping week and worry about this! They go get him and put us in a little room and I tell him that it was “easy peasy” and I don’t know why I was so worked up over it. We sit there and laugh about how dumb I was and how crazy I had been leading up to this appointment. Then the radiologist comes in. I swear she must be some kind of angel. Her name is Dr. Sara Harvey. She is sweet, kind and gentle. She sits down, looks me in the eye, and says you do have a mass and it is solid. Solid? Cysts aren’t solid? She continues with you need a biopsy ASAP. Do they biopsy cysts? Nothing is making any sense. I look up at her and ask is it cancer. She says yes...I am 90% sure it is. At this moment my whole world changes. I can’t look at my husband. I can’t look at her. I can only look at the ground and think wow, so this is how I’m going to die. Chris takes over and asks if we can do the biopsy that day. She leaves the room to go see what can be done. As she walks out and the door clicks shut I lose it. I am sobbing uncontrollably. Begging my husband to tell me what I am suppose to do now. He has no words. He just holds me. Dr. Harvey comes back in and says the biopsy can be done at 1:30 that afternoon....or the following Monday. Again, I can’t speak. So Chris tells her we are going to do it that day. I finally find my voice and ask her who would be doing the procedure. She says there are a number of radiologist who can do it. I don’t want them. I want her. I don’t know why but I feel this weird connection with her. She tells me if I want her to do it then she will change her schedule around and do it. We leave the office and have an hour and half to wait before I have to go back for the biopsies. I can’t eat, I can’t think, I can only sit and cry. Chris starts making phone calls. To my dad so he can pick up Clayton from school. To my best friend, who is absolutely beside her self. To my boss, who is not only my boss but a wonderful friend. To my brother, who lives 9 hours away.

That was the shortest hour and a half in my life. As I said before, I do not like pain. But I REALLY do not like needles! I have no tattoos, I refuse to take shots, IV’s send me into a panic attack. But I know I am fixing to have a huge needle suck in my left breast. And again my husband cannot go back with me. I have to do this by myself. I am taken back to a room and the nurse goes over exactly what they are going to do and any complications that could arise after. Dr. Harvey comes in....and wraps me in a big hug. I cry and cry. And she just keeps on hugging me. I lay down on a gurney and they put a warm blanket on me. Dr. Harvey explains that she will tell me every little thing she is doing before she does it. First things first is another ultrasound the see exactly where she wants to start. Then it’s time to numb me up. I have expressed my fear of needles and they both tell me how great I am doing. She says it will be a little bee sting and BAM....that is one big ass bee! I’m not going to lie and tell you that it didn’t hurt....because it did. But it slowly became numb. Then BAM....there’s that damn big ass bee again. She continues over and over until she thinks we are good. Here comes the biopsy needle. Which I learn is a core biopsy so it is a much larger needle. It is so large that she has to cut a slit in my breast with a scalpel to insert it. She puts it in and it doesn’t really hurt. It doesn’t feel good but it is tolerable. She tells me I will hear a click....CLICK....she’s got it. I am thinking that I am so glad this is over. Then she tells me that she needs more. She wants to make sure she has enough so there are no questions later. I tell her to get extra. I do not want to do this again! Click, click. Okay I’m going to make it. When she inserts the needle for #4 I feel a sharp stab. Seems she has to go very deep for this one. So more numbing meds for me. Click, click. She ends up doing 5 total biopsies. They are telling me how proud they are of me and how strong I am. I don’t feel very strong. In fact I feel like I have been beat down. Both emotionally and physically. I will get the results in 2-4 business days. So guess what....more waiting.

Chris stays home with me on Tuesday to make sure I am okay. My mom comes down and stays with me Wednesday and Thursday. And we sit and wait. Every time the phone rings I am looking at the caller ID wondering if this will be the call. At 2:45 my mom leaves to go pick up Clayton at school. At 2:48 the phone rings. It is the call I have been waiting for and I am here by myself. The lady on the phone must be a saint. There is no way I could do her job. “Mrs. Preston I am so sorry to tell you that your biopsies have come back and it is malignant. You do have cancer” And just like that. I am now a cancer patient. I start trying to ask questions but she doesn’t know any more details. I am set up with an appt on November 26 with an oncology surgeon and a medical oncologist. Wow, I get 2 specialist. She tells me I will find out exactly what type of cancer I have and what stage it is at those appointments. So once again....we wait.

The worst part of this was having to tell my 12 year old son. The first thing he said was “But Mom I don’t want you to die” Yeah...try not to cry after that!

It is a very weird feeling waiting to see if you are going to live or die. Can this be treated or are they going to give me a certain amount of time to do the things I have always wanted to do? I do know that I am a fighter. I have went thru being scared and sad...and now I am just pissed off! Breast cancer will not beat me! I have to watch my son grow up! I can’t kick the bucket and have my husband bring some hoe up in my house! My parents are not going to have to bury a child! And my brother will not be an only child!

I am ready for the news tomorrow. Let’s get going on get this done so I can get on with my life! Cancer can kiss my ass!

Love to all,

Stephanie Preston

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asterythm · 5 years

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A is for Amour || Human Error (2)

Pairings: Eventual Logicality, eventual Prinxiety Word Count: 2.5k Chapter Summary: Though rigid schedules may have worked in his favour when it came to essays and science fairs, Logan's plans are ill-equipped to handle a living, breathing human. He finds this out the hard way. Chapter Warnings: “Implied gore mention” is all I can think of for this one. Let me know if I’ve forgotten anything, though! General Warnings: Toxic romantic relationship, abusive Deceit, low self-esteem/self-deprecation, negative thinking

<< First Chapter || Read this chapter on AO3

Logan Berry was just about ready to eat his tie.

Not in the literal sense, of course; Logan was very well aware that cloths and fabrics did not have much nutritional value to them. They’d be difficult to digest, for one, and he didn’t imagine the taste could be too appetizing either. The young man had merely been using figurative language to express irritation.

A little clarity never hurt anybody.

Perhaps it would be simpler to forget about the textile consumption and just put it this way: suffice it to say, anyone looking at Logan now would never be able to guess how excited the boy had been only thirty minutes ago.

Which was a shame, really, considering how rare it was for Logan to get excited about anything nowadays.

It was true, though — Logan had been walking on sunshine for weeks in anticipation of this moment. How could he not? Today was the day of his first-ever session in his new tutoring job; a day he’d spent long days and longer nights preparing for. Logan had even gone so far as to create and rehearse a script that contained everything he intended to say, word-for-word. Every detail he could think of, he had planned, all the way down to the exact outfit he’d wear — a freshly-ironed black polo paired with his best blue necktie was the perfect way to passively say, this young man means business. Knowing how crucial a good first impression would be to their overall success, Logan had done everything in his power to ensure that today’s session would run perfectly. It had taken every second that he could spare (and quite a few that he couldn’t), but he didn’t mind. After all, Logan had been completely convinced that all his efforts were bound to pay off in the end.

Oh, what a fool he’d been.

You see, it was only once Logan was watching this unsettlingly energetic thing come careening around the corner did he realise that in all of his careful planning, he’d forgotten to factor in one major variable: the student himself. And a single glance was all it took for Logan to realise that his mistake would cost him dearly.

Not only is he late, he’s completely out of breath. And he’s not even bothering to hide it… just look at that gaping mouth, Logan’s narrowed eyes had immediately observed. Smudged glasses, uncombed hair, grass-stained sneakers — one of which is untied, mind you — oh, and now he’s gone and sent books flying everywhere.

So much for first impressions, I suppose.

With the introduction of this new limiting factor, the future wasn’t looking too bright, to say the least. But if there was one thing that Logan’s extensive collection of award-winning science fair projects had taught him, it was to never waste time trying to control the uncontrollable. So, notebook clutched in one hand and tenaciously holding back doubts with the other, Logan had launched with great determination into the script that he’d practiced so many times before.

It took all of five minutes to grind that determination into the dust. Every single time he paused for breath, the freckled boy seated crookedly in front of him would take it as an invitation to start chattering away at a speed that would give even the most accomplished of auctioneers a run for their money. Poor Logan could hardly keep up with his student, let alone settle him down long enough to get through even the first paragraph.

Finally, he had been forced to abandon his perfectly-crafted script in favour of a much less elegant approach: a simple and to-the-point list of questions. Though it physically pained Logan to abandon the result of so many tears shed and sleepless nights passed, he’d rather finish things the “alkali way” (or, as the cool kids preferred, the “basic way”) than never finish them at all. And if he’s going to talk anyway, Logan reasoned, I might as well give him something productive to talk about. Surely then we’ll be able to stay on-topic.

No such luck. Logan’s first question got no more than a noncommittal shrug before Parker — or was it Patrick? No, he was quite certain that the boy’s name was Parker — was off again, running his mouth a mile a minute, dropping awful puns and grammatically incorrect sentences all over the previously pristine carpet. The poor librarians would have some cleaning up to do later.

Okay, so plan B didn’t work either. Nothing to worry about, though, Logan pretended to believe. I’ve still got twenty-four letters to get through.

To be fair, Plan C was really more of a coping mechanism than an actual step-by-step plan. A surprisingly effective way of releasing pent-up stress and frustration, this longtime favourite involved imagining, in vivid detail, the source of that frustration being slowly and painfully fed into a running wood chipper.

What?

Some might think this cruel. Logan preferred to call it merciful; after all, at least he was limiting his vengeance to the hypothetical realm. An added bonus was that, in the interest of ensuring the utmost accuracy, it had compelled him to familiarize himself with the inner workings of wood chippers. So really, Plan C was a win-win for all parties involved.

As you might have guessed by now, dealing with annoying people never really had been Logan’s strong suit.

Actually, make that dealing with people in general. In hindsight, signing up to work with Sandford Secondary’s peer-to-peer tutoring program had definitely not been the best idea he’d ever had, in that case. Not because he wasn’t qualified — complex formulas and sentence structure he could handle in his sleep. But teaching those same concepts to a student who apparently had no intention of listening, he most certainly could not.

Really, Logan should have known better than to believe that he could ever be successful in any job that depended so much on one’s ability to work with others. Why couldn’t he have chosen something with more facts and numbers?

Facts and numbers were predictable. They always fit neatly into categories of right or wrong, true or false, black or white. Social interaction was so much messier. With no structure, no set of rules, and no procedure to follow, the whole thing was really nothing more than haphazard guesswork, a real-life game of hangman where every wrong word brings you one pen-stroke closer to game over. Bearing all that in mind, Logan had never understood how some people could so easily waltz up to strangers and just begin “bonding” like it was nothing.

And frankly, he didn’t particularly want to understand. Why would anyone choose to while away their life building those fragile houses of cards; vocabulary cards filled with only empty words? Did no one realise that a single misplaced breath is all would take to knock everything down in an instant? Why waste time trying desperately to convince your peers that you’re worth their love, when you could instead be hard at work earning their respect? In Logan’s experience, relationships of any kind — romantic, platonic, even familial — were always sloppy at best when built on love. Respect, on the other hand… respect was real.

This attitude, by the way, was an entirely objective worldview that had nothing to do with the fact that Logan didn’t exactly have many romantic or platonic relationships to choose from. Correlation, not causation.

Besides. Not that he cared.

Taking a deep breath, Logan forced himself to focus back on the session. (That makes one of us, he couldn’t help thinking.) Speaking of empty words… Parker, or Patrick, or whatever-his-name-was, had somehow been ceaselessly talking about corn for — Logan checked his watch — over seven minutes now. They were getting nowhere, fast.

If Logan allowed the boy to keep this up, the two of them would end up leaving the library having accomplished absolutely nothing at all. That simply would not do. His student’s attitude may not be ideal, but he’d be damned if he let his own standards slip because of it.

After taking a brief pause to collect himself and his thoughts, Logan stood abruptly, causing the freckled boy to cut himself off mid-sentence.

Slowly, deliberately, he moved to stare out the large windows framing the section of the library where the two of them were seated, so that his back was turned and his face was hidden from the other boy.

Then, voice dripping with contempt, he spoke.

“Let me make one thing clear. I am not here to make friends, and neither should you be. I am here to teach, and as of yesterday, I was under the impression that you are here to learn. However, your behaviour so far has led me to believe that perhaps I was mistaken. For once in my life, I find myself praying that I will be proven wrong.

“Now, I don’t know what kind of merry tomfoolery you were expecting from our session today, but I do know exactly what I was expecting, and exactly what I have prepared for you. And since you clearly do not seem interested in steering this session anywhere productive, I suggest that you hand the reins to me and do exactly as I instruct from here on out. I have prepared a rigid agenda for how we will be spending this time together, and I intend to follow it. I expect you to do the same. Be aware that this agenda includes absolutely no icebreakers; we can’t afford to waste any more of our valuable lesson time, especially not on childish games.

“Starting right now, you will answer my questions so I can develop a plan for what we need to accomplish, and you will answer them without distraction. When you are not answering questions, you will hold your tongue like your entire future depends on it. Because it very well might. Is that understood —” just in time, he suddenly remembered the boy’s name — “is that understood, Patton?”

The following moment of quiet, the first one since Patton had stepped foot in the library, was answer enough for Logan.

“Good. I trust this will not be a discussion that we will need to have again, then.”

With that, Logan returned to his seat, carefully scrutinizing Patton once more to see if he could spot any differences. He didn’t need to try too hard. Patton’s transformation was so drastic, it was almost…

Unnerving. The vigor from earlier had all but disappeared — thank goodness — but with its departure came a distinct dullness to the eyes framed in those round-rimmed glasses. And where Patton had previously been nearly falling out of his seat with barely contained energy, he now slumped inwards as if the words that Logan had spoken were actually physically crushing him.

At the sight, Logan couldn’t help but feel the tiniest glimmer of guilt. Perhaps he hadn’t needed to lay the scolding on quite so heavily. What if I overdid it?

A second later, Logan remembered he didn’t care.

Excellent. This shall be ideal. The brief moment of weakness over, Logan settled back down into the library’s comfortable couch. “What are your academic strengths?” he read off his notebook.

“Uhh, I’m… nice, sometimes. I guess.”

Logan let out a deep sigh. A wood-chipper-shaped silhouette flickered in the back of his mind.

Most likely seeing his teacher’s disapproval of the vague answer, Patton hurried to add, “I mean, I can be pretty patient when it comes to worksheets. It always takes a really long time for me to finish my homework, so I… kind of have to be, you know?”

“Hm. Is that it?”

“That’s all I can come up with right now. Um, sorry.”

“I see.” Pencil scratched across paper as Logan scribbled down (a paraphrased version of) Patton’s response. In the otherwise unbroken silence, the sound grated loudly against Logan’s ears. He hurried to finish so he could move on to the next question. “Academic weaknesses?”

This time, Patton’s answered without even a moment’s hesitation. “Focus. Organization. Time management. Anything related to math or numbers, really. I’m not good at taking risks. My work is always sloppy and hard to read. It takes me a long time to wrap my head around new concepts.” He rattled off one item after another, a strange mix of confidence and detachment, almost as if reading off an invisible script that he’d already recited — or heard recited to him — many times before.

Logan wasn’t sure what to say to that. Here was another reason he hated socialising; people always had this odd tendency to hyper-fixate on what needed to be fixed rather than what they already had going for them, a tendency that Logan couldn’t imagine was healthy or even at all helpful. There’s so much beauty mixed in with the bad, and yet you choose to ignore it all? Worst of all, these senseless “social blinkers” meant that Logan had no chance of getting an accurate idea of Patton’s actual strengths and weaknesses. There was no way that every item on that list of shortcomings that Patton had just blazed through could actually apply, right?

Logan decided not to push the question, though; experience had taught him that calling others out on their poor logic didn’t often end well. I’ll just have to figure that part out myself, I suppose. Instead, he adjusted his thick glasses, wrote down one or two items from Patton’s list of weaknesses, and read aloud the next question.

And the next, and the next. They were really tearing through the conversation now; Patton’s answers seemed to get shorter and more succinct with every second that passed. Not that Logan was complaining. In fact, he was nothing but grateful for Patton’s newfound intense focus. It seemed his brief speech had done the trick.

Sooner than expected, a quiet trill interrupted the two of them. He checked his phone to see that his alarm had gone off. The session was over.

Had it really been two hours already? It had felt like so much less than that.

Shutting off the alarm, Logan turned to face his student. “Well, that marks the end of our session. I… appreciated your cooperation, Patton. We may have gotten off to a bit of a rocky start, but your focus in the second half of the session was sufficient to convince me that we won’t have too many problems from here on out.”

This time, Patton said nothing at all, settling instead for a wordless nod.

“Next week, I will have worksheets prepared for you. In the meantime, your homework is to write me a page, single-spaced, telling me a little bit more about short-and long-term educational goals. Full sentences only, please.” Logan flipped his notebook shut. “I look forward to reading your writing for the first time,” he lied.

In response, Patton picked up his backpack and started to walk away. He only made it about three steps, though, before turning back and opening his mouth. Logan waited.

The words never came. After the briefest of pauses, Patton’s mouth closed, lips pressed firmly together, perhaps to suppress whatever he’d been wanting to say.

As watched the child disappear around the corner, a thought arose unbidden:

For some reason, Patton seemed so much smaller leaving the library than he had looked when he was entering.

***

[next chapter]

A/N: Okay. Even though it's only chapter two, I have a LOT to say. Most of this is about the fic in general rather than the chapter, so... it's LONG. I'm sorry. In the interest of not putting you to sleep, let's speed-round this.

The first chapter of AAmour was the very first thing I ever wrote for the Sanders Sides fandom. I based that chapter almost ENTIRELY on a oneshot comic by @the-pastel-peach.

Two months later, I was planning for NaNoWriMo 2018 (a challenge where authors write 50k in 30 days). Long story short, I decided that I'd like to try finishing AAmour.

I didn't.

I did hit 50k, but I only made it to chapter ten. I still want to finish this thing though, so I've decided to edit and post what I already wrote, one chapter a month, and then write the second half of AAmour during NaNoWriMo 2019.

I'm already late with this first chapter because my dumb brain decided I needed to do a complete rewrite a week before posting, but in the future I'd like to post a chapter on the first day of every month.

Almost everything after chapter one is my own work. I say "almost" because I picked @residentanchor's brain a lot during the planning phase.

So yes, I may still be writing a high school AU, but this is no longer @the-pastel-peach's high school AU. Besides Logan's last name (I couldn’t resist -- the pun game was too strong) and the first chapter, any similarities to their version of the AU are completely coincidental; in fact, I've barely looked at theirs because I didn't want to risk any subconscious copying.

Also heeeeyyyyyy this is my 200th post that’s pretty nifty--

I think that about covers it. Thank you so, so much for reading -- both the chapter and my ridiculously long author’s note!! See you soon, lovelies. Take care <3

General tag list: @surleytemple @starryfirefliesbloggo @icecoldparadise @lyditist @fandom-random2405 @beach-fan @ihateitwhenyourejustvague @starryeyedhomicide

AAmour tag list: @romanticsanders @thatrandomautist @thelowlysatsuma @mirror2thespirit @pokii-jonas

Let me know if you’d like to be added to or removed from either tag list!

#thomas sanders #sanders sides #logicality #sanders sides fic #sanders sides fanfic #ts virgil #ts patton #spectral scribbles #spec made something #a is for amour #aamour #tw implied gore #tw deceit mention

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