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zalrb · 6 months

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The First Meetings {SE Fic}

This was fun, though I'm mad I couldn't use all the gifs I wanted.

Elena stood on Wickery Bridge and peered down to the river below. As she examined the water, she saw it all: her parents’ car skidding off the road, plummeting into the depths. The water filling the car. Her father pounding the window. Her mother unconscious. The panic. The fear. The acceptance. The darkness. And then she woke up in the hospital. Her parents were recovering in different rooms on the same floor. It’d been a close call. Too close.

She didn’t tell anyone about it, not her parents or her brother, not her aunt Jenna, not Caroline, not even Bonnie, but every day since that night, she’d come to the bridge. She’d spent a lot of summer mornings just standing here, sometimes sitting against the railing, writing in her diary, before meeting up with whoever or doing whatever. Like a ritual. She couldn’t really articulate why she did it. She couldn’t really articulate how she felt since that night either. Everyone expected that she was fine because she was fine, her parents were fine, everything was fine.

Maybe a week, a month of being jittery -- that was to be anticipated -- but now, it was time to go back to the way things were, the way she was. The only difference she’d really seen with her parents was that her dad had started spending more time with Jeremy, as if trying to make up for the possibility of lost time. But she and her mom were back to their routine. So she was back to hers.

Suddenly -- a caw. The noise disrupted her thoughts. A crow flew by and perched beside her. Elena startled. A crow on the bridge where she nearly died, how fitting. It didn’t leave. It hopped closer to her.

“Go away.”

It started to flap around her. What was its problem? “Shoo!” Stubborn damn bird. She turned to bat it away only to find the crow gone and a dark-haired man standing behind her. Her hand flew to her chest.

“Oops,” he said, his blue eyes glinting. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”

Elena didn’t answer right away. “I just didn’t know anyone else was here.”

He was grinning at her. Elena didn’t know how she felt about it. It was playful but there was something else there to it, something that made her a bit uneasy, like she should be ready to run at a moment’s notice. She blinked at him. Wait a minute…

“I know you,” she said, taking in the leather jacket, the blue eyes, the smile that in a second could turn to a leer.

They’d met months before. Four months before to be exact. On the night of the crash. Before everything changed. He’d come out of nowhere, just like he did now, and he thought she was someone else, someone called … what was that name, it’d been a ‘k’ name or a ‘c’ name…

“I do have a pretty unforgettable face,” he said now.

Elena nodded. “D..Da…Damien, right?”

He paused, something sharp and painful flitted over his face and then it was gone. “Damon,” he corrected.

Right. That was right.

“You should be careful out here, all alone.” He gestured around the empty bridge.

Not to be rude or anything, Damon, but it’s kind of creepy that you’re out here in the middle of nowhere.

You’re one to talk.

Pieces of the conversation they’d had in May were coming back to her as he said, “Been catching up on the local news.”

Elena swallowed hard. “Yeah, it’s weird, you know, because all my life, there’s never been a single animal attack and now suddenly it’s like bears and wolves and coyotes.”

“Oh my!”

Elena stared at him.

“Wizard of Oz.”

“Funny,” she said.

Why did she feel so tense? Why did it feel like he’d cornered her somehow?

When she’d met him that night, she’d felt … well, it’d been weird, but it’d been somewhat intriguing. He’d been somewhat intriguing. You want what everybody wants…

“Animal control’s been out so it’ll all die down soon,” she said.

“Unless it isn’t animals.”

Elena narrowed her eyes, trying to sus him out. “Why? You know something everyone else doesn’t?”

“Oh, I know a lot more than ‘something’.”

She shivered. It didn’t feel … her heart rate was steadily picking up. Why was something so simple so nerve-wracking? So stressful? She should walk away but she didn’t feel released from the conversation. He seemed to sense her trepidation because he took a step back and loosened his demeanour, like he was trying to appear non-threatening. He’d done that the last time they’d met too.

“So what are you doing here? Isn’t school starting?”

Elena bit the inside of her lip. “It’s a bit of a long story.”

“I ain’t getting any younger.”

Elena paused. She didn’t know if she wanted to tell him or not, but she somehow felt like she had to.

“A few months ago, the night I saw you actually, my parents’ car skidded off this bridge. We almost died, it’s a miracle we didn’t.”

“You come back to the spot where you almost died?” He raised his eyebrows. “Seems a little morbid.”

Elena pressed her lips together. “Yeah, I can see how it seems that way.”

“What does the boyfriend think about this? You know, the one you got into a fight with?”

Good memory.

“Matt?” Elena thought about him showing up to the hospital, taking her hand in his. Then showing up to her house, anxious to make sure she was doing OK. Then his back as he left when she told him… “We broke up.”

“Figures,” said Damon with a shrug. “Seems too much like a country bumpkin for a gal like you.”

Something in Elena switched and her tone grew firm. “I was in a weird headspace when I talked to you that night but I would never talk down about Matt. OK? You don’t know him so you shouldn’t either.”

He shrugged. “I just call ‘em like I see ‘em.”

“But you haven’t seen anything.”

He squinted his eyes at her and Elena didn’t really know what that meant. She couldn’t be sure that he wouldn’t hurt her but she couldn’t be sure that he would.

“You’re right, you know, I should get to school. Don’t want to be late my first day.”

“Want a lift? I got a sick ride.”

“Thanks,” said Elena slowly, picking up her school bag. “But I’m kind of taking a break from cars…”

“Suit yourself.”

His eyes twinkled and Elena smiled somewhat awkwardly before taking off down the bridge, and when she was sure she had enough distance between them, she slowed down and exhaled, before picking up speed again at hearing another caw.

She’d made it to school quicker than she thought she would. People were still outside, finishing homework or gossiping or playing hacky sack like they were in some weird retro movie. Elena stopped walking, taking a moment to properly breathe and unclench from her talk with Damien or Damon or whatever on the bridge, and glanced around for Bonnie or Caroline.

“Look out!”

Everyone looked around, and then up. By the time Elena followed suit, it was too late. A football. Spiraling in the sky. It was soaring toward her and in a second it was going to connect. With her face. Elena already knew it was going to be bloody. Bloody and embarrassing and painful.

Someone was calling her name. “Elena!” Maybe Matt? “Elena, watch---”

Out of nowhere, someone came in front of her, catching the football before it could hit her.

He wasn’t even looking at it. His head was turned toward her, his eyes peering into hers for any hint of impact or injury. She could get lost in those eyes -- that brilliant green. She was lost. Elena’s lips parted.

“You saved me,” she said, with a gasp of disbelief.

“You all right?” The boy’s tone was soft but his expression was focused, intent on her, and almost smouldering with concern. She could do nothing but blink. It took her a moment to realize that she was actually holding her breath again. It took her another to realize that it wasn’t because she’d almost been pummeled by a football.

“Sorry! Yes! Yeah, yeah, I’m --- thank you.”

His gaze lingered for a second before he turned around and threw the ball back. It whipped through the air at a speed Elena didn’t think she’d seen before. She chuckled. She couldn’t be sure if it was because of the adrenaline or because she was impressed.

“That was incredible. How did you throw it like that? How did you catch it like that?”

He shook his head. “I saw that it was coming toward you, and I just reacted, I guess.”

Elena felt suddenly and unexpectedly embarrassed, as if that had been the most intimate thing she’d ever heard. She was vaguely aware that they had an audience but she saw no one else, just blurs and shapes, this boy’s chiseled face the only thing she could see clearly.

“So, does my hero have a name?” She hoped he could sense the playful irony in her tone and her eyes widened slightly at the possibility that he couldn’t. She spoke quickly to fill in the silence. “Mine’s, um, I’m Elena.”

He smiled at her, his eyes glinting with … what was that? Amusement? Charm? Was he charmed? Did she charm him? Why was her heart beating so fast?

“Stefan.”

She nodded and bit her lip nervously. “I’ve never seen you around before. I would’ve remembered.”

That last part was unnecessary. Oh God.

“Uh,” he grinned, like he didn’t know what to do with the compliment. “I’m sort of new here. My family has roots in Mystic Falls, I was born here but I moved away a while ago. I just came back.”

“Just in time,” she said.

He looked at her curiously. “For?”

Me. Wait, what?

“Uh, well, our football team is in desperate need of saving. And with reflexes like yours, we might actually have a shot at not being a complete joke this year. Tryouts should be this week.”

Stefan made a face, like he wasn’t certain.

“You should do it for your moral fibre,” she continued.

He laughed at that.

“No, seriously, wasn’t it, uh, Camus!” Elena said his name like she was answering a question on a game show. “Wasn’t it him who said everything he learned about morality and obligation he learned from football?”

Stefan licked his lips and Elena did her best to keep her gaze eye-level.

He smiled. “He wasn’t talking about American football.”

“There’s non-American football?”

“Soccer.”

Elena cringed. “Oh. Right. I knew that.”

He shrugged it off. “Common mistake.”

He was kind. Elena brushed her hair from her face. The bell rang and everyone started moving toward the building.

Stefan gestured in front of him. “Shall we?”

Elena couldn’t help but smile but tried to control how widely. “We shall.”

They started toward one of the school’s entrances and even walking side by side, he kept his attention on her.

“So, you read Camus?”

“Yes. No. Well, I’m trying.” Elena couldn’t understand why she was rambling. Maybe she’d stop if he’d stop looking at her.

“I had something sort of happen to me a few months ago and it - uh - it - it changed things for me, not everything, a lot of things. Well, maybe not a lot of things, but some things…” Why couldn’t she just shut up? “So I’m trying to do … things.” Elena, she admonished herself, stop saying ‘things’. “Kind of like a New Year’s resolution just not on New Year’s…” She pressed her lips together and closed her eyes, shaking her head slightly. If the universe had any decency, it would open up a hole in the ground that would swallow her up.

“That didn’t make any sense did it?”

Stefan grinned. “I get it. You have a new perspective now and because of that, you’re trying to do things you wouldn’t have before.”

That was exactly right. “Wow, you make talking look so easy.”

“Years of practice.”

She laughed at that. She didn’t remember a time laughing this much, this genuinely in such a short period of time.

They were in the hallway now and Stefan had stopped walking. Elena had the horrible feeling that he was going to head in the opposite direction of her and that it was time for them to go their separate ways.

“Thanks again,” she said.

“Any time.”

She moved to continue the way they’d been walking the same time he moved to walk down the opposite way.

They did that a few times before he stood to the side and let Elena pass.

“Thanks,” she said, hunching her shoulders, embarrassed.

She should keep walking. It would be smoother that way. Cool. Indifferent. Unaffected. It’d be what Caroline would tell her to do. She was almost around the corner. No, she couldn’t help it. She felt drawn back. A pull. She had to see him one last time. She turned her head and felt a jolt when she saw that he’d been watching her the entire time.

The rest of the morning went by in a bit of a haze. Truthfully, like most of her days since the accident. And then everything suddenly brightened to a sharp clarity just before lunch. History class. Her eyes went right to him when she walked into the room and she felt locked in even though Stefan didn’t seem to notice her. Before he could catch her staring, before Matt -- who she��d realized a second too late was also in this class -- could feel any worse, she sat down.

Mr. Tanner had been droning on for fifteen minutes but Elena wasn’t paying attention. She couldn’t even if she wanted to --- her thoughts wouldn’t let her neither would her body. Everything in her seemed to respond to Stefan’s mere presence being in the same vicinity. As if she were being called to. Which was crazy, she thought, because she didn’t even know him.

Casually. Very casually. She turned her head to glance at Stefan. A second later, his gaze met hers and embarrassed excitement bloomed in her chest, making her turn away immediately, a smile lingering on her face.

“Am I boring you, Miss Gilbert?”

Mr. Tanner saying her name made her flinch.

She wasn’t expecting it and so answered without thinking. “Kind of.” She was snapped back into reality when she heard the rest of the class titter with excitement. “Sorry, no, I didn’t mean---”

“No, no, you spoke your mind, don’t be a coward, own it. Let’s do something to correct your disinterest in my class.”

“Mr. Tanner, really…”

“Pop quiz,” he said, leaning against his desk. “The Battle of Willow Creek took place right at the end of the war in our very own Mystic Falls. How many casualties resulted in this battle?”

Elena had no idea. It had to be a lot, right? It was a battle. “A couple hundred at least.”

“Are you guessing?”

“Well, I’m trying,” she said helplessly.

The class laughed.

“It would impress me more if you just owned up to not knowing.”

“OK then, I don’t know.”

Mr. Tanner sighed. “I was willing to be lenient last year for obvious reasons, Elena. But the personal excuses ended with summer break.”

“There were three hundred and forty-six casualties,” said a deceptively light voice. “Unless you're counting local civilians.”

Elena looked behind her. Stefan was looking at Mr. Tanner with a pleasant expression on his face.

“Thank you, Miss Gilbert.”

Stefan smiled. Entirely un-intimidated.

“Your name?”

“Stefan. Stefan Salvatore.”

“Salvatore. One of the Founding Families.”

“Distant relative.”

Elena saw Matt mutter beneath his breath. It looked like it could’ve been ‘of course.’

Mr. Tanner nodded, as if deciding on how he would play the rest of the scenario. “In any case, you’re correct. Except, of course, there were no civilian casualties in this battle.”

“Actually, there were twenty-seven, sir.”

Mr. Tanner raised his eyebrows. “Twenty-seven?”

“Confederate soldiers, they fired on the church, believing it to be housing weapons. They were wrong. It was a night of great loss.”

Elena felt suddenly moved by that. Something in Stefan’s tone, in his expression told her that he was no stranger to loss. It was almost like he could feel the pain of that day as if he'd lived it.

“The founder's archives are, uh, stored in civil hall if you'd like to brush up on your facts, Mr. Tanner.”

Elena’s mouth fell open in gleeful shock and admiration.

Mr. Tanner’s eyes flashed. “Cute,” he said. “You know I let it slide before when you swooped in to save Elena, no doubt to impress her, even though I didn’t call on you to speak but I won’t tolerate rudeness. Pack up, go to the office.”

“Well, don’t get upset at him because he knows more about your subject than you,” said Elena.

The class tittered again and Stefan shot Elena an amused expression. She pressed her lips together to keep from smiling.

Mr. Tanner let out a nasty laugh. “Well, isn’t this sweet, the lovebirds defending each other. You can join him in the office, Elena. Come on, let’s go.”

Outside in the hall, Stefan was already walking in the direction of the office and Elena reacted.

“Hey,” she called out.

He turned around. She didn’t really have a plan. She just didn’t want to go to the office and she didn’t want him to go either. She wanted time. She realized right then and there, she would probably always want more time with him.

Elena walked over to a door and pushed it open. She tilted her head -- you coming? He grinned.

They decided to walk around the track, spending a few moments just ambling next to each other as the sun beamed down.

It was weirdly comfortable. Elena didn’t feel the need to talk to fill the silence. It was also strange how calm she felt. Earlier, being around him made her nervous, light-headed, and now she just felt ... anchored.

She’d never experienced that before.

“Bit bold of you, you know,” she said finally. “New school, new - well - old town, but first day and you’re already making trouble?”

“Well, I live on the edge.”

Elena giggled. “I can see that.”

“What about you? Mouthing off to a teacher on the first day? Very edgy,” he said, deadpanned.

She snorted. “Well, I nearly died. What’s your excuse?”

He turned to her then and Elena mentally kicked herself.

“That the thing that got you on your not New Year’s resolution?” he asked. “What Tanner was talking about?”

Elena brushed it off. “I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s…”

She glanced sideways at him to see if he would just change the conversation to something else he wanted to talk about but his expression was interested. Open.

“My parents and I got into a crash last May. Over on Wickery Bridge.” She shrugged. “That’s it, that’s the story.”

“Mm,” he said. “Maybe that’s what happened but it’s not the story.”

How did he know that?

“You don’t like talking about it.” The way he said it, Elena knew he wouldn’t press the subject if she didn’t feel like continuing.

“I just don’t really feel like I can say anything about it,” she found herself saying. “I lived, you know, I survived. My parents survived. I shouldn’t…”

“Have feelings about it?”

Elena had never really thought of it like that before. “Everyone’s just so ready for it to be in the past, you know?”

“A car crash isn’t a little thing. Nearly dying is the most transformative thing you can experience. It’s OK if you’re not OK about it right now. There’s a lot to process.”

“You know, I go to the bridge everyday? The spot we skidded off and into the river. Morbid, right?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Seems like you’re trying to keep a promise to yourself. Going to the bridge helps remind you of that.”

“Yeah.” The word barely came out as a whisper.

How did he know that? Know her? Elena felt … recognized. And bare. Yet … safe. This. Was. Crazy.

“A promise…” She repeated. “And that’s the other thing too, it’s like it’s made me restless. Like, I got a second chance, a miracle, who gets that in their lifetime, you know? And I don’t want to waste it. But everything seems dumb and superficial now. I just want to live, you know, live with … with, uh--”

“Passion?”

She nodded. “Right.”

“In my experience, it’s the dumb stuff, the small stuff, that’s what makes up living. By all means, if you want to climb Everest, climb Everest, you know, but going to a concert or a pickup game or …

“Family night,” said Elena.

“Who says you can’t do those things passionately?”

Elena didn’t remember when they stopped walking but they were standing now

and the feeling … that feeling … of being recognized had deepened into something more acute, more intense and she felt the urge, the need to be that person, that space for him. Right then and there, she wanted to pour into him, and wanted him to ---

A crow cawed.

Breaking the reverie.

Elena turned sharply toward it. She couldn’t be sure but it seemed like the same one from the bridge. As soon as the thought entered her mind, Damon’s face flashed before her eyes, and she took a deep breath in. Stefan touched her arm. She wanted him to keep her hand there forever.

“You OK? Where’d you go?”

“Nowhere,” she said. “I’m here. I…” She took another breath and looked around for the crow. It was gone. “The crow … it reminds me of someone. Someone I saw earlier, before school.”

“Someone you know?”

“No. Not exactly. I’d met him once before.” She closed her eyes, searching for the words to describe what was happening to her. “I don’t know, since then there’s just been this feeling in the pit of my stomach. It went away for a bit, when…” When she was talking to him. When she was relaxed. “But it just came back. It’s like something I can’t seem to shake.”

“Sounds like he made an impression.”

She looked at him. “There are better impressions, believe me.”

Stefan’s eyes searched hers and it happened again. Immediately. He was drawing her into him and she was falling and falling...

“Hey, your face. Is there something---”

“Sorry.” Stefan shielded his eyes from her. “Sorry, I … sorry, I’ve gotta go.”

“Uh…”

Elena watched Stefan walk away, his stride swift, and felt a sharp stab of disappointment that they were no longer talking, no longer in the same place together,

A few seconds later, the bell signalling lunch rang.

The moment Elena opened her locker, it was slammed shut and her best friend, Bonnie Bennett, was standing beside her. Elena let out a sigh of relief. “Bonnie! Why did you--?”

“You and the new hottie. The whole school’s talking. Dish.”

“There’s nothing to tell,” said Elena casually. Too casually.

Bonnie looked at her. “That always means there’s something to tell. And I can tell because---”

“Because you’re a psychic now?”

“Because I was sitting by the window in calc. and I saw the two of you walking around the track. And you two were vibing. Don’t deny it.”

“Oh, please.”

“Aimee Bradley said that he defended your honour in Mr. Tanner’s class. She said he cussed Tanner out and stormed out of class..”

Elena made a noise of disbelief. “Since when did you listen to Aimee Bradley?”

Bonnie shrugged. “She’s not the only one saying it.”

“That literally did not happen! He just---”

Elena was interrupted.

“Well, your nose doesn’t look broken,” she said, nudging her way between Elena and Bonnie.

“Hi, Caroline.”

Elena exchanged a quick look with Bonnie who tried to stifle a laugh.

“And what do you mean my nose doesn’t look broken?”

“Oh, everyone’s talking about how Matt threw a football at your face to get back at you for dumping him and the new guy beat the shit out of him on the green.”

“What!” Elena looked at Caroline incredulously. “Oh my God, guys! Nothing you’re saying happened! Someone --- not Matt, he tried to warn me -- threw a football, it almost hit me and---”

“And the new guy saved you from massive embarrassment on the first day?” said Caroline. “It’s just so typical. There is a finite amount of hot guys at this school and when we finally get new blood, you get there first. You’ve already dated the captain of the football team, you had this encounter with some mystery man---”

Elena unconsciously tensed at the memory and Bonnie looked at Caroline pointedly, who closed her eyes.

“Sorry, I’m a bitch,” she said. “I shouldn’t have brought up that night.”

Elena sighed, half-exasperated but already on her way to forgetting the insensitivity. “I never said that guy was hot by the way.”

“Oh, please, mystery men are always hot. It’s like a rule,” said Caroline, apparently over her brief bout of contrition.

Elena addressed Bonnie. “You know I actually saw him again today before coming to school?”

Bonnie shook her head. “Really?”

“Yeah, the vibes were … weird.”

Bonnie squinted. “Weird, like, dangerous, weird?”

Elena opened her mouth but didn’t say anything . “It was definitely intense. But not like…” Not like what she’d felt when she spoke to Stefan. “I don’t know, it kind of made me queasy?”

“Butterflies,” said Caroline, throwing up her hands. “So, the sexy, dangerous mystery man gives you butterflies--”

“I never said--”

“And now you’ve got the other mystery guy who actually goes here saving you on the green like some freaking knight?”

Elena rolled her eyes. “Don’t be so dramatic. He caught a football.”

But even when she tried to minimize what had happened verbally, physically she felt her heart thud and a jittery, giddy flutter in her stomach that made her want to laugh to get the feeling out.

“And stood up to Tanner on your behalf,” said Bonnie.

Caroline shook her head like she was severely disappointed in Elena. “You’re being so greedy.”

Bonnie snorted and rested her head on Caroline’s shoulder.

Elena opened her locker again. “Look, I’m not even thinking about Stefan.”

“So the new guy’s name is Stefan.”

“I could be talking about the mystery man on the bridge.”

“You’re not, I can tell by that big, dumb smile you’re trying to hide,” said Bonnie.

Elena popped her head out from behind her locker door and gave Bonnie a playful grimace.

“Anyway. I’m actually thinking about Jeremy. I haven’t seen him anywhere. Have you two?”

Caroline rooted around in her bag for some lip gloss. “Elena, if I ever start caring about the comings-and-goings of sophomores, shoot me.”

“That’s Caroline-speak for ‘no’,” said Bonnie. “And I haven’t either.”

“I’m kind of worried. He never skips school.” Elena pulled a contemplative face. “Bonnie, do you mind if we, like, quickly go over to my house to see if he’s there? I’m sure there’s something in the fridge we can eat so we won’t miss lunch.”

Caroline made an expression as if Elena had said the dumbest thing she ever heard. “In all of the times we’ve skipped school, when have we ever stayed home? He’s probably at the stoner’ pit or something.”

Bonnie snorted. “Yeah, Jeremy, a burnout. Please.”

“No, he could be at home. I don’t know, all summer he’s either been on his Xbox or pining after Vicki Donovan. Maybe he’s pretending to be sick and he’s still in his room.”

“If he’s been pining after Vicki Donovan then he’s definitely at the stoner pit probably trying to impress her..”

“Caroline!” Bonnie gave her an admonishing hit on the arm.

“What! You know I’m not wrong.”

“Don’t be mean just because you’ve had a thing for Tyler since fifth grade.”

“Shut up.”

Bonnie laughed. “Elena, I’ll give you a lift.”

“Since when was your family pack rats?” said Bonnie.

They’d made it to Elena’s house and walked into the foyer. The closet beneath the stairs was open and there were a bunch of boxes around the door, crammed with what looked to be junk. Papers. Dusty journals.

“I don’t know, this wasn’t here when I left this morning,” said Elena.

“You think Jeremy took it out?”

“Yeah, but why?”

Bonnie shrugged.

“Jeremy?” Elena called.

When there was no answer, she walked into the living room and didn’t see him there or in the kitchen.

“Some leftover spaghetti in the fridge,” said Elena to Bonnie. “I’m just going to check upstairs and then I’ll be right down.”

Bonnie nodded. “OK cool. I love pasta night at your house.”

“It’s the oregano,” said Elena, grinning.

She headed up the stairs. She could definitely here talking. Low talking. But it wasn’t coming from Jeremy’s room. She turned around. It was coming from her parents’. It was the middle of the day. Neither one of them should be home. Elena felt like suddenly she shouldn’t be up there. Something was wrong or secret or … She walked slowly down the hall toward the room. The door was nearly closed, but not quite. She peaked through the crack. Jeremy on a chair. So, he did stay home. And then … Dad. He let him stay home? And then … was that … was he holding … a stake?

#stelena #stefan salvatore #elena gilbert #the vampire diaries #dobsley #paul wesley #nina dobrev #stelena fanfiction #maybe if you and i had met first ... oh please

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linalavender · 7 months

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How Tatsuki Fujimoto writes Affection

First of all I would like to give massive credit to Tiktok user @campaign_baby for their Tiktok I saw on this that really made me think of it alot more

I will Bring up Examples from:

Shikaku

Mermaid Rhapsody

Goodbye Eri

Fire Punch

Chainsaw Man Part 1 (Quite a big spoiler in this will give fair warning)

Fujimoto has a sort of strange method he uses to write that a character Loves/cares deeply for someone. And its The character either being willing to be consumed or to provide sustenance to someone, Or to consume the other person. Examples:

Shikaku

After Shikaku confesses her love for Yucel, He rushes to the hospital to offer her his blood, Making her into an immortal vampire just like him. Yucel has also fallen for Shikaku, its basically his confession of love, He wants to live with her Forever.

Its drawn in a way you can tell its such an act of compassion too.

Mermaid Rhapsody

"I loved her so much that I thought, If it was by someone with a smile as pretty as hers, Maybe being eaten wouldn't be so bad."

Toshihides Dad feels the exact same way about his Mom as Toshihide feels about Shijyu. Mermaids eat humans, But that never mattered to either of them.

Goodbye Eri

In Yuutas Movie about Eri, He writes her to be a Vampire, because he wouldnt actually mind to be her sustenance, In his movie, he loves Eri so much. (I genuinely cant read this fucking story without sobbing, Rereading it again just to get this screengrab just made me cry for like 20 min help)

Fire Punch

This one is Pretty straight forward, Agni with his regenerative powers feeds his village by continuously chopping of his Arm so they dont all starve to death. But more importantly he does this to prevent his sister from doing it aswell. He doesnt want her to suffer that pain so he takes sole responsibility for providing himself to the village.

Agni also later feeds his followers with the help of Togata Chopping of the part of his face that isnt on Fire. I think this has more todo with making sure Togata gets fed rather than his followers, To Agni Togata means alot.

⚠️Chainsaw Man Part 1 (Spoilers for the Final arc)⚠️

When Power is about to Die, Power not only offers her own blood For Denji to Drink so he can get back to health, But Pochita also offers a small part of himself so she can come back as a Powerful Devil.

And ofcourse the big one is Denji Eating Makima. He obviously has to and all for the sake of erasing her. But he explicitly says it wasnt an Attack, It was an act of Love.

Its such a fascinating thing that the idea of consuming someone can be concidered something you do to a cherished one, as an affectionate thing. I guess as Denji mentions that you basically become one with eachother in a way if you consume them.

But this is such a Weird thing Right? Where does this idea even originate from? Well ofcourse we can only Speculate but I really think he took on inspiration from his own life here, Because he has actually done this to someone he loved. Yes, Seriously.

Tatsuki Fujimoto eating his deceased Pet Fish

In the Authors notes for "Tatsuki Fujimoto Before Chainsaw Man: 22-26" Fujimoto shares a story from when he was 24:

"Even though we were poor, we had a pet Japanese rice fish. I found it dead one summer. I went to toss its body into the trash like in Parasyte, but my girlfriend said she wanted me to bury it, So off I went to the park, alone. I tried to bury it under this big tree, but the ground was too hard, my hands got all dirty and I had no hole to show for my effort. Out of Options, I figured I would pretend I had buried the fish and left it lying there on top of the ground. As I watched it for a little while, ants found the body and began to carry it away. Im not sure what came over me, but in that moment, love for that pet fish welled within me for the first time. I brushed the ants away, and then Ate it."

You can read the full story here

It has that "Wait what the hell am I reading" Charm to the story like alot of his works, But theres something so weirdly beautiful about this story, Somehow stricken with grief and love for this fish, He ate it. As Denji says, its not an attack, his fish is part of him now and its an act of love. So strange, yet so Beautiful.

Anyways thanks for reading this insanely long post if you even got this far I appreciate it!

#tatsuki fujimoto #fire punch #chainsaw man #goodbye eri #Mermaid Rhapsody #Shikaku #chainsaw man spoilers

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moonlightsmasquerade · 5 months

Text

Monsters in Mandela: Blood in the Water

TW: Blood, Body Horror

Mark Heathcliffs nightmares have been giving him the feeling something terrible is going to happen, and when his friend Cesar Torres shows up to his house covered in blood the nightmares end up becoming reality for both.

Mark Heathcliff practically jumped out of the bed, trying to calm his heart rate after another nightmare, they had been getting worse, and this time he was seeing the town in his dreams. This latest one was at the abandoned church, horrific monsters crawling out of the doorway and running around the town. One always stood out, a creature with large bat wings. This time the monster had lunged straight for Mark before he had woken up. He took a deep breath, sitting in his room with a single light on, he picked up the phone by the nightstand, hesitating a moment before Mark pressed the buttons on his phone to ring Cesar Torres, he really needed to hear another person, something rattled him about that dream.

“Hello?” a groggy voice asked

“Hey, it’s Mark.”

“Mark? It’s like… 3 in the morning, why are you calling?” Cesar asked.

“I-I, I had a nightmare.” Mark said, he cringed at himself, he felt like a child, being scared over nothing.

“A nightmare? Mark-”

“I know, I know, but I had to talk to someone!” Mark said, “Cesar it felt real…” He could hear a sigh on the other end.

“Okay, look, since it’s really late right now I’ll come over tomorrow and we can talk about it. You just have to remember it's only a dream, it should be easy to shrug off, it's not real.” Cesar replied.

“Right…” Mark replied

“I’ll see you tomorrow, good night.”

“Night…”

The phone clicked off and Mark was alone again. He placed the phone on the receiver and laid back down on his bed, staring at the ceiling for who knows how long before getting back up, opening the drawer to the side table and pulling his notebook from the drawer, flipping through pages, pages of drawings from dreams and memories that stuck out to him. Remembering when he first saw that old church as a child, seeing horrible faces looking at him from within. He could still remember them clearly even now. He flipped to a clean page and started drawing out the monster from his dream. If he was gonna lose sleep, he might as well add another drawing to the book.

He felt childish for bothering Cesar, but he couldn’t mention the dreams to his mom. She tried to be reassuring but never understood why they scared him so much, Mark hated mentioning anything about the church because it had always been chalked up to childhood imagination. Cesar was the only other person who knew about the reason why Mark had been so afraid of the place.

He finished scribbling the image of the monster, with its large bat wings and long fangs. He put the book back in his drawer before attempting to fall back asleep.

…

"So the old church had monsters running out of it?" Cesar asked when Mark had finished explaining the nightmare

"Yeah, there’s one that keeps showing up, it had red eyes and bat wings… I had seen it a few times but it… attacked me in the dream last night, that’s why I was so freaked out, I’ve never had anything like that happen in a nightmare before.”

"Shit, that sounds… freaky." Cesar made a face, his brows furrowed and his mouth pursed slightly, “And you’re sure you saw St. Gabriels Church, and not any other?”

"Yeah… why?" Mark asked, tone slightly worried. Cesar changed his face to surprise and they looked away.

"It's nothing… well.” Cesar looked back at Mark, like they were mulling over the right words to say to the other, “Okay don’t freak out, but my mom told me two police officers were in the hospital because they went to St Gabriels, and something attacked them."

"What!?" Marks eyes were wide.

"It was probably something normal like, I dunno, some rando or something that attacked them, I don't think it was your bat demon, but I just thought it was a weird coincidence."

"Yeah, weird…" Mark felt anxiety rising. Cesar could see his face twist to worry, and saw him fidget with the cross on his neck,

“You know it’s a coincidence, I really don’t think you need to worry about it!” Cesar said.

“I know I shouldn’t and I know it’s a dream but Cesar, I just… feel like something bad is going to happen. I just, I just know it's coming." he said. Cesar sighed and put his hand to Mark’s shoulder.

"Look y'know what, I think you're having weird stress dreams, you just have to… let it go? I think if you give yourself something fun to do this weekend, we could even hang out again if you want. I think your bad feelings will disappear, alright man?" They smiled to Mark, who smiled weakly back,

"That… that sounds good."

"See! That's all you need.” Cesar turned to the clock on the wall, jumping at the realization of the time, “I better head home, call you later, but not in the middle of the night again.” Cesar said, Mark let out a halfhearted laugh.

"Yeah, call you later"

He watched the other leave. Mark kept his hand around the cross, Cesar was probably right, he was just stressed. Everything would work out. He clasped both hands around the cross.

“Please let it be okay, I know it’s just a dream but please please let everything turn out okay.” He whispered quietly to himself. He hadn’t done this since he was a kid, but he’d hoped that it could give him some comfort until the weekend.

…

Friday evening, Mark hadn’t called again talking about strange nightmares, so Cesar thought that the other took his advice and was feeling better. His house phone rang, he picked it up from the wireless receiver and spoke,

“Hello.”

“Hi Cesar,” His mom’s voice responded on the other end, “Sorry honey, they need all hands on deck at the hospital tonight, I won’t be home. Do you think you’ll be okay on your own?”

“Oh yeah Mom, I’ll be fine.” he responded,

“You remembered to lock the doors?”

“Yes.”

“And the windows?”

“Yes.”

“And the security systems on?”

“Yes, you don’t have to worry about me Mom, I’ll be fine on my own for a night.” Cesar wandered the house, phone still to his ear, double checking the windows and doors locks, to make sure everything was secure. You could never be too careful.

“I know, I can’t help it sometimes.” his mom replied.

“I will be okay, I’ll give you a call again soon, I love you.”

“I love you too hon.”

He clicked the phone off, putting it back on the holder. It wasn't uncommon for his mother to need to stay at work longer, she was trying to not do that as often since the robbery when luckily neither had been home. Once Cesar was satisfied with his check through the house he started to look through the kitchen cabinets, deciding to make dinner. They rummaged for a bit before

Thunk

He paused, listening for another sound.

Thunk

It sounded like the sound of something hitting a window. He quietly opened the cutlery drawer, grabbing a kitchen knife, moving closer to the sound, it sounded like it was coming from the living room, before they could turn the corner of the kitchen to the living room, he heard a

SMASH

Something broke the window. Cesar’s heart raced, beating so loud it was all that they could hear. They stayed quiet, listening, Holding the knife up and entering the living room cautiously, seeing the busted window but no one there, no sound save for wind blowing the curtains. Their eyes scanned everywhere, but it seemed as though no one was there. Everything was eerily still for a moment.

Until Cesar felt hands grab his shoulders.

He screamed struggling against whatever was holding him, they dropped the knife, trying to pull away from it, clawing at the hands with an iron grip on his shoulders. He continued to scream and struggle until something sharp stabbed into his neck. He froze, white hot pain rushed through their body. Cesar's blood felt like it was boiling. Just as suddenly the assailant let him go, and Cesar dropped to the floor. He held onto the wound on his neck, trying to stop the bleeding and used his other hand to push himself off of the floor, he didn’t look to see if the attacker was still here, Cesar ran, stumbling out the door of the house and running to find help.

…

BANG BANG BANG someone pounded against the front door. Mark opened it to Cesar holding his neck, white shirt stained in crimson, breathing haggard and his eyes wide.

“Oh god Cesar!” Mark quickly took him in, Cesar stumbling slightly and Mark holding him up.

“What happened?”

“I don’t… it was behind me… I was attacked…” was all he managed, gasping and stumbling, Mark could see his eyes flutter slightly.

“I’m… tired” his voice barely cracked a whisper.

“No, no, no don’t start falling asleep stay awake ok? Um, list what's in the room, don’t fall asleep.” Mark took the other into the dining room, pulling a chair up, and running to grab the first aid kit under the kitchen sink in the adjacent room.

“Uhm… There’s the table… chairs…”

Mark rummaged through the first aid kit, pulling out what he needed. He gingerly dabbed the disinfectant soaked cotton against Cesar’s wound, two gashes on his neck, Cesar winced but continued listing what Mark asked,

“Photo of… Sarah… Photo of you and… me…” He kept listing items in the room while the other patched him up. Mark finished cleaning the wound, putting a cotton pad and medical tape to keep it in place.

“Okay, all done, how are you?”

“Better I-I guess?” Cesar responded, rubbing at the bandage slightly

“Do you think we need to go to the hospital?”

“No, I think… I’ll be alright” he still sounded tired.

“We can call your mom if you want.”

He gave a noncommittal ‘hm’ in response, Cesar was barely listening to Mark speak, his head felt like it was underwater. The only thing he was aware of was Mark pressing a glass of orange juice into their hands. The smell was sour and overpowering, it made them feel sick, but his throat stung from how dry it felt, so he took a sip anyway.

It tasted rotten.

He coughed and retched, and felt Mark pat their back. His throat still stung. Mark continued to talk to him, but Cesar was preoccupied, he could hear the sound of… a heartbeat? Not their own, it sounded like it was further, the direction it came from seemed to be Mark. His heartbeat was so fast. The sound beat against Cesar's ears, making their head spin.

“I don’t feel very good.” Cesar’s voice was hoarse, he stood up and started to walk to Mark.

“Do you need…” Mark stopped, eyes wide and his heart skipped a beat. What had frightened Mark was the fact the sclera of Cesar’s eyes were a deep angry red.

“C-Cesar?” Mark stammered, stepping backwards, his heart raced. Cesar looked at him confused. He stepped closer, Mark stepped back.

“Why are you-” Cesar gasped, he faltered, nearly losing his footing but caught themself against the table. Their breathing turned shaky, a snap sound echoed as they coiled into themselves, collapsing to the ground. Long clawed nails pushed through bloody fingertips and dug into the floor. The snapping continued, something was shifting under Cesar’s shirt. All Cesar could focus on was the pain, feeling like something was under his skin, trying to rip its way out of their back. Their teeth clenched, his mouth bled slightly from the sharp fangs that now replaced his incisor teeth. The shirt started to rip, followed by the sounds of cracking and stretching of flesh and bone, new shapes forming on Cesar’s back. They were wings, bat wings. Mark gasped, staring at his friend in horror. The nightmare was real.

Cesar looked at him, frightened red eyes full of tears staring at Mark.

“Mark help me… help…It hurts so much, I just want it to stop.” Cesar spoke, his voice was quiet and raspy, like it was painful for him to speak, “I’m scared, I don’t know what's happening to me.”

Cesar tried to move closer, before letting out a small cry, head in their hands, then they looked back at Mark. Their face changed, they bared their teeth at Mark, who screamed. He sprinted away, Cesar letting out a hiss before chasing him as he ran out of the dining room to the stairs, Cesar couldn’t focus, all he could hear was thump, thump, thump. The sound of blood beating through a heart.

Mark ran up the stairs to his room and shut the door, hearing the sound of Cesar slamming against it, banging their fists on the wood.

“Oh god, oh god please, this can’t be happening.” Mark could feel himself panicking, unsure of what to do. He sat still for a moment, he knew he had a weapon in his dresser, he had a gun, but he couldn't, that was his friend, even if his friend had become a monster, he couldn't hurt him.

No, I can’t do that, that’s still Cesar, there has to be another way.

Cesar’s fist banged against the door again, Mark could see the hinges splintering away from the doorframe when the other hit against it. Mark needed a plan, his fingers mindlessly twisted the cross on his neck, giving him an idea. Vampires hate crosses right? Would that work? Maybe it could stop Mark from being attacked long enough to get help, and find a way to fix Cesar. He clasped his hands around the cross again, muttering a prayer before facing the door. After another bang Mark ran and grabbed the doorknob, yanking it open and letting the other fall inside. Mark sprinted around them, heading for the stairs and hearing the sound of a screech, he made the mistake of turning his head.

Cesar had lunged forward, grabbing Mark and the two fell down the set of stairs. Mark hit the floor, trying to ignore the pain and run but Cesar grabbed him. He raised his arm over his face, but it didn’t stop Cesar, he bit into Mark's arm. He cried out, but still tried to push against the other. He could feel himself getting dizzier and dizzier, and all he could feel in his arm was burning pain as blood ran down it. Cesar finally let go of Mark's arm, the room was spinning, he barely had the energy to struggle. He weakly held up the necklace, he hoped that the cross would repel the other, but Cesar didn’t budge, nothing was stopping the vampire. The last thing Mark saw was their fangs still covered in blood as they bit down on his neck.

Mark screamed.

…

Cesar couldn’t focus on anything, only the pain that constantly rushed through him, everything felt like it was on fire. The last thing they could remember clearly was Mark… who looked afraid of him before everything blurred together. Just as suddenly a fog had left his mind and suddenly all of his senses were overwhelmed. The lights were bright, he had the taste of iron in his mouth, and his hands felt sticky. Cesar tried to process what was going on in there when they looked in front of them… at Mark’s body.

Cesar cried out, Mark was covered in blood, he didn't move, he laid there with his eyes shut, a wound on his neck. Cesar hadn’t stopped screaming, scrambling away from the body and falling back onto the carpet. They tried to get back up, but they suddenly felt heavy, like something was weighing them down. He saw something move from the corner of his eye. He turned his head, realizing what was weighing them down, attached to his back were bat wings.

This can’t be real

He pushed himself up, this time able to lift themselves and the extra weight of the wings. Cesar shook, he thought about his attacker, the sharp pain in his neck, they’ve become a monster… they did the same to Mark, but he was…

“No… No no no no no no no.” Cesar repeated. He wanted this to be a bad dream, he wanted to wake up. They tried to think, what the hell was he gonna do? Cesar felt hot tears at the edge of their eyes, and he started to cry.

Mark’s eyes opened, he blinked a few times. The sharp pain in his neck throbbed and he tried to sit up, feeling dizzy as he did, he touched where the pain was, and pulled back a slightly bloody hand. Despite how fuzzy his head felt he remembered clearly what happened, Cesar was a vampire now… and he bit Mark. He turned his head to the only sound in the room, the sound of sobbing, coming from Cesar.

“Ces..” Mark winced at the pain in his throat, “Ces..Cesar.” Cesar jumped at Mark’s voice, his red eyes looked at Mark, startled and confused. Mark tried to stand, stumbling slightly as he tried to do so, his legs felt weak.

"Cesar… Wh-” Mark flinched at the sudden pain in his jaw, he clenched his teeth, a slight trail of blood running from the corners of his mouth as he felt his teeth shifting, he put both hands to his jaw, as if holding his face would make the pain go away. His eyes shut tightly, his body shuddering. Mark curled inward himself. Cesar hesitantly got closer, he could only hear Mark taking shaky breaths.

"Mark?"

Mark's head snapped up, he hissed at Cesar, baring his now sharp teeth at the other. His eyes were slightly bloodshot, and the once warm brown iris was replaced with dark red. Cesar felt a pit in their stomach, any relief that he didn’t kill Mark was gone, he was turned into another bloodthirsty monster. Mark's face changed, he looked… scared.

“What- What’s happening? I can’t…” Mark felt like he was fading in and out, he couldn’t think clearly. Mark suddenly snarled at the other, baring his teeth again. Cesar didn’t want Mark to do what he did, he tried holding onto the other, who thrashed at the attempt to hold them back. Mark pushed the other, who lost their balance and fell back, Mark sprinted for the door and ran out into the night.

“Fuck!” Cesar cursed, he stood up, trying to regain their balance again, and ran outside after Mark, still stumbling slightly from the weight of the wings, any care that anyone would see them went out the window. He had to find Mark and get him back before-

The sound of screaming broke through, Cesar went in the direction of the sound, fearing the worst.

...

Like Cesar, Mark’s mind was completely fogged over, he couldn’t focus on where he was going, just on the pain, the burning in his throat. Every sense was dulled, his body on autopilot, something else was making him run, searching for…a heartbeat. He could hear the sound of a beating heart, and followed it. He knew he moved quickly, lunging at something. There was screaming, he knew that, he could hear it. There was the taste of iron in his mouth, and relief, relief from the pain.

Mark felt himself being pulled away, the fog was disappearing, he could actually understand his surroundings. Cesar was the one pulling him. A man with a bloody wound on his neck, a woman with him was screaming, shouting for someone to call the police. Cesar practically lifted the other up and sprinted, when they ran up to the house they practically threw themselves and Mark inside. Slamming the door and locking it. Cesar looked out the window quickly, before shutting the curtains

“No one followed us… okay okay, it's okay.”

It had gone so fast, Mark looked at his hands, smudged with blood. Blood he drank from someone he attacked. Mark felt sick.

“Did I kill someone, oh god I think I killed someone.” he spoke frantically, his hands shaking. He repeated the words “Oh god, oh god.” while Cesar just paced, hands to their face. Neither spoke for a while, both choosing to sit on the living room floor, Cesar kept his eyes on the door, and Mark felt himself becoming more and more exhausted.

…

Mark opened his eyes, realizing he had fallen asleep. He could see Cesar also fell asleep, lying on their stomach, seeing the wings on their back told him that it was real, not a dream. Mark got up and moved to the curtains, hesitating for a moment before pushing them back, morning, the daylight was now on Mark’s extremely pale skin. Nothing burned, he let out a small sigh of relief. He wondered what to do now, if he should call someone, he even considered venturing outside. He peered through the curtains, using a hand to shade his eyes against the harsh light.

Police cars drove past, one parked nearby, not a good idea to go back out then. He pulled the curtain back. He had to change, the shirt was still stained in blood, and the dried blood still on his skin was starting to itch. Mark headed to the upstairs bathroom, passing by the blood stain in the carpet near the stairs. He was gonna have to deep clean that too, but that was a task for later in the day.

The sink ran with warm water, Mark wiped at his neck with a small towel, the dried blood washing away and showing two scars, he expected them to look like dots, but they looked like scrapes. He got a good look at his face in the mirror, he was paler, red eyes looked back at him. Mark gingerly opened his mouth to see fangs, he reached a hand to them, and realized his nails were sharp with a dark tinge. He looked away from the mirror, swapping the stained shirt for a clean one. His cross had been slightly stained in blood, he rinsed it under the sink. He almost expected it to burn him, but it didn’t, like it didn’t repel Cesar. It didn’t work. His prayer didn’t work.

Mark chewed at his lip. He thought if he prayed, if he believed, then God would be able to protect him. If God was real this cross would burn his skin, make him burst into flames. Instead he put it back on, like he was still a human. He wasn't human, despite the fact he looked human, he knew he wasn't. Thoughts kept running through his mind. Why would God allow monsters to exist, let alone attack people. It all made him feel sick.

“God dammit why.” he whispered to himself.

...

After a few moments Mark headed back to see Cesar now awake, reaching their hand towards the curtain, only to hiss and recoil, a small pink burn on their hand.

“Hey.” Mark said, he held out the shirt for the other to wear, who took it and muttered “Thanks”

“It's old so, I made holes for the…”

“Yeah.” Cesar responded curtly before shuffling up the stairs to change.

It took a bit of work, but Cesar managed to fit the wings through the holes. It still felt strange, as if someone was holding onto his back.

Something I’ll have to get used to I guess. He thought, turning to the bathroom mirror.

One thing that surprised Cesar was still being able to see their reflection. They stared at their new face, his skin turned an ashy grey color and their ears stretched to the shape of a bats. He opened his mouth, looking at the long fangs, and it seemed all his teeth had become sharper. Of course, their eyes were bright red now, overtaking the formerly white sclera. It felt… strange, he knew it was his face in the mirror, but it didn’t feel like that was him, it was someone else, and yet… this was him. Cesar swallowed the lump in his throat, he couldn’t go out looking like this, he was a monster. He couldn’t go home, what would his mother think if she saw him like this?

Oh god… his mom… she’d be home now, she’d come home to him missing, she was going to freak out. Cesar’s stomach twisted in knots thinking about it, but they couldn’t… they couldn’t go back, if she saw him as a monster… the idea of his own mother fearing him, hating him. Maybe it would be better if he didn’t come back, maybe if she just thought he was missing it would be less painful. He slowly walked back down the stairs to Mark, who looked lost in thought, chewing on his bottom lip which bled slightly. He stopped when he saw Cesar.

“There’s a lot of police patrolling, you should stay here, then we can… figure something out.” Mark said.

“Okay… what about your mom?”

“She's out of town, my sister’s with her, we've got the house for a while, I’ll call her, tell her I’m okay.” he said, receiving a ‘hm’ from Cesar.

“After… um… maybe we can call your mom-”

“No! No, I don't think we should call her.” Cesar interrupted. Mark looked at him surprised, but Cesar just stared at the floor, eyes not meeting the others. He didn’t push them on the subject. They both stayed still in the silence, it was hitting both how awful the situation was, and neither knew what to say to the other.

What the hell were they going to do now?

#oh god this was over 4000 words XD #uhhhh i hope you guys enjoy....#tmc mim au #tmc au #tmc fic #tmc #sorry for the bleak cliffhangery ending this would have gone on for three more pages and i needed this out pronto #blood #body horror #any other ask to tag #if you see mistakes no you dont <3 #my fics

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clunelover · 4 months

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Okay great, I get to do the intensive outpatient program (half days - mornings) for anxiety/OCD. Starting in a few weeks. I now get to figure out what exactly I say to my boss and when. I’ve done it before but it’s been a long time!

For any of you who didn’t follow me back when I did this - I had terrible PPA after C was born. All my usual anxiety shit was ratcheted up, and I had some new things that seemed to have sprung up due to the Las Vegas shooting happening during my maternity leave. It finally got bad enough that social worker BFF said I should consider treatment.

At the time I did PHP (partial hospitalization - ie full weekdays) and then stepped down to IOP. I think it lasted 10-12 weeks between the two.

The program included some amounts of CBT, DBT, mindfulness, and art therapy, with the bulk of the time being spent on ERP (exposure and response prevention). Just doing exposures to trigger anxiety and sitting with it until it reduces at least by half. This is why I say I don’t want to go back - that shit is HARD. But it really works. Those of us with this flavor of anxiety get in a thought trap where we think anxiety is unbearable and that it won’t go away unless we [insert unhealthy behavior or ritual/compulsion]. But in fact it will eventually go away on its own. I just need to retrain my muscles for tolerating discomfort.

For me, some of the specific exposures were:

- for fear of being wrong, tell someone an incorrect fact on purpose (my favorite was “Massachusetts wasn’t one of the original 13 colonies.”)

- for fear of people thinking I’m weird, face the “wrong” way in an elevator

(Most of these things were done with employees at the facility. Not just random people on the street or something. Oh although one of my things was to send a work email without checking it for typos).

Eventually I built up to something they called “interroceptives” which were activities meant to simulate physical feelings of panic, like spinning in a chair or trying to breathe through a cocktail straw.

Anyway, when I did it the first time, I remember it gave me so much freedom. So many things I’d thought impossible or too scary, I could do. But the disinclination to sit with discomfort can creep back in.

I think my current issues are different than last time I went in! Back then I was still working as a statistician, so I had very specific “I’ve forgotten everything I learned in grad school” thoughts. Now that I do a different type of job, I’m more secure (although less so again with new hard to read boss). My current issues are much more social in nature. I can’t bear talking to other Girl Scout moms. All my friends actually hate me. Etc.

And more agitation about things needing to be “just right.” Almost all household chores except laundry are too overwhelming to start. Anyway, I’m pumped to get it all sorted out! And I hope my favorite mental health specialist is still there although that’s unlikely cause I think it’s a high turnover job. But we shall see!

#cw gun violence #cw shooting #cw mental health #actually ocd

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sir-arlieosaurus-lung-struggler · 4 months

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the holidays are always really fucking weird, i dont like many of them but specifically December is just- ew

Anyway ill just thro my mini pitty party real quick:

These song explains how I feel about christmas time *perfectly*

Have yourself a Merry Little Christmas by mother mother (christmas playlist)

From heres basically a trauma dump about being in the hospital, but i typically talk about this in a tone more like "oh yea! i nearly died lmao"

When i was like, just turning 6 I had 💫pneumonia💫 & needed to go to the 💫hospital💫. So I spent like, 12/11-31/15 in the hospital. along the way i had these treats happen (not really in order, 💜=story from family member, ❤=i actually remember this)

💜being diagnosed by my sisters 16 yo boyfriend by looking at my gums, whereas medical staff took 4 days

❤Some mcdonalds, cool auntys banana bread, jello & making popin cookin sets w/ my older sister

💜a 5 day medically induced coma

lung surgery therefor cool fuckin scars on my back (WHICH I CANT FUCKING SHOW ANYONE CAUSE I WAS CURSED W/ TITS AND 2/3 ARE UNDER MY BRA)

💜waking up from said coma periodically only to say "im scared" w/ my mom trying to comfort me but i had ear shit going on

💜Finnaly actually woke up, yelled "IM DEAD", which is reportadly the scariest shit my dad has ever heard, my mom asks if i hurt, i say yes, she like "ur not dead honey" again i was 6 & in & out of a coma 😂 (idk why but I've always found that story funny)

💜my parents being thretened w/ truancy by my dumbass school

❤Christmas, I had *2* mini christmas trees in my hospital room 💅 1 was cool but my cool uncle & aunty got me a pink 1 which I still have to this day as a lamp

💜only trusting 1 of my doctors cause he looked like my grandfather who'd been deceased for 2years at that point

❤💜going on walks around the kids floor in a wheelchair & stealing a little gingerbread beanie baby ornament but they didnt care so they just let me keep it & i still have it somehwere.

💜my mom met a lady who had a son who was a few months old & they didnt expect to live past a couple weeks but he *did* (more on that later)

💜had food in the cafeteria and i proceeded to rub the pizza i got *into my hair*. My response? "Its just cheese" my family and I quote that to this day lmao.

💜being reverted to a toddler for a good minute (someone asked my age i said i was 3, i was not) & needing to relearn walking, talking, the little bit of reading i knew & getting into a shower w/out being scared of being pulled down the drain

❤said dude who asked my age worked at the hospital cafeteria & we visited him after most of my appointments. miss u uncle (that was what he went by), wish u well. Dont know where he since covid cause the part of the building cafeteria was in was torn down.

❤and after all that later and i got releaced on new years eve :>

results:

From there forward i had a 20-30minute nebulizer to do every 4 hours (which my parents had to wake up at like 2am for a half hour for), 2 twice daily inhailers, 2 nasil sprays, "the tire" (tastes like shit and makes me feel anxious) (that isnt even all of it my mom counted 8 meds at one point) and i slowly dropped them year by year till they had me down to just rescue inhailer as needed & if my lungs r really shit for a min i go on the tire. (Tire=prednisolone but what 6 year old is remembering that name lol)

specialist appointments every week, then 2 weeks, then every month, 3 months, 6 months, now im at checkup every year and check in as needed

"Look whos inside again" by bo burnham is my life in a nutshell

To this day the smell of a consentrated area of hand sanatizer just has me stop in my tracks lol.

seeing a picture of tiny me on my parents facebook feed yearly of me unconscious in a hospital bed w/ tubes in mah face

couple of close friend i met post hospital (keep in mind i was like 7) didn't believe me so i ran around the playground cursing them the fuck out (never did get in trouble for that 😂) ((I still talk to 1 of them shes cool))

Idk where to put this but about that kid I was talking about before, I found out last year around this time he had just died- of 💫pneumonia💫. yea that fucked me up for a good minute, he was around 6 too which didn't help, I never even met the kid and I still had a weird form of survivors guilt.

Anyway have a merry fucking christmas i really dont get this holiday lol, treat yourself kindly, feel free to be the grinch you are and explain in detail why u hate the holidays u arent alone lol

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schizopositivity · 1 year

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Hey so like

The only times I've ever really heard people talk about schizophrenia being hard is how others are affected by it, how it's "creepy/bad/evil/scary", etc

Can you talk about the stuff that's been really difficult for you in your personal experience without it just being through the lens of how it affects others?

Thank you :)

this is gonna be a long one cause schizophrenia is very complex so im gonna break it down by symptoms and how it affects me

TW: demon, self harm, suicide attempts, csa/sa mention, death mention, delusions

•hallucinations: these were at their worst when i wasnt on antipsychotics when i was a teenager, would see little monsters running around that made me really afraid and question reality. but what i most commonly saw/felt/heard wad this demon thing that was sorta representive of a grim reaper. it would tell me that self harming would help me and i listened. it made me really scared and sad all the time. this went on for about a year and i didnt tell anyone. it had a grip on my shoulders and followed me around all the time. i cant stress enough how scared it made me. sometimes it would get loud and id panic and black out, and then get "woken up" by my mom shed find me hiding and shaking under a table. it told me i had to end my own life and i attempted twice, one of the times required hospitalization and after a psych ward (which finally got me on the antipsychotics i needed). since then the hallucinations have calmed down and i dont see the demon anymore but i do hear similar things, now i just try my best to ignore it. its more annoying than scary. like feeling a poke on my shoulder at work and having to not react cause the stigma of showing symptoms. or like seeing scary faces in everyday things and just being like "huh weird" or hearing very mean or threatening things and thinking "thats obviously not actually what im thinking, id never do something like that", hallucinations still suprise me all the time especially the first few seconds of it, but now i have the experience where i can ignore it after that

•delusions: the biggest delusion i have that i still have to this day is very much influenced by my trauma of being the victim of csa and sa literally too many times to count, i truly believe that i was made to be abused and it will happen for the rest of my life, no matter what people tell me i always will not fully trust people and think they will abuse me at any moment, when people look at me i think they are planning how to abuse me, this is such a deeply held belief and it causes me anxiety and triggers my cptsd. it makes me feel very exposed and inhuman like a piece of meat it sucks. some other delusions ive had are that im the reincarnation of kurt cobain and that im gonna be rich and famous with no plans on how to make that happen. these felt good when i was in them and horrible when i snapped out of it. i kinda miss them.

•avolition: i struggle with this a lot. i have to be told to do tasks otherwise i dont do them. i never know when or how to do daily tasks. even if i can recognize that something has to be done i have no clue what steps to take to complete that task. like when i was the only one running the nursery at a spiritual center and id see kids crying id think "someone should do something about that" even though its me that has to do something. i struggle to maintain personal hygeine, do house chores or take care of my cats. if im not directly told to do it ill just let it fester. i do well at my job because im always told exactly what to do and how to do it. this symptom makes me feel lazy, childish and stupid. because of this i dont think ill ever be able to live on my own. i am dependent on other people to show or tell me what to do to take care of myself, my house and my cats.

•flat affect: this symptom makes me feel broken. like when my favorite grandpa died and i couldnt cry. it made me question my love for him. im constantly questioning my own feelings (even though im feeling them) just because my face and voice dont match what im feeling. ive fully thought that im unfeeling or unhuman because of this. i also get accused of lying a lot because of my flat affect. and i hate being accused of lying cause when i defend myself they dont believe me and there no winning.

•anhedonia: this really sucks. i used to really love doing art and playing guitar and now it feels like a chore. this is loss of pleasure in things that used to make you happy. it just makes me sad and feel like theres nothing i can do to change it. this makes me feel hopeless and useless.

•memory loss: i forgot most of what happened this year like valentines day with my partner (my first valentines day with a partner), my birthday, my partners birthday, my friends birthdays, i forgot them all and i feel like a terrible person because of it. this makes me feel dumb and careless. but i do care so much but i just cant remember so much important events. this also shows itself in smaller ways, forgetting what ive said to people, forgetting what ive bought, forgetting the last sentance ive read in a book so often that it makes reading nearly impossible.

•prosopagnosia: i cant recognize faces and mix them up often. this shows itself most with celebreties i constantly mix them up or think two different people are one person. i also dont always recognize my own face and i feel like a stranger to myself.

•consintration issues: i have a lot of trouble consintrating on things unless they are intresting to me, which because of anhedonia is not much. its hard for me to hold conversations with people and stay in focus. i feel like a terrible person when im not able to focus or remember what people have said.

•thinking issues: i have trouble thinking clearly a lot. its either i have too many thoughts at the same time, or my thoughts feel slow or empty. this makes me feel stupid.

•speach issues: i have trouble talking a lot of time. ill think im responding but im silent. it makes me feel mean and careless. when i do talk its usually short sentances. i very rarley actually talk a lot even to people im close to.

•fatigue/impaired motor function: i need so much rest in between activities just to function. i feel lazy a lot of the time. i also sometimes have trouble with normal motor function like sometimes when im walking it turns shaky and uncoordinated.

•amnesia: this showed itself most before i was on antiosychotics, when id black out often and find myself hiding under something. now it doesnt show up as much. this makes me feel confused and unaware of what i was doing or how i was acting when i was blacked out.

•isolation/social withdrawl: this showed itself more before i was on antipsychotics. i believed that everyone i knew was plotting against me and i had to be alone to stay safe. i now know thats not true but i still struggle to keep in touch with friends and family. most of the time ill see a text and completely forget to reply and people think im ignoring them. this once again makes me feel careless and mean. i really do care about the people in my life but i just have trouble staying connected.

theres probably more that i forgot but this is what comes off the top of my head. most of the struggles of schizophrenia affect me and not other people.

#answered #mental illness #nd #neurodivergent #schizophrenia #schizophrenic #psychosis #actuallyschizophrenic #mental health awareness #pseriouslypsychotic

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axolozzy · 1 month

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vent (tw for extreme ablism transphobia and overall terrible stuff idek if i should even post this im sorry i just really need to vent i will probably delete this later)

y’all i’ve finally gotten comfortable vocal stimming in front of people im comfortable with like my friends and family and now my mom all of a sudden thinks im hearing voices or that i have “multiple personalities”????????* like no i promise nothings “going on” with me and j don’t need to see a mental health professional im just stimming because im happy. what the fuck

*also i’ve literally told her for YEARS that it’s called DID and talking in different voices does not fucking mean someone has “multiple personalities” because this has come up SOO fucking much over the years and i’m getting tired of explaining it. i repeat things in funny voices because it’s fun. i’ve done it my whole fucking life it’s called echolalia it’s called STIMMING and she doesn’t listen to me whenever i explain that

so much for being comfortable being myself around people. “you never used to act like this” BECAUSE I WAS SCARED!!!!! BECAUSE I HAD TERRIBLE ANXIETY AND DIDNT WANT TO BE JUDGED FOR BEING WEIRD!!!!!! my parents genuinely think there’s something severely wrong with me now. they literally told me that. because i meow sometimes as a vocal stim. and so do LITERALLY ALL OF MY FRIENDS AND PEOPLE AT SCHOOL. PEOPLE IN CLASS TALK IN WEIRD VOICES AND MAKE ANIMAL NOISES TOO ALL THE FUCKING TIME!!!!!! ITS NOT FUCKING SERIOUS!!!!!! GOD FUCKING DAMMIT

i’m genuinely so fucking tired of this god who fucking gives a shit of im weird. i’ve been like this my whole life its not my fuckign fault that you didn’t pay attention and don’t remember. FUCK

my step dad’s a fucking dick too i genuinely hate him so fucking much i cant fucking take it anymore. NO!!!! IM NOT GOING TO FUCKING MAKE EYE CONTACT WITH YOU BECAUSE IT MAKES ME UNCOMFORTABLE AS FUCK. “why” because im autistic. “that’s not an excuse” yes it fucking is bitch its literally a symptom of fucking autism. no i AM going to keep calling myself autistic because thats what i am. no its not “putting a label on myself” because im actually fucking diagnosed autistic im not going to pretend it doesnt exist. because i fucking exist. im not going to “beat” my autism by suppressing all of my autistic traits because you want me to. “why?” DO YOU FUCKING HEAR YOURSELF???????

and this guy worked in mental health for 17 years. he worked at a psychiatric hospital for 17 years. he never went to college or learned anything about mental health at all. he thinks he knows more than me about my fucking disability when he says the most outdated offensive shit ive ever heard about autism or DID or schizophrenia. he doesnt listen to a word i say because he’s “older than me and has more life experience” and therefore he automatically “knows more than me and im wrong.” he doesnt listen to anyone actually. he literally says to people not to correct him when he’s wrong because he doesnt like being told he’s wrong to being told what to do or think. he’s “not going to change his beliefs for anyone” even if he knows his “beliefs” are literally just fucking factually wrong or actively harmful. he purposely makes people feel like shit if they stand up for themselves against him. he purposely makes me feel like shit because im the only one in this fucking houses that dares to disagree with the shit he says. he’s a republican he’s obsessed with trump and blasts conservative transphobic racist news channels on the tv right outside my room at night so it keeps me awake and doesnt turn the tv down when i ask because apparently he has hearing problems but has never once got that checked out. he deadnames me and says “because of his adhd he’s not sure he’ll ever remember to use the right name so he’s not even gonna try.” and he says he loves and supports me but is constantly saying the most ableist transphobic shit to me and says he’s just giving me a hard time because he loves me. he has said on multiple occasions with a straight face that “fat people piss him off and they’re the one type of people that he doesnt feel bad for being outwardly hateful and discriminatory towards.” he tries to make me feel guilty for not believing in god. he’s anti abortion. he doesnt want me to get gender affirming care under his roof because he thinks its weird and disgusting and doesnt want me to get a dick even though i have told him a million fucking times i never want bottom surgery and i dont know why this is any of his fucking business anyway. he constantly tells me my online friends aren’t real friends and when he knows i love talking to them he purposely turns the wifi off. he asks me why im acting so weird and i say its how ive always acted alone and with my friends and im just being myself and he says “stop acting like that.” “why. im not going to change who i am for other people.” “well i want you to around me.” KILL YOURSELF IM SO FUCKING SERIOUS. GOD FUCKING DAMMIT I HATE HIM SO FUCKING MUCH

he’s a manipulative bastard and whenever we get into arguments, SOME FUCKING HOW a few hours later were happy and forgiving eachother and im the one saying sorry. he’s an asshole to me and everyone around him, he’s an asshole to my mom. they are constantly fighting but always deny it. i cant fucking take it anymore

sorry for this vent i know people dont follow me to know about my personal life i know i shouldnt say this stuff but i dont fucking care im so sick of this. i woke up this mornign feeling more excited happy and motivated than i have felt all week and it was ruined the second my mom came in my room saying that the way i act (my literal vocal stims) make her think there’s something severely wrong with me. i love her more than anything in the world she’s the best mom ever but what the actual fuck??????? anyway i hate my stepdad and even though i dont believe in hell i hope he fucking burns

#vent

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spencecreates · 8 months

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Words: 1256

This is the same characters as my last thing but takes place well before it and is just fluff. I promise. Only warning is mentions of pregnancy

Oliver still wasn’t used to this new world. The colors were weird and the animals bit him more than he was used to. The cat they fed outside would let him pick her up though. His dad said that she’d be able to come in during bad weather, but his mom was allergic so it wasn’t good for her while she was pregnant.

Earth was safe for the baby to grow up. Oliver knew that, that was why they were here. To keep the family safe. But he felt in the pit of his stomach that it couldn’t be that easy.

He stayed at his mother’s side, each ache and sickness from her pregnancy sent a worry through his heart. And at night he’d peer from his bedroom door, looking towards the basement, the scratched paint on the door like a grin stretching across it. The scratch was from them moving in the furniture for the baby.

The room was all set up, Oliver had helped pick out paint colors. The ceiling was a soft glowing orange like the sky of their home and the walls had dinosaurs on them. Oliver had learned about them in school; he couldn’t believe they used to exist here.

At night he crept across the hall to his parent’s bedroom. The door was always unlocked, letting him in and hearing his mother’s snoring. His dreams were still plagued by them. At first he had thought that they had managed to break through into his head again but his dad explained nightmares after he told them what happened in them. It brought little comfort.

He stopped at the end of the bed, the light of the full moon falling onto him as he held tightly to a stuffed purple tiger. He watched his parents for a moment before carefully creeping around to his mother’s side. He touched her belly, feeling the movement and his hand being kicked at. It helped him to relax a little before looking at her as she hiccupped herself away from it.

She looked over. “Ollie?” She carefully started pushing herself up. “Ollie, what are you doing here?”

“I had another nightmare,” he said, squeezing the toy tight. “I just needed to see you guys.”

Her expression softened and she nodded, shifting as he tried to make room for him. Luckily the bed was big enough for the three of them.

“Alright, come here. Let’s try to get some sleep, okay?” She smiled and kissed his head, letting him nuzzle against her shoulder. They both settled back into sleep, her holding him close and him curled into her side as best he could.

Hours later however, the sky still dark and the stars still littering the wide expanse, Agate woke again. She looked at the ceiling, staring as she wondered what had woken her. Then she gasped at the sudden pain, sitting up as she put a hand to her belly.

“Oh shit…” She moved, reaching over Oliver as he started to stir. She shook her husband’s shoulder. “Oleander. Lee, it’s…it’s time.”

Oleander sat up all at once, hair sticking in every which way and eyes wide. “Now?”

“Dear--”

“Right, right, I-I’m ready, I got it.”

Agate watched him hustle off, grabbing the things they had packed to be at the hospital. She looked down at Oliver, who was rubbing his eyes as he looked up at her.

“We’re going to be heading to the hospital soon, love, you’re going to need to change,” she said gently. They’d talked extensively about where they’d be having the baby, considering they weren’t even of this world. But the fear of something going wrong, they’d had trouble conceiving before with Oliver and this pregnancy hadn’t been without its challenges. Oleander, as skilled as he was in many things from medical to magical, he wanted the assurance of someone trained.

He’d already talked to them, found one they could trust. But he still felt uneasy about this all. This child was surprising, conceived here in the new world. Perhaps something new had given them this gift. That’s what Oliver had been, a gift of the gods before they were gone.

At least they could be calmer about a second child, the first had been genuinely terrifying when he wasn’t sure if she’d make it. If either of them would.

The family met at the living room, Oliver helping his mom as Oleander had everything gathered. The hospital felt a long way off as they got Agate into the car and Oleander stopped, pressing a kiss to his head.

“You’re going to be such a wonderful older brother.” They smiled before finally he hoisted Oliver inside, watching him squeeze his toy for comfort again and then started the drive to the hospital. He held Agate’s hand, letting her squeeze with each contraction. He’d be fine. More than fine.

They checked in, Oliver able to stay with them until it was time and Oleander letting him help comfort her. He again told him the story of how he came to be, how the god Oliva came to them and promised him to them after they’d tried for so long. How their faithful service to their home had been repaid with the most beautiful gift.

This child would be a new gift, for a new world to serve.

Oliver eventually found himself sitting in a waiting room. He had a book and his stuffed tiger, but neither comforted him as he waited. A nurse kept an eye on him, and as time dragged longer, Oleander came and checked on him a few times, to sooth his own and Agate’s worry, so she didn’t have to worry during this time. She always worried for him after they came here.

Finally, Oleander came out with a smile on his face, the sun peeking his rays over the mountains but not yet showing its face.

“You have a brother, Ollie,” he said, watching his face light up and hugging him so tightly. “Yarrow.”

“Yarrow… Can I see him and mom?” he asked quickly, tugging his father’s sleeve.

“Of course, of course.” He kissed Oliver’s head, leading him towards the room.

It was still quiet as a nurse let them in. Agate was sitting up, looking exhausted but radiant. In her arms was a small bundle. She shifted, Oliver slowly moving to get on the bed to sit with her, looking down at the face of Yarrow.

He was tinier than Oliver thought he’d be. And had more hair, blonde fuzz on his head. He fussed for a moment, eyes opening to look up at him.

“H-hi…” he said gently.

“Do you want to hold him?” Oliver nodded, never having wanted anything more in his life.

She gently transferred Yarrow into his arms, smiling at the wide eyed expression. Yarrow squinted at him, eyes the same beautiful brown as Oliver’s own. He grabbed Oliver’s shirt, arms moving uselessly as he yawned.

For a moment, nothing else seemed to matter. And for the first time since they moved there, Oliver felt safe and peaceful. He knew that nothing would happen while he had Yarrow. And Yarrow would have him, always. It didn’t matter, he’d give up life itself for this tiny baby in his arms.

This was, of course, a lot for an eleven year old to understand. The deep vast feeling in his chest stayed open but the words that finally came from his lips were much simpler.

“I love you, I’m always gonna be here. I promise.”

#my writing #oc: yarrow #oc: roan #the garden of edos

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aseriesofthrills · 1 year

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My heart won’t stop beating. It’s good that it’s beating, preferable actually, but not this fast, and not this loud. I’m at my parents’ apartment sleeping on a thin pull out couch in their guest room. They just retired from Florida to North Carolina, breaking the mold of retirees flocking further south. They haven’t found a house yet in Asheville so we’re in cramped quarters, an apartment far more elegant yet much smaller than my shitty but spacious house in Los Angeles. Less than 24 hours since my feet touched east coast soil, I’m already feeling a little claustrophobic in the space. And it is just that - a space, a place, not a home. It’s not where we brought my younger brother home to from the hospital, the host of my first sleepover, the bathroom where I got my first period, the home held together by the walls I stared at wondering if everyone would immediately sense a difference in me after the first time I had sex, the bedroom where I came out to my parents. When my plane landed in North Carolina, my mom desperately wanted to “get the first hug” - a game our family plays - and left my dad stranded in the car in order to track me down near baggage claim, simply unable to wait the extra 30 seconds for me to make it outside. I used their guest bathroom only to find the toilet paper folded over, like I was at the Waldorf Astoria. Sometimes my mom even puts chocolates on my pillow when I visit. My dad texted me the day before my flight to ask for grocery store requests, as if the right brand of cold brew is the key to my happiness and they’d do anything in their power to unlock it. So, maybe, who needs a home when you have a lot of love? And anyway, this all has nothing to do with why my heart’s beating like a drum. It would be in any space or place.

My heart won’t stop beating fast and loud. I’m lying on my stomach, and I can hear the beats reverberating throughout the metal springs, the frail skeletal system holding this flimsy pull out couch together. The beats feel shockingly loud, as if I’m stranded at some heavy rock concert that I didn’t buy tickets to. I never understood why some people willingly go to concerts but bring earplugs, the weird fibrous orange material poking out of their ear canals. Supposedly their “pliable design slowly expands, conforming to your ear canal to help block out hazardous noise.” I would consider this noise Hazardous, but it isn’t just an aural problem. The bed is vibrating with my aliveness, abuzz with my analyzing. Could my heartbeats be shaking the whole apartment complex? The beating and throbbing makes it feel like I’m sleeping inside of my own giant ribcage, taunting me from the inside out. I should try turning over onto my back, but somehow that feels worse in other ways. Like I’m opening myself up to the world, vulnerable, singing, “Sure! Come and devour me!” Even if it meant the end of the incessant sounds of my blood pumping, I don’t think I could sleep like that. I want to feel cocooned and enveloped, folded into myself, a child and its mom all at once, someone capable of self-soothing. A feeling only possible by being on my stomach, relentless beating be damned.

I have a crush. Aside from being alive, it’s undoubtedly the source of the fervent beating that now must be registering as at least a 4 on the Richter scale. Noticeable Shaking of Objects and Rattling Noises. Felt by Most People in the Affected Area. I take solace in the fact that Moderate to Significant Damage is Very Unlikely. The crush is complicated. She told me she likes me, but we have to wait. I’m not good at waiting. Terrible, actually. Two or three weeks feel like months. I truthfully have no concept of how far off it feels to my warped brain, and the nebulousness of that might be even worse than being able to ascribe a timeline to it. It’s like I’m stranded in a foreign country where I’ve lost my passport, and I’m trying trying trying to get home but there’s no guarantee when I will. Someday, yes, it will be worked out. Things will fall into or out of place. But when? When when when? I wonder if she’s as preoccupied with me as I am with her. For my sake, I hope yes. For her sake, I hope no.

At a certain point the beat beat beating seems to let up, or maybe it’s just turned into a frequency I can thankfully no longer hear. But in some diabolical plot by the world to hold me hostage in an awake state, I’m now hyper aware of a clock ticking. Not metaphorically, though that would be apt, but the literal ticking of a time-keeping device in my vicinity. Tick. Tick. Tick. I hate to be this dramatic about something that was likely placed in the room by my mom in a casual attempt to decorate, but frankly, it’s ruining my life. And why would she pay such careful attention to decorating anyway? This is a temporary apartment, a space, a place, not a home, and it doesn’t need little clocks. It needs my newborn brother and my first period bathroom and my sleepover room and the walls that watched me grow.

Thoughts about my crush keep flashing through my brain, almost like jump scares. You expect it but it startles you all the same, grossly over-buttered popcorn flying everywhere. Like Fleabag suddenly remembering things at inconvenient times about her best friend, Fleabag plagued by guilt over her death. Except I didn’t kill anyone. I just like someone. I think back to the way she touched my hands at the bar, surprised by how cold they were, warming them up. How she put her hand on the small of my back when I was walking in front of her. How she asked, “Can I kiss you?” in my passenger seat outside of her apartment at 1am. How she tasted sweet, like candy. How I didn’t want her to leave my car, how I wanted to go inside with her. How she texted me after that she’s glad she ran into me. How she said she has a crush on me and wants to take me on a date, but after Thanksgiving, because it’s complicated. I need to be patient, because it’s tricky with work. We might be working together. And a big holiday is right around the corner. So we have to wait. But the pit in my stomach is ignoring all of the nice things she said. The playful, flirty things she did. I can’t stop wondering: what if she changes her mind about me?

My heart won’t stop beating fast and loud. I think about the counting sheep trick, and my depleted little pea brain can’t remember if it’s a wives tale or if it’s actually supposed to help lull you to sleep. I figure it can’t hurt. I start counting, but instead of sheep, I count every time the clock ticks. One. Two. Three. The clock has still been loyally ticking this whole time that my head’s been off doing its Olympic Mental Gymnastics, going for gold, burning so many calories that my brain might get so lean that I’ll only ever be able to think about this crush. A broken record player scratching the same spot forever. Four. Five. Six. After Hurricane Katrina, I went to New Orleans with a group to help clean and rebuild, and one business that I helped repair had a big analog clock hanging on one of its walls. The classic black and white one. Like everything else in what was left of the building, it was broken. Whatever time was displayed on the clock must have been the moment Katrina’s flood waters got so high that it short circuited and stopped. I am certainly not likening my personal anxieties to a massive natural disaster, but I am saying I think my brain has hit its maximum flood level of thoughts, and if it turned off soon I would not be the least bit surprised. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. It’s actually working a little bit. I can only focus on counting, not on crushing, and I feel myself seeping deeper into the bed, begging it to engulf me and kill my brain. At this point, that is a thing I want.

For better or worse, I still have enough gray matter in my broken brain to think of all the permutations of how our date could go. The date that still feels like it’s in an entirely different calendar year from now. Where we might eat. Our feet touching under the table. Wondering if she’ll gently touch my hands again. What we’ll talk about. What’ll happen after dinner. Will one of us suggest going to a nearby bar to talk more? Will we go back to her place? That’s where most of my daydreams lead. Her place. I haven’t been inside her apartment, but she showed me around a bit when we met virtually for work a few months ago - when I wish I’d more overtly tried to forge a connection so things might be further along by now, but how was I to know I’d feel this way? - and I’ve seen other bits and pieces on Instagram. Still, I have no real concept of the layout, but my brain has created its own blueprint. We walk inside and she offers to get me a drink, and I don’t really want another one because I’ve had one at dinner, but I say yes and hoist myself up onto the kitchen counter while she makes it (a cocktail) or pours it (wine). She brings it over and I barely wait for her to hand it to me before I put it down and we start kissing. In another version, I ask to use the bathroom once we get inside and then, when I’m done, I open the door and she’s just waiting outside for me. We start kissing. That one’s a little weird, I guess. In a different permutation, we sit down on the couch to watch a movie. She asks what movie I want to watch, and I say some version of, “It doesn’t matter… I don’t plan on watching for long.” We start kissing. The last one’s sort of a bold one. I’m not always bold in these situations. Sometimes I am, but only if I feel almost certain that the other person feels the same way I do. When we ran into each other at the bar, she made a comment about wanting to kiss 28 people at her 28th birthday party. A friend who saw us interact reminded me that I apparently responded with, “I hope I’m one of them.” At any rate, impatience is clearly a common thread in all three of these scenarios. No matter the route, all the daydreams lead to the same place.

If my parents’ behavior - the hugging and the toilet paper folding and the grocery shopping and the loving - is any indicator, you would think my attachment style is so firmly, unquestionably secure that I should be memorialized in the Museum of Good Mental Health. Give me a ribbon cutting ceremony, give me pomp, give me circumstance. As it turns out, I might just have an anxious attachment style, which is a realization that only occurred to me relatively recently but I’m sure occurred to my friends 6 crushes ago. It hit me out of the blue one morning when I was brushing my teeth, my intrusive thoughts picking a moment to strike when my defenses were down and I was unable to distract myself. And it makes perfect, crystal clear sense. Being closeted for so long, you get accustomed to feeling wrong. Feeling bad. Feeling like your thoughts aren’t right, you’re different, you don’t belong. You’re so wrong so bad so wrong and so bad. For the longest time I didn’t have many people around me who I knew were queer, so my crushes were either on fictional characters or straight girls. And do you know what fictional characters and straight girls don’t have the capacity to do? Like you back. Return your feelings. Living in a cycle of desperately wanting someone who doesn’t have the ability or desire to want you back does something to a person: after a while, it makes you feel unlovable. You internalize it and conclude you’re not worthy of love. There is a problem, and the problem is you. Reciprocity starts to feel like a never-going-to-happen-thing - it’s not situational, it’s global. And it gets reiterated over and over because you get caught in that dynamic, addicted to the pattern. Even though it’s miserable, it’s familiar. With all that said, I also do want to acknowledge that being a human is hard. I would submit that we all feel insecure and, at times, unworthy of love or even being liked. It doesn’t require trauma or any particular type of hardship to have an obsessive crush, a lack of self-confidence, a difficult time navigating feelings. But I do think my early relationship with my queerness is inherently part of the mix for me, personally.

It feels as if my crush is camping out in my brain. This crush, and all of my baggage surrounding this crush, is making my heart beat really fast and really loud. Have I allowed this to go too far? Undoubtedly yes. Should there also be room for some self-empathy? I think also probably yes. Definitely yes. Someone told me that they like me, and it has sent alarm bells throughout my system. Someone has both the capacity to like me and does like me. And because I have a scarcity mindset when it comes to romantic love, my body is trying to hold on so tightly and doesn’t want to let it go. I keep replaying those moments of compliments and touch and feeling good on a dizzying loop because my brain thinks that might be the last time it will happen. A sign of a crush pulling back - a non-response for a few hours, a different tone, a shortness - it all feels like a total dismissal, my worst fears confirmed. It sends me right past Go, Do Not Collect $200, in fact Why Don’t You Go Right To Loveless Jail! My neural pathways have been carved throughout time to expect rejection and disappointment, but I’m trying to free myself from the tired maze of my own myopic thinking. Ultimately I have no idea how this will turn out, and that’s incredibly anxiety inducing. Gaming out all of the things I’m going to say to her, or where we’ll go on our date, or who will make the first move and what that move will be - it all creates an illusion of control. But this isn’t something I can control. It’s a thing to recognize, look in the face, and surrender to. Another person is a thing I really can not control. Uncertainty is an aspect of reality that no one, including me, is ever free from. I can, however, remind myself that this is not the only good thing I will ever experience. There will be more crushes, more reciprocated feelings, more Can I Kiss Yous?, more grazing hands at a bar. If we’re lucky, we’ll all have many spaces, many places, many people to call home.

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ahiddenpath · 2 years

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Life Update

Rambling about my life beneath the cut.

CW: Mentions of Alzheimer’s and care facilities.

So, my company let go of a good chunk of people. I still have my job, which, honestly... I would have preferred being laid off, lol! They decided to get rid of some satellite locations to save on the rent (the company is very low on cash), and the people who worked there were laid off. This move secured about another 5 months of cash flow for the company, at the average rate we have been spending.

In the meantime, they have started reorganizing the people who remain- and they seem to have no clue what they actually... Want... from that. It’s also been an absolute mess with them trying to move lab equipment from the other sites to our remaining site. I’ve basically been treated as a lab planner and mover for a few weeks- not just me, basically anyone the facilities manager walks past at the wrong moment- and it’s terrible, lol? That’s always been a huge problem with my company- “our lack of planning is now your emergency.” I told my boss I can’t conduct experiments and stop what I’m doing to be a mover or planner at the drop of a dime. It seemed to help- I suspect the facilities manager didn’t tell the managers that they were ordering scientists around without warning.

Meanwhile, more coworkers are leaving, because... Like, of course they are? My immediate coworker is on paternity leave for 2-3 weeks, or I guess... The length depends on how his wife does and how much time off he has, I don’t know. It’s been a really rough month or two for me.

I am cognizant that I can quit, but... Hm. I feel like quitting is off the table, but being laid off... Hey, that wasn’t my fault, it happens all the time in biotech. My ideal solution here is that someone buys the company for its intellectual properties and lets go of most of the employees with a big company severance package. This would also increase the value of our stock, which has been underwater for a long time. Then, I could have some time off and search for a new position at my leisure, rather than simultaneously dealing with all of this while job hunting, which is one of the worst experiences out there that isn’t, like, an emergency. But I can’t bring myself to actively hope for this- people need their jobs. But those jobs won’t be there if the company really does go under, which is a real possibility- at least this would give us better severance, in theory?

I need to figure something out. To be honest, I’m in a weird place where I’m finally making good money in my career, but I’m unhappy with it and so burnt out and stressed all the time. At the same time, after 10 years of writing daily, I finally feel like... Maybe I could become a novelist? Maybe? But that’s such an enormous gamble...

Meanwhile, my mom’s situation with her husband is not great (I got into this situation in an earlier life post, but I don’t want to rehash it here, apologies). Basically, the hospital lied to her. They claimed that they agreed to send her husband to long term care for people with medical needs that their families can’t meet. She signed him out of the hospital. They actually sent him to a short term physical therapy care facility- and they removed his heart conditions and his Alzheimer’s from his chart, meaning that he has no reason to be there on paper. He’s likely to be released soon, and back with her. Not ideal, considering what happened during his last Alzheimer’s episode.

Meanwhile, the work on our house is finally complete. It went over by about a week and a half- long enough for my cats to learn that they would be confined to my husband’s office while the contractor’s work, and get rebellious about it. It was stressful, but the improvements are lovely. And my husband painted the downstairs office as a surprise for me while I was at work! He took a day off and did it! So I was able to order the big bookshelf for in there today! He’s the sweetest in the world.

I’m trying to stay... You know... I don’t know, calm, functioning. I’ve been leaning on creating and exercising, hard. I’m a bit of a personal crossroads with the job and future career thing. I imagine it happens to most people at some point in their lives- is this what I want? Am I just doing this to get the money I need to live? If yes, is there anything I can do about that? If no, how do I come to terms with that? Etc, etc.

Wherever you are in life right now, I’m always hoping for the best for you, my dear.

#hidden's life

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millimononym · 2 years

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The Attackers

here are Venus and Brambles, the attackers of my OC team! (i don’t have a name for the team yet. names are hard). Also if you remember the first oc post and remember the guys name and are wondering, yes, everyone in the team is named and has their looks based off plants. this drawing kinda looks weird cuz i drew the heads first like a dumbass

ANYWAY OC BACKSTORY/PERSONALITY TIME

so Venus is like...one of the only decent people in the entire team(don’t get used to it). She’s very energetic,bubbly and sweet. She also eats a lot. She grew up as the oldest sister in a poor household with a single mom and multiple siblings. As she’s an adult now(early 20′s) the responsibility of caring for her siblings falls on her as her mom is in the hospital. She uses the money she earns as a footballer to pay for her mom’s hospital bills and care for her siblings. She’s incredibly stressed (as you can see from her antennae,they droop when someone is feeling negative emotions) but tries to seem happy in front of everyone because she believes showing negative emotions will rub off on people and she doesn’t want that. She puts other people’s needs before her own because she likes seeing people happy. She doesn’t like conflict but CAN and WILL beat someone (cough cough BRAMBLES cough) up if they’re hurting kids. Dated Brambles at one point...i don’t know how that happened but i’m glad that’s over with

Brambles. This motherfucker. Actual alien equivalent of Ricegum. Going from talking about Venus to talking abt him is giving me whiplash. Absolute ASSHOLE. 0 redeeming qualities. anyway i should probably talk abt him now. He’s the brother of the teams’ backup player and Sugarcane’s cousin. He’s the oldest out of 4 siblings and is an absolutely horrible brother if you were wondering. Grew up in a rich household and is a spoiled brat. No wonder his father left (oh yeah btw his dad left lol). Regularly makes fun of the backup player(his youngest brother, who is SIXTEEN BY THE WAY) for having mental problems and attachment issues (HMMM I WONDER WHAT COULD’VE CAUSED THOSE. probably not LIVING IN A LOVELESS HOUSEHOLD WITH AN ASSWIPE OF A BROTHER). He’s even worse later but i’m not gonna spoil it. How did he manage to date someone as sweet as Venus. I have no clue. I don’t wanna talk about him anymore, his personality is draining to the brain. If he was a real person i’d spit on him

[[EDIT/UPDATE 19.8.2022: ok so i’m not really good at making my stories(i mostly make characters and specific scenes) but Brambles was a pretty barebones guy, even for me. Wasn’t much to him besides being his brothers abuser and being a disappointment to his family. So i wanted to flesh out his character a little more i guess (that’s a lie it came to me completely randomly while listening to music lol.(the music was Splitter Girl by weevildoing and Kareshi No Jude by syudou if u were wondering)).

This might change but as of now some things are added: Brambles was a child who took his familys’ neglect as any rational child would: By developing extremely violent tendencies to harm himself, and every other creature unlucky enough to be near him! ...yay. Frequent victims include animals(who he definitely murdered, by the way) and his youngest brother(hope i introduce him soon so i can stop calling him just that cuz its weird). His other 2 siblings were too slippery for it i guess. Plus theres 2 of them so thats twice as many hands to throw at his face, which they did. TIMEJUMP TO THE PRESENT, i actually have a reason for Brambles and Venus breaking up besides him being an asshole: Cheating. Motherfucker cheated on her with a defender in the team(who i ALSO havent introduced HNNNGHHH) and also cheated on him with Venus because NEITHER OF THEM actually KNEW about the other dating their boyfriend, so technically they were both cheated on. It didnt go to well for our boy here,as you can imagine. Probably gonna need to add some scars to his design now lol(maybe the back? cuz im lazy and dont wanna change anything). So yea those are the changes for now byee]]

WELL OKAY that’s them alright. As one last thing u may have noticed: you can see in the picture that they’re wearing matching collars. That’s actually part of the teams uniform (which i forgot to include in Sugarcane’s reference pic like a dumbass). Each position has a different color and the attackers one is red! A shame Venus has to share the position with Brambles but what can you do.

#galactik football #GF OCs #original character #my art stuff

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pastriibunz · 4 months

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I get a little silly and explain the lore for

THE HATCHETFIELD KAIS!

TKWDLM Kai: You know her, you love her, she’s The Kai Who Didn’t Like Musicals! Well, kind of a lie. Girl really likes musicals. She just doesn’t like this one. Her script/fanfic is finished and can be read here, and she’s the only Hatchetfield Kai whose I story plan on writing out, but who knows! If you folks liked TKWDLM enough, maybe I’ll write the other ones out! Also, a thing to note: Every Hatchetfield (minus the Kais in the Trip series, they got their own thing going on) Kai is a variant of TKWDLM Kai. She’s escaped the infection somehow, and she’s been searching the timelines, trying to find one where the world is okay and she’s safe with Paul and Emma. The search has taken at least 2 years and she hasn’t found one yet, but she’ll search for as long as she has to. They’re worth it.

Forever And Always Kai: Someone get a bell cart, because this girl’s got some major baggage! Inserted into the plot line of Forever And Always, Kai watches her mom and dad (Emma and Paul, obv) get married, which sucks for her because of some past trauma involving marriage- *cough* Hiro Mira *cough* -but then her entire world flips upside down when she learns the Emma she’s learned to love like her own mother isn’t the real Emma. Kai, filled with heartbreak from being lied to, and the disgust of the idea of stealing someones life for themselves (she’s got some issues surrounding her own identity) tries to help the real Emma in whatever way she can. When that inevitably doesn’t work out, and after learning that Paul lied about his identity too, Kai tries to make a break (pun intended, you’ll see why in a minute) for Unington. While trying to escape the apartment she breaks either her entire lower leg or her ankle (depending on the ending), slowing her down. No matter what ending, Kai doesn’t make it to Unington, with Paul and Emma finding her. They take her to the hospital and then back home, where Kai begs for them to kill her too. They, much to Kai’s dismay, assure her they won’t and that they’ll love her like their own, Forever And Always.

Hey, Melissa! Kai: Oh, boy. This one’s a doozy. And it’s pretty silly. Me and my friend (@local-soda-can) turned the weird, kinky and fetishy story of Hey, Melissa! from flat out gross/weird to kinda sweet in a really messed up sort of way? I feel like I should say this now: ‼️IT'S NOT SEXUAL ANYMORE BECAUSE KAIS A MINOR (17) AT THE TIME OF THE STORY‼️ so, now that that’s out of the way, let’s get on with the show!! The entire thing is so long and goofy, that I’m making it its own little summary on @beaniibunzz, where I’ll link here when it’s up! But, essentially, Melissa catgirls Kai and Kai just accepts it because she craves praise, validation, and affection that Melissa provides and Kai’s like “oh shit sure I’ll be a cat yeah why not!!” It was really funny to write. Very silly 5/5 stars!!!

ATDTU Kai: Ah, A Trip Down To Unington! Again, my friend local-soda-can made an 8 part live reaction to this, linked here! To summarize, Set 3 years after TKWDLM (where somehow everyone is uninfected), The Hatchetfield Gang™️ (Consisting of Paul, Emma, Ted, Bill, and Charlotte, with guest appearances from Mr. Davidson, Sam, and Melissa) take, as the title states, a trip down to Kai’s hometown of Unington! During their stay, they learn about Kai and her past, as well as how the town isn’t exactly the nicest people towards her. It’s very silly and it makes me giggle. Go read my friends live reaction for more info!!!

Hallow’s Eve Kai: This one I’ve actually never posted about, nor does it have any actual writing behind it. But, it’s still silly! Essentially, During a Halloween party at CCRP, someone *cough* Ted- *cough* has the bright idea to summon a demon!!!! Yay!!! Emma (who has most definitely tried to summon a demon, you cannot convince me otherwise) walks the gang through the process, and at first nothing happens. Then, Kai (dressed as her dad, Bendy!!!! :D) appears. Now, they’ve gotta give her a deal/task she can fulfill or else she’ll be stuck bonded to the gang for the rest of eternity. Maybe one day I’ll probably post something revolving around this thing.

ATUTH Kai: The newest Kai of the bunch! A Trip Up To Hatchetfield is essentially the reverse of A Trip Down To Unington. It, like ATDTU, is set 3 years after the events of TKWDLM. Instead of the gang going down to Unington, however, it revolves around Kai going up to visit Hatchetfield. Kai was supposed to go on tour around the US in TKWDLM, with her starting city being Hatchetfield. There were some complications with that *cough* apocalypse- *cough*, but that’s water under the bridge now. She heads down to Hatchetfield for what was supposed to be a week, and does the show she was supposed to do! But, when she tries to leave??? THE ENTIRETY OF HATCHETFIELD (minus the gang™️ the gang™️ is cool) SCOOPS HER ASS UP AND IS LIKE “nah ah ahhhh no leaving for you ☝️☝️☝️” and now she’s like everyone’s collective child and she just wants to leave- it’s silly :]

and that’s that! if your wondering about Black Friday Kai or Nerdy Prudes Must Die Kai, they’re not on here bc I haven’t started outlining Black Kai-day and Nerdy Prudes Must Kai is still at the beginning and I wanna give it some room to grow before I summarize it

okai byeee :D

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kandadiff · 1 year

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Van Der Wulff : Christmas Gifts

~~~~~

~ Christmas was supposed to be the most wonderful time of the year. You guessed maybe you didn't get the memo this year or everyone around you didn't. You spent all last night arguing with Xavier who was being more unbearable than usual. How exactly was it your fault Shawn was obsessed with you? Or that Edward mother invited you to dinner with the family? She invited kitty too and she hadn't been with Harry for years!

Not to mention your parents. They had only been here for a few days but you had enough to fill your quota for the year. Who the hell did you new stepfather think he was? His words echoing in your head. 'Its about time you come back to France, obviously the time away from home has been a disaster.' and your mom fucking voice agreeing with him.

Your father was no better. "If she's going anywhere it's back with her true family. The ones that cares about her." You rolled your eyes at that. Where the fuck had he been? It had been Your stepmother who made sure you were okay and still alive during the school year. He was too busy with his do-over children to pay much attention to you or even broster.

So to say the least, your Christmas Eve morning has been rough. Maybe you could just lay in bed all day? No, Stefani was looking forward to having you at the Christmas party she was hosting and you knew she would look for you if you didn't show. You sighed and turned over your eyes instantly drawn to the bouquet of hibiscus flowers plopped on your night table. Weird. That wasn't there last night. You sat up and grabbed at the pink card that lay in the middle of the blossomed flowers.

'Thanks for being there for me. I heard these were your favorite. Merry Christmas. - Robin'

You couldn't help the smile that plastered itself on your face. You knew you would have to get rid of the letter before Xavier were to see it but it was moments like this that made you wonder if you were better with Robin. You held the letter for a few more moments before tearing it up sadly. You were about to tear up the envelope as well thinking of telling Xavier the flowers were delivered by your grandparents when you realized there were other things hidden in there. Curiously, you pulled out four tickets to Noctournal Wonderland! A rave that was supposed to be the biggest and best (and hardest to get just one ticket - nevermind four). "Oh my god!" you squealed excitedly clutching the tickets and quickly hiding them in your drawer. You pulled out your phone about to call him when you stopped yourself hearing a plethora of noise downstairs. You had to go down there sooner or later. ugh. Maybe you could make that call.

~ ~

The house was in a whirlwind. Presents constantly being delivered made it so the doorbell wouldn't stop ringing, calls from family members made it so the phone wouldn't stop ringing and Makayla was insistant on making a Christmas Eve lunch for the families, but she was so stressed out she burned every plate she made so far. "I'm going to order it and pick it up!" She finally said throwing the glop covered spatula into the sink.

"Want me to take you?" Katya asked and Makayla sighed. It was like she could feel her parents breathing down her neck. Their dinner with Rio last night went as well as a house fire. Her father caught one glance of the eagle tattoo on Rio's neck and decided that he was not good enough for his youngest daughter. To her parents the age difference didn't matter or the fact Rio was polite and even brought gifts for his parents and siblings. Her father said that tattoos screamed drug user and he then made them leave. Yanking Makayla up so suddenly by her arm Rio almost pulled out his gun on him before he remembered who the man was. All the way home they scolded her 'You need to be focused on your recovery, Makayla! Hanging out with someone like him - never mind dating him! It is foolish! Do you want to end up back at the hospital! Huh? Think before you act!'

"Mick?" Katya's voice pulled her out of her thoughts and she looked at the blonde before shaking her head.

"No it's okay. I'll just go." She moved to the door opening it just as your mother was about to knock.

"I'm here to see my daughter." She said her hands full of shopping bags with clothes that were not at all your style. "I have to find teh perfect going home outfit! She will continue to model with Maddy in France." Makayla looked at her puzzled but your mother just pushed past her and up to your room, Maddy following her.

~ ~ ~ ~

I held the manila folder in my shaking hands. My eyes scanning over the words, my heart sinking as they words registered in my head. Negan's large hands rubbing my shoulders, trying to offer me some comfort while Simon stood by looking down at me. He looked angry on my behalf, the look he had told me both Negan and him had read the private file that detailed everything that happened that caused my siblings and I to be separated.

It was Stefani and Daniel. They worked with the police to orchestrate the fight between Harley and J. They knew it would end in an arrest and separation of the kids. She fought so Robin would be placed with Harley's unstable brother because he, in her words, was a problem child. The other children under J's care were returned to an orphanage or thrown onto the street. She only chose me because I was the only one she wanted. She went against her half sister and broke up my family because she wanted me. She described me in the file as 'too good for Harley or that demented man. She would flourish like a flower in my care. The others are doomed from the start but she will be mine - ours.' I closed the file unable to read anymore, pushing it away from me on the coffee table.

"We can handle them." Simon blurted out. "We can even do it painlessly if you need." He made a gun with his fingers and moved it twice. "One, two - painless."

"What?" I looked up at him not willing to follow his train of thought. "What are you talking about?"

"I get it, kid. My parents were pieces of shit too. Someone ended them for me and it was the right choice."

"What the fuck, Simon!" I shouted standing up and moved to him "What the fuck is wrong with you? Don't ever fucking say that again! and don't fucking touch my parents! I'll deal with it!" I shoved past him grabbing the folder.

"Where are you going?" Negan asked after me but I didn't answer. Just taking the keys of the car he had gifted me and moved out of the house. Negan looked at Simon and shook his head. "A lot of people would think what you said is some psychotic shit." They looked at each other for a moment. Simon was the first to look away. "Let her handle it for now and keep it between the three of us."

"Yes, sir."

~~~~

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james-fun-in-the-sunderland · 1 year

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pt 2 . still vicky. 31, 35, 40, 51, 67, 69. 🙄

NO need for all of these rolling eyes SMH... u didnt evven have to send these sirrrr

ANYWAY link back to the 69 ttrpg asks i GUESS

31. do they respond well to praise? how about criticism?

as said in the last ask he does respond well to praise however it all depends on WHO is praising and how OVERT and how OFTEN... praise him too much and he'll get MAD but praise him too little and he will also get mad, he doesnt respond well to criticism. if you criticise him too much he may actually completely hate ur ass, but thats if he thinks it isnt deserved and EVEN THEN he will still get annoyed like whatever man >:/

35. when did they feel loneliest?

i feel like this ones a LITTLE obvious but while his mom was in the hospital probably! his childhood home would be all empty he'd have no one to come home to and he would only come home after doing jobs and visiting her so he had no time for literally anyone or anything else, not that he really had the energy for anything else anyway, at least after she died he would go out and just talk to anyone off the street but while she was still alive it was just him and a dying woman while he pushed away anyone else bc he felt extremely vulnerable during this time too (he was also like. 25 so he was also just dealing w being a young adult and all the angst there so . he was NOT doing well)

40. if you had to remake this character right now, how would you change them?

GOOD QUESTION id probably make his hair different, change his backstory a lil and quite a few scars ! alot of stuff w him is either in active development or straightened out so id probably change more of the actually established stuff ... maybe give him a different clothing style, make him more outward with some traits like his musical ability... hmmm this is such an interesting q

51. what element of their backstory are you proudest of?

ALOT OF IT im always very proud of my lil characters backstories hehe... i try to make them all make sense for the person a character has developed into and i feel like vickys especially really reflects that, if i really had to choose one aspect it would be how death just follows him all throughout his backstory, people dying annd leaving him left and right making him really feel surrounded by it ya kno... not even just with the obvious stuff like ALOT of his childhood friends end up dying lmao its just fun themes ...

67. do they consider themselves to be special?

NO absolutely not, hes literally described himself as just another average joe DESPITE COMPLETELY NOT BEING ONE . this man cannot die and works for like 5 different mobs and yet hes like nah im just a normal single father man, idk why ur saying im so weird. he also just gets weirded out by the idea of someone finding him so special... ofc he really would love to be special in a way he can control, i suppose thats really it huh, he really loves control and if people find him special for his deathlessness or anything its like... ok but he doesnt CONTROL that... he can control his talents though so if someone found him special for that hed be like YEAH literally im so cool

69. what’s one secret they don’t want getting out?

the classic. lets go through the obvious ones, his deathlessness, even though its an open secret he really doesnt like people talking about it, his crime too of course but he doesnt even care that much about that either, like even less, his daughter even knows and has talked abt how he kills people for money so... his whole past is a secret even to his daughter bc hes just a private person... i suppose also the main one would be his real name (for people who dont know his real legal name isnt actully vicky love, its louis cox! ( louis pronounced louey bc hes french lol)) he started fully going by vicky when his mom died so he just doesnt like to be called louis bc it reminds him of his 'past life' ... hes got alot of secrets huh... these are really the only things he DOESNT want to get out tho, most other things hes private about he doesnt really care if people learn it

#rev lore #the secret uestion was hard and i feel like not interesting at allllll augh but he doesnt HAVE any secrets hes just a private guyyy #OC: Vicky Love

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bakuvantea · 3 years

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HEY BESTIE I HOPE YOUR HAVING AN AMAZING DAY

CAN I GET SOME GENERAL HEADCANONS WITH SUNG JIN-WOO WITH A FEMALE S/O

FEEL FREE TO IGNORE BUT REMEMBER TO TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF

>:)

general relationship headcanons of sung jin-woo with his beloved s/o

- warnings: none! just a tad bit of nsfw implications

- audience: I made this gender neutral, i do hope that’s okay!!

- a/n: hello >:) anonnn (may i call u that? lmao-) here’s your request love!! thank you for your kind words <33 stay heathy, stay hydrated, and always rest up okay? hope you have an amazing day ahead too!!

also idk who jacob is-

-•-

: pre-awakened jin-woo (before entering the carthenon temple)

> he was always cautious, he didn't want [you] to hear the whispers going around about how you could've chosen someone better, about how you could've loved someone that was not him. thus, he was very shy and timid, always on edge when he feels the piercing stares from his batchmates -most especially when you try to initiate physical contact with him in your school or in public, you'd see him uncomfortable and so you'd immediately stop (because you respect him, ily). behind closed doors though he would always go above and beyond in pleasing you and making you feel loved, although he always doubts himself so you always make sure to give him praises and assure him that he is the one you love (not that jerk jacob from the class next door).

> he always wears spare hair ties or hair pins around his wrists in case you forget or lose yours. in fact when its weekends -and when he's not out infiltrating dungeons and positively offering his life on a silver platter- he always tries to study new hairdos and hairstyles so he can have more variations and choices when he ties or pins your hair for you. he'd always kiss the top of your head after and you'd feel his smile as he nuzzles your hair, smelling your shampoo. since his hair is also long, you'd also return the favor and tie his hair for him. his favorite would have to be the classic apple look with a pointy lock of hair erect in the middle -he really looks like a shih tzu, adorable-

> he.blushes.so.easily !!! he is very weak to praises and your lil kisses that pepper his face. you can see him glow and you even see his smile evidently becoming wider despite him shying away from you, looking downwards to avoid your loving gaze.

> he may be sht but he is also very playful towards you, teasing you and throwing pillows at you when you’re in his room, what a baby.

> often during dates he'd always need to leave early because he really needs to earn money and g to the dungeons. although you try to offer him some of your savings or your help during the dungeon raids, he'd always reject your offer, thinking of how it may burden you or the dungeon raids may possibly hurt you. you don't listen to him though, you give some of your savings to his sister when you cross paths in your school, and you'd always register after him in raids or call up someone you know to have you join in.

"(name) why are you here?!"

"angel face, i can handle myself just fine. it's my choice to help you and whether you like it or not, i've also been called for this raid. come love, we're going in."

> you'd always take his blue hoodie and wear it. he gets so shy when you smell it.

he gets frantic when you take his hoodie and start sniffing it, exclaiming; "stop! i smell weird."

you raise an eyebrow at him, "woo, you smell fine. i like it."

he tries to stutter a remark but was silenced by your smile.

> you always try to visit his mother with him and his sister, jinah. you always talk to their mother out loud and you'd see jinah smile gently at you and jin-woo trying to stop sniffles from escaping his lips by biting them and covering his face with his hoodie.

jinah: u simp

jin-woo: shut it

> he loved cuddles! but he really likes kissing your cheeks. he loves how soft they are and he loves feeling your cheeks move when you smile or laugh at his cute antics.

> he loves you so so dear

: post-awakened jin-woo (after the events of the carthenon temple)

> oh, dear it's the monarch-

> you weren't with him when he raided the "d-rank" dungeon that then turned out to be,, well pretty much a bloodbath, so you were very worried when you heard word of the news. you and jinah basically ran to the hospital and when you caught sight of him you almost fell down from relief and pure shock in seeing the state he's in. well, not long after though suddenly he's all buff and you were really trying to make sense of what's happening.

you: hello there good sir, what in the name of fck are you doing in my boyfriend’s room all sweaty and half-naked😀

jin-woo: (name) it’s me

you: haha yes, sir ‘it’s me’ that’s a pretty weird name but i don't judge, anyways my baby boy is not here uhm haha please get out of my boyfriend’s room

jin-woo: (name) it’s really me!

you: no sir, my woo radiates baby energy, you on the other hand radiates big dilf energy, haha i do not like what i am sensing so please for the life of me leave-

(jinah had to convince you that it is indeed jin-woo, you had her stop you from trying to hold his tiddies)

> you were very happy in seeing how confident he’s become, and you were even more proud with how he still says so humble despite his new accomplishments and title.

> it was obvious that he has become distant with others and have set a boundary between him and other hunters, you accept that part of him though since you know just how much he has gone through. he may act aloof towards others but he’s still very playful and comfortable with you.

> you have also noticed another thing though, he has become a bit possessive or much protective over you and jinah. he’d always have you bring a shadow with you to guard you when he can’t be with you. also, when someone stares at you for far too long, he’d step in and go, “hey there pal” and oh gosh was that enough to get the guy running (pretty damn hot)

> you still visit his mom with him, he doesn’t cry now though.

> when he trains, you’d insist on lying down below him when he does push-ups. you’d kiss him every time he swoops down and you’d hear him laugh which then makes you giggle as you hold his cheeks between your hands

> jinah is sick of the two you, always screaming about how on earth did her brother get an s/o before her, the audacity!

> his shadows adore you, of they’d always try to impress you or get head pats when you tell jin-woo to summon them for you. you live them to bits and always thanks them for a job well done in helping jin-woo with his raids. on the first time you accompanied him for a raid -you had to bribe him with more cuddles- and you were shocked with how his sweet adorable shadows turned a full 180, becoming ruthless towards the enemies. quite a show you’d say. after though, they’re back to flocking over you, even dismissing jin-woo lmao

jin-woo, watching you give each shadows head pats: i hate it here

you: get in line then

> it may be due to his newly acquired talents and his current mental and physical prowess but he has become more perceptive towards you. he can always read you and know just what your mood is and he always tries to make you feel better by giving his whole attention to you.

> of but of course, since dear jin-woo has become quite the looker, you also notice how girls flock over to him. and especially miss hae-in (she’s very sweet yes, but hey that’s your man so like—). the moment you discovered that she left her guild to join jin-woo’s, and then confessed (well basically she did) to your man, well you were upset but really who could blame her? instead of taking your frustrations out on her and your boyfriend, you decided to just talk it out with jin-woo and ask him about how it went. the two of you cleared it out and you got kisses and maybe even more after that ;))

> you and jin-ho are menaces to society when you are together, he hates how endearing and annoying you two can be. i mean, does he really hate it? nope, he absolutely loves seeing you two interact, although his head always throbs when you two start screaming to britney, gaga, and doja.

> a tease, he has become the master of being a tease, you hate it and love it at the same time. he’d trail kisses down your neck to your thighs and leave some marks then he’d suddenly walk away while asking you what take-out you want. rude, that’s what he is. ofc he always finished what he starts tho oop-

> he always randomly bites you now, you don’t know why but it’s really cute when he starts nibbling so you let him be.

> so extra when he tells you that he loves you. he professes it in such weird but adorable ways. one time he had printed out ‘i love you so much’ on a big-ass tarpaulin and had his shadows hold it for him while he’s kneeling down smoldering at you. you hate him so much (you don’t-). or that one time he bought a bouquet basket and had a ring tied to one of the flowers, you had to take the bouquet apart since the damn ring fell to the very bottom.

> sometimes when he gets back to the agency after his dungeon raids you and jin-ho would see him all grumpy and you immediately know that either he wasn’t able to make the enemy his soldier or his coat got ruined.

jin-woo: *sad noises*

jin-ho: that’s okay, you can kill and slaughter the others and take their souls next time

you: jin-ho couldn’t you have worded that better-

over-all, he’s the bestest boyfriend, such a sweet and handsome pretty boy much strong and reliable we love him<333

-•-

- a/n: i can add more to this if you’d like!! just hit me up again lmao it’s too long now so-

#sung jin woo x reader #sung jin woo #solo leveling #solo leveling x reader #manhwa #jin woo #jinwoo #sung jinwoo #winamikobabbles #sung jinwoo x reader

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