#I’m big on food and coffee is my life and I can’t even taste coffee anymore and I’m losing my mind

[valoale]

Is it normal to have a mental breakdown over the loss of the ability to smell and taste

Because I am

#man I can’t stop crying and laughing #I’m big on food and coffee is my life and I can’t even taste coffee anymore and I’m losing my mind #can this Covid kindly fuck off #its day 4 and I still have 38-39 degree fever and horrible aches and now I can’t taste or smell shit #I’m pissed right off #when is this hell going to end #vee talks #or should I tag #vee rants #instead #idk man this bitch is tired

[shawtuzi]

i’m still deciding whether i want to write for ellie or abby in my next tlou fic but until then pls enjoy these construction worker!eren hc’s bc i am sooo thirsty for him

cw include: black fem!reader, lots of fluff, lots of smut, eren being the cutest thing ever

sfw

construction worker!eren whose only dream in this life is to have a pretty wife with a litter of kids and a big ass house to go with it. he’s already slipped a gorgeous fat rock on your finger and talks of getting pregnant with your first child were slowly but surely happening which meant he was getting closer and closer to what he truly wanted most.

construction worker!eren who is a total mommas boy!! his mom is so very dear to him and to know she adores you just as much as him makes him so so happy.

construction worker!eren who looks so cute in his everyday work outfit. whenever he’s got his hard hat on around you you can’t help but knock on it a few times but it’s okay he thinks it’s super cute.

construction worker!eren who starts his day a six-thirty every morning and is always home by five o’clock on the dot. his morning routine consists of giving your forehead and lips a sweet good morning kiss as soon as his eyes open, a quick fifteen minute shower with music softly playing in the back (usually the trapsoul album by bryson tiller), making a big ass pot of coffee bc lord knows he’ll need it with the airheads he works with, quadruple checking to make sure there’s food in the fridge and pantry for you, another sweet kiss to your lips before he heads out, and then spending five minutes trying to pry you off of him while you beg him to take the day off. “m’sorry sugarplum i cant take off today, gotta save up for that big house we want you know how it is,” he’d always say before shushing your whines with a kiss full of tongue n passion.

construction worker!eren who is so tired and sore when he gets off work but is never too sore to accept one of your bone crushing hugs as soon as he walks through the door to your shared apartment. he’s always extra careful to make sure his hands that are usually covered in residue don’t touch your clothes even though you could literally care less.

construction worker!eren who facetimes you everyday around the same time to enjoy your company while he’s on his lunch break. usually the conversations consists of you telling him to make sure he’s applying a lot of sunscreen (bc this heat was nothing to play about), your plans for what you were making for dinner, and if anyone happened to piss him off that day you’ll surely hear about it.

“how’s your lunch?” you asked giving eren a loving smile as you watched him practically devour the leftover lasagna from last nights dinner. he wiped his mouth with a napkin before speaking, a content smile on his lips. “food is perfect honey tastes just as good as it did last night,” you smiled at his words but it faltered just the slightest bit when you saw how reddish pink his cheeks were. “baby have you put on any sunscreen yet? weather app says it’s supposed to be almost a hundred out today,” you pouted wishing so desperately that he was there so you could give his little sunburns kisses. eren observed his face in the tiny box on the corner of his phone, letting out a small hum. “don’t worry about me sugar i’ll put some on before we get off the phone,” he gave you a comforting smile which you returned. you folded your freshly manicured hands together before speaking, “so…for dinner i was thinking steak kabobs?” “now we’re fuckin’ talking”

construction worker!eren whose nicknames for you are sugar, sugarplum, honey, angel, and my honeysuckle (which is a type of flower heje)

construction worker!eren whose stomach is almost as big as his heart lol this man loves him a good home cooked meal!!! he doesn’t know what he did to deserve a wife who feeds him as good as you do but you best believe he thanks his lucky stars everyday for it. and yes he’s fs the kind of man to completely devour his food in record time meanwhile you’ve barely made a dent in yours, this usually leads to you splitting the rest of yours with him bc this man always has room to eat more food.

you had decided to make steaks for dinner and like usual eren had devoured his plate in less than ten minutes. “was it good my love?” you giggled taking a bite of the roasted potatoes you made as side. bc he had a full mouth all eren was able to get out was a satisfied sounding ‘mhm!’ eren had washed his dishes and put them away before making his way back to the table to keep you company while you continued to eat your food, love and adoration swarming in those jade irises of his. without a word you swiftly got out of your chair and got comfy on his lap. eren didn’t say a word but by the way he was looking at your plate you could tell he was dying for another bite. you cut off a piece of steak and held the fork up to his lips with a smile, “go ahead take a bite i know you wanna.” without a second thought eren took a bite and for the rest of dinner you took turns feeding him and yourself.

construction worker!eren who becomes even more attentive and loving than he already is once you’re finally pregnant!!! you have morning sickness?? he’s right behind you rubbing your back and even offers to brush your teeth for you after you’ve finished. you need your feet rubbed?? prop them up and he’ll get straight to work. he even takes more days off work than usual bc he misses your touch just as much as you miss his. ever since he found out there was a little him growing in you he frequently started talking to your belly.

construction worker!eren is a girl dad no ifs, ands, or buts!!!!! crazy story but he had the strongest feeling you were having a girl and low and behold on the day of your gender reveal you found out you were having a girl!! yes he cried like a baby himself and yes connie has it on video.

construction worker!eren who treats your daughter like she’s the finest china when she’s finally born :( the first time he did skin to skin contact with her he swore his heart was gonna explode with how much love his had for the tiny human in his arms. and once she was sound asleep in her lil bed he was quick to leave the hospital to buy you whatever foods you were craving—you deserved the best princess treatment for bringing his lil princess into the world.

construction worker!eren who keeps a polaroid pic of you, him, and your newborn daughter in his worn out wallet, showing it to everyone at his job…and a couple strangers….he rlly can’t help it you two are his pride and joy <333

“hey reiner did i ever show you this picture?” eren beamed holding up the polaroid in reiner’s face for the third time that day. reiner chuckled a bit before nodding, “yes eren you showed me, she’s a cute one you and y/n are lucky,” he smiled and eren nodded in agreement, still staring down at the picture. “yeah…m’the luckiest guy in the world aren’t i?”

nsfw

construction worker!eren who is six foot six and pure muscle. it’s a wonder how he eats so good and manages to look even better but hey! you weren’t complaining. he certainly was lacking down there either baby he’s the full package. his dicks eight and a half inches with two prominent veins on the underside that rubbed against your sensitive walls in the most delicious way possible.

construction worker!eren who has a raging breeding kink but is that really a surprise? whenever you two fuck and he’s able to rlly take his time with you i kid you not he has to cum inside you at least three times or he will not be satisfied. sometimes whenever he pulls out he’ll push down on your lower belly and watch his cum spill out with dark, predatory eyes. majority of the time he’ll use that as an excuse to fill you up for the umpteenth time bc he just cannot let any of his precious cum go to waste.

“so pretty,” eren had a lazy smile on his face as he watched three orgasms worth of cum ooze out of your puffy, spent pussy. just when you thought he had his fill and was ready for a much needed good nights rest you felt his one softening dick begin to harden up against your still trembling thighs. “eren…” you whimpered, but he just shushed you with a kiss mumbling a quick ‘jus one more’ before slipping back inside you with ease. he was extremely low on energy so he wasn’t quite able to fuck into you like a madman like he was before so he just settled for grinding into you. “o-oh honey! f-fuck!” you squealed wrapping your legs around his waist. between his swollen tip continuously bumping into your stomach, and the coarse hairs on his pelvis rubbing against your sensitive clit you were slowly but surely going dumb. “yeah jus’ like that, f-fuck yeah let daddy fuck a baby into you baby c’mon make me cum.”

construction worker!eren who is nawt a fan of quickies at all!! he’s a man that likes to savor the moment when it comes to sex and if he’s able to admire the faces and sounds you make then what’s the point?? when he’s got you all to himself expect to be occupied for the next couple of hours bc like i stated before he’s not satisfied until he’s cum in you at least three times and made you cum twice as much!!

construction worker!eren who is a certified MUNCH!!!! this man loves having his mouth on your pussy and yes if ur wondering he definitely eats it through your panties. he’s so sloppy and loud with it you’d almost be embarrassed if he didn’t completely turn you dumb whenever he tongue fucked your weeping pussy :(

“mm renny,” your brows scrunched together in pleasure as eren sloppily ran his tongue up and down your soaked folds. his hair was still damp from his shower and was slowly soaking the couch from the droplets falling from his locs but neither of you seemed to care. “couldn’t stop thinking about you today…i mean i already think of you all day but i kept thinking about you in that way and fuck it was so hard to focus. reiner almost ripped my head off from how distracted i was,” as he was talking he was pressing sloppy, wet kisses all over your cunt and the inside of your thighs. he inserted two fingers easily into your dripping center and couldn’t help the groan that rumbled in his chest when he saw how tight you were squeezing his fingers. “you got the prettiest pussy honey, you know that right?” he gave you a small smile before spitting directly on your clit making you jolt. you whined in embarrassment ofc and covered your face with a near throw pillow, whimpering out a pathetic ‘stop ren s’embarrasing.’ eren just hummed and attached his mouth back to your pussy, wrapping his slightly swollen lips around your throbbing clit, “m’never gonna fuckin stop my pretty little honeysuckle never ever.”

construction worker!eren who is a biggg fan of the 69 position. sometimes you suck him so good he tends to lose focus but you don’t mind in the slightest. your big strong man never stops working whether he’s on or off the clock so if he gets a little consumed in his own pleasure who are you to snap him out of it?? if you’re putting some serious work in he’ll moan n groan so loud into your pussy you could cum alone just from that!!

construction worker!eren who had the prettiest moans *sighs dreamily* he’s never shy to let you know you’re making him feel good and it’s so fucking hot hearing his breathy whines and moans especially when he accidentally overstimulates himself which he happens to do a lot heh. you’ve definitely had a couple complaints from neighbors bc of the noise but he don’t even give a fuck!! he knows it turns you on more than anything to hear him be so vocal so why on earth would he ever stop??

construction worker!eren who was soo nervous when you suggested having sex while you were pregnant. it was no problem for him at first but once you started showing that’s when the panic started to settle in��he was so afraid he’d accidentally hurt you or the baby that he kinda went on an sex hiatus much to your dismay, but after some convincing be finally gave in.

you were on your side and he was spooning you from behind, giving your shoulder or neck a kiss of encouragement every once in a while. “jus’ let me know if it hurts at all or you’re uncomfortable okay? cant believe you talked me into this…” eren mumbled into your shoulder. you replied with a soft ‘mhm’ your patience wearing thinner by the second. it had been a good couple of weeks since you and eren last had sex and you were almost sure you were beginning to lose your mind. you’d finally had enough when he came home from his morning jog looking like an absolute dream with his chest heaving and brown baby hairs sticking to his forehead. that’s how he ended up here: one hand securely holding onto your small bump while his other was slowly pushing his dick inside your awaiting entrance. “oh wow…” your eyes fluttered shut in pure bliss, toes curling once he bottomed out. “f-fuck that feel okay hun?” it felt more than okay. you brought your hand to your clit and began rubbing quick circles to dull out the stinging stretch. eren peeped this and replaced yours with his own, the rough pads of his fingers on your clit had your lips trembling. “y-you need to stop this—hah! sex strike and fuck me more please i—i miss this,” eren heard your plea and nodded feverishly. god was he a fool for ever depriving yourselves of each other, he will never be doing this again.

#eren smut #eren yeager smut #eren jaeger smut #aot smut #eren x black reader #eren x black fem!reader #eren fluff #eren yeager fluff #eren jaeger fluff

[not-neverland06]

Alone And Forsaken pt. 2

Joel Miller x fem!reader

A/N: clearly I don’t do one shots, I tried, I failed. I can’t help it he’s just so fine (@woodland-mist you asked so, here you go)

WC: 5.6K

Part one

You weaved through the throng of people in the town square, hoping to get by unnoticed. Maria had told you where to find Tommy, you should have known it wouldn’t be easy, nothing with him ever really was. 

“Y/N! Hey!” 

Nope

You had one goal and it was not to meet and greet with all your neighbors. You ducked your head down, hiding yourself in the passing throng of people and evading them. It was a new couple that had just moved to Jackson a few days ago. 

You, of course, had protested anyone new coming in after the incident with Abby and her people. But because you and the brothers had been less than forthcoming with what happened and no one had any reason to listen to your doubts. 

They’d been moved into the big house across from you and Joel, because they needed the space. 

Because she was pregnant. 

In three months your life was going to get very loud and very miserable. 

The couple was too nice for your taste. You’d just barely gotten used to staying in Jackson for longer than two weeks, then Maria went ahead and shoved the two friendliest people you’d even met down your throat. 

Maybe you were too bitter. Maybe everyone was right, you should try and socialize, give people the benefit of the doubt before you write them off. 

“Do you see where she went, honey?”

Then again, maybe not. 

You rushed into the Tipsy Bison before they could spot you. You were sure they would tell Joel about this when they spotted him on the porch with his morning coffee. And you were sure he would give you hell for it, but you already have to deal with Tommy this morning. They can go bother someone else. 

You glanced around the bar, spotting some blonde hair in the back. When you rounded the tables you could see Tommy was busy haggling with Sam, trying to trade a shirt for some of his roast beef sandwiches. 

“I think I’m offering more than enough for some sandwiches, Sam.” Tommy, being the de facto leader after Maria, was trying to maintain a semblance of diplomacy. 

Sam was a stubborn jackass and you knew if you didn’t do something this would take all day. You walked up and nodded a greeting to Tommy before glaring at Sam. “Give him the sandwiches.”

Sam glared at you, trying his damndest to look down his nose at you. “Mind your fucking business.”

Tommy straightened up, a frown on his face. Neither he nor his brother had ever been good at losing the whole Texan chivalry thing. They didn’t do well when someone disrespected a ‘lady’ in front of them. “I think you need to watch your tone, Sam.”

You held up a hand towards Tommy, stopping him from getting too riled up. You already had a less than respectable reputation in Jackson, didn’t need to drag him down with you. “Give him the sandwiches, and we won’t need to get Joel involved.”

Sam opened and closed his mouth, he glanced between you and Tommy, like he was trying to call your bluff. You couldn’t really help yourself as your hand drifted down to land on your holster, your fingers idly drumming against the leather. Finally he huffed, mumbled something prickish under his breath and shoved the sandwiches into Tommy’s hands, snatching the shirt. You watched until he retreated into the kitchen to address Tommy. 

“You probably coulda kept the shirt.”

Tommy shrugged, tucking the food in his pack. “Yeah, but we do things a certain way here. Can’t just go flashing your pistol at people.”

You scoffed, “Didn’t flash my pistol, I used your brother.”

Tommy chuckled and nodded his head towards the bar’s exit. You followed him outside, looking around to make sure the coast was clear of your neighbors. When you turned back to face him he was giving you an odd look. “What’re you so jumpy for?”

You sighed, “Your wife decided to move Mr. and Mrs. Rogers next to me and Joel.”

Tommy smiled and laughed, most definitely at your expense. “You mean Ann and James,” you nodded, ushering him along the sidewalk in case they popped up again. “They’re nice people, I think she’s just trying to get you to branch out.”

“Don’t need to,” you grunted out. Though, hunching over, hiding from anyone who wants to talk to you, you weren’t sure you were making a great case for yourself. You straightened up and glared at him, “‘Sides, I didn’t come out to chat about my new neighbors. I want to talk about the Harvest Festival and my ‘date.’” You couldn’t keep the disdain out of your voice if you tried, which you weren’t.

“Bob,” Tommy offered. You rolled your eyes and nodded. “What about it?”

“I’m not going.”

Tommy crossed his arms and smirked. “Says who?”

“Me,” you weren’t sure what he wanted from you. 

“And why not?”

Oh. Oh. That stupid smug little look was back on his face. How in the hell does he know? “I think you know why.”

He shook his head, “Nope, don’t think I do.”

He was really making you do this? “I can’t go because of Joel.”

“What’s my brother got to do with this?”

You opened your mouth, some argument at the tip of your tongue, but it was lost to you the second you tried to speak it into existence. Why couldn’t you go?

You broke apart from Joel slowly, neither of you in any sort of rush to end this. Idly, and without much thought behind it, your fingers traced the shape of his lips. You didn’t realize you were smiling until you saw the same soft expression mirrored on his face. 

“Been wanting to do that for a while,” his voice was quiet, as if he spoke any louder the trance would be broken. 

“I’ve been waiting for you to do that for a while,” your smile grew when the hands around your waist squeezed you tighter. He pulled you closer and you got comfortable in his lap, your hands moving down to play with the fabric of his shirt. 

He didn’t seem to mind the subtle exploration, his own hands mimicking yours. Now that you finally had the chance, neither of you seemed able to stop touching each other. You weren’t sure where to go from here. 

You hadn’t realized how desperately you had wanted this, wanted him, until you had him. You didn’t want to ruin the moment by overthinking or complicating something simple. Still, is everything going to change now?

Did that kiss mean as much to him as it meant to you? 

What did this mean-

“Hey,” you startled slightly, jolted out of your thoughts by the heavy weight of Joel’s hand on your cheek. “I can see that brain going. I can practically hear the rust flaking off the gears in your head.”

You scoffed and smacked at his chest, “Shut up.” But he was right, it was far too easy for you to get lost in your own head. Especially concerning him. You were grateful for the way he could anchor you in the present, drag you back out of a trap of your own making. 

Joel stood, his arms wrapping around you and dragging you along with him. You could hear his bones popping, you wanted to protest, tell him to just let you walk, but you knew he wouldn’t listen. He had that determined look on his face, the one that meant he was ignoring how old and worn out his back and knees were. 

Besides, you liked how strong he was. Relished in these little displays of strength, even if it was something as simple as carrying you to bed. You knew you needed to talk, you needed some sort of verbal confirmation that this was more than just two lonely souls looking for company.

But Joel just dropped you on the mattress, grumbled about getting your stuff from the guest room, and left. You changed out of your clothes, brushed your teeth, and waited for him to come back. When he did, he had changed too, he dumped a pile of blankets on the bed and got in beside you. 

He laid down and wrapped his arms around your waist, dragging you into his side. You looked down at where he was holding you, lacing your fingers together, and let yourself fall asleep. You two didn’t say anything else, you just reveled in each other's warmth, let the comfort you provided lull you both into an easy sleep. And when you woke up in the morning, he had breakfast ready for you, but he didn’t say anything about the night before. 

In fact, for the next week, there was no mention of you two kissing or what his vague, half-confession meant. Sure, now he greeted you with a kiss each morning and night, but other than that nothing had changed about how you two operated. 

You didn’t have anything to appease Tommy with as he looked at you expectantly. No, nothing had majorly changed between you and Joel and you hadn’t had a real discussion about anything. But, you didn’t really need one, you knew what you meant to each other. And you knew how hard it is for people like you and Joel to have those discussions. 

Emotions, romance, love were all such distant concepts, it felt so foreign to you. If you tried to date, or speak into existence how much weight he held in your life you know inevitably it would just end up complicating and ruining things. 

You were together, alive and not some mindless fungi outside Jackson, the rest was inconsequential. 

You just said, “Cancel it, I’m going with Joel,” and walked off before you had to be subjected to more of his smug face. 

You made your way back through town, the morning rush having calmed down now that everyone had gotten their supplies or found their assignments for the week. You were thankful not to spot any nosy neighbors as you made your way back, that was the last thing you needed after having to deal with Tommy’s questions. 

Neither you or Joel were really big fans of talking about your emotions, hell you’d have punched someone out back in the QZ just for telling you to look for the light. Gooey stuff was practically a foreign language to you now. 

You could function based on actions; setting out his coffee in the morning or a new book appearing on your nightstand when he’d gotten back from patrolling. It was all you needed to understand what you were to each other.  

You trudged up the stairs to the porch, Joel was sitting in his favorite rocking chair, a mug resting on his knee. His supply was running low, you were gonna have to find someone to trade with again. You had been keeping an eye out on your patrols, trying to see if you could find any beans. 

You weren’t really sure how coffee plants worked, if you planted the beans whether they would even grow or not. But it was worth a shot. 

“How’d it go?”

You let out a long sigh and threw yourself down on the chair next to him. It creaked under your weight but held up against the strain of its old age. You rocked back and forth, plucking at a string on your jeans. “Fine.”

He snorted slightly as he took another sip of his coffee. “Looks like it. Oh, Jason and Anna stopped by.”

It was your turn to laugh, you smirked at him, propping your head in your hand. “You mean Ann and James?”

He rolled his eyes and nodded, “Yeah, them.”

“You’re losing it, old man.”

He shrugged, “I don’t know, they were concerned about your hearing. Said they must’ve called your name ten times and you didn’t hear them.” There was a shit eating grin on his face as he stared at you, like he knew it was complete bullshit. 

You rolled your eyes and scoffed, “Please.” You sat up and leaned forward, irritation forcing you upright, “If I have to listen to her complain about how tender her breasts are again, I’ll shoot myself.”

Joel grimaced, giving you a disgusted look as he put his mug down. “These people know what T-M-I is?” He put too much emphasis on each letter and you couldn’t help yourself as you laughed. It was always funny to hear him get an attitude with that gruff Texan accent, he ended up sounding like a poor attempt at valley girl. He swatted your knee, trying to get you to stop making fun of him. 

“Tommy, come on, what’d he say?”

You shrugged, looking down and away from him, going back to playing with the loose thread of your jeans. “I don’t know, he was asking all these questions.”

Joel was quick to ask, “What questions?”

You rested your head on the back of the rocking chair, “Why I didn't want to go on the date.”

“What’d you say?”

Jesus, he was barely taking a breath. “I said,” you paused and looked at him, not really surprised to already find him looking at you. His gaze wasn’t as intense as you were expecting, more eager? You weren’t sure Joel got eager. “I said I couldn’t go with what’s-his-face to the festival because of you.”

“Yeah?” He smirked, leaning back in his rocking chair, a strange sort of male pride clear on his face. “How come?”

You scoffed, glaring at him from where you sat. The hell was he getting at? “Why do you think, genius? Why would I go out with someone when I’ve got you?”

“You got me?”

You paused, irritation draining from your body as you stared at him. His face wasn’t giving anything away, he wasn’t closed off, just staring at you expectantly. “Don’t I?” You hated the way your voice went quiet, you wished it had been more confident, teasing, like you knew the answer and were screwing with him. You sounded too vulnerable. 

Joel let you squirm for a minute, you’re pretty sure he thought it was funny. Finally he sighed and leaned forward, his hand landing on your thigh and you could feel the warmth of it through your jeans. You hadn’t realized how cold you’d gotten until he was this close, walking furnace that he was. 

“Yeah, you do.”  You tried not to let the relief show, though you’re sure it did if his little smirk was anything to go by. He squeezed your thigh once before he stood up to go back inside. 

“Oh,” you suddenly remembered the last bit of your conversation with Tommy. “And I told him you were taking me to the harvest,” you called over your shoulder. It was your turn to screw with him, and if the way his shoulders tensed up as he paused in the doorway was anything to go by, he was just as excited as you about that ridiculous festival. 

“When’s your next patrol?”

Joel had found you an old mystery book on his last run, the same one you were reading now. You marked the page and put it down on the nightstand as he got into bed next to you. “Not sure, I think thursday. Why?”

He shrugged, leaning back against the pillows and gazing at you. “I was thinking I could go with you. We could go exploring that old art museum Maria told me was a couple miles out.” He reached out, tucking some hair behind your ear and you tried not to lean too much into him.

You smiled, almost accepting when you realized what he was doing and the smile dropped. You huffed out a breath and rolled your eyes. “Nice try, Joel, we’re going to the harvest festival.”

He held up his hands in mock surrender, “Got no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Really?” He shook his head, oh-so-innocent. You scoffed, “You’re so full of it. If I went with you, we’d miss the harvest festival. And who would have to listen to Tommy’s bitching? Me.”

“He’s my brother.”

“Then you deal with him!” You picked your book back up, deciding on ignoring him for the rest of the night. You should have known he would try and weasel his way out of this.

Honestly, once you’d decided you were going with Joel, the festival didn’t seem that awful or daunting. You’re a little hurt he wants to get out of it so badly. You weren’t that bad of company. 

“You ignorin’ me now?”

You shrugged, flipping through the book, not really absorbing anything. You’d have to reread this chapter tomorrow. 

A big hand found itself in front of your face, blocking you from reading anything more. Joel dog-eared the page, something you loudly protested to, and threw the book on his nightstand. “Joel, you know I hate when you do that.”

“Yeah, I know,” you rolled your eyes at his little smirk. “But you’re talkin’ to me.”

“Child. You’re a child.”

He leaned over you and shut your lamp off, ignoring your snippy still usin’ that. He settled down in bed and patted the spot next to him. You hesitated, only for a moment, debating whether you wanted to give him more of a hard time or just give in. 

It wasn’t a hard choice. 

You settled down beside him, your head falling on his chest and his arm naturally wound itself around your back. You tried to ignore the way your legs fit together, how you felt like a complete puzzle when you laid down beside him, the two of you fitting together perfectly. You tried even harder to ignore the way the thought made your heart race, but it was nearly impossible. 

Sometimes you resented Joel a little bit. Resented him for the way you lost control of yourself and your emotions when you were around him. Resented all the power he held over you and how unaware of it he seemed to be. 

“I really don’t want to go.”

You scoffed, your fingers tracing the design on the worn out t-shirt he was wearing. “You think I do?”

“Then let’s just skip it.”

“Joel, I already said-”

“We used to be able to just do whatever we wanted.” You paused as he interrupted you, closing your mouth and tilting your head up so you could look at him. “We went where we wanted, when we wanted. There weren't all these bullshit obligations like patrol, or making sure our shifts match up.”

You were silent, taking in what he was saying. It wasn’t hard to miss the resent lingering in his tone, or the way he spoke fondly of your past. Before you had responsibilities. But you must have been quiet for too long because he reached over and turned his lamp off, closing his eyes with a sigh. 

You stayed awake a while longer, just thinking about what he said. He was starting to sound like you, the same frustration and anger at being expected to provide for others. You were at everyone’s beck and call here. People viewed you as do-ers. Someone needed something done, you were the one to do it, and there was no arguing either, because everyone worked together here. 

The thought left a bitter taste on your tongue as you went to sleep.

“Come on, hurry up!”

Ellie was sitting on the couch, she ran the towel in her hand over her hair roughly. You stood behind the chair, scissors in your hand as Joel trudged down the stairs. You wrapped a towel around his shoulders to keep his wet hair from dripping on his shirt. 

Years ago, a time that feels nearly as distant as 2003, it was Tess who would cut yours and Joel’s hair. You’d sit down in the crappy apartment you had in the QZ and she’d use some blunted ass scissors to saw off your hair. 

Neither you nor Joel should have been trusted with any scissors, but when Tess was gone and you were on the road for too long Ellie and Joel would start bitching about their hair. Neither of them liked how it would touch their neck. 

Luckily while you were still learning there were no mirrors. They couldn’t see how horribly you had done. They would always run their hands through their hair and frown, like they knew something was wrong, but they just couldn’t prove it. 

The only thing you had to worry about for a while was just not busting out laughing every time you saw the bangs you accidentally gave them. 

Thankfully, by the time you reached Jackson you’d gotten good enough at it that they would still come and badger you for a haircut. They’d never had a chance to see just how horribly you had done in the beginning. 

“Oh, Jesse wanted me to ask you if you’d do his hair soon?”

You gave Ellie a noncommittal hum, running your fingers through Joel’s hair. “I like it long.”

“Cut it.” He didn’t exactly leave any room for arguments, he even crossed his arms, like you were actually going to pester him about it. You weren’t, but you were leaving some length, it’s not like he could cut it himself. 

He tilted his head slightly towards Ellie, “What’s Jesse want with her?”

You pushed his head back in place and started snipping. “What do you think he wants?” Ellie snorted, she got off the couch, probably already bored of sitting there. She went over to the mirror on the wall, running her hands through her hair and grinning. 

“Isn’t he with Dina?” You weren’t proud of it, but you might have picked up some information about people around town. Would you say gossiping? No. Would others? Probably. 

“Not anymore, they broke up a while ago.” Ellie turned around, hands on her hips as she stared at you. 

You momentarily paused in cutting Joel’s hair, ignoring his disgruntled complaint. “Am I missing something?”

Joel turned to face her as well, matching confused expressions on both your faces. “Yeah,” Ellie paused, like she was waiting for the two of you to connect the dots. You glanced down at Joel but he just shrugged. 

He tried, “I thought Jesse and Ellie were dating.” 

You rolled your eyes and shoved Joel’s head forward, going back to the haircut. 

“God! You guys, me and Dina are dating, we’ve been dating for like three months.”

”I thought you were friends,” Joel offered unhelpfully. 

“Clearly not,” Ellie sniped back. “You guys seriously didn’t know?”

You shrugged, “I don’t know what you kids get up to.” Ellie sighed and sat back down on the couch seemingly disheartened by your underwhelming reaction. “At least you can’t get her pregnant.”

Ellie sucked in a breath, “Right.”

Joel swatted your hands away from his hair, he better pray that doesn’t screw you up. “Ellie, what was that?”

“What?”

“That noise you just made.”

“Joel,” you interrupted, forcing his head back in place, “stop moving, dammit.”

“Dina’s pregnant,” Ellie rushed the sentence out in one, jumbled breath. 

You watched as Joel’s shoulders tensed and then slumped in front of you. “How’d you even get her pregnant?”

“What’re you doing?”

Joel closed the patrol log and shook his head, “Nothing, come on.” 

Your eyebrows furrowed in suspicion as you watched him walk off. He had spent way too long by the log book for him to have just been writing - Couple runners, took ‘em out -J

You wanted to open it up and look but he was watching you from the entrance of the garage. You shoved aside your curiosity and followed him out to the horses. He grabbed the reins of his horse, “Come on, Sunny.” He shook his head and scoffed as he mounted her, “Still think their names are ridiculous.”

“Sunny and Cher,” you pet the black mane of your own mare and huffed out a laugh. “How’s Ellie even know who they are?”

“I don’t know, must’ve heard it from someone ‘cause she don’t even spell Sunny’s name right.”

“And she’s a girl.”

He laughed, “And she’s a girl.” 

He led you both outside into the sunny woods. Snow’s completely melted now, you weren’t sure how Maria and Tommy managed to time their ‘Harvest Festival’ so perfectly but it was a good time to celebrate the incoming warm weather. 

“So,” you nudged Cher forward to walk alongside him. “Where are we going?” Joel shrugged but didn’t provide you any answers. “Clearly not Jackson,” you were going the opposite direction of the town. 

You glanced at the back of Sunny, the bags he had tied to her saddle, each of them far too stuffed for a simple patrol. “You kidnapping me?”

“Maybe.”

You sighed, rolling your head back and taking in the greenery of the woods. You were definitely eager for winter to be over. Something about the cold weather makes the infected go fucking insane. They're faster, meaner, and just over all bigger pains in the ass. Not to mention the fact that they travel in huge fucking hordes. 

Tommy always tries to pretend he knows about them, something about the barometric pressure making them migrate but you know he’s just full of it. You watched a pair of hare’s dart in front of you and Joel and took in a deep breath. 

God, you’d forgotten how nice it was to be outside without the sound of people around you. There was the sound of the horses' hooves squishing lightly over wet grass, the wind moving the leaves above you, and the distant sound of birds singing. But no voices, or kids, or people demanding favors.

You’d missed this, with Joel specifically. It’d been a while since you had this type of quiet with him. So, you didn’t push him too much about where he was taking you, just followed him down the path. 

You were fine not bugging him while you were on a lovely jaunt through a pretty forest. But it’s been an hour and you can’t feel extremities that really need blood flow. “Joel,” you tried to remain friendly but your tone was strained as you shifted on your saddle for the nth time. 

“Yeah?” He grunted out. 

“How much longer?”

“Not much longer.” He turned around and frowned at you, “Have some patience.”

You tugged on Cher’s reins, forcing her to stop while you glared at Joel’s back. “Patience? Joel, we’ve been out here since six. I’ve had a lot of fucking patience. But that ran out about three miles ago, right when I stopped being able to feel my a-”

“We’re here.”

Of course you were. 

Joel got off Sunny and offered you a hand down. You took it eagerly, more than happy to finally stretch your legs out. You were a bit surprised when he kept your hands locked together, he wasn’t normally one for touchy shows of affection. 

Not that you were complaining, you were more than happy to revel in the comforting feeling of his hands in yours. Though, his were definitely rougher than your own, you weren’t without your own callouses, but he’d had years of carpentry and being a contractor under his belt before the apocalypse. 

He’d paused in a field, the grass here was up to your waist which made it difficult to see where you were stepping and what you were stepping on. You kept close to Joel, the horses trailing behind you both as he led you through the field. 

It took a moment for you to realize you’d never been out here. You’d only been vaguely paying attention to the direction you went while you were on the horses, trusting Joel to know the way. But this was definitely unrecognizable, which was strange, you thought you’d found everything when you went exploring on your own. 

Out in the distance you could see a vague shape forming, some brown structure that you couldn’t really make out as the grass was getting taller. It only took a few feet to finally figure out what was looming over you. 

A fence. 

Fun.

You said as much to Joel, probably in the most sarcastic tone you could muster. He rolled his eyes and kneeled down. You couldn’t help but admire his arms as he dug his fingers into a rotten plank of wood and pulled. He managed to make a hole large enough for you to crawl through and motioned towards it. 

“Well, go on, smartass.”

You huffed, getting down on your hands and knees and squeezing your way through. You didn’t bother seeing what was in front of you, turning around so you could keep the way through open for him. The wood dug into your palm, splinters burying themselves in your skin. 

God, this better be worth it. 

He groaned as he straightened up, pulling you to your feet and stretching his back out. “Alright. Ready?”

”Yep,” you rolled your eyes as he walked in front of you. What could have been so amazing he had dragged you out here?

A house. 

Well, it was a nice house, better taken care of than you’d seen out here. Looked like an old farmhouse, two stories, and a wraparound porch. Something you would have loved a long time ago. Surrounding it was a tall fence, it went out pretty far, there was room enough for a large garden and then some. There were bits where the wood had rotted or had holes in it that looked like someone had broken through. But the grass was trimmed, a normal height instead of tickling the ends of your hair. 

Overall, nice, but you had no clue what Joel was doing out here. 

“What do you think?”

“It’s nice.”

Joel scoffed, he crossed his arms and stared at you, “Just nice?”

You laughed and walked up the stairs of the porch. It was cleaner than you thought it would be, no signs of aging on the wooden boards. “It’s a nice house, Joel. I just don’t get why we’re here.”

He sighed and walked up to you, you took in a deep, centering, breath when he placed one hand on your waist. He moved you slightly out of the way as he leaned in, opening the door up behind you. “We’re here ‘cause this is ours,” admittedly your eyes were on his lips and your focus was how close he was to you. 

It took you a second to actually process what he had said. You blinked and your eyes shot back up to his, “What?”

He nudged you inside and you stumbled over your feet as you went. The interior was even nicer than the outside. There wasn’t a spec of dust or decay, it was like time hadn’t had a chance to touch it. There was a couch, bookshelves, even an old record player. 

“Joel, what the hell are you talking about?”

He sighed and threw his backpack down on the ground. He walked over and took yours off your shoulders, nudging you to take a seat on the couch. “Been working on this for months.” He smiled a little, the wrinkles in the corner of his eyes crinkling with the movement.

You were still a little confused, eyes darting around the living room as you sat there with a dumb look on your face. “Look, Jackson was nice for a while.”

You tuned in enough to grunt in opposition. Joel chuckled, “Alright, fine, it was never my favorite. I was out here one day, looking for you,” he added with a light nudge to your knee. “Found this place.”

“And… What? Decided to test out Jesus’s favorite pastime?”

“I was a contractor before the world went to shit. Like riding a bike, it just comes back to you.”

“I just don’t understand. Why? Why put in the time and effort and materials?”

He scoffed, “Why do you think?” When you didn’t answer he rolled his eyes. “We always talk about disappearin’ and I thought this would be a nice place to do it. There’s already a perimeter up, just have to make some more repairs. Worked something out with Tommy, it’s close enough to Jackson that we got some power from the dam,” he stood up now pacing around the living room a little as he talked to you. 

You slowly became aware of the stupid grin growing on your face. The warmth that was spreading through your cheeks and stomach as you realized he’d done this, fixed up this old house for months in secret for you. 

That explained why he’d been complaining about his back so much lately. 

You stood up, cutting him off from his tangent about how you were still close enough to Jackson for supplies and to see Tommy and Elllie. You fisted your hands in the flannel he was wearing and tugged him down. “Joel.”

He smiled at you as his hands landed on your waist, squeezing a little. “Yeah, sweetheart?”

“Have I ever told you I love you?”

He pulled you in and grinned, “Not once.”

This kiss felt different than all the rest. Felt like something more final, like you both knew you’d reached the end and there was nowhere left to go. You’d explored all you could, fought your way here, and now you stood in this old house. The one he had fixed up and you knew you didn’t need to fight anymore. 

You just needed this, him in this moment. 

“Ellie?”

Ellie turned around at the sound of Dina’s voice. “Yeah?”

She nodded her head towards the patrol logbook, there was a strange smile on her face. “Might want to take a look at this.”

Ellie walked over, shooting Dina a confused glance before she took a look and let out a laugh.

We aren’t gone, but we’re disappearing for a while. You won’t find us, don’t come looking (I mean it Tommy) - J

end. — I do not own the characters or the game The Last Of Us, but this writing is my own all rights reserved © not-neverland06 2024. do not copy, repost, translate & recommend elsewhere.

TAGLIST: @chrysanthemum-00 @marimarvelfan

#Joel miller x reader #tlou x reader #game!joel x reader #joel miller #tlou #the last of us x reader #the last of us

[dd-is-my-guiltypleasure]

A LIFE IN THE DAY

David Duchovny: ‘Love can happen at any age, right?

The actor, 63, on The X Files, songwriting and snacking

EKATERINA GERBY

Interview by Helen Cullen

Wednesday January 17 2024, 12.01am GMT, The Sunday Time

Duchovny was born in New York City. He studied English at Princeton University and Yale, before breaking into acting in the late 1980s, starting in TV adverts and working his way up. In 1993 he began playing the role of the FBI agent Fox Mulder in The X Files, which ran for nine years. He later played Hank Moody in Californication. He has also released three folk-rock albums and published five novels — last year he directed a film adaptation of one of these, Bucky F***ing Dent. Duchovny has two grown-up children from his former marriage to the actress Téa Leoni. He lives in California, with his girlfriend, Monique Pendleberry, and his two dogs, Brick and Rookie.

I like to get up at dawn because those are my best thinking and writing hours. I love the sunrise but it also means I can get some work done before the sun gets too much. That’s the best time of day for me. I have a coffee that makes me think I’m brilliant for ten minutes and that’s all I need to get going.

Food to me is just fuel and I don’t have very advanced taste buds. I think everything kind of tastes OK, which people react to with suspicion. For breakfast I like oatmeal — what my Scottish mother called porridge.

If I’m filming I still like an early start, but I shot my recent film What Happens Later, with Meg Ryan, all through the night because we filmed in a regional airport after it closed at 9pm. That’s a bit of a nightmare for me as a morning person, but we developed a great camaraderie from working while the world was asleep. My daughter, West, thought it was great to see a romantic comedy film with people my age, but I don’t think of myself as any age, so I hadn’t thought about that. Love can happen at any age, right?

Everybody wants me to have a hobby, but I’m blessed because I love my work. I’ve been able to branch out into music, writing and directing. With songwriting I can pick up the guitar at any time. If you wait for inspiration to hit, you’ll be sitting on your ass for ever.

I knock off for lunch about 12pm. That’s when I have the one big meal of the day that would be recognisable to other humans as a proper meal — vegetables and a protein such as fish. The rest of the time I snack.

In the afternoon I work out. I love the games I played when I was younger — boxing, tennis and basketball — but as I get older I tend to get hurt doing those, so I’ve found Pilates is best for me. It’s still super hard but the least dangerous.

I live in Malibu and the height of my fame has passed, so it’s not difficult for me to move around any more. It’s a different era now because everybody has a phone, so paparazzi are more a thing of the past. I tend to go to the same places where people are bored of seeing me.

There are always different reasons why fans might stop me — it could be still because of The X Files or Californication. I am very proud of The X Files. I can’t think of another show like it in terms of cultural impact and longevity. I just thought we were making good, goofy TV but Chris Carter, the creator and director, saw what was coming in terms of the culture of conspiracy theories. Gillian Anderson [his co-star] and I went from being unknown to globally recognised in a couple of years. We don’t get to see each other that much as she lives in London, but there’s no one else I can share that with.

West is an actor now too. It wasn’t something that I would have charted out for her because I know how difficult it is, even more so for a woman, but I want her to do something she’s passionate about. There are still dark corners in Hollywood but the pitfalls and dangers are much more upfront.

I do enjoy a party, but I’d rather spend time with friends in the evening. Because I like to get up so early, I go to bed early also. I feel electric light has really f***ed with our sense of mind and body, and that we were made to hide in the cave at night from predators and wake up with the sun, so I try to do that. Constitutionally, I feel like that works for me.

Words of wisdom

Best advice I was given

It doesn’t matter if people laugh; it matters if it feels funny to you

Advice I’d give

There’s no such thing as good advice — you have to come to it on your own

What I wish I’d known

Take a moment to appreciate what you’ve done before worrying about the next thing

What Happens Later is in cinemas now and available to stream in spring. The Reservoir by David Duchovny is out now (Akashic Books £19.95)

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#david duchovny #2024 #what happens later #txf #meg ryan #mo #malibu #his life now #west duchovny

[madhattervanessa]

Kill You To Try (Prologue)

Summary: You return to the Dutton Ranch after being gone for weeks.

Warnings: mentions of a funeral

Words: 953

next Chapter

Series Masterlist

-

Sitting back against the beige fabric of the car seat, you squint at the first hints of blue in the sky. Your travel mug is still steaming with the gas station coffee you bought on the way. 

You rub at the sand in the corners of your eyes before tugging your hat down a little. Your fingers nervously tap against the steering wheel as you watch the sunbeams reach over the horizon. It drenches the farm in peach and pastel hues. The crystallized frost from last night makes the tree line glimmer in the distance.

The burnt coffee smell wafting through the stagnant air of the car makes you roll the car windows down. The freezing morning air bites at your cheeks but blessedly exchanges the air inside for the smell of sand and fresh hay.

You watch your breath puff out into the air just as you hear the soft crunch of nearing footsteps. 

“You’re back.”

You barely turn your head and look down at the familiar face to your left. Your lips feel raw as you try to mirror his smile, caught up in his charming expression, the rosy colored cheeks, and the warmth of his arms against yours on the car door. 

“Hey, Rip.”

He comes closer, one foot stepping onto the sidebar, his bulky form blocking out the weak light of the still-rising sun.

“Where’ve you been?” You can see him scanning the inside of the car, the fast food wrappers and your duffel bag, the backpack still half open on the passenger seat.

You sigh and take a long sip of your coffee, trying not to grimace at the taste.

“Had to attend a funeral.”

He looks down, awfully focused on your hand on the steering wheel.

“Shit. I’m sorry, Bones.”

“Yeah,” you whisper. The next gulp of coffee does very little against the lump in your throat. 

The silence stretches between the two of you until he clears his throat.

“Got a calf last week.”

You finally manage to meet his eyes. He doesn't comment at the sight of your face, the ragged expression, the smeared makeup, doesn't even flinch.

"D'you want to see it? I'll take you up."

He smiles, one of his hands patting against the car door.

"Some other day maybe. I think if I get up on a horse today, I'll die."

“City life change you already?”

It definitely hadn’t. But running away from it all seems compelling today. You don't know if you'd be able to stop.

“Got some milk in my coffee today, too.”

"City life's a slippery slope, ain’t it.”

You hum, non-committedly, and can’t help snorting in amusement at his grave expression.

Both of your eyes flit toward the lodge as the door snaps open. Twinned footfalls of heavy boots ring out into the morning air as you watch Lee and his father step outside. At the sight of the truck in the driveway, they both stop. Rip raises a hand in greeting toward the men. The Dutton patriarch sends his eldest son towards the stable with a silent nod; to get the farmhands up and to work, no doubt. 

Which leaves you to face the bear.

“Fuck.” You chug the rest of your coffee, wincing at the sharp sting of heat.

“Good luck with that,” Rip murmurs before pushing off the sidebar.

He tugs the door of the truck open as he does. You shoot him a glare that he smiles at before he tips his hat and turns away. 

You watch him catch up to Lee before you hop out of the truck. 

You duck your head as you round the hood and meet John Dutton at the other side of the vehicle.

“Good morning, kid.”

“Morning, Sir,” you tip your hat at him, hoping to lighten the mood.

The unimpressed look you get in return makes you feel like you have shrunken back down to when you were 13 and running around the ranch in boots two sizes too big for you.

“Welcome back. You ready to go to work? Or do I have to continue paying you for going on vacation?”

There it is.

You flinch and fix the ground covered in gravel.

“Nothing left for me to get distracted by, Mr. Dutton.”

You can hear him sigh, his shoulders dropping as he pushes his hands onto his hips. His gaze drifts over the ranch, a thoughtful expression on his face. You chew the inside of your cheek, biting the smooth tissue until the coppery taste of blood bursts across your tongue.

“Right.”

He looks down to the ground, then the truck.

“We have a lot of catching up to do, you and I. Why don’t you put your bags in the guest room and help yourself to some breakfast? Join us on pasture 8 when you're done.”

“Yessir,” you mutter, finally lifting your eyes from the ground. 

He meets your gaze, the stern set of his jaw returning once you do before he nods and walks off, no doubt following his son to the bunkhouse.

You sigh in relief, glad to have gotten away with your hide intact before you turn towards your truck. You quickly clean out the front seats, wiping away crumbs and napkins. Afterward, you grab your backpack and duffle bag from the passenger seat. The heavy weight of your luggage digs into the knots in your shoulders as you haul it up the stairs to the lodge.

Inside, the warm air is filled with the smell of the burnt-out fireplace, old wood, and the herbs from the kitchen. The familiar scents envelop you like a warm embrace. Your shoulders drop with a deep exhale.

It feels good to be… home.

-

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[multi-kpop-fanfics]

Happy go-lucky boy! (sometimes not so happy)

pairing: best friend!Seokmin x gn!reader (ft. some of the sebongs)

genre: minor fluff, angst, comedy, best friends to lovers!AU, college!AU, slice of life

warnings: mentions of food, mutual pining, seungkwan our lord and saviour, hoshi is a mf idiot, kissing, jealousy, cursing, mentions of anxiety and panic attacks (they aren’t actually happening), seokmin is sad :(

word count: ~2.2k

summary: Seokmin is a bright person, full of love, especially for you - but it proves to be a little too overwhelming for him to handle.

Author’s note: Hi Madi @heartkyeom​! This is your @svthub​ secret santa calling <3 I know it’s cliche to write a fic for a Christmas gift, but I really hope this will cater to your tastes (and keep you on your toes for the next part hehe)~ Happy reading and happy holidays my love🤗

“Kwan”, Seokmin nudges his friend’s shoulder with a grin but the latter ignores him. “Seungkwaaaan”, the older male whines again, making Seungkwan roll his eyes in annoyance. 

“BOO SEUNG-”, “Will you shut up?”, he snaps his head towards Seokmin, dramatically putting his phone down on the table. “But you were ignoring me!”, “You were about to tell me about Y/N’s latest instagram post, weren’t you?”, he deadpans and Seokmin is left frozen in his spot. 

“H-How did you know?”, he asks while rubbing his nape and Seungkwan merely shows him the screen of his phone, the post in question clearly visible. “Oh”, “Yes, Seok, you’re not the only one who’s friends with Y/N and follow their profile”, “Ahahah, yes you’re right”, “But you are the only one who has a crush on them and is a complete coward about it-”, “I shouldn’t have bothered you at all”, Seokmin grumbles, crossing his arms in front of his chest. 

“Listen, I know you’re very fond of them and literally adore them, but you won’t win anything by sitting here, liking and commenting on their posts or going out with them for coffee or food or whatever while you’re walking next to them with fucking heart eyes”.

Seokmin hates it when Seungkwan gets brutal with his words - but what he hates the most is that Seungkwan is right about everything. 

But how is he supposed to make a move on you when you’re always so confident and a literal ball of sunshine?

His heart does somersaults whenever you post a selfie or a full bodied pic, in the cutest outfits, with bright colors and statement jewelry - if Y2K aesthetic was a person, it would be you.

But it’s not just the bright colors you’re usually sporting -  it’s your smile and radiant eyes that make him melt on the spot, whether he’s looking at you through the screen of his phone or in real life, in flesh and body.

All of his worries are skyrocketing to the max when he spots you at the cafeteria cashier, paying for your milk boba and you turn around, happily waving to him. He feels like he just got showered in ice, frozen in his seat and about to enter a panic attack.

“Dude, calm down, you’ll make it worse if you don’t relax!”, Seungkwan whisper yells at him, “I can’t fucking calm down - oh God, they’re almost here, Kwan, I’ll fucking pass out-”

“Good morning besties!”, you greet the two men with a big smile, “How are you doing on this fine day?”, fine my ass, Seokmin thinks - but a bit louder than he was supposed to. “Seok? What’s wrong?”, you ask him with a worried tone and he looks at you, frozen and eyes wide open, not knowing what to say.

His fight-or-flight instincts kick in and he mutters a faint ‘sorry’, bolting out of his seat and away from the table, leaving you and Seungkwan utterly baffled.

“What just…?”, “Don’t mind him, Y/N, he’s just…hella stressed lately”, Seungkwan makes up a kinda believable excuse, hoping you won’t catch up on what is really going on. “I might text him later, I’m worried about him”, you sit down, a pout forming on your lips. “I know you are, I am too”, Seungkwan exhales, “But knowing Seok, he hates making his friends worry about him, even if it’s something serious”.

Even if his friend loves him like he's the most precious person in the universe?, you mutter to yourself, fiddling with the straw of your boba, completely missing the way Seungkwan's eyes widen in shock. You didn't even notice that you said it louder than you thought you did, sighing as you take a sip of your beverage, slouching back in your seat - your mind is still occupied with Seokmin’s bizarre behavior and you pray to whatever higher being exists in the universe that you’re not the reason he acted that way.

“Um, Y/N, I should get going, class starts soon and Soonyoung will probably start wailing if he’s left alone”, Seungkwan clears his throat, “Where are you headed to?”, “Me? Um, I think I’ll go back to the dorms, my classes are over for today”, you reply nonchalantly. “Okay then”, the blond man gets up, “I’ll catch you later then. Oh, and cheer up a bit, everything’s gonna be okay!”, he says before sprinting away to make it in time for his class.

“Everything’s gonna be okay, huh…”, you mutter and leave the cafeteria, clutching the milk tea in your hand as you make your way back to your dorms, the taste of the beverage not feeling as sweet as it was a few moments ago.

Seokmin wants to disappear from the face of Earth after what happened today. 

He feels like the biggest idiotic asshole in the universe and the worst of all? He made you sad AND worried about him.

“Ughhhh you stupid, stupid fucking idiot dumbass!”, he curses in the pillow he grabbed and pushed on his face, practically screaming and kicking his feet (not in the cutesy way), all while his roommates are worriedly watching him behind the half open door of his bedroom.

“Do you think we should step in?”, Mingyu asks with an upset expression. “I would say no, but given the current situation and how he has been acting today, I guess we don’t really have any other choice”, Joshua sighs. 

“Um, I can hear you two”, Seokmin speaks with a defeated tone and his roommates shyly enter the room, awkwardly clearing their throats. “Aw come on, just speak”, he throws the pillow on his side, trying his best to sit up on the bed. “I’ll be honest with you, Seok, this isn't like you at all”, Joshua sits right next to his friend, “Can you at least tell us what’s going on?”. “What’s the point of telling you what’s wrong with me if I can’t solve it on my own?!”, Seokmin protests. “Are you fucking stupid? This is exactly why we’re here!”, Mingyu kneels in front of him. 

“Ew, Kim, kneeling? Really?”, “Shut up, Shua! Anyways, where was I? Oh, right”, the tall man picks up his train of thoughts, “What I’m trying to say is that we want you to tell us your troubles, because we’re your friends and we wanna help you”, “As much as I don’t want to admit it, Mingyu is right”, Joshua adds, his hand resting on Seokmin’s shoulder, making the man exhale in defeat.

“Okay fine, you won”, he shrugs, “I’m madly in love with Y/N but I don’t know how to confess to them because I’m a goddamn coward who has fucking heart eyes everytime I see them in person or one of their insta posts or whatever and I managed to make them upset today because I acted like a scaredy cat in front of them AND Seungkwan!”, he blurts out in one go, leaving his friends completely stunned.

“Well shit, dude”, Mingyu breaks the short-lived silence. “That’s all you have to say?!”, Seokmin asks with a baffled expression, “I literally spilled everything that has happened up until this morning!”, “Actually, I do have something to add”, Joshua chimes in, “Please do, I would love to hear your input”, “You’ve royally fucked up everything, Lee Seokmin”.

“Fuck you both”, he grumbles, falling back on the bed with a loud plop. “Hey, come on, buddy, it can’t be that terrible - nobody could ever hold a grudge against you, especially when you’re literally such a happy-go-lucky guy!”, Mingyu pats his back, “Besides, you could always text them back and explain yourself - you’re best friends with Y/N, so I doubt it’ll go that bad”. 

It’s as if a light bulb has lit up above Seokmin’s head and he grabs his phone, opening the chat he has with you, to see the familiar bouncing dots appear on his screen.

Y/N is texting…?, Seokmin notices and lets out a loud yell when he reads your message.

y/n <333: hey seok, sorry if i’m being nosy, but i wanted to check up on you…you seemed very upset earlier :(

“Why the hell are you yelling?!”, Mingyu whines, covering his ears, “Y/N texted me!”, Seokmin yells back in panic and the three men are instantly glued to the screen. “Are you seriously going to leave them on read?”, Joshua glares at his friend. “No, of course not! I’m just trying to think of a good answer”, “Oh my God, he’s so whipped”, “I fucking know, right?”, “Can you two shut the fuck up? Thanks”, Seokmin makes both of his friends stop simultaneously as he tries to type out a decent answer.

seokshine☀: hi y/n, sorry for earlier today :/ 

seokshine☀: i..didn’t want to worry you, just…some personal shit going on

“Well, at least you’re being honest…kinda”, Joshua mutters, which earns him a slap on the head from Mingyu, signaling him to stay quiet and just watch.

y/n <333: oh i see….

y/n <333: do you perhaps wanna talk about it? you know you can talk to me about anything

“Yeah, I fucking wish I could”, Seokmin scoffs, typing out his answer, his fingers calmly clicking on the screen, unlike the rest of his demeanor.

seokshine☀: it’s…kinda sensitive, i don’t feel very comfortable saying more rn :(

seokshine☀: sorry for that

Mingyu frowns as he reads the sent message, soothingly rubbing his friend’s back up and down. 

y/n <333: it’s okay! there’s no need to apologize, i won’t push you to do smth you don’t want to

“Fuck, stop being so nice to me”, Seokmin’s voice cracks, tears threatening to spill from his eyes. “Seokmin…”, Joshua looks at his friend, leaning closer to him.

y/n <333: um…i’ll go out with soonyoung tonight for ramen, do you wanna join us? it could lift your mood…

Tch….of course, that fucker, Seokmin scoffs, biting his lips out of frustration.

It’s not like he hated Soonyoung, not at all - on the contrary, Soonyoung is one of his closest friends. But the thought of you and him eating together, laughing and perhaps flirting (he knows how flirty Soonyoung can get when he’s in his comfort zone) makes him upset….and jealous.

“Uh oh…”, Mingyu grimaces and Joshua mirrors his expression, fully aware of how well you get along with Soonyoung - it was a very fine line, and one wrong reaction could blow up on Seokmin’s face. Badly.

seokshine☀: nah, i think i’ll stay home today

seokshine☀: don’t wanna be a party pooper today :”)

God, would he be one hell of a party pooper if he actually went.

y/n <333: aw :( 

y/n <333: if you wanna stay home, i’ll respect that

seokshine☀: ty for understanding me :’’)

y/n <333: don’t even mention it, that’s what friends are for <3

y/n <333: i will still miss you seok :(

Seokmin laughs dryly, tears now freely spilling from his eyes, staining his cheeks. He drops the phone on his bed, sobbing loudly, feeling lost and helpless. And it was all because he acted like a fool in front of you.

“Oh, buddy…”, Mingyu pouts and brings his friend in a warm hug, Seokmin’s head resting on his chest, as the brown haired man cries nonstop, “It’s okay, let it all out, we’re here now”.

Joshua silently stares at Mingyu, a puzzled expression on his face, as if he’s trying to ask what they should do to help their friend. But none of them have a good answer.

But maybe someone else does.

boo seungkwan: hey, dumbass

boo seungkwan: HEY

boo seungkwan: STOP LEAVING ME ON READ I KNOW YOU’RE ACTIVE

boo seungkwan: oh come on tiger bitch

tiger king: i’ll ignore the last word but now you have my attention

boo seungkwan: i hope so bcs things are serious this time

tiger king: how serious??

boo seungkwan: we must set up y/n with seok. asap

tiger king: okay i’m down! 

tiger king: why should we do that again?

boo seungkwan: oh my god you’re a fucking idiot

boo seungkwan: they’re in love with each other, you himbo!!

tiger king: and how was I supposed to know that??

boo seungkwan: seriously now? you haven’t noticed?

tiger king: uhhhhhh

tiger king: no? 

boo seungkwan: this is not going to end well…

tiger king: oh come on, kwan, i’m supposed to leave in ten! don’t wanna stand up y/n

boo seungkwan: wait - YOU’RE GOING OUT WITH Y/N??

tiger king: IT’S JUST RAMEN, STOP YELLING AT ME

tiger king: besides, it could be a good chance to get some extra intel yk?

boo seungkwan: wow, look at you putting your brain to good use for once

tiger king: i can put other parts of me to good use as well ;)

boo seungkwan: you’re gross

boo seungkwan: just…try to be discreet and not give away anything, okay?

tiger king: aye aye sir

Seungkwan closes his phone, letting out a breath he wasn’t aware he was holding, holding the device on his chest.

“I hope they won’t be mad at me”.

#svthub #dk fluff #dk angst #dk crack #dokyeom fluff #dokyeom angst #dokyeom crack #seokmin fluff #seokmin angst #seokmin crack #svt dk #svt dokyeom #lee seokmin #svt fluff #svt angst #svt crack #seventeen fluff #seventeen angst #seventeen crack #seventeen

[faithintheunknownsblog]

A/n: Imma be completely honest idk where some of these came from lmfao

Integra Head Canons

- Integra is a bisexual but is more attracted to women than men, you aren’t going to change my mind

- Even if it is only being friends, it will take a long time before Integra will let you into her heart because she’s scared to lose more people in her life

- You know you and Integra are close when she lets you have one of her cigars

- And you’re the closest with her when she shares one with you

- I feel like Integra is a bit of a germaphobe, I have nothing to base this on, I just think she is and that’s why her sharing a cigar with you is a big deal

- Integra takes long hot showers because she spends the first half of it just silently crying, then when she’s finally done crying she regains her composure and actually showers. It’s the only place she is able to cry without ending up getting disturbed

- Integra definitely has a bunch of hair care and skin products

- Integra isn’t big on pda (public displays of attention) that’s why she goes all out when you two are alone/not around with people who you two are constantly around.

- Integra loves to listen to classical music because it fills the quietness of the mansion, and if you two are really close she will waltz around the room with you

- You best bet dates with her are going to be extravagant; I’m talking candlelight dinners in fancy secluded gardens with live music

- Integra loves cuddling, that is why she still slept with her childhood teddy bear before she shared her bed with you.

- Once you two are together she no longer needs her teddy bear but she of course keeps it though, it just goes in the safe in her closet now.

- Yes, the teddy bear goes in the safe where she keeps some of her weapons and the most expensive things she owns because that’s how much that teddy bear means to her

- Integra is up at 5 am, everyday and she drinks pricey black coffee with only two sugar cubes

- Integra is an expensive woman with expensive taste; eating at the most expensive restaurants there are, getting top grade food that you can’t just buy from your local grocery stores. No she has personal suppliers and she only hires the best chefs to cook in the Hellsing’s kitchen

- Also clothes are always individually tailored to perfectly fit

- Integra hates reading in her free time, she has to read a shit ton of paperwork at work. She definitely isn’t going to read for fun

- Unless it’s reading bedtime stories to your kid(s)

- Eyup, Integra will take in your kids as if she birthed them herself. She isn’t exactly the greatest mom in the world (lord only knows how many times she has asked you how she should respond to a situation) but she tries her best and that’s what matters.

- She has issues with how to deal with them crying because she has always held back her emotions, and she doesn’t always know what to discipline them for or how to discipline them in a correct manner

- Integra does and doesn’t want to spoil your children… It’s like an internal conflict because she wants to give them everything but she also doesn’t want them to turn into spoiled brats that have everything handed to them on a silver platter.

- And Heaven FORBID she finds out someone says something disrespectful about your family, you’re lucky that you know how to calm Integra down because if you didn’t it’d be a bloodbath

There are plenty more I just can’t think of currently, but Integra is the perfect gentleman

#hellsing fanfiction #hellsing ultimate #hellsing #hellsing fandom #hellsing x reader #sir integra fairbrook wingates hellsing #sir integra x reader #integra #integra hellsing #sir integra #hellsing organization #hellsing ova

[likecastle]

Ronance Femslash February - “number”

Thank you, @annieofhearts, for today’s prompt: “number”. I have to admit, I kind of don’t know where this one came from--it’s only vaguely a response to this prompt, and it’s kind of blink-and-you’ll-miss-it Ronance, but once the idea got hold of me, I couldn’t do anything else. Sorry it’s probably not quite what you were expecting, but please know I still really appreciate the prompt and had fun with this! (And you can always send in another prompt to give me a chance to redeem myself!)

I’m accepting Ronance prompts all month for Femslash February. Don’t be shy! You can find previous prompts I’ve filled here.

Putting part of this behind a cut because it got a long.

“I can’t do it,” Robin whines, sprawling hopelessly onto Steve’s couch. “I can’t go on another terrible blind date with some weirdo who insists on talking about her raw foot diet the entire night.”

“Maybe this time it’ll be different,” Steve says from the kitchen, as he sprinkles salt onto the popcorn he’s making.

Robin raises her head from the couch cushions to give him a baleful stare across the living room. “D’you remember the last one?”

Steve gives a whole-body flinch. “Nadya.”

“Nadya,” Robin agrees morosely. “And, like, sure, the sex was good, but she also stole multiple appliances from my kitchen.”

“I mean,” Steve says thoughtfully, “from what you told me, the sex was better than good.”

“I need a toaster, Steve! Bread is one of my primary food groups! And more importantly, I need to not wonder where my belongings have wandered off to after I hook up with someone. Like, what was she even doing with them? It’s not like my shitty microwave I’ve had since college was worth anything on the open market.”

“OK, OK,” Steve concedes, obviously trying to forestall a rant he’s heard plenty of times already. “So you’ve struck out a few times.”

“I know I’m not exactly a whiz with numbers, but I think it’s fair to say my recent dating history constitutes a unilateral failure by any metric. I don’t know.” She pulls one of the couch cushions over her head with a groan. “Maybe I just need to give up on the idea of meeting the perfect person and try being on my own for a while. Maybe I already had my shot at the one big love of my life and I blew it without even realizing it. Maybe it’s stupid to think there’s anybody out there who could possibly put up with me, or—”

“Hey,” Steve cuts in sternly, nudging Robin’s legs so he can sit down beside her on the couch. He lets her stretch out on top of him once he’s settled, giving her shin a reassuring pat. “You’re smart as hell and you have good taste in movies and you’re the only person I know who can always make me laugh, no matter how bad a mood I’m in. You’re gonna find someone who can see how great you are, and anyone who acts like they’re putting up with you can fuck right off, because you’re cool as shit, OK?”

“Yeah, I know,” Robin mutters.

“Look,” Steve says, “you don’t have to go on this date if you don’t want to. It’s totally fine it you want to take some time to just be by yourself. But, if you ask me—”

“Which I didn’t,” Robin points out.

“If you ask me,” Steve continues, louder this time, as if volume alone gives him the moral high ground, “you’re gonna start psyching yourself out if you don’t pick yourself up and get back out there. Like, yeah, maybe this date will suck, but if you start going into every date assuming that you’re doomed to fail, it’s gonna become a self-sufficient prophecy.”

Robin groans again, shoving at Steve with her foot hard enough that he sways onto the arm of the couch. “Ugh, I hate it when you’re right.”

“So what do you know about the girl this time?”

Robin sighs, heaving herself up so she can get at the popcorn Steve set down on the coffee table. “Not much. She works with Lois at the Reader, just moved here from somewhere back east a few months ago. Lo said she’s never really dated women—apparently she was in a relationship with this guy for, like, ever, but she’s known she wasn’t straight since high school, and now that she’s single again, she wants to, you know, test the waters.”

“You do have a weakness for emotionally unavailable bi girls,” Steve says, almost apologetically, but Robin can’t even contest it, since this is an observation she’s made herself many times before.

“The Curse of Vickie,” Robin admits with a sigh, though privately it’s not Vickie she regrets the most, but another one who got away. “Fuck it, why not? Who knows, maybe it’ll even be fun.”

“That’s the spirit!” Steve says, reaching over to steal the popcorn bowl from her.

A week later, when Robin walks into the bar and sees Nancy Wheeler, of all people, waiting anxiously in a booth, her first thought is that Steve isn’t going to believe her when she tells him how her blind date turned out. Her second thought, as Nancy spots her and breaks into a bewildered grin, is that maybe she’s finally going to break her streak.

#ronance #robin x nancy #robin/nancy #robin buckley #nancy wheeler #steve harrington #a wild steve appears! #ronance femslash february

[greenninjagal-blog]

Deja Vu pt 10

Here we go. Are you ready? 

If you’re new around here you can find the first chapter [here] or if you just want a refresher you can find the previous chapter [here!]

Summary: Sometimes communication is the hardest thing to do. Other times you have a Virgil in the area.

Word Count: 12296

Read on Ao3 || Hero Worship Series || My General Writing Masterlist

“What?” Remus says, blinking for a moment as he tries to recenter himself from where this conversation went. The world doesn’t start shaking like an earthquake, and there’s no air raid sirens, nor streets outside filled with screaming, but Virgil slams shut a cabinet drawer in the kitchen that makes the silverware rattle far louder than Remus thinks it should be able to and it feels exactly like the world the is about to fracture apart like an egg.

Janus drags a hand up to his hair and tugs on a fistfull like he usually does when he’s reached a step in his brilliant plots that he can’t work his way around. Like he was waiting for Remus to reach out and take his hand and demand they go out to get shitty fast food and not think about things. Like he was hoping that Remus would lean forward those last few inches and steal a kiss or four and make all the impossible things seem possible. Like he’d forgotten that Remus was clinically trained in the art of fighting destiny to make Janus’s goals reachable.

((Remus spent far too long daydreaming about that simple action to not have his heart twist and knot at the sight of it.))

“I swear I’m not making this up,” Janus says. “It’s like…really minor mind control, and it can only affect a few people at a time who meet her gaze, but the effect stabilizes over time. The longer she can get you to look at her the more control she has over your actions until you don’t even realize that the actions you’re taking aren’t yours.”

Like the movies, or comics. Puppetmaster style. One glance and your mind isn’t your own. Why does that sound more ridiculous than Remus who can exchange bodily harm for access to a billion and one futures that don’t suit his needs?

“I was going to tell you,” Janus says, rush, rush, rushing like he’s a waterfall of words and if he doesn’t get them all out before Remus takes another breath the whole world is going to blow up and really end. “In the coffee shop. But I thought that you would back out once you realized how big and bad everything could be, and so I chickened out because I—I can’t do this alone. None of this, Remus. I wouldn’t have even started without you. So instead I told myself I would tell you later. After.”

Remus remembers that moment. It feels like decades ago and seconds ago, old enough to be caught in the footnotes of an outdated textbook and recent enough that if Remus blinks he’ll be holding his iced coffee again crammed up against Janus in the middle of a crowd stupidly believing that the world is much bigger than him, Roman, and five words. He’d been thinking about kissing Janus, about the taste of his latte, about the way his lips slide into that perfect little smirk that drives Remus to want to do anything for him. Janus had been talking about owing him something, as if Janus’s attention, company, and time wasn’t the most valuable thing Remus had gotten from anyone in his entire life.

It’s insane. Remus feels like he’s going insane. 

Weren’t they supposed to be kissing? Isn’t that what happened in the stories when someone confesses their undying, totally painfully obvious affections? How did he mess this up as well?

“Are you saying Roman is being mind controlled?” Remus asks, rasps, chokes. His throat is dry all over again, and the floor is swaying under his feet. If he weren’t sitting down already he thinks that he’d be lying on the floor, in another puddle of blood for Virgil to hate cleaning up. ((Why, why, why, why does everything come back to fucking Roman?)) “Because if this is based just on him acting like an asshole I have bad news: he has….always been like that.” 

Always been acting like he’s the greatest thing ever, always been acting like he needs nothing and no one, always been acting like Remus isn’t worth the air he breathes and he’s just sick. Just sadistic. Just a sociopath with no regard for human life. 

Ha.

“I’m not making this up,” Janus repeats. “Remus, I wouldn’t lie about this. Not to you. You know I wouldn’t lie about this, right?”

“Janus,” Virgil says, like a warning, but Remus isn’t sure who it’s to or what it's about. 

“I’m not lying!”

The air is full and tense and heavy, like trying to breathe in liquid cement through a straw. Remus hasn’t had practical experience in that type of hell before, and he’s not appreciating this trial run either: there's a foreign aura  dancing around Janus, hovering over his head like an invisible swarm of insects waiting for the perfect moment to attack and Janus curls around himself, hands squeezing his own arms hard enough to bruise as he stares at Remus but also anywhere else.

He doesn’t look like the stranger with green eyes who caught his coin in the air and then bet with it, he doesn’t look like the Dee who confidently got himself killed a billion times trusting that Remus would redirect fate its—fucking—self to keep him alive, he doesn’t even look like the Janus who snipped and snapped at Virgil and still brought back Thai food that they would enjoy.

He doesn’t look like anyone Remus knows. Just a shadow, a shell, a fake— 

((Remus has seen him wear millions of faces, billions of smiles, and trillions of eye shades, but there had always been something at his core that was undeniably him that Remus could pick out even when he was dying. He searches through the man in front of him and comes up so horribly empty part of him feels dizzy.))

"I'm not making it up," Janus says, desperately. "I swear— " 

If Remus didn’t know better, didn’t know Dee like the back of his hand, didn’t know Dee like the color of his own blood, like the beat of his own heart, like the taste of powdered pills on his own tongue; if Remus didn’t know that Dee didn’t do hysteria, he would assume that Dee-who-is-Janus is being hysterical.

His fingers are curled into the couch cushions, his nails digging into the fabric so deeply that there’s no sign of his chipped nail polish. His mouth tastes like copper, like metal, like cyanide and arsenic and gravedirt and he wants to scream that Roman can’t be mind controlled, you can’t be right about this, Dee, Janus, please, please, don’t be right about this, I’ll do anything for you, just please take it back.

Janus isn’t breathing and Remus doesn’t feel like he is, either. There’s something in his throat and it feels like a boulder, and he’s staring at Janus who is his friend, who he loves, who is about to cry and Remus needs to stop it--

--by any means possible. His mouth opens--

“Don’t.”

Remus’s mouth is still closed, and he’s still there staring at Janus about to cry and Virgil’s voice is echoing in his head like a foghorn at a 3AM that didn’t happen.

Virgil who’s voice could do incredible things, Virgil who pushed back against Janus in all the ways that Remus never would, Virgil who just cleaned his blood out of the carpet and told Remus that he doesn’t have much left and he doesn’t know what the right thing to say is and time is passing and Remus is passing with it. There’s the flicker of power in the back of his mind, the easy-to-unlock latch that unfurls his spine and makes the worry and panic go away, the switch of his vision where he blinks and the consequences don’t stay so he can say whatever he wants and do whatever he doesn’t want to do and he can die a thousand times and still live and he can watch his friends and family get murdered a million times and still have a chance to save them. It’s there and if Remus thinks too hard he’ll feel like he’s back on the side of the highway with Janus’s blood dripping down his fist from a conversation he’d been too scared to have because whatever Remus loves he makes a fucking mess out of.

Remus chokes on his tongue, biting down on the traitorous thing before he gives Janus another reason to cry.

No, he can do this. He doesn’t need his power this time. 

He’s… He’s not scared. He doesn’t need a safety net for a conversation.

Virgil is staring at him, hard and daring and worried; a man glaring at the receding ocean waves knowing that a tsunami is coming and there’s no time to run and Remus is not going to make him clean blood out of the carpet again.

“Roman’s…” not mind controlled, not getting an easy way out, not the victim here. His lungs are aflame. The seconds are piling up like bricks around him, and Remus closes his eyes and forces himself to try again.  

Janus trusted him. Janus told him his name, his real one that belonged to the version of him that he never shows anyone with blue grey eyes and green scales and hands that were always cold. Janus trusted him with this too.

“I don’t think you’re making it up,” Remus says, strangled and dying but based on the shuddering breath Janus takes in it’s the right thing to say. “You don’t—You, Dee, Janus, You—don’t do that. Your mom or whoever can mind control people. I’m just saying that Roman— Roman doesn’t need to be mind controlled into… any of this. He’s not...He’s always been…”

Remus had been eight years old. Roman had been his everything.

Part of him wants to vomit, whether it be blood or words or the icy black feeling that seems to have wrapped around his rib cage and squeezed away the memory of warmth. He wants to vomit and expel every bad thought and feeling inside before his nerves come back and the jittery feeling shakes him into a molotov cocktail. He wants to tell them that Roman doesn’t get to have the easy explanation for every shitty thing he’s done, he doesn’t get to destroy Remus’s life over and over and over and then get to say “I was mind controlled, I didn’t mean it! Remus, you have to forgive me! I never would have driven you out of your own home if I had been in control of my own actions!”

Because Remus has spent nights lying awake thinking about the feel of his mother’s fingers in his mouth checking to make sure he swallowed his pills, thinking about the creak of the burgundy leather couch in his psychiatrist's office as he tells Remus it’s okay if the pills had been working, he doesn’t need to pretend otherwise, thinking about the scent of cleaning supplies as the Principal forces him to clean the graffiti sharpie insults off his own locker while Roman laughs with his friends ten feet away and about how he lied to himself when he thought drinking the bleach would hurt more than the current burning in his chest.

It’s not fucking fair.

“Calling it mind control is insulting,” Virgil says, like he knows that Remus is about to drown before Remus even realizes his own thoughts are crushing his lungs. The emo reporter comes storming back into the room with a fistful of silverware and napkins with a brand name of some fast food place that must be nearby and cheap. 

His entrance brings all the oxygen that Janus and him had lost in this strangled parody they were pretending could be called “communication”. Virgil nudges Janus towards the sofa, the end opposite of Remus, and Janus stumbles and sits like he’d never heard of the idea of sitting before; a broken animatronic too rusted to be of use anymore. Janus isn’t looking at him, and Remus can’t look away and the space between them is farther than the distance between the fucking planets.

“It’s more like advanced persuasion.” Virgil continues, because he’s not distracted by seven inches, three centimeters, I love you, My mom is a supervillain, and the worst timing that there ever was to have passed. “You can fight it if you know what to expect and she can’t make you kill someone unless you already had the premonition to commit a murder. Hypnosis is a better description.” 

He stops right in front of Remus, their legs almost touching because of how close the coffee table is behind him, and Virgil is holding a box with a fork on top and staring hard and fervently at him. “His hands aren’t clean, Remus. He hurt you and was encouraged to and it’s fucking sickening and awful.”

((Remus is twenty one years old. He wishes to every deity out there that anyone had ever believed in that someone would had told eight year old him this. He wishes that he met Virgil before. He wishes that Janus, Virgil, and him had already had this conversation. He wishes that he was normal.))

“Just because Witchall’s power is involved, doesn’t mean that he’s absolved of all wrong doing,” Virgil says, slow and steady and so, so very certain. “I’ll make sure of it myself.”

It feels like the inside of a casino, brimming and overflowing with people in sparkly outfits, shouting and laughing and yelling, the slot machines ringing and the chips shifting, the cards shuffling, and Janus holding a purple coin like a promise and Remus is not going to cry about it.

“Eat,” Virgil says, putting the box in his shaking hands. “This is the good stuff.”

Then he turns to the side and eyes Janus with a suspicious look. If Janus notices, which seems very unJanus like to have not noticed, he doesn’t react at all, merely clasping his hands together tightly and counting out robotically measured breaths, in a way that Remus doesn’t like seeing and likes listening to even less.

I did that. And it wouldn’t have happened if he had just looked into the future and found the right thing to say. It wouldn’t be happening if he had just—

“You too,” Virgil says, flicking the side of Janus’s arm and pretending like he doesn’t see Janus flinch anymore than he doesn’t see the strangely discolored patch on the carpet under their feet that smells like bleach. “I believe you, he believes you. The only one who is uncertain is you, Janus.”

Janus laughs the same way that he had when Roman had said Remus didn’t have a power. Disbelieving and condescending and startled, brimming with the usual confidence but making Remus's heart throb painfully in his chest. He thinks about holding Janus's hand, clenching their fingers together so tightly that he stops being able to tell which digit is his and which is Janus's and stops caring about it too and somewhere far away Roman blows up into a thousand pieces and not a single person cries about it.

But Remus can’t even twitch his own hand and Janus’s palms are occupied with trying to break all the bones in his own fingers seven inches away from him.

 “I’m not… I’m not lying.”

“You’re not lying,” Virgil repeats, solidifying it into existence as if it hadn’t already been a fact. 

“I believe you,” Remus adds to reinforce. Because he does. He does. He knows what those words can do, the type of magic they possess that even people without super abilities can wield, the way that a single phrase can haunt someone to the ends of the universe and back.

Remus has never been on this side before, but Janus is sitting there so incredibly desperate for a reassurance, so incredibly in need of someone to look at him, so incredibly wanting to hear the exact words that Remus grew up dismembering himself for a chance to hear. He’d wanted for someone to believe him for so long; Remus doesn't know why it never occurred to him that Janus might need to hear the same phrase from him. 

((Why? The voice in the back of his mind that he doesn't want to hear asks. Why was it so hard for Roman-Mom-thedoctors-thestudentstheteachershisfriends to say it? It’s so easy. Remus breathes, the sky is blue, he believes Janus.))

"Janus," Remus says, pausing when Janus jumps like someone electrocuted him. His eyes jump towards Remus, like a magnet, like a gunshot, like the world is ending and he wants Remus to be the last thing he ever sees and Remus swallows back the panic in his gut at the thought. "You are not a liar." 

He wants to open his arms. He wants to wrap Janus up in a hug and tell him that he actually thinks Janus is a really shitty liar and has a terrible poker face. He wants to breathe in that cardamom and shoe polish scent and tell him that Janus can tell a million lies and still not be a liar. 

"I've seen liars," Remus continues, hands twisting around the fast food container and squeezing. "Real liars who kept telling me I was making things up for attention. Who told me I was sick. Who played nice to my face and then purposely excluded me from everything. Who smiled politely when I talked but never listened and indulged me when everything good was happening for them then decided it wasn’t fun anymore when it stopped them from doing what they wanted and then I—" 

(( --topples to the ground, screaming, glass and silver sparkles shatter all around them like pretty little snowflakes, Mom and Dad come running and the screaming doesn’t stop because Remus is on top of him slamming the bloody base into Roman's face again and again and again and Remus, Remus, what is wrong with you?! REMUS GET OFF OF HIM! ROMAN CAN YOU HEAR ME SWEETHEART? I NEVER SHOULD HAVE HAD YOU-- ))

Remus shakes with his whole body, and he thinks of grey-blue eyes, the sharp twist of a smile, dragon wings and warm hands dragging him out of the rain and laughter, so much laughter in the face of five words that have scared Remus since the dawn of time and then he's dislodging the memory that never happened with several hundred instances that did. 

"I’ve seen liars," Remus repeats. "And Jan...you're the most honest person I know. If you say she can brainwash people…. then she can abso— fucking—lutely brainwash people.”

"I told people," Janus says softly, eyes wet and shiny and small. "I told so many people when— when she loosened her control enough that I could think— teachers, my friends, the maids and cooks and the police and no one would...they wouldn't….” He swallows hard. “They would tell my mother. And she would make sure I never talked to anyone again. Pulled me out of school to homeschool me, put bars on my window so I couldn’t sneak out, told the maids I had a contagious disease and couldn’t be in contact with anyone—"

Janus takes a deep shuddering breath. “Virgil was the first person who believed me. My first…real friend, and the first spark of hope I had in years.”

Remus sneaks a quick look at the reporter, who looks to be doing his best to pretend like Janus is a stranger standing a few feet away at the supermarket, speaking another language entirely into a phone. His lips are pressed together tightly, with the tips of his fangs threatening to cut up his bottom lip if he keeps staunchly refusing to look in the direction of Janus and acknowledge any type of feeling at all.

“How did you meet?”

A neutral question, Remus thinks. Or not. His heart is beating way too fast thinking about young Janus with bright eyes, young Janus with his mother’s hands digging into his shoulders in warning, young Janus being kept in the house away from anyone until he feels like a ghost in his own home, young Janus shaking apart, alone, lone, lonely without a single other person who is not family to talk to him for weeks…

Janus huffs out a short almost-a-laugh-almost-a-sob laugh and Virgil tries to scowl but he’s halfway into his own take out container, and preoccupied with the scent of tangy marinated chicken rising from inside.

“My mom,” Virgil says, plopping himself on the coffee table surface with his feet up on the sofa in the no-man’s-land between Remus and Janus, “worked as a maid for the Witchall residence for seven years. Single parent trying to raise a kid didn’t leave a lot of room for excess money so where she could save she did, you know? Brought me to work with her and as long as I wasn’t touching anything or doing anything it was okay. Witchall was always polite in front of my mother. My mother adored her.”

He spears a piece of mango and Remus gets the rest of the idea pretty quickly.

“I wasn’t allowed to talk to him,” Janus says quietly. “Literally. She told me to stop acknowledging he existed and after that I wasn’t able to see or hear him when he was in the same room as me.”

“It was really fucked up,” Virgil adds. “If I hadn’t known what either of them could do I would have been really messed up for the rest of my life— no don’t give me that look, Jay. I’m not messed up! I choose to live like this!”

“Cindy introduced herself to me because despite having lived here for a whole year she has never gotten the chance to meet you,” Janus counters with less than half the usual snark that he has.

“Who the fuck is Cindy?”

“Time out,” Remus calls, “You knew?”

Remus did not mean for it to come out slightly bent, slightly broken, slightly like he’s got something in his throat and it's not a piece of shrimp that’s painfully scraping through his esophagus in a way that would totally make sense for him to be choked up over. He clears his throat and does not look at either of them and it doesn’t mean a thing because Virgil can probably hear the painful swallow and the stuttering beat of his heart.

Virgil nods without any judgment. “Yeah. I, uh, my power manifested pretty early on in my life. I wasn’t born with it, but I was one or two when silence became a mythical idea, and my parents couldn’t understand why I was unable to go to sleep because I was hearing the buzzing of the next door neighbors’ fridge. I don’t think my dad ever figured it out; something must have tipped my mom off and they got into a fight and my dad raised his hand towards me… But yeah my mom got me out of there pretty quick… what was I saying? Oh, yeah, I’ve been able to hear through walls since I was really young. I tried telling my mom something was wrong with the Witchalls, but it was the best job she’d had with the best hours and it provided for me so she told me to pretend like it wasn’t happening.”

Virgil tilts his head with a bit of a rueful smile on his face that Remus almost believes is true. If it weren’t for the death grip on his fork, if it weren’t for the darkness in his eyes, if it weren’t for the way his body has gone still. 

“It was a good job; it paid well,” Virgil says, too cheery to actually mean it. “If you have enough money, people are willing to look away from anything. Keep quiet… don’t cause noise… or you’ll be next in the line of fire.

“So yeah,” Virgil stuffs a piece of chicken in his mouth. “I knew what Witchall was doing to Janus. I knew that he physically couldn’t see me.”

“He left me notes,” Janus whispers.

“She couldn’t exactly demand he stop being able to read,” Virgil explains. “And for a long time she didn’t realize that he was getting notes, or that I was sending them.”

“Burn after reading.” Janus loosens slightly more, not-quite relaxing but something close. His fingernails wrap around the edge of his food container and finally pops it open to reveal some type of spicy red curry and Remus becomes acutely aware he’s the only one not eating and he can’t actually remember the last time he ate. “I paid twenty bucks to a pothead at my prestigious school to give me his lighter and then I kept it hidden under the false floorboard in my room, just to prove I could have something she didn’t know about. Then the letters started and it came in handy…” He rubs his sleeve over his cheeks, wiping away the tears and taking a deep breath. “She, ah, she caught me trying to burn one. She made me tell her who they were from and then…she fired his mom. Immediately.”

Remus glances at Virgil who does the equivalent of looking like a chipmunk with too much food in its mouth. He frantically swallows multiple times, almost choking (such a bad way to go), almost breathing in chicken (a slightly more interesting way to go).

“It wasn’t that bad!” He says. “Uh, well, it was for a bit. But uh, I got older and mom was more busy with her two jobs so she wasn’t around as much. Public school put me on the radar of some computer guys, and then some hackers…and well, have you seen what the internet can do? She’s beautiful. Anyone can get any information in a matter of seconds, and once it's posted it's so hard to erase completely. And it can be anonymous. No more looking away, no more keeping quiet because anyone who sees it won’t know it’s me posting.” 

He sounds reverent, the disciple of a goddess so real that kinda sorta makes Remus want to convert. The internet had always been just another tool to him, just something that was there, sometimes he even got news articles on his phone or looked up directions to the nearest fast food place when they were off driving or watched a few episodes of a mindless TV show from a pirated site. Virgil has a slight grin on his face when he talks about it with a wonder on his face, awed and happy in the way that Remus is about Janus.

Virgil taps his fingers along his container, the grin on his face slipping away as quickly as it had come.

“Uh, shouldn’t have known,” he corrects himself, poking at his food. “They shouldn’t have known it was me posting.”

He takes a deep breath and when he looks back up it's directly at Remus, eyes dark and haunted. “Turns out with enough money you can hire people to do anything she wants, no questions asked. Have you ever been kidnapped?”

((Remus has. In a future that didn’t happen in the blurry area between Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Ohio there had been a friendly guy with a too wide smile who liked picking up eighteen year old hitchhikers and leaving their corpses on the side of the interstates. But it’s not that important.))

“She hired some people to find out who was posting bad things about her and then she hired more people to kidnap me from my own apartment,” Virgil says. “My mom wasn’t home. They told me if I screamed they would kill anyone who came to help. And then they dragged me all the way back to the mansion of hell from the nightmare dimension and when I wouldn’t fall for her sith lord evil mind tricks she…”

He trails off. Remus fills in the blanks a million different ways and wonders if Virgil realizes that the fact he’s alive, able to move and talk and breathe without a machine means he outwitted hundreds of younger Remus’s. 

The apartment feels silent and empty without any conversation. Not even the fridge in the kitchen makes a noise; if Remus didn’t know better he would have thought that he somehow fell directly back into the white nothingness that Patton conjured when he took away Remus’s power. Virgil stares at his food, and Janus watches the wall across the room as if it might start moving when he looked away. Remus isn’t sure what to say or do or think so he doesn’t.

“She ordered me to kill him,” Janus says finally. “And I wanted to make her happy. By any means possible.”

Remus doesn’t dare close his eyes, doesn’t dare think about younger Janus fighting, fighting, fighting against a hopeless situation, against those damning set of words. He doesn’t consider how Janus might have been the same age as Remus was when he took a snowglobe to Roman’s head and didn’t stop swinging because Roman cut the last strings of Remus’s sanity, or about the feel of blood on his hands, the sick twist of his insides when he realizes that there’s no way out, the mounting understanding that everything is wrong and won’t ever be right again because someone you trusted is just a monster on the inside and somehow you’re about to pay the price for it— 

“Yeah, well, it didn’t work very well,” Virgil continues, breezily waving to his living, breathing, exceptionally attractive self. “He took a sonic blast straight to the face, and it knocked him out. Then I dragged his ass out of there, held him hostage for a few months with about twenty rolls of duct tape and my personal charm until I could reteach him how to think for himself.” He paused, pointing at Remus’s take out container with his fork. “If you don’t want that, I’ll put it in my fridge and make you something else. Like jello. Or ramen. Or more jello.”

“Why do you even have a stove if all you consume is jello and ramen?” Janus asks like a drowning man lunges for a life preserver.

“Why do you wear three piece suits even though they cost way too much and you ruin them anyway?”

“Not all of us can live in our emo phase for our entire lives, Virgil,” Janus says with just enough of an eye movement to imply an eye roll, as if he wasn’t sitting nice and pretty in ripped a hard rock band tee, a choker, and black combat boots with metal spikes. Remus hadn’t seen him in anything close to this type of dress before— not even one those few times that they mixed up bags and Janus had worn of Remus’s shirts for the day when they were just driving— but fuck Remus if he didn’t pull it off just as well.

“And not all of us have stoves that work, Janus,” Virgil says. “The landlord is dragging his feet about getting someone to fix it so I’m working around it for another three days before I send him a very lovely recording of his affair, and offer to forward it to his wife’s work computer if he doesn’t get it fixed for me immediately.”

“If you have the time to dig up his affair, then why don’t you just find someone to come fix the stove yourself?”

“Will you stop critiquing everything I do?” Virgil snaps out nudging Janus with his foot. “You don’t see me telling you all the better ways there were to relieve all of your mom’s benefactors of their wealth and means.”

Janus blinks and then twitches in his seat to face Remus, his knee half up on the sofa. “Please Remus, ask me what Virgil and I have been talking about for the past two days even when I very clearly have not been wanting to talk about it.”

“That’s completely not necessary—” Virgil starts.

“Oh no, I believe it is completely necessary—”

There’s a lot more to the story, Remus thinks. Virgil didn’t mention the part where he and Janus were in a relationship, where Virgil was Janus’s partner before Remus even knew what a casino was, where there was an argument of some kind, a break, and Janus was left desperate enough by himself to lunge for a cash box in front of a stranger he just met like it wasn’t a suicide. There are bits and pieces to the story that make Remus’s skin itch, his lungs burn, his lips dry out. There’s a history so strong between Janus and Virgil that Remus’s stupid little “I love you” seems even stupider than he could imagine.

What is a few heists compared to an entire childhood? What is Remus compared to Virgil? 

But Janus is looking at him, not at Virgil. His gaze is hesitant and worried with the wispy edges of panic trailing in his cloudy sky eyes like phantoms and Remus is counting, counting, counting those few inches between them again as if Virgil’s feet weren’t between them at all.

Virgil is also looking at him, and for a split second Virgil’s dark mysterious eyes flick back to his own feet, raised on his own couch, and he jerks back and drops them to the floor as if he was embarrassed suddenly.

“I’m not saying your ways weren’t effective, or eye catching! You certainly made a fucking statement when you swooped down from the sky and crashed the ceremony and made The Prince choke on his words. All I’m saying is that it would be easier— did you just fucking snort?” Virgil says, looking at Remus as if he’s particularly offended.

“Janus has a rare disease, didn’t you know?” Remus says. “We can’t do anything the easy way or all his organs will explode from the lack of drama.”

There’s a beat and then Virgil laughs, a light buzzing in the air that makes the room hazy for a moment before he gets himself back under control. 

“Slander! Libel! How dare you call me dramatic!” Janus says, wounded. “All of my actions are completely reasonable! Logical even! Rational!”

((There are trillions of bad endings that Janus could get; Remus has seen most of them. He can’t help glancing at Virgil and wondering if this might be what a good ending would be like for once. He can’t help wondering if he would mind so much if he still gets to see Janus smile once or twice.

Remus reaches out and picks up his take out container, and thinks that he doesn’t quite mind not knowing the rest of the story’s details.))

“Hey, Snakes and Ladders,” Remus says, tilting his head to catch Janus’s gaze before it goes back to his take out. “I can see the future, you don’t tell lies. When we figure out what’s wrong with Virgil, we can start a fucked up club. I’m thinking of calling it “Lords of Being Fucked Over By Everyone Else” but I’ll take other suggestions.”

“Hey! There’s nothing wrong with me,” Virgil says defensively.

“I can change that,” Remus says at the same time as Janus lets out a weak, “Liar.”

He sounds more like himself, like the bits and edges are melding back together. Remus can’t help the relief that swarms through him, any more than he can keep away the swell of affection at the sight of stir fried broccoli and beef in his container. 

“But you’re right,” Janus says, letting out a breath he didn’t seem to realize he was holding. He swallows some of his curry before continuing as if he needs a breath before he rips off a bandaid. “We should have a name, going forward. If you want to go forward.”

Remus thinks about reaching out, holding his hand, rubbing a thumb over his knuckles, memorizing each of the muscles and veins and he says, “Wherever you go, I’m following.”

((Remus is twenty one years old, but he thinks that he means it with all of his soul, speaking a fact of the universe into being right along with the sun rises, the earth spins, wherever you go I’m following you.))

Janus almost smiles. Remus almost lunges across the sofa to kiss him.

Virgil lets out a self-amused hum, picking out some rice from his container. He taps his foot on the ground a few times, lounging comfortably on the table the way Remus imagines he doesn’t get many reasons to. “I hope you didn’t have any ideas already.”

“Why not?” ((Which Remus believes is Janus-ese for “I have exactly seven picked out already.”))

“Because you already have names?” Virgil says, like this is common knowledge that everyone should be aware of. He pats around his body and then blindly at the table for something before clicking his tongue and holding a hand out. Janus frowns at the offending limb, but after another second he reaches into his back pocket (dark skinny jeans that Remus thinks belong to Virgil because he would absolutely have remembered Janus wearing that himself), unlocks his phone, and then hands it over.

Virgil sticks his fork in his mouth, sets his container on a pile of forgotten scrap papers and napkins, and uses both hands to type and swipe on the screen for a minute, searching for something with a single minded focus that makes Remus jealous for all of five heartbeats before he remembers there’s food in front of him.

Virgil turns the phone back around to show them some online chat with dozens of users. Remus leans forward to get a better look at the text on the screen despite the protests of his ribs, guts, and muscles. 

“‘Dread Assembly’’” Janus reads off. “‘Spite Order’, ‘Brotherhood of Vengeance’— I have met and fought twelve year olds with better naming capabilities.”

“Who are all these people?” Remus asks. “Why do they care?”

“Fans,” Virgil says, relinquishing the phone into Janus’s capable hands. “Or well, most of them are. Some of them are pretty neutral on their stances, and there’s a few against you guys that want to weigh in. I keep them updated on your exploits since I noticed the trend of the benefactors of the Witchall campaign getting systematically financially crippled, and so those that know how to read know everything I knew about you guys up to two days ago. They’ve been asking for updates ever since Janus name dropped me on live TV. I got so many followers yesterday….” He shrugs. “The good news is that this website is really good at protecting the community and so they’ve been fending off the FBE and associated law enforcement that are trying to shut this down. Bad news is that it’s probably only going to work for another like… three days? Four? I’ve already been trying to hook up with some coders that can build me another secret secure site, but vetting has been taking time.”

“Vetting?”

“Yeah, like making sure they didn’t sell their usernames to the FBE so I’m not walking into a trap,” Virgil leans back, nearly knocking over an abandoned coffee mug. “Witchall has been after me for a while now, and I’m not about to slip up doing stupid shit no matter how much Janus makes me want to.”

“I resent that,” Janus comments, although from the way he’s scrolling through his phone, he most likely didn’t actually hear what Virgil said but likes the idea of arguing it anyway. Remus remembers suddenly, being at a diner with his feet up on the opposing couch and thinking about kissing Janus over a plate of french toast just to get his attention back for a few more seconds.

“‘Erinyes,’” Janus says, finally. “The Furies. From Greek Mythology. Goddesses of vengeance who punished men for their crimes. That's who they want to name us after? I think I liked the Morari more. More gender neutral and what not. Also I’m offended; they are supposed to be the ugliest of women—am I that bad looking?”

Virgil rolls his eyes so hard Remus is impressed they don’t get stuck. “You had too much of a Percy Jackson phase to not be enjoying this name. You are the deity of vengeance, Janus. The champion of victims, the person who makes sure those who think they are untouchable get absolutely owned.“

Janus does that expression of his in which he is smiling but tries to hide it (which he calls his poker face), so Remus believes that Virgil managed to convince him to stick with the name. Honestly, he doesn’t know much Greek Mythology—the myth of Cassandra and her tragic end had hit him like a wrecking ball and caught him somewhere between obsession and terror that left him with more anxiety than was possible to hide, and when his psychiatrist had caught wind of what had him so wound up the man had told his mother and his mother had banned Greek Mythology from the house.

Roman had gotten furious at Remus for it, if Remus remembered correctly. The local community theater had been putting on Ajax, and Roman had scored the role of Agemenmon, and there had been at least three days of arguing between them in order for Roman to practice his lines while Remus was home.

Roman didn’t talk to him directly for a week after that.

So admittedly he doesn’t care much for the name, but he’s not against it, and if Janus likes it then Remus will live with it too. That’s enough for him.

“Also another point in its favor,” Virgil says. “Homer, aka probably the most well known Greek Writer Guy for all things Ancient Greek according to people who are neither Greek nor had an obsession with Greek Mythology, never specified a number of Furies, so potentially as you get allies you don’t have to change the name. You can build an interconnected web of sections of people to fight this fight and all of you can be called Erinyes. You can’t do that with the Moirai.”

“I could,” Janus says.

“Erinyes also have snake weapons and icons, and that’s just free real estate to show off.”

Janus scowls. “Shut up.” He clicks off his phone, shoving it back in his pocket before he goes back to eating his Thai food, and Virgil leans back again looking satisfied with whatever rate that Janus’s heart is beating at and Remus does not think about how much he would like to see either of their smiles pointed at him. 

“I would never trust that many people,” Janus says after another minute, his eyes darting towards Remus for a second. “A team name like this needs to be more. You saw with that Firespark child—”

“Flamestrike,” Virgil says.

“—names are easy to hide behind, distance yourself from who you are as a person. He called himself a hero and decided that he could make life and death calls. I don’t want to have dozens of people running around assuming that just because they call themselves Erinyes that they can deal out justice as they see fit.”

“Only as you seem fit, then?” Virgil asks in a way that is so innocent that it's not innocent at all. Janus narrows his eyes at him, his lips curling into a displeased frown.

“Nah,” Remus cuts in loosely, twirling his fork in the air. “I get a say, too. Group decisions and all that. It’s basically a democracy in our club. Do you want to join? Our application process is really easy to fill out.”

“Wait, what?” Virgil says.

“Yeah,” Remus says. “All we need is two thousand dollars, the name you want to be called, and a picture of you in a cat girl costume, or a sexy french maid costume, whichever you have in your closet right now, you weeb.”

Virgil’s whole face blushes with a red that could either be embarrassment or anger or panic and his box of food gets crushed between his hands spitting out fried rice and some suspiciously spicy looking sauce onto the bleached rug below, but Janus’s laugh tumbles out of him like a freefall. Remus’s entire stomach swoops with far too much elation; it’s like jumping off a skyscraper, with the only sound he can hear being Janus’s wonderful, golden laugh as gravity tugs him down in an iron grip, except that there’s never any contact with the ground (or a windshield, with the glass slicing through his neck again and again and again—). It’s an amazing feeling. Remus wants to say something more, something else, something that keeps him smiling forever.

“People would do it!” Virgil splutters. “Not me, but people out there would do that if you said that was all it took! FBE people would do it, if that were all it took.”

“I don’t want to see Janus’s mom in a cat girl costume.” Remus says and immediately regrets ever being born when Janus’s laughter chokes off, and Virgil’s frown deepens. He’s mentally kicking himself in the dick by the time that Janus has his breath back and is looking down at his food again like it’s not actually edible as much as a prop of something else to focus on that’s not them.

“She wouldn’t,” Virgil says, to further bring the mood back to the reality that Dragana Witchall is a bitch and the only good thing she ever did was birth Janus. “But she might make one of her subordinates do it. Not Princeps, but like… I don’t know, Zeal?”

“Zeal?” Remus echoes.

“Oh,” Virgil says. “The Prince’s kinda-secret-but-not-really partner. You fought him a little bit at the thing— glasses, polo, curly blond hair and freckles?”

Remus remembers a toothy smile, a pleasant voice amidst the chaos, a hand raised towards someone who was protecting others and a white light that spelled death and danger and the name “Patton” on his tongue like a curse.

“His real name is Patton Hart,” Virgil continues. “I checked him out while we were waiting for you to wake up. Thanks to the name you gave us, which I'm not going to ask about how you knew, it really wasn't all that hard afterwards to get a last name. Some guy on Reddit actually dumped his phone number online so I’m sure he’s not having a good time right now. There’s not much on him. He made the honor roll at his school from middle school to sophomore year, and then his grades totally crashed, which meant that he got kicked from all his school clubs— which meant every club in existence. Seriously. I got second hand anxiety reading the online yearbook club lists. But other than that… nothing. He has two parents who live in Virginia with their two pet cats Snowball and Momo. No incidents that I could see that would have drawn your mom to him, Jay.”

Janus frowns. “What’s his power?”

“Taking away others’,” Remus says, clipped. “ French Maid costumes don’t seem like his style. He dresses too much like a youth pastor and it's weird. Do you think that he likes to be called Daddy?”

Janus snorts into his take out box. Virgil grimaces, but then shakes his head and blinks.

“Wait, did you say ‘takes away powers’?”

Remus tilts his head just enough for his neck to screech in agony and pretends like he doesn’t hear the scream of all those people that had been hiding behind that wind barrier, like he doesn’t see the silhouette of Janus falling right out of the sky, like he doesn’t breathe in for a moment and taste the white nothingness of whatever that white light had done to his future vision.

“Yeah,” Remus says in his best approximation of everything-is-fine. “Takes away.”

Virgil frowns. “Huh.” He chews on a piece of chicken. “Mostly I’ve been seeing him shadowing The Prince around. I had guessed that he was a partner on some level to him because he was always in the background of the photos taken. My theory was that he could boost powers. But I guess taking them away is a much more effective measure for making sure The Prince never loses.”

“Okay, yeah, then what the hell is Roman’s power?” Remus asked and then realized a second later that maybe he didn’t actually want to know the answer to that. Surely out of all of them, Remus should have been the one to know. He grew up with Roman; didn’t that suggest that he should have noticed something power-like? Shouldn’t it have been as obvious as Remus’s future sight?

Except that he didn’t know. Hadn’t known. Because Roman never told him. Because Roman let him grow up thinking he was crazy. Because Roman never cared about him, never trusted him, and Remus had given everything for him, but now he was maybe-brainwashed and that everything he had given meant nothing.

Janus has that look in his eye that says he wants to know (and use and manipulate and scheme) and Virgil shifts in his seat with the urge to talk, and Remus braces himself for the worst.

“It’s pretty hit or miss on if siblings will even get powers; One kid can trigger nuclear bombs when they sneeze and the other can have absolutely nothing at all. But generally if both siblings have powers, those powers are connected,” Virgil says, twirling his fork in the air with the confidence of the genetic scientist that he was not. Remus is still impressed. “There’s a few studies on it, but most of it is unconfirmed and unproven since like…superpowers are a new phenomenon and ethics is a thing and if people can explain away something they will—which yeah I’m sure you are already super aware of, sorry. I was going to write a few essays on it myself, but the combination of being kidnapped and hunted for sport and teaching Janus how to be a real boy forced me to drop it. I still have some PDF prints of the stuff published if you’re interested in the real science of it. Thank the deities that be for Sci Hub—where was I going with this?”

“You think Roman and I have connected powers,” Remus clarified around the stranglehold on his throat that feels like his brother, a self declared superhero’s hands. “What like… he sees the future too?”

That had been a theory between him and Janus. They had been in their hotel room, practically lying side by side with their phones between them and newspapers dating back months about The Prince’s actions when they set up their plan for Janus’s TV debut: it had been sickeningly terrible realization back then when he had been staring at the front page new articles plastered with The Prince’s face and wondering how he avoided expelling blood from every orifice. Now know that it’s Roman’s stupid face under that mask….

Remus stabs a piece of pineapple particularly hard and does not think about stabbing Roman in the face.

“No?” Virgil says, like he can’t possibly imagine how Remus came to that conclusion. “He controls probability.”

Remus stares at him as Virgil chases after a clump of fried rice in his carton without actually explaining what that could possibly mean. Janus, at least, is wearing a similar expression: something confused and prideful, desperately not understanding but not willing to ask. He instead clears his throat and places his box on the table next to Virgil’s side which causes Virgil to glance up.

“What?” 

“Probability?” Janus repeats innocently. “Dice rolls? Should I ask him to flip a coin next time we meet?”

Virgil chews on the edge of his fork lightly, the sides of his fangs scraping the metal gently, and then drops it into his carton and places it on the table behind him. He looks around the mess and then jumps to his feet, nearly trips over Remus’s fragile legs, and scurries to the mess of papers and pens and textbooks on the counter. He gathers a handful of pens and dumps them on the sofa cushion between the three of them.

Janus grimaces like Virgil is a cat that just brought him a dead mouse, but Virgil doesn’t react. He picks up three of the pens (a red ball point, a black sharpie that’s missing a cap and a yellow highlighter) and keeps them in his hand.

“Both of you pick a writing utensil,” Virgil says motioning to the ones on the table.

Janus and Remus share a look but in the end Remus lunges forward and swipes the green gel pen and Janus gingerly picks up a pencil with a bitten off eraser holding it between his fingers at a distance.

“Okay, this is how you see the future, Remus,” Virgil says. “The quote-unquote correct way. No matter how many times you look, the both of you will pick those same writing utensils, unless you interact in a way that changes that, like telling Janus, for example, that the pencil is dipped in poison.”

“Ha,” Janus says in a very deadpan. 

“But!” Virgil continues, motioning for them to hand the pen and pencil and he places them back on the sofa how they were before. “The Prince… uh your brother, Remus, he controls the probability of things happening. So, uh, when he uses his powers he…” Virgil picks up all the pens on the table and he replaces them with the ones from his own hand. “...switches them out.

“So now your only options are the ones newly placed in front of you. That’s why Remus doesn’t see what’s coming: Roman physically changes what is happening after he’s seen what it is.”

Janus stares at the new options intently.

Remus rocks back on his seat picking at a piece of broccoli stuck in his back teeth. “I don’t get it. Sometimes I can see what he’s doing and sometimes his stuff doesn’t work at all. What about that?”

Virgil twirls the pencil in his hand. “Well I assume that instead of pens, he’s manipulating number probabilities. Like percentages? Where 100 percent is a guarantee that something will happen and 0 percent is a guarantee that thing won’t happen. So if there’s say…a 2 percent chance Janus’ll launch across a stage and punch The Prince in the face, he switches that probability to a 98 percent Janus will launch across the stage and deck him in the face and successfully makes him look like a fucking unhinged superpowered supervillain on live TV. Congratulations.”

Janus doesn’t actually sneer but it’s a close thing.

Virgil turns to Remus and continues, “That’s why sometimes things still run the way you expect. Sometimes that 2 percent chance still beats out the 98. When The Prince had you pinned on the ground and told you it was over—remember that? You probably felt a swell of helplessness or sudden loss of will to fight, right?”

“You’re Done, Remus.” Roman had yelled hands around Remus’s throat, squeeze, squeeze, squeezing. “Time to give up.”

Remus pretends like he doesn’t taste blood in his mouth and Virgil at least is polite enough not to mention how his heart is hammering in his chest, slamming against his ribcage until those bones give in and break and all their hard work of keeping him alive these past few days becomes meaningless.

“Yeah,” Remus says.

“Yeah,” Virgil echoes. “He totally did that to you. And you still beat the odds and threw him off. It was amazing! I thought you both were done for; seriously I almost stopped the stream so no one would have to see it, but then you launched him—”

Janus clears his throat pointedly. “You’re fanboying again.”

“And you’re jealous that you aren’t nearly as cool as he is,” Virgil shoots back without hesitation, fanged grin all the way. Remus isn’t sure what the feeling in his stomach is, but it's so warm he thinks he might be burning from the inside. 

Janus throws a napkin at Virgil who throws a pen back, and their voices are prickly but nice. Janus’s tongue sticks out of his mouth in a childish taunt that Remus has never seen him do, and Virgil fumbles over his food making a yelp as he nearly knocks their dinner on the ground and they both seem… happy. Content. 

Good. A good ending. 

“How’s probability connected to seeing the future?” Remus asks.

Virgil’s grin widens just a bit as he turns back to Remus. “I think it’s like…okay you know how when you see the future, you can change it by manipulating your own actions? That’s you changing yourself to affect the terrain. Your brother, on the other hand, changes the terrain to affect himself. You’re inverses!”

“You got all that from observing the two of them interact,” Janus says, blandly, “and yet you still think that there might be an uncharted part of the planet where dinosaurs still live and breathe.”

“You won’t be scoffing when a velociraptor tears you apart.”

“I can be a velociraptor anytime I want!” Janus says. “Literally! Any time!”

“And yet you aren’t one now,” Virgil says easily. “Lame.”

“Remus can’t be a velociraptor, ever! Are you calling him lame?”

Virgil scowls, jabbing his fork in Janus’s direction as if he was the bane of the whole world. “Don’t you dare, Witchall. Remus is infinitely better than you will ever be!”

“Well yes, of course, that is a given—” Janus says and apparently startles himself with the admission because he clamps down on his tongue so hard that he nearly draws blood. His cheeks flush and he glances at Remus as if he was hoping Remus hadn’t been paying attention. “I mean…well, actually you know what I mean. Surely this must have come up in one of the futures! There is no way that I haven’t already said it so there’s not really a need for me to say it again—”

Virgil nods along with what Janus is saying for a moment before he turns towards Remus and very peacefully opens his mouth. Remus is expecting some snappy comment, a low tiered insult towards Janus that he’s beginning to think is just how they handle any type of emotion between each other.

What comes out is 100% Janus’s voice. “Hey, Remus, I’m stupid and dumb and not worthy of your attention or affections but I’m equally in love with you as you are with me.”

“I do not sound like that!” Janus yelps.

The world is swaying under his feet. Remus’s eyes dart down to his knuckles to make sure they aren’t bleeding from a swing at Janus’s face the last time he heard anything close to those words. His heart is beating in his bruised throat and his tongue got lost in the back of his throat, and there’s something horribly fragile in his chest built out of glass words.

Virgil and Janus are snapping at each other again, filling the air with frantic vibrations as Janus’s cheeks flush and insist on something, something, something. Remus doesn’t hear any of it. 

“Do you mean it?” Remus asks because he’s a masochist.

Janus freezes his hand on Virgil’s jacket collar, just barely short of choking the life out of Virgil who looks rather unconcerned about it all things considered.

“Remus…” He says. “Yes. I—I’m yours. If you would have me.”

If you would have me, he says, like there’s a future, a world, a universe where Remus would ever not want to cling to the shining warmth and trust that hangs around Janus. Like there is a chance that after everything that’s been laid on the table between them, Remus would turn his back. Like Janus hasn’t seen the ugliest parts of Remus and brought him back to life anyway.

Like Remus didn’t mean it when he said wherever you go, I’m following.

There’s seven inches between them and then there is not because Janus is sitting right next to him on the sofa on top of the forgotten writing utensils, their thighs touching in a way that seems innocuous and also very sinful.

“I love you,” Remus says, and that’s all because Janus is kissing him.

Virgil catches Remus’s take out box right before it slips between his hands and time passes but also does not because Remus does not know anything other than cardamom, shoe polish, red curry, and JanusJanusJanus, IloveyouIloveyouIloveyou—

Janus’s fingers twirl between Remus’s own, squeezing gently even when he pulls back. Janus presses another kiss to his cheek, to his cheek bone, to his forehead and then he presses their heads together. Remus feels dizzy, and fuzzy, and wonderful beyond belief. He’s almost giddy. If his ribs weren’t barely held together with scotch tape, his bones brittle and likely to snap if he twitches wrong, his lungs not preoccupied with trying to host a thousand buzzing bees, well… he thinks he might get up and scream to the whole world.

“So, what now?” Remus asks breathlessly. “Roman’s maybe-brainwashed, maybe-not, and that Zeal guy is probably going to try to convert us to the great religion of Mommy MindMelter—”

“Why would you call her that?” Virgil says.

“—But we stopped that FBE thing, right?” Remus continues. “What do we do next, raid some TV station and tell them all that your mom is trying to take over the world? Do we have some physical proof? We can drop it at a police station like Batman or something. Does the FBI or Homeland Security take drop ins? Oh shit, wait, does your mom control those? I don’t know what the Secretary of Defense does; I failed my government course in highschool… Why are you both making that face?”

Janus has a pinched expression on his face, like he just realized that Remus put hot sauce in his sweet tea again without him noticing because he was too busy reading on his phone to pay attention to Remus. Virgil grimaces and they shoot each other a glance in a way that makes Remus think he’s out on a not-very-funny joke.

“About that…” Janus says, scraping his tongue on his teeth to get rid of the imaginary taste.

“You didn’t stop shit,” Virgil says. “You delayed the opening of the FBE center here in Portland. By three days. The place opens up tomorrow at 10 am. They’re also adding a doubled security force at the doors, metal detectors, and The Prince and Zeal are supposed to be there to handle the crowd as well as offering autographs. It’s been all over the news, along with a very flattering picture of you covered in blood torn from the cameras two days ago. Neither of you are getting within 100 feet of that building without like… a shit ton of luck. And a world ending event.”

“Something more world ending-y than Dragana Witchall?” Remus asks.

“Unfortunately,” Janus says, rather glumly. “My mother is very well versed in long cons and manipulating public opinion. She appeals to the higher forms of government with super soldiers ready and willing to fight, and frames it as a heroic deed that only the most honorable can achieve to keep the public complacent. If one of her pieces dies… well, she can just find another to replace them until she gets enough of a following that when she runs for whatever position she crafts for herself, she’ll win or start a civil war on those in power.”

“People would really fight for her?” Remus says, and then remembers that it takes two seconds for Janus’s body to fall off a stage. “Nevermind.”

Janus threads his hand unoccupied through his hair again, musing the blonde locks. Remus thinks about plucking that hand too from his hair and interlocking their fingers and… just holding them together. Like a tether, like a net, like an anchor. For all the futures (and presents) where he’s kissed Janus until he’s run out of breath, somehow the simple thought of holding his hand seems suddenly, surprisingly scandalous of him.

“It’s a power-debt dynamic,” Janus says clinically. “She makes people believe they owe her something to the point where even those that she’s not mind-controlling will act on her commands without hesitation. You heard your brother. He thinks he owes her, and he’s willing to parade around promoting her cause because of it, and if it comes to a fight…Remus, I’m sorry, but Roman will likely die for her, too.”

Right. Because Remus had picked up a gun in his haze of fury and he kept shooting and Roman hadn’t backed down even when they were inches apart. At the time, it had seemed like just another thing that Roman would do by himself, no mind control needed; he always liked to be the hero to Remus’s force-fed villainy. But even if Remus wants to peel his own skin off at the sight of his brother, stopping him wouldn’t stop the bigger problem of the power hungry sociopath trying to gain world domination.

Remus has seen Roman die more ways than he can count, handled half of them personally, and isn’t sure if he wants it to stick or if he wants Roman to live until he’s 115. His head hurts to think about it, and there are other things to think about in the meantime (Janus, Janus’s hands, Janus’s lips, Janus tongue….)

“The dedication… the guilt…” Janus says. “I know what it’s like to be under her control better than anyone.”

“I would have died for her; I would have killed for her,” is not said out loud, in this time, but Remus doesn’t have to go searching through futures to know that Janus is thinking it. By the dark look in Virgil’s eyes, he seems to know it too. 

It’s weird to think for a moment and imagine that instead of Roman’s pompous ass up on that stage smiling for the cameras, talking about duty and honor and glory, it might have been Janus. Or well… not Janus. Someone less opinionated, someone less real, someone who doesn’t argue or cuss or beat up children in Idahoan Malls or get flustered over the words I love you. Someone who doesn’t think on planes world’s beyond what Remus can plan and plays 5-D Chess with his words but still has a shitty poker face and can’t stand messes. It would be like someone tore out everything that made Janus Janus, and shoved something else in.

There’s a swell of appreciation in Remus for Virgil at that moment, for reaching out, and then refusing to leave him behind, dragging Janus kicking and screaming towards the future that they were currently living, and every other little detail that Remus will never know about. 

“Roman’s always gotta be the hero,” Remus comments, squeezing Janus’s hand in his own as he stares at the cut Roman’s rapier had given him. It hadn’t hurt in the moment with all the adrenaline and fury coursing through him, but now the neat precise stitching itched and ached sharply. “If I show up anywhere he’s going to come running. I could lure him away from the FBE.”

Janus nods politely at the information, which is because he probably already figured that much out. His nose twitches as if he’s doing complex mind boggling arithmetic, and he sets his head against Remus’s shoulder, like he’s not afraid of ripping apart Remus’s fragile skin. He’s warm, warm, warm.

“That would be good,” he says. “Considering I can’t land a hit on him without your help…. If he’s distracted I can sneak into the FBE and destroy their files and shut down their location before they have a chance to actually harm anyone, and then I can sneak back out with a different face in the chaos.”

He has his scheming face on, and Remus pretends that his heart doesn’t do a flip at the sight of it fitting so rightly on his face: the look that belongs on him, the powerful confidence of someone who knows what they’re doing and knows how to do it well, the easiest thing in the world to fall in love with, and even easier to trust with everything that Remus is. 

“Sounds like a plan,” Remus says, cracking his neck. “I’m going to need a gun.”

He pretends like the beat where Janus doesn’t immediately say anything and Virgil chokes on his food doesn’t strike him directly in the chest. 

“I’m not going to kill him,” Remus says.

“It’s not that we don’t believe you,” Virgil says. “But like… if you google unhinged right now, your face is the first thing that comes up. I don’t really think we can just stroll into a gun shop and demand a gun. Plus I think Oregon requires a background check with a purchase, which you are absolutely not going to pass, Janus won’t pass, and it won’t be a quick process to get through even if I pass. I really don’t think guns are the way to go with this.”

Janus hums deep in his chest. “Does it have to be a gun?”

Remus tries not to feel like he’s being ganged up on. “Unless you know of something that has the same range and is easy to use. If this whole probability thing is true, then he’s going to need to be extra focused on a bullet to make sure it doesn’t hurt anyone, and it will give me some room to stall for time without needing to use my power.”

“And the last thing you guys need is Remus using his power,” Virgil says, pointedly noting the floor where they had cleaned up the blood earlier. It’s strange that all of their feet and shoes are standing over it, in such a small area, so close together and Remus can’t figure out why he thinks that should be strange. 

Still, Virgil has a point; Remus doubts that he’d be an effective distraction for very long if one peak at the future sent him directly to the morgue without passing GO or collecting $200. At the very most he can only imagine that he might be able to out maneuver Roman one time—belief in his power or not before his body decomposes on the spot.

“No offense,” Virgil adds.

Remus contemplates sticking his fork down his throat just to make himself vomit up everything he just ate. 

“I don’t think you can offend me if you tried,” he says instead, because he does feel a little bad about making Virgil clean up his blood after he already said he was squeamish, after he just rubbed his relationship with Janus right in his face, after, after, after. Half digested Thai food, however cool it would look, probably would be crossing the line into unforgivable territory that even his strange admiration for Remus couldn’t withstand. 

“Is that a challenge?”

“Bold implications from someone who got flustered over a dick joke earlier.”

“That doesn’t count!” Virgil says quickly. “We were having a moment! And you ruined the moment with a dick joke!”

“Is there ever a better time for a dick joke?”

“Any other time! Literally!”

“Virgil! I can’t believe you think my grandmother’s funeral is an appropriate time to joke about whipping it out. How nasty! Shame on you.”

“I did not say that!”

“Does my grandmother’s funeral not count as any other time?”

“I’m starting to think you don’t even have a grandmother!”

“If I did, would her funeral be a good time for a handjob--?”

“I have a plan,” Janus decides suddenly. 

A hurt look flashes across Virgil’s face, for a split second, and Remus thinks that if he blinked he definitely would have missed it entirely. In its place is a solid wall of boredom and he reaches out and plops his take out container on the coffee table right next to Janus’s forgotten curry.

“Oh good,” Virgil says. “So you’re going to be evacuating my apartment?”

“Don’t sound so sad, my dear,” Janus says. “You have a part in it still.”

“The fuck I do! I’ve done enough for you in my lifetime and I’m not looking to be arrested and-or get thrown in some super secret Antarctic jail for world-ending threats, which the two of you are, by the way. Thanks, but no thanks. I nursed Remus back to health, gave you a place to lay low, but if that is over, then I want no part of what you’re planning next.”

"Oh, I don’t know," Janus sighs theatrically, catching Remus's gaze out of the corner of his eye and winking. "I think you can do something more. It would hardly take more than an hour of your time and you would be perfectly fine after. All limbs attached, I promise!"

“Oh no,” Virgil says, catching sight of the gaze they just shared. “Absolutely not.”

“Absolutely not what?” Janus asks innocently, with a pleasant smile that borders on threatening. He stands up, nearly towering over where Virgil is folded on the couch, and there’s a shadow over his face that Remus absolutely loves.

“If you had to clarify I’d have all my limbs attached afterwards I don’t want to be a part of it. I don’t know what it is, but I’m not going to help you,” Virgil says stubbornly. “I’m done with all the crimes, I’m done with your schemes! I let go of that life when you left the first time! In fact, there’s not a single thing you can do or say that will get me off this couch!”

And, at that, Remus can’t help but grin.

[Chapter Eleven]

Also! if you’re interested in more Deja Vu things more often, consider joining this new [Deja Vu discord] to receive more updates on what is going on :D

#deja vu au #remus sanders #janus sanders #virgil sanders #sanders sides #superhero/supervillain au #sorry for the long wait #but congrats! we did it! #Virgil and Janus backstory peek #Roman power reveal #a slight nod towards Patton and whats up with him #Remus and Janus officially in a relationship? #maybe? #And Virgil is about to be peer pressured into villainy >:D #We love a good friend group #give it another chapter and Virgil will realize that Janus has two hands #Don't worry

[fumifooms]

L’s sugar addiction & self-medication : character analysis

I have some thoughts on L and his relationship to sugar that I haven’t seen from others yet surprisingly, so I’m making this post that hopefully won’t get too long definitely became long af. I’m very open to counter-arguments or people adding on to this.

Some context: I 100% see L as autistic and there’s honestly no debate to be had, even though I don’t think it was done intentionally. (I respect others having different perspectives, I just think it’s objectively the most fitting label/explanation and I’ll act like it’s a given through this analysis). I’m autistic myself, “high-functioning” meaning I mask decently enough, diagnosed at 18 and started taking concerta for attention this month at 19, I’m also INTP if that matters and yeah uh as a kid I identified a lot with L and Near and wow surprise surprise I got a bit unhealthily reliant on sugar for a while there, so here I go. 

Other context headcanons: L has autism, but is undiagnosed, which I believe mostly because Wammy’s House seems to be outside of the government and society’s eye and it didn’t seem concerned with diagnosis or mental health, the time at which Death Note was written in, and just general vibes idk. Even if he was diagnosed, he strikes me as the kind of autistic who wouldn’t care about the label and wouldn’t give much thought to it -mostly because he gives 0 shit about masking tbh and he’s highly fact oriented-, thinking he works well as he is and that medication would change him and the rupture to his habits sound unpleasant, even if down the line it’d be very helpful and it actually doesn’t change you as a person chill. Yeahh, I have an aversion to drugs of any kind, outside stuff affecting my brain chemistry just gives me a big nope, that’s including alcohol, coffee and painkillers, so I can relate even if it’s something I have to get over, and he seems the type of not wanting to be under any effect. Anyways point is: he doesn’t take meds and isn’t super aware of his condition, despite being knowledgeable in his habits and needs in many regards in canon, on the spot I’m thinking about his sitting pose = brain power stat for example. 

So why the sugar? The canon explanation is something along the lines of it giving him the energy he needs because he sleeps so little. Yeah fair, that does make sense, and also fits in with what I’ll be talking about:

My explanation: L self-medicates with sugar, which lead to sugar addiction. And I’m being 100% unironic. Those words are thrown around jokingly a lot but sugar addiction is a real issue that doesn’t get addressed much. Confirmation that L’s relationship with sugar is an addiction might even have been like, explicitely stated in canon at some point? But I haven’t seen that around and my memory really isn’t that good. So yeah there’s probably L’s picky food taste because of autism sensory issues in there as well, him just liking the taste and all and wanting same food, but this level of always eating it is more than just a preference. I’m sorry fellow autistic guy that only ate potatoes for all his life and got massive problems, but at least potatoes don’t influence your brain chemistry. Even if it started as a preference and continues to be such, if he’s addicted or not with how much of it he consumes is out of his hands. And where my earlier rambling comes in is: I think he’s unaware that it’s an addiction, I think he doesn’t think much of it, he overestimates his agency and control over his diet, even if he does recognize his dependency on it to a degree. L eats sweets pretty much constantly in canon, so that part won’t be argued about, I’m more interested in the why and how of it.

Let’s refine what sugar addiction is a bit, have this article. (It implied at one point that sugar can’t be truly/gravely addicting but it shows facts comprehensively so I’ll let it slide) Sugar addiction pretty much demands that you eat sugar constantly to get the effects (energy, stimulation that makes your head feel clearer) you seek, when the addiction is in full swing. Sounds self-explanatory yet?  Is sugar addiction real? Further reading: healthline.com article, theguardian article, someone’s journey. It’s a complex and debated issue, and sugar is still something important to have in certain quantity in our bodies, I don’t claim to be a biochemist or expert on the topic. 

Ok but why sugar? Why would he get addicted? Why does L feel like he need it? Well even if it wasn’t a full on addiction, which in his case it is, sugar gives energy, as mentioned, it can somewhat act as a stimulant. Without mentioning that sugar is widely spread and seen as pretty casual, it’s easy to get into eating it way too much and thinking nothing of it, like coffee, especially if you don’t suspect your craving of it is tied in with how your brain works. In autism, if you tend to be understimulated, you can get prescribed stimulant medication that’s intended or generally given to people with ADHD, like me with concerta, it’s really not that uncommon. Have these article tidbits that adress it as self-medication:

(article 1: addcrusher.com “How You Are Self-medicating your ADHD” - Article 2: Medium.com “Why Adults With Undiagnosed ADHD Often Turn To Self-medication”)

Why do you think L needs stimulants in the first place? He has shown to want more stimuli in general, rather than being overstimulated, even if he does like to have a calm controlled environment. I, too, am an autistic person that gets understimulated easily, which mostly leads me to listen to fast paced music as stimming when doing college exams, etc. L seeks the mental stimulation of puzzles and it’s the only thing he shows interest in doing (canon), again because of the stimulating entertainment factor. Because he doesn’t mind situations that put him under pressure, or in contact with a team of people or in public. He doesn’t mask to appear nice or neurotypical, but he does show no discomfort about an overwhelming amount of stimuli in general. Also because he stims in other ways than solving cases: tapping his feet, playing with food, etc. And, last of all, the reason of this essay, because he eats sweets all the time. 

Okay, but sugar as self-medication? Really? Where does your personal experience come into this? Like I’ve mentioned here and there, I get understimulated easily and I only started taking stimultant meds veryyyy recently. That stuff is instinctual; you’ll tap your feet mindlessly if you need more stimulation, if you’re hungry you’ll eat, if you want coffee you’ll get it, if you have a lil sugar craving you’ll seek to quench it, even if you don’t really know why. You do what makes you happy, and if sugar makes you feel good for a while, makes you feel energized or think more clearly then subconsciously you’ll start wanting it more often, hence why you start out not thinking much of it. I wouldn’t describe my case as an addiction, I don’t think I really got withdrawal or super bad or anything, but there definitely were days when i’d constantly be craving and/or eating sweets, always taking breaks from fruitless work to grab another sugary snack every 15 minutes or every hour. Gummies or other candies, cookies, marshmallows, and for a while even literal packets of refined sugar. They were food cravings like any other, feels like “I want some pizza”, but underlaced with need, and a feeling that you’ll feel and function better once you’ve gotten it. But the craving never stops, and you’re never satisfied, you only ever end up taking more and more and more. Yeah, I’d class my experience as an attempt at self-medication, definitely. Often when I'd take a lot and keep surrendering to the craving for more it’d just lead to more intense hyperactivity, manic symptoms and my body going bonkers with sweating and shaking and stuff, but sometimes it’d genuinely help me focus on schoolwork and on concentration. 

Conclusion: It’s a stimulant, so it helps L. It makes him feel like it’s helping him think better and be more awake, so he takes more. It keeps working to some degree even if it’s unhealthy, so he never stops it or tries alternatives. That’s kind of all there is to it, in the end. L puts a great deal of interest in his mental state for productivity purposes, but has never seemed to have any care in his body’s health at all, so I don’t think he’d care to change even if he knew how bad it was anyways.

Tangent:  I also like the thought of Wammy’s House being pretty abusive in that neglectful (and manipulative) way and Watari being such an enabler, all focused on performance rather than healthy behavior and thought processes, which does work for iq results apparently but at what cost. L and Mello especially def have some self-destructive habits. Anyways yeah- I like that angle instead of the whole thing being “haha quirky”, it sounds narratively consistant and compelling for the tone of the Death Note franchise. I’m sure Watari honestly believes he’s doing a good thing and helping L working at his best condition, to some degree, but yeahhh feeding the guy under your care only sweets for years without steering him towards healthier alternatives is bad if we want to do a realistic analysis, especially if you’re the one who raised him/organized the environment in which he grew up. 

Actual conclusion, more in-depth: So what does this all mean for his character, if I’m getting angstier: L is driven into his detective work not because of some grand passion or ambition (canon), but because working on cases is the only thing interesting enough for him (also canon) aka the only thing that gives him enough stimuli to not be understimulated and painfully bored, but for that lifestyle of constantly chasing high stimulation he also needs substances that give him a rush. The whole thing is extremely unhealthy and unsustainable and L will crash and burn out eventually at any given moment. Kind of a tragic character, huh. He died on his thoughest case ever, his interest driving him to take risks and get more invested and stressed than ever.

L’s laser focus on objective productivity while ignoring the fact that he has human physical needs just like everyone else, likely from a feeling of superiority and uniqueness not entirely unfounded, makes him blind to his very real issues. Being an irl L isn’t cool, it’s sad and unhealthy, cringy for everyone else around you. You may think you have metaphysics and the meaning of life or lack thereof pegged, but that won’t do you any good while you’re on the floor in a manic episode or burnout. I’ve been there mate, but seriously, gain perspective and grow some self-care, being purely statistic oriented is stupid. 

Give this man concerta. And a therapist he’ll condescendingly dismiss and talk over, but therapy nonetheless.

#death note #l lawliet #character analysis #analysis #sugar addiction #self-medication #essay #wammy's house #asd #autism #actually autistic #enabling #fumi rambles #my posts #my content #my analysis #i don't wanna sound pretentious y'all sorry if that came across that way #I respect u even if u disagree with this /gen #just word vomit that happens to be slightly personal and researched #no but seriously abusive wammy's house when #where are the takes #long post #i could have written this better more compellingly but oh well #my meds still aren't really working well so finishing this was a challenge #neurodivergence #tossing this into the world and accepting reaching perfection isn't always worth it: development

[moodywyrm]

OKAY these are from different ask games but I’m extremely nosy so :)

26. how’s your spice tolerance?

27. what’s your favorite or go-to outfit?

🔐 - something no one would guess about you

🖇️ - what are your favorite asks to answer

🌊 - a kink you would like to write but you think you’d be judged

Aaaaaaand some of my own:

Would you consider any of your anons friends, even if you’ve never actually talked to them off of anon?

Do you prefer tea, hot chocolate, or coffee?

Favorite constellation?

Talk about your crush (if you have one)

Sorry, I love seeing the answers to these. Makes me see the author as more of a person than just their fics (Not to sound weird, it’s just a lot of people think that about writers). They’re also super fun! Enjoy, Moony. <3

Omg you’re an Angel I love questions 💕💕

26. My spice tolerance is pretty good!! But specifically when it comes to Latin spices and cuisines, bc I’m Mexican and most of our food is spicy 😎 my favorite snack is xxtra hot Cheetos with Tapatio 💕 but something about East Asian and south Asian spices fucks me up??? I think it’s just bc it’s not a taste profile I grew up with :(

27. These are similar but not the same! My go-to outfit is usually comfy pants (typically flared leggings) with a band tee (probably metallica), my big cardigan, and my doc martens. My favorite is usually that outfit but with a miniskirt and tights, although I can’t always wear it bc sensory issues.

🔐. I’m not sure actually? If I had to guess, based on my blog alone, I don’t know if people would guess my love of musicals? Or my love of crime and mystery stories? My sister and I went on a rampage watching a bunch of murder mysteries 💕 idk I feel like I talk about a lot of my more hidden or less popular interests on here?

🖇️. Omg i love answering my nonnies life updates, sweet domestic asks, especially when they’re about the lil universes I’ve built around the characters (like college basketball Abby and her apartment). Idk, both of them make it feel like people are actually engaging with me and my work instead of me just screaming into the void 💕

🌊. I don’t know actually? I feel like I don’t have any kinks that are like really intense? Maybe somno?

Okay for yours!!

- i do consider my anons friends!! Maybe not as closely as the ones that have markers or ones I talk to off anon, every day, but they’re still my friends!!

- coffee all the way 💕 I’m very picky about tea, and I don’t like hot drinks or drinks that are too sweet

- i like scorpius!! Although I don’t know too much about the constellations 😭

-i do and some of y’all probably know who. they’re the sweetest girl in the world and I’m so happy I met them :( genuinely, I must have done something pretty good in a past life to have her in mine now. she’s absolutely gorgeous, in case y’all were wondering, but my favorite thing about her is how caring she is. I love watching them take care of their family, and how they take care of me. I’m gonna take care of her one day, in person. My strong girl, she makes me so giddy all the time, i love talking to her 💕

Thank you for asking so many questions baby!!! I love answering ‘em 💕 and k totally get it, I feel like sometimes readers forget we’re also humans with stories and feelings, and I’m so lucky to have met people like you and so many of my followers who are so kind 💕

#moodythoughts #anon #qna #got super gay at the end there oops

[allwhilewaiting]

100 reasons to stay

It’s becoming harder for me to stay grounded these days, something difficult rose up within me and re-triggered all those fearful feelings I’ve been trying to stomach my whole life. Feelings so big and so raw that more often than not, I feel debilitated from a viable solution that will sustain my light. And so as I am fighting through this, the battle to keep my mind needs reminders of why. There are a million reasons to stay…Here is the short list.

There are versions of me that want to be experienced in the future. I won’t be able to know anything about them unless I stay. 💃🏾🙋🏾‍♀️🙆🏾‍♀️💁🏾‍♀️

I haven’t gone to all the concerts and heard all the music I want to hear live. 🎤 🎶

I haven’t bought a leather sectional to take naps on in my cute little forever home. 🛋️

I haven’t bought my cute little forever home. 🏡

I’ve never been to Niagara Falls, the Great Wall of China, or the Taj Mahal. There is so much out there to see both domestic and abroad. ✈️ 🏔️

There are more people I need to love and be loved by, my two little girls included. 👧🏿 👧🏿

My granny can’t take another heartbreak. 👵🏾 💔

My mother can’t take the heartbreak of my absence. 👩🏽 💔

The place where I am meant to be professionally, spiritually, and physically depends on my presence. 📍

I have a lot of Tubi movies left to watch. 🍿

There’s a lot of delicious food I haven’t tasted. 🍴

The feeling of sweet glorious redemption from getting my joy back refined will only happen if I stay. And my joy has always returned. 🌊

I came here for a reason. I was kept here for a reason. I deserve to realize what that reason is. 💭

I’m a kind and pure heart. There is so much need for my heart type in this world. 🫶🏾

I haven’t laughed enough. There are so many more laughs needed in my lifetime. 😹

I haven’t taken myself on nearly enough dates. I haven’t shown myself enough love yet. 🤎

I want to learn ceramics and I’ve never taken any classes. 🏺

The world is changing in some interesting ways, there could be some cool stuff waiting in the future to witness. 🌎

These gen Z kids are turning the world in ways that could be to the benefit of society. I’ll have to stick around to see how much better the world could be because of them. ☮️

I haven’t read enough books yet. 📚

I haven’t read enough poems yet. 📝

I haven’t had enough meaningful conversations yet. 🫂

I haven’t danced through enough mornings. ⛅️

I haven’t sang through enough evenings. 🚿

I haven’t smiled enough at all the beautiful things, like the sun and the moon and breath and freedom and Divine love. 🌚

I haven’t worn enough bathing suits and journaled on the beach. 👙

I haven’t drank enough water. Have to stay for the sake of my hydration. 💦

I haven’t made enough generations of my sim families. I owe it to them. 🎮

I haven’t seen my grey hair yet due to aging. 👵🏾

There are too many Charleston secrets that I’ve yet to find. I haven’t even read my book on the Battery yet! ⛲️

I haven’t mastered cooking one great meal yet, and I want to try a lot of recipes. 🥘

I haven’t had enough awesome sex. 🦵🏽

I definitely haven’t seen enough London theater. 🎭

I haven’t been a bridesmaid yet! ⛪️ 👗 💍

I haven’t had enough happy cries. 🥲

I haven’t had enough fun in general. 🎡

I haven’t had enough great coffee. ☕️😋

I haven’t worn my pink timbs yet and it doesn’t get cold until like December/January in SC. 🥶 💖

I probably need more karaoke… 🎤

I need more winters, I think it’s my favorite season. Hot cocoa, sweaters, blankets, and good movies sounds so sentimental. 🪵 🧦 🍵

I need more walks to appreciate God’s beauty. 🌳

I want more tattoos. 🖊️ 🌺 🍃

That feeling of magic that settles in my heart with serotonin swimming through my brain when I’m in flow is my natural state, and I deserve to live there ✨ 🧠

I have many more museums to explore, including revisiting the Charleston museum. 🏛️

I want to be moved by more art. 🧐🖼️

I want more roadtrips and snack stops to random gas stations along the way ⛽️ 🚘

I want to try on more shoes in stores. I never buy shoes. 👠

I want to receive and give long hugs with back rubs. 🧸

I want more beautiful massages. 💆🏾‍♀️

I want to get some facials! 🧖🏾‍♀️

I want to try more restaurants and more mixed drinks. 🍸

Those Marshall and TJ Maxx runs where I’m finding cute mugs and pictures and seeing all the shiny things that releases that dopamine rush…yea, I want more of those moments. Wearing flip flops, feeling that cool store air tickle my thighs in a summer dress while I’m in the purse aisle, nothing quite like it. 🛍️

I want to paint. Even if it’s just me getting a canvas from an art supply store. 🎨

The veil is not thick enough to dissuade me from believing that there is something so beautiful, so patient, so wondrous and gentle about life. And I have a deep resonating feeling that what is waiting for me in this lifetime is incredibly fulfilling. The little things. The moments I could have never bargained for. The reason why I’m alive. It’s actually for good. 😌

I have puzzles I want to compete. 🧩

When I wrote that I am more than just a single lifetime in my lineage, but the silent catalyst for change, that meant that my whole existence is to off-shed those limiting beliefs about my resiliency and to incite generational healing as a lifestyle. ❤️‍🩹

The sound of the rain…against my window pane 😌

The beauty of trees 🌳

Feet planted against the earth reminding me I am one part of the great whole 🌎

Crisp cool fresh sheets 🛌

The cool breeze on a warm day 🌬️

Because dawn always comes after darkness ⛅️ Always.

There are endless possibilities to start over, each bringing something new and exciting. Leaning into the beauty of a fresh start is a privilege that has presented itself to me time and time again 🤍

God always always always shows up for me better than I could ever try to do for myself. And I know that. ☁️

Nights like last night, where I have the privilege of experiencing a soul tribe 🤍✨

Those chik fil a nuggets might not be great for my body, but they are definitely food for the soul. Gotta stay for Chik Fil a sauce girl 🐔

One day I'll become vegan. I don’t know when, but it’ll happen eventually. And I’ll shave my hair, and I’ll rub cocoa butter and Shea butter on my supple skin and wash with black soap 🧼 and be in my true goddess nature. I may even be a true plant mama 🪴

Podcasts have saved my ass. Some of my most comforting moments were remembered during episodes. I have got to hear the latest episodes. Can’t hear them if you I'm not willing to stay. 🎧

Everything is an illusion. Aka...nothing is as serious as it seems ✨

I need to practice my twerking 🍑

There is always a solution to my problem. That’s what life is…chalk full of options. I just have to be willing to explore them. 🕵🏾

Gratitude. Simplistic pure gratitude. For all that I am and will be. For all that I was and have been. For the colorful opportunistic realm of possibilities. Everything is so very possible for me. Life is built in my mind’s eye, manifested in the tangible. 👁️

Because I get the privilege of loving and rooting for my damn self, forever and unapologetically ☝🏾 🖤 🤎 💜 And that’s nobody’s business but my own.

I haven't figured out all of the genres of movies I like, and there are a lot more favorites for me to add to my collection.

I haven't tried to become a mortician or a fiction author yet.

I'm not liberated enough on earth, and I came here to experience freedom. I must find it.

Drives in my sweet Pepper 🖤

Shakespeare Globe Theatre shows in London 🎭 ♥️

Weddings. I love weddings. Especially weddings with line dances.

Ye Old Fashion on Savannah Highway is open late before or after Gaillard performances I can taste their crispy salty fries and try each flavor in their long line of ice creams. Across from the gas station I watch cars pass and imagine a life over there where I could visit anytime I like. Especially when it rains in the night.

[ray-elgatodormido]

Thank you @lucien-lachance for the tag. You can all drop in if you like too.

-Do you play an instrument?

I don’t, I have a big piano but I don’t really have much of a musical bone in my body. I just sing for fun when I am alone.

-Favourite Book characters?

Haven’t really read any books recently since I don’t have the patience to do so. But I guess if mangas count then it’s the feral ninja femboy from One Punch Man.

-What’s your Starsign?

Aries

-Favorite Colour Scheme?

Anything with cold colours like cyan and green but I also love red and metallic colours even if I render with more saturated colours.

-Naps or Long sleep?

Long sleep. If I wake up too early I get a stomach ache and I can’t really take nap unless I’m sick.

-What languages do you speak?

French, English and Spanish. I’m both Canadian and Venezuelan so language is something I sorta take pride in. My Spanish is a little rusty (I can understand well it’s speaking that needs work) because I don’t use it that often but I hold it dear so I try to improve it. I am proud of my Venezuelan heritage and I won’t hide it. Music, Food, History, etc, I try to learn as much from family members. And I really really miss them. (also if you want me to personally translate any Hispanic song then I’d love to 👀)

-Dreams/aspirations?

Currently? Getting accepted into a 3D modelling/animation program for college and/or university. It’s difficult to get into but I work hard to succeed. I also really want to eventually make a silly Oblivion Let’s Play à la Wilburgur with my own brand of insanity, I already drafted some stuff.

As for Dreams, I want to travel outside the Americas and go see ruins and natural landmarks across the globe. And I also want to pet a shark, just pat the snoot.

-Long Hair of Short Hair?

Short hair all the way, I can’t with long hair. However I’m gonna let my hair grow so I can dye it black and perhaps cosplay as Lucien Lachance at a comic con.

-Tea or Coffee?

Tea, I really don’t like Coffee. The smell and the bitter taste really puts me off. Tea is good both hot and icy.

-Bring a Book character to life or go into a fictional world.

I think I’d just go into a fictional world because if I bring any of my faves to life the world will burn.

#personal #were my fellow Venezuelans at? #I mean half Venezuelan but still #does anyone want me to share that let’s play draft tho

[gingerchangeling]

Hello and happy Thursday! How's this week been going for you?

I wanted to ask some things so I can try and sprinkle in as much Christmas magic as I can into my writing. Totally stealing/plagiarizing from @kazoosandfannypacks' wonderful post haha.

What is some of your favorite Christmas media—movie, TV episode, song, and/or book?

What is your favorite hot drink? What do you think about seasonal drinks versus "normal day" ones?

What is your favorite Christmas food and/or dessert? (I mean...dessert is technically food, so maybe that's redundant, but... *shrugs*)

How much do you typically decorate for the holidays? Do you enjoy decorating? (Personally—one of my goals in life is to decorate as much as I can! I love seeing other people's decorations. Especially lights. They're so beautiful.)

What is your favorite memory around the holidays/Christmastime?

Do you cook or bake for the holidays? Do you enjoy doing so?

How do you think Captain Swan would celebrate the holidays, whether Christmas or any other?

Whew, that's quite a bit, isn't it? No pressure to answer immediately! I'll be here when you do! ~Santa

AAAAAAHHHH HI SANTA!!!

That is a lot of questions! I’ll do my best to answer, but just in the interest of disclosure, I’m actually a bit of a Scrooge. I have no problem with other peoples festivities (it’s even my moms favorite holiday!), but I’m not much of a holiday-maker myself. But I’ll answer your questions the best I can!!

Let’s see here -

Favorite Christmas media- as mentioned, I’m not a huge Christmas person so I don’t watch too many. I love the classics - the old stop motion animations - and the various adaptations of A Christmas Carol. Polar Express is cute too. I absolutely dispise Elf, and Christmas vacation and A Christmas Story are loathed runners up.

favorite hot drink - definitely be any version of coffee/espresso.

Holiday drinks?- I think it’s fabulous. Don’t like most of them myself but to each their own, enjoy what you enjoy and fuck everyone else. As far as “normal”, I think normal is over rated.

Christmas food - weirdly, something I don’t eat regularly even though I could is cinnamon rolls. And from the whole holiday season, turkey, mashed potatoes and stuffing.

Christmas dessert - ok I don’t care what anyone says, the distinction between food and dessert is a vital one. I think it’s probably Bush de Noel (or however you spell it). My aunt also made a ridiculously dark Brooklyn blackout cake that was the best thing I ever tasted.

Decorate for the holidays? - not really. My mom is always the one who decorates. But I did manage to dress Timothy up this year and I’m very proud of my work.

Behold Timothy-

Favorite Christmas memory?- hmmm I don’t really have one. Halloween was always the bigger holiday for me, but the Christmas morning breakfast of eggs and toast and bacon and cinnamon rolls is something I always appreciate!

Cook and bake- YES!!!! So much. I love baking and I love cooking. I read a post once about how people have small magics in life and mine is that I can cook/bake without a timer. I can manage to pull anything out within a minute or two if being perfectly cooked. I have no idea where I aquired this. It may have something to do with having out the oven on fire in my youth 🤦🏼‍♀️.

How would Captain Swan celebrate? I think they would have a big event with all the extended family, but I think Christmas Day, and when they open each other’s gifts, would be something private, in their own space, in their own time, without an audience or expectation.

How’d I do Santa?

Thank you again and can’t wait to hear from you!!!!!!

#gingerchangelingcsss #gingerchangelingcsss2022

[lovemesomesurveys]

Do you use the Oxford Comma? I see a lot of debates on this. Yes I do.

Do you enjoy baking? if so, what's the last thing you made? I sometimes get in the mood during the holidays. The last thing I baked was sugar cookies last Christmas with my brother. How much are gas prices in your part of the world? I’m not exactly sure, but I know it’s expensive. What are your favorite activities when the weather warms up? The only summery, outdoorsy thing I like to do is go to the beach.  How many objects around you are purple? Just part of my phone case.

Do you enjoy gardening? No. Do you have any stories about bad weather you've experienced? Been caught out in the middle of rain storms a few times. Are you a playlist making type of person or do you just shuffle all of your songs? I used to be a playlist person, but now I’ll just hit shuffle. I like the variety.

What are your favorite type of rocks? igneous, sedimentary, metamorphic? I don’t have a favorite. Let's say you would make great money doing so.. would you ever be a beekeeper? Nooo. Do you have any concerts you're planning on attending? No, unfortunately. There’s been a few recently I wish I could have gone to. It’s been over a decade since my last concert, I miss it. Would reading minds really be a good super power? or just stressful? Just stressful for sure.  March 8th is International Women's day! Who are some inspiring women in your life? My mom. Do you think corn belongs in a stir fry or should it be left out? I’ve never had stir fry and I don’t even really know what goes in it.  If you had to choose only 1 thing to eat for 1 month.. what would it be? I don’t know, but ugh, I miss food. D:  Do you enjoy amusement park rides or are you more into the food like me?  With the exception of Disneyland (I love the rides and food), it’s the food for me. When was the last time you went on a nice, relaxing walk? Uhhh. Have you ever had to crawl through your windows because you locked yourself outside? No. Are you a country music fan? I like some.  Do you have the cilantro 'tastes like soap' gene? or do you enjoy it? I loveee cilantro. Also, I didn't know people couldn't but, can you smell ants? What scent do they put off to you? i’ve heard that before. No, I don’t think so but I’ve also never attempted to. I’m not going to go get near one to find out either. Do you enjoy Iced coffees and lattes? What is your typical coffee order? I do, but hot coffee is the best. I typically get a white chocolate mocha or a caramel macchiato.  If given opportunity, would you record a song? What artist would you collab with? No, I can’t sing. Do you believe in an afterlife? Yes. Do you think there is 1 true God and the others are fake or what are your thoughts on religion altogether? I believe in one God.

Have you ever had any unusual pets? Would you ever want one? No. How often do you consume pizza? What is your go-to pizza place and order? I’d say like 2-3 times a month. I like this local place. That sounds so good... Do you remember the feather in hair trend? Did you like that or ever partake in it? I didn’t wear any.  Do you think Daylight Savings Time should be a thing? I don’t really care. Have you ever watched Dragon Tales? What was your most watched show as a child? I’ve seen some of it before cause my bro and cousins watched it when they were kids. I was a Barney, Arthur, Nickelodeon, Disney Channel, WB and Fox Kids 90s kid. If you had to get a tattoo of lyrics or a quote, what would it be? I’ve wanted ‘free bird’ for several years.  Do you have any tattoos or piercings? I wish I did but, needles😬 No tattoos, and just my earlobes for piercings. If you're interested in astrology.. what are your big 3? (sun, moon, rising) -- What do you consider to be red flags in a person? not just personality wise. think about professions, maybe what they drive.. etc.. How they interact with others, body language, questionable interests, their profession, possibly.  What is a simple thing you cannot do? Like, I can't whistle for example. I can’t either.  What do you think of leaving Christmas trees up year round and decorating them for different holidays? I’d do it. I’ve left my mini tree up in my room before for like 2 years, ha, I could have at least swapped out the decor for the holidays. Do you like carpet or do you think it should be a thing of the past? I much prefer tile and hardwood.  Are seasonal allergies bothering you as well or are you a truly blessed human with no allergies? I suffer from ‘em, too. What is the scent of the last candle you lit? I don’t light candles. Would you rather give up bread or cheese for the rest of your life? Don’t be cruel. Another question that got me thinking.. are there more doors or wheels in the world? Uh. Are there any bands or artists you think get too much hate? Nickelback for example. Why did it become a thing to hate on them? I still like their music. Free groceries for one year or free gas for one year? Which would you choose? Groceries. What is your favorite body of water? ocean, lakes, ponds.. etc. Ocean. final question.. How are you doing? feel free to rant and let it all out. life is crazy. I’m tired, in pain, uncomfortable, frustrated, hungry, depressed...

#personal #text #survey #surveys

[mytruthandbeauty]

2 May 2023

I’m a big coffee lover and I almost always drink coffee that I brew at home myself. One thing that I’ve loved since being in Latin America is the fact that I can get coffee from local growers. I am all for supporting the local economies of the countries in which I visit and live and I’ve had really great coffee in each of these countries. Even though I buy coffee at the market then brew it at home I do occasionally go to a cafe and have a cup. I always get a double espresso when I go to a cafe and not only does the coffee give me pleasure, so too does the price. Depending on the cafe the price ranges from $1.50 US to $3.00 US not the ridiculous Starbucks prices of $4.00 to $5.00US (those Starbucks prices maybe off as I haven’t been to a Starbucks in years). Be that as it may, there’s no way to beat the favor and quality of any produce that is grown locally and shipped directly to the market. Of course the process with coffee is more involved, but you get what I mean. The beans are grown in Mexico, then roasted in another part of Mexico and finally canned and shipped to a Mexican grocery market. This is one of the advantages of travel to me, getting food at its freshest and one of the things that makes for a healthy life.

I do my best to live as healthy as I can, which was another reason I left the US. So much of the food sold there is overly processed, that it can’t be healthy and the fruit and vegetables often have no taste and are sold unripened. I used to take forever reading product labels trying to find food with the least additives, because I assumed those would be the healthiest for me. Eventually I gave up and started buying only uncooked foods except bread, soy milk and cheese, being the only processed foods I bought. I’ve stuck with that practice here in Mexico and I believe I’m doing the right thing, because every time I get a check up I’m given a clean bill of health. I also feel good and I don’t have to struggle to maintain a good weight. Whenever I meet people they are always surprised by my age, they think I’m decades younger than I am. I realized some time ago that there are few things with which you have a great deal of control and what you put in your body is one of them and one that has a great deal of impact on the overall quality of your life. I want my health to be at its best, so I try to do what I can to make it so.