#Mine is the wrong texture in food

[when-november-ends]

witchcraft things

that didn't work for me

and why

- kitchen witchcraft

i love cooking and i love working with plants, however incorporating spells into my food didn't work for me. i got way too distracted by the spell part, that i completely forgot to make the food taste good. and as much as i love magic, it took the fun out of cooking for me. because now, cooking wasn't something fun where i could experiment with flavors and textures, it was something i had to put thought into beforehand. and i like to be spontaneous with my cooking.

- protection spells

protection spells seem to be the most important part of the witchcraft community. and i do think it's important to know how protection magic works, but it's also very unnecessary to have protections up 24/7 if you're not famous or have many enemies. i tend to forget about my protection spells, so they just sit on my altar, untouched for months and i forget to make new ones. hasn't hurt me so far tho, so i'll be saving those up for when and if i actually need them.

- casting a circle

not gonna lie, i tried that once and never again. it felt so pretentious to me.. like i was in Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. and not in a good way. i stumbled across that practice on witchtok first, that was when i thought i was wrong for practicing my way and not how other people said i should. i don't think casting a circle is a bad thing to do, but it absolutely is a bad thing to do for me.

- bowl spells

bowl spells are one of my favorite kinds of spells because they're interactive. you put things in, you take things out. the energy doesn't feel stagnant and the spell is always working it's magic as long as you interact with it. ....but unfortunately my adhd made it very clear to me that those kinds of spells aren't something that works for me. i forget about them 5 minutes after i made them and they never get interacted with, so they don't do much of what they're supposed to. i would definitely recommend them to people who remember to take out and put in stuff tho, because the concept is great.

- scrying

gods, did i want that to work. divination is my favorite kind of witchcraft and i'm great at it! so when i learned about scrying, it was something i immediately got interested in and tried. i tried fire and water. fire worked a bit better, because the flames are dancing and water is reflective. that meant for me, i was always seeing things in it that were physically there, and couldn't concentrate on the scrying part. honestly i don't really remember why the fire method didn't work out, but i assume i got distracted really fast or lost in my thoughts.

- veiling

veiling can be done for many reasons. mine was, that i wanted to use it as a way to protect myself from all the different types of energy in public places. every person has their own life, with their own problems and their own current state of being. and since i have social anxiety, i thought veiling would be worth a try so that public places perhaps wouldn't get overwhelming as fast. well, that backfired because before i could try it, i realized i was trans and the head covering made me feel very dysphoric when i put it on at home. i never attempted anything similar again after that.

- ancestor work

i lost someone really close to me in early 2020. she wasn't a blood relative, but she was my dad's best friend, our landlord (who lived in the same house as we did by the way) and she saw me grow up since i was a baby. i was so desperate to try and talk to her. i tried to reach her myself, i asked other witches for help, but it never worked. after a while i decided to let her be, because the constant getting my hopes up and then being disappointed didn't help my mental health. i just wanted to know if she was okay now, but i think i just have to trust that she is. as for my other ancestors, i don't know anything about them and i am not really interested in finding out. i wasn't close with any of my great grandparents because we saw each other about once a year until they died. they didn't do anything wrong, but i don't want to force a connection.

- dragon work

damn. i really love dragons. all my life and with all my heart. and i truly believe that they are out there (not physically, like dinosaurs were, but in a similar way the gods are out there). i've done a lot of research on the topic, but my mental health got in the way. i don't have the concentration to reach out to them, nor will i be able to dedicate a specific amount of time to them regularly, which i feel like they won't like. i will try again when and if i get better, but until then it goes on this list of witchcraft things that didn't work for me and why.

#witchcraft #witchblr #witch #witches of tumblr #norse pagan witch #pagan witch #witch community #witchcraft community #witchcraft 101 #witch tips #beginner witch tips #beginner witch #baby witch tips #baby witch #kitchen witchcraft #dragon work #scrying #spells #witchcraft spells

[wumblr]

every couple of hours i walk silently in the dark down the spiral staircase in my mom's friend's unbooked airbnb past my mom, who is sleeping 20+hrs a day at this point, holding my breath to check whether i can hear hers to try not to wake her, 20+hrs sleep deprived, and inevitably i make one noise and she wakes up and i ask her if she's hungry and she asks for morphine and i say i never expected you to exhibit that kind of junkie behavior and i ask if she wants an ondansetron first except i call it a stomach pill and after i repeat myself three times because her hearing is gone she takes it because the morphine puts her stomach off and she can already only eat a tablespoon of the blandest possible food with no variation in texture which i've been fucking up for a week barking up the wrong tree trying to put spices and flavor in things she refuses to eat at all and i keep telling her if we don't figure out how to get her to eat i'm going to call the nurse and ask her to bring a nutritional IV and she says that might be okay and that's how i know it's really starting to go south, because there are very few things she hates in the world more than keeping a needle in her arm. if i had to guess, that's why she refused treatment, not really anything about the treatment itself. and i go out to smoke and i mull over being in the downwinder state the year RECA expires unexpanded with the lowest cancer rate in the country because it's been over thirty years since the comprehensive test ban and the risks from smoking or drinking vastly outweigh the risks from radiation exposure at this point, and nobody here smokes or drinks, and i think about whether i will be so lucky to catch mine at stage 1 when i get it and thus have the option to beat cancer on the first try by surgical intervention just like everybody else in my family did except my aunt who went for chemo instead of an oophorectomy because as her doctor friend advised her it would "probably work, like dropping a nuke on an anthill" but due to the state of my life i don't think i'm going to have regular cancer screenings, so it doesn't really matter. then my mom's friend comes by with her dog and talks about how she has to cash out her stock portfolio because she only has $5k in charles schwab and she hates whatever the other account was but they'll freeze her withdrawals for a week if she tries to transfer it out and she can't do that while her property holdings are as curiously unrented as they've been this year. and i think about how i've never even had $5k. and she asks if i want them to start over bridget jones' diary because she's trying to make my mom watch the raunchiest comedies she can find and they only just started it and i say no thanks and silently go back upstairs to not sleep, punctuated by soundtrack clips of chaka and aretha

[sebari-1004]

Uk supermarket tierlist because I saw a TikTok and their tierlist was simply wrong so here is mine

1. Lidl, cheap and not as crowded as Aldi. Very similar stuff but with a better overall vibe. Love Lidl <3 Get the app for shopping and get your partner in crime to get the app too but only use one of yours, every season or so they’ll hand out £5 off vouchers if you’re not a regular user of the app. The cat treats are good too. They’ve recently increased their cat food selection to have some more common brands now which is good too. Their own brand licki licks are the best bang for your buck on the market and highly worth trying for picky cats or cat meds.

2. Aldi, go there if you can’t go to Lidl. It’s too loud and crowded for me and the queues are annoying. I’m honestly not a fan. The queues remind me of primarks a Saturday. The stuff is cheap though

3. Sainsburys, go there when you’re feeling fancy ✨ genuinely though I go there once every so often for a special shopping experience. The blueberries are MASSIVE. Don’t get scammed by the garlic chives though, they’ll register as 2.25 but they’re actually £2.00. They have a decent cat food selection, a lot of fancier stuff too like Blink and scrumbles.

4. Asda, you go here when you need some specific and Aldi / Lidl don’t sell it. The vibes are fine, it’s not too crowded but it’s realll expensive for somewhere that used to be affordable, thanks for that one rishi (you don’t deserve my capital letters, you improper noun). The cat food selection here is okay but should be better. There’s not much range here but they have your classics like whiskas and felix.

5. Home bargains, SO MUCH FUN. Like fuck actually getting groceries, this is the trip of a lifetime. Don’t go there too often cause the novelty will wear off but god damn if the shit isn’t cheap and handy. Good for the occasional stroll, recommend going once every 6 months for funsies. You can go more often if you’re rich like that but we can’t afford that in this household. Limited cat food options, a lot of weirder unknown brands and paste texture cat food which hashbrown refuses to eat.

6. Morrisons is here next for sentimental value. Also breakfast was good here as a child and I like how much stuff they have. I like their cat food range but it’s not as good as Sainsburys.

7. Tesco, my fellow brits will hate me for this one but I don’t like the vibes of Tesco. The people there are just as poor as me but give off the vibe of feeling too proud to go to Lidl, like suck it up, the red bell peppers are 59p and the ones at my Lidl are huge. I weigh them sometimes for fun and they’re around 300grams, just go to Lidl. Decent selection of cat food too and they do seem to care about the price and affordability of it.

8. Green Co op, stuffs hella expensive for some reason and you can’t use the green co op card in the blue co op and vide versa which is really annoying but my sister likes going here so it’s eighth. The sweet selection is fine though.

9. Blue co op, we don’t need blue co op

10. Marks and Spencers, bomb cookies and gift stuff. Not much else, too expensive and we aren’t here living the lavish life.

Dishonourable mentions

11. Iceland, decent cakes but why go here when the range sells them too and the range is so much more fun to look through

12. Waitrose, who can afford this and why haven’t we eaten them for sustenance yet???

#supermarket #uk #tierlist #that’s it #bye bye~

[cookinguptales]

When I was younger... I think saying that Ratatatouille was a hyperfixation of mine is too strong, but I will say that it's a movie that came out at just the right time for me personally.

I was going through one of the toughest times in my life in that period, and I was just getting to the age where I could understand that the things happening to me were not right. I was coming to question the worldview that I'd been raised with, and I was starting to understand that many things in my life would be better qualified as abuse. That paired with some other things led to me feeling extremely jaded.

And... I think it would've been really easy for me to become irreparably cynical at that age. I was feeling so disillusioned with so much of my life that it was hard to believe in anything anymore. But then Ratatouille came out and I really resonated with the basic message that sometimes love requires courage, and that the simple act of creation (and finding joy from that creation) could be incredibly meaningful. That cynicism is both easy and enjoyable, but that finding joy, finding meaning, can only happen if you make the conscious decision to reject it.

idk. I think I just really, really needed to hear that at that age.

Since I was very young, I'd actually wanted to be a chef when I grew up. I think... by that age, I was realizing that it wasn't going to happen. I was just so, so sick, and I only got my first diagnosis less than a year after the movie came out. So at the time, I didn't know what was wrong with me, but I knew that I was simply too sick to cook -- and that cooking school, for the most part, was not very accessible if you have mobility disabilities.

But... I wanted to cook this one thing. Just this one thing. I remember it took me hours. Like literally hours -- just for the prep work. We were pretty poor back then and I wasn't going to ask my parents to get a specialty product for the kitchen just so I could cook one dish, so I ended up creating it without a mandoline. I cut all the vegetables by hand.

I was exhausted by the time I was done (and did have a moment of "you idiot, you hate both eggplant and bell peppers, why are you making this?") but there was a real sense of accomplishment there. And I did like it a lot more than traditional ratatouille.

(My issues with eggplant are textural, so cutting it thinly and stacking it with zucchini, one of my favorite foods, helped alleviate that for me. lmao)

I never made it again, though, and these days I cook very little. I'm still sick. I always will be. So... there's still a very specific pain that I feel when I watch that film and they say, "Anyone can cook."

But it's also something that I tell myself the few times that I do cook. When I jerry-rig an accessible cook station in my living room. When I discover ways to make things doable, if not easy. Anyone can cook. Maybe not always, maybe not anything, maybe not the way everyone else does it. Certainly not in a professional kitchen.

But... anyone can cook.

And... truthfully speaking, I had a real breakdown a couple years after this movie came out. I learned in the most brutal fashion possible that my body would not be like everyone else's, no matter how hard I pushed it, and during the forced medical leave that followed, I finally came to some very tough realizations about my life and the adults around me who had failed me. Even, y'know, the ones I loved.

I do think having that kernel of hope, though, and that stubborn refusal to entirely give into cynicism, did help me survive the period. I really tried to throw myself into anything that could give me the barest amount of joy back then rather than being entirely pulled under by the uh. Incredible amount of depression I was dealing with.

I'm not gonna say that Ratatouille saved my life; I think that would be a bit too much. But it certainly didn't hurt. I went through this period in my life where I really kept imprinting on unrepentantly hopeful, optimistic characters that truly believed in the best in people, even when it hurt them. And... I think there were some mirrors there in my own life. I so desperately wanted to believe that things could be good. That the people in my life would be good. And it very much did hurt me.

But... I think I needed all that, too. I don't believe that the world is all Disney optimism or anything, but I think that... y'know, what's the point of anything if you give into despair? Living and continuing to live and eking out joy wherever you find it is a very conscious decision, and one that you have to constantly make. You learn to mine through the shit to find just one thing that makes you remember that life can be very beautiful.

Some days that's a fandom. Some days that's a person. Some days that's confit byaldi. idk, man. Sometimes you have to cut through the calluses that life has given you and just experience something with childlike wonder and hope. That's the real message there, I think. That you have to have the courage to allow yourself to feel joy, even in the smallest ways, when things suck.

Love isn't always rewarded, but... you gotta keep letting yourself feel it, right? It really is all there is.

#personal post #ratatouille #tbh I feel like what heals me most when I'm feeling awful has been nature #I think the trips I've been taking with my father to see national parks have been really healing #and I'm glad that I have the chance to go out to northern california and be with the redwoods at least once a year #those trees make me feel so human lmao #I remember when dad and I were in monument valley -- not actually a national park #we drove out to this relatively secluded area #and there was no one there #and there was just this... perfect silence #like such a perfect stillness that I cried #ofc then dad was like 'wow do you hear how quiet it is...' rip but

[gods-of-kanto]

What're everyone's favorite and least favorite food?

Indigo: Ah-

Indigo: I guess i love Sandwiches the most? Good tasting food. I cannot handle, and will not handle anything with Sitrus or Oran but the absolute worst is the Tres Leches cake. I just cant. Its the texture moreso than anything for me. Sends all the wrong signals to my brain.

Indigo: I think i cried the first time i tried it. I just remember hiding against Ash and pushing it to him.

Ash: Ah... You really gotta make us think eh?

Ash: Ramen is the shit, Especaially Tonkatsu Ramen.

Ash: I dont think i dont like anything specifically. But something i'll avoid eating if i can is Grapefruits. I hate them. Its nit even a taste thing- ive eaten other things pretty similar but those specifically are my most hated.

Peach: Why... Why do you have to ruin this with Least favorites??!

Peach: I love Ambrosia- i dont give a shit if its a sometimes food, Its mine and i want it.

Peach: I dont like Super Sour Candies. I can handle them but i want to get to my sweet faster dammit!

Pepper: I 'unno, i guess i like Curry. Chicken Katsu Curry specifically.

Pepper: Um, my least favorite thing is... Liver? Ive neber tried it, but it heard its gross.

#professor peach #kanto prince indigo #champion ash #pepper blips #post

[sacchxrine05]

Had a thought while barely conscious in bed this morning and I feel the need to exorcise it.

(tw for discussions of eating disorders like ARFID and things of that ilk)

I think about Sherlock a lot (too much) and one of the things that’s kinda captured my attention recently is his eating habits. I’m going through a rough patch with eating myself, and usually when this happens I think of ACD Sherlock saying smthn along the lines of ‘I don’t eat while working on a case, digestion slows me down.’ (that might be a BBC Sherlock thing but I can’t quite remember lmao)

I imagine YNM Sherlock is similar or the same in this case, as we rarely see him eat (off the top of my head I think he ate a cherry at the bar during A Study in S in the anime and then both a sandwich with John on the roof and the floor sandwich Milverton tried to use to humiliate them with, although that was more to prove a point than to get any sustenance from it) and at least once John has reprimanded him for not eating enough. Sherlock is also quite messy and doesn’t often see the point in cleaning as, in his mind, it’s a waste of time and he might have this view when it comes to preparing a meal to eat.

I’m pulling a lot from my own experience here, but with eating disorders like ARFID it’s hard to find motivation to eat/prepare food, and I can imagine Sherlock often feels this way when he gets into a slump between cases or something like that. And although there’s nothing to really prove that he has an aversion to certain foods due to a sensitivity in taste/texture (I imagine his senses are quite heightened in order to make some of his deductions) he probably does stick to a select few foods both because he probably can’t afford many varieties of food and also because his idea of a meal is something quick that he doesn’t have to take time out of his day to prepare.

Miss Hudson has cooked for Sherlock and John on occasion, although I don’t think this is a very regular occurrence given their dynamic. However, she probably does make something for one or both of them if she thinks he hasn’t been eating enough recently.

Sherlock probably also gets quite hyper focused on cases when they come up (even more so when the Lord of Crime pops up) and so he doesn’t always notice when he’s hungry since it’s not something he’s really thinking about. Also, smoking cigarettes can reduce your appetite and with the way Sherlock smokes he’s definitely not realising how hungry he is until he’s on the brink of starvation. Also drugs…enough said there.

Idk, I just think it’s interesting and especially with how the fandom tends to put Liam as the one who doesn’t eat enough while Sherlock is the exasperated one trying get him to eat something goddamnit. Such a dynamic isn’t exactly wrong per-say, and I believe it says in the character profiles that Sherlock gained some weight post fall, most likely thanks to Billy poking and prodding him into eating and also working regularly and therefore have more of a desire to eat, especially after taking on missions with a lot of field work. He also probably wanted to set an example for Liam so that he eats more too. And he stopped smoking and doing drugs, so that probably improved things quite a lot too.

But like anything to do with mental health and disorders, things come and go in waves and it’s likely Sherlock would have moments where he ‘relapses’ and will go a long time without eating much or just feeling generally unmotivated to make food on top of nothing really appealing to him taste-wise y’know?

I think it’s also this dumb sort-of-headcannon of mine that makes me generally less keen on art/fics that portray Sherlock as being significantly larger/broader than Liam and I don’t mean the slight difference between their figures in the official art/manga/anime I mean like a noticeable difference you know?

Cus I mean…Sherly has muscle cus of his martial arts(?) training and maintaining that through his work, but he’s also a skinny coke addict who smokes too much and eats too little, there’s not going to be an insane difference between him and Liam like some ppl like to portray, y’know?

But anyway, people will always view characters differently and do what they want with them in their fanworks, it matters very little in the end lmao

If you made it this far thank you for listening to me ramble, I hope it wasn’t too nonsensical TuT

#yuukoku no moriarty #moriarty the patriot #sherlock holmes

[spectrumlife99]

A more personal story about a big struggle of mine...food.

I've talked a little bit about how I hate food before on this blog...but now I think it's time to go in-depth about it...even though I usually HATE talking about it, and I'm really nervous and anxious about making this post, but I'll do my best.

Ever since I was little (like, two years old when I was taken off the baby bottle and had to move to solid foods, which, actually, I have NEVER drank milk since the baby bottle was taken away because it was nasty and I no longer needed it to survive...and I STILL to this day hate milk and find it gross), I have had MAJOR sensory issues with food, causing me to be extremely picky and particular about what I eat. I have issues with the look, smell, taste, texture, etc. I also hate things on my plate touching each other, and as a kid I had to have everything on separate plates/bowls because I wouldn't eat if anything on the plate touched each other. I still hate that to this day though, with a lot of work, I have been able to move past the "everything on separate plates/bowls" thing. I do still try my absolute best to keep everything a good distance from each other though.

I am also very particular about even the same types of food. For example, I only eat certain specific brands of certain specific things, and if the brand is wrong, even if the food itself is the same, I will always notice just by smell alone, and refuse to eat it. If the brand is not the safe brand, I will not eat it. If we don't have a safe food or the right brand of safe food, I will choose to go hungry rather than eat, because it's just too much for me to eat a non-safe food/brand. My diet is extremely limited...I would say that 99% of all foods in this world are way too overwhelming for me, and I know for a fact that I can count the number of foods I will actually eat on my fingers...and everything on that list is bland, except for a couple VERY SPECIFIC flavors of VERY SPECIFIC kinds of candy. It has to be bland because I can't handle anything that's spicy (even if it's only a tiny kick or a pinch of seasoning, it will still feel like my mouth is burning and my stomach will start feeling bad), I can't handle bitter things (bitter things will immediately trigger the gag reflex), and I can't handle sour things (sour things, aside from being overwhelming in taste, make my mouth really irritated and that really hurts), or things that are too sweet (I can handle mild sweetness but if it's anything even the slightest bit over mildly sweet, I can't handle it, it triggers the gag reflex). If I could survive without eating, I would never ever eat a thing because I hate food and eating so much. I usually only eat one meal a day, that being supper, because my family always makes sure to have safe food for me in the house for supper specifically. And if we have takeout or go to a restaurant, we always make sure that the restaurant has one of my safe foods beforehand, otherwise I won't eat.

I have gone multiple days in a row without eating anything, because there was nothing safe around. This was back when I was in my early teens in the psych hospital. I was there because I needed a medication adjustment, they had to take me off everything and put me back on everything again slowly, as well as change some of the meds because I was struggling with severe anger issues and aggression, there wasn't a day that went by without me exploding on someone and physically hurting them or myself back then...so I was in the psych hospital for about a week and a half. The teen ward was like a dorm at a university or something, there was a common area, and two long corridors of rooms, with the girls on one and boys on the other. Now, the food situation there was...less than ideal... especially for someone like me. We had a choice of what we wanted to eat, but to actually GET to choose, we had to wake up at the designated wake-up call time...which was always really hard for me since I am not a morning person and I also had nightmares that woke me up and made me really anxious and panicky basically every night. So, as you can probably guess, I always missed the menu choices, meaning I always ended up with something random. That was not good, because it was almost always something that wasn't a safe food. The worst part of it was, there were multiple days in a row of this, and by the fourth day in a row of me not eating, one of the nurses did the worst thing possible for a person with severe food sensitivities...the nurse force-fed me...and continued to do so everyday after that. It was like torture, and every time after being force-fed by the nurse, I would go right back to my room, head right to the bathroom, and proceed to get rid of it by gagging myself on purpose to make myself throw up. The food sitting in my stomach made me nauseous as it was already so I just had to get it out of there so I could feel better. I never told anyone about it though because during my entire week and a half there it was so traumatic I was basically rendered mute, barely saying a word to anyone. I know that they were just worried about me and wanted to make sure I survived while I was there, but they definitely could've done it less...aggressively...

This wasn't the first time I was force-fed either. As a kid, with my OT, I did a type of feeding therapy called Feeding Team. It was supposed to help me learn to try new foods...but it didn't work. Now, the person who force-fed me there wasn't my usual therapist. My usual therapist never did that, she just sat there with me and reminded me that if I didn't eat the food of the week, I wouldn't be allowed to do all the other stuff...the stuff I liked doing in OT. Multiple weeks just consisted of me just sitting there the whole time because I just wouldn't...COULDN'T eat. But my usual therapist never threatened to force-feed me or anything like that. So how was I force-fed there, then...? Well...it was when my usual therapist wasn't there, and I had a substitute...a couple substitutes weren't the most patient and after it became clear I wasn't going to eat, they would pick up the fork or spoon, gather some of the food on it, and shove it into my mouth. I would immediately go running to the bathroom after that and proceed to, once again, get rid of it all so I didn't feel sick anymore with the food sitting in my stomach like that.

No one, absolutely NO ONE in my family knows that I've been force-fed before. They also don't know about me purposely getting rid of the food I was force-fed every time. I have only told my talk therapist and a best friend of mine who understands what having food sensitivities like this is like...and only brought it up in the first place because I've been thinking about this for a while and having nightmares about the force-feeding where I wake up feeling sick and like I need to get rid of the food I was force-fed in my dream...so it's been really bothering me a lot lately. And I'm one of those people who HATES anything to do with throwing up. If someone around me is sick with a stomach bug or flu and I hear or see it...I freak out and have full-on panic attacks over it, and when I have the stomach bug or flu myself, I try to keep everything from coming out as long as I possibly can.

And food unfortunately is something that can make me really sick and trigger the gag reflex from just the look and smell alone...which is why I always stay away from the kitchen when my family is eating their meals, and waiting until everything they had is all cleaned up and put away before I can finally have my own safe food for supper...I do this pretty much everyday, as it's very VERY rare for my family to have something I can eat alongside them for supper. The only thing that really comes to my mind that I eat with them is pasta...my mom makes it plain and makes the sauce separately because she's allergic to tomatoes and I don't like sauce. I completely cover my plain pasta in the (what I like to call) "cheese salt" type of parmesan cheese because that way it tastes better and it's not greasy. One of my younger brothers (who also has some food sensitivities, but he's not nearly as problematic in my parents' eyes as I am because he eats a lot more things than I do) does the same thing, and we often fight over the parmesan cheese because of it.

I used to have to sit at the table with everyone during holiday meals, which felt like torture, but now I don't have to do that anymore because I just can't do that without feeling sick and losing my appetite at the sight and smell of all holiday food. The only thing I eat on holidays is plain rolls...which is just bread. Everything else is way too much for me. So I wait for everyone to finish and clean up, and then I have a safe food, just like basically every other day.

On Easter yesterday I didn't even eat supper at all because I just wasn't hungry. I have a hard time noticing when I'm hungry or not, so that plays another part in me not wanting to eat, because I don't feel like I need to. I've been put on an appetite stimulator medication because my one meal a day is not enough for my family and support workers and it makes them worry...even though I'm totally fine with one a day but that's just me. It worked for a while, it didn't change anything I actually ATE but it made me feel hunger a bit more...though now it's stopped working and I'm back to one meal a day. I get really tired of my family constantly judging me for being picky, berating me for never eating anything, telling me I'm being difficult, and saying things like, "There are people starving out there, you should be grateful for what you have and eat!" When they say those things, it does not help at all! It instead just makes me really upset because I literally CANNOT HELP IT! I didn't ASK for this, I didn't ASK to have so many food sensitivities...and it drives ME just as crazy as it drives THEM! I wish I could eat more things so they wouldn't get so mad at me all the time but I just CAN'T!

You know how people will expect you to just toughen up and eat what's in front of you...? Yeah...no...that doesn't work for me. If there's nothing I can eat, nothing that's safe, I will not eat a THING until I have a safe food in front of me again, even if it takes multiple days...the longest I've gone without eating was four days. I am so glad my parents don't force-feed me though, like the nurses at the psych hospital or the substitute OT person did...because that means I haven't had to intentionally make myself sick to get rid of the things I was force-fed in about a decade now. I am so afraid to tell my family about those incidents because they have never heard anything about it from anyone at all and I always keep traumatic memories and things that happened to me to myself for years at a time, until I can't take it anymore and I just break from the stress, but I am working on it now with my talk therapist, so I hope I'll be able to say something eventually.

Anyway, I guess what I want to say is, anyone else who's autistic and struggles with food sensitivities, I see you and I feel you. You are not alone. I used to think I was alone in this until I met my best friend who struggles with this stuff too. It was so validating for me to finally have someone who understands what this is like, and I hope my story can help some of you feel not so alone either.

#actually autistic #autism things #food is a sensory nightmare #food is gross #i hate food #i hate talking about this usually #but i wanted to spread the word that this is a real issue people have and it's not because they're choosing to #and hopefully help anyone who has this same problem feel validated and less alone #i see you and feel you #also please don't hit me with the “oh it's an eating disorder” thing...last i checked you're not born with eds #and i have been like this since i was very very little...like two years old little #it's entirely a sensory thing...a really really major sensory thing with multiple components to it #long post #sl99 talks

[ezlebe]

Tomgreg prison era?

4-11

Dear Thomas Wambsgans –

Tom blinks at the flowy script and formal address, then reaches out and grabs the envelope… Yeah, it says it’s from Greg. He unfolds out the rest of the paper and it says Sincerely, Gregory Hirsch too.

He furrows his brow, wondering if this is something weird spear phishing scam by letter. It’s really bizarre, if so, but clearly it is working.

Dear Thomas Wambsgans,

The food here is dreadful. I finally understand your concerns, and have now had them realized, from our visit to the diner in Washington DC. It is worse than –

Okay, so it’s probably Greg, but is he… roleplaying? Did he dictate this aloud for some crook secretary to apply pen to paper, too?

 – when we went, I fear, as it seems to be entirely processed and I had forgotten the odd rubber texture to powder egg. It is even worse than the MREs that I once found on my grandfather’s ranch and sustained myself with for a week. Is the food for you also of subpar quality? I have been curious to know if mine is worse due to being in the state of Florida, where it is very hot and damp.

The other occupants here are surprisingly cordial, though there have been some friendly joshes toward my height, but it is no worse than any of the family. I do think I may have to learn Spanish. I have found a single fellow inmate who speaks French, but it is in an incomprehensible dialect called Cajun, which I previously believed only to be a type of food. I have struck up something of an acquaintanceship with this man, if only to irk those around us.

Sincerely, Gregory Hirsch

“Oh, buddy,” Tom mutters, covering a smile with a tight palm and exhaling a broken laugh into it. He drops the letter to cover his eyes with that hand, mortified at the burn behind them. It’s a nothing letter – it’s just… Greg sounding sort of like Greg, complaining about eggs, and third languages, and… and very deliberately reaching out to him.

Fuck. He’s so fucking happy thatit’s really just disgusting.

Tom reaches out and grabs the envelope, again, scanning his eyes across the address. He has no idea what he’s going to write back, except maybe to tell Greg that his French is fake, too.

~

Greg,

We’re not in a period drama. You’re okay to write to me like a real person.

The food here sucks, too. I would’ve taken you out to more dives, but let’s be real your affection for crappy chain food prepared you better than I ever could for it. If you repeat this, I’ll kill you, but I actually don’t mind powder eggs. They remind me of camping with the scouts.

My only real stumble here so far is this guy in for corporate fraud talking to me like he knows Connor. It’s bonkers. He doesn’t actually know him, right, because he thinks knowing him makes him more respectable in here. It does not. You would think him seeing me in here would make it plain as day that being in the Roy circle is meaningless, and yet.

How you doing, otherwise? I know you need a precise measure of water and shade like a delicate, fussy flower.

–Tom

~~

It takes about a week and a half to get a reply to a letter, which is maybe quick for moving a physical object a thousand or so miles, but is just horrific on Tom’s anxiety. He feels like a wartime widow, attending the mail drop and regularly disappointed, wondering if the last letter was the last. It’s just about the time he starts thinking he’s said something wrong, too, Greg has finally realized he shouldn’t be writing Tom, a new one shows up, easing his worries in a way almost like its own clockwork.

6-05

Dear Thomas,

I do not believe I was ever meant to take residence in Florida. It is very hot and humid, which is very manageable for visits, but I recall believing New York was too much, and this is far, far worse. I am beginning to feel like a slug. It is not allowed to simply stay in bed, but I fear that I will one day wake stuck to it.

I’ve been trying to do exercise since I arrived, but I dislike it, especially now that my body seems to be attempting to melt, so I’ve moved on to other pursuits. A good number of other inmates do not hold any regard for the less physical activities available to us –

Tom nearly covers his face, but settles for pinching the bridge of his nose; good lord, Greg is really playing at being such a dandy. Is it a psychological thing? He’s claimed it isn’t, but Tom really has no way to know, a whole country away.

– at all. I enjoy them, though. It is much better to be assigned an indoor detail, as well, than to be stuck outside toiling with a bunch of rude oafs who think height equals shares of physical labor.

Tom gives up and breaks into a laugh, dropping the letter to cover his mouth with both hands in attempt to muffle it.

A clear of a throat, which Tom had been avoiding, comes from behind him. “You good, Tom?”

“I think…” Tom sighs, dragging his hands down his face with a forceful swallow. “My only friend in the world has been driven insane by coke withdrawal.”

“…That can happen?”

“I don’t fucking know,” Tom says, as he picks the letter back up with a careful straightening of the paper. “But he’s weirder than ever.”

I have been unable to get any concrete answers about disease prevention to answer your question about the mosquitos. I was, however, informed that only twenty percent of people show outward symptoms of West Nile, so I may, in fact, have already had it?

How are your call out duties and activities among other inmates? I know that was something you were exceedingly worried about, and my experience so far in that is the warning was some measure exaggerated. It is not an amazing experience, nor one I would ever welcome, but now approaching my third month I have suffered the most of boredom. Your letters have bolstered me greatly, in that respect, as I keep them to reread when the impulse strikes me, which is often.

I also hope you’re doing well.

Sincerely, Gregory Hirsch

Tom furrows his brow, as a flush streaks across his nose. He presses his thumb against the word reread, covering and uncovering it, and tries not to think too much about the small, if growing stack of letters now well memorized on his own time.

~

Greg,

I hate to say it buddy but I’m not surprised you’re an indoors activity guy. I can actually see you running around with a little moleskine and a pen, though if it’s for secrets or pictures, who’s really to know?

I’ve been running and working out a lot, actually, so maybe it’s better we were separated by a spiteful, nasty old man of your blood relation. I’d have made you tag along to my free time whenever I get too cooped up and antsy, which is all the time, Greg. It is literally every day. I wish the unit staff here would assign me go out and do something awful and back-breaking outside, but I think they think I’m too soft and old, which is obviously its own insult.

I’m saving your letters for my tell-all book, so I hope you don’t expect anything to be forgotten. The world is going to know about the oatmeal thing and how you don’t know the capital of any US states, as well as the fact that you write to me like a lunatic in immaculate cursive. You’re going to get nothing but fountain pens and calligraphy sets, as gifts, from now on.

They better have bug spray in that commissary. I do not want you getting a brain disease and croaking out there on me. I would hate to have the entire state of Florida ruined for me by a mosquito.

– Tom

~~

“You got two from your lovely lady friend.”

Tom eyes Carter shuffling the letters like cards. “I know it says Greg.”

Carter demonstratively sniffing at the edges, pretending to look inside, generally just fondling Greg’s fucking letter, which is a bold move for a forger built like Roger Rabbit. “Don’t smell any perfume on it…”

“I know it also says FPC Pensacola,” Tom says, injecting every ounce of deliberate pleasantness that he can spare.

Carter pulls back and looks at the front of the envelope. He grunts and throws both at Tom. “Shit, so it does. I didn’t think that was allowed?”

Tom narrows his eyes, then glances down to the letters, as Carter fucks off to the next person in line. He turns them over in his hands by the corners, waiting until the unit is let loose, and decides forcefully not to ask. He doesn’t want to know if he’s got strings pulled without him knowing, until it matters; ignorance, at this point, is bliss.

Tom pulls out the first postmarked with a tense tug. He’s not sure why Greg would send two so close – he usually waits for a reply.

Tom! I saw an alligator!! It was like both bigger and smaller than assumed!

Tom raises an eyebrow, then flips over the page to a blank back.

Alright.

He reaches out for the next envelope, more careful at the twice over sealed seam.

8-16

Dear Thomas,

Okay, that’s more familiar. Evidently, the alligator was just exciting enough Greg forgot he’s pretending to be a Victorian.

It’s been a day and I have seen to send a formal letter.

I have weathered a small actual hurricane, but I just believed it a bad storm at the time. The water level rose high, but, thankfully, it did not outright flood. It was less intimidating an experience than I had assumed it would be after watching films on the subject. The hurricanes, evidently, do not get quite so bad in general and are most often a lot of rain and wind.

The alligator was roughly two meters in length and hissed quite loudly when it was woken, but did not make any other move. My fellow inmate Lou told me that the creature was simply sunning itself after the storm. He also informed me that they are cocodrie in his French and they can get much larger, but that they’re lazy. In return, I told him about orignal and that I would not have approached one so closely to the fence.

Are you still well? I do not know what August is like in Minnesota.

I have recently been considering the end of my stay here. I know you are sentenced for nearly twice as long, but do you think that I might see you before then? Our lawyer has said that it may be easiest to find out by trying to put my name on the list after my release in November.

Yours, Gregory Hirsch

Tom reads the last paragraph twice before he believes his eyes, sure he’s misreading something in Greg’s flowy, perfect cursive script. He curls against his dinky desk, into his elbow, and folds the letter up while swallowing thickly against emotion balling up at the base of his throat. He sets both letters with the others, then closes the drawer, ignoring impulse to take it back out to read a third time.

He wants to see Greg so much that it sits behind his sternum with all the comfort of the head of a morning star, but… it’s hard to believe that the sentiment might be returned, let alone enough to ask about it. He might just be being polite – it’s far more likely that their lawyer floated the idea out of bias.

~

Greg,

I can’t believe you saw a dinosaur when I haven’t even seen a deer. I’m relieved you were okay during the hurricane, though, and every other storm. It sounds like a lot of water to be dealing with and I don’t envy it. Stay safe. You can probably survive any flooding by standing up, but I don’t think we want to test it.

The worst August weather up here is just a little rain. I haven’t even had to deal with it much. The winter is in a couple months and that’s going to really suck the energy out of everything. I can’t wait to feel like I’m in fifth grade and forced to go outside for recess again. I bet you’re familiar with the feeling, though I’ve never thought to ask where you went to school? The one I went to was private and still made us do it, but maybe Canada doesn’t allow that shit.

It’s no problem to try to get you on the list, but check in before you actually make any detour on your welcome home tour. I’d really love to see you, but you’ll have spent enough time in a prison, Greg, to ever walk willingly into another one.

What the flying fuck is an orignal?

 – Tom

~~

10-23

My Dearest Thomas,

Tom flips the upper third of the letter down and sets a flat look out the window. It doesn’t seem to matter how many times that he tells Greg to write like he was born in 1988, not 1788, he just won’t because he thinks it’s fun, the nut, and now it is just getting ridiculous.

All Hallows’ Eve approaches! I am most excited. I don’t believe that the camp will do anything monumental for the holiday, but I have sketched some decorations for the letter. The seasons are most odd in Florida, as well; I have been put on a garden detail and, because they do not have winter, they are still growing food. I enjoy it! It is a much better experience doing this under the direction of the faculty here than my grandfather, who had much patience for plants and little to spare elsewhere.

Tom didn’t actually need any confirmation that Ewan was basically a warden, but good to know he’s worse. He wonders, as well, if Greg is predisposed to entire conversations with plants; he seems the type. The little thinking pumpkins in the letter margins just sort of support the idea.

I have also sketched out one of the blossoms on the back from a zucchini. I find they are quite pretty. I was informed by a CO that they can be stuffed with ricotta and fried to be eaten, and I told him that sounded like something you might enjoy more than me. He said then that I must make them, but I believe that would be better left to you, as well.

I only have a month left, as of today! I cannot wait for the opportunity to see you. The letters are sustaining, but hardly satisfying enough compared to actual company.

Our lawyer has urged me that I should prepare for the cold and I was forced to remind her that I am from Canada; however, she then informed me that Toronto is, in all fact, south of both Twin Cities and Duluth. I never thought to look. I doubt still that it is all that bad.

Ever Yours, Gregory Hirsch

Tom stares at the closing for a beat, a reluctant grin twisting his mouth while he huffs through his nose. He flips the page over and studies the drawn flower, wilted and certainly somewhat lifelike, featuring faint lines and shading, and realizes Greg must be practicing a lot. He probably won’t be sending many more letters, tripping back into real life, but Tom hopes that Greg continues the artsy hobby. He’s not half bad at it. He’s like a little amateur naturist; a burgeoning, trapped Monet.

~

Greg,

Your cartoon pumpkins are very dark, thinking about being carved into pieces. I’m surprised the administration let the letter through at all, hah. Duluth isn’t doing Halloween, either, but there is a CO who started wearing cat eye contact lenses and it just comes off as a painfully dorky rebellion. It reminds me of Tyler the assistant with the Felix clock on his cubicle.

It’s now getting a bit colder and the leaves are turning, too. I expect meals are only going to get worse, from here, so I’m happy someone is going to be getting vitamin c even if it isn’t me. I hear a lot of rumor about hydroponics around here, but I don’t believe anyone is relating it to food. If you like the gardening, though, you should keep it up, so you’ll be prepared for when the world ends and we’re reduced to agrarian pursuits. I’ll do the hunting part.

I’ve noticed you’re collecting hobbies. A quick learner with a curse. What I’m saying is the flower is really well drawn, buddy, as in actually lifelike. I didn’t know you were such an artist.

I have heard of frying them, some Italian thing, but never tried it. It’s probably really crispy and greasy, so I wouldn’t dismiss to so quick for yourself. In a similar weird Italian thing, they do their own songbird, but from what I’ve seen, it is a bit too much even for me.

I miss you, too. I admit I asked about you and our lawyer said to my face she only uses you as an excuse to visit Florida. She doesn’t even It’s just rude.

– Tom

++++

“Wambsgans, visitor,” the CO says, jerking his head toward the visitor building with a flat expression. “Greg Hirsch.”

“What – Really?” Tom says, shocked that – well, Greg is even in the state so soon, since he was scheduled to be released only something like three days ago, but also that he got through the visitor screening process. It seems whoever is signing off on those is either a moron, letting in his accomplice, or the opposite of one, and knows Greg and he can’t exactly duplicate or plan any other version of their crime. …Or, more likely, his lawyer pulled strings. “Oh, I – ” he looks down at his rumpled uniform, suddenly feeling almost naked in it. “Okay.”

He enters the visitors room at the behest of another, more familiar, CO called Maria, and promptly forgets her and the rest of the bland room at the sight of Greg hovering near one of the bolted, tacky tables. His hair is longer, maybe having gone entirely uncut since the day they got stuck in their respective camps, and he’s hunched as ever, big round eyes staring back at Tom.

It’s tempting to do the crazy thing and piledrive Greg into the ground and never let him go, but Tom takes the sensible and sane choice to simply speedwalk to the table. He gets close enough and Greg jumps him, anyway, squeezing the life from him while Tom clumsily, hurriedly grabs back.

“Tom,” Greg murmurs in his ear.

“Hey, buddy,” Tom answers, softly, bracing his hands on Greg’s back with a hard swallow. He closes his eyes for a brief pair of moments, holding his breath and pretending they’re anywhere else. “Long time no see.”

Greg hums a vague response, a petulant grumble escaping his lips when Tom gently pulls away before a CO can come peel him off. It’s a whiny, spoiled little noise that Tom missed so much.

“You were really that eager to get back into another prison, huh?” Tom asks, settling across the table from Greg and ignoring another plain stupid idea to reach out for Greg’s hands to make themselves a summoning circle of two. It’s not like a hug; he’s never held Greg’s hand.

Greg sweeps some overlong hair behind his ear, leaning into the table with a shrug.

Tom is just struck dumb by the fact Greg is sitting in front of him. He’s solid and real and here, and Tom needs to do more than just stare at him. “Florida for eight months and not even a tan?”

Greg grins and stretches out his arms to look at the pale backs of them. “I guess not?”

“You doing okay?” Tom asks, glancing over Greg from his bulky sweater to his obviously new jeans, ankles exposed to the air with a shock of white socks underneath. “No yawning distress, or whatever? I assume you got the benefits coming in.”

“Yeah, your, uh – your mom is really nice? Like still. She said she would help me find a place.”

“A place? Oh.” Tom swallows hard in shock, because it almost sounds like Greg plans to… to stay in Minnesota? “Huh… You might want to watch that. Her taste leans toward art deco – Oh no, wait… that’s you.”

Greg breaks into a laugh, shaking his head and suddenly ducking it into his chest. His long-fingered hands flex against each other on the table, making it more tempting than ever to reach out and take them.

“There’s this… Frank Lloyd Wright service station, not far from here,” Tom says, unsure where he’s really pointing when he flicks his fingers toward the wall across from them, but it could be close to Cloquet. “It’s based on that sort of thing. You should go gawk.”

“Or, maybe, we do that when you get out?” Greg says, quietly, looking up under his brows with a small shrug. “It’ll like… you know, be better. You could tell me about it.”

“Yeah?” Tom swallows hard against a swell in his throat, heat blazing across the back of his neck. “I haven’t actually been there.”

“I bet it’s pretty cool,” Greg says, smiling back, flicking his fingers in a similar direction. “For like a – a gas station.”

“A service station, Greg, which goes the extra mile,” Tom says, raising his brows while leaning across the table with a hum. “Full service.”

“No, yeah,” Greg laughs, again, smiling wide, as he nods his head. “Sure.”

Tom takes another few seconds to stare, rudely indulging himself and prepared to blame his circumstances. It’s the prison that’s doing it – he’s just lost all his social graces. “So is… Mommy’s just dragging you around the Twin Cities?”

“Kind of?” Greg says, narrowing his eyes a bit with a wincing sort of smile. “She had me help do some shredding at her office yesterday, after we flew up? I think as, like, a joke?”

“Oh my god,” Tom mutters, rolling his eyes toward the windows and more than a bit exasperated, but not that all that surprised. “Don’t tell me that.”

“She said she’d pay me, actually,” Greg says, outright overeager, as he relays this baffling bit of news. “If I wanted a job? But I couldn’t tell if she was serious. She reminds me sort of, uh, of you, when she’s not like being my lawyer.”

“Embarrassing, right,” Tom says, scoffing through his nose with a weak laugh. “I’m glad you’re getting along.”

Greg sweeps his hair out of his face, again, smiling somewhat under his fingers. “Yeah, like… I’m glad, too.”

The conversation drifts, almost awkwardly, but not uncomfortably, like neither of them know what to say, but don’t want to leave. It goes on like that, anyway, until a CO breaks in with an announcement and Greg does straighten with a glance at the clock. It suddenly feels like it hasn’t been any time at all.

“So, I was looking – um, at the rules?” Greg says, lifting his head with a nod at the station behind Tom, though there isn’t any sign to that effect behind him. “And you get like unlimited time but only like eight total, right? Per month. So like I could split it with your family, or whatever, but that could be, like… two visits a week?”

“That is math, buddy,” Tom says, forcing himself to look up into Greg’s eyes while he raises his brows high up his forehead with forced levity. “You want to stick it out here that long?”

“Yeah, I – I mean if that’s okay?”

“Of course, Greg, I would love it, if you stayed, it’s just – ” Tom lowers his voice, making sure to put a taunting pull at his lips. “This is Minnesota. It’s dead boring.”

“I like lived in New Brunswick as a kid in the summers, you know?” Greg says, though Tom had certainly not known, but that’ll be an explanation asked for later. “It’s like way more boring.”

“But…” Tom rises out of his chair slower than Greg; no matter what Greg thinks he’s going to do, there’s a chance this is the last time Tom sees him. “…No hard feelings if you run back to New York, alright?”

“You totally would have a lot of them, Tom,” Greg disagrees, as a grin pulls somewhat mocking at his lips. “But I’m, like – I’m not going to. That’s why I’m here.”

“Sure,” Tom says, offering a shrug that he’s sure would look less stiff on a Buckingham Palace guard. “If you say so.”

“Like, it’s like… like how you wrote you’d have to go down to Florida?” Greg says, while his hands swing to briefly tap at either edge of his now-vacant chair. “If I ended up doing something that got me stuck down there longer. Remember? When I stole oatmeal. It was something like… you’d go down to Pensacola to give me a reason to keep on-target?”

Tom feels his eyes go wide, startled at the baldfaced mention of a, until now, gone unmentioned lack of subtlety on Tom’s part that should’ve been left that way out of politeness. “So what, Greg? You know that’s not just…” He reaches up and scratches at the heat bursting across his jaw, heart thumping heavily in his chest. “It’s not the same. That coming from me.”

“Or, uh…” Greg shrugs smally into a shoulder with another nod. “Maybe it is.”

Tom only barely manages a punched out breath: “Oh.”

“Uh… uh… anyway, I’ll be back Saturday,” Greg says, taking a hasty backward step and nodding, then looking down with a hitch when he nearly flattens someone’s kid. “With y-your mom, maybe?”

“Okay, buddy,” Tom says, lifting a hand to wave by rote. He drops it slowly back to his side, as Greg slips out the door behind some group of other visitors. He sighs hard through his nose, biting at the inside of his lip and muttering against it. “Fuck.”

“Hey, man,” Neal says, stage whispering from two tables over. He’s an insider trader with a rumored few hundred mil stashed away somewhere that everyone knows about, because he won’t shut up about it. “Was that rumor true about you two bumping uglies the whole damned time?”

“No,” Tom says, annoyed to hear his voice lift, as he keeps staring at the door and shoving down hard on the impulse to do something really stupid, like try to follow. “I was married.”

“Huh. You think I don’t hear that ‘was’?” Neal says, with a hum that leads into a quiet click of his tongue. “I will say this, man? He did not look that tall on the TV.”

“No?” Tom says, looking over with a sneer building across his lips.

“You two make each other look normal size,” Neal says, offering an unkind gesture with a back and forth sweep of his hand at two evident levels. “You have my endorsement. You got to be with someone who makes you look less like a freak.”

“Golly gee, thank you,” Tom says, flatly, rolling his eyes back to the door. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

A sharp clear of the throat comes from behind Tom. “Are we conspiring, gentleman?”

“With this guy? Our resumes don’t line up,” Neal scoffs, which is… insulting but sort of true, since he actually made money off trade schemes, while Tom fell on a sword and jammed another person on top of himself and it for good measure. “But did you see his boy? He could play for the Knicks.”

“I did see that,” Maria says, tilting her head in the same direction. “He didn’t look that tall on PGN.”

Neal raises his brows. “That’s what I’m saying.”

+

Tom folds the Funyuns bag, half and half over again, empty now after Greg offered it as the standard fare. “So you really like the work – are you looking into becoming the worlds largest paralegal?”

“The whole job is, you know, interesting, seeing it from the other side, but –” Greg leans forward, as his eyes go wide with a marked sparkle of excitement. “The – like, the best part is reading all the horrible things people did.”

Tom rolls his eyes. “Oh god, your insatiable snoop monster is finally being sated.”

“I guess?” Greg says, sweeping his ever-growing hair behind both his ears with his hands. “The worst so far is this guy who admitted to your mom he totally burned up a company car, but she had to convince everyone it got stolen.”

“Wow,” Tom says, lowering his voice with a glance toward the observing CO utterly ignoring them. “Burned it?”

“I guess he was super unhappy at his job?” Greg says, with a small shrug of a single shoulder up against his ear. “I never would’ve done that – I like having stuff too much.”

Tom snorts hard, as he leans back away, grudgingly putting some space between them for his next question. “I know you do. Speaking of… How was your New Years thing? Aside for your scheduling issues.”

It probably didn’t go great, because no Roy function ever does, but there has to be some reason Greg came back to Minnesota, afterward, rather than sending Tom some Dear John about sticking it with them a second time. In fact, Tom had thought that was exactly what he was going to get until he got called up today, since Greg missed Saturday, so he’s just… more curious than ever.

“Oh, uh…” Greg sighs hard through his nose, slumping back in his seat. “It was… bad. I’ve never really seen my mom with them all, as like an adult? It – like, it was really uncomfortable. But Grandpa Ewan at one point, uh – He actually yelled at Uncle Logan for calling her a pill head, so that was, like. It was nice of him? But my mom still kind of cried.”

Tom presses his mouth together in a grimace; that sounds par for the course. “That sucks, bud.”

“I got some champagne, though, and brought it home,” Greg says, eyes flicking back to make contact with Tom, then a laugh breaks through his lips. “Your dad is funny – he thought like I’d get in trouble? But it wasn’t even like the most expensive stuff.”

Tom stares back for a beat, then slowly cocks his brows. “…You got my parents champagne?”

“I-I can get you some later,” Greg says, eager, wiggling forward on his seat and leaning into his elbows on the table with a wide look. “It’s like not until September. Or like, you can pick it out – I just took this off the table.”

“You’re such a delinquent, Greg,” Tom says, then swallows hard, as he realizes for the nth time, in a way that still feels just absolutely impossible, Greg seems to really be in Minnesota just for him. “What am I going to do with you?”

“Like, the same as usual? Hey, like,” Greg says, scratching up against the side of his nose with a thumb. “Do you think the champagne is like a heavier offense than the papers?”

Tom drops his head in a deep nod. “I think it would be to your family,” he says, affectedly flat and joyless.

“My mom like brought this extra big purse with a bunch of plastic baggies,” Greg says, waving down at his side with a gesture like he’s brought his own bag. “And she took like a bunch of food. She said it was for her book club.”

Tom tilts his head to a wide angle, then scoffs hard through his nose while lifting it back up. “I’ve never met your mother, but I like her, Greg.”

“The book club is more like a wine club,” Greg adds, looking up when the CO starts to make the announcement for the end of visiting hours. He rises from his chair with a stretch, back cracking like a broken zipper. “I used to have to pick her up? But now she uses like Uber and sometimes her friend, Brian.”

“That’s so funny,” Tom says, wrapping a hand around Greg’s nape, as he leans down for his now-customary hug. “You have a good week, okay?”

“I’m sorry I missed Saturday,” Greg says, his pout unambiguous against Tom’s neck while he speaks into it. “The stupid plane –”

Tom hums loud to interrupt, squeezing one last time before reluctantly letting go. “Hey, you were here today.”

+

Tom isn’t sure if he’s more anxious or less with Greg around, as his release date approaches with the quick passing of summer. He feels weight against his back, excited but crawling with uncertainty, as easily hundreds of good, bad, or ugly ways it could go build in the back of his head and he… He wants to know where he stands with Greg, but also he doesn’t want to know; the thing that makes him nearly lean up at every perfectly appropriate hug, sitting as it’s been so long under his ribs, almost scarier than any of the rest of it.

He never expected Greg to do more than uncomfortably put up with it, let alone start to… regularly imply some similar sentiment. The ambiguity of zero privacy spares him any real denial or confession. He can pretend forever that Greg really forgives him, or at least the actions, and will stand with him at the gate at the end of all this, if he never, ever asks.

“Yeah, but it’s like… we made it?” Greg says, sweeping his hand through his hair, then he offers the other to make a jazzy gesture. “Or, I did. You’ve got two months? It was – it sucked, a lot, and everything, but the, like… I think the working yourself up before it the first time was actually the worst part? To me. When you thought you’d end up in, like… Alcatraz.”

“Alcatraz is closed, first off, Gregory, and second, I’ve read it was mostly the island part that sucked. Whatever, yes, it’s done. …But I wish you’d had something to run off with, anyway,” Tom says, rolling his voice around the word with a low grumble. He gestures toward the decidedly denominational symbol hanging around the curtain rod at the window, smuggled in by some past visitor. “I’m not a Catholic, but there’s still some part of me that feels like I should have taken all this guilt upon myself like I promised to.”

“If it helps, I – I maybe did?” Greg says, wetting his lips, then dropping his shoulders with a shrug. “Have… something. But I decided not to use it.”

Tom stares for a few beats, mouth twisting downward, and when Greg doesn’t crack and admit to some terrible joke, he feels his hands curl into fists across the top of the table. “…You what?”

“Yeah, uh,” Greg shrugs, again, blinking rapidly and looking down, plainly not having expected to get this sort of response for his confession of heinous idiocy. “Um. You remember when we – We were at your like house – penthouse…? I… I recorded it on my phone.”

“Greg,” Tom says, hearing his voice bark, then forcing it back down into something lower like a hiss. “Why the fuck wouldn’t you use that?”

“Your mom said it probably wouldn’t matter? She might’ve – probably was lying, but –” Greg suddenly reaches across the table and sets his hand on top of Tom’s wound fist. “Now it – I think… I don’t know. I’d rather just be happy that I’m here like this an-and with you now, than… wonder if I had used it? If I wouldn’t be.”

Tom stares for a few beats, suffering a brief, horrible wash of anger at his mother. “Greg –”

Greg shakes his head, fingertips scrambling at the edge of Tom’s turned-down hand. “I dunno, Tom, shit sorta happens?” He continues, his voice lowering, almost breaking, “Like… like how none of this would’ve happened, at all, if I hadn’t told Gerri ab-about your press conference plan an-and then lied to you about it.”

Tom stares and feels his eyes narrow, then widen, as his whole expression threatens to collapse; he’s angry, so angry, but it wanes almost all at once when he sees Greg is… trying so hard to blame himself for some reason. He shakes his head and looks down, pulling his hand from underneath Greg’s by widely spreading his fingers.

Greg makes a tight, pained noise, almost soundless.

Tom finishes the action to wind their fingers together, palm to palm, to put himself in a more active grip. He’s… upset, yeah, but he’s suspected this for a while; he suspected Greg telling a lot of people about a lot of things that were just too convenient, but he was just as bad. “Okay, Greg, don’t… get so worked up. You’re not that big of a snake. That’s why I’m so mad you didn’t slither out of this – you’re usually smarter.”

Greg takes a wet breath. “But I –”

Tom tightens both his hands around Greg’s one, squeezing around the knuckles. “Don’t start. You’d been working in the corporate environment not even a month, baby, and I can’t remember giving you a single reason to trust me.”

Greg takes a sharp breath, lifting his eyes and mouth dropping open, but he still doesn’t speak until seconds later: “Ne-neither did Gerri.”

“She was the closest thing you knew to a lawyer,” Tom says, tilting his head with a flat, sarcastic smile. “Too bad she’s probably even more biased and self-serving than the rest of us.”

“Maybe… yeah. Like, with Roman, she – ” Greg looks up with a start, as a shadow falls somehow indifferently over their table.

“I want to preface this by saying none of the comments by Officer Carlos were homophobic,” Maria says, pointing over her shoulder at the markedly ducking CO that’s been shadowing her for a few weeks. “He had me concerned because you look like you’re fighting, but now I’m here and it’s more a crying situation. Are we having a problem, gentlemen?”

“No, ma’am,” Greg says, ducking his head with evident mortification. “No-not at all. I can’t really cry with witnesses, actually.”

Tom flattens his lips with a shake of his head at Greg, then up at Maria, who’s now giving Greg the hairy eyeball. He squeezes Greg’s hand one last time before letting it go. “We’re just praying for our sins.”

“Inmate Wambsgans,” Maria says, turning her condescending look toward toward him with a bizarrely uncanny rock of her head. “Do you even know where chapel is?”

Tom stares Maria down for a solid beat, then lifts his hand with a point and a crooked smirk. “It’s the same place where I meet my counselor.”

Maria raises an unamused brow. “You got me there.” She nods down at the table. “The time ends in twenty minutes. You better apologize quick, eh?”

“Ten-four,” Tom says, sunnily, dropping his arm to smack at the table with an exaggerated gesture and very light tap.

Later, once the announcement officially goes out to part ways that afternoon, Tom presses his lips lightly across Greg’s jaw, hiding it inside the hug; it earns him a tight squeeze almost to the point of asphyxia.

====

Greg cranes his head up at the station, leaning against the hood of the car behind him. He looks like he’s actually judging it, which is pretty funny, since his amateur interest began with a Parducci documentary he watched on a flight to Scotland. He’d gotten Minneapolis and Detroit confused, then been irked when Tom didn’t know about all the buildings in this city that he’d visited once on a hockey trip.

“You don’t have to write an essay on it,” Tom says, flatly, keeping one eye on Greg and the other on the mechanic in the open bay. It would be just his luck to get a trespassing call an hour after his release. “You’re not going to be graded on if you like a tacky gas station in a town that’s only other claim to fame is Jessica Lange.”

“It’s got a – ” Greg takes a breath, gesturing back and forth with flailing, turning palms. “A lot of angles.” He looks over at Tom, raising his brows with a short lean inward. “Did you know they built this – uh, fake one sort of the same in Buffalo, recently?”

Tom stares for a beat, taking in Greg’s eager, bright face, then leans up and kisses him across the mouth. He figures if Greg shoves him, he can just blame the surprise that way, in his own head, rather than the much slimmer, but very present, chance of disgust. He ends up being the one surprised, when Greg hums deeply, all of a sudden weighing heavy on Tom’s shoulder with an arm wrapping around his neck. It even makes him forget the mechanic, who’s hopefully not a total dick.

“I, um – ” Greg stutters, moments later, a smile cutting across his face while he goes on to shake his head. “It’s maybe not that great, Tom? The one in – uh, in the museum is all copper.”

Tom yanks at Greg gently by the coat lapels, listening to a resulting sputtered laugh, and tightens his voice up somewhat more cartoonish, maybe like how he’d scold a baby. “You just prove over and over you can’t appreciate these nice things I give you.”

#tomgreg #this is probably one of the longest of these ive done lol #long distance prison era

[4lph4kidz]

To lighten the mood, what are some silly headcanons you have for the alpha kids? One of mine is Dirk is lactose intolerant

i'll add that one to my collection, thank you very much. i also think he has terrible hayfever bc he grew up with no plants around

jake has bad posture but if he stands up straight he is constantly banging his head off of doorframes. he also constantly forgets about his peanut allergy but will not stop eating potentially dangerous foods

jane pronounces 'calliope' wrong and keeps messing it up for years after learning this fact

i think roxy makes romhacks for fun and if she teamed up with rose she could make that super freaky creepypasta .exe shit like actually really happen but it starts an actual chain reaction ring style curse and they have to walk it back

between bleaching the shit out of it and salt water exposure, dirk's hair is more damaged then his psyche, and resembles straw in both color and texture. he tries to moisturize it but he's fighting a losing battle

also not exactly a headcanon but i think god tier roxy's object summoning powers are sorely underutilised for prop comedy

#ask #`gonna be real my brain stopped working it took me a while to figure out what to say despite my brain being so full of headcanons lol

[ceilingfan5]

in the spirit of impending halloween, can you go off about overrated (or underrated) candies?

im gonna go out swinging and declare at the top of my lungs that i hate red candy AND blue candy and quite often green candy. strawberry flavored candy is on thin ice but usually not bad. and before you're like woah what the fuck. prepare to die on this hill with me fucker. im allergic to food dye, esp red n blue. not like, severely, but it gives me migraines, and combined with a billion other triggers, shit like birthday parties n valentines day were vomit bummers of a repeated nature when i was little.

so then like, at halloween, i'd have to give my little brother all my red n blue and often green candy, and being a little brother, he was piss poor at trading, and it was a whole thing.

SO WHAT"S GOOD ACTUALLY?

chocolate except for like, almond joys, mounds. im not a coconut guy. snickers are fine. caramel fucks, peanut butter is good if it isn't a bitch to get out of the wrapper, i like crispy bits, nougat rules. pretzel m&ms fuck. the best easy to get chocolate is the hershey symphony almond n toffee bits bars that are ginormous, but like, actually decent chocolate rocks the socks. i got a bar of tony's chocolonely the other day and it was like fucking, strawberry cheese cake flavored and usually im a milk chocolate, then white chocolate, then.......................................................maybe slightly dark chocolate person, but god i ate the entire thing in one go and i had no regrets except for that it was gone

peach anything! chewy orange candy, lemon candy, strawberry candy (if you are offended on red and blue flavored candy's behalf please come take it off my hands the next time i have a variety bag). skittles, starbursts, etc. also like, sour gummy worms/octopi, watermelons, sour patch kids. also also tootsie rolls, which kind of straddle the line between one and two taxonomoically

rock candy fucks, good texture. chocolate rocks are the same. lollipops but only like four flavors and i don't fuck with mystery. pop rocks (again like. three varieties) are cool. bubblegum is a probably.

grape is a hard maybe. as are smarties (chalky), nerds. nerds are like eating aquarium gravel so you have to be in the mood. i'll eat like three candy corns and that's plenty. mint chocolate heavily varies. peanut stuff, gotta be in the mood for it. mega sour candy is probably a no, as is like...gooey things. i don't do like, gushers etc. wrong texture.

no: cherry anything, blue raspberry anything. no mystery flavors, cause you never know when it's gonna kick your ass. no coconut (texture), dark dark chocolate (bitter), spicy (spicy), coffee anything (bitter). if you are upset about it give me your mailing address and you can have any of mine you like (joke)

also i never eat candy from like, the dollar store, tj maxx, craft stores etc, and if it has been in my cupboard too long bye bye. im also not gonna eat like, chocolate flavored wax product.

#ask game #don't get me started #thank you!!! #i appreciate you indulging me esp since i posted n ghosted

[canyouhearthelight]

The Miys, Ch. 219

Soooo.... as much as I love @baelpenrose, @writing-with-olive, @quantumizedinsanity, and many others for creating and beta reading this, I want to give a super extra special shout out to @lwgph and @freakfagot for very kindly letting me know that I completely skipped chapter 219 when I posted 220 last week.

And since 220 actually references events that happen in this chapter, I am looping around and posting it this week. Thank you both, so so much, for catching that.

Parvati still had not returned to work two days later, and I had just received a message that morning from Xiomara that she was requesting a leave of absence.  As worried as I was, I probably would have done the same thing, so the leave had been granted, open-ended.  There wasn’t much work to be done, anyway - all of the focus currently was on preparing for landfall, and jobs were locked in.  Hannah and I could handle living space allocations, easily.

All of which did absolutely nothing to calm my worries as I poked at a vegetarian curry in one of the mess halls.

“I am reasonably certain it has given up fighting back,” a deep voice rumbled from behind me. 

I turned halfheartedly to greet Jokul and invite him to take a seat. “Got a lot on my mind and no convenient crisis to distract me,” I admitted.

“Such is normally the human condition. Or so I am told.” He winced as he chewed a mouthful of pasta. “That is not what squash should feel like.”

“Apparently we ran out of food stock on butternut squash really quickly.” I sighed and gave up, pushing my food toward him. “Appetite’s off.  It’s gobi masala, help yourself.”

He shook his head gently. “I do not enjoy cauliflower, but thank you.” After a moment of consideration, he set his fork down. “Would you like to talk about it?”

“Wish I could,” I sighed. “But it’s not my story to tell. A friend of mine is going through a lot right now, and wants some space. Given what they just confided to us about their past, I don’t blame them and it isn’t a situation where I can really push, you know?”

“I take it this friend is not of the variety to spar? I have not seen any new faces lately.”

“Definitely not the sparring type,” I confirmed. “That’s kind of what set everything off.”

He nodded in realization. “The situation with our escorts, I take it.”

I groaned and dropped my forehead onto my hands. Peeking between my fingers to see his reaction, I asked in defeat “Do you think we made a rash decision?”

“From what I understand, no.  They believe we are inferior and wish to force us into that mold, correct?”

“Mm hmm.”

“We lack the martial capacity to fight directly, and allowing them to remain would instill sufficient paranoia that they need not take any action to divide us. But that is simply my belief.  I take it that your friend believes differently.”

I nodded, head still propped on one hand as it had been so frequently lately. “They want us to find a more peaceful solution, or at least try something else before we go straight into the splodey parts.”

“Did they have such a solution to suggest?”

“No one has, as far as I can tell. That’s the problem. And with this person, it’s more complicated because of their past.”

“Not a cryptic phrase at all,” he teased gently before trying another bite of the pasta. “It is less objectionable when congealed, which is a terrible realization.”

That at least got a snort from me. “Some foods are like that. But we’ll have fresh food again before too long. They’re trying to conserve root stocks of everything that we are going to be growing on Von, and rather than waste everything else, we are using it up the best we can.”

“This cannot be the best use of these ingredients. I refuse to believe such blatant deceit.”

Another snicker. “That filling probably came from the console, if the texture is that bad. We were just talking the other day about how most console vegetables have the wrong texture. It doesn’t help - like, at all - that everyone likes them to be cooked to different degrees.  From what Miys told me, the console basically takes an average and uses that.”

“A case in which no one wins,” he sighed dramatically. “But it does explain whatever this is.”

“Not everyone likes curry as much as I do,” I pointed out. “Otherwise, that would be the perfect solution.”

“You are correct. I rescind my objection, although I am going to strongly recommend they do not use the five tons of beets I have been harvesting as borscht.”

“Five tons? That’s…. A lot of borscht.”

“It could likely be better used as a reasonable amount of borscht, roasted beets, and a substantial amount of sugar,” he stated firmly.

I wasn’t going to argue. Instead, I flicked open my datapad and made a note to contact Grey and Xiomara about the idea. “Noted. And thank you. I like the resource distribution side of you, by the way.”

“I am certain Farro has made it clear: an unfortunately large part of being a warlord in the After was gathering and managing resources. It is all well and good to have someone attend to it for you, but one should always have a close eye on everything to avoid abuse.” As if to make his point, he shook a ravioli at me. “Beets are easy, everyone likes sugar. Making war is harder.”

His statement brought me back to the reason I was sulking as far from my office as I could get. “I already know what Arthur would do in this situation: he made it very clear to Charly that he only suggests we wait until we are on planet so that the GC doesn’t feel the need to send new escorts. But what would you do, knowing that not everyone agreed with a decision?”

“Anyone in our settlement was allowed to object to any decision we made, provided they were able to suggest an alternative. And then everyone would vote, in most cases. The only exception was generally when a decision needed to made quickly, such as a disaster or an attack.”

I blinked several times, skeptical. “It can’t be that simple.”

“Truthfully, it is not. Wrong decisions can still be made, but emotional ones were less likely when the person objecting had to provide the alternative rather than just objecting.”

“Thank you. For that, and for the beets.” I stood, picking up my half eaten food. “I’ll talk to the Council, see about opening a poll to the Ark.  It will need to have a time limit on it - we land sooner rather than later.”

“Our people need opportunity, not time,” he shrugged. “If I have learned anything, it is that.”

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#the miys #found family #humans are weird #humans are space orcs #haw #hfy #aliens #apocalypse #post apocalypse #post post apocalypse #science fiction #original science fiction #my writing #original writing

[lazlohno]

safe foods

as an autistic person, i experience the common phenomena among us tistics that is safe foods.

i just felt like listing mine and why they’re safe. my blog, why not?

Blueberries - Round, have 3 different tiers of flavour that usually correspond to size. If they feel wrong, they ARE wrong. this rule ESPECIALLY goes for texture.

Grapes - Oblong, bite-sized. These ones ease me into drinking water when I’m having a rough day. Mostly water themselves, and have two colours, both of which are nice on the eye.

A specific brand of granola bars - Rectangles! Hand-sized. Grounding, for one reason or another. texturally a dream. Granola is only good in this form, fight me. Taste is ALWAYS consistent or something is HORRIBLY WRONG with the bar itself.

Kimchi ramen - The only thing I dislike are the mushrooms, which I just avoid. Never too many spice packets. Consistent, pasta, and can be prepared in two ways depending on how I’m feeling; Broth or no broth. The little vegetables are funny to me. Warm. When I cook it right, the ramen is very nice and consistent texturally.

Common patterns:

Roundness (?)

You can easily tell if something is wrong with the food

Easy to eat

Consistent texture and flavour

This is interesting information which I will now knowingly apply when assessing foods in the future. Fun

#safe foods #food #autism #actually autistic #lazlo talks #i also like strawberries and bananas but they have too many conditions attached to them to list here i felt #k back to ace attorney or death note. #haven’t decided yet #// #food cw #cw food

[angelo-the-doctor-of-feelings]

Wanna fun story(it's not fun at all in fact it made me very upset)

I only eat two things normaly. Rice with eggs(would recommend it tastes good) and noodles (this includes ramen) Sometimes salad if we have the right dressing.

Now, my brother made some noodles and offered me some I agreed but then asked how long he cooked it for because

I won't eat noodles if they're cooked for too long. He said he cooked it for nine minutes. I cook mine for eight so I was pretty sure it would be fine.

I went to grab them and they were still in the water. I was uncomfortable with this cause it would've been in there for around ten minutes which is too long. I said something along the lines of I can't eat it.

My father was not a fan of this and he yelled at me to eat it. I tried fighting back saying that it was in the water for too long but he said that it was fine to eat. Obviosly that's not the problem. But I was forced to eat the noodles that were in there for by now eleven or twelve minutes.

Later I went to my mother and asked her about it and she said she was going to do the same thing if my father hadn't. She also said that this has nothing to do with your 'supposed autism'(we weren't sure if I was autistic at the point so that's why she said that) and to let it go.

I knew she was wrong so I pulled up a study showing that autistic people have problems with food textures. She THEN YELLED at me because I and I quote "couldn't let it go".

I'm just glad I didn't lose noodles as one of my safe foods as I've had that one for years and I didn't want something like this to ruin it. I do eat rotini less than other noodles though.

I also make all my own food now not trusting what my family makes.

I just wanted to see an unbiased opinion on this. I told my brother and he said that it was stupid but there's no point in fighting her.

Knowing Donnie,

I absolutely understand that you were upset.

If making your own food solves these problems for you, then please do it. People who aren't on the spectrum won't understand this need of sameness & the impact certain textures can have. Which is sad because your experience is valid, even though others might not feel this way. They're LUCKY they don't.

I don't know if further talking about it with your family will help, but I highly encourage you to pursue the things that make you feel regulated, safe & happy. 🧡

There needs to be more acceptance & more information/ awareness about sensory issues.

You are not stupid. 💕

Sending hugs! 🧡

Donnie & me are rooting for you!

#mikey supports #mikeys magic family #mikeys world of feelings #donnies exceptional mind #neon leons messy mind palace #raph a roni blog #turtle net #rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles #rise of the tmnt #rottmnt #rottmnt fandom #rottmnt roleplay #comfort #mental heath support #rottmnt autistic donnie #autistic characters #rottmnt mikey roleplay #tmnt rp blog #mental health #sensory issues

[miss-midnightt]

I just went to a formal dinner thing, and…saying it was shitty is an understatement.

I chose to go because I thought it’d be fun. I’d get to eat and chat a bit. Gods was I wrong.

I ended up having to wear super uncomfortable, brand new shoes that I hadn’t broken in at all. Very bad for my skin disorder (very rare; causes blistering and soreness especially on bottom of feet and fingertips/palms). I’ve been far more exhausted than usual, and I’ve been overstimulated basically all day (and that’s why so much of today was spent wearing headphones); this event was quite loud and pretty crowded, and I couldn’t take out my phone or even bring my headphones. Or leave. Some baby started crying and these little kids were talking at the table next to mine. Idk why but that was bad. Then the speakers glitched in the middle of a performance and created feedback. Had to restrain myself from screaming.

I knew a couple people there, and sat with them, at a table at the very edge, but didn’t really talk. The combination of the overstimulation and resulting worsening of social and general anxiety caused this.

I ate barely anything, just a dinner roll, a few small potatoes, and a teeny piece of steak. The selections were super limited, and, while none of them really had anything that I literally couldn’t eat…I just. Can’t eat them? Like they’re just foods. I won’t eat. Because I’m picky and also ravioli is very bad texture for me.

It was part of a community event, so most everyone knew each other, except for me. I felt so isolated. So other. I saw all those people socializing normally, in pretty dresses and shoes, and I was so upset. Upset because I couldn’t have that. That I couldn’t laugh and sing along to songs because I’m too nervous. Too tired. Too hyper or not energetic enough. I was the outsider looking in. I knew it. No one else really noticed. It’s always like this. Always.

I think I’m going to cry.

#screaming at midnight

[the-fiction-witch]

Agent Y/L/N P2

Media The Queens Gambit

Character Benny Watts

Couple Benny X Reader (Spy)

Rating Sweet

Concept Spies

"So... what exactly are you going to Russia to do?" I asked leaning on my bedroom door watching her as she unpacked my bag completely and was now repacking it slightly differently mixing some of her own items into my bag and some of mine into her's clearly giving the bags the illusion of a couple having packed them together and swapped items over for the sake of space and such.

"Classified" she snapped refolding my shirts differently

"What was wrong with how I packed them?" I asked her

"Firstly, If you think we'll get through this with one bag check you're an idiot we'll be stopped and searched at the airport on arrival guaranteed, I can get us though departures on my clearance but we'll be searched when we arrive. And when we make it to the hotel porters will take them and search through them. Trust me any mistake will be scrutinized" she explained

"You do realize I'm a chess player right? Not some kinda international spy? There not going to give a shit"

"You're an American. That's enough" she says "They search the bags and find things that don't make sense we have a problem, trust me." she says "secondly, this is a cotton dress shirt, you fold it like that it'll wrinkle. And then you either need to pack an iron or rent one from the hotel. You got sixty nine dollars a week for an iron?" she asks

"No."

"I didn't think so."

"Fair enough."

"Do you smoke?" she asks

"No, you?"

"No, Drink?"

"Socially. You?"

"When needed" she says

"What are you going to do while I'm playing chess anyway?"

"Classified"

"If I'm supposed to be your boyfriend won't it be suspicious if I don't know where you're going everyday?"

"Sightseeing" she says "That's all you need to say,"

"Fine, Ohh uhh don't pack the books too deep I'll read them on the plane" "I though I'd put the travel board on the top so you could practice?"

"Both. I read and practice"

"Fair enough" she nods

"What's your name anyway?" I asked "let me guess classified?"

"Classified." she snapped

"Well what am I supposed to do? Call you agent y/l/n? Cause I think that'll raise some suspicion."

"The passport and identification I'm taking with me says Emily Smith"

"Emily smith?"

"Yes."

"Did your agents pick too random names out of a hat?"

"You're meant to have names that don't draw attention to yourself, boring, simple, forgettable."

"Fine. But if were meant to be a couple you should have a pet name" "Smart thinking, what did you have in mind?"

"Babe?"

"Absolutely not."

"Darling?"

"Fine" she sighed

"Alright, Just do whatever it is you're going to do and stay out of my business" I told her.

I woke to the loud aggressive ringing from my alarm on the bedside table, I groaned, turning over to shut the damn thing off, rubbing my eyes and staring up at the ceiling waiting for my eyes to clear a little, I perked up a little as I smelt something strange, Burning. Oh fuck! I quickly jumped out of bed, slipping my kimono on our of habit and opening the door to the main apartment but I calmed down immediately as I saw the CIA girl in the kitchen making breakfast.

"Oh fuck-" I sighed

"What?"

"I forgot you were here. I thought my fucking apartment was on fire"

"No, just breakfast" She says setting a coffee down on the table for me

"Thanks, You didn't have to you know."

"Airport food and coffee is some of the most disgusting in the world, I'd rather lick the floor its cleaner" she explained

"Fair enough, What's on the menu then?"

"Pancakes."

"Nice" I smiled sipping my coffee and actually noticing her, as she stood in little white heels, black seamed stockings, a black petticoat under a white textured off the shoulder dress with a large black belt around her waist, her hair pinned up in some tight curls make up as pristine as I had ever seen a girl.

"I've already set all the bags by the door, and called the taxi company to pick us up in an hour drop of at the airport, We'll have exactly thirty two minutes until initial boarding luckily I've already got it set for us to skip primary check in and security checks and access to the silver lounge. We'll be first to board given our clearance and we can get settled until we arrive in moscow. I've been notified they'll be a car waiting to take us to the hotel" she explained before delivering a plate of pancakes to the table "Shouldn't be so hard I hope Mr watts."

"Hu. Maybe I should take one of you guys with me on all my trips" I joked sitting down to have some pancakes "and Just Benny is fine."

"Alright, Benny." she smiled bringing her own coffee,

"What is the uhh the plot I guess?"

"Plot?" she asks

"You're meant to be my girlfriend. What if people ask questions"

"Good point. We may get questions on the arrival end or over the two weeks. Well what do you suggest?"

"Uhhh... How about, we met in a bar. Been dating for about a year and you're just moved into me."

"I do not feel I'm a bar girl."

"Don't you?"

"I don't feel thats an emily smith concept"

"How about, we met... In the supermarket?"

"Buying what?"

"What does that matter?"

"They may ask"

"Just grocery shopping, just meet in the line one day?"

"Some day they only had one check out open"

"Yeah and we complained to each other"

"A fine start to a budding romance" she laughed

"I've had worse" I laughed

"Alright, Come on we don't want to be late" she says finishing her coffee, I finished my breakfast and my own coffee quickly going and getting dressed given everything was already arranged, she got her handbag and her jacket on as I shut up the apartment given I'd be gone for two weeks, making sure everything is as it should be making sure to lock the place up tight as she took our bags to the taxi. I don't know why but I suddenly felt kinda nervous about all this, I mean. If they found out I helped get her into the country and do whatever it is she's doing... What the hell would they do to me? I didn't want to imagine. I forced it away maybe if I just pretend I have no idea. I went up and got into the taxi with her the two of us sat silently until we arrived at the airport she climbed out first and immediately some men came to unpack the taxi taking our things.

"I hope you know what your doing" I told her

"I've done this twenty nine times. I think I'm good." she says "Not a word now, Until I tell you so. I'm emily until I tell you otherwise"

"Understood" I nodded

She offered her hand so I took it and headed into the airport with her.

[kabillieu]

More about breastfeeding under the cut.

It's amazing to me how my breastfeeding experience with this baby is so different than with my eldest. There's one big thing that has stayed the same--namely, I am only lactating in my right breast--but everything else is different.

I've also been experiencing dysphoric milk ejection reflex, which is a super weird condition where you experience feelings of sadness, anxiety, homesickness, or anger right before your milk lets down. I first noticed this way back when baby was in NICU and I was exclusively pumping. I finally googled it, and I was pretty flabbergasted that there's this whole condition I'd never heard of and subset of people who experience it. Luckily, mine is mild and therefore manageable. Mostly, it's just weird. I get very intense feelings of melancholy, not every time, but most times when I pump and sometimes when I breastfeed.

At baby's last well-check he had not gained enough weight. I think this is because when we all had Covid in January, he did not feel well for a long time and was eating less. He was already at the bottom of the growth chart, so he really can't not eat. He has to eat. So for the past two weeks I finally started offering a full bottle of formula in addition to nursing him at bedtime. And at his weight check earlier this week, he'd gained enough weight so that his doc wasn't worried about him anymore. This baby has not been exclusively breastfed in a while. He's mostly breastfed, but he does get supplemental formula. He got formula the entire time I was gone at my conference because I didn't have enough stockpiled frozen breastmilk. I have never been able to pump the amount of milk he needs for daycare, so here in a week or so, when my frozen stockpile runs out, he'll be getting at least one bottle of formula a day at daycare in addition to bottles of breastmilk, and I'm sure we'll continue to give him a bottle of formula at night before bed.

I mention all this because I have feelings of failure that I couldn't exclusively breastfeed this baby. I acknowledge these feelings are irrational, and by acknowledging their irrationality I stay on top of beating myself up or feeling too bad about something I cannot control. I also do not believe there's anything bad or wrong with formula, and in fact I'm grateful for formula because without it my baby would be in a lot of trouble. And, finally, he's still 80% breastfed. He's getting the nutritional benefits of a breastfed baby. Everything is fine.

I realized, talking to my therapist, that it bothers me that I can't produce enough milk for all his daycare bottles because I spend so. much. time. pumping. I work so hard at it! Because I have only one breast, I pump nearly twice as often as is recommended because that's the only way I can seem to produce almost enough milk for him. My first baby was never apart from me. I never had to pump. He simply got the milk from me and my body made enough. But my body does not produce for the pump like it produces for my baby. So I work even harder than most mothers at pumping, and it's enraging that it's still not enough.

Despite all this, it's worth it because I have wanted a breastfeeding relationship with my baby, and I have one.

In other feeding news, weaning is not going the same as it did with my oldest either. My oldest was simply ready to eat solids, and he pretty much weaned himself. This baby will eat some purees but is not that interested in food with texture. I think we have a picky eater on our hands. All signs are pointing to it. Lord give me the patience to deal with it.

I'm hoping to gradually wean him this summer, so that he's either completely weaned or so that, bare minimum, he's only nursing morning and nights by fall.

I will be grateful to have two same-size breasts again lol.