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#and hopefully i stick around longer than a couple days
dragonsholygrail · 3 months
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Without Much Spoken
Astarion x gn!Reader
a/n: My first attempt at posting for bg3 and Astarion. But I plan to continue posting many more fics for not only this lil guy, but for a lot of the party! So stick around!
summary: During one night of your groups travels together, Astarion enters the room to find you overwhelmed and crying. Acting before thinking it through, Astarion comforts you.
word count: 1.1k
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Walking up the stairs of the Inn their group was staying in for the next couple of days, Astarion opens the door as he normally would, heading to bed after the exhausting day that had finally, at last, ended. He was more than ready to plop into bed and fall into a hopefully dreamless sleep. His only true escape that lasted far few hours.
But as soon as the door creaked open, a small sliver of light shining through, your sobs broke through the silence like a fierce screech. They stopped a moment after, the silence even more heavy and the tension growing thick the longer neither of you speak.
Astarion opens the door, only a bit further. Enough for the light from the hall to catch on your features. Your frozen, having fled to isolation in order to prevent this. To stop anyone from seeing you, to not bother anyone else with the weight of your intensely hyperactive feelings. Especially him. God, you didn’t want to bother him with this.
Astarion was always good for a light joke, a quick quip. He was good at that. At making things feel lighter, even unintentionally making you feel better at times. But that’s not what you wanted right now. You didn’t want to feel better in that way, you didn’t want to attempt to push aside your emotions for another, you didn’t want to just forget about what you felt. You needed to let out what was overwhelming you. What twisted your gut with anxiety, what made it hard to breathe, what sent your body into overdrive, what clouded your mind and made you feel like a complete mess.
You needed it out, and you knew Astarion wasn’t typically the one to go to with that sort of thing. You never held it against him, you cared for him, you may even love him. But you knew he had little to no experience in the ways of comforting someone. Knew he didn’t really know how to do that. So, in an action you convinced herself was selfless, you didn’t confide in him. Didn’t give him the chance to offer whatever type of comfort he possibly could provide.
And Astarion knew it all and more. With his past, he knew how to read people easily. Learning how others think was vital in his line of work, in his everyday life, in his survival… Reading you always seemed a little bit easier for him to do than it was with others. He could see what you were trying to do. The way your body stiffened on the bed, the tears both dried and fresh on your cheeks, the way your hands clenched as if you wished the ground would swallow you whole.
Astarion didn’t feel any particular way about this revelation. He could see your reasoning, your line of thinking and what brought you to the conclusions you ended up at. So he honestly couldn’t explain why he reacted the way he did.
His hand shuts the door, encompassing you both back into darkness without thought. His feet move toward you on their own. Though the darkness surrounds you both, both of your eyes end up adjusting again. You can see the way Astarion stops at the edge of the bed, his form hovering over your curled frame on the bed.
It’s without a word that he slides into bed behind you, his back resting comfortably against the headboard. His legs spread wide, giving you enough space to sit between them. His hands softly curl around you, not trying to overwhelm you even more. One hand around your stomach, feeling the erratic breaths you take as you attempts to hide your cries. The other hand over your heart, feeling its pounding rhythm, both from the mix of emotions that sent you to this state and from him finding you here. He didn’t need to do this, his hearing being able to pick it up well enough on its own. But for some reason he needed the reassurance. That it was all real.
He pulls you into his chest and you don’t hesitate to fall against him, putting your weight on him. He isn’t doing this to prove anything to you. To prove he can comfort you, if you needed him to. No, he isn’t going to make you come to him and he’s not going to make you hide. He doesn’t know why he’s done this. He just… did. Wanted to. It’s all he can grasp onto.
The feeling of him being there was enough, you realize. It had taken so much energy to try and remain still after Astarion found you, but now that he was here and he’s staying, you can’t hold it in any longer. It physically pained you beyond explanation. Sobs broke out of you, the action moving your body with its force. You couldn’t control it.
Astarion just sits there, not saying anything and not really doing anything either. But it’s more than enough. You didn’t realize how being alone had made everything so much worse. You thought that being alone, having nothing around that could possibly add to your array of emotions was what was best for you. But as you two laid together, you noticed the way Astarion didn’t add anything. The way he could actually help in ways everyone else just couldn’t seem to.
Eventually you begin to calm down, your body shaking but your emotions releasing and leaving you. That’s when you feel Astarion’s hand on the back of your head. You jump slightly, but besides that, you don’t dare acknowledge it. His hand gently starts combing through your hair. Then when he reaches the end, he brings it back to the top of your head. You sigh heavily, falling into him further. The peace of the empty silence, the darkness that covers everything, washes over you both. Neither of you seem to want to break it.
You tilt your head ever so slightly, hoping he doesn’t stop. The gesture was doing wonders to help calm you down further. You can barely make out Astarion through the darkness, but you can see enough to tell he’s simply staring ahead. It’s then you realize that he probably hadn’t even noticed what he’s doing to you. How he’s actually comforting you. It sends waves of pleasure through you, working both to overwhelm you a bit more and yet also calming you. You fall back, fully resting on him once again as he, in a way, pets you. Your eyes seemingly closed on their own.
It’s only after an unknown amount of time that he murmurs in your ear, “I’m here.”
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spacecowboyhotch · 4 months
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Blossoms & Whiskers
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prompt: painting
pairing: jake lockley x f!reader
contents: anxiety, a couple kisses, avoidant love confessions
wc: 1.1k
an: the first of hopefully many promotional fics for the @moonknight-events’ bingo @juneknight & i have going on right now. DISCLAIMER: as a event runner i will not be entered in the drawing for prizes. this is promotional only.
SP BINGO 2024 | moonknight masterlist
As soon as you enter the flat you know who’s fronting. There’s the faint smell of paint wafting through the space and the covered canvas that Jake keeps easeled in the living room is gone. The window to the fire escape is open and there’s a mason jar full of murky water in your view. His hand appears, dipping and swirling the brush.
“Jake?” You yell as you kick off your shoes and hang up your light jacket.
“Out here. I’ll be in in 20,” He calls back distractedly through the window, hand disappearing.
You’d never seen Jake paint, it was something he’d picked up in the last few months and something preferred to do on his own, like many other things in his life. But, you always like to imagine the expression on his face. Brown eyes under a furrowed brow, intense and scrutinizing as always. His nose scrunched in concentration, the tip of tongue sticking out the corner of his full mouth like it does when the two of you play Jenga. The lines he paints are as sharp and precise as the lines of his body.
You peg him for a structured modernist, dependent on clear contrast and definite shapes. One day you hope to no longer guess, you hope that he’ll share even the smallest bit of his art with you.
You decide to take a quick shower and put on a kettle for some tea. By the time he’s slinking through the window carefully with the canvas, you’re curled up on the couch with a book. His eyes linger on you, enjoying how incredibly cozy you look.
“Took longer than expected,” He explains as he sets the painting back on the easel, turning it away from you.
You don't look up when you respond, “It's alright, honey. Cover it up and come snuggle.”
Jake is quiet for a handful of moments, unmoving. Finally he says, “It's finished.”
Your eyes freeze on the page, but you don’t move. Your interest in piqued. “Oh?”
“It’s for you. I’d like you to see it.”
“Are you sure?” You ask gently.
“I’m sure. Always sure about you,” He adds his voice is still quiet, but firm.
You grin, throwing your book on the floor as you stand, uncaring about what page you were on. Jake was sharing this with you. For a moment you wonder if he’s shared this with Marc or Steven at all– they’d mentioned giving his privacy. But if he was sharing this with you, certainly he’d shared it with them.
“Eyes closed,” He instructs, and you quickly follow suit. “Good girl.”
With your eyes covered, you can hear your own breath more clearly, hear the quiet drag of the easel against the wood floor. Hear his quiet, even steps.
His hands come to rest on your waist, and you feel his mouth brush the shell of your ear as he whispers. “Open for me.”
You open your eyes to rows upon rows of your favorite flower. The sun hangs low in the sky, just beginning to dip below the horizon, a few clouds dotting around. It’s much brighter than you ever imagined. Jake is a conglomerate of neutrals and darks, leather and basics. To see so much color, such an obvious lightness from his own hands stuns you. As you take more in, you see a black cat frolicking through the stems, batting at one of the flowers. Its eyes shine mischievously.
It’s your turn to fall quiet, your eyes whisking over the canvas time and time again, drinking in all you can.
“Don’t comment too quickly,” He says dryly, his hands squeezing your hips.
“Oh, Jake, its beautiful,” You breathe softly, taking a small step forward to examine it in further detail, wanting to see each and every stroke.
He lets out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding, that comfortable warmth that you bring to his chest multiplying tenfold. “You think so?” He asks, trying to sound noncommittal.
“I know so. Is this cat supposed to be ours?” You point to it, grinning up at him. He’d mentioned his want for cat a few times, but it wouldn’t be a possibility until the lease was up so that you all could move to a pet friendly place.
Jake hesitates for a moment, his eyes flickering to you before they return to the canvas. Jake was the last of the boys to come around. Your relationship is the newest, and though it is no less sweet, no less passionate sometimes he struggles to be open with you. You’re patient, knowing that every piece of the man standing beside you is worth waiting for.
“It's supposed to be me,” He admits quietly.
“You?”
“The cat is me, and everything else…is you.”
“Me?”
He grows quiet again, trying to figure out what to say. He so desperately wants you to understand. You gaze up at him, watching as he mulls things over, gathering up the words to tell you what this all means to him. What you mean to him.
“Its me, basking in everything that is you. You love the sunset, you love pointing out shapes in the clouds. You love these flowers. There’s more there, more intention that I could explain. But I hope that one day, the cat, that you’ll—“ He stops, realizing that he’d got too carried away. He was about to show all his cards.
You raise a hand to cup his cheek tenderly, “I do. I do already, Jake. It’s easy.”
His gaze grows more intense as he studies you, searching for any dishonesty. There’s not a drop in your eyes. “Me too.”
Jake didn’t know it could be this easy. Sure neither of you have said the words outright, but he can feel it in the way you look at him right now. You lean in, closing the gap between you to press a soft kiss to his mouth before, one he gets lost in. And when you pull away, you simply turn back to the painting. Your hands reach out, fingers wiggling and his hand darts out, grasping yours.
“It’s still wet,” He reminds you, squeezing your hand gently before he lets it go.
“Right, sorry,” You murmur sheepishly.
All of this has you feeling a little shy— held but with hands that are afraid you’ll break. You could ask him to say it, you could say it yourself but you know that things are the slowest with him. Sometimes you have to treat him like the cat he’s painted. He’ll spook easily, retreating into solitude.
You tuck the idea of asking for more in your back pocket. Another time. Instead you ask, “So…where are we hanging it?”
Jake relaxes. He knows your thinking face, could see you weighing the pros and cons. It feels good to know how you feel about him and even better to know how well you know him.
He drops a kiss on your forehead before moving towards the fireplace. “I was thinkin’ here.”
“I’ll go get those sticky strip thingies,” You say, marching towards the closer that holds everything from spare linens, holiday decorations and yes— sticky strip thingies.
“Command strips,” Jake corrects you, snorting softly under his breath.
moonknight taglist: @ninebluehearts, @rmoonstoner, @hotchs-bitch, @later-gators12, @foreverinwanderlustt-blog, @aleeb, @eyelessfaces, @marc-spectorr, @missdictatorme, @toracainz, @mccn-bcys, @campingwiththecharmings, @whatthefishh
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love-and-monsters · 10 months
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MerMay: Mermaid Girlfriend
F mermaid X GN reader, 11,800 words
IT’S STILL MAY I GOT IT IN ON TIME. In all seriousness, this was way longer than I wanted it to be. I gotta learn to be more concise. Apologies if the ending’s a bit rushed and there are mistakes- I was kind of speeding to get it out in time. hopefully you still like it!
Content Warning: Mentioned/discussed non-consensual human experimentation, description of injury
You had been returning to the seaside every full moon for a year just to see her. It was only an hour by train from your shitty little apartment, and the summer meant you had plenty of time to get home and change into something beach-appropriate before it got dark.
The beach didn’t close until ten, and you were there just as the sun set, so there was enough time to wander around. The boardwalk was nice, if a bit crowded. Loops of fairy lights hung along the edge of the boardwalk, adding some illumination between the larger spotlights of streetlamps and vendors. You purchased a churro and settled down on a bench to watch the shore.
The sea was dark, but light reflected off the crests of the waves so you could track the undulation of its surface. The foamy surf that surged up the beach was pale enough to be readily visible, and you watched its ebb and flow as it crawled further and further inland. Sometimes its back and forth was disturbed by a person walking through it, but the night was growing chilly without the sun and people stopped venturing into the ocean as it got later.
The moon rose, hanging heavy and low over the ocean. Its glow created a spot of reflection in the ocean, one paler and more consistent than that of the twinkling boardwalk lights. And, as it got later, the boardwalk lights switched off one by one, leaving less competition for the moon’s glow. The streetlights were still on, but the gaps between them were now more starkly shadowed, the fairy lights unplugged for the night. You stayed in the shadows as you crept to the edge of the boardwalk, the portion that was slightly elevated above the beach, and hopped down.
It was distinctly cool, with the breeze rolling in off the sea all around you and in the shadows of the boardwalk. You retreated to a particularly gloomy spot and waited.
Security staff did sweep the public beach areas, but they were never thorough or seemed to care if they actually found someone or not. A couple of people in uniform wandered onto the beach, swung their lights around to spot stragglers, then left. The beach wasn’t what they were usually concerned about, anyway- if rowdy teens were hanging around, they would be more interested in the boardwalk itself, and the security guards patrolled accordingly. They would do a couple more checks throughout the night, but they were mostly just making sure people didn’t sneak onto the beach, get drunk, and leave a bunch of trash everywhere. They could be easily avoided.
Once the security guards were gone and you were certain there were no other people trying to use the beach after dark (it had happened before, forcing you to stay hidden for more than an hour before you gave up and went home), you crept out from your hiding spot and toward the edge of the sea. It was cold enough that you didn’t stick your toes in the surf. You just approached the very border of the sea and waited.
It wasn’t hard to wait. You had been doing it for a very long time.
You had only seen her once. It had been around the same time the year prior- early summer, when the sea had just started to consistently get warm. Your visiting the beach had been sheer coincidence- it was a good day trip and you’d been cagey after a winter spent almost entirely alone. Walking around the boardwalk had been just the pick-me-up you needed to get your mind back in gear.
It had been such a good pick-me-up, in fact, that you had been reluctant to return home. Even once the sun had completely set and the beach had been closed to guests, you remained. You just needed one more minute free of your apartment, one more minute to be free of your work, one more minute of peace.
And then she had broken the surf.
At first, you thought you were just looking at another human tourist. The head and shoulders that emerged from the waves had been, from a distance, in the perfect silhouette of a human. You watched, a bit concerned. Yes, you’d snuck onto the beach after hours, but you weren’t stupid enough to go swimming in the ocean without a lifeguard present. And wasn’t it cold? The water hadn’t warmed up that much.
And then she had broken the waves and you’d seen that, from waist down, she had a tail.
It was a dolphin tail, at least in shape. Sleek enough to smoothly reflect the moonlight from above, it had only been visible for a moment before she’d slipped back beneath the waves.
Naturally, you had immediately sprinted for the beach as fast as you could, skirting the very edges of the foam to stare out into the ocean. Your brain was seized by the utterly fantastic, utterly crazy notion that you had just seen a real-life mermaid.
Of course, within the few minutes it took for your heart rate to slow, you realized how utterly stupid that idea was. It was, in all likelihood, a person wearing one of those fake mermaid tails that you sometimes saw online. They were often skillfully crafted, good enough to be mistaken for the real thing in the light of day, never mind the dim half-light provided by the moon.
Still, you waited by the shore, scanning the coastline. She may not have actually been a mermaid, but she was still a person, and it wasn’t safe to be swimming at night. Even less safe to be swimming in a tail like that, which could get caught on something or restrict movement if she got caught in a rip current. The least you could do was wait for her to poke her head back up again and see if you could convince her to get out of the water.
You waited. And waited. Your concern grew heavier, like a weight on your chest the longer you stayed. She was gone.
For a few moments, you scanned the beach up and down, squinting at the waterline. Maybe she’d let the current sweep her further down the beach and surfaced there. But there was no sign of her in the ocean or on the beach. You fidgeted anxiously. Where was she? The longer you waited, the more likely it became that she was trapped under the water.
What were you supposed to do? Run for help was the most likely answer. But you were reluctant to leave, and what were the odds you’d be able to make it back with help before she drowned? The only other option was to wade in yourself.
The water was an ice cold shock against your skin- it was still early in the summer, so the sea hadn’t had a chance to warm up yet, and the chill of the night air didn’t help. It wasn’t severe enough to lock your muscles up, but it was enough to make your feet and hand go numb. The sand slipped under your feet and it was hard to find your balance again. Still, you shoved yourself forward, wading into the water until it was up to your waist, then your chest. Then your feet slipped away from the sand completely.
Waves bobbed and splashed at your face, and you sputtered out mouthfuls of salty water. Still, you spun valiantly around in the water, swinging your limbs in the hopes of hitting something. This, you were pretty sure, was where she had gone down, and the current wasn’t particularly strong. The sea floor was also only a few inches from your feet- if you strained, you could brush your toes against it without going underwater- so it was unlikely that she had sunk beneath you.
The longer you stayed in the water, the colder everything became. It was stretching up from your numb hands and feet into your legs and chest. You dove under the water for a moment, searching frantically with your hands. There was no sign of her. Even continuing in the direction you’d seen her moving, you couldn’t find her body.
It was at that point that the complete stupidity of your decision sank in. This was why people said not to jump in and try to save people. Because now you were out in the water, half frozen, and probably not able to even drag her body back to the shore if you did find it. If she was still alive.
A wave splashed over your head and you sputtered. You twisted, trying to head back to shore, but your numb hands and arms made it hard to move. You could barely feel anything below your calves. The shore looked much further away than it once had, or maybe it was just that you were moving toward it so slowly. It felt like you were fighting the water itself, like it was trying to grab you and drag you back toward the open sea. The waves wrapped around you, pressing against your limbs with inexorable force.
And then you were yanked forward by a sudden and powerful force. You gasped, then regretted it when a flood of salty water entered your mouth. Choking and coughing, you tried to kick against whatever was dragging you- some kind of current? Then you registered that the force was not the full-body tug of a current, but a pull that was centered at your waist. Like someone had grabbed you and was pulling you with them as they swam.
One of your wildly kicking legs struck the seafloor. The force at your waist vanished, and you managed to scramble to your feet, choking up water and swiping sand and salt from your eyes.
Something brushed against your leg and, with the instinctive terror of anyone whose leg had just been touched underwater, you scrambled away. Your eyes flew open, still stinging, but clear enough to see, and you froze.
What had touched your leg was her. The woman you’d seen in the water. Her features weren’t all that clear, thanks to the darkness, but the moonlight was enough for you to see that she was still wearing the mermaid tail.
Except. That now you were up close to her. She was bobbing in the water, most of her back clearly visible, and there was no seam line. No mark to show where the tail ended and skin began.
It was a trick of the light, of course. It had to be. Except. When she shifted in the water, lifting her head and shoulders out, you could see her neck. And the gills that were striped on either side of it.
As you stared, the gills flexed. The little flaps that partially covered the slits moved. It was just a tiny little motion. But it made the world turn beneath you.
She was real. A mermaid. Merperson. There was no way to fake those gills. If this had been a video, you would have assumed it was CGI- very good CGI, to be clear, but you never would have actually believed it. But this was not a video. She was right in front of you. She was touching you. And those gills were intimately real.
You lifted your hand up, acting automatically, and touched the gill slits. You weren’t really thinking about it- you were just fascinated. For one amazing moment, you could feel how real they were under your fingertips, slightly warm and damp. And then she made a strange, high pitched keening noise and slid away from you.
“Wait!” You scrambled to your feet as she pushed away from you, gliding into the sea. Fuck, of course poking at her gills would make her leave. Her tail brushed against your legs one more time and you felt the strength in it as she pushed against the water and sailed out to sea. You stood, waist-deep in water, watching her vanish into the darkness. Her tail broke the surface once final time, several feet away, and then she was gone.
Weak from nearly drowning and shaken by seeing something you had previously thought to be a myth, you crawled out of the water and sat on the beach. Being soaked through made the night almost intolerably cold, but you sat out on the beach anyway, watching the moon cross the sky.
By the time the sun and sea were turning pinkish-red with morning, you had made a decision: you would see her again.
Your plan was, admittedly, neither complicated nor good. In your defense, you didn’t have a lot of information- all you knew was that she’d come to the beach once. Maybe she would come again.
Going to the beach every single night wasn’t possible for you, so you narrowed the time frame. Once per month was doable. And the first night you’d seen her, it had been a full moon. Maybe she’d been close to the beach on the full moon for a reason. Not to mention that it was just easier to see the ocean when there was more light in the sky. So, every full moon, you returned to the beach and waited for hours, hoping for a glimpse of her again.
After almost a year, you’d seen neither hide nor hair of her. You kept going to the beach, though- perhaps she hadn’t been active during the winter, perhaps she was just being cautious and staying away for not. But there was a worry that you had disturbed her, that she was never going to come back, and that you were never going to be able to really get to meet a mermaid.
You wanted to thank her. She’d dragged you out of the water and you’d done nothing but stare and prod at her. Even if you never got to see her clearly again, you wanted to get the opportunity to thank her.
And so, you were sitting on the beach. Waiting. Hoping. Trying to catch just one more glimpse of her. But the knot sitting in your stomach said that you were possibly wasting your time.
You sit for hours, watching and waiting. Your eyes try to drift shut and you pry them back open. The moon reaches its peak and starts to dip back down. The water starts to pull back down the beach. You check your phone. It’s getting quite late. If you don’t get ready to leave soon, there will be no more trains back to your apartment, and you’ll either have to walk or wait. You watch for a few more moments, watching the currents of the ocean.
Just as you’re turning your gaze away, something changes.
You freeze, staring intently at the spot of motion. It looked like something moved, breaking the even pattern of the waves. But it was only for a moment. You wait. Please. Let it be her.
And then you see it. The slim, glistening form of a large tail breaking the waves, just barely illuminated by the moon.
You scramble toward the ocean, stopping once you’re close enough for the waves to break over your feet. Her head breaks above the waves for a moment, a barely-visible motion that you certainly wouldn’t have seen if you weren’t looking for her.
Now what? You’ve been searching for so long that the actual finding has left you paralyzed. You don’t want to splash into the water unprepared again- nearly drowning once was enough for you. Sure, you could yell for her, but that has the likely side effect of drawing other humans to you, and that would probably drive her away. Instead, you fumble for your phone. Careful not to let it drop into the waves, you unlock it and switch on the flashlight app.
It takes a moment for you to locate the mermaid again- her tail breaks quite a few feet to the left of where you last saw her. She keeps moving. That’s going to make this more difficult. But you’re determined to try regardless.
You lift your phone above your head and point it toward the mermaid. It’s not all that strong, but you have a small mirror. You lift that up and tilt the mirror until the light intensifies. Perfect. Over and over in a steady motion, you shift the mirror. The light dances over the sea in a pattern. One, two, three, stop. One, two, three, stop. One, two, three, stop.
Animals from the sea sometimes use reflections of light from the shore to direct them toward the beach. You’re hoping that your mermaid will have a similar instinct. At the very least, maybe she’ll get curious and come closer.
The mermaid’s head breaks the surface again. She doesn’t appear to be moving anymore. Just looking around. You raise the mirror again to start your pattern. One, two, three, stop. One, two, three, stop.
Her head vanishes back under the water. You freeze. Is she leaving? Coming closer? It’s impossible to track her. You just keep scanning the sea, your heart sinking more and more the longer she stays underneath.
And then her head resurfaces. This time, she’s closer to the beach. Much closer.
Your breath stutters. Fingers shaking, you lift the phone and mirror again. One, two, three, stop. One, two, three, stop. Her head vanishes. You hold your breath. She’s coming closer. Just a little further.
Her head breaks the surface once more and your breath catches even more sharply. She’s close. Close enough that you can see her in detail. And she can see you as well, because her gaze locks onto you. She pauses, still half-submerged, and stares.
You stare back. Does she recognize you? Does she remember you? You remember her because she’s the only mermaid you’ve ever seen, but she might drag humans out of the ocean every other day. She isn’t showing any recognition. She’s just watching cautiously.
“H-hi,” you say. Your voice wobbles a little. “Can I come closer?”
She doesn’t move. You take a single step down the beach. She doesn’t react. You try a couple more steps. Her eyes shift at that, following your motion. There’s tension in the set of her shoulders, but she still doesn’t flee. Once you’re about a foot and a half from her, you stop walking and drop to your knees.
You’re close enough that you can actually make out details. Her hair is lank and wet around her face, but quite long. Her hands, when the waves pull back enough for you to see them, are webbed. She’s slender, but it’s the sort of slender that shows off the ribs and spine in a disconcerting way. The kind of slender that speaks to rarely getting enough to eat. Her eyes are as black as a shark’s eyes and when they catch the moonlight, they turn nearly pure white with the reflection. Her tail reminds you of a dolphin’s tail, with what seems to be rubbery skin rather than scales, though the fins at the end are larger and bulkier than any dolphin’s you’ve seen. Not that you’ve seen many dolphins.
“Can you talk?” you ask, because mermaids in stories can often talk. Then again, if she was born and raised under the sea, where would she have learned to speak? Heck, even if she does know a human language, who’s to say it’s English?
She replies by opening her mouth, which shows off rows of sharp teeth, and all that comes out is a grating hiss. There’s a sound there that might be words, but it’s sort of lost in the rest of the noise, which sounds a little like a snake combined with a steam pipe. Her mouth clicks shut again. It’s hard to read her face (apparently she doesn’t emote much) but her tail comes down on the water with a heavy ‘splat!’ and you can only interpret that as irritation.
Before you can try to comfort her or tell her it’s okay, she’s dragging herself up onto the beach. You scramble back, startled, but she continues doggedly forward. At first, it’s easy going, since she can just half-float or coast on the waves. Then her tail starts dragging on the sand and she abandons the smooth glide to half-hop, half-drag herself onto the beach, seal style.
Once she’s mostly out of the water, she sags onto the sand. She’s making a weird sort of wheezing noise and her gills keep flexing at her neck. Is she drowning? Or, well, the opposite of drowning. Suffocating? You’re just about to haul her back into the water when the wheezing fades. She picks her head back up and looks at you, alert and focused.
She lifts one of her webbed hands and used the tip of her pointer finger to scratch something into the sand. You’re convinced it’s going to be mermaid language for a moment before you recognize the lines she’s putting together.
“You’re writing ‘hello,’” you realize. “You can write in English.” She nods vigorously. “How did you even learn how to write?”
She hesitates for only a moment before scrubbing out her previous word and writing again. Learned as a child.
“Mermaids learn to write in English?” you wonder out loud. How did that work? How do they even get enough material to learn English underwater? Books would dissolve.
She frowns and makes another unhappy hissing noise. Her tail flexes, slapping against the sand. No. Not mermaid.
You pause, flicking your gaze to her tail. Her soft hissing grows sharper. It sounds like it’s coming from somewhere deep in her throat and chest, a more constant sound than a human could create. Her gills flare. The hissing reaches a peak, then she seems to run out of energy. She collapses fully on the sand.
“Do you need to go back in the water?” you ask. She’s far enough up the beach that it would take considerable energy to shove herself back into the waves. But it wouldn’t be too hard for you to drag her back, if she needs it.
She shakes her head rapidly, dragging her chin back and forth through the sand. She remains collapsed for a few moments longer, gills flaring as she pants, then she stretches out a hard to write again.
Outside water tiring but fine. Is hard. No humans for long time.
“You’ve had contact with other humans?” you ask. She nods once before writing again.
Was human. She draws back after finishing the sentence, looking at you to assess your reaction. Your mouth opens and closes a couple times before words come.
“You were a human?” She nods. “But then… how? What happened?”
That seems to give her pause. She swings her tail back and forth. Eventually, she starts writing. She keeps having to scrub it out to make more room, writing through the same area over and over.
Yes. Was human. Lived nearby. But was poor and homeless. Needed help. Enrolled in medical trial. Got safe lodging. Food. Safety. Was good. Then trial went bad. Pain. Sickness. Was asleep for a long time. Was like this after that. Others were there. I left. Do not know about them. Tried to hide long time. Hard to be awake during day. Hard to talk to people. Scared. Lonely.
She stops writing after that, sagging on the beach once more. You sit in silence, processing it. “I’m- I’m sorry.” The words don’t feel helpful at all, but you’re not sure what else you can say. She snorts and makes another hissing sound. “You, uh. You can write, but you can’t talk, I guess?”
No. Throat not work right. Does not make sounds right.
“Have you spoken to anyone else since you… left?” She shakes her head and starts writing again.
No. Scared. Uncertain. Do not want to be captured. Do not want to be studied. Scary here, but free. Her tail swings back and forth, kicking up clumps of wet sand.
“Okay, okay,” you say. “I’m not going to tell anyone, I promise.” She nods and slumps on the ground, panting once more. Her breath seems to be getting more labored the longer she stays on land. “Do you need to go back in the water? How long can you stay on land?”
Not know limits. Cannot stay on land too long though. Breathe easier in water. Chest gets heavy if on land too much. She pants for a little longer before heaving herself mostly upright again. You are first human to see me since I’ve been here. I have been more careless. Lonely.
“I’m sorry,” you say. “That sounds awful.” You fall into silence for a moment. The mermaid slumps onto the beach, eyes closed. She makes a wailing noise in her throat, a sound that it almost too high for me to hear. But I can tell what it is. She’s crying. There are no tears from her eyes, but the wail goes on and on with no pauses for breath. It’s a long, mourning wail.
When she quiets, you reach out a hand and place a hand on her shoulder. She’s cool to the touch and quite slick- you’ve never felt a dolphin before, but you have felt the rays in an aquarium touch tank. It feels quite a lot like that, the same slightly slimy but also quite smooth and pleasant texture.
When she recovers herself a little, she sits up and begins writing again. Thank you for speaking with me. It has been long time. I like seeing people again.
“Do you need to go now?” you ask.
Tired. Want to rest.
“Then can I see you again?” you ask. She looks startled, eyes going wide and tail flapping against the surf. “Please? I- you saved my life last year and I don’t want to leave you alone out here.”
She thinks, eyes darting around. Then, hesitant, she nods. Will return tomorrow when moon is high. Come then.
With that, she pushes herself backwards. It takes a couple awkward, flopping movements, but then she’s most of the way in the waves. One catches her, lifting her off the sand, and she turns her body in a sinuous motion. There’s a second where you can still see her swimming amongst the surf, and then she’s gone beneath the waves once more.
You stand on the beach for a while. Once she’s gone, meeting her feels like a dream. You’re half expecting the memory to get hazy, like dreams do when you wake up. But even as the moon sinks lower, the memories don’t go away.
You turn and hurry off the beach. There’s only another thirty minutes until the final train departs for the night, and you want plenty of time to rest.
After all, you’re coming back tomorrow.
When you reach your apartment, you collapse into bed and sleep. It’s past midday and you’re both groggy and starving when you wake. Grabbing a bowl of cold cereal, you plop yourself down in front of your laptop and start searching.
You search loosely for mermaid sightings, but quickly find that it isn’t leading anywhere. Most of the sightings that pop up are from popular areas, and more than half the articles are about debunking mermaid sightings. Even narrowing the search to look for mermaid sightings specifically in your area doesn’t help- it brings up a bunch of posts with the word ‘mermaid’ in them, but nothing about seeing a mermaid. If anyone else has seen your mermaid, they haven’t posted it online. Or, at least, the post wasn’t popular enough to get into the first few pages of a google search.
Since this search is getting you nowhere, you change topics. She’d said she’d been captured for some kind of medical trial. Again, that’s too broad of a topic to just go searching for willy nilly, but she’d said she’d been local, which narrowed the scope. You’re not sure how long ago she was captured, so you search for any local medical trials in the past ten years.
You don’t find any specific medical trials, but what you do find is the name ‘Wellterra.’ It’s a medical company, one that specializes in research and development of medications. They treat everything from cancer to genetic conditions and chronic illnesses, and the local branch is only one of a few hundred locations all over the world. And the location nearest to you is specifically located right on the ocean, and has research and development facilities with a focus on aquatic creatures.
It’s enough to get your suspicions going.
You hit up the library, print off several sheets of information, and head back to the beach.
You wait impatiently for the moon to rise high into the sky. It’s slightly less than full now, but there’s still plenty of light for you to see your mermaid drifting in toward the shore.
She crawls up onto the beach and drop to your knees in front of her, swinging the backpack off your shoulders. “I’ve been doing some research,” you say. “Take a look at these.”
You tug out the cheap laminated binder you purchased to protect the pages and shove it toward her. She barely looks at it before scratching words out in the sand. Cannot read it. Eyes not work well above water. Print too small.
“Oh,” you say, a little embarrassed that you didn’t think of that. Your mermaid looks uncomfortable as well, perhaps hurt by the reminder of how much she’s lost. “That’s fine, I can read out the important stuff anyway.”
You pick out the bits of the document you highlighted and read them out loud to her. She crawls closer, fin-like ears twitching every now and then. By the time you’re done, she’s practically leaning against you and hanging off your every word.
Yes, she writes as soon as you’re done. I remember that name. Not know about any other experiments. Kept in pen in the ocean. Separate from everything else. Few people saw us. Only remember four individuals.
“But this is good!” you say. “We know they’re the ones who did this to you, and we know there are others. We just need to get some people in law enforcement to see you and hear from you and then we can-”
She’s already shaking her head. No.
“I know you’re afraid of other people, but maybe we can work out some kind of deal and I can advocate for you-”
She’s shaking her head again, even more aggressively this time. NO. She taps the word several times for emphasis. When I stay silent, she continues writing. Will not work. Police brought them people.
Sharp chills shake their way down your spine. “Th- what?”
She taps that sentence again. Police brought them people. Your stomach turns. “You’re sure?”
Yes. Police suggested study to me. Heard scientists talking about police bringing in criminals. Gave them a good pool of people. She lowers her hand, frowning at the sentence.
“So, what,” you say, trying not to sound as frightened as you feel, “there’s just a conspiracy to hand over people to a business that does experiments on them to turn them into merpeople?”
She considers this for a moment. Yes. Police probably do not know about mermaids. Probably just think medical experimentation. But they are probably paid to bring in people and less homeless means police look better. It works for both groups.
“God, that’s…” you trail off. There aren’t words that you can use to describe what you’re feeling. Hopeless is maybe the best way to say it. If you can’t contact the police, then what are you supposed to do? Break in yourself?
You actually entertain the idea for a few seconds before realizing how asinine that is. Maybe in a movie an untrained nobody could sneak into a massive medical facility and release the trapped mermaids they were keeping secret and reveal their shady dealings with the police, but somehow, you figure that’s only going to end in disaster. You’re just some goddamn office worker. You can’t even do five push ups without being winded, never mind sneaking into a secure facility.
“Have you ever tried to break back in?” you ask. Maybe you can’t get in, but if she got out somehow, there must be a way. She grimaces and shakes her head.
Yes. I got out because of temporary power outage combined with technology fault. I was being tested in ocean pool and the electrical lock keeping me inside failed. There was a storm- I assume power outage and generator fault created a window of opportunity. Only went back once, and was nearly recaptured. They don’t seem interested in hunting me down as long as I don’t go there. But I can’t get close enough to do anything. Her tail slaps the sand hard, sending a combination of grit and water spraying at you. She looks chagrined instantly, and tries to wipe you down. Her hand is actually less slick than you thought it would be. It’s still wet, obviously, because she’s been in the ocean, but her palms are actually kind of grippy. It’s a fascinating texture. Before you really think about what you’re doing, you take her hand in both of hers. Not really doing anything with it, just holding and kind of massaging it with your thumbs.
You’ve hardly held her for more than a second when she makes a noise akin to a squeak. You jerk your head up to look at her and she’s staring back at you with eyes the size of saucers.
You drop the hand. “I should have asked before touching, I’m so sorry-”
No! She goes to the trouble of writing the exclamation point and hits the ground a few times to emphasize her point. When she’s sure you’re listening, she writes more. Liked it. No human contact in long time. Was nice.
Oh. Yes, of course. She’s been at sea and you’re the first person she’s talked to, much less had physical contact with. And even before that… you’re not sure how long she was held captive, but surely the scientists there weren’t handing out hugs and kisses with their experimentation.
As she gazes up at you with her sea-deep, dark eyes, your chest tightens. She must be so lonely. How has she survived out here all this time? Humans need to be with other people, you know that much. Isolation is torture. But she’s been out here all this time, with no one to talk to or even just hold her hand to comfort her.
It’s a bit awkward to hug someone who’s mostly lying down in the sand, but you’re determined and she’s not that heavy. It ends with her half-slung over your shoulder with your arms holding her firmly in place.
“It’s okay,” you say. Your tone isn’t quite steady enough to be reassuring, but you hope the emotion in it conveys how important this is to you. “I’m going to make sure you’re okay.”
Her arms wrap around your shoulder. They’re clumsy, like she can’t quite remember how to hug anymore, but she gets it after a few moments. She clings to you as fiercely as you’re clinging to her.
The visits come as often as you can manage, after that. If you had it your way, they would probably be every day, but you need to work and you just don’t function very well without sleep. You do manage a forty-eight hour stretch once, but practically falling asleep at the beach can be dangerous, and your mermaid gives you a vicious tirade that only gets worse when you pass out again while she’s still writing it.
So. As often as you can. More or less, that’s about three times a week. Most nights you spend chatting, talking about your lives. She was a custodian at a department store, until a bought of illness left her unable to work and ate up her savings. By the time she had mostly recovered, she was homeless and still struggling to do her old job. She’d been recommended to the medical trial by police who had found her sleeping on the street, and had thought it was a wonderful opportunity. And the first week had been good, with her getting regular meals and staying in a room attached to the lab so she could be in a ‘controlled environment.’ There were other people there, too, and she’d spent most of her time making friends.
And then they had finally been ready to administer the first drug. They had told her it would make her sleepy. And it had. She had fallen asleep, more deeply asleep than she’d ever been in her life. Sometimes, she would become conscious again, if only dimly. The only thing she could remember from those periods was a pain so intense that she had fought to fall back into sleep.
Her memory from that period was foggy, she told you. But she knew, even on the few occasions she woke up confused from pain and drugs, that there was something wrong with her body. It wasn’t until she was finally set free of the drugs and the pain had faded to an ache that she realized exactly what had happened. Trapped in a tank only just big enough for her to stretch out in, with a mask over her face to force air through her system, she realized she had been changed into something not human. A mermaid.
Three people died. Or, she assumed they did. She’d met twenty-nine people before the drugs had been given, and only twenty-six merpeople. The experimentation hadn’t stopped after that- they constantly prodded and poked at the merpeople, but it was never as awful as it had been in the beginning.
Six months. That was how long she was trapped. Or, close to it, anyway- she didn’t have a calendar. Her escaping had been a fluke- one quick moment of chance that she took advantage of.
It is better, she said, to be out here. Scary. But better.
They had never hunted her down or tried to recapture her, beyond the new security measures at the lab. Neither of you were sure why. Maybe they thought it would draw more attention to her, or maybe they fully expected her to be unable to survive on her own and were just waiting for someone to find her corpse. Regardless, she was relieved. It meant she was able to stick around the area. Even if she couldn’t actually visit her home anymore, she was loathe to leave.
After learning the whole story, you do as much digging as you can manage, which isn’t much. No amount of searching brings up anything specific enough to be of much help. There are hundreds of mermaid sightings all over the world, and only three of them are local enough to possibly be her. Looking at Wellterra is no more useful- just pages and pages of bland corporate speak about the medicine they’re developing. The most suspicious thing you can find is a page on their website claiming they ‘desire for humans to live in harmony with the planet, and strive to create medicines that work with nature,’ which could honestly also just be corporate posturing. No pages of conspiracy theories. No secretive posts on old forums from disgraced ex-employees. Nothing.
It’s possible there’s more information you can find off the usual search engines, but you’re not sure how to access it. Technology has never been your strong suit. It’s frustrating that you can’t find anything more, though your mermaid comforts you when you apologize to her.
Is fine. Good that you are here. It helps. She pats your arm, leaning forward so she’s almost in your lap. She’s been getting cozier with you, not that you mind. You pat her head, running your fingers through her hair. When you catch a knot, you pause and delicately untangle it. She makes a low humming noise in her throat, eyes closing in relaxation.
“I’m glad I can do something,” you say, trying not to sound bitter. You nudge the container of chicken wings toward her. You’ve been bringing food for her through the past few visits.
Early on in your visits, you asked her what she ate. She shrugged. Anything. Have to catch it. Tastes better than I thought it would. After that, you started picking up food for the two of you to eat together. She has a strong preference for seafood, but she’ll sometimes ask you to being food she remembers from her human life. You oblige as often as you can. You’re still trying to save up to get her a proper steak, though.
Your mermaid drags the container of chicken wings toward her. She picks one up and bits down on it, severing cleanly through the bone. You wince a little at the crunching noise. After a few moments of chewing, she picks up the top of the container, which is soaked in sauce, and licks it once before ripping out a chunk of it with her teeth.
That was the weirdest thing about her. The bones thing is weird, but understandable. But the fact that she eats Styrofoam is quite a bit stranger. In fact, the limit on what she will eat seems to be nonexistent.
Can eat anything, she tells you when you ask about it. Fed us many things in lab. Plastic. Styrofoam. One got sick from it, had to get it cut out. But rest of us could eat it fine. Does not taste as good as other things. But easier to find. Do not know how it works.
It’s certainly strange, but you suppose it saves a little money on food, since she’s just as willing to eat the packaging. She’s even enthusiastic about it, noting that the flavor from fresh food packaging is much better than the stuff in the ocean. The only things she wont eat are glass and metal, but plastic, wax, and paper are fair game.
“I wish there was a better signal here,” you say as she chews through another chunk of Styrofoam. “I could show you some of my favorite shows.”
I would like that. She stretches out on the beach. Little to do in ocean.
“Swimming around has to get old eventually,” you say.
Yes. Is beautiful. But can become tedious. She leans against you, practically falling into your lap. You stroke her head. It’s getting toward the end of summer and the nights are a little cooler now. She seems to appreciate the touch more when it gets cold. She’s not quite cool to the touch, but she’s a bit colder than a human would be. You don’t mind, not when she seems so completely delighted by your presence.
You shift your legs under her and she makes a strange noise, like a choked-off whimper. You freeze. “What’s the matter?”
She shakes her head, but when you move again, you feel something against her skin. A little change in texture, one that makes her groan when you touch it. “Let me see,” you insist, slipping out from under her and trying to flip her over. She squirms away from you, too strong for you to move her without her help, but a smear in the sand tells you what you need to know- she’s got a cut and it’s bleeding.
“I can tell that you’re injured,” you say insistently. She makes a move like she’s going to try and slip back into the waves, so you grab her arm. If she really wanted to, she could probably break free. But she allows you to hold on. After a moment of halfhearted struggling, she goes limp, then flops over onto her back.
The wound isn’t as bad as you initially worried. In fact, most of it looks rather old. The two ends of the wound are already healed over with scar tissue, but the middle part of the wound is still covered in half-formed scabs. It’s hard to tell how deep it is, but it doesn’t exactly look shallow. There’s blood leaking from the middle part of the wound in a steady trickle, but it looks more like some of the scabs got ripped off than like she’s bleeding profusely.
“You should have said something,” you fuss. You poke the wound and she snaps her teeth at you nonthreateningly. “Don’t be like that. I should have thought to bring bandages or a first aid kit or something here, god I’m so stupid.”
She shakes her head furiously, wet hair slapping back and forth. After a moment of struggle, she twists her arm around enough to write. Not fault. Would not help. Bandage not stay on in water.
“I could still have gotten you some antibiotics or something,” you say, anxious. “How did you even get that?”
She shrugs. Ocean dangerous. Not many predators. But strong currents. Sharp objects. Can get injured.
“Fuck,” you mutter. All you can think about are the myriad of diseases someone can get from a cut like this. She’s almost certainly not up to date on her tetanus shot. “How long ago?”
She shrugs. 1 week. Healed quickly.
You grimace. It does look pretty well-healed for only a week, and there don’t seem to be any signs of infection. But that doesn’t mean you’re not nervous. “I’ll come back tomorrow with a first-aid kit. I want to at least try to patch some parts of it up.”
Your mermaid seems unconcerned, but she doesn’t protest. Once she polishes off both the chicken wings and the container, you take your leave. She turns and vanishes back into the water, and you watch until her tail slips beneath the waves and doesn’t come back up.
The train ride home is quiet, and usually, you’re half-asleep for it. This time, thought, you can’t get your mind to settle down. You’ve just been taking it for granted that she would come back to you every day, like you’re meeting a friend for coffee. But the ocean is dangerous, and she can get hurt. There’s always a possibility that one day, you’ll come back to the ocean and she won’t appear again.
You leave work early to put together the best, most waterproof first-aid kit you can. At least if she can stash it somewhere in the water, she’ll have something she can use to help herself even if you’re not there.
You end up at the beach earlier than usual, and pace the sand for a while. That nervous energy in your body makes the time drag on and on, like the sun is deliberately crawling through the sky.
Finally, the beach closes and it gets dark. The moon, a sliver of a crescent, rises into the sky. You wait by the shore, sitting so that the waves just barely roll in over your toes. And wait. And wait.
The moon reaches three-quarters of the way across the sky before you really start to panic. Was she sick? Did the reopening of the wound trigger some sort of infection? Or was she caught in a current again, the wound on her side making her too weak to fight against it?
You don’t know. You can’t know. And that yawning chasm of knowledge fills your stomach with a deep and terrible pit.
Panic is starting to choke you when there’s a splash, a tail appearing above the water. Your chest releases and you half run to the water to meet her as she comes into shore.
As soon as she’s above the water enough for your to see her, you realize why she’s been late. She’s covered in netting. It’s tangled around her right arm and the fin of her tail, pulling both into an awkward position. She can move forward, but it’s clearly a strain to do so, and she collapses on the beach as soon as she’s up on the sand.
“What the fu-” You cut yourself off to suck in a gulp of air and bolt toward her. She reaches for you as soon as you’re close and you haul her a short ways up the beach before taking a look at the rope wrapped around her.
It’s definitely some kind of netting, though you’re not sure if it’s the sort used to block human swimmers from entering dangerous areas, the sort used to catch fish, or something else entirely. But it’s wrapped around her tail fin and her arm enough to restrict movement, and even tight enough to almost cut off circulation at her wrist. You fumble for your first aid kit and tear through it- there’s a small set of scissors there to cut bandages. It’s only just big enough to get around the rope, so you start sawing away.
The rope is made of some kind of plastic fibers, and after a few minutes of sawing, it just feels like you’re destroying your scissors. Cutting each of the individual fibers instead of going after the whole thing at once works better, but it’s still slow. Eventually, you manage to whittle the rope connecting her arm and her tail down to only a few fibers. She flexes and the remaining fibers snap. Immediately, she lifts her wrist to her mouth and uses her teeth to saw through the rest of the ropes. There’s a purple-red mark where the rope was.
You and her work together to saw the rest of the ropes off her body. With her movements much less restricted, she’s able to stretch around and chew off some of the rope while you tug away areas that are less reachable. Finally, the beach is littered with pieces of shredded rope and she is free.
“Are you okay?” you ask, poking and prodding to check her for injuries. She makes a short, affectionate noise and nudges you away so she can write.
Yes. Ran into net caught in current. Tangled. Struggling made it tighter. Could not escape. Came here. She nuzzles close to you. Saved me.
You pet her head. “If that rope had been any tighter, you could have lost your hand. You could barely move!” Panic is making it hard for you to breathe. You practically clutch her against your chest. She snuggles close to you. “What if that happens again and you can’t get out? I’ll never know what happened to you!”
She shrugs, twisting in your grip to write again. Ocean dangerous.
“No shit it’s dangerous!” you say. “The ocean’s a goddamn hellhole.”            She makes a wheezing-screeching noise that you’ve come to realize is her natural laugh. Ha ha ha. Her expression grows somber. Nowhere else to go. Must stay here.
She’s right, of course. She can do nothing else but stay in the ocean and wait until something kills her. The thought makes your stomach ache.
“There has to be something,” you say. “I can’t let you stay here.”
She gives another shrug, even more halfhearted this time. You pat her head absently as you think. There has to be something you can do.
Eventually, something comes to mind. It’s not a good idea, necessarily, but it’s something. You nudge her, because she’s falling asleep against your shoulder. “Hey. How salty does the water you’re in need to be?”
Thank god, salinity level was something the scientists tested. It’s not comfortable for her to go from one salinity to the other, but it is possible, and it’s easier for her to go from high salinity to low salinity than the other way around. Her body is apparently able to adjust after a little bit. That’s a relief. It means your option is at least tenable.
She seems hesitant when you tell her about it. Concerned. Have not left sea.
“I know it’s an adjustment, but you’ll be safer. No one ever comes by and it’s not the cleanest area ever, but I can help you clean it up. Getting there is going to take some doing, but it’s not going to be impossible.” She hesitates. “Think about it. I’ll give you a couple days. I need to figure out the logistics anyway.” She nods and you help her back into the water. She swims away slowly, and a knot ties itself into your stomach as she vanishes.
You have to work the next day, but you spend every spare minute you have looking for something to make the whole plan work. The biggest issue with the whole thing is the concern about transportation- she’s bigger than you are, because her tail is longer than human legs, and there aren’t a lot of good options for hauling around someone who can’t walk. You toy with the idea of a wheelchair- you can rent one and it’s relatively inexpensive, but you’re not sure how well it’ll actually work. She doesn’t have hips the same way humans do, so she can’t sit up, and her tailfin would probably dangle off the end and get caught in the wheels. You also consider a wheelbarrow, which would actually be easier to get, but there’s still the problem of her fitting in it. It’s not going to be a comfortable fit by any stretch of the imagination.
The solution you settle upon is more expensive than you’d like, but probably the safest and most workable. You can rent one of the smaller u-haul trucks and set up a rented kiddie pool in it. You’ll be able to drive her a good chunk of the distance, even if you won’t be able to get all the way there. Then, hopefully, you can use a wheelbarrow to get her the rest of the way.
It’s not an easy solution (in fact, you’re already feeling sore just thinking about it) but it seems the safest and likeliest to work. The next day, you travel back down to the seashore to tell her your plan.
She is less than enthusiastic, but willing enough. You rent the truck, a small swimming pool, and spend the next couple of days sorting everything out. Luckily, you don’t call out sick all that often, so your faked illness doesn’t get a lot of scrutiny. Once it’s reasonably dark on the second day, you set up the pool in the truck, fill it halfway with water, and get in the driver’s seat.
Driving to the beach is faster than taking the train, so you end up there earlier than you anticipated. You buy an extra-large serving of fried cod and head down to the beach to wait. There are only a few people around, and none of them pay much attention to you. If you squint down the shoreline, you can see, off in the distance, a building set into the coast. It glints under the moonlight. It looks tiny, but menacing. You shrug off a shudder. If they haven’t come for her before, they won’t now. Everything is fine.
Finally, the last few people clear off the beach. As soon as you’re certain they’re gone, you head down to the edge of the water. Your mermaid emerges only moments later, tail swinging through the surf. She heaves herself up onto shore.
“The truck’s that way,” you say, pointing off beyond the boardwalk. It’s the closest available parking lot, but you still can’t see it from the beach. She grimaces. “We just need to make it there, and then you can rest. We’ll take breaks if we need to.” You show her the fried cod. “And I have your favorite for when we’re done.”            Her grimace softens and she makes a noise of agreement. Slowly, bit by bit, you start to make your way up the beach.
The way she moves on land looks like a combination between a seal and someone doing the worm very enthusiastically. She braces herself with her hands on the ground, tenses, then uses the powerful muscles of her tail against the ground to heave herself forward. Sometimes, she tries to pull herself forward with just her arms, but that seems to be a more exhausting endeavor. Not to mention, it pulls her across the sand, which can’t feel comfortable on her bare skin.
You make it almost to the edge of the boardwalk before she stops moving outright and collapses in the sand. Her gills and sides heave with her desperate gasps for air. You crouch next to her. “Just a little further, okay? We can take a break. Do you need water?” You offer her the enormous water bottle you have, one of two. She sips from it, then splashes water over her face and gills. It doesn’t help her breathe, apparently, but her gills can easily get irritated from being in open air too long.
“We can just sit here until-” A flashlight beam swings through the air, roving across the beach. It misses you by inches. We freeze. “Crap. Crap crap crap crap crap.”
She makes a high-pitched, frantic squeal before remembering you’re supposed to be stealthy and shuts up. Her tail flops against the sand as she struggles forward, but she’s tired enough that it’s not much motion. You grimace. The light is coming closer, and it’s between you and the sea and you really don’t want to get caught. Security guards will turn you over to the police and if the police are in on it, you don’t want to alert them.
Okay. Plan B. You drop into a crouch in front of her. “Get on!” you hiss. She claws her way up onto your back, nails digging into your shoulders. It hurts, but you don’t have time to get her into a better position. Instead, you reach back to grab ahold of her tail, make sure she’s not at risk of falling off, and push yourself to your feet.
Your knees protest and tremble as you get up, and the sliding sand doesn’t make things any easier. Maybe mermaids are lighter than humans, because she’s well over six feet long and you’re pretty sure you couldn’t lift a human her size. But maybe it’s also the adrenaline running through your veins that gives you the boost. You haul her, on your back, to the boardwalk, clear the steps, and full-on sprint to your truck.
It feels like you’re going to collapse before you get there, but you make it. You crouch in front of the truck while the mermaid unlocks the back door (your hands are still occupied holding her) and once it’s unlatched, you swing her inside. You don’t stop to see if she makes it in the pool. You just slam the door shut, relatch it, and throw yourself in the driver’s seat.
Really, you’re not actually sure you’re being followed. You might not be. The security guards don’t tend to chase people who have left the beach- it’s not their job. But you’re adrenaline-high and panicked, so you just tear ass through the streets until your racing heart has slowed enough that you feel safe stopping.
You pull over and hurry around to check the back of the truck. Your mermaid is sprawled across the back of the truck, only halfway into the pool, and looking disgruntled and carsick. Water is splashed all over the back of the truck, leaving a relatively small amount in the pool. “S-sorry,” you say sheepishly. “I, uh. Didn’t mean for that to happen.”
She waves a hand nonchalantly at you. “You good to keep going?” you ask. She grimaces, but nods. “You’re sure?” She gives you a look you’re pretty sure translates as ‘let’s just get this over with.’
You lock up the doors and head out on the road again. This time, you’re gentler on the brake and the turns, and there isn’t a lot of thumping or complaining from the back, which seems like a good sign.
It’s about an hour and a half of driving before you arrive at the end of the road. You’re not at your destination, you’re just as far as you can get in a car. You unlock the back of the truck and peek inside.
“How are you doing?” you ask. She’s fully inside the pool now, though a lot of the water has sloshed out. She shrugs, grimacing. “We’re almost there. Just a bit further, okay?”
She grunts, heaves herself out of the pool, and crawls her way over to you. “Give me a sec,” you say, and instead of helping her out, you crawl in next to her. With some fumbling, you tug at the straps securing a heavy wheelbarrow to the wall.
“I know it’s a tight fit,” you say as you push the wheelbarrow out. It lands on the edge of the road with a heavy thunk. “But it’s the easiest way to transport you.”
She looks annoyed, but she is able to at least mostly squeeze herself into it. The positioning requires her to pull her tail fin up to her chest, but she seems… well, not comfortable, but able to hold the position.
You heft up the wheelbarrow and start walking. It’s easier than just straight up carrying her, but the journey is mostly uphill, so it’s not exactly comfortable. There’s also not a path, so shoving the wheelbarrow over the uneven ground is not easy. The walk’s fifteen minutes on your own, but dragging along the wheelbarrow extends it to over a half an hour. But finally, you make it to the expansive lake.
The lake is large, several miles wide at least, and twice as deep as she is long in the deepest areas. People swim here in the midst of summer, but no one is supposed to, and they only ever stick toward the outermost edges. But the part that reassures you the most is that the area is strictly forbidden for boats, and fishing, and it’s a relatively peaceful area. At the very least, it’s far away from the dangers of the ocean.
“What do you think?” you ask. She perks up, gazing out over the lake. Her posture is completely still. Then she twists her body in one huge motion and launches herself over the edge of the wheelbarrow and into the lake. Water splashes over you and you shriek.
There’s a ripple in the water and she’s gone. For a moment, there’s no sign of her. Then her head emerges several feet away. She swims back to you and perches on the shore, shaking water out of her hair.
“What do you think?” you ask. She glances around, but there’s no sand here to write in. “Oh, right!” You fumble around and finally grab your final gift for her. “Here. I thought this might be a problem. So, uh. Housewarming gift?”
She rips into the packaging with her teeth and reveals an erasable whiteboard with a small container of markers. Her expression brightens and she hurries to uncap one of the markers and write. Thank you.
“Sure, sure!” You crouch next to her. “So, uh. How is it? You think you’re going to be okay here?”
She glances around for a bit, taking it in. Water colder. Slimier also. Garbage in some areas.
“Oh,” you say, shoulders drooping. “Sorry, I thought-”
She waves a hand in front of your face to cut you off and keeps writing. But is calmer than ocean. Peaceful. Appreciate. Not need to hide so much. Currents easier. She ducks underwater for a moment and surfaces with a smile. Like it.
You relax. You hadn’t even realized how tense you were about her potentially not liking this place. “Good.” You offer her the box of fried fish and she rips into it eagerly. “I’ll come up here over the next few days, to make sure you’re settled in and get you things, but I’m not going to be able to be here as often after that. It takes a lot longer to get here.”
Her face falls so quickly it’s heartbreaking. She doesn’t even bother to write anything. She makes a frantic wailing noise in her throat and snatches at your shirt. “Woah, hey, hey!” You slip from the unexpected grabbing, and she releases you before you can tumble into the water. She whines apologetically, but she’s still giving you the fishy equivalent of puppy dog eyes.
“I know. I’m sorry. I wish I could visit more often too. But I can’t miss more work and it takes a long time to get here unless I’m renting a car, and I can’t afford to do that every week.” She ducks partially under the water, sulking. “I’m sorry. Really.” She stares at you. “I’ll try to visit every weekend. As often as I can. I’m not going to abandon you, I promise-”
She surges out of the water, grabs the front of your shirt, and before you can really process what she’s doing, she’s pressed her mouth to yours.
She feels cooler than a human kiss, and wetter as well. Her mouth is salty and you can feel her sharp teeth behind her lips. Her nose brushes against yours as she tilts her head sideways and tingles shoot down your spine.
Mermaids must not need as much air as humans, because when you break the kiss, you’re practically seeing spots from oxygen deprivation. She clings to you anyway, still making sad whining noises. You hook your arms around her and squeeze her to your chest.
“I- I know. It sucks. I don’t like it either,” you say. “I’ll figure something out. So that we don’t have to be apart for too long. I promise.”
She clings to you tighter. You press a kiss to her forehead and give her one final squeeze. When she slips slowly into the water again, her hand stays in yours, fingertips touching, for as long as she can possibly manage.
It takes some fussing, but you come up with a short-term solution- cell phones. There’s reception near the lake, though it’s sometimes spotty, and simpler cell phones are pretty cheap. You get the best rated waterproof version and present it to her the next time you’re up there. Her excited shrilling is music to your ears.
You text back and forth every day. She sends you videos of her swimming around, of interesting creatures that come by during the day. You send her videos back of mundane things, like your breakfast or your trip to work. You’ve spent a small fortune on power banks, so she can keep her phone charged at all times, but it’s worth it when you can get on a call with her and listen to a podcast together.
Every week, you head up to the lake to visit her. Even in the winter, when it was chilly and a thin sheet of ice formed over the top of the pond, you visited. She was more sluggish then, rather sleepy, but she would still force herself awake every time you visited, slotting her body against yours and humming happily at your warmth.
When spring rolls around again, she perks back up. The lake is more beautiful than you ever remember it being- maybe it’s because she ate a good deal of the trash off the banks during the winter, but the water looks clear and beautiful, and the animals are more plentiful than ever. Sometimes you get a creeping sensation on the way up to the lake, like you’re being watched. But nothing ever happens, so you chalk it up to paranoia. You’ve seen neither hide nor hair from the Wellterra people, and no one ever comes investigating about the beach incident. After a year of waiting, you’re finally ready to accept that the immediate danger is over.
It takes another couple of years of saving and scrimping and visits to the lake before you’re ready to take the next step. It would have taken longer if not for your mermaid. Apparently, you can find all kinds of strange things in the lakebed, and some of them are old pieces of jewelry that can be sold for decent prices. She presses them into your hands with glee, eager to help you.
After so long of waiting, you rent a house only a couple miles from the lake. It’s sort of dilapidated, but you’ve got some experience trying to fix stuff in your apartment, and it’s got more space and, most importantly, it’s close to her. You can walk to her with relatively little difficulty.
The day of your moving in, you head to the lake. “Aliyah!” you call, dropping down next to the lake’s edge. She emerges from the water, laughing in delight. “Hi, hon,” you say as she pulls herself onto the shore and into your lap. She’s dripping wet, but you’ve gotten used to it by now. She kisses at your lips impatiently. “Hi, yes, I’m happy to see you! I know it’s been a while.” Prepping for the move had conked you out for a while, but you were thrilled to be back. Apparently, she was too, because she was swaying her tail back and forth in the water, sending little splashes onto shore. “I have something for you,” you say, reaching back to get something out of your bag. She stills, attention focused on your hands.
You lift the box from your bag and hesitate. Nerves crawl through the pit of your stomach. “Uh. Close your eyes.” It’ll be easier to do it if she’s not looking at you. She huffs, but obliges. “Okay. Um.” You carefully shuffle so you’re in a kneeling position and flip the lid of the box up. “You can open.”            She blinks her eyes open and freezes. Resting in the box is a long, silver chain. And attached to the chain is a simple diamond ring.
“I wasn’t sure how easy it would be to keep a ring on underwater,” you say, “so I attached it to a necklace. But it still means the same thing.” You lift the necklace from the box and hold it out for her inspection. “I know we can’t really get married, but… I thought maybe the ring could mean something anyway. I’ve got one too, so other people will know that I have someone and that I’m committed to you.”
You are knocked over by her enthusiastic surge out of the water. She soaks you as she tackles you to the ground, kisses spilling all over your face with enthusiasm. You giggle helplessly, overwhelmed and adored.
It’s a strange relationship. But it’s the one you want. It’s the one you love.
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sroloc--elbisivni · 11 months
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"so how's the vacation writing going" well i made progress on a couple of the Actual WIPs i have posted and then i also saw this art by @wtf-a-psychoanalysis for space leosagi with usagi in the slave leia outfit and uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh i blacked out and came to with 2800 words typed up on my phone in the Notes app. anyway. love to commit sexual violence against a man via application of aliens amiright. went in a different direction than jabba the hutt, this is far future in the space bodice ripper au when the guys are running around having space adventures. cw: implied sex slavery.
“Well?” Leo hissed, prodding one of Donnie’s feet.
Donnie kicked him, face intent on his wrist computer. “I’m working on it. The camera network in this place is stupid big. Are we sure this is a guy and not an AI?”
“We’re not even sure he has the thingamabob we want,” Leo said. “Hence, you, hurrying up, in our near future, please.”
“Um,” Mikey said, peering through the slats of the maintenance tube exits. “Is this a bad time to mention—“
“Probably,” Donnie said, not looking up.
“—that the guy I saw earlier is standing right there?”
“What do you mean right there?” Leo shoved him out of the way for a better look and got an eyeful of draping black cloth and white furry leg. “Oh. Right there, right there.”
“Yeah,” Mikey said, pointedly.
“Listen, guys, I got this,” Leo said, and shoved the maintenance hatch open. “Heeeeyyy, sorry to ask, but do you mind just moving down the hallway whiiiiii…”
He got about halfway through his sentence before he pried his head out to talk with this stranger and convince him that they were just a couple of maintenance guys doing very important work who should not be interrupted. This was about when he got a good look at the man—very much a man—and lost his entire train of thought.
The legs that were uh, pretty muscly actually, revealed by the drape and cling of rich black silk shot with gold, led up to a belt of gold hanging low on some shapely hips. Trim hips. Put all your weight behind a solid punch shaped hips. The torso crowned with wrapping curls of gold around the shoulders and pecs was also muscled, in that really nice dorito-shaped bulk way. Scars crisscrossed the soft-looking white fur in more than a few places—a starburst on this hip, a slash on that shoulder, a scattering of burns like a meteor shower across the torso. Leo really wanted to touch all of them.
The look on the guy’s face said if Leo did that he probably would only get to enjoy it for like. Three more seconds before his untimely demise. He was some kind of rabbit alien, ears bound on top of his head and draping down like a fancy hairdo. There was one more scar over his left eye, arcing like an extra eyebrow and lending some punch to his glare.
“While what?” he asked.
“Um,” Leo said. Words. He could do words. Eventually.
The rabbit rolled his eyes, leaning back against the wall and bracing his elbows in a way that showed off his abs. “Listen. Whatever you’re up to, I don’t actually care. If you’re going to try to kill Hikiji, I’ll have to stop you, but until you’re at his throat? Not my problem.”
“We’re here to rob him, actually,” Mikey chirped, sticking his head out of the tube next to Leo’s torso.
“Great. I mean it. Please, rob the bastard blind.”
“Do I. Uh.” Leo shook his head dragging his tongue back into place. “Who are you?”
The rabbit smiled. It didn’t look like a happy smile. “These days? No one.”
“Nice to meet you, no one,” Mikey said, and Leo elbowed him back into the vent so he could pull himself up and get on eye level with the rabbit.
“So, do you maybe wanna help us?” he asked, hopefully. If they could just get this guy to come with them, a little longer, maybe he’d loosen up a little bit. He probably had a nice smile, when he was happy.
For the moment, the rabbit loosened up enough to blink and snort. “What the hell, sure. What do you want to know?”
“Where’s the vault?” Donnie yelled from inside the vent before Leo could embarrass himself by asking for this guy’s number. “This map is useless!”
“He has fake copies of the blueprints on the servers. The real ones are metal engravings in the engineer’s quarters and can’t be photographed.”
“That’s—horrifyingly impressive. I hate that.”
“So do the engineers,” the rabbit said, dry. “Which vault? There’s three, but I don’t think you want the one for alcohol.”
“Wherever he keeps the, the,” Leo snapped his fingers, trying to remember.
“The Mambrino basin,” Donnie said. “Smallish, gold, contains a code only activated when a certain fluid is poured over it?”
“Oh, that. That’s in the leeward vault. You’re about three floors too far up.” He pointed down the hallway, and Leo admired the pretty blue crystal on an elaborately wrought bracelet he was wearing. “There’s a ladder that’s been locked for the last year, but if you’re blocking the cameras, you can probably bypass that too.”
A brief squabble ensued as Mikey and Donnie both attempted to leave the vent at the same time and tangled up their limbs. Leo ignored them with long practiced and grinned charmingly at the hot rabbit, trying not to look at where the smooth arch of his hipbone jutted out beyond the edge of the skirt-thing. “Sooooooooooo…wanna come break into a leeward vault with us?”
“I’ll pass,” the rabbit said, but he looked softly amused. “You all are really going to do this, aren’t you?”
“Of course!” Leo swept a little bow. “Stealing from rich bastards is one of our specialties.” He straightened and winked at the rabbit. “Along with daring rescues, if you know anyone in the market for one?”
Oop. Wrong tactic. The rabbit gave this horrible sad little smile and looked away. “Plenty of those needed out in the galaxy, I’m sure.”
Donnie and Mikey had finally worked their way out and stumbled upright. Donnie looked the rabbit up and down and said “Your outfit is derivative and tacky, I could do better. Call me if you ever need a stylist. Where’s the ladder I’m opening?”
“I’ll—” The blue gem on his bracelet flashed three times, accompanied with three chiming tones. The rabbit straightened immediately. “Down the hall, that way, third door.” He jerked his chin, didn’t point. His pointing hand was too busy wrapping around the bracelet, which had started to blink.
Leo grabbed up the rabbit's wrist—he was clutching it like he was in pain.
This was obviously a mistake. The rabbit’s eyes flashed and he jerked back.
“Let me go,” he snarled, and Leo was startled enough to drop his grip entirely.
“I—sorry,” he blurted. The rabbit was already turning around and striding away, black cloth swishing between his legs.
Leo hated to see him leave, and somehow, he didn’t much like watching him go either.
“C’mon,” Mikey said, tugging at his elbow. “The next person who catches us out here isn’t going to be that nice.”
“Yeah,” Leo said, staring at where the stranger vanished. “Sure.”
They got all the way down the ladder before he persuaded Donnie to follow the guy on security cameras all the way back to the main throne room of this big evil villainous castle on a meteor they were infiltrating to pass the time.
The rabbit walked in from a side door, not the big front one, and headed right for the big fancy dais where a human-looking alien in black and gold and brown was sitting like he owned the place.
The rabbit walked up to him and dropped to his knees. The guy, who had to be the Lord Hikiji they’d come here to rob, waved one hand for the rabbit to approach his fancy bench throne. When he came in reach, Hikiji took his chin in one hand, possessively, and held him in a bent-forward position that looked like it would be murder on the back.
The rabbit had his someone-else’s-untimely-death look on again, but he wasn’t…doing anything. Just standing there while Hikiji was saying something they couldn’t hear.
Hikiji turned his gripping hand into a caress down the rabbit’s throat and let him go. The rabbit moved to the side of the bench and dropped to the floor, leaning his back against Hikiji’s legs and staring at the wall. HIkiji rested one hand on his head like a Bond villain stroking a cat and seemed to forget about him.
“Hey, broskis?” Leo said, staring at the tiny screen like this might be the day he developed the ability to kill things with his eyes. “Change of plans. We’re going to destroy this guy.”
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Sunlight
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Pairing: Chris Evans x Black Reader
Words: ~1.2k
Warnings: age gap, slow burn romance, I think 18+ in later chapters but for now it’s just storytelling, somewhat dark, mentions/implied death, blood
A/N: hi, this is my next writing fic, I have finally written about 3 chapters and the only inspiration im getting is from Hozier songs like cherry wine, as it was, and also sunlight. I have written some more chapters on my other fic but I feel it needs to be reworked also hopefully you read this and like it. *if you wanna be added to/removed from my taglist ask me and I’ll add/remove you with no worries at all*
He walked down the stairway on unsteady stones, the only source of light coming from the candle in the chamber stick he held. Walking down the path in the deepest part of the kingdom, finally reaching the bottom was greeted by a cell at the end of the dark hall within it a creature he came to greet.
All there was is all four walls coming together deep down within the earth, leaks coming from above smelling of soil and rain as the storm finished before he decided to come down to the creature's cell.
Slowly, padding toward its cell door to see the visitor who wished to talk to them. As the candle came closer so did its features become shown. Eyes as dark and big as the star-encased sky, make you believe that they couldn’t see a thing but could see all at the same time. Hands similar to a human's with the exception of their sharp black nails, and black encasing the tips of each finger. Teeth sharp and a few longer than others. Hair mangled as it’s been unkempt, cheeks sunken, and clothes barely hanging on to its body looking on the brink of death but being in its cell for over two centuries. No one visits as everyone says ‘it’s an accursed thing’, whenever they have to explain to their children why to never go down into the basement.
But, him. He chooses to ignore what his father says to see what it looked like one late night several years ago. Ever since he visits whenever there’s a full moon for a couple of days to see such a wondrous creature. As it's not as accursed as his father makes them out to be.
Tonight should’ve been like every other night, with the difference of him smiling, and reaching out his hand to me but with blood slowly drying on his hand, shirt, and pants. It was a sight to behold as he spoke, “I’ve come to finally free you, beloved,” with blood splattered across his face. His eyes showed me love but his outward appearance showed me something darker.
“What did you do?” was all I could slowly choke out, as my mouth and throat were parched.
“I’m sorry where are my manners,” speaking to me once again, taking his hand that was reached out and moving back.
“Saving you from this lonely hell my family has given you,” he began again as he steadied his sword ready to swing at the lock and chains holding my cell together, “you deserve so much more than this. So, I took my rightful place from your current captors so I can finally free you.”
Charging up his sword with a very clear and strong spell as his sword flew a bright red and then he swung. Swiftly breaking what once was my lock, now shards on the ground. Quickly opening the door, stepping over the shards, and bringing himself to one knee.
“May I finally greet you properly as mine? And do not worry I will carry you so as to not hurt you anymore from this point on,” he told me as he looked up at me.
Slowly giving my hand out to him and beginning to speak I reply, “you may, but be gentle with me, please. What is your name?”
“Christopher Evans, but just for you you can call me Chris my beloved,” I was told as he kissed the back of my hand, “and yours?”
“(Y/f/n), (Y/f/n) (y/l/n) is my name, it’s been so long since anyone’s asked me for my name,” it was like a shout but only fell upon his ears, if others would were here no one hear as it wouldn’t echo throughout and before I knew it I was whisked up into his arms, spun around, and held as gentle but tight as he could hold me without taking my breath away.
Now bound to him as if I made a contract, now without a word or a doubt. Then starting the slow ascension to the outside from this underground purgatory.
——————————————————————
Before we knew it, there we were at the door. He set me down and gave me a look as if I should be the one to open the door to my freedom. Opening that door made me feel the heaviness that I had been carrying lifted off my shoulders.
All I could see before was the darkness, feeling the bricks as I scraped another line down the brick indicating a day. From what I could tell, all I ever did was count, recount my happiest memories, my worst moments, and whatever I could entertain myself with. Well until Chris, then I was counting the days, minutes, and hours until he returned. Now I never need to do that again.
As I stood at the doorway, holding my hand within my own slowly walking out. I could see within these elegant walls, and took a turn to my left another door. With windows showcasing the sunlight through the windows and its curtains flowing through slowly. Walking towards it, I took a look back at Chris and he nodded. Turning back to the door I opened it and took in the open garden in what could be the middle of the whole castle.
I took in the sun as it began to rise, its sunlight swimming with the clouds bringing out colors I hadn’t seen in so long made me tear up. Feeling the sun as it rose and shone on my skin after so long felt bittersweet in a way.
Just as I began walking into the garden, a maid took a turn before taking in my form startled by what she was witnessing. As she was thinking about running to get one of the guards, sees Chris walk from behind me and realizes what happened.
She took in his form from the now-dried blood, and you could see the multiple things she questioned and the conclusions she was coming up with.
“If you are going to tell a guard or anyone else about my beloved, do tell them that I let her out and I plan to take her as my queen,” he thundered to her. Feeling chills run up my spine as he then took in my form.
“I’m gonna need to get you new clothes, and get food in you as you’re just so small,” Chris insisted to me as he turned me toward him, taking my hands into his.
“Then I’m gonna need to find out how such a small thing as yourself is so dangerous,” he chuckled to himself. Picking me up once more, he began walking into the castle and up the staircase to the third floor. Walking on towards the end of the hallway.
Opening the door to a room half as big as the garden downstairs.
“This is where you’ll be staying, and don’t worry I’ll notify everyone that you are so you won’t have any problems, my love,” he assured me, bending down to one knee. “Now I won’t be gone long but until then I'll have one of my best guards’ outside until I am. And I’ll send in a maid to help you out as well.”
All I could do was nod until he left me in this room to my own devices.
Taglist: @cherienymphe @geminixevans-stan @afriendlyblackhottie @sunshinebuckybarnes @honeystevie @syntheticavenger @flawlessglamazon @ramp-it-up @maroonsunrise83 @ysmmsy @starryevermore @sapphirescrolls @punani @olyvoyl @p---ink @avintagekiss24 @fineanddandy @harryspet @canumoveurseatup-no @nagisaunicorn-blog @ilovefandoms102 @boxofbonesfic @mianorth @raewritesfiction @cockslutpadalecki @stargirlfics @georgiapeach30513
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bananapolis · 2 years
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Ok so could I pls request nanami teaching reader how to make bread (maybe reader has only baked a couple things like cookies but bread is entirely different to what they’re used to but they wanna learn!!) and at one point, reader gets flour on their nose/cheeks (they’re unaware of it). When nanami notices, he is absolutely floored becoz u look so adorable and his heart goes pitter patter and he just loves the fact that you’re spending time with him doing one of his favourite hobbies 🥺🥺
i honestly looked at this request and just,,, where do i even start bc i bake bread and there's a lot less flour flying around than people think so i took ~artistic liberties~ and changed it slightly i hope u like this!!
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it's no secret that nanami bakes. he bakes a lot. if there's fresh bread left in the common area, it's baked by nanami. after all, it's impossible to finish a whole batch of sourdough loaves alone. and baking's pretty much all nanami does in his free time, beyond reading. he bakes lots of stuff, but he likes sourdough. he's got a real nice recipe down, and makes sure to take good care of his starters.
so it also makes absolute sense that you would ask him for help when you wanted to learn how to bake bread. at first he was kinda confused by your question. there's so many types of bread? you didn't strike him as a sourdough person, but then again, all he's seen you eat are those overly-sweet yet addictive donuts that gojo-san and ieiri-san are always buying. which makes sense because that's what is always around. he only brings fresh bread over on mondays, after the weekend, and usually it's gone by the next day, and you're not known to stick around the common area all that often. to be fair, he doesn't stick around the common area all that often too, only coming out if there's a fuss, which usually means there's an obnoxious senpai who has bought donuts, and who is making people eat junk-
nanami-san? your voice pulls him back to the present time. if it's too hard to teach me how to make proper bread, is there like, a simple recipe? oh good heavens nanami is going to suffer today, isn't he? what is "proper bread"? you don't even know what you are talking about. he looks at you with a hint of amusement, taking in your hopeful face, a touch of pink around your ears. why were you blushing? nanami tilts his head. so... what kind of bread do you want to make? you almost sigh in relief at his question, and nanami interjects: i haven't agreed yet, i just want to know if it's within the realm of what i know and can teach you. you deflate a little, and it must have been obvious because nanami sighs. i'm not the bread expert, you do know that, right? undeterred, you press on, telling him you like soft, fluffy bread, that tastes good even when it's plain for those days when you don't have time to make a sandwich- just buy a sandwich, nanami cuts in, and you pout. he sighs. again. okay, so a soft and fluffy bread, that tastes good plain, and doesn't seem too difficult or take too long to make? you look up at him hopefully. nanami sighs inside. bread usually takes hours. but it's a weekend, he's got time, and he knows just what to make. let's go grocery shopping. you cheer. he sighs. AGAIN. and you laugh, because you know that's just him, pretending he's so tired by your demands, yet he still follows through.
an hour or so later you're back in the kitchen together with a lot less groceries than you expected. nanami, always straight to the point, immediately starts setting things up. he explains each ingredient on the table as he unpacks the bags: bread flour, sugar, milk, butter and yeast. we're gonna be making milk bread. let's start with the yudane. nanami takes one look at your expression, and he explains. it's just an additional step that we use to make the bread softer and last longer. it's not a compulsory step. he opens the cupboard and picks up a small saucepan. he makes the water-based roux quickly, with practiced movements. this should be enough, he says, spooning out the yudane into a small bowl, and covering it with plastic. i made extra, you can keep the excess for when you try making bread the next time. the rest of the steps follow fairly quickly and is as you expected bread making to be, with nanami giving you instructions, and you attempting to follow. the trouble comes when you're trying to knead the dough. to be fair, you were warned that it was a long and tiring process.
how long do i have to do this, you whine, arms aching. until you can stretch the dough out and it forms a translucent film, nanami states. you've been kneading the dough for 30 minutes. if you can call it kneading: it's actually not rolling and kneading as much as it is lifting the entire piece of dough and throwing it on the countertop, folding one edge in, rotating slightly and repeating the steps over and over. your arms ache. this was not what you signed up for. you thought you could have a nice day out with nanami, bake a little, and play around in the kitchen and maybe get him to fall in love with you. you've baked other things before, surely it couldn't be that hard to bake bread, can it? well, you were very wrong. nanami notices your expression shift from persistent to slightly upset and he moves nearer to you. it's okay if you're tired, i can do the rest. he stands beside you, about to move you out of the way when you push him back. i wanted to bake bread, not ask you to bake it for me, you mutter resignedly. nanami sighs. such a troublesome wish, he says, gently tapping you on the forehead. provoked, you stick both hands into the bag of flour and wipe it on his cheeks, sticking your tongue out at him. covered in flour, nanami's surprised expression is really cute. you giggle, and nanami recovers immediately. he touches his face and swipes a line across your face, cheek to cheek. he taps you on the nose, you'll get no bread if you're going to be cheeky, he says, his clean hand steering you away from the countertop so he can work on the dough. he wipes his face with a clean towel before starting. you lean on the other side of the table and watch him, studying his expression, appreciating how he works the dough as if it were second nature, blushing when you watch the muscles on his arm ripple. in what seems like no time at all, the dough finally passes the windowpane test, and nanami separates the dough into six even portions and leaves them in a loaf pan to proof. you look up at him in wonder. you're so cool, nanami-san! nanami looks at you, your eyes wide in adoration, blushing slightly, framed in the golden glow of the late afternoon sun, and lightly covered in flour. flour that he put on your face. you, covered in his fingerprints. and he has to turn away before replying. thanks, he says. if he knew he had to see you looking this cute today, he would have rejected your plea outright. he knew he was going to suffer, just not in this way. he closes his eyes for a moment, pleading to the heavens that he can keep his hands off you, then shifts to wash his hands.
you don't even notice his reddening ears as he moves to the sink, your eyes fixed on the bread proofing before your eyes. but if you would just take a peek at his expression now, as he watches you silently from a corner of the kitchen, arms folded, eyes soft, it seems like you've achieved the goal of making him fall in love with you after all.
-----
for anyone who wants to bake bread: get a bread maker, i beg you. making bread by hand is a HUGE workout and needs a large countertop. and also like, several hours of just beating and kneading the bread. where do you think nanamin gets his muscles from! all those hours of kneading...
yudane is called tangzhong where i live and it's a popular way of making bread softer and yes, last longer, in japan, korea, taiwan and other places. it's not hard to make!
if you liked this, please reblog!
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casesandcapitals · 1 year
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20 days post-op and I finally admitted defeat in thinking I could save my failing right nipple graft. So, I have an areola but the center is just a depression where my body is working on making new skin.
The left graft turned out fine, and in a month or two I'll know what the right one will look like healed and decide if I want to tattoo it or not.
My stitches are almost completely dissolved and switching from bandages to silicone tape has definitely helped me not feel so much like an invalid.
Just above where the drain on my left side was inserted there's a quarter sized chunk of scar tissue that's big enough to be a visable bump, but I'll massage it with all the other scar tissue once I hit that stage and hopefully it'll soften up.
I feel like I'm speedrunning wearing a binder, cuz I never have to bind again, but I've been wearing this compression vest for 20 days. 24/7 for the first week, and then 23/7 for 4-6 weeks after that, taking it off to shower and wash it. I have to sleep in it and my skin has gotten so irritated and sensitive it's actually painful. My ribs are so sore. I can't wait to never have to wear this thing again.
I've had a couple moments of almost missing limb syndrome, where I'll think to adjust myself under my binder but there's nothing to adjust. I leaned forward to rinse after brushing my teeth and pulled a muscle in my chest because there was no weight pulling down but I tensed up to bear that weight anyway. I was struggling to wash under my arms in the shower, since I still can't lift my arms up, and it took me a week to realize I was still holding my arm out as if to reach across breasts that are no longer there, and it's easier now that I'm reaching my arm directly across my chest. The 2nd or 3rd day after I was allowed to shower again, I got weirded out my the sight of my arms in front of me while holding soap, they looked too long and too thin and alien, and then I realized there was just so much empty space between my arms and my torso. Today I looked down at my ribs to make sure there was no bruising and realized that, not only have I not seen my ribs in maybe 2 decades, but the ribs on my left side stick out a bit farther than on the left side.
Like, I could go on and on. It's incredibly bizarre. Walking around topless still feels illegal and probably will for a long time.
Nothing could top this. I'm so happy and grateful and just relieved. Every single gross and painful and uncomfortable thing about surgery and recovery is worth it a hundred times over.
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nikkeisimmer · 9 months
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Back in 1991 I was a college student in the music program at Douglas College, 20 years old in May 1991 (a month before I turned 21). I was not finding college much fun and my educational difficulties were showing up full force.
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Then along comes Timothy Zahn with a continuation of the Star Wars saga that I had grown up with. Gen X were the target audience as children for Star Wars back in 1977 when I was a kid of 6 years old at least when Star Wars came out in April of that year. And the entire trilogy (Star Wars, Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi) were complete and released in the theatres by the time I had turned 13.
So as a young adult, what’s now referred to as the Legends series of books were a part of my life. I would save up and buy each one as they came out, reveling in the further adventures of Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Leia Organa (now Solo) and their growing family. Some of the events in my own personal life (in general my luck with women mirrored that of Luke Skywalker who couldn’t seem to find a match even if he tried. I mean, look at his track record (the woman who tried to kill him back during the Rebellion days then there was Gaerial Captison, a few others here and there, Callista (the Bodysnatcher) Ming) and well, Mara… who finally in the Legends became his wife).
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The relationship of Mara and Luke was one that really struck a close chord because to me Luke was the “everyman”; the hero of the story; the one everyone wants to be. And what I really wanted at the time,considering the circumstances of being in an abusive situation with my mother and her narcissistic traits, was an escape (from reality, perhaps); someway to get out of the situation I was in. So Star Wars was a way, when I wasn’t working at selling houses which frankly was no longer enjoyable by the time 1998 rolled around, to escape the abuse and BS at home.
Narcissistic parents and their enablers want you helpless and strip away your emotional supports and they did that quite well. If you’re doing the math, I was 29 at this point.
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The Hand of Thrawn duology of Ghosts of the Past and Visions of the Future had come out and we saw Luke and Mara get engaged.
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And well, I had met (online) my future wife and was on the phone with her a lot. This was wayyyy before everyone and their dog and cats. having their own personal cell phones. Cell phones and pagers (remember those?) were the realm of business people. I was in real estate, so I owned one of both.
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I rolled a sabacc on that one. We’re 23 years together as of next month. We’ve been through ups and downs that probably would have broken up most couples including my mother’s meddling. But the choice that I made was to stick with my wife: to get away from my mother who had done nothing other than to beat me down every chance she got.
In other words my relationship with my wife saved my life.
And that’s also a reason why Star Wars is so important to me. It provided an escape and a bit of sanity in an insane situation and allowed me a bit of time to plan my escape. I left my parent’s hpuse in March of 2000. 4 months before my now-wife came up from the States and 5 before she and I got married (parents were not invited - her mother due to logistics because of her being back in the States, secondly, my parents weren’t due to my mother’s abusive controlling behavior and my dad because by now he’d become her enabler). My uncle; my mother’s flying monkey had predicted our marriage wouldn’t last.
23 years and every wedding anniversary that passes is lile another happy “fuck you” to my uncle.
This is one of the reasons why I’m disgusted with the sequel series. Everyone goes through trials and tribulations and they grow, learn from their experiences and mature to become hopefully a better version of themselves.
Rey on the other hand is a Disney’fied version of their typical Princess stories. There’s no growth at all other than the time she was on Jakku. There was the “immediate learning” of her Jedi skills with very little training - a kind of Mulan’ish immediately good at everything. There was no connection at all with Rey as a character.
But then again if one likes their stories to be all fluff and light, then fine. But don’t disrespect the original characters while doing it.
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Turning the hero character into a miserable old grouch who lives like a hermit who tosses his father’s lightsaber when he originally treated it with reverence is not subverting the plot.
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It’s being a dick and ruining a much loved character just for a cheap laugh. Yeah, I’m pretty angry with the sequels because when I was a kid, I idolized Luke Skywalker and Han Solo.
I looked forward to the sequels, hoping that they would do justice to Lucas’s vision, but we got a disjointed plot, “Somehow Palpatine returned”, Super Rey Palpatine and bitter old angry OT characters who were characterized as incompetent. And what enraged me the most was that we got this.
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The final insult from Disney’s screwing up the sequels so badly was after filming TLJ, Carrie Fisher went into full cardiac arrest on an aircraft and passed away. There is now no way to rectify the mess that the House of Mouse has made to Star Wars; the franchise that I love more than any other sci-fi franchise. I grew up with this franchise and while I’ve grown out of what Lucas had termed as the target audience, when someone messes with the memories of your childhood, screws up your heroes, yeah, you get mad.
For me, Star Wars was my happy escape and thanks to Rian “Ruin” Johnson, it’s tainted irreparably. Harrison Ford may have wanted out but the rest loved their characters. And Mark Hamill wanted his character treated with some respect but instead of Luke Skywalker, the noble Jedi, he got Jake Skywalker - the down and out green-milk guzzling irritable hermit who “doesn’t give a shit no more!”
Disney has gone full on and said that anyone who dislikes the sequels and dislike the way Rey is written are old racists and white misogynists who live in their mom’s basements.
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Well I ain’t white, I don’t live in my mom’s basement, I wish women got treated more fairly, I’m more liberal than conservative and I’m frankly pissed that my childhood film heroes got so disrespected. OK granted, I may be old and not a kid any more (my wife would beg to differ. She says I’m a 2 year old in a 53 year old body) but I still love my Star Wars with the exception of the sequels.
And Legends will always have a special place in my heart because it got me through the toughest part of my life.
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hermionewrites · 3 months
Text
1. through fire, nature is reborn whole.
wc:2400
One of the most daunting moments for an eleven year old wizard is having your fate decided by an raggedy old hat. It was a dirty brown with a gash for a mouth that let out a gravely voice. One by one people got called up and sorted into one of four houses. Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, Gryffindor and Slytherin. Hundereds of eyes follow the poor student as they sit on the rickety old stool and wait for the leathery thing to cry out. Tiny feet shuffle foreward and cram close together, thinning in numbers as the night goes on.
The ceiling above them morphs and changes to match the exact state of the weather outside. Showing the light drizzle turn to a violent heavy rain. It was a grand room, with high ceilings coverd in ornate, delicate carvings. Square windows let the last light of the day into the hall, lighting it up softly.
A boy was called up to the stool and the hat doesn't call out a house straight away. It hums and huffs for a long time and the hall settles in a expectant silence. Sabrina's face contorts in confusion as people around them start some idle conversation an the boy on the stool looks embarassed as he waits for the decision.
"It's called a hat stall." The boy next to her whispered, leaning over to her slightly. She looks around at him, more confused than before. He had rounded glasses and messy dark brown hair that stuck up at the back.
"A hat stall?" She clarified, no idea what he was on about.
"It's when the hat takes longer than five minutes to sort someone." He explained quietly. "I'm James, James Potter." He introduced himself and holds his hand out to shake.
"Sabrina Rivera." She replied and shook his hand. It was slightly clammy, she wiped it in her robe once he lets go. More people had started to whisper the longer the hat took to decide where to put the boy.
"What house do you want to be in?" He can't stand still as he asks, impatient for his turn while his eys dart to the hat every couple of seconds.
"I'm not sure, I don't know a lot about them." She shrugged, not much care for what house she got placed in.
"I want to be in Gryffindor, like my parents." He began hopefully. "But I'd be happy with Ravencaw or Hufflepuff. Not Slytherin though." He exclaimed grimly.
"What's wrong with Slytherin?" Sabrina asked, taken aback slightly by the bite in his tone and glancing over at the table with the green banner embelished with a snake above it.
"Evil and rotten, the lot of them." His face turned grim and he rolled his eyes at the table. Sabrina opened her mouth to ask more questions when the hat finally shouted out.
"Gryffindor!" It projected and the round blond boy on the stool looked greatly relived and the long table let out a huge roar. Other tables clapped politely, as he walks quickly over to the table.
Mcgonagall's sharp voice cut through the noise of the crowd. "James Potter." She called out to the small crowd, all huddled at the front.
"Good luck." Sabrina whispered as he confidently strides up to the front of the hall. Placing the hat on his head, it contemplates for a couple seconds before crying out. Gryffindor again. His face lights up and he bounds over to the table of his dreams. The cheers were massively loud this time. They were happy to have him. James' face was plastered with a huge smile as he shakes the hands of the people sat around him.
After the cheering had died out, Professor Mcgonagall called out again. "Sabrina Rivera."
Her feet shuffle up to the stool and it rocks slightly as she sits on it, one of the legs worn away slightly more than the others. Then Professor Mcgonagall lifts up the hat to her head. She was a tall, severe-looking woman who had her long dark hair pulled into a tight bun. She lowered the hat onto her head and the dusty smell hit her nose, sending a small shiver down her spine. It barely touched the fly-away hairs that were sticking out of her ponytail before it made it's decision.
"Slytherin!" It erupted out and Sabrina's stomach dropped as she slowly dragged herself over to the table. However, unlike before, there was no roar of applause and the silence was haunting. She could hear her own footsteps on the cool stone floors and she plants herself on the end on the end of the table.
"Are your parents magical?" The girl opposite her asked, not even bothering to introduce herself. She had long black hair, bright blue eyes and a nose that pointed downwards. The girl next to her and a blonde bob and blue eyes too. "I don't recognise your name, thats all."
"No, they're not." Sabrina answers naively. She watches the girls faces contort from a neutral to full on disgust. Others around that were listening in also narrowed their eyes.
"I'm a Bulstrode, pureblooded." She boasted, a huge pridful smirk crawls onto her face. The blonde next to her sneers, practically retracting back into her own face.
"Why is there a mudblood in our house." She spit, turning her nose up at Sabrina, like she had smelt a foul stench.
Mudblood. Sabrina had never heard that word before, she thought the word for people like her was muggle or muggleborn. The disgusted tone that coated the words gave the impression that mudblood was not a term of endearment. Whispers travel up the table and they all turn to glare and leer at her. Heat travelled up the front of her chest and rolled up her neck. She hunched over, tucking her hands into her lap.
The rest of the sorting dragged on forever, every time the hall lit up with cheer. Then another was sorted into Slytherin. He was skinny and had short mousey brown hair, reflecting auburn in some lights. His name was Thaddeus Travers. When he was sorted, the table ruptured out in applause, cheers and noises of exterme happiness. He was immediately welcomed to the table, an older kid who looked like him pulled him in for a huge hug. What was wrong with having non-magical parents?  
A light clinking fills the room and everyone swivles their heads towards Headmaster Dumbledore. He was an old man; a face full of wrinkles; silvery almost white hair that flowed past his shoulders and a beard to match. Purple velvet robes cover him, with small embroidered gold stars all over. He carried a slight mischievous whimsy in his eye and he walks up to the small podium. A gold owl is carved into it, it's wings spread wide as if it was going to take flight.
"Now, a warm welcome to our new students and another for our old ones." He projected across the room. "Another year of magical education awaits you! Now a few rules." He says. "Mr Filch wants to remind you that the forbidden forest, is indeed forbidden. And no magic in the coridoors! Now!" He claps his hands together, "Tuck in."
Just as Sabrina's face was going to scrunch up in confusion, hoards of food appear on the table. Platters of roast beef, chicken, pork and lamb chops, sausages, bacon, steak, joints, pies of all varieties, boiled potatoes, roast potatoes, mashed potatoes, peas, carrots, gravy, and bread rolls. It was very... English. She plates up a small bit of everything, her eyes widen in wonder at the sheer amount of choice.
After inhaling the dinner, the plates disapeared. Only to be replaced with more filled with desserts. Peppermint humbugs, stacks of cupcakes, and regular cakes. However, no one even bothered to soclaise in her direction.
The feast came to a close and Dumbledore rose once again. "The houses respected prefects will escort the first years to the dorms.” Then, an older girl in green robes stands up, telling the first years to follow her.
The corridors were long and winding, all looking identical. The labrynth of stone walls lead to a large hub of staircases. Suddenly, one comes out of place, rumbling as it moves to another balcony. The other houses heading up the flights apon flights of stairs, Sabrina looked up expectantly, excited to see where the Slytherin common room was.
"We're down in the dungeons." She said, pointing down a large staircase. The group followed and the lower and deeper they got into the castle, the more dark it became. There was a slight damp and dingy smell as they came to a stop in front of a stone wall.
It was an ordinary stone wall. Stuck together with cement. Rough, grey stone. None of her new classmates looked confused as they all stood staring at a plain stone wall. Boring, plain, solid stone would have been there for centuries.
"The password is pureblood." At that the bricks started to grind and pull away from eachother. They fold on top of another brick, creating a makeshift arch and revealing, a set of deep oak double doors. They gilded open and the prefect led the group down the black marble stairs, shiny enough to see your reflection in it.
The common room is cool and dimly lit. There is a fountain filling the enterance with the sound of trickling water. The ceilings are ornately carved, they give off a sweet scent of damp stone. The dark wood bookcases that line the walls are home to rare books and antiques such as skulls, skeletons, crystals, and pottery. In the corner there is an emerald grand piano that is playing itself, the melody it exudes is soft but haunting. There are velvet armchairs placed around where many students are curlded up reading or competitively playing chess. Long tables are set up for study groups, illuminated by a large crystal chandiler above it.
However, what caught Sabrina's attention the most was the windows. They are round and stone lined but what layed beyond them was much more perplexing. They were underwater. Blue light from the moon cuts through the murky water. It made the entire room have a green hue.
"The girl's dorms are on the left and the boy's are on the right." The prefect said, pointing in opposite directions for each. There was a small winding staircase at each end, made of the same reflective marble as the enterence stairs. Portraits of people line the walls near the dormatories and Sabrina jumped back when one of them moved out of it's frame.
"I hope I don't have to room with the mudblood." A girl infront of her whispers and the one next to her agrees. Fiddling with her fingers, Sabrina looks for her name on her dedicated door. Her dorm was on the right side, second door down. There was a peice of yellow paper, or parchment as wizards called it, with four names written on it. Violetta Bulstrode, Melody Fawley, Sabrina Rivera, Regina Rowle.
Pushing open the door, Sabrina shuffles in awkwardly and all three girls inside abruptly stop giggling and glares fill their faces. Disappointment following quickly after. Her eyes flit aroud the room and take it all in. It was spacious and finely decorated. Next to each bed there were desks that matched the rest of the dark wood in the room. Imported rugs cover the floor and are incredibly soft on her feet as she makes her way to the bed in the corner.
The bed was four poster, adorned with green bedsheets that felt impossibly soft. Curtains are gathered at each post and tied off with bows. Sabrina grabbed her trunk and slid it under the bed, pulling out her pyjamas for the night. Climbing in, she shoves the curtains across, creating a barrier between the other girls and her. They had resumed their giggling and the occasional snide comment.
She laid there on her back, staring up at the ceiling. Millions of thoughts swirled around in her mind, eating away at her stomach. She thought back to the conversations during the sorting. If all Slytherins were evil because they didn't like muggleborns, how evil was she?
____
Meanwhile in Gryffindor tower, James was sat in his own dorm. It was warm and comfy with wooden floors that creak when it rains. Thick drapes line the windows to keep the heat in and keep out the harsh morning light. The cluttered writing desks organise themselves every time you enter the room.
"So you're glad you got Gryffindor then?" He asked the boy on the bed next to him. They had met on the train, both sharing their hopes to be placed in Gryffindor, for it being the best house.
"Yeah, I'm glad l'm not a snake." He said, a small smile on his face. "My parents are going to be so mad."
Then two more boys push open the door to their room. James' face lights up in recognition.
"Hey! We met you guys on the train too!"
"I'm Peter." One of them introduced himself. He was blond and short. His cheeks were rosy and round. Awkwardly, he stood next to the other boy he walked in with.
"You were the hatstall, right?" James asked. Peter nods sheepishly, turning his head down to the floor. "James." He added quickly afterwards, realising he has forgotten to introduce himself.
"I'm Remus." The other boy said. He was taller, with long limbs. His hair was mousey brown and floppy. And a face with small thin scars littered over it, some white and pink. He was carefully placing many, many pairs of eclectic socks into his bedside table.
"Do you have enough pairs of socks, mate?" Sirius asked sarcastically.
"Have you got enough hair on your head?" Quipped Remus. Suddenly, all four boys bursted out in loud, contagious laughter. The kind that made you roll around grabbing at your stomach, gasping for breath between laughs.
"Where are you guys from?" Peter asked, pulling out his uniform for the morning.
"Cotswolds."
"London but my family comes from France."
"Wales."
"Middlesbrough."
Their conversation lasted long into the night, the room filled with laughter. The group barely getting any sleep before their first day of classes.
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themarginalthinker · 7 months
Text
Flight Feathers
(Another drabble from a little au with @berd-alert - what if Alan Frog became an abandoned vampire fledgling in Santa Carla a few years post-canon?)
Santa Carla had changed.
In the three years since leaving it for redder pastures so to speak, the town and the infamous Boardwalk had changed. Not to any human eyes, granted. Yes, there were even more businesses popping up in the margins - holes in the walls rented out for cash-only enterprises that came, stayed a week, and then were gone - and there were the people as well. The coastline remained a destination for all sorts, either for a couple days, or for a whole summer, whiling away the sweltering, humid daytime hours into the cool, windy nights of bonfires and tired limbs.
All this was nothing different than it always had been. A new decade, 1990. The century beginning to close her eyes in her last years, soon to welcome whatever insanity would come to pass in her progeny, always new, but never unknown.
No, what had changed Santa Carla was not something that could be seen from anywhere but her underbelly.
Marko looked out over the buildings of the town in the further distance from the relative calm the wharf. He'd needed a moment away from the crowds. In just three short years, being out with the pack in the wide open planes and dense forests of Montana, Colorado, Wyoming - David's heart's home, where he'd taken the pack after Max's swansong - Marko had gotten much less accustomed to being around so many people. Even the short two-week jaunt was enough to make him crave the quiet again. How he'd managed as a new fledgling living here night after night, he had no clue.
A presence pushing up against him, in his mind. His bond. He blinks, looking away from the lights of the games and food vendors further down, and leans into Paul as his mate sidles into him. Slipping from the shadows and faint mist over the water to nuzzle close to Marko in the dark space where no human eyes were watching.
"Find anything promising?" Marko asks.
Paul sighs, nose under Marko's jaw, and he can feel the hard lines of fangs already extended under his closed lips. Hm.
"Nothing that wouldn't be really tricky," Paul said. "And…I think they were spoken for anyway."
Mmhm. Marko sighs with him, letting Paul press teeth to his throat. Some frustration behind both the gesture and in the bond, pushing, wanting something else, but working it out like gnawing a dry bone. They wanted a feed, but hunting took time, took patience. Carefully expended energy for, hopefully, a bigger net return.
But, what was that statistic? Nine out of ten hunts for predators are unsuccessful?
There were other packs in the area now. Bigger ones than just their measly two. And they were playing longer games than either Marko or Paul cared about getting involved with. Marko himself had seen them, when moseying around familiar sights, like the carousel, some odds-and-ends shops the pack had made punkish terrors of themselves in. They had locked onto Paul and Marko pretty quickly - supernatural things did, like to like, same to same.
And it wasn't just vampires in Santa Carla these days, no.
Marko couldn't quite confirm it yet, wanting to poke around a bit more, but he's pretty sure some lycan-ish folks were taking an interest in the wildlife areas outside of town, a couple of the bars were offering more than booze in the basement levels, for beings who looked human enough, but left a taste like ozone and wildflowers in the back of Marko's throat, and the 'new age' shops (whose selection of joint fillings made Paul just laugh) were doing a bit more magic than what could be found at the bottom of a stick of incense.
In any case, a pack of two like them wanted very little to do with any of the drama that came from interrupting the drawing of new lines in the sand of the beaches. Paul and Marko weren't even here to stay. Just visit.
Marko's parents weren't…old. Only in their mid-fifties.
But they'd lost their son. Disappeared into the night, without even a body to bury.
The pack was probably right. Marko was prolonging things for himself, for no real reason, but, they let him have this. Not that David or any of them would deny him, of course.
As long as he was safe, unseen, and unknown, Marko would visit his parents in the township outside of Santa Carla proper. To appease his own mind.
"Well, no use sitting around here, then," Marko says eventually, pushing Paul off him to gather up his coat and start heading for the bikes. "Maybe we can look around town. I don't think the tail-waggers at this one place would notice too much if someone didn't quite make it home."
Paul hums, following after. "The gin-joint with the weird…whatsit above the door?"
"Hex sign - dude," Marko turns, giving Paul a look and a nudge, "You're from New England, near one of the biggest populations of Amish people and witches in the world, and you don't know what a fuckin' hex sign is?"
Paul snorts, looking comicly indignant. "Different times, Marko. Way different times."
"Alright, nega-Nancy Drew."
"You know, I think that's the only reason you know what a hex sign is - which is surprising as well, because I didn't think you knew how to read."
"Fuck off!"
The banter passes like blood itself between them. In their minds, their hearts, the bond grows lighter. Joy in each others' presence. The nights might be long, but time always seemed shorter when passing it with a friend.
At one point, they may have stuck around the Boardwalk, even if it was lean season, just to make a nuisance of themselves, just to find interesting nooks and crannies to satiate their equally ravenous curiosity.
But on the way to their bikes, Marko notes the stares. Not from humans, no. From others of their kind. Lurking in little bunches on a street corner, hanging around burnfires in cans, pinning he and Paul down from a perch on a cabana rooftop that Marko himself once used to claim as his throne. They all looked human enough. But a vampire knows a vampire.
Paul and Marko walked with their heads high, however. Not engaging, not looking anyone in the eye, but not setting themselves up for anything.
This wasn't their territory anymore.
The stares stayed on them as they pulled their bikes out, launching onto the road away from the beachfront.
The throngs of beach-goers and partiers on the nighttime surf was easy pickings. Only the more experienced strayed into town.
The place Marko had mentioned was something that found itself right in the middle of a dive bar and a fish-fry. Marko noted the crucifix on the far back wall, right above the pinball machine that someone was tapping furiously away at to the onlooking audience, enthusiastically egging them on. Along the walls were road signs from past eras. To the immediate left of the door, the long bar, behind which on mounted TVs, played sports and the news. It smelled of fried food, alcohol…and woozy, distracted humans.
Paul cut the way through the place, to a little table. His warrior-blue eyes relaxed, but darting. Here, there. This man drinking deeply from a pint? Maybe. That girl laughing drunkenly almost to the point of wheezing over there? Perhaps. Paul pushed the images, the feeling of it into Marko's mind, for his thoughts.
Marko takes it in. Examines. Maybe. The man was slumped, tired, but tall and built and glaring with hard knuckles. The girl was nearly three sheets to the wind, but with someone who was laughing along, if not nearly as gone. Witness to her.
Paul sighs again, and just leads Marko back to a table.
"What's the poison?" He asks, letting Marko sit, perched on the chair.
"Mm. Screwdriver?"
Paul makes a face. "Lightweight."
Marko presses into the bond. Just them. David, Dwayne, Thorn and Mike were whole states away, and would be unable to do more than mourn if something happened.
Marko doesn't look back, but he can feel the eyes of one of the barkeeps on them.
Paul relents. "Fine. I'll keep it under twenty percent…"
"Thank you," Marko chirps.
Paul slips away to the bar to collect their vice for the evening. Marko lets his eyes roam.
There's a decent amount of people here besides the ones Paul immediately zeroed in on. A group of women, clearly celebrating something. Marko discards them. Too many, and he didn't feel up for playing pretend enough to fool girls like them tonight. A couple of people hanging around the bar, near the door, so clearly not old enough to be drinking anything fermented, let alone the stuff they were looking to try and ply the bartender for. Maybe. Hm. He gave the notion to Paul, to let him mull it over.
Then, in the far corner, a darker space in the already 'mood-lit' main room of the bar, a small gang of people. Three, to be exact. Their clothing was familiar - Marko and the pack knew the style intimately. Grungy jean jackets covered in patches over shirts just a size too big or too small, with faded logos, their shoes taped and repaired and dirty.
Punks, and as Marko lets his senses drift, eyes sharpen and nose take in the air, they were warm. Breathing. Smelling of sweat and a few days unwash, and skin.
He smiles, really pushing this to Paul. He gets a zing of excitement and relief back.
Paul slides back to the table, depositing their order - screwdriver for Marko, a rum and coke for himself.
"Finally, dude," Paul says, "Something decent to drink."
Under those hooded, lazy eyes, pupils dilate as they land on the table of waywards.
Marko can't help but smile just a little too sharply into his glass. "Well, it's been a week. Hunger is the best seasoning."
The night draws on. Marko and Paul sip their drinks, chatting a bit, and then letting their minds wander and twist idly around each other. The doors to the place are marked. Front, a side door to an outside patio space, but it was locked tonight. A backdoor, with a loading bay for product trucks.
The people in the bar diminishes as the hours do the same.
Marko keeps note of the people behind the counter. As humans filtered out, the faint...fur smell could become more apparent. The prickling under Marko's nails and in his gums was getting sharper. 
The peace kept with only the acknowledgement that nothing was to happen within these walls. 
And it wouldn't. The little group was getting up, finally, likely having seen the time and attuned to the impatient glances being thrown their way with every second that ticked past midnight. 
Marko and Paul didn't move with them. Not at first. The three filed up to the front of the bar, paying with a collection of crumpled bills and scattered piles of quarters, and then began shuffling out. 
Marko waited a minute. Two. Then he raised his arms and stretched. In their bond, Paul vibrated like a cut powerline. Easy... 
They get up. They pay. The bartenders watch them go with eyes that gleam yellow-green under the dim lights above. Lips twitching just enough, just enough to show the hint of teeth too long for human canines. 
Marko and Paul are gone before anything can come of it. The gang has emptied onto the street, beginning to walk away to some destination unknown, and unfortunately for them, never reached. There is an industrial park down the way. No streetlights, basically no traffic. Lots of holes to dump a body- 
Marko blinks. 
Something catches his nose. A scent like…blood. 
Animal blood. 
Paul is caught up as well, when Marko’s mental focus shifts so dramatically, so quickly. The gang moves further down the road - and more, and the pair risks losing them. But Marko is still rooted to the spot. Maybe it’s the hunger, a week of nothing and finally being tempted by fresh blood so close, and it is close, Marko knows it. He turns away, and moves back towards the bar, to the alleyway beside it, leading to the back lot. 
The gang of punks is gone. Passed out of sight around the corner of the road.
Paul clicks, a sound inhuman in the back of his throat, confusion and more than a bit of frustration at this point with Marko. But he follows, pure curiosity over what on Earth could have pulled Marko, Marko of all people, from a hunt. 
Marko himself is walking steadily down the alley. He passes masses of empty milkcrates, bottles, and trash. It smelled like tepid water from recent rains, mixing with dirty concrete, old garbage rotting away in the warm air…and that scent of blood. 
At the end of the alley, around a corner of a little outbuilding, is a couple dumpsters. And among those dumpsters, in the deepest shadows behind them, obscuring it, something moves. Paul is at his shoulder, gripping it, watching what he is. 
At first, Marko thinks it might be a raccoon, maybe even a dog…but it doesn’t smell like one. Then, without warning, the thing makes a quick move. Thrashing, flailing, hitting the dumpster’s broad side and shoving it with the force of the slam. From among the detritus, a couple rats scamper, squeaking as they go.  
Pale arms wheel out of the darkness, and make a luck shot. One of the rats, hooked by the fingers. They’re already speckled with blood. It’s pulled back, and the person belonging to the arms, is revealed as they stumble into the minimal light of the alley. 
Marko freezes. Paul’s hands go hard on his shoulders, and his presence in their bond like utter ice. 
A boy, no older than them, crouches on the ground. He’s medium height, his hair dark with a bit of wave, just past his ears. Longer than either of the vampires remember from. The last time. 
Alan Frog hadn’t changed much in three years. Or. Maybe he had.
The rat in Alan’s hands screams as it’s cut into by the knife the boy produces from a pocket. He tosses the knife away almost as soon as he can to not waste a drop of what comes from the animal, mouth latching on through grimy, coarse fur, and taking anything, anything it can give him. Desperate.
Everything seems to happen so fast. 
Marko feels the weight of Paul’s hands leave his shoulders as he rushes forward. In their bond, Paul’s shock has turned into something else. 
It’s frigid, it’s razor sharp, and it’s aimed with unmitigated, utter fury, right at Alan.
Vampiric body shifts in less than a blink of an eye. Limbs lengthening, claws flicking out, teeth, all of the killing ones, elongate and expose themselves in a snarl that splits the night like a crack of lightning. The boy before him doesn’t even know what’s happening, one minute sucking a fucking rat, the next, his neck is grabbed up. Crushed in the grip of a very angry, very hungry, and very, very capable vampire. 
Paul hauls the boy up like he’s a rat himself. The playacting at the Emerson’s house - that was nothing. He’d been angry, but he’d also needed to live for Marko’s sake. To pretend to die so he could come back and the pack could escape. He wasn’t playing now. 
The boy squeals under his grasp, wasting his last few breaths on this Earth. Hand scrabbling at Paul’s arms, legs kicking in the air. His mouth opens, still wet with the blood of the animal he’d caught, lips pulling back to reveal his own teeth, but they’re only a fraction sharper than a human’s. Babyteeth - hah. A cute nickname for the pack’s own fledgeling Michael, who hadn’t accepted his own fangs yet, but here, an insult. Paul shows off every single one of his, long, white, real fangs for tearing past muscle and ligament, hard arterial walls. 
Poor fucker. Just poetic fucking justice. Not so tough without your idiotic brother and your stupid fucking toys. 
Paul leans in, ready, so ready to feel Alan Frog die for what he did, to them all-
“Dont!” 
Paul stumbles as hands with their own long claws grab him, his shoulders and hair, wrenching him off the kill. The kid slides from his grasp, falling to the ground and hacking for air. 
Paul whirls around, shoving himself against Marko’s mind - who shoves right back. Like a slap in the face, cold water over the head. Marko stands, also transformed, but wide-eyed, in shock himself. 
“Marko?” Paul says. 
Hurt. Confused. 
Marko looks down at Alan. Alone. Pressed against the wall. There is a look in his eyes, a look Marko knows well, and knows the feeling behind. It’s why he was here, drinking rats. It’s why he’s not going toe-to-toe with Paul. 
“He’s new,” Marko says softly. Watching the cringing fledgeling, barely fighting back instincts to fly into the street and maim the first person he sees. 
“He almost killed you,” Paul growls, anxious and angry and burning bright. “Marko, they almost-!” 
He cuts himself off, unable to finish the sentence. 
Marko knows. He was there. He felt the pain - both his own, and Paul’s when there was that hideous moment, where the world went black and cold and silent, when he was sure he’d died for the final time. 
Marko stares down at Alan. Slowly, releasing his grasp of Paul’s arm, he moves forward. Paul watches him, and then watches Alan. Every move, every twitch the kid makes. Even slower, Marko crouches onto the concrete, his fangs good and out to show the kid that no, he’s not playing around. 
He stretches a hand towards him. 
But doesn’t withdraw. He lets Marko’s fingers light upon his forehead, trailing down his cheek to his jaw, his neck. Where the pinpricks of Paul’s arrested bite are left. 
Alan whimpers. Ever so slightly leaning into the touch of another being, cold, and familiar. 
More than hungry. 
“...You’re alone, aren’t you?” Marko asks. 
“...Yes,” Alan croaks. 
Alan Frog. An abandoned fledgeling in Santa Carla, found by the two people who have ever reason to kill him here and now, and not even drain him for it. 
Marko’s fingers shift, encircling Alan’s throat. 
“Well ain’t that a bitch, little bird” he says.
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megatraven · 5 months
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Hydra x MC Mistletoe WIP
"Are you ready to go?"
Her fingers stop their furious tapping across the keyboard as she jumps, surprised by the sudden voice.
"Uh-! N-no...? I still have all this paperwork to file and one of my cases needs to be wrapped up before I leave tonight, and-"
The longer she rambles, the more she tries to busy herself at her desk, shuffling papers together and pushing pens out of the way. Every move she makes is a nervous one, flustered by her husband's sudden appearance.
Hydra smirks- she always gets a little bit flustered when he shows up early. Or, as he liked to call it, on time, knowing that his wife would stay hours late if she had it her way. He admired that about her- her work ethic was strong enough to rival his own, but since meeting her, he learned how to have a proper work-life balance. Unfortunately, she was still struggling with that herself, her status as a field agent sometimes keeping her in the office far longer than when they first met.
On the fortunate side of things, she had Hydra to help with that. And since he started working alongside HERA, it was all the easier for him to visit her at work and push her to leave when she was supposed to.
It helped all the more when he could prepare little surprises for her, to encourage her away from her desk.
Like now.
He was waiting for her to turn around and see it- a black band wrapped around his head, with a little branch sticking out from the center of it, and dangling a tiny little snippet of mistletoe. Not a tradition he ever thought he'd partake in... but he'd seen another couple do it just days prior, and he just knew it would be something she would think cute. Not to mention the kiss it would hopefully get him.
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acacia-may · 7 months
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Hello hello Acacia~! It's good to see you posting again. I hope you're doing well and that this little ask game has been fun for you. I saw the song and headcanon post originally (and several of the asks you've answered are on my reading list for today). I was fighting with myself earlier to decide which character duo to ask for a song and headcanon for. But now I've decided: is there a song you have in mind for Tanjirou and Nezuko's sibling bond?
Hi Erika! You're so sweet as always, and it's so good to hear from you! Thank you so much for the warm welcome back and for the ask about two of my favorite siblings (and they're actually functional this time, what do you know!) 🥰 It really does feel nice to be posting again (crossing my fingers that I'll be able to stick around a bit longer this time 😅).
There are some Demon Slayer manga spoilers in my headcanon so I've put your song & headcanon below the cut. Thank you so much for playing my song + headcanon game!💖
I just about squealed when I saw this ask because I have so much love in my heart for the Kamado siblings! My favorite song for Tanjiro and Nezuko (besides the beautiful canon/in universe "Tanjiro Kamado No Uta," of course, which I'll admit has made me tear up more than a couple times while listening to it) is a song called "Footprints" by Molly Kate Kestner. It's one of my favorite sibling songs in general, and I actually found it shortly after finishing Demon Slayer so it has always made me think of Tanjiro and Nezuko and given me all the wonderful warm & fuzzies about them. 😊 I really think it just speaks to Tanjiro's role as the protective older brother, trying everything he can to take care of his younger sister and always being there for her. I could pretty much quote the whole song here (except for that one line about the siblings sometimes fighting with each other because I can't really imagine them fighting much 😅), but the lines: "Through the years I'd make mistakes so you wouldn't have to make them. I took chances every day, so you'd know when to take them" have always reminded me of Tanjiro as does the whole refrain:
You can follow my footprints But you don't have to fill my shoes It's just a path for you to follow If you so choose You can take the road less travelled Yeah, I'd probably do that too But if you're lost and feeling broken Through and through You can follow the footprints I left for you
Footprints - YouTube
And here's a soft & fluffy Tanjiro & Nezuko post-series sibling headcanon:
Tanjiro and Nezuko have always loved to cook together, and one of Tanjiro's dreams and motivations throughout the series was to one day get to cook Nezuko's favorite meal for her after she (hopefully) became human again. After the end of the series, Tanjiro can't wait to surprise his sister by cooking her favorite food for her, but Nezuko insists on helping him in the kitchen because she has missed getting to cook with him so much. Nezuko has the idea that they should make both of their favorite foods for the meal, and they spend all day together cooking, reminiscing, sharing stories, and laughing in the kitchen as they prepare dinner which they share with each other and with their friends.
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reidsaurora · 2 years
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babes are you okay?? why you have surgery? (if you're okay with me asking ofc) :(
hi, rups!!! thank you so much for checking in! i am so sorry i'm just now getting a chance to answer this, it's been a long and busy day for sure 🤣❤️
i was gonna say long story short but i feel like there's just no way to tell this story in a short version so buckle up! there will probably be a lot of reading 🤣 also i'm gonna highlight the important words just in case that will help to explain the important parts of this extremely long story 💀
so back in 2015, i got diagnosed with crohn's disease, which is basically where you can inflammation anywhere in the lining of your digestive tract, so anywhere from your mouth to your booty. mine has always been throughout different places in the digestive tract.
that being said, very soon after my crohn's diagnosis, i was diagnosed with something called hidradenitis suppurativa, which is basically just a bunch of lumps and tunnels in the skin... and they can pop up anywhere. the armpits, the sweat glands, the underboobs, the 🐱 area... yeah, anywhere. and i was blessed with the ones in ✨️the land down under✨️
so, i've had all these lumps and tunnels for over seven years. some of them have calmed down, some have popped up in new places (my armpits are now involved but that's a different story for a different day), and some of them unfortunately turned into fistulas. according to Google (just bc it's kinda hard for me to describe on my own), a fistula is basically a connection/tunnel through an organ to either another organ or the skin.
i have two fistulas, one from my 🐱 area to the rectum (i think, everything's been such a haze, i'm having trouble remembering how all this works), and then one from the skin to the ah noos (pls lmk if i need to explain this joke or if you get it 💀).
all that being said, i had to have something called a seton placed in both of these fistulas. a seton (i've been told) is sort of like a really thin rubber band that goes throughout the fistula like a tube to keep it open and draining, in hopes of drying up everything in the fistula to hopefully close it off in the future.
some setons are placed there for weeks to months. however, my surgeon has told me that because of how advanced my fistulas are (because one of them has been there for a couple years and we didn't have the money because medical expenses are awful in america), it may take longer than that for mine to heal. his hopes (yes... i had a grown man stick his fingers in my unmentionables 🥲) are that this is not the case, but he did warn me just in case that does happen.
the good news is that i've FINALLY!!! found a new gastroenterologist (the dudes that check up on the crohn's related stuff) after moving out of peds (the kiddo docs) over a year ago. i've met this doc twice and i already love him. he's so kind and so attentive and extremely smart, just an all around great doctor. anyway, he is extremely knowledgeable about my situation and fistula care and all that jazz so i have lots of hope that he will be able to help me through this, as well as my surgeon. my surgeon is also an amazing guy and is extremely good at his job as well.
now, to make a long story short. i had to have emergency surgery because fistulas are awful in the first place and mine are apparently even worse.
again, thank you so very much for checking in! if any of you guys have any other questions, feel free to send me an ask or a DM! i would love to help out as much as i can!
also! my wonderful friend @reidsbookclub (who is a medical student btw!!) has said that she could answer anyone's questions that i could not answer, if you guys have any questions about this procedure medical-wise that she might have more knowledge on. thank you so much, grecy! 💛
lastly, i would like to thank you again, rups for checking in on me! i honestly was just using this as a way to rant, i was never expecting anyone to see it on their tl or even read it because there's been a lot of lengthy, annoying posts about it at this point 🤣
so thank you for checking up and seeing if i was ok! i think i will be with time ❤️
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raj-veerapen · 2 years
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Phone Call 1 
Featuring: Raj and Xavier @xaviernottheprofessor  Time: 11:30 PM, couple days after Thomas and Celeste’s wedding Triggers: Incarceration, Mental Health Issues, Raj’s Ex-Fiancée, Raj and Xavier’s Breakup  Note: When I say this one is a roller coaster, I have to admit I did not expect the ending 
Raj: after Xavier picks up Hey...um sorry if this is a bad time.
Xavier: had take a while to pick,excited and worried about who was calling, he laughs hey! No,no. I was just lying in bed. I can't really sleep anyway. Are you alright? Everyone okay?
Raj: Yeah, I'm fine. Amaya's out with some friends and I got off about an hour ago. It's just....remember when you helped me with the insurance stuff? I had forgotten about that but my card showed up today and I was wondering if you could help me out with signing up for a plan because I have no idea what any of this even means.
Xavier: Wait. he sits up and smiles Raj, thats fantastic! I'm so happy to hear that! Of course I can help. Let me uh, let me get my laptop real quick. Anddd okay got it. I'm going on the medicaid choice site right now. Emmie's wifi is amazing so...okay first we have to see if your doctors par with the insurance so want to give me names? I can look them up.
Raj:  awkward pause I don't actually have a doctor.
Xavier: oh. Right. Right. That's why I pushed this in the first place. Have you spoken to your therapist? Maybe they can submit the claims to the insurance. I know some doctors do that out of courtesy.
Raj: Not yet, from what I could tell she doesn't take insurance, but I can ask. It'd help out a lot of she could
Xavier: okay, perfect umm well, for our county,it would be Anthem and thats a great plan. And Raj, you can get a lot of benefits actually. You should look into it when you have time. Like food stamps even housing vouchers to help pay rent. 
Raj: But there's people who need those resources more than I do, and I don't want to go through the approval process and take a spot that should be going to someone else.
Xavier: but its not like you don't need it. Yes, there are people that need it and maybe more and hopefully they're getting help. The help is out there. The bottom line is you do need it. You're not claiming anything that shouldn't be for you. You fit the criteria. And besides, fuck capitlism, right? Eat the rich. This is one way to do it...just sayinnnnn.
Raj: deep sigh I know, I'm just......one of the things that I've been talking to my therapist about is trying to figure out why my first instinct whenever someone offers help is to deny it and why I don't believe that I should be allowed to have more than just what I need to survive. And this just kind of hits both of those.
Xavier: closes the laptop Anthem. Don't forget it.  Well, its a good thing to dwell on. Look, Raj  you have spent a good amount of your life helping others. Its remarkable. If you dont do for yourself, you run the risk of no longer being around to do those things.  Think of Amaya. She adores and needs you. And I'm not guilt tripping you.  I'm just saying we all have our place in this world and if yours is to give to others always then you have to stick around longer. Can't do that on a Ramen diet and poor medical treatment.  And you have to nourish your mind too. That's why you're in therapy right? he clears his throat um, have you thought that maybe this a generational trauma type of thing? Maybe you've been conditioned to feel this way? It feels instinctual because its all you know. That may be where you need to start.
Raj: I don't think it was generational, like we didn't have a lot growing up, but there was always a sense of taking care of yourself before others, so it was a sense of volunteering and helping the community but not........this. And like this is going to sound so fucking stupid now, that was what I was trying to do back before I was arrested. My salary was to support Amaya and Saanvi, make sure that we had what we needed as a family, that we had enough to spend on the occasional treat or fun day out. It was just....................................pause that sounds a little like a realization after prison that I stopped.
Xavier: listens intently. Its the first time Raj has ever spoken about his family  its not stupid. The other stuff? It's not important.  Like these luxuries, all the nonsense. It's just...it's okay to have too. Especially if people are helping others. And it sounds like maybe what happened with Saanvi and then prison....maybe it all was just the perfect situation for all of this to get worse for you.   frowns do you feel undeserving or do you feel like you don't want to take away from someone else. I know its both but I think that first part hits harder. Like you said, before prison you at least lived within your means and did what you had to for the community. You have to figure out what happened to your mindset in that interim when you were away.
Raj: Maybe....I honestly hadn't even connected Saanvi to it much, or even my time in prison. I just don't like thinking about either of them all that much. I guess I just never really let go of the fact that when I was there, the whole you aren't really a person just gets drilled into you.
Xavier: has half a mind to get out and go to Raj.  I'm sorry that happpened to you. God, I am so sorry. You are a real person. A person that I care about and want to see get through this ...sadness that you have. sighs Do me a favor and remember this for your next session. Its so good and so important, Ba---Raj. I think that once you see this through, you won't have to think about them all that much. You can look forward to happier memories, Just fill yourself with the things and people that make you the most happy. You need to heal. You deserve to heal. Okay?
Raj: I mean, it was my fault that it happened so it just felt like the natural consequences of things. pulls out a paper and starts taking notes on their conversation I will, I'm writing it down so I'll remember. But I'm sorry that I ended up dumping all of this on you, I wasn't trying to.
Xavier: sure and that's okay but you're still a person. Prison reform is definitely something worth talking about someday. smiles oh don't worry about any of that. We're friends right?
Raj: That's honestly something that I've never worked with, I just don't think I can mentally handle doing that kind of work.........which I guess is a healthy boundary to know? So maybe that's progress? And yeah, we're friends, but I don't think this is a regular friend conversation. You just make me feel safe.
Xavier: it is very healthy so its great you recogize it.  It is progress. Pat yourself on the back. he stares at the ceiling once he's lying down maybe not but I guess that's okay. I'm happy I make you feel safe. Hearing your voice...well, it's so nice.
Raj: lays down on his air mattress which makes annoying air mattress sounds I've missed hearing your voice too. I was honestly feeling guilty about how much I've missed you because I was sure that after everything you wouldn't want anything to do with me
Xavier: laughs ehhhh well, confession time? I was close. Just bitter. I was getting to the angry phase. It wouldn't have lasted long. Just anything from you and I'd be yours. * closes his eyes* sorry sorry. I know that's bloody confusing. But you understand.
Raj: Honestly, I pulled out my phone to text you more times than I could count, but I just thought that you'd be too angry. Or we'd start a cycle of accidentally hurting each other again. But it is definitely confusing. I haven't stopped thinking about you since the wedding
Xavier: it took a lot of restraint for me to not continue texting but I thought it'd be badgering and I figured there was no use. I guess in the spirt of being confusing, I haven't either but it hurts less. I'm at peace with a lot of things now. I don't know. laughs nervously you have no clue how much I fucking adore you, do you?
Raj; I'm glad that you're at peace that I was a complete asshole because I'm not yet. smiles I think I have an idea of it, because it's probably about as much as I adore you.
Xavier: runs a hand over his face and laughs. i mean you were an asshole. smiles But i was inconsiderate. I'm sorry about all of that. The house, tuition. I don't know how to love sometimes.  takes a deep breath You don't know...if you were here. The friends line would be very blurry. swallows hard yeah, yeah source for nice dreams at least. You being here and all. chuckles And just like that I'm a hot mess.
Raj: I'm not mad about the tuition, I mean I was, but honestly I think I was just more mad I had no idea. Like Amaya had never given me any indication that she wanted to go to college, so it wasn't just the shock you paid, but the fact she'd kept that from me. And then the house on top of it............trails off and sighs I wish that I knew how to react better, but I'm working on it. But I know, so insanely blurry. Part of me wants to see you right now, but I also don't want us to do something we'd regret in the morning.
Xavier: I'm sorry. I hope she's spoken about things more now? I've talked to her about that. She's just always afraid you'll feel obligated to do something for her and she worries about you too. She's such a good kid, Raj. nods I mean, it was a lot. And a commitment and just...a lot. sighs I didnt have much growing up and I just want to give as much of myself as I can. Especially to someone I want to spend the rest of my life with. I got overly excited. Oh God, Seb was right. I'm a golden retriever. laughs you'll get there. You're already making so much progress. I can say with my whole chest that the entirety of my being wants to see you right now. And we would absolutely do things we'd kind of regret. laughs softly But you'll definitely be in my dreams. I'll take that for now.
Raj: We have, we had a really long conversation about it about a week after....it all happened. And I know, and I just wish I could have just accepted it, but at least we both understand a little bit more as to why I reacted that way because it kind of took me by surprise too. The way that it all just bubbled over. chuckles You know, with how you keep mentioning these dreams, I'm kind of curious about what exactly you're thinking is going to happen in them.
Xavier: Good. I guess it wasn't the time. I can understand the universe telling us things. pauses a bit before letting out a soft sigh  Well, we're most definitely not friends in them.
Raj: I figured that part, considering that we're definitely not friends in any of my dreams either.
Xavier: that....well, that's just unfair. laughs and takes a moment to collect himself I'll help you relax and tell you all about my dreams as long as you tell me yours.
Raj: laughs back I think that sounds like a deal
FADE TO BLACK FOR PHONE SEXY TIMES because the two of them collectively decided phone sex isn’t real and if it’s not real you can’t regret it
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lifeafterthelayoff · 10 months
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Life after the layoff: DAY 21
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This is the tractor I used on my first job. That's me in the tank top, mini-mullet, and cap standing on the back of the road grader behind the tractor. My dad is driving. You can see the mower mounted underneath. Dad built a box on the back of the tractor that would hold a push mower and a weed trimmer. Fill up the gas tanks, grab a insulated jug of water, and head out into the heat. I'd drive it down our 1/4 mile driveway and turn right, going up that hill on the gravel road a couple of miles until I reached the Wolters' place. It was a slightly shabby farm place, out of operation for years. The buildings were no longer in use, slowly succumbing to the inevitable decay that descends on all farm places in rural Iowa. A broken window here, a tin repair there. The windmill hadn't worked in years, probably decades. I mowed around it all, made it look tidy. It was a tough job. But, John Wolters, the man that lived there, paid $20 each time. And not just any $20 – I was often paid in silver certificates, dollar bills in with a date of 1934 on them. He must've saved the cash from the farm's productive years and kept it in the house, rather than a bank. I mowed the place for years, and the supply of these old yet still-legal dollars never ran out. (I was a coin collector, so I couldn't spend all of them, as they were too fascinating and cool.) I did spend some of them, often buying CDs at Walmart, the nearest place a rural kid could get music. Mom would take me there after I got home and cleaned up. I remember staring at the Jimi Hendrix "Are You Experienced" CD, that $20 of old money in my pocket, wondering if I should spend it. I did. So many details stick in my mind about this first job. How hard it was. The thrill of driving alone at age 14 on a tractor from 1946 on the dusty gravel road. The smell of an airless and furnace-hot patch of grass after cutting. The telephone poles slowly going by at 7 miles per hour, the top speed of the tractor in road gear. I've had 21 jobs since then. Now I'm looking for my next one. Hopefully it will be less dusty. But I do miss the satisfaction of pulling away from the old Wolters place, mowed up neat and tidy. And $20 in silver certificates richer.
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laele25 · 1 year
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Hello Polar Vortex 2022
A friend of mine in Northern Florida warned me it was gonna be 14 down there on Christmas.  As someone who grew up in a very cold climate (rural Nebraska), I offer some tips to help you survive your flirtation with Jack Frost.
First thing.  Run water in all your faucets. Hot and cold.  The entire time.  It doesn’t have to be a lot, just a dribble, but it will help keep your likely uninsulated pipes from freezing and breaking. 
Try to seal up any cracks around your windows and doors.  A rolled up towel makes a great draft dodger for the bottom of doors. Stuffing old rags in cracks around your windows will help keep out drafts. Even something as thin as an old tee shirt ripped up will do.
If all you have is a space heater, try to move everybody (especially elderly and young children and pets who don’t have thick fur) to that room.  Close the doors to the area and seal out the drafts.  Wear layers of clothing, you can always take off extra clothing as it warms up. 
Drink warm drinks and eat hot, comforting foods.   So basically, the opposite of what you’re used to.  Hot tea is amazing for surviving cold weather.  Since it’s Christmas, break out the hot cocoa.
When you go outside, the cold air will hurt.  It will sting like you just plunged your face into a tub of ice water.  You will be momentarily blinded and probably start coughing when the cold air hits your windpipe.  Once again, layers are your friend.  Do not stay out in those temperatures any longer than you have to.
Before the polar bears from Wisconsin chime in, people in warm weather climates do not have your tolerance for the cold.  And once you move to a new climate, you change fast.  First winter here in Seattle, the two days of slushy snow didn’t bother me.  By the fifth year?  I’d lost all my cold tolerance.  Folks who aren’t used to cold don’t need to be out in the cold.
If you’re also dealing ice and snow, a few tips.  A bag of clay kitty litter can save your life.  Spinkle it on your exterior steps and walkways to keep them clear.   Put it in your trunk to help keep your back wheels on the road and it can also be used to melt snow and ice if you get stuck.  Drive slowly and try to stick for clear areas.  Look out for black ice on roads and sidewalks.  It looks like dark concrete and it is slippery AF.  Take small steps and honestly, if your footwear is waterproof, if you have a choice between a couple of inches of snow and a slippery sidewalk, choose the snow.  Try to keep your feet dry, though.  Frostbite happens faster than you think, so if you don’t have gloves, keep your hands in your pockets as much as you can.  Hats are mandatory when it’s cold, they keep heat from escaping your head.  Even a ballcap is better than nothing.
Hopefully, y’all’s power and lights stay on.  I’ll be thinking about you and if anybody has anything to add, reply or reblog it because 14 degrees in Florida means everybody else is getting blasted too. 
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