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stargazer-sims · 1 year

Text

Journal Entry #50

previously - Journal Entry #49 (part four)

Victor

It's Tuesday again.

I keep doing this, recording entries on Tuesdays. Unlike last Tuesday, nothing much happened today, but that's not to say I don't have news. Even if today wasn’t eventful, the weekend was.

I finally heard from Seiji. It took him until Sunday to reply to the multiple texts I'd sent him on Friday, but better late than never, as they say. What's going on with him will require some explaining, so let me come back to it, 'cause I'm sure you want to know how Yuri and I are doing too, right?

Right. Here comes the health update. There’s some good news and some not so good news.

Good news first; I'm feeling a lot better. It's like my body decided to kick itself into high gear and get some serious healing done since Friday. I’m still getting headaches, but they’re not nearly as intense as they were before, and the blurriness is completely gone from my vision now, which is super encouraging. Today, I didn't take any pain medication for my arms and rib, not even ibuprofen.

In hindsight, I think I probably should've had a little something in the afternoon, because my rib was hurting by the time I got back from spending several hours at the hospital with Yuri. The chairs in there aren’t particularly comfortable and it’s hard for me to sit for long periods of time. But, you know me. I was trying to be a tough guy about it.

My biggest problem right now isn't pain. It's that I'm restless and nearly bored out of my mind. I'm still not cleared for exercise, but I keep trying to sneak in some shoulder stretches and a bunch of leg work whenever I can. Normally, I'd be training, going to work, cooking and cleaning, and taking care of Yuri, but I can't do any of that at the moment and a guy can only take so much inactivity. I'm going kinda crazy with nothing to do.

As for Yuri, his progress hasn't been quite as good as mine. He's slowly getting better, but he's still in the hospital. It's been a whole week as of today, and I don't think he'll be getting out for at least another week.

He hasn't reached the stage where he's bored yet, probably because he's really weak and he's still sleeping a lot, but at least he's able to get out of bed on his own now. He was even up and walking for a few minutes this afternoon. I coaxed him to drink some water afterwards, which probably looked hilarious because I was holding the cup for him and I had to hold it between both hands while he sipped through a straw.

He's still not eating, unfortunately, so they're still giving him intravenous nutrition infusions. I'm sure he's capable of eating independently, but I think he's scared, and nothing anyone's said so far has been enough to motivate him to try.

Dr. Kasongo has already brought up the subject of tube feeding at home, but only with me because neither of us feel Yuri is ready for that conversation yet. Obviously, tube feeding will be an option of last resort, and we really don't want to frighten or upset him any more.

I’ll be honest, the idea upsets me too, not just because I hate the thought of how debilitating it’d be for Yuri, but also because I don’t think I grasped exactly how sick he is until I had that conversation with his doctor. Like, I’ve always understood that his illness is serious and chronic, but I don’t think I fully comprehended the magnitude of it, if that makes sense.

Dr. Kasongo is hopeful that we won’t have to go the tube feeding route, in any case. She’s certain Yuri will settle enough to start a liquid diet by mouth in another day or two, but I'm not sure it'll happen as soon as she imagines it will. Not without some kind of intervention, at least.

The nutritionist came to see him while I was there today, and he had a complete meltdown in front of her. It was pretty clear that he did not want to hear anything about the food plan she was suggesting for him once he's released from the hospital, and his solution was to dissolve into tears and ask her to leave. I think I've seen him cry more in the past week than in the entire duration of our relationship. Yuri hardly ever cries. He rarely shows any emotions really strongly for that matter, regardless of how he's feeling inside, and it's difficult to see him in such a vulnerable state.

The nutritionist told me she's going to ask the doctor to make a referral to a psychologist for him. I already know he's not going to like that, and I’m predicting he'll cause a scene over it, but I do think it's a good idea for him to speak to someone.

That having been said, I can also empathize with his reluctance. At first, I didn't want to talk to the psychologist Dr. Sato referred me to either, but now I actually kinda like him. The initial referral was supposed to have been to talk about the emotional effects of my accident, but I told him I can get over that by myself, so we discuss other stuff instead. I've talked to him about the death of my dad and sister, the stress of being the main caregiver for somebody with a chronic illness, and the challenges of being an immigrant.

He says I'm psychologically healthy and that I don't need long-term therapy. I agree one hundred percent, but having someone objective to confess all my doubts and insecurities to has really helped me feel a lot better mentally. I'm happy to have that support, to go along with the support I'm getting for my physical recovery.

We'll see how it goes with Yuri and his psychologist. I'm envisioning hysterical outbursts, but I'm sure one of us will let you know what happens for sure.

Okay, I guess now it’s time to tell you about Seiji and what happened on Sunday afternoon.

I'd been with Yuri for the morning on Sunday. Mom and Julian picked me up around noon, just after Yuri's grandmother arrived to visit with him. She had Yuki with her as well, so it was probably a good thing I was leaving. According to Yuri, the energy of me and Yuki together in a room can sometimes be a bit overwhelming for other people. The last thing he needed was to deal with that.

Anyway, Mom, Julian and I had lunch at my favourite sushi bar, which was kind of chaotic because neither of them knows how to use chopsticks and even though I'm a chopstick wizard, I can't use them right now either. We all ate with our fingers, which earned us a lot of disapproving stares. I think people were mostly staring at me because I was picking up pieces of maki with the fingertips of both hands together, but I didn't care.

Back at home, stuffed to the brim with salmon, eel, rice and vegetables, I was ready for a nap on the couch and was not at all expecting my phone to ring. When it did, I was startled out of my drowsy stupor, and nearly fell off the sofa. Then, I recognized Seiji's number on the caller ID and all thoughts of napping suddenly dissipated like mist.

I tapped the 'answer' icon on my phone's screen, and didn't even bother with hello.

"Hinamori-san! Where the hell have you been?" I demanded. "Sakura and I have been trying to reach you for days, you know."

"We're not on a first-name basis now, Nelson-san?" was his testy response.

"Really, Seiji? You ghost me for days, and you're annoyed with me?"

"Sorry.”

"Yeah, you should be."

"I wasn't ready to talk," he said. "I went out to the country, to my grandparents' estate, 'cause I just needed to get away for a while."

"What for?" I asked. "And why didn't you tell Masao you were going? Why didn't you tell Takahiro and Fox? Like, how do you leave town without even telling your best friend and his boyfriend?"

"I headed out when Taka was at work," Seiji confessed. "I left him a note."

"You... No, you know what? Never mind," I said. "Why did you need to get away. Did something happen?"

"Did something happen?" he repeated, his tone incredulous. "Dude, are you kidding me right now? How are you even asking that? Like, what do you think happened?"

"I... don't know." I said, perplexed.

"You're so stupid, Victor.” He sounded as though he meant it.

I did my best to force down the familiar sting of humiliation at hearing that. Kids at school used to call me stupid, and it’d always made me feel horrible. My inner child wanted to cover his ears and hide under the nearest desk so he could cry without drawing even more ridicule.

But then, a little voice in my brain that sounded very much like Sayuri Ishida's seemed to whisper, that's not true.

It really isn't true, and I need to keep reminding myself of it. Dr. Ishida had put that monster from my past to rest, once and for all, and I used her words like a shield in my mind. You have an eye condition called hyperopia. Your ability to read is normal. Your intelligence is above average.

“I’m not stupid,” I said, as calmly as I could manage. It was mostly for my own benefit, but still, I wasn’t interested In letting Seiji’s dig at me go so easily.

Seiji made a dismissive snorting noise. “Whatever. Must be the head injury, then.”

I pulled in a deep breath. "Seiji, listen. I really don’t know what you’re talking about. Can you please tell me what's going on? Me and Sakura and Masao have been worried about you.”

“Masao should know,” he said.

“Maybe, but Sakura and I don’t.”

Several seconds passed before Seiji finally spoke again. “Fine. I guess I owe you some kind of explanation. Can you… are you like, okay to go out? I don’t want to talk about it on the phone, but Taka said you’re in a wheelchair and…uh, you know…”

“I’m not in a wheelchair,” I said. “I had to use one for like, maybe three days after I got out of the hospital. That’s all.”

“So, you can go out?”

“Yeah, but you’ll have to come and get me if you want me to go somewhere with you. I’m not cleared to drive yet.”

"When's a good time?"

"Now? I'm not doing much, so whenever works for you, works for me."

"Okay," he said. "If you literally meant now, I can be there to pick you up in like, twenty minutes."

"That sounds good," I agreed. "That gives me plenty of time to grab some water and throw on a sweater."

You're at home, right?"

"I'm at home. See you when you get here."

He showed up about twenty-five minutes later, looking like he'd spent the week in a tent rather than living in luxury at his grandparents' sprawling country estate. His hair was a mess, there were dark smudges beneath his eyes, and he was moving like he was the one who was injured. He looked like he hadn't gotten more than a few hours sleep in the last several days.

"You look worse than I do," I commented, once we'd exchanged greetings.

"You look... surprisingly good," he remarked. He sort of nodded at my arms, where the bottom of my casts were peeking out past the ends of my slightly too-long sleeves. "You know, except for that."

"I'll be rid of these in a few more weeks."

"And then what? Back to the mountain?"

"Naturally," I said.

I couldn't interpret the expression that passed across his features. It didn't last long, but I hadn't missed it, and it could've been anything from disbelief to worry to disapproval. It could've been some combination of all three.

"Let's get going," he said, and although neither of us verbally acknowledged it, we both blatantly pretended the previous few seconds hadn't happened.

The car ride was weird. Normally, Seiji and I would be joking and laughing, listening to music a bit too loud, and talking about our favourite subjects. This time, we were silent, and the only sound in the car was Snowflake by Arashi, playing quietly on repeat.

Where we eventually ended up was in the valley, in Hanamigawa Park. The last time I'd been there was on Yuri's birthday, back in September. The park had been vibrant with colour then. Now, it was brown and grey and dismal, the last vestiges of winter not quite having given way to the tenuous first signs of spring.

We got out of the car, and I followed Seiji across the grass until we came to a bench.

"So...?" I prompted, after it felt like we'd sat there for at least five minutes, staring at our shoes.

"So, what?"

"About that explanation you owe me."

"Yeah." He scuffed the toe of his boot on the ground. "I've been thinking."

"About what?"

"I'm going to move to the city. Try to get a grown-up job. Maybe go back to college or something."

"What are you talking about?" I said. "Your job with the Recreation Association is a grown-up job. There's a lot of responsibility in teaching people how to ski and snowboard."

"It's not the kind of responsibility I want any more, if I ever did."

"What?"

"I quit," he said.

"You quit your job?"

"I quit everything."

At that, an awkward silence stretched between us for several seconds because I had no idea how to respond. I wasn't sure what he meant by 'everything'. I thought I could guess, but I didn't want to assume.

When the lull was starting to feel too long, I finally ventured, "Define 'everything'."

"Everything," he repeated. "I quit my job, I told Taka I'm moving out, and I'm hanging up my board. Masao already knows, so don't bother to ask if I've told him."

"You're not going to compete any more?"

"I'm not going to snowboard any more."

I stared at him. "Why?"

As if it were too difficult to hold my gaze, he looked away from me and began to fidget with his hands. "I can't do it any more," he said.

"But... why?"

"You know how people say the mountain is magical? That there's a guardian spirit?"

"Yeah."

"It's just a story," he said. "The mountain is nothing but a cold, dead rock, and it'll take everything from you with no regrets. With no feelings at all. I named my snowboard because, for some dumb reason, I let myself think it had some kind of spirit inside too, but you know what? It's just another lifeless object."

I had to admit that what he said was correct. From a purely factual standpoint, the mountain is rock and snow, and snowboards are just Fiberglas and wood or carbon, but I have to admit I like the idea of there being something more to them than that. I love the stories of the mountain spirit Yukimatsu and his beautiful sword Shirayuki, and I believe that Elsa is more than a piece of sports equipment. When Elsa and I are flying down the mountainside, I definitely feel something from her, and sometimes I imagine I can hear her singing.

"I thought you loved snowboarding," I said.

“Maybe I used to. Or maybe I still do, but it's like a toxic relationship that you can't seem to leave until it's almost too late. Like, you can't make yourself get out of it until it steals every last bit of hope and happiness you ever had."

"I don't understand," I said, because I really didn't.

"Do you know, I think I might've accidentally hurt Masao, trying to get to you when I saw you go down?" he said. "You know how tiny he is, and he was trying to hold me back."

"I didn't know," I said.

"If it wasn't for Fox, I probably would've..." He didn't complete the thought, but instead continued with. "Takahiro said I was literally screaming. The thing is, though, I don't remember. I don't remember Masao grabbing me, or me knocking him to the ground or... anything. All I could think was, you could be dying and the people you care about most wouldn't even be beside you."

"Obviously I didn't die."

"Yeah, but how were any of us supposed to know that at the time? You didn't see it the way we saw it. Masao said it looked like you could've broken your neck, and I... I couldn't handle losing somebody else like that."

It took a second for my brain to register what he'd just said. Somebody else. Had he seen another snowboarder go down like I had? Someone who hadn't been as lucky as me?

"Who...?" I began, but quickly closed my mouth because something told me I shouldn't pry.

But, it was too late to worry about it when Seiji started to answer anyway. "Didn't Yuri ever tell you about Tsubaki?"

I tried to recall if Yuri had ever mentioned anyone by that name. "I don't think so. Who is she?"

"I thought he told you everything," Seiji said.

"Apparently not."

"Tsubaki was our..." he trailed off, and then amended. "She was the woman I loved."

"Oh."

"She was our teacher in our final year of high school," he went on. "Me, Taka and Yuri were in the same class, so we all knew her. She wasn't that much older than us and most of the boys in our year had a crush on her, but for whatever reason, she liked me and Taka best. Maybe 'cause she was into snowboarding like we were."

"You went snowboarding with your teacher?"

"Not while she was our teacher," he said. "But, we all talked about it all the time, and we'd see her up on the mountain on the weekends."

I'd seen one of my high school teachers skiing on Granite Mountain once. It had felt strange and out of context to me, and I'd tried to pretend I hadn't even noticed him. But, regardless of my effort to ignore him, the rare sighting of my chemistry teacher outside his natural habitat had been enough to distract me, and it resulted in me getting yelled at by my coach at the time.

I'm sure I succeeded in forgetting about it almost immediately afterward, and I’d never even dreamed of bringing it up with him at school. I couldn’t help but winder what it would've been like to have a teacher like Tsubaki, who I could've geeked out about snowboarding with.

"Seems like she would've been a cool person to know."

"She was amazing," he said. "When we graduated, she said we could call her by her given name, and we became friends. We all used to hang out, me Taka, Yuri, Tsubaki and her best friend Mei. We went snowboarding together then, and we did other stuff like going on road trips or going to someone's place for a meal and to play games or watch movies. Or just talk. Tsubaki and I talked a lot."

"What happened?" I asked.

"With me and her?" he said. "She always told me that she didn't want to have a relationship with me, but towards the end, I felt like things were changing between us. She was starting to treat me less like a friend and more like... well, not a boyfriend exactly, but something deeper than snow buddies, you know?" He sighed. "Then everything... ended."

"I'm sorry," I said.

"Yuri really never told you about any of this? He never told you about Tsubaki's accident? How she..." He paused, closing his eyes. "How the mountain took her from me."

It was at that point when I realized Yuri actually had told me. I hadn't made the connection immediately because he hadn't gone into detail and hadn't used Tsubaki's name, and I hadn't wanted to press him for information. "He mentioned he had a friend who died in a snowboarding accident," I said. "We didn't talk much about it."

That figures. Yuri wasn't that close to her anyway." He gave a little shrug. "Yuri doesn't know how to be close to people.”

“That’s not true.”

“Isn’t it?”

“Are you saying he’s not close to you?” I asked.

“Dude, from where I’m standing, he’s not even all that close to you,” he said. “I mean, where the hell was he when you needed him? At work, and even when all of us were at the hospital with you and we were trying to call him, he ignored us. You know how many times Taka tried to reach him?”

“He was probably in a meeting,” I said.

“Why wasn’t he on the mountain with you? That’s where he should’ve been.”

"His job is important, Seiji. Besides, what happened probably would've happened anyway, even if he had been there.”

"That's not the point," Seiji said. "The point is, he doesn't care about anybody but himself. Why was it you and Sakura who were checking on me? He's supposed to be my friend."

"Sakura and I are your friends too," I reminded him. "Yuri couldn't check on you. He's been in the hospital since Tuesday."

"So what? He's too sick to send a text?"

"Yeah, as a matter of fact, he was." I met his gaze. "Are you seriously mad at Yuri because he didn't text you for a week?"

“I’m mad at him because he’s an asshole. Because he got someone he doesn’t appreciate or even deserve.”

“So, you’re not actually mad at him. You’re jealous.”

“Whatever,” he said. “I know you love him, but wouldn't it be better to love somebody who gives a shit about you? If you'd died out there, he would've just carried on with life as normal."

"No, he wouldn't," I said. "You obviously don't know him as well as you think you do, if that's what you believe."

"I know him well enough," he said. "I've never seen him shed a tear over anything or anyone. But you? You treat everybody like they matter, and you deserve at least that much in return."

"Everyone deserves to be treated like they matter because everyone does matter," I said. "Where are you even going with this?"

"You didn't have to come halfway around the world for Yuri. You could've stayed safe at home and had anyone you wanted.”

“I want Yuri,” I said simply.

"I don't know why. He's a crappy partner."

“Yuri loves me just as much as I love him, and he treats me like I matter," I said. "Maybe you’re convinced he’s a crappy partner because he wasn’t where you thought he should be, but that’s not how it works. We don’t get to script real life to our tastes. It just happens, and sometimes it sucks, and then we gotta figure out how to deal with it.”

“You think I don’t know that?"

"Do you?"

"My life has sucked for the last three and a half years," he declared. "Worse than yours, probably.”

“My life doesn't suck," I said. "There are parts of it that suck. Like, everything's not always easy or fun, but overall it's good, and I'm happy."

"Then, you're delusional." He got up abruptly and started to walk away. "This was a waste of time."

Stunned by the suddenness of his decision to leave, I stared at his retreating figure for several seconds. When I pulled my wits back into place at last, I had to run — contrary to doctor’s orders — to catch up to him.

"Seiji, wait!" I called. "We're not done."

He glared at me. “Yes, we are.”

"You said you were going to give me an explanation."

"I did. It's not my fault that you're too dumb to figure it out."

That was the precise moment in which I lost my temper. I think that if I could've grabbed him and shook him, I would have, but maybe it was a good thing I couldn't.

"I'm not dumb!" I yelled. "I'm sick and tired of everyone saying I'm stupid! I'm probably smarter than you, but I'm not a damn mind reader, so if you want me to understand something, then explain it in a way that makes sense!"

"Fine!" he said. "You want it in language your brain can handle? Here it is. I'm done pretending I'm okay. I don't want to be in this place, hanging around with people who remind me how useless I am and how much I've lost. I don't want to be on that damn mountain every day, thinking of her."

“But—”

"I can't keep running the risk of putting my parents through what her parents had to go through. What I had to go through. It's not worth it. I'd rather have nothing myself than to leave my family with nothing."

"But, there's lots of other stuff—" I began.

“There isn't," he said. "Snowboarding was the only thing I was good at. I’ve failed at everything else. Like, I was rubbish in school, and I was useless as a medic. I couldn’t even…”

“What?”

“There was only snowboarding, but you know what? Snowboarding fucking wrecked my life, Victor! There's no part that it didn't touch, and I can't fix anything now. All I can do now is protect the people I love, and try to forget it."

By the time he was done with this speech, he was crying. Evidently not wanting me to see that, he wiped his sleeve across his eyes so fiercely that I'm sure it must've hurt.

"Seiji—"

"Leave me alone," he said.

“You’ll never forget, you know.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You can go to the city if you want,” I said. “You can go to the other side of the world or a whole other planet, but you're never gonna outrun grief or anger or whatever. You might think you feel better for a while but there's really no place far enough away to escape from it."

"What the hell would you know about it?"

"You might be surprised by what I know about it," I told him. "But I'm not gonna give you a lecture. If you’re not ready, you wouldn't listen anyway.”

"I doubt you know about it like I do," he said.

"Maybe not exactly in the same way you do," I conceded. "But, you know what? I get what it's like when somebody who was the center of your world suddenly isn't there any more."

There was a lot more I could've said. I wanted to tell him I know what it feels like to think about someone every single day and picture how the future might've been different if they were still around. I often wonder about all the stuff Dad and Caroline and I might've said to each other, and all the ways I could've been a better person when they were alive, and how they'll never know what i learned because of them, and who I became because of them.

Tears were still leaking from Seiji's eyes, but he wasn't trying to hide them any more. As I watched, he stood there with his head bowed and whispered, "I couldn't save her. No one could."

"Do you want to tell me about it?"

He shook his head, but regardless of that, he started telling me anyway. "It was just a normal Saturday," he said. "I was working with Mountain Patrol, and my team got the call about an accident up on the expert run. I didn't know it was her until we got there. The advanced care paramedic on our team took one look at her and somehow he knew right away that her neck was broken. It was really bad."

"That had to have been a shock."

"They took her in a helicopter down to the hospital in the valley." He went on as if I hadn't spoken. "You know, to assess her and try to stabilize her. They might've rushed her to one of the big hospitals in Kyoto afterwards, but... there wasn't time. Her parents were in Tokyo, and there wasn't time for them to get here, either. Me and Taka were the only ones with her, and I don't know if she was aware of us being there, but I was holding her hand when she passed."

"I'm sorry," I said.

I thought about my mom. I hadn't found out until many years later that she'd been with my dad in the hospital when he passed and had been able to say goodbye to him one last time. Caroline had been killed almost instantly, so Mom didn't get that final goodbye with her, and I can't decide if that was a blessing or not.

I mean, I can't wrap my head around how terrifying and soul-shattering it'd be to hold your baby as she took her last breath. Watching your partner die would be devastating enough, but losing a child...? And my mom had to suffer through both. The pain she felt must've been immeasurable, making even mine seem minor in comparison.

I don't know how she handled it. I don't know how she survived it. I think if something happened to take Yuri away from me, I'd die too, of a broken heart. Or maybe I wouldn't literally die, but I'd wish to stop existing if he wasn't by my side.

I had to resist the urge to hug Seiji as he stood there crying. His whole body was visibly rigid, and I knew he wouldn't want me to touch him. Takahiro probably would have if he were there, but Taka the compulsive hugger could get away with it and Seiji might even relax enough to reciprocate. In fact, Taka is the only person I've ever seen give Seiji a hug that didn't look unnatural or uncomfortable. Had Seiji always been that way, or had his trauma caused him to change?

He swiped at his eyes with the back of his hand. "Sorry," he mumbled. "I shouldn't have told you all that."

"It's okay. You must've needed to say it."

"Maybe. It was just... that thing you said. About somebody being the center of your world? She was, you know. She would've been, for the rest of our lives. I would've taken care of her, and I think we would've been happy, but... None of that's gonna happen now."

"Have you ever talked about this with anybody before?" I asked.

"Only Taka," he said. "He's the only one who understands. Everybody else thinks it's ridiculous 'cause we weren't even in a relationship."

"A friendship is a relationship. So what if you weren't her boyfriend? That doesn't mean it should hurt less."

"You don't think I'm like, being dramatic or whatever?"

"Why should I think that?" I said. "I don't have the right to tell you how you're supposed to feel or what your grief is supposed to look like, do I? Maybe you're like Yuri and you hardly ever cry for anything, no matter how destroyed you feel, or maybe you're like me and you cry over every little thing, or maybe you're somewhere in between. It doesn't matter. It's all valid."

"Thank you."

"You don't need to thank me for letting you feel however you feel."

"Yeah, I do. Most people would judge me for it."

"I'm not into judging other people for their feelings," I said. "I've got plenty of my own that I'm busy judging myself for."

"You shouldn't. Like, if you can tell me my feelings are okay, you can tell yourself that."

I offered him what was probably a lopsided smile. "I'm working on it. My psychologist says I have to stop creating burdens for myself."

"You're seeing a therapist?"

"Yeah. Unbelievable, right? My doctor referred me to him after my accident, but we've been talking about everything. He's helping me get perspective."

"Perspective," Seiji repeated, as if he were contemplating it.

"You know," I said. "Like how some stuff in your life seems so big and overwhelming, you don't know how you're supposed to deal with it? Sometimes you have to break the situation down and manage it bit by bit."

"Like learning a trick," he said.

"Exactly. Remember when you first learned to ride? There were probably lots of people around you doing all kinds of crazy tricks, and you couldn't even do an ollie yet. Now, you're the one who's flying, but you had to build up to it, one skill at a time."

"So, how am I supposed to do it?"

"I don't know," I admitted. "Maybe start off with figuring out what's really going on in your head. Like, are you sad or angry or scared, or what? And then... I don't know. Ask yourself exactly why. Like, if you're angry at a specific person, or you're scared about a certain thing."

He nodded. "I guess that makes sense. But... do you think I need professional help for that?"

"Maybe? I'm probably the last person you should ask about that. I didn't even know I needed professional help until I was getting it."

"But, it's working, right?"

"Yeah, but it's not magic. You have to want to get your shit together before you can get your shit together, and you have to work at it."

"Good to know."

"Listen," I said. "Everything's gonna be okay. It may take a while, and it might not look exactly how you wanted it to, but it eventually does get better."

"Thanks."

This time, I could feel my smile in my entire face. "You're welcome, but give credit to Yuri, too. He taught me that."

"Yuri taught you optimism?"

"He taught me about resilience," I said. “That’s better than optimism.”

“How so?”

"’Cause it’s realistic. And it’s honest.”

“I see how optimism can be unrealistic.”

“Resilience is sort of like body armour,” I said. “Having it on doesn't mean nothing ever hurts you. Sometimes it hurts like hell, but you get through it and you survive, and eventually the pain isn’t so bad any more. Yuri's constantly showing me that, whether he realizes he is or not."

"Okay," was all he said in response.

He started walking again, in the direction of the park gates. I fell into step beside him, and the quiet between us this time didn't feel quite so fraught.

When we reached the place where we'd left his car, I asked, "What are you going to do now?"

"Take you home, I guess," he said.

"I meant in general."

"Oh." He shrugged. "I don't know. I'm going to Kyoto tomorrow. I've got a couple of appointments to view apartments. Do you want to come?"

"So, you're definitely moving?"

"I guess so."

"What kind of job do you think you'll get when you move there?"

"Does it matter?"

"Not really," I said. "I was just curious."

"I'll probably end up in a convenience store," he said. "But, I was training to be a paramedic before, so I might be okay at taking care of sick people at home or something. And I like kids, so maybe I'd do all right working in a daycare. Or tailoring. I learned how to draft patterns and sew from my mother, so I could probably do that."

"I didn't realize you were training to be a paramedic. When you said 'medic' before, I thought you meant you had the certified mountain rescue course. The advanced first aid one."

"I do have that certification," he said. "But, I was in college for paramedicine. After she... after Tsubaki died, I dropped out because couldn't handle it any more."

"How far did you get?"

"Not very far. I finished the first in-class module, and Mountain Patrol was my first part-time clinical placement. That was it." He made a face that might've been self-disgust. "Useless, right?"

"Not necessarily," I said.

"What?"

An idea was starting to form in my head, but I didn't want to say too much to Seiji until I'd had a chance to talk to Yuri about it first. "You think you could drop me off at the hospital instead of at my house?"

"I'll drop you off anywhere you want," he said. "But, what'd you mean?"

"About you quitting college?"

"Yeah."

"There might be more options for you than snowboarding or working in some dodgy convenience store in the city."

"Right."

"I'll come with you to Kyoto tomorrow," I said.

He frowned at me. "You've got some kind of ulterior motive, don't you?"

"Maybe."

"You're trying to convince me not to move."

"No, I'm not trying to do that. If you want to check out the opportunities in Kyoto, there's no reason not to. All I'm saying is that you might want to go there with something better in mind than working at a convenience store. Like, if you're serious about home care or child care, maybe try it out and see if you like it before you take off to the city and commit yourself to a lease and everything."

"You think I should do that in Mt. Komorebi?"

"Think of it as a safety net," I said. "Stay home for a bit longer, try some different stuff and find out what you really want. Then go off and chase your dream, whatever it is."

"What if I really don't want to stay here?" he said.

"Nobody can force you to stay. All I'm saying is, before you leave, make sure you're deciding and not just reacting."

"Okay," he said. "But I still feel like you're up to something."

"I'll tell you about it tomorrow," I said.

"I'm not going along with it, whatever it is."

"You don't have to go along with it, but you should at least wait to hear what it is."

He drew back his arm as if he were going to punch me, but only flicked my shoulder instead. "You're a massive pain in the ass, you know."

"Yeah," I said. "I hear that a lot, but for some reason, people love me anyway."

"I hate you," he growled, but I knew he wasn't being serious. "Get in the car, Nelson. Wouldn't want to keep you from your pain in the ass other half."

"You didn't really mean what you said about him before, did you?"

If I was expecting an apology or a retraction, I would've been disappointed.

“Some of it,” Seiji said. “He is an asshole, and you seriously could've done better, but if you're happy..." He raised his hands in a gesture that seemed to indicate there was no further comment he could offer. "Anyway, you can tell him I'll come by and see him in a day or two. I'll make Taka and Fox come too, if they haven't been there yet, and I'll bring daifuku mochi. The strawberry kind."

"He's not eating," I said.

"Since when has Yuri ever said no to strawberry mochi? Me and Taka have literally seen him too weak to sit up, and he’d still be lying there demanding a little bite of our strawberry mochi. It's his all-time favourite. That, and tinned peaches, but they're probably already on the lunch menu at the hospital."

"How do you—"

"Just tell him," Seiji said, "And tell him I'll even feed him if he needs me to. Oh, and also tell him to expect a huge piece of my mind for what he did to you. He had no business abandoning you like that, and he definitely has no business taking you for granted. Actually, having somebody as devoted to his pathetic little ass as you are, he should consider himself the luckiest person in the universe."

I didn't show it on the outside, but inwardly, I was both relieved and amused. It might not be an apology, but I figured this was as close as Seiji would get to saying he still considers Yuri his friend.

Even if I hadn't liked hearing what he'd said about my husband, I couldn't blame Seiji for being upset. From Seiji's point of view, maybe Yuri's behaviour after my accident had looked horrible and uncaring, but Seiji hadn't seen him in my room with me immediately after. He hadn't heard the pain and guilt in Yuri's voice when he told me over and over that he was sorry, and he hadn't seen how hard Yuri worked to help me at home when he really should've been resting himself.

"I'll tell him," I said. "I think he'll be glad to see you."

"Yeah, whatever." He opened the passenger door for me, and I climbed into the car. A moment later, he slid into the driver's seat. "I'm leaving for Kyoto at eight in the morning. You'd better be up and dressed when I get to your place."

"Don't worry," I assured him. "I'll be ready."

((More about Seiji & Tsubaki from a different perspective, for anyone curious))

#ts4 #sims 4 #eagames #snowy escape #victorsworldadventures #victor nelson #seiji hinamori #tw death #dw accident #tw illness #tw chronic illness #tw hospital #tw trauma #tw therapy #stargazersims

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thefamilyeldritchabomination · 5 months

Text

Chapter Twenty: Sonne Pt. 5

“Dolly will be alright, she’s just zapped herself of energy and will need some time to replenish before Dolly is operational once more. Now, I will tell you right now that your weird leech like hermit crab is the least of your worries, right now, you and Dolly are still at the same location as before. Do you want to see what the current scenario looks like or would you rather have me explain why you’re actually here?” Survive grabbed a little tea cake to munch on while she waited on what Envy’s decision would be.

“I want to see what’s going on right now…I don’t think I can focus if I don’t know what’s going on.” Envy finally admitted to themself that they indeed had problems with focusing on things.

“Then I will fire up the scrying bowl then to view what’s happening at the moment, you may even get an idea why I’ve dragged you into my little domain.” Survive casually returned to the scrying bowl as she finished a tea cake, running a claw along the rim of the bowl, the waters flickering to life with the current scene playing out.

=======================================================================

It had been two hours since the explosive event happened as Lust sat by the table, keeping Gluttony close by since Greed was running late with his food. Because of how much of a death grip Envy had with Dolly, they couldn’t really separate the two at all and were left on the floor of the cabin for the time being until one of the two woke up. Ernest and Dorian had set up a little blanket fort of sorts close to Dolly, feasting on snack foods while they waited for her to awaken. Periodically, one of the two absolutely awful lions would take a piece of their own clay and carefully massage it into Dolly’s furry arm until it absorbed a bit into her body. Freddy couldn’t help but feel very weirded out by this new behavior from the monsters he had a hand in creating, sitting on the couch with the Elric brothers, bickering away on who gets to transmute Envy fully back to normal after the botched job Dolly did. It was pretty clear that neither party wanted to touch Envy, mainly because of the large horrible teeth they have and the bite risk the asshole held at the moment.

“I tried my best the first time, it’s your turn to transmute them kid.” Freddy said, trying to push the job on Edward Elric to handle the spiteful asshole. “I’m seventeen years old, just a kid still, you transmute them, you’re old.” Edward protested, shoving the job back to Freddy who wasn’t all too thrilled with this event.

“I’m not that old asshole, I’m still a fresh spring flower in the garden of life.” Freddy argued, not happy being called old so early in life, not realizing his flower status had been promoted to a tree instead.

“Mr. Mancer, you’re like close to forty and aren’t even married yet or with kids. You transmute Envy, you have nothing to lose.” Edward snidely remarked, still not going to touch Envy after everything that happened between the two. “Kid, I’m fucking twenty-eight years old, being around the homunculi here has rapidly aged me before my time..” Freddy had an expression of being dead inside from all the stress they’ve endured within a year’s time.

“...Damn…yeah you still have to transmute Envy.” Edward wasn’t going to budge on the subject matter and was very determined not to handle Envy in any foreseeable way.

“You’re a creature of very little empathy, aren’t you?” Freddy snorted as they fish for their knife again to pop off some scales on Envy to find the tattoo once more.

“Oh no, I’m very empathetic, I just have no more shits to give, especially around you.” Edward said, feeling relieved to have won the who gets to transmute Envy debate as Envy’s serpentine tail basically whipped the knife out of Freddy’s hand.

“Goddamn it, even when you’re unconscious you’re still a pain in the ass to deal with.” Freddy rubbed his freshly whipped hand and decided Envy can stay as a mad science project gone wrong.

“To be fair, you did pull a knife on Envy..” Alphonse finally spoke after being silent between the bickering Alchemists.

“They earned that one fair and square from how they rapidly aged me.” Freddy pouted since they didn’t get to pop any scales off Envy as pay back.

“That’s enough squeaking, I'm getting a massive headache listening to this. All I want to know is where the hell is Greed!?” Lust finally stood up from the table, having had enough of this day.

“Right here! Man, have I told you guys how much I love this crazy town? The circus arrived in town just now with their crazy looking machine and one of them even hissed at me! It was great.” Greed had barged into the cabin with one of the first cadavers to feed Gluttony with.

“Is it a hobby of yours to get anyone to hiss at you in general?” Lust raised an eyebrow at Greed’s statement as she let loose Gluttony to get a fresh corpse after being hungry for so long.

“Not always, that’s normally reserved for Little Envy the Jealous, but it was awesome being hissed at by someone else for a change.” Greed said as he failed to see the aforementioned Envy on the floor.

“Well good news for you, we got Envy back, downside, they’re out like a light and looks like something straight from a horror show.” Lust said, her finger casually pointing to the floor to show off the semi humanoid looking Envy.

“Damn..I knew Freddy and Envy had bad blood but I didn’t think Freddy would purposefully make Envy keep that monstrous look, though they can totally now fit in with my merry band of chimeras.” Greed whistled appreciatively at the horrible sight of Envy freely seeing as they won’t be punching the living daylights out of him just yet.

“Damn it I didn’t do that, that was Dolly! Didn’t you see that huge ass light show earlier!?” Freddy screeched in frustration once again as he pointed out to Dolly on the ground with Envy, her horrible clay nurses screeching like banshees at Freddy in response.

“Oh so that’s what the light display was! Yeah that caused the circus folks to go wild at the sight. I think they were trying to locate something, but not entirely sure what though.” Greed went to sit on the couch as if everything was still very normal and not entirely a dumpster fire at the moment.

“Greed, please tell me this isn’t your way of saying you want to start a circus after everything is done with…” Edward was now feeling the same thing as Lust was, pure exasperation.

“I do like circuses and that brings in lots of cash..” Greed started to toy around with the idea of starting up a circus with that sharp tooth grin of his.

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duchessofostergotlands · 2 years

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We had a bit of discussion today, on how the monarchy will work once the Queen is gone and her cousins retire. Do you think C&C, WK, the Wessexes and Anne will be able to cope with whatever workload they set for themselves on their own? Maybe Bea or Eugenie could, ever, be included? Lady Louise?

This is an interesting conversation and one I had with friends too recently. It's a long one so get ready lol. Ultimately there is no requirement for anyone other than the monarch to do work, let alone keep up a certain engagement number. And I would say most members of the public don't have an in depth knowledge of engagement rates. So if one older royal doing about 70 engagements a year retires then I don't think it'll be noticed. But if the Queen and all the older cousins retire in a short period of time then that takes the royals down by over 450 engagements per year very rapidly (if we use last year's numbers) and that might be more noticeable.

Now I think that'll only really be an issue until the Cambridge kids are in their mid to late 20s. But that does still potentially leave a gap of maybe a decade or so. I think that there's no need to do exactly 450 engagements to cover the loss, but the problem will come if Camilla, Kate and William don't substantially up their numbers because the headlines would not be good if they dropped by 20% in one go. Louise would be popular but has always been raised to be a private citizen. Beatrice is older and Andy campaigned for her to be a working royal but she's not popular at all, and has inherited some of the York tendencies from her parents, so I can't see the public being happy with that. At most I can see her, Louise etc occupying the position of Prince/ss Michael where they are not working royals but go to State Banquets etc to boost numbers. I think the sense is the public would prefer if it was kept to who works today, but they also may not be thrilled if the royals aren't seen to be working. So the answer really is I don't think it's quite as bad as people think but a lot depends on timing, whether or not the working royals are willing to up numbers to a level the public are happy with, and a cost benefit analysis of bringing in someone to be another pair of hands vs the risk of pissing off the public by inviting the wrong pair of hands.

What complicates this for me is the Counsellor of State role. I think that needs to be reformed anyway, as I talk about all the time, but essentially when the Queen dies the CoS' will be Camilla, William, Harry, Andrew and Beatrice. So three of the five will not be working royals. And that concerns me because basically the Counsellor of State acts as monarch, they have huge power. And we have lots of different checks in place to try to ensure that that power is used ethically (the royal rota reporting on duties, checks on any business opportunities by the Lord Chancellor etc). Non-working royals don't have to do those things. Which means theoretically a dodgy company could go to Beatrice and say "withhold assent from this law which would be damaging to us and we'll give you £1 million." And there would be no way of preventing that. So in my view if you are a Counsellor of State you should have to be a working royal, taxpayer funded, and fully answerable to the public at all times. If you aren't a working royal, you should be removed as a CoS. And so even though I don't want the others to be working royals, I think if they are to remain as CoS then in the interest of democracy they should be obligated to at the very least have all business dealings checked before they agree to them. I don’t think having Bea as a working royal is great for the royal family's image but not having her as a working royal is pretty bad for our democracy! All the more reason for the government to reform the CoS role.

#ask #anon #british royal family

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lozzzyy · 1 year

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Weird to think tomorrow is my last full day living in the same place I've always lived before I go somewhere completely new. I'm definitely looking forward to it and wish I'd gone sooner, but I still don't think it's sunk in properly. For basically as long as I can remember I've lived in the same place as the rest of my dad's side of the family and, by the end of this week, I'll no longer be near any of them (by UK standards anyway, it's like 40 miles away and just under 3 hours of travel start to finish). It fucks me up how much I hesitated on this. I had basically all of last year to do it with my new job but never had the guts to pull the trigger. The uncertainty killed me for the longest time. Every tiny thing I couldn't nail down with 100% certainty was used as another excuse. I haven't even moved out for something like university before, which I still hugely regret, but I've made that bed and now I have to lie in it. It'll be a shock to the system, but there's no easy way around that anymore. I'm grabbing myself by the scruff of the neck and throwing that dumb bitch outside. That being said, I do have family here who are older than me and have never fully moved away, so I get to be a bit smug about that.

My secret hope is I can use moving out as leverage to coax other family members into moving away from this tiny village to hopefully realise it was fucking them up in the long-term. Places like this are awful for growing complacent and not wanting to do anything. It genuinely drives you insane to live somewhere so small when you start to recognise everyone and go to the same places for years and years on end. My first priority will be getting my younger brother to go to university, then maybe getting my dad to move if possible. It's obvious everyone in that house is as unhappy living here as I am. The current plan is convincing him to move just as my young brother is starting secondary school in the summer of 2024, which will hopefully make a convenient time for everyone else who is able to get themselves set up somewhere new. It's the same as my situation, I don't see a future where any of them are happy living here.

Coming out as trans in December made me reconsider a few things. My family were supportive, but it still didn't feel right. I couldn't stop bouncing between "I need to go now now NOW" and "Maybe I should just stay here until I'm transitioned more". In hindsight, the latter was definitely an awful idea and a symptom of how badly I needed to make a change. My family are supportive but sometimes I wonder how much of it is sincere and how much is just to keep me happy. It feels like they do want to call me Ruby (sometimes get an accidental deadname to my face which isn't the end of the world) but they don't actually consider that to be my name, if that makes any sense? I think living around people who've known you your whole life makes for a lot of friction in the process. Nobody has been hostile about it but it's also annoying and boring answering the same few elementary-level questions constantly. Spending some time away around people who don't even know my deadname sounds very refreshing right now.

What I'm doing isn't special, obviously. Moving out for the first time at 24 is not remarkable whatsoever, if anything you might say that's a bit late (depending on your cultural norms or family situation), but for some reason, it feels really monumental. In the last few months of 2022, something just fucking broke in my brain and it all violently snapped into focus. My situation, how stagnant I've become as a person, having nothing to really look forward to. It sounds like bragging but I don't usually cry much, at least not when I'm just sitting alone. From late October to December, I would literally break down sobbing every other night if I was left alone with my thoughts for long enough, it was BAD. I've had depressive periods before but none of them even come close.

After Christmas, I resolved on moving out. Before anything else I absolutely had to start living somewhere else, I had at least managed to identify that as the main source of my unhappiness. Every day of January was agonising. With each second that ticked by where I hadn't sorted something out, I could feel the passage of time scraping against my bones. Most of my time and energy went into finding a place to move to. Each second was another one wasted, another second closer to becoming even older and having even more regrets. 24 is definitely still "young", but it's your mid-twenties when you maybe start thinking about how much time you have left to be young. The idea of entering my late twenties (or God forbid thirties) and still living here is one of the scariest things I can imagine. You see people around here sometimes who did just that. People who finished their education and never tried to move on. No prospects, no friends, no life. It's mean but there's really no other way to describe it. They settled wherever was easiest and took the path of least resistance. I've definitely done that to an extent and I'm grateful I managed to snap out of that trance before it got even worse. Even now I sometimes catch myself saying "It's too hard, whatever". That mindset absolutely has to be stamped out and killed going forward. Living somewhere with things to do and being closer to friends should help a lot.

But yeah if any of the moots live around South Wales and want to beat each other with metal pipes or smthn hit me up xoxoxoxo

#thoughts i wanted to write down #about moving #wig

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cosmictyto · 2 years

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I feel like I’m on a roll with art so I’m milking this phase for all its worth, lol (also, omg. Somewhat decent looking humans. I never thought I’d get here :,) )

Anyways, my Fable 2 brainworms have reawakened so I finally designed the Sparrow I’ve baked in my brain for years now. This is her post-game during what are her late 30s, early 40s.

Feel free to ask about her if you’re interested/curious about anything!

~ TWs! Mentions of EDs and light mentions of ableism and PTSD ~

“Clover ????,” A.K.A. Sparrow, the Hero of Bowerstone/the Hero of Bower Lake, (occasionally) Ranger - she/her - single - sexuality: it’s complicated - Alignment: Lawful good (with some sins, as a treat)

Final choice - Sacrifice

“Oggie” - Loyal companion - Breed: good boy

Current Residence - Brightwood Tower

Other Owned Properties - Brightwood Farm & Reaver’s Manor

Abilities

Mainly utilizes Skill & Will styles, but is also tough and handy with swords. Her preferred spells are Time Control, Vortex, and Blades. She used to use Inferno, but has since fallen out of using it in combat.

Stealth - After several incidents where she’s been caught off-guard (mainly the Thag & Howling Halls incidents,) she prefers to come into situations with as many advantages as she can. Taking an almost sneaky, rogue-like approach to missions and fights. Her full combat outfit includes the gloves + mask to hide her active will lines as much as she can. If she can’t take enemies out from a distance she’ll use crowd-control spells to turn the tide of the fight in her favor.

Survival Skills - During her youth, part of her hero training involved getting dropped off into the deep woods to hunt and forage alone with nothing but a knife (well, not completely alone. She had her dog.) As an adult she’s developed a respect and admiration for the wilds and would rather take roughing it in the woods over any crowded town. There’s a peace to the forests and coasts of Albion that she’d never found in a city.

Personality

Shy and introverted, mostly. She doesn’t really care for being around people and hates the pressure that’s on her whenever she’s in town. She could especially feel the hundreds of eyes on her whenever she entered any major city and it’s always put her on edge. These are thoughts/feelings she needed to push aside during her campaign against Lucien, but now that her “job’s” been done she’s allowed herself to mostly recede out of the public eye.

She’s somewhat serious and doesn’t want others to see through the walls she’s put up. If you’re lucky, you might see a smirk if you’re amusing. However, she does have a slight wild streak if you can coax it out of her. Mainly through drink. Hammer’s the only one who can really get her going while sober, though.

Despite her tough exterior, Sparrow has a gentle, generous, and kind side to her. During her early years she’d spare whatever extra coins she had to any orphans, travelers, or beggars she came across. But, once Theresa claimed the Spire and Sparrow bought Brightwood Farm from Giles, she found herself offering her home to those in need. The farm’s become a sort of mix between orphanage and abuse refuge where people Sparrow trusts can rebuild their lives out in the forests of Brightwood. Just like Sparrow did during her childhood within the Dweller Camp near Bower Lake. However, the place’s gotten full. So crowded that she moved over to the tower so she could get some peace and quiet and visit with the others when she’s prepared to.

As she’s gotten older, though, she’s just felt tired and worn down. Lonely, even. During her hero days she at least had Hammer. And even when she didn’t she had her mission to focus on. But with no mission and the other three heroes gone she doesn’t have anyone she can relate to. Most people find her too intimidating to talk to, or they’re star-struck and don’t fully see her as a person. There was a brief period where her loneliness grew too strong. The time between her final encounter with Lucien and when she got her dog back. After that fateful trip to Knothole Island.

Conditions:

Her Stutter - Sparrow’s had a stutter ever since she was little. Rose did her best to help her sister by writing stories, teaching her to read out loud, and remembering to be calm and supportive when practicing. But, because she was a child (and in, what? the equivalent of the 1800s?) she never had much progress. The other kids teased Sparrow so much for her speech issues that she grew embarrassed each time she spoke. One day, she just stopped. Save for one or two short words. When Rose passed, Sparrow spent the rest of her adolescence mute. As an adult, she’s healed some and opened up more to others. But, really, only around those she trusts. Mainly Hammer.

She mainly struggles with syllable repetition as well as prolonging sounds. The hardest sounds for her are mainly consonants like hard Ds, Ts, Bs, and Ps and will even drop these if they’re at the end of a word. Example: “Do-do-don’ go tha’ way.”

Regarding sound prolongation, it’s the “sh,” “s,” and “w” sounds she gets stuck on. But it’s less common than syllable repetition. Examples: “Sssssure, I’ll have some.” “Ssssometimes it’s frustrating.” “Wwwwhere di-did you go?”

When concentrating on getting a word out she’ll tilt her head, furrow her brow, close her eyes, and her jaw will start to tighten. Also, if she’s standing, she sways in place a bit and will fidget with whatever’s in her hands/whatever’s nearby. But those aren’t specifically secondary characteristics of her stutter, but rather self-soothing techniques from the anxiety spike she feels when really getting tripped up.

She’s not sure why, but she doesn’t stutter when she sings (it uses a separate part of the brain but she doesn’t know that. 1800s and all.) Singing/songwriting has been one of the few pleasures discovered post-Lucien as she finally feels like she’s found a way to express herself without much grief from herself or others. Her favorite thing is to head down to the pond next to the tower, sit by one of the large oaks, and just sing with Oggie snoozing nearby. (For a voice comparison, I imagine she’d sound similar to Ryn Weaver with that kind of neat warbley sound.)

Food insecurities - Growing up on the streets as an urchin rarely ensures that you get a consistent meal. Again, Rose did the best she could, but there were so many nights where she had to tell Sparrow stories just to keep their minds off of their cramping stomachs. As an adult, Sparrow’s… weird about food. Mainly going through periods of hoarding food and barely eating only to later binge the larder before it goes bad. The idea of food being left uneaten makes her skin crawl. On the bright side, she can make a mean bone broth from whatever meat she gets her hands on.

As she’s gotten older some of her issues have settled as she’s maintained a more steady stream of food. Gardening’s helped somewhat as seeing the produce actively grow reassures her that food will come. And living in Brightwood does mean hunting/foraging opportunities. But, she does still have occasional fast-binge periods (mainly in winter) and struggles to overcome them.

PTSD/general trauma - I don’t feel like I need to get into this too much as it’s pretty much a given that Sparrow would have some form of deep trauma from all the shit you go through in-game. Most of her nightmares are based around the loss of control she’s felt. Her inability to save her sister, how she couldn’t stop falling out of the castle, how she couldn’t stop the murder of Hammer’s father, how the Spire tried to warp her, how she couldn’t even save Barnum (one of the last living fragments of her childhood.) The list goes on from all over her life.

#fanart #my art #my ocs #(clover) sparrow #hero of bowerstone #hero of bower lake #fable hero of bowerstone #fable sparrow #fable #fable 2 #character sheet #fable fanart

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heinous-eli · 1 year

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Ibuprofen, a poem

[ content notice: OTC drug abuse, menstruation, manipulative/emotionally abusive relationships, references to fellatio/sex work, emesis, self-unaliving and self-harm attempts/impulses]

2006

The bottle sits in the medicine cabinet. No one tracks it, at least not very closely. No one thinks much of it. Everyone knows I need it from time to time.

My mind is going and going and going. I don’t know what I want. I don’t know what’s happening to me. It feels something like puberty, when, some seven years prior my body’s core was opened so that the flesh nest I didn’t know I had built could be shed before it went septic. My body has remade itself fully since then. Time for something else to be torn apart.

The bottle sits in the medicine cabinet. No one tracks it, at least not very closely. No one thinks much of it. Everyone knows I need it from time to time to the point where I’ve learned to dry-swallow so that I don’t have to leave class to take a few to dull that familiar deep ache punctuated by sharp spasms.

I think about the time 7 years and 7 more before when I had stumbled upon a stray pill the brand-name one with the sweet coating looking like a light brown coated chocolate on the beige carpet the best color of all the M&Ms, which were the best candy It didn’t feel like one in my hand. I immediately told my mother what I had found and handed it over. What a good girl.

The bottle sits in the medicine cabinet. No one tracks it, at least not very closely. No one thinks much of it. Everyone knows I need it from time to time. I’ve been getting it for myself for years now.

I reach up towards the high medicine cabinet shelf. Press and turn the safety cap. I am too tall and too dexterous at that point to be child-locked or shelf-blocked out of it. Should I be? After all, the air freshener, which I didn’t even know was a drug says “Keep out of reach of children and teens” right on the label. Mom and I had laughed about that. I am too mature to be in need of any such safeguards. I got my twelve-year molars at nine and my period at ten not exactly the type to suck down fumes in hopes of a high.

The bottle sits in the medicine cabinet. No one tracks it, at least not very closely. No one thinks much of it. Everyone knows I need it from time to time and this new anguish feels like one of those times.

I fill my palm with the rounds. They don’t look like the pretty, long-discontinued light brown M&M. Don’t make a nice sound when making contact with each other. We’d long switched away from that smooth-shelled, sweet-coated name brand. These were dull and rough, harder to suck down but by now, I can dry-swallow up to four of them without my teacher noticing. However many these are, they don’t stand a chance against me. I’m home, in no rush, no need to hide anything with a glass of water if I want it just a few feet away. I can hold these for longer, since the coating won’t melt in my hands. They don’t melt in my mouth, either.

The now nearly-empty bottle sits in the medicine cabinet. No one tracks it, at least not very closely. No one thinks much of it. Everyone knows I need it from time to time.

I suck down enough to make me lose time. I drift, lost to time, swallowed by the rounds. I sleep all evening, all night, all morning. For once in my overregulated life, I’m left to be. I’m in college, so I handle my own schedule and alarms. I’m on my period, so no one reminds me of Maghrib, Isha, or Fajr. No one thinks much of it. I wake up, realize I’ve been dead to the world from Asr to Zuhr but not dead enough to leave the world.

The now nearly-empty bottle sits in the medicine cabinet. Mom eventually notices it’s almost gone and adds it to her shopping list. No one thinks much of it, including her aside from admonishing us to tell her when things are running out. Everyone knows I need it from time to time.

I successfully play it off as my usual monthly troubles. The boy I like, the one who’s been taunting me into tearing myself asunder tells me that I have what is essentially a hangover. I need a thick, hearty Irish stew. He asserts, with that full-smirk half-innuendo that keeps me hooked on him that if it weren’t for my parents, he’d bring me some and feed it to me. I don’t tell him I’m too nauseous to swallow water let alone enjoy slurping on some exotic new dish.

The new bottle sits in the medicine cabinet. No one tracks it, at least not very closely. No one thinks much of it. Everyone knows I need it from time to time.

Approximately 2 body-remakes later

The bottle sits in the medicine cabinet. No one tracks it, at least not very closely. No one thinks much of it. Everyone knows I need it from time to time. It’s there, but he’s more incapacitated than usual.

What’s wrong, I ask?

"Oh, I needed them but we were out two weeks ago And I know we’re broke so you know" I don’t know. Do you know? Love of my life, look at me. By now, you not only know that I would not only

Get a payday loan Put up the car as collateral Swallow cum along with some mild disrespect Swallow some of my pride and ask my sister Swallow a bit more of my pride and e-beg Sell my soul, if I still had one Swallow what’s left of my pride and ask my parents

just so that you could be the slightest bit less uncomfortable but also that I could. Because I have. You were there. This is a basic that costs less than a tank of gas one that we both need, if differently, to boot. I drop everything post-haste to get the dual-pack of bottles rattling unpleasantly with their full capacity of rough brown pills.

The bottle sits in the medicine cabinet. No one I tracks it, at least not very closely. No one I thinkso much about it. Everyone knows I need it from time to time. It’s there, but he’s more incapacitated than usual.

What’s wrong, I ask?

"Oh, I needed them but I couldn’t find it" Love of my life, didn’t we decide on the spot together-- Never mind. From here on out it lives right here, right at your desk along both your sight-lines from every angle.

The bottle sits in the medicine cabinet on his desk, under his eye. I track it. I thinkso much about it. Everyone knows I need it from time to time. It’s there, but he’s more incapacitated than usual.

What’s wrong, I ask?

“Oh, I saw you take it from my desk so I thought it wasn’t there” Love of my life, didn’t we decide on the spot together-- Never mind. From here on out I will sit at your desk when I open it so you know it will never leave you.

The bottle backup sits in the medicine cabinet. The bottle sits stays on his desk, under his eye. I track it. I thinkso much about it. Everyone He knows I need it from time to time. It’s there, but he’s more incapacitated than usual.

What’s wrong, I ask?

“Oh, I saw you take some the other day and you’re on your period And it seemed like it was running low I couldn’t finish it while you still needed it could I” Love of my life, didn’t I say I was tracking it and weren’t you there when I bought the new ones-- Never mind. From here on out I will never touch it. It’s all yours.

The backup sits in the medicine cabinet behind his bottle. The His bottle stays on his desk, under his eye. My bottle stays in my bag, rattling unpleasantly. I track it his. I thinkso much about it his. Everyone He knows I need it from time to time. it’s his. It’s there, but he’s more incapacitated than usual.

What’s wrong, I ask? “Oh, I forgot to tell you I was running low And you know I can never remember the one in the cabinet” Love of my life, I didn’t expect you to remember the cabinet The new one was right behind the old one-- Never mind. From here on out I’ll open the new bottle and I’ll pour the old ones atop the new and I’ll discard the old bottle so you don’t get them confused.

The backup sits behind becomes his bottle. His bottle stays on his desk, under his eye. The bottle formerly his goes into the trash. My bottle stays in my bag, rattling unpleasantly. I track his. I thinkso much about his. He knows it’s his. It’s there, but he’s more incapacitated than usual.

What’s wrong, I ask?

“Oh, I saw you throw away the bottle I thought we were out” Love of my life, didn’t we talk about this last time-- Never mind. I tell him I’m so sorry. I’ll do better. From here on out, I wait until he’s asleep so that I can open the new bottle and pour the old ones atop the new and discard the old bottle so he doesn’t get them confused out of his sight, so he doesn’t think we’re out.

The backup becomes his bottle. His bottle stays on his desk, under his eye. The bottle formerly his goes into the trash doesn’t exist. This is an infinity bottle of ibuprofen. Bulk shopping has progressed so much these days. My bottle stays in my bag, rattling unpleasantly. I track his. I thinkso much about his. He knows it’s his. It’s there, but he’s more incapacitated than usual.

I choke so hard I cannot ask. What’s wrong he asks

The choking merges with a memory of excess and nausea. I slurp down an entire bottle then put my fingers down my throat so I can give it all to him. What else have I left to give?

#poetry #breakups

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myths-too-tall · 11 months

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Myths Too Tall Info Post

This contains both basic info and rules.

This blog has far less rules than Tales Too Tall (NOT RELEASED YET), as it is dedicated to non-canon interactions, roleplays, scenarios, or even alternate versions of these already alternate characters.

My main blog is @beepsparks , the canon blog Tales Too Tall is not out yet (I don’t have the motivation and am unable to work on it right now because of how ambitious it is and because of school, sorry)

This blog is also 13+, sorry, but while everything here isn’t canon, gruesome and violent moments will still happen. Whether through scenarios or roleplays. This isn’t a nice and friendly au based on Jack and the Beanstalk. It can get pretty brutal at times. Especially since it’s based on Ice Hell’s Padlock.

Absolutely nothing NSFW! This au and blog is not meant to be sexual in any way, shape, or form.

Feel free to send asks about any scenario ideas you have, this blog is meant for not only roleplays and scenarios I come up with, I’d love to see your ideas! Or even fanart or your own writing if you feel like it lol

PLEASE read the triggers section in the rest of this info post, if you ask things here before reading it, you might get triggered by something you didn’t know would be in here! And I don’t want that to happen.

Available Characters to interact with

The characters you’re able to interact with currently are as follows:

Manny (Yellow Guy), Robin (Duck Guy), and Harry (Red Guy)

Paige and Tony (Everyone’s favorite giant cannibals)

The rest of these characters are not fully developed yet, but some are very close! You’ll still be able to interact with them.

Bentley Briefcase (The boss of a local shop)

Shrignold Butterfly (The local cult leader)

Colin and Electracey (usually a duo in heroic monster hunting)

Charlie Coffin (The man that lives in the woods alone, likes the nice, quiet, and isolated life. Knew Paige and Tony closely from before… Roy happened.)

Lesley (There isn’t much you can do with her, all she does is tell the story)

Extra Info

The characters actually aren’t using digital devices to interact with users. Every ask comes in a form of a letter to them. Their responses, whether written back or spoken, are “mailed away” to them. If you ask them anything mentioning the internet, they will probably be confused. (Also, Colin and Electracey are more like rustic robots because of the time period this au takes place in.)

Paige and Tony are definitely on the more… deranged side. Despite how much they might seem elegant, they’ve gone slightly more insane due to how long they’ve been living in the sky. They don’t even believe they were ever “human” in the first place anymore.

I have character roleplay icons for Manny, Paige, and Tony specifically currently. If I can’t find a good icon to use to react, I wont use them.

Paige and Tony have a giant black Persian cat named Muffin. I don’t know why I made him, but he exists.

Please specify which character you’re sending an ask to to avoid confusion! Also, you can ask characters at any time period, specifically in the beginning, before the beanstalk is grown, the middle, where Manny has either met or stolen from Paige and Tony at least once, or the end, when Paige and Tony have basically kidnapped the trio.

If you want to say which character you’re asking or what time period you want the question to be asked in without actually saying it in your ask, you can simply put it in parentheses.

Example: “[insert ask here]” (Manny, after he’s stolen from Paige and Tony)

My own triggers and minor triggers

This is here to note anything I WILL NOT answer, write, or draw, as such things will make me uncomfortable.

My Major Triggers

Do NOT by any means make or put Paige and Tony in scenarios where they are in danger of something I fear, I have a very high attachment to them, so them at risk of something I fear myself does in fact make me extremely uncomfortable, if not kinda sick. (Please avoid putting them in dangerous situations regarding earthquakes, and any scenario of them being human sized, interacting with another giant (Despite my interest, I did previously have a rough phobia of them unfortunately, and I still am not ENTIRELY over it, as I might get uncomfy from time to time. So yes, unfortunately you cannot ask anything about “role reversed MatB”, despite it would be an interesting concept, I simply can’t deal with it at the moment.)

Please don’t mention or send any clips or photos of the introduction scene with Choo Choo in Transport, that includes my previously mentioned trigger of Tony in scenarios involving him in danger of things I fear, and that scene not only included that, but other things that make me highly uncomfortable. (On another note, though, cropped photos Tony looking kinda goofy after that scene are somewhat okay as long as I don’t think about the scene too much.)

My Minor Triggers

This is stuff that just makes me kinda uncomfy, some things may slide under specific conditions.

I do have a problem where since I have a high attachment to Tony, extremely angsty (specifically, sad angst) situations with him might make me upset (it depends though, so you may ask anyway, I will simply delete the ask if its too bad for me, though.)

Writing of breaking/broken clocks is perfectly fine, any video or GIF of breaking clocks however is not. Apologies, but I believe some of Tony’s traits have rubbed off on me, meaning I also don’t like the act of breaking timepieces in general. Please do not send any videos or GIFs of such actions.

Trigger/Content Warnings for common themes in this AU and blog

A lot of cannibalism will be mentioned or possibly even done, Paige and Tony have always been cannibals, even when they used to be “human”. They will even threaten others.

As previously mentioned, Paige and Tony (and sometimes other characters) threaten people sometimes! Paige and Tony especially don’t tend to play nice.

Since the villains, Paige and Tony, are giants, theres a LOT of things that could count as megalophobia in this au. So if you have that phobia, please be careful when reading.

There will be a lot of descriptions of gore here, violence is kinda common in the MatB au.

This is based on Ice Hell’s Padlock! If you’re not a fan of 2014’s Classic Padlock too much, I wouldn’t exactly recommend this au.

A healthy reminder that everything in here isn’t real! This was all made for fun and to mix my interests, even if Paige or Tony threaten you, remember it isn’t real.

That’s all of the info post! Have fun! And remember! Don’t steal.

#myths too tall info post #pinned post

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blue-eyed-bloodstains · 1 year

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Has anyone ever told you that you were really pretty? yeah but way too much of my life, still is, has been severely the opposite to where I never believe it no matter who it is...:(

Do you relate to main characters in novels often? it depends on the book and situation/backstory

Do you listen to a wide variety of music? yeah

Does nature feel magical to you? yeah

What holiday are you looking forward to next? Halloween, always

Do you take a lot of pictures? no I really wish I did, just always forget or not in the mood only to regret it later

Did you ever go through a phase when you didn’t want to take medicine? I don’t think so, although any type of pill or capsule has been very hard since 2014 due to a medical condition, I gag really really bad and it sucks that most meds don’t have a liquid or ODT (dissolvable) version

Do you love popsicles? don’t eat them very often but yeah definite nostalgia of ice cream trucks with them!

Do you have to hem up a lot of your pants? no actually most pants are short around the ankles cause I’m so tall...I mostly wear my fiance’s pants which at least reach my shoes when standing lol

Do you shop at Goodwill? I have in the past and got some really cool clothes, I haven’t gone in forever so I’m definitely due!

What’s your natural hair color? it was dirty blonde with natural blonde highlights growing up but overtime, especially as I isolated a lot more and mostly stayed inside it got darker so now it’s brown grrr

Do you like your smile? HELL. FUCKING. NO. major trigger for me all my life....

Was the last book you read good? honestly’ I can’t even remember the last book I fully read and finished...I just can’t sit down and read the last several years, too much personal shit going on to where mentally I’m just not into it

Do you make grocery lists? sometimes but most of the time I forget to and just wing it, then again we mostly get the same shit every time so it’s easy

Do you take walks often? ha no that’s a disaster waiting to happen...my health has severely depleted my physical ability for even basic functions on my feet :(

Does sunlight make you feel happier? yeah especially a nice cool warm day, not too chilly not too hot

Do you make wishes on the moon? no

What are you most looking forward to this spring? nicer weather, top down doors off backroad cruising in my fiance’s Jeep with music blaring and the wind blowing, and I am DYYYIINNNGGGG to swim! preferably pool but beach works too!

Are you fulfilling your passion in life? nowhere near

Do you daydream a lot? no, more like zone out and get too lost in my head which is never a good thing especially alone which is most of the time anyway...sigh

What are your dreams? fucked up nightmare fuel and night terrors...all the time

Do you take medications? yeah several

When was the last time you went to the doctor? actually last week on March 28th to the cancer institute

What helps you fall asleep? pssh jack shit, I’m an insomniac and when I do actually doze? it’s rarely longer than an hour at a time...needless to say I’m the walking dead

Do you love sushi? GIMME RIGHT NOWWWW!!! I LOVE sushi I’d live on it in a heartbeat if I could!

What’s your favorite type of seafood? pretty much anything, there’s some things I haven’t gotten to try but I’ve got a decent range that I have and I love

Do you have stomach problems? you don’t even know the fucking half of it and can never fully understand unless you suffer like I do every single day. period.

Do you enjoy editing photos? back in the day I did Photoshop quite a bit through free trials but it’s been so long, I don’t know where to even begin especially thinking about how updated it must be now. I’ll occasionally throw a minimal filter on a pic every now and then on my phone but rarely

What was the last photo filter you used? ha wow considering I just mentioned filters...ummm I usually will do like something to do with the saturation in the pic..maybe a bit faded, grayscale, etc.

Do you live a simple life? not exactly the word I’d use...complicated is better

Do you own a pair of pajamas with foxes on them? nope

Peace signs or hearts? depends, guilty of being one of “those” that early FB days I’d throw up the peace sign a lot in pics lol and pretty much every card (holiday, bday, etc.) I’ll throw in a heart when signing at the end

What kind of pie is your favorite? cheesecake, hands down

Do you think you could go a whole year without eating dessert? hmm probably yeah, I’m more of a junk food junkie so I can probably make a year without sweet stuff like candy, chocolate, etc.

#survey #bored #random #about me

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chronocidalrage · 1 year

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12/8/22 - 12/13/22

SELF ESTEEM My self esteem is garbage because it’s entirely based on other people’s opinions of me. Or at least what I perceive other people’s opinions to be. I have no true sense of self. I get what FEELS like a sense of self when others seem happy with me, but it’s false. That’s why I felt so good in my late twenties. Not because I actually found myself, but because I surrounded myself with people who reinforced what I wanted to believe.

I need to trust myself to analyze a situation and make the best of it.

I feel weird ever feeling good or happy. It feels wrong. How can I feel good if Atom isn’t involved? It doesn’t seem right.

Is my brain set for: Atom = good and therefore good = Atom? And then less and less things were good with or without him so I got all fucked up?

Then I think the single period of my life made me want to drink for various reasons. And drinking was something that was new and good with or without Atom. It was something good that was interchangeable. Now I’m trying to tell myself things are good again when the only thing that’s was ever reliably good was Atom and he’s dead and he wasn’t even fully good in recent years. So few things are “good” and I never know which way to go. It feels like lacking a compass because I don’t even know what good things look like anymore.

Atom, thank you for making me feel safe when I couldn’t do so for myself. I hope (for both or our sakes), I soon learn how to do that for myself. I hope I can make myself feel even half as safe as you were able to.

The pain I feel, the little sting that slowly grows until it envelopes me and I feel like I can’t move? The feeling I get at a grocery store that reminds me of being there with Atom? That pain is always gonna be there. The pain and the degree of the pain is a result of how sweet the memory is plus how far away from it you are. There’s no way around it. As long as the sweet moments are in your past, they will always hurt.

It’s weird though because the emotions are so vibrant and strong it seems impossible for you to be gone. Like how can I still feel this strongly about someone who hasn’t existed for over a year? Wild, but the feelings really still are that strong.

I have to move on because I’ll never feel that same “flavor” or safe and protected again. Never. It’s simply not possible. But I can feel other flavors of safe. I may even be able to make my own flavor that I can count on. It’s like Golden Bowl. I’ll never have my first favorite Chinese food again, but that doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy other Chinese food or have other favorite meals or restaurants. EDIT: of course high Alex would explain this in terms of food lol.

How do I find my own joy and safety? Just learn how to do more things. Learn to rely on myself through practice.

How do I open myself to new joy? You just do. You just stop obsessing, stop tensing and open up.

SUSIE It’s crazy. Everything from the beginning of our relationship feels like 2-3 years ago at most. Wild how long we’ve actually been together (officially eleven years!). We’ve spent most of our relationship living together at this point. I still really love her. That’s awesome.

I think part of the problem for me is that Susie has changed and gotten even cooler and stronger than she already was and I haven’t. So I can’t possibly imagine how she could be attracted to me as I am.

WATCHING MOVIES With only the light from the Christmas Tree is so great.

I need to have a flexible identity. Instead of seeing myself as someone who IS great, I should see myself as someone who’s TRYING to be great. There will be successes and failures.

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kaoarika · 2 years

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Since I have been reshuffling and reorganizing stuff in my room since some time ago (but has been not exactly too motivated to do much), I recently strumbled with a paper sheet of something I printed a decade or so ago, which was on my stash of “try to find the rest if the other page comes by” on my bookshelf. And I cannot believe how much time I wasted in looking for it because I was intrigued about it.

Thing is, it’s also from those times that I think I printed almost whatever, wasn’t happy with the thing I intended to print and perhaps I either drew on it, or recycled it for homework,, or it’s highly possible I trashed it. A decade or so ago.

So, I still have some loose pages of stuff I printed, but I will never find the rest, lol.

But this particular one is interesting to me for some reason. I have been on a binge of trying to come with organizing ideas of a possible future thing for my AU characters (and by future, I actually mean possible after-canon stuff, since I don’t have much of a set ground for their storyline after a year or so of what I do have planned right now), so, sometimes? writing memes is the best I can organize ideas about them. In fact, it has been a practice I had been doing for years, but since I don’t have too many OCs to begin with or really didn’t fully explore them more than I should’ve had (including my ocxcanon charas), I never really shared them publicly.

I have a few good ones from Tumblr that I have compiled in the years since... and then there’s the DA ones.

Tbf, I haven’t gone fully through DA since pretty much the start of the last decade, and just very recently (the past 4 years) I have been using it more as an art archive than anything because, as time goes on, many of the people I used to follow there don’t use the platform anymore (and I also unfollowed maaaany people I shared an interest with ages ago, but that was way before 2018), and there’s little interactivity I have with other users there these days, as well? When I was younger, I did find many memes quite fun to look at, even though part of me wanted to do some of these because I wanted to “belong” somewhere, and so, and so. As, you expect, many of these, back in the day, were pretty simple, not too deep, and it reflected the age of OP when doing them.

SO. in my vague memory, I recall doing this particular one with a few OCs I had back in the day, I tried to be “funny” (it was supposed to be in form of an interview... but again, you could tell a teenager wrote those questions), and I remember it being a little... lame |D. The thing is, I THOUGHT I had the whole thing printed... not just a piece of it. So I was “well, I COULD try to search the whole thing, right? It’s a very silly meme, and I thought google searching or searching through DA was going to be somewhat easy if you wrote a VERY specific sentence. GUESS WHAT. IT WASN’T.

I DID have a few clues about the period it came from (around 2009~2010) given the OCs I used there, but I also weighed the possible outcome of “well, the user I ‘stole’ this tag meme from probably deactivated their account ages ago”. But I didn’t consider how an absolute hell is searching through DA these days (they really need better search filters) and Google... don’t seem to cover much of writing deviations (as Journals technically count as deviations since the early 2010s). SO, yeah.

And all for a silly and somehow lame writing meme I wanted to fill just for my own pleasure and amusement.

I had to be very specific with keywords, and when I was starting to narrow the results (from over 2k towards 700... towards 500) I finally came with it. And WOW, it was as juvenile and lame as I remembered it was, but even so... I wanted to have my fun with it, you know?

And so. Compared to the simple answers OP filled it with... or my poor written ones from 10 year or so ago... I went FULL on it.

Maybe I won’t share it (not as a meme format, at least) for the foreseeable future, but gdmn, how this drove me nuts for a whole evening.

#kao's nonsenses

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markresonates · 2 years

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summary: You claim to barely remember the fatal boating accident from this summer, unaware that deep within your subconscious you know someone in your friend group has blood on their hands. On the night the devil comes to collect for something you can’t recall, the only thing standing between you and a fiery, one way ticket to hell is your story.

pairing: ex!Jaemin x fem!reader x devil!Haechan

(featuring: brother Jeno & dreamies briefly)

genre: porn w plot, angst, tiny fluff, supernatural

trope: college, house party, whodunit, not a love triangle

word count: +10.7k

a/n: for @neo-cult-ure’s sinners collab! my designated sin: lust…but uh i got carried away. so. it’s not solely jaemin? super sorry about that & being late. 2nd note: this is my 3rd fav fic so i hope you like it as much as i do!

warnings: rough unprotected sex, oral (fem & male), lots of choking & degradation, spanking, manhandling, voyeurism, lil humiliation, exhibitionism, masturbation, restraints, me pushing the Haechan big d!ck agenda, slight dub con kind of(?), character death, blood, hard dom!Haechan, dom!Jaemin, sub!reader

“Hey, where did you put the cups?” Renjun asked.

Jisung looked up from the family-sized bag of chips that he was considering to be his lunch. “Uh… what cups?”

“Ugh, seriously? I told you to get red solo cups two days ago!”

“Renjun, don’t blame somebody with an attention disability,” Chenle defended his partner in crime. “It’s not his fault he forgets things within 12 hours!”

“Or less,” Jeno piled on from where he was decorating the chandelier in festive purple and orange streamers.

…..

An affectionate hand softly slips into yours. “Today reminds me of him, too.”

You fall out of the clouded memory from the last holiday, landing on the solid concrete floor of reality with a painful thud. That was then and this is now. You blink back the stinging tears rimming your eyes, clearing your throat to swallow the grief clogging your airway. Your empty stare flicks from the bathroom sink to the bunny leaning against the door frame, exchanging a sad smile with the only person who’s been able to carry you through the toughest period of your life.

“You didn’t have to throw a halloween party this year, y/n,” Jaemin echoes for the third time this week. His thumb traces comforting shapes into your skin.

“I know, I know. It just felt like I had to though. Like, it's a family thing and I’m in charge of it now because he’s-” You take a shaky, deep breath, suppressing the sobbing fit laying heavily on your dry tongue. “...because Jeno is gone.”

For the sake of privacy, Jaemin fully enters the bathroom and locks the door behind him. “At least Renjun volunteered to take care and host the actual party after you did all the planning, right?”

You can see compassion in his dreamy eyes, minimally putting your mind at ease. Your altruistic boyfriend always looks on the bright side of things, finding the silver lining in situations.

“Yeah, that would’ve been a nightmare.”

Someone noisily jiggles the bathroom door handle behind Jaemin, successfully ruining the intimate moment as he leans in for a kiss. “Occupied!”

“Y/n?! Are you in there?!” Renjun shouts over the pulsating party music playing on the other side of the thin wood barrier.

You groan purposefully loud enough for the mood killer to hear. “Why?!”

“Can you open the door so we can stop yelling?!”

Jaemin twists the lock and yanks the door inward impatiently. “What do you want?”

“Can you get extra chairs from the shed out back? You know the combo to the lock,” he requests in a nicer tone. “Please?”

“Why can’t you do it?” Jaemin interrogates your smaller friend.

“Yeah, can I tell you the combo so you can get them yourself?”

The substitute host releases the exhausted sigh of a retired, 80 year old man who’s sick and tired of the neighborhood kids playing in his front yard. Renjun was involuntarily cast for the role simply because he owns the most brain cells out of the friend group. Nevertheless, brains or not, he’s getting antsy wearing the actual party host pants that are 1.5x sizes too large for him.

“Fine, I’ll do it,” you say, mostly out of pity for how agitated the introvert appears.

If looks could kill, Renjun’s limp body would be on the floor and Jaemin’s daggered eyes would be held liable for murder. He wanted tonight to be as bearable and stress free as possible for you because he knows what happened to Jeno makes you emotional. Taking care of trivial party chores doesn’t exactly qualify for “stress free” by his standards. “Baby, wait. Drunk college kids are perfectly capable of sitting on the floor.”

“It's not that big of a deal, really.” And certainly not big enough of a deal to kill one of your closest friends over. “I need fresh air anyways.”

“I’ll come with you then,” he says, just like you knew he would.

You open your mouth to accept his offer when an unidentified, urgent knocking at your bedroom door rips your consciousness from dream land.

…..

Another dreaded dose of reality kicks in, figuring out you’ve been alone all along. You’re propped up against your headboard, back pressed to fluffy pillows. Rather than the caring boyfriend of your dreams, your hands lay clasped together on yellowed, delicate pages of a book you mysteriously found on your bed yesterday. You assumed one of your friends left it there as a surprise to somewhat cheer you up on a painful day. The spooky novel you planned on starting tonight is sprawled across your thighs. Technically you did start it, even if only a whopping two paragraphs of Shiley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House before passing out in your solitude. Once more, your eyes comb over the first sentence you got through before passing out in your solitude:

“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed (to some) to dream.”

The inception you experienced begs the question if anyone had been knocking at your door in the first place or if that was simply another mind trick. You wouldn’t be surprised if the disturbance was all in your head. There is not a single drop of alcohol in your bloodstream yet you suspect the dissociated allusions are comparable to the effects of the stinging liquid chugged downstairs. Although, the vibration in your pocket notifies you that the not so imaginary culprit is outside in the hallway, forcing you to get out of bed and check on the person interfering with your unscheduled beauty sleep.

“This better be a life or death situation for you to wake me up,” you grumble at the low budget spiderman.

“Dude, I woke you up? Seriously? I’m really sorry, I didn’t know you were actually sleeping,” Mark rambles apologetically. “I thought you were just, like, avoiding coming outside because Jaemin’s here with this other girl and they’re like basically fucking with their clothes on in the living room and you didn’t want to-”

“Wait, he’s already with another girl?”

Mark pulls his halloween mask off in a panic. “Holy shit, you didn’t know.”

“But it’s been less than a month since…” Your voice trails off halfway through the silent, heart shattering fact, as if you didn’t have enough of a reason to cry today.

“Fuck, I’m really, really so, so sorry, y/n.” The superhero has the same idea as your dream ex boyfriend did, seeking solace in your room by barging in through the sliver in which you opened the door. He locks it behind him, doing everything in his power to prevent the ex from seeing the tears that’ll likely be shed in his cursed name. “I don’t know if it matters but you’re definitely, like, hotter than she is.”

“Wow, I feel so much better now, thanks,” you deadpan.

Mark pulls you in for a hug you didn't know you needed right now. The extra padding from the costume is oddly comforting. You don’t count the exact seconds of the embrace but he holds you long enough to feel as emotionally supported as holding Jaemin’s hand for 10 seconds would feel. That support would have to suffice for the time being.

“I remember you said it’s ’cuz of guilt, right? But, um, would you ever consider getting back together? I’m almost positive he’s, like, trying to make you jealous or he wouldn’t have come.”

Honing your emotional distancing skills, you wiggle out of his artificially bulky arms. You regain your composure, smoothing out your vampire costume with your hands. Even if you suspected you wouldn’t leave your room, because of the fact that you talked about being vampires with Jeno earlier this year, it would be a crime against siblinghood to leave the costume in your closet to rot. Pulling out of Mark’s hug calls home the loneliness that settled into your own rotting skin at the end of the summer.

“What did you need earlier?” A spark of intuition coerces you to take a shot in the dark before he speaks. “Actually, wait… were you going to ask me about extra chairs?”

“Oh my GAWD! How did you know I was gonna say that?!”

How DID you know that?

“Lucky guess, maybe? I had a weird dream about chairs for some reason.”

“Damn, really? That’s shit is fucking crazy, wow.”

You weigh your options at the moment: stay in your lonely room and wallow about Jaemin replacing you so easily and freshly becoming an only child in your family, OR distract yourself with a trivial task that requires no comprehension and gets your blood pumping for a little while. “Actually, I’ll go get the chairs for you.”

Concern is instantly etched into your friend’s face as you usher him out into the hallway. “Hello no! Dude, don’t even trip, like, I got you. Just tell me the combo to the lock and I’ll go get them instead.”

“Thanks, Mark, but I think I need some fresh air right now.”

Spiderman looks conflicted about your decision but reluctantly moves out of your way. He’s right on your tail heading towards the back door and doesn’t hesitate to grab your hand when you pass by your ex on the packed living room couch.

Ever since middle school, Jeno and Jaemin had been inseparable on Halloween, often planning couples costumes that you participated in every so often. Never in a million years would you have pictured some girl you’ve never seen before on top of him, grinding on Jaemin in public, no less. But here you are. On the other hand, you never pictured a halloween without your brother either.

Life changes whether you want it to or not, and you either accept it or drown in the memories of the past, trying to relive the moments you treasured most.

Your feet take root in the amber oak wood floor, shock feeding your visceral reaction. You plant yourself smack dab in the middle of the swaying, half tipsy/half drunk costumed, college crowd.

If Jeno wasn’t around from the very start, was this what Jaemin would’ve been doing all along? Charming hot girls with a simple cheeky smile and a flirty wink to sweet talk them into his lap? Honestly, it would probably be more than just his lap.

Jaemin locks eyes with you and squeezes the girl's ass tightly, swirling her hips around and grinding down faster on his unquestionably hard erection. You imagine that when the party's over, he’ll take that girl to his car and fuck her rough, hard and dirty. Foggy green blurs over your eyes momentarily, while red heat blazes between your legs, remembering and imagining the times that he used to give it to you like when you two wanted to switch things up after having deep and passionate sex every other day. You’d chalk it up to pent up sexual frustration making you miss it like crazy. You feel like you’d do nearly anything to get fucked as good as Jaemin could fuck you but seriously doubt there’s a single person on earth who would be able to do that.

Perhaps Mark was right and the whole point of this public, explicit performance was some toxic way of trying to make you regret ending things with him. But after what you’ve seen tonight, it shouldn’t matter in the slightest. You simply wish you could feel something other than lonely, needy and stupidly jealous for the rest of the night.

Mark tugs on your vampire cape then nudges you forward. You break eye contact with your once dream boyfriend, releasing you from whatever magical spell he cast on you. Fighting the livid urge to say something to them, you bolt to the exit, sensing his enigmatic glare follow you through the sea of party goers. He had kept his eyes peeled for you the entire night. Not that you care or anything (or not that you should care.) Jaemin was trying to wind you up and you despise the fact that it is working. He spies Mark’s hand in yours through a momentary gap of college students and is swept up in a whirlwind of emotions he’d prefer to bury in the ground.

Elbowing your way through numerous sweaty bodies, you successfully reach the sliding glass door to the backyard. You put your hands on Mark’s chest, preventing him from following you out into the night. “I kind of want a moment alone, okay? Don’t worry, I’ll be right back,” you promise him.

Your roommates all agreed that the backyard should be off limits during the party and you’re relieved to find that the handwritten, crooked sign that Jisung taped to the see-through door did the trick. To ensure that the door is left open a smidgen, you grab a twig near the pool and jam it in the door track.

The backyard shed houses eight folding chairs and you’re determined to fetch the whole collection. You wrangle the cobweb-clad chairs Mark requested out of the storage space and lean them up against the side until all of them are out. In order to save time, you take two chairs with each trip. You take extra care going by the pool covered in its dark red protective plastic tarp. The heavy folding chairs scrape along the cool pathway leading from the shed to the glass doors and the screeching sound of metal on cement echoes over the wooden fence of your backyard perimeter, pouring into the neighborhood’s vacant streets. It is late enough into the night that every kid who lived within a ten block radius had called it a day and gone home to binge the sugary treats they reeled in.

You reminisce about the times that you and Jeno would return from trick-or-treating as children. As soon as you dumped your halloween hauls on the kitchen table, Jeno began bargaining with you for the sweet, jelly candy pieces that he loved. You and your brother were far closer than you’d say most siblings were and didn’t fight nearly as much as others, so it was all the same to you whether he got more of the jelly candies. By the end of your fair trade off, you would be the new owner of a large chocolate ratio and it barely mattered if you liked the jelly treats too.

With six chairs down and two to go, you scoop up the remaining few and lock the shed. Pivoting around, a stranger blocking your path appears seemingly out of nowhere. “Hey, what are you doing out here? The party’s inside only.”

You look the mysterious guy up and down, pondering what his costume is supposed to be. Light illuminates half of his shadowy figure. He's sporting a black-on-black attire of thoroughly ripped jeans, a plain black t-shirt and a chic leather jacket. On his head sits a dark bucket hat, partially shielding silver dangly earrings. “Did you miss the sign that said the backyard is off limits?”

“I’ve been watching you for sometime now, y/n,” he proudly says.

“Ohhh, are you playing a stalker for halloween?” you ask. “I haven’t watched a full episode of You on netflix but I don’t think your outfit matches that one guy Joe Goldberg.”

“Today’s your lucky day.”

“Really? And why is that?” You drag the chairs around to your hip, preparing for your return once he vacates the premises.

“I'm in a pretty good mood today… so I’ve decided to give you a second chance.” The smug smile on his face makes the hairs on the back of your stand up.

“What are you talking about?” He appears amused by your soured expression. “Look, get out of my way. My boyfriend is waiting for me inside.”

“Hmm, your boyfriend… I thought you broke up with Jaemin because of your dead brother? Or are you talking about the religious one who’s been flirting with you all night?”

“How did you-? God, it doesn’t fucking matter.” Moving to push past him, he grabs your forearm, his hand searing hot and branding your skin with sweltering heat. The fiery feeling ripples through your arm like a flattened pebble skipped on the surface of a boiling pond.

He snickers as you leap back in pain, looking down at the hole that the high temperature burned through your long sleeve costume. “Oh, come on, y/n. I didn’t hurt that bad. You’re totally being overdramatic.”

You hold your hurt arm gingery. “Really? Then why don’t I brand your arm with a hot iron and we’ll see how it feels.”

He sucks his teeth and rolls his eyes. Caving into your noisy complaints, he snaps his fingers, and the pain dissolves. The only remnants of its existence being a fuzzy sensation similar to your foot falling asleep, fading until it's completely gone. “So, here’s how it’s going to go, sweetheart. I’m interested in a certain story of yours about the-”

“I’m not telling you shit,” you spit out.

He pokes his tongue into the inside of his cheek, jerking his head disappointingly. “-most life changing night of your life”

“Go fuck yourself.” Your bold insult lures him in closer. You back up as far as you can manage before your back hits the shed door. Hitting it with a hard thud, the impact knocks the majority of the wind from your lungs and you sputter for air.

“You have no choice, princess. Either I’m finding out what I wanna know or your fate is sealed and you drown.” He gestures to the pool over his shoulder. “See that pool? You wouldn’t believe how many people trip and fall in those and then get caught under the tarps and-” The stranger gestures to his neck as if getting one’s throat slit. “You know what I mean.”

Your throat feels dry, whittling your question down to quiet words. “Who are you?”

“I’m glad you asked. It took you long enough.” The man twirls his wrist gracefully and a sleek black cane with an ivory skull handle pops out of thin air. More heart stopping than that is what was hidden under the bucket hat that he snaps away - pitch black horns peeking through his caramel hair.

“You probably know me from that old, stupid fucking holy book but my close friends call me Haechan.”

“You’re… the devil?” you guess, testing the waters.

“You know, I never really cared for that name. Something about it is just so-” He cringes and shivers like a chill went down his spine.

“What abouuttt Lucifer? Is that correct?”

His nose scrunches up disapprovingly. “Ugh, you know what? Let’s pretend to be close friends tonight, k?”

“Okay, s-sure… Haechan.”

The devil smiles, satisfied with your response and patting your head condescendingly. “Good girl! Now, where were we, hm?” Haechan raises his eyebrows like he’s encouraging you to answer.

“Uh, you had said something like my most special-”

“Life changing,” he scolds. “I said life changing.”

You nod several times. “Sorry, yeah, that’s what I meant. Life changing night of my life.”

“Corrrrect. So, any ideas what night I’m talking about?”

You roll your head back, looking to the array of stars scattered across the sparkling midnight sky for answers. The high stakes situation effectively beats your thought process with a mallet while you wrack your brain for whatever particular period he’s referring to. Coming up empty handed, you stare at your feet, and shake your head regretfully. “Can I get a hint?”

Haechan sighs almost sympathetically. “Aw, cute. You’ve buried the memory.” You wince as he grabs your jaw. Surprisingly, his action is gentle and his fingers are familiar. He raises your chin, staring into your soul when your eyes meet. “We’ll just have to fix that then.”

He taps his cane against the ground and within a blink of an eye, you’re in a new location. “Recognize this place?” he asks, turning your head to face your new surroundings in a storage closet. It’s bigger than the shed with a much taller roof, walls with cluttered shelves and floor overrun with an extensive alcohol collection, carefully packed away in large cardboard boxes and stacked wooden crates. “By the way, I should mention that the date is August 13th, 2021.”

“Then it’s… Jaemin’s birthday.” you slowly reply, studying every miniscule detail of the place like it’s the very last time you’ll ever see it.

“Where?”

“We were on my family’s boat for his party.” You stumble into the time traveler as the boat teeters from severely choppy waves.

Everyone in attendance underestimated the major storm that had rapidly rolled in that evening … at least one of you should have known that ignoring the obvious logical course of action for the sake of one silly party was a recipe for disaster.

“And what significant, life changing things happen tonight? I’ll give you a hint: there’s two of them.”

“Well, first there’s me and Jaemin… and also-” The closet door handle dips and your voice trails off.

“Yes? And?”

“And Jeno di-” You gasp in disbelief, now face-to face with your brother; although Jeno seems to stare straight through you.

“What was that? I didn’t hear you, y/n,” Haechan painfully pressures you for the answer.

Your brother crouched down, carefully shuffling a few wine bottles around to fish more champagne from a cardboard box at your feet. The clinking noises of glass-on-glass paralleled your heart on the brink of shattering.

“And my brother dies today.”

Jeno made a speedy exit, accidentally slamming the door behind him and bringing you to flinch involuntarily .

“But do you remember how he died? Actually, let me rephrase that. Did you see how he died?”

“N-no,” you whisper.

“That’s okay, princess. Let's fast forward 42 minutes then. I wanna get to the main event, don’t you?” the Devil proposes. “After the cake cutting and all that other shit, what happens in here?”

“Um, Jaemin and I happen in here.”

“Care to clarify on that?”

“If you know what happens next, then why are you asking me? Why are we fucking here in the first place?!” you shout.

You know it’s risky to take out your frustration on him and you don’t want to push your luck, but at the moment you can’t hold it back, you just saw the person you buried in a hollow box that was engraved in his name months ago. How are you supposed to react to something like that?

Haechan smirks, knowing he has you right where he wants you. “Hey, don’t raise your voice at me, sweetheart,” he says smoothly. “I’m giving you a chance here.”

“A chance? For what? You already said I’m drowning in my pool so what’s the point of all this?”

He casually throws an arm over your shoulder, pretending you’ve been close friends for years like he said earlier. “I think your case is interesting… perhaps interesting enough to reverse your fate in hell. But I can’t relive human moments unless I’m with the witnesses themselves. And so that’s what we’re doing! Reliving your most interesting life moments which just happen to be on this night.”

On his last syllable, he taps his cane on the ground like the first instance of him changing time although now the reality jumps ahead to the moment where you and your present ex were in the storage closet together. It was on this night that the birthday boy had mustered up the courage to make a move on his best friend’s sister. He had been dying for a spare moment alone with you, finally ready to cut the dense, sexual tension; whereas you were looking for the toolbox containing the only pair of scissors to open his presents.

“I’m skipping to the juiciest part if that’s alright with you,” Haechan comments. Popcorn magically pops into his hands and he chews obnoxiously as the action begins. He snaps his fingers and the insufferable show commences at 9:48 p.m. on the dot.

…..

Jaemin’s undeniably beautiful face was dangerously close to yours. Sirens went off in your head. You envisioned emergency lights strobing inside the cramped cabin. The warning signs rang loud and clear and you couldn’t locate any glowing, red escape exits.

But who even said you wanted to escape? You didn’t need, nor did you want, saving. And that was the problem.

You should have been doing everything in your power to remove yourself from the situation. Jaemin was your brother’s best friend. He was given explicit orders to steer clear of you; granted, that was a blanket warning for all his friends over 5 years ago and Jeno didn’t single him out, it still kind of applies, right? If anything, it would be worse to find Jaemin in violation of his wishes than the others. There was no question about whether Jeno would be angrier if he was the one to lay a single finger on you. But right then, as his eyes slowly fell to your lips, every ounce of your willpower plummeted to the ocean floor below the storage closet on the boat.

To hell with Jeno’s stupid ultimatum. Just give into lust already.

…

“Damn, you ‘eally thought tha’? Wha’ uh coincidence you said ‘ell, righ’?” Haechan mumbles, munching on a huge bite of buttery popcorn while the memory plays out. You’re aware that he's trying to provoke you but just because you’re aware of his intentions, doesn’t mean you can stop yourself from falling for the bait.

…

“Jaemin… ” you whispered just as his hand slid up the base of your neck and guided your mouth to meet his. You mindlessly reached up to the dusty shelf overhead and placed the long, metal scissors next to the toolbox you found them in. You couldn’t care less about opening the birthday boy’s presents at this point. Your core tightly clenched around nothing as the familiar fluttering kindles the insatiable heat that you had been feeling around him for years.

Jaemin was like cotton candy- when it first meets your lips, it’s flavorless. It takes a second to sink in that what you’re tasting is more than just fluff. It's real and never in your entire life have you tasted something so sweet. He kissed you tenderly for what felt like an eternity before his mouth grew greedy for more. You threw your arms around his neck when his hands dropped to grip your hips.

“Baby, I’ve waited so long for this,” he spilled shamelessly against your lips.

In the heat of the moment, he lifted you up to sit on a tall crate nearest to the door. Your party dress rode up as he slotted himself between your thighs. You parted your lips for his eager tongue to slip inside, moaning into his mouth. Feeling his hard-on rub against your panties brought the new exposure to your attention. If he wasn’t wearing pants himself, you’re sure he would have felt the sticky slick seeping through them.

You pulled out of the kiss with a worried expression on your face. “Jaemin, wait. I’m going to stain your pants.”

He looked down to where a small wet patch had formed over his crotch and quietly laughed. “Aw, baby...” His hands roamed down to squeeze your mid-thighs. Hauling your body to the very edge, he kneeled to place a single kiss over the flimsy, damp material. You twitched at the slightest pressure, aching to be touched by Jaemin in that very spot. The cherried smile on his lips fell as he stood back up. He leaned in real close to you with a wild look in his eyes “… I don’t fucking care.”

When Jaemin’s mouth crashed into yours, it was like cotton candy all over again.

This is happening, you thought.

Your brother and his friends could be standing directly outside the door and this is happening. You didn’t even consider the fact that he was going to have to go out there and rejoin the celebration in his name wearing the same pants printed with your cum. In your defense though, he was the reason you were wet in the first place, so whose fault was it really?

Jaemin hooked a finger under the waistband of your pesky article of clothing. “Can I-”

“Yes, please,” you answered breathlessly.

…

Haechan nudges your side when he notices you cover your eyes. “Hey, come on! Move your hands, sweetheart. You’re missing all the action!”

…

“Hmm, so needy.” You drew in a sudden breath of air when his fingers rimmed your entrance, slipping inside you five seconds later and curling up to massage your buzzing spot. “I didn’t picture you’d be so needy for me.”

“What did you p-picture doing to me?”

“Baby, I pictured myself doing everything to you. Things like this-” Jaemin’s mouth connected with your clit, providing your body with that tight sensation that made your toes curl. His free hand tugged the top of your dress down to reveal your breasts; Jaemin went back and forth between tweaking your nipples and kneading your chest aggressively.

…

Your hands don’t budge, remaining on your eyes despite Haechan’s order. The blatant defiance leads him to dismiss his magical popcorn with the wave of a hand. He loops his cane around you, dragging you back to meet his front side, and securing your body to his. You instinctively grab the cane caging you in, both hands clasped over his.

To be clear, Haechan didn’t mean for it to happen like this. Admittedly, he did imagine you naked, tied up and powerless the first time he saw you last week but he had no intention to act on it. He contemplated whether taking you home, fastening you to his special wall, and using an endless amount of toys on you would be unprofessional; but then it hit him… he’s the devil. To think any rules or mandates can hold him back is laughable.

Besides, he had been hearing your thoughts all night: you’d “do nearly anything to get fucked as good as Jaemin could fuck you but seriously doubt there’s a single person on earth who would be able to do that.”

And maybe you’re probably right; maybe there truly isn’t a single person on earth who could make you feel as good as Jaemin; but lucky for you, that statement doesn’t exactly apply to Haechan. Plus he can’t put his incessant competitiveness to rest at the moment; all he wants to do is prove to you he can fuck you better than Jaemin ever could in his dreams; and that’s exactly what he plans on doing.

For some reason, you didn’t think it was possible for someone like Haechan to have the capacity for arousal. Your mind goes blank for a handful of moments finding that your rationale regarding the devil falls short. Feeling his stiff erection pressing against your ass, your eyes flutter closed. It immediately occurs to you that you’ve never been with someone as large as Haechan. You hum, turned on by his size and sexually deprived for weeks now.

“Feels good, huh?” the Devil tempts.

“Yesss,” you hiss, heat vibrating through your body.

You don’t know how to describe it. There’s no other explanation than it’s simply another compulsive rush of hysterical lust flooding your bloodstream. The lust you felt with Jaemin grew stronger overtime; but the glowing yearning with your ex was distinctly different from the nearly instant lust you possessed for the fallen angel. There’s a possibility that it’s because you used to have sex with Jaemin all the time and since the break up, you haven’t been filled, but you want Haechan so badly that it almost hurts. Throwing all caution to the wind and ignoring hundreds upon hundreds of red flags waving before your eyes, you give into the striking lust for a second time.

Lolling your head to the side, you give Haechan’s tongue access to your neck. He licks a strip up your neck, anchoring his mouth to the spot below your ear. Grinding against Haechan and focusing on the present-time arousal is distracting enough to miss the hot moments that led up to Jaemin’s first thrust into your opening. The buzzing captivates every ounce of your consciousness at the moment.

“H-haechan,” you call out as he repeats some of the same actions Jaemin did to your body over the summer. His fingers slipping in the front of your pants and diving straight into your wetness. He sets his cane on another box and spins you around, ripping the costume cape off your neck with plans to bend you over another stack of steady, wooden crates piled as tall as your waist. You undue the front button of your jeans and the zipper for him to easily shimmy your pants and panties halfway down your legs. Haechan has to help you unhook the thin threads of your long sleeved shirt that get snagged on your earring as you try to wrangle it over your head. You lay your shirt down on the wooden surface under your chest and bend over as soon as possible, folding your arms under your head and perking your ass up.

“Look at this little slut we have here,” Haechan snickers after your hurried undressing. “Jaemin’s right, you really are needy.”

You whine in protest. “I’m not a slut.”

Haechan gets on his knees for a closer look at your slit. “Y/n, you’re so wet, you’re dripping on your pants. Don’t you feel that?” You twitch when his fingertips part your wet folds. This time you do feel arousal leak out of you and trickle below just like he said. He blows cool air on your exposed parts, making you quiver. Doing it again, he takes a mental snapshot of your core pinching together compulsively as more sticky cum is squeezed out from your opening. “Seriously, you’re making such a mess, y/n. What a fucking whore.”

Haechan doesn’t spare a second to hear your weak objection before his mouth is slurping your juices. Eating you out savagely, his hands remained where they were, holding your lips wide open. You twist your neck to the side, bearing retrospective witness to Jaemin roughly pounding into you two feet away. Surveying the sex act from a different perspective is satisfying in an entirely different way than the one you had months ago. He’s holding you underneath him basically within an arm's length away. It’s probably in your imagination but seeing it happen like this has you feeling nearly twice the amount of pleasure with the devil tongue fucking you simultaneously as your ex boyfriend pleasured you too.

Come to think of it, it’s difficult to grapple with the reality of this situation and whether this whole thing is in your mind or not. What if this is another part of the crazy dream/flashback inception from earlier?

It’s an outlandish scenario for the Devil to show up on halloween, threaten your life, transport you to not only a different place on earth but a different place in time, watch you and Jaemin fuck and then get you naked. There’s also a strong likelihood you and Haechan will do the same exact dirty deed as is demonstrated next to you.

There’s no way on earth this is real.

The owner of the expert tongue petting your folds stops what he’s doing and gets to his feet. “Oh, baby, it’s real alright,” he says, reading your mind. He stands right side up and steps in front of your line of sight, partially blocking the show. “But even if this isn’t real… don’t you want to do the ‘same exact dirty deed’ with me? Yes or No.”

“I- yes. I want it with you,” you confirm with certainty. You lift your chest off of the crate to turn around and face him. Your jeans are still only lowered to your knees and you have to waddle a bit to fully make the rotation.

Haechan grabs your jaw and licks along your bottom lip. “That’s what I thought, slut,” he whispers sinisterly.

He smashes your lips together with haste like he’s the one in a hurry now, wasting no time to penetrate the seam of your lips. Whereas Jaemin was cotton candy, you consider Haechan to be sour candy pop rocks. If you had to put it into words how his kisses felt, you would say your mouth is fizzing with tiny, thrilling electric shocks radiating from your jaw to your fingertips. If by chance fireworks had a flavor, that’s what Haechan would taste like.

His hand slips down from your jaw to your throat, mildly choking you before going all out like he intends to do to your body. “You think you can take all of me, y/n?”

“I can take it, I know I can take it,” your lust compels you to cry without a second thought. You cling onto the black front flaps of his leather jacket desperately. “Haechan, please.”

“If you say so, sweetheart.” He snaps his fingers and both of your bodies are instantly naked; not only that, but your hands are handcuffed behind your back. Haechan’s hand pushes you flat to the crate, bending you over again for his personal use. He swipes his fingers straight through your slit one time, collecting some of your dripping cum in his hand, and jerking himself off for a moment. His slick cock prods your opening, forcing you to take deep breaths in preparation for the stinging stretch you know is coming. “Remember you asked for this.”

You nod timidly before he pushes his thick cock inside you. Haechan is so much bigger than Jaemin but he takes you at an unexpectedly slower pace than you imagined someone as demonic like him would treat you to. He licks his lips hearing you whimper as he plunges deeper, reaching spots inside you that have never been touched by any man or sex toy of yours in reality. You snivel, feeling fortunate enough to have worn waterproof mascara tonight when a few tears trail down your cheeks from the throbbing pain of your walls spreading wider.

“Aww, you’re doing so well, baby,” Haechan coos, petting your head. “Giving me such pretty tears too.”

You’re on the brink of fully taking his cock inside you when he gets stuck and can’t push any further into your tightness. He stills, patiently waiting for you to accommodate his size. Drastically uncharacteristic of him, he opts to treat you delicately before blowing your mind. He’ll make you suffer with the utmost devastating alternative very soon. In the meantime, you two watch your past self moaning out Jaemin’s name while he repeatedly pumped his whole length inside you with much greater ease.

…

“I thought about this all night, y/n,” Jaemin huffed. “And after we cut my cake, I watched you lick up your fork for the remainder of the frosting on your plate over and over again.”

“Hah, J-Jaemin, I did that on purpose. I knew you were staring at me. You didn’t exactly try to hide it,” you teased, biting your bottom lip.

He dug his fingers into the sides of your lower thighs. “How long have you known? How long have you known I wanted you?”

“I think it was t-two weeks after we met,” you panted. “I’m seriously surprised J-Jeno didn’t notice you basically undressing me with your eyes all the fucking time.”

He lifted your legs up higher, incredibly improving the angle in which he was pummeling into you. “You know what? I’m glad you knew.” Looking down at your face with a dark expression that cranked up the tense, contracting muscles inside your core. “What about me jerking off to you every night, huh? Did you play with yourself and picture me fucking you and making you come all night?”

“Yesss,” you struggled to moan as he started rubbing your clit. “I thought about it every night.” You were close to your climax by that point. All you needed was another minute of Jaemin fucking you as hard as he possibly could before you’d burst back then.

…

Considering how large Haechan is, the biting pain of nearly being stuffed full subsides fairly quickly. “Keep… going,” you wheeze over a minute later, eager for the rest of him to push past your aching opening. “I can take it, I promise.”

“I know you can, sweetie,” the Devil remarks in a sweet tone, calmly rubbing your ass a handful of times. He rips a sharp cry from your throat when he harshly smacks your unsuspecting skin. “I know you can.”

He sinks his cock inside you in one swift motion. Haechan’s jaw rarely drops, perhaps being witness to an event that warrants such amazement every half millennia or so. But watching your throbbing, tight hole fully swallow his big cock is one of those special exceptions. His pelvis presses into your ass and he takes a moment to savor the feeling of being completely snug inside you. The stinging pain forces you whimper, but the involuntary response is mostly derived from pleasure rather than pain. He fills you up like you’ve never been filled before, hitting your deepest, most sensitive spots easily.

Your eyes flick to where Jaemin’s cock was disappearing inside you in August, fixating on your past self’s climax and how her face scrunched up.

“I remember how good that felt,” you breathe out. You see her scramble off the box once she came down from the hazy high that your ex had caused and get on her knees. You had opened your mouth, taking his cock past your swollen lips and hummed around the base. Jaemin chewed on the inside of his cheek as you readily invited him down your throat.

Actually, come to think of it, you draw a blank reflecting on how Jaemin looked when he came back then. You spend a majority of your brain power on trying to remember what happened next after the show instead of getting fucked nice and deep like you should be.

What little was left of Haechan’s soft side bows out for the night. You squeal as he wraps his arms around your torso and pulls you flat against his warm chest out of nowhere. While your worn out, trembling body has developed a shear layer of sweat, his honey skin is perfectly dry. He snaps his fingers, stopping time on the summer memory.

Haechan slowly slides out of you only to ram his large cock back inside. “Pay attention to me and me only, got it?” he sternly orders.

There’s something about his strict tone that turns you on even more and you can feel yourself growing wetter. It's another one of those unexplainable sensations to add to the list of many others from tonight. “I’m- I’m all yours,” you sob.

“All mine? Ha, I like the sound of that,” he huffs cockily.

His rhythm mirrors that of the first powerful one, nice and steady at the start. Every snap of his hips has a forceful drive behind them, extracting strained noises from your gaping mouth. Haechan snakes one hand around your neck, clamping onto the sides of your throat and yanking you back like he did two minutes ago while his other hand tightly grips your waist.

He diligently defiles and chokes you like this for dozens of moments before checking on what you can really handle. “How you feeling, baby? Too much for you to handle?”

“No, it-it’s perfect,” you wheeze. “Haechan, you’re perfect.”

“I’d say this pretty little pussy of yours is perfect too.” He releases your throat and you gasp, filling your lungs with a greater quantity of oxygen than what you had been forced to get by with. You’re slightly disappointed that he let go of your throat because, to your surprise, you like being choked by Haechan. You earn another harsh blow to your ass when you don’t respond to the compliment. “This is where you’re supposed to say thank you to me, you whore.”

“T-thank you, Haechan,” you manage to reply.

“What a very good girl you are, y/n.” Another slightly lighter spank lands on your stinging skin. “And you’re so welcome.”

Abandoning the steady, slower pace for something more his style, he runs his hands up your back and secures them to your shoulders. He clutches your skin so hard that you might believe he has talons. Haechan uses your shoulders as leverage to control how fast he pummels into you, rocking in and out of your melting entrance skillfully.

10% of your mind is ponders several questions about this supposedly “present” affair happening at the moment:

Assuming he is the devil, you wonder what practice he has with this sort of thing. Being that he’s obviously thoroughly experienced and a clearly a master of his sexual craft, how often does he fuck mortals?

of every mortal who has undoubtedly sinned, why you?

and last but certainly not least, why do you like this so much? Is it the exciting oddity in relation to seeing Jaemin and you of the past, the desperate persistent sexual frustration from being deprived of daily sex like before, or the extremity of Haechan defiling you?

No matter what you’re thinking, the devil can easily fish any thought out of yours out of your mind. “I answered that second question already, y/n. Did you hit your head and forget already?” he torments you, running his hands down your arched back, anchoring them to your love handles instead. “Firstly, of all my trips to earth, something like this happens maybe once in a thousand blue moons.”

“Something like this?” you ask. You’re hyper aware now that he can read your mind but your curiosity urges you to forsake the limited supply of air in your burning lungs for answers.

“Something likkkee giving it to a mortal, you know? Rough and hard and dirty. I like it like that.”

“God, but you’re just so fucking good at-”

“Argh… he - has - nothing - to - do - with - this, you fucking slut.” The rapacious individual slams into your center with brutal force between each pointed word of his.

“I’m s-sorry,” you babble.

Haechan wraps his hands around your torso again; this time aggressively squeezing your breasts and tweaking your nipples for a few moments. “It’s okay, baby, I forgive you.”

He sinks himself into you, holding your body down and completely dominating you in every way for an immeasurable period. He snaps his fingers, making the handcuffs vanish. Sensing the pressure building within your body, he determines that this is the ideal time to pull out of your buzzing core.

You whine, feeling empty and rejected. “Why did you- AH!” Haechan hastily grabs your body, spinning you around and lifting you up by your thighs onto the crate. Your legs are spread similarly to your past self’s legs were but this crate is pressed to a wall, giving you a surface to lean on behind you.

“Sweetheart, I wanna see your face when I make you come,” he says in a spine chilling, lustful voice. Giving you no time for a response, the devil winds his arms under your thighs, prying your legs apart more and buries his cock inside you recklessly. “You like it when I choke you, right sweetheart?”

You only nod twice before his hand is wrapped around your throat again. He secures you to the wall behind you, almost like the thud against the shed you did to yourself earlier in the night but now there’s a different reason your lungs are strained for air. He squeezes the sides of your throat tightly, smirking when you hum in pleasure from not only being filled up repeatedly by Haechan but also being choked against the wall just as you craved. “You like that, you dirty whore? Like it when I squeeze and choke you real hard?”

“Yes,” you rasp, barely nodding your head.

Haechan heaves your legs higher over his shoulders, happy to indulge your desires and snickering at your wasted expression. “Ha, if only you could see your face now, it’s adorable.”

Pumping in and out of you, he beats your g spot with a hard rushing pressure that goes directly to your throbbing core. You’re a goner once his fingers begin to circle your clit aggressively, the tense sensation edging your body closer to swirling down the drain to climax.

“Feel good, sweetheart?” he teases, knowing your answer from the choked pleasured moans that vibrate in your throat, your glowing facial expressions, the way your body twitches, and being able to read your thoughts. The devil just wanted to hear the tremor in your voice.

“Mhmm, y-yeah,” you whimper.

You feel the inner, pinching tingles trickle through your muscles, up your legs over his shoulders, to the tips of your fingers that are holding on for dear life to the edge of the crate for stability while Haechan vigorously stretches your walls, and up your spine to your head that is currently pressed against the storage closet wall. The intense aching that ties knots deep inside your core, winding up with an exhilaration that you’ve never experienced prior to this moment. You wish you could suppress it though; it’s a pipedream but you fantasize about holding out as long as he can.

“Sweetheart, just come for me already, I know you want to,” Haechan tempts you with glossy, twisted eyes, picking up the pace of his thrusts, and rapidly stimulating your clit. “Nothing would make me happier than to see you come on cock right now… Don’t you want to make me happy?”

You squeeze your eyes shut as the white hot flash shoots through your spasming body, engulfed in raging pressure that makes you feel like you’re levitating. Haechan accelerates his stimulation through your climax to elongate the euphoric high. Clenching around Haechan’s cock tightly coaxes a low moan from his pink parted lips, the satisfaction in his capabilities turning him on even more. He releases your throat and switches gears, focusing on his own climax next.

With tremendous stamina, he roughly fucks you for what feels like hours and you take everything he gives you graciously. A minute away from coming inside you, he groans, “Baby, you were so perfect to use for the night. And who knows… maybe, sometime in the future, we can do it all over again.”

Your mind is too far away to process his comment, drifting off into the hazy clouds and transcending reality out of pleasure. The feeling compels your senses to fade into thin air. Your eyes flutter closed, on the brink of letting life slip away entirely.

Haechan roughly spanks your thigh to grab your attention, snatching your consciousness away from crossing the line and giving up control of your body. “No blacking out on me, you got it? Baby, you’re gonna feel every single second of me filling up your pretty cunt with my cum right now.”

“I got it,” you sob, feeling Haechan’s cum unload inside you. When he pulls out you try to hold it in tightly but it dribbles to the floor regardless of your efforts. You slide off the crate and slump to the floor, breathing heavily and seeing stars swirling around the room. Your fingertips gingerly touch your puffy slit, triggering your body to twitch.

“So… did you have fun, yn?”

You nod lazily. Haechan spends a few wordless minutes with you on the ground before snapping his fingers again, making you both fully clothed like nothing happened. “I hope you like my cum inside you, yn, because you’re stuck with it for now.” He’s right, you can feel it leaking through your panties and into the material of your pants already. Helping you up, he pecks your lips with a cheeky smile. “I’m glad we both got what we wanted.”

“Which is?” you question skeptically.

“Am I wrong in thinking that you wanted to be fucked better than Jaemin ever could?”

You bite your lip, mentally acknowledging the truth in his assumption.

“Exactly,” he continues, avoiding eye contact with you. “But, sadly, it’s time for us to move on to the main main event.”

The earth-shattering affliction kicked off at the top of the hour. To his surprise, the demonic anthropologist feels relatively sorry for you. But no amount of emotions will alter his course. Haechan has a job to do. He is the devil, afterall. He snaps his finger to the moment Jeno busted in on you and Jaemin.

You were on your knees, giving Jaemin the best head of his life, while he was on the verge of shooting his cum down your throat. You and him jumped up, rushing to cover up and get decent in front of him. Jeno’s angry eyes burned holes in your now ex boyfriend, his eyes not leaving Jaemin’s face for a single second before his emotions boiled over.

It wasn’t even so much that you and Jaemin had gotten together. It was that Jaemin did it behind his back, trying to hide it. Jeno isn’t dumb. He noticed the way Jaemin had been looking at you for the longest time and was waiting for the day when Jaemin finally brought it up. He wasn’t trying to be your walking-talking chastity belt necessarily, he just wanted there to be transparency in your friend group, especially between the two people that meant the most to him. He didn’t mean for things to get so messy. All he wanted in the first place was honesty.

…..

“Argh! You were my fucking-” Jeno threw a punch at Jaemin, chipping his eye with a vengeful fist. “-best friend.” The ferocious blow knocked him into the box. Jaemin’s body slid to the floor, deep violet bubbling to the surface around his eye.

As the boat rode over a massive wave, the metal, industrial grade scissors you had set on the shelf next to the tool box clattered on the floor. You lept into action crouching by his side and snatching the potential weapon that had been a mere centimeter away from impaling Jaemin’s hand.

You whipped around to verbally berate Jeno’s violent retaliation, and it was at this very second that Jeno launched himself at the injured person he once called his best friend.

Instead of an exchange of angry words you planned, the sharp scissors sliced through your brother’s skin and into his gut. Jeno sank to his knees before crumbling to the ground. Within the drop of a hat, seething red splotches were staining the fabric over his stomach.

…..

You choke on a sob much like your brother did when he tore the long tool out from his body, yours being of a higher pitch and his with a greater degree of pain.

…..

Jaemin grabbed the shirt he was wearing before you threw it on the ground. The med student rolled Jeno onto his back, using it as a compress over the stab wound while you uselessly sat there in horror. Looking to you frantically, he jerked his head to the makeshift towel. “Get over here, y/n! Keep pressure right there and I’ll go get help and the first aid kit!”

You crawled over to takeover the roll Jaemin was better at. He was out the door and down the hall by the time it occurred to you that he should’ve stayed behind instead. Maybe he knew that you wouldn’t be able to stand on two feet and made the split second decision based on your obvious incapability. Either that or he had terrible judgement in trusting you to be helpful with essentially every task imaginable.

…..

There has never been a time in which you’ve seen so much blood.

“Wait a minute, y/n, you know that’s not true. You’re watching you watching this much blood because you stabbed your brother,” Haechan points out in a grim tone. “Stop lying to yourself… lying is a sin, remember?”

You wish that the damp shirt in your hands was soaked in red wine as if you had spilled the expensive bottle by Jeno’s head and made a simple mistake. But no amount of wishing could rectify your fatal mistake and in the eyes of the universe, the price of taking your own brother’s life must be paid in blood, whether it be deliberate or not.

…..

Sorrow and betrayal lingered in Jeno’s eyes. The light within them, flickering and fighting for life, glossed over into an empty darkness. You look on with the heaviest of hearts as he succumbed to the accidental injury of your doing. Taking Jeno into your arms was the exact beat the storm’s crescendo struck its cord, tipping your family’s vessel over into the ocean. The tool box fell off the shelf from above and hit your head, knocking you unconscious. You see a similar pool of blood flow from your head as well.

…..

“No…no… no!” you scream as the storage closet filled with water. You knew the boat capsized that night but it hits you that not remembering what led up to it wasn’t your mind coping with a traumatic event by burying it in your mind. And you wish you could forget the ultimate bloody truth permanently.

The phoney funeral etiquette you put on months ago felt wrong at the time and you couldn’t figure out why. You had talked it over with Jaemin a handful of times, desperately trying to convey that the feeling in your gut was worse than survivors' guilt he carried. Of course, Jaemin knew why you felt that way, but he swore on his own life that he wouldn’t reveal the truth to you. In his eyes, it was a blessing from above that you were hit with that toolbox but the downside of your ignorance was that you didn’t know the weight he carried on his shoulders. To inherit the role of protector only for you to break up with him hurt in a way that Jaemin couldn’t put into words.

The poor judgement skills of drunkenness are the sole reason he was hooking up with that girl tonight. Yet inebriated or not, he would still carry the weight because he pledged to take the secret to his grave, shielding you from the paralyzing emotions compartmentalized in your mind. He never dreamed that it would be so devastating though.

It’s a murderous, grim guilt that seeped into your skin while the boat sank speedily, the feeling of the murky ocean water polluted by Jeno’s blood, engulfing the cabin and turning your skin pruney. You watch Jaemin swim in at the very last second, saving your incapacitated body from drowning within the nick of time before you were dragged down with the sinking vessel just as your brother’s dead body was.

The Devil sternly taps his cane against the floated floor twice, at last returning you to the lonely backyard. Every detail, down to the dew drops clinging to their respective yellowed blades of grass on the lawn, is exactly how you left it. The few chairs that have yet to be transported down the cold cement are propped up against the shed. The muffled, thumping music of the halloween party can still be heard playing through the concrete and plaster walls. The neighborhood streets, corresponding sidewalks and front porches once bustling with rowdy trick or treaters much earlier in the evening are vacant.

He knows from past experience that you’re too stunned by the revelation to comprehend any conversation. The hungry guilt he sadly awakened within you had an appetite for self loathing and it would indeed be fed against your will.

“So… do you think you deserve to go to hell?” he questions after gifting you with 10 solid minutes to collect your scattered thoughts.

“t-this can’t be true… I would never-”

“Then what do you think happened, hm? Explain to me what went down that night and what happened after Jaemin fucked you?” he inserted softly.

In a perfect world, you would know how to answer the devil. You would know how to advocate for your past self, authoring the most scrupulous and incontestable defense the world has ever known. It would be persuasive enough to get you off the hook and wipe your afterlife record clean of the bloody crime you may or may not have committed months ago. But this isn’t a perfect world. And the only sound in your mind is a constant offkey note playing over the blaring white noise of uncertainty, almost like a lost locomotive whistle, driving your train of thought into the ground.

“y/n?” he repeats, waving a hand in front of your face.

“If I was the one who killed Jeno, I would-” You clear your throat and stand up as straight as you can manage, hoping to appear collected and stable. “-I wouldn’t deserve to go to hell. Even if I killed-”

Haechan slips his hand into yours and squeezes it. “There’s no ‘if’ here, y/n. Please, just accept it.”

You swallow thickly as the waterworks creep up on you. “I k-killed Jeno but I didn’t mean to. Never in a million years would I have wanted to hurt him. I loved him so fucking much and… honestly, I feel like a part of me died when he died.”

Haechan’s neck rolls back, looking to the glittering stars much like you did before, deep in thought about your fate. “Is that good enough? Am I still going to hell?”

His captivating eyes hold yours hostage. “I don’t know what to tell you, y/n. It wouldn’t be fair to take into consideration what we did together. And after everything I’ve seen tonight about what really happened in your life, well… you gave into lust with Jaemin and you killed Jeno.” Haechan caresses your cheek. You tuck your lips together, pinching your eyes shut in a desperate attempt to put a cap on the never ending supply of devastated tears streaming down your face. “I’m sorry for all this. I truly believe you when you say you never wanted to hurt your brother…” The devil pauses, gently wiping away a few of your tears with his thumb. “... but it doesn’t matter.”

“Why? Why doesn’t it matter?” you ask. Your weak voice cracks in between the heartbroken words that spill from your mouth.

“Sweetheart, blood is thicker than water, and actions speak louder than words… and what you did was loud enough to call me here.” Haechan lets out a heavy, sympathetic sigh as the shadow of his own guilt is threaded throughout his tone. “And that’s the reason you drowned with your brother that night.”

Within the blink of an eye, Haechan is gone, disappearing into the dark night with which he came from. You look down at your hands and scream, seeing your pruney skin covered in blood. Squeezing your eyes shut, you try to rationalize this situation.

If this was all a dream you would have woken up by now, right? So you’re not dreaming. And if this was hell, why would you be back at the party? Exactly, so you’re not in hell. Hell wouldn’t be a halloween party, obviously.

The blood is an allusion to torment you, just like the cum seeping from your panties and dripping down the inside of your thighs is imaginary too. It's all an allusion.

And Haechan must have said you drowned to mess with your head. Just a simple little prank from him. That was the punishment you got and nothing more. You wipe off whatever wet liquid might be on your hands on your cape, still keeping your eyes closed just in case your hands were red with guilt that you weren't ready to acknowledge just yet.

It’s fine. It’s perfectly fine. It’s more than perfectly fine. Nothing in the history of anything, even in a perfect world, has ever been more fine.

Maybe if you keep telling yourself that, someday you’ll believe it. Because serenity is a delicacy you can’t afford if you owe your life to the Devil.

That is, if you’re even alive anymore…

taglist: @sunshinedhyuck, @fishjellyyt, @injunsweetheart, @sunshinedhyuck, @fishjellyyt, @ningningsworlds, @aedreamzy, @daegalfangirl, @keemburley, @nominsgirl, @bockhyun, @daegalfangirl, @xuzixushi

(highly recommend The Haunting of Hill House btw!! both the netflix show and the novel!)

okay time to address the elephant in the room: my collab slot was for jaemin but somehow, in the middle of drafting up the plot, haechan got involved bc i didn’t want jaemin to be the devil ?? idk idk. the only explanation i have for you is that i have a severe case of sunfloweritus…

thank you for reading !! and i really hope you didn’t see the twist ending!

➾my masterlist

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linkemon · 3 years

Text

Keith Kogane x Reader (selfship)

Selfship made for Patimiet on Wattpad.

Friendly reminder that English is not my first languge. You can check my Masterlists both in English and Polish here.

Selfship takes place somewhere around Season 2. I have to point it out, otherwise some information will no longer make sense.

☆ Keith has never been too open to people. You had to put in a lot of work and patience to get to him. You often had shy conversations interrupted by periods of silence. It was, however, a comfortable silence, not disturbing either of you.

☆ Team Voltron immediately realized that your relationship is changing. On the other hand, you had trouble noticing each other feelings.

Shiro was the first person to discover that something was up. It is him who Kogane comes first to for advice on how to talk to you.

☆ The boy is very shy despite his courage. Because of this, it was difficult for him to admit that he liked you.

He swallowed his pride and asked Lance for help. The poor man thought that this seducer would be useful to him at least once. So he put on a face mask and ran to get the flowers. He practiced the pick-up lines that the Blue Paladin had taught him for a long time in front of the mirror. Ultimately, however, he forgot everything. He stood in front of you, stuttering. He avoided eye contact and blushed all over. In one breath he asked if you would go out on a date with him. He was relieved when you agreed.

☆ Keith takes you on rides with the Red Lion. He flew cautiously at first, but now he often does tricks to show off to you.

☆ He dislikes crowded places. Dates with him are a rather relaxed way of spending time. For example: walks or watching strange, Altean comedies on the TV that Pidge fixed.

☆ You fully supported him when he found out that he had the blood of Galra in his veins. He is very grateful for that.

His background makes him ignore certain things. Your appearance does not matter to him. It also doesn't matter if you are losing/gaining weight, wear/don't wear makeup, like/dislike dressing up. He will always look inside your soul first of all, because he knows you did the same for him.

☆ Keith thinks that actions speak louder than words. It has always been like this. So he has trouble with saying: I love you. Expressing his feelings is a difficult topic for him.

☆ You rarely show your feelings physically. Especially at the beginning of your relationship.

Instead, you do small, seemingly invisible things for each other: cook extra portions of food, take a seat on the couch for other person, keep a unified front in discussions and help each other win food battles against the rest of the team.

☆ Keith is very concerned about your safety. As a child, he lost his family and then Shiro for a long time, which took its toll on him. He wants to be with you at all costs on all the missions in which you take part. So much that he argues with the rest of the team about it. He always checks if you are not hurt after the mission. He panics if anything is happening to you. He will cut his way among enemies to you, no matter what. If the wound is bad, he carries you in bridal style to the healing pod as fast as he can. If he could, he would spend all the time by your side. So much so that he forgets to eat and sleep. Shiro must emphatically remind him to take care of himself.

☆ He is a better listener than speaker. He likes it when you tell him about your passions and interests. He always memorizes seemingly imperceptible little things and then uses them to please you.

☆ Keith was jealous of Lance. With time, however, he noticed that you weren't interested in his flirting, so he let you convince him to let it go.

☆ Kogane is very uncertain about your future. After all, you are at war, in a galaxy far away from Earth. It can make him distance himself from time to time. He thinks that would be better for you. He does not want you to suffer if one day he is gone. So you have to remind him of your love.

When his sorrows go aside, he will begin to make the first, timid plans with you for a future.

#keith kogane x reader #keith kogane #voltron x reader #voltron #shiro #lance mcclain #shirogane takashi #pidge gunderson

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mouthfulloftoothpasterry · 3 years

Text

The birth of Lavender Styles

Summary: Y/n gives birth to their new baby girl

warnings/ disclaimers: child birth, breast feeding, disclaimer (ages)

Y/n had noticed her contractions about two hours ago, she was sitting with Forest, playing with his ABC blocks when she noticed it. It was familiar- at least familiar to her two other pregnancies. She wasn't scared, she was calm, she just looked over toward Harry and gave him a small nod. She had already done this twice before, going through a particularly rough birth with her first one so she felt like there was nothing she couldn't do at this point- childbirth wise.

That look was all Harry needed to be well clingy. Ever since he had gotten that look he's been by her side. Her contractions were only lasting around 60 seconds and about 15 minutes apart, but Harry still held her through every single one and praised her for carrying yet another child of theirs, praising her body for being able to grow such beautiful babies. Violet and Forest were a little confused (and scared) as to why their mumma looked like she was in pain or a little frustrated every so often, but they continued to play when she had her little episodes- not wanting to startle her.

About an hour in, Harry had started to get worried, her contractions were getting worse and she was so uncomfortable. “My love, should I call over the midwife? I can see you are so uncomfortable, it hurts to see you like this.” Harry confesses, sitting behind Y/n, legs on either side of her, his hands rubbing her bump up and down. Y/n shakes her head, of course being stubborn. It was her first at-home birth and water birth, it was a bit of an unusual choice but they wanted to try it out before they were (possibly) done having babies. They have always wanted to welcome one of their little ones into the world all while they were still in the confines of their cottage but Y/n was never confident enough to do it.

“No, I'm fine.” she says, trying to verbally sway her husband into believing that she really was okay to wait it out a bit longer. Harry shakes his head, pulling her hair into a bun with a hair tie he had cuffed around his inked wrist for times like this in her pregnancy when she wasn't feeling the best. “Honey, you can't just sit in pain.” Harry sighs, trying to compromise with his very pregnant wife. Y/n nods, her head bowing down while she grips his hands. Harry smiles, kissing her shoulder, “Thank you, now let me call the midwife and doula. You relax, please,” Harry stresses, wiping the sweat that has collected on his own forehead from stressing. He pulls his leg up, preparing to stand up and call the little team they had set for the birth but Y/n stops him, resting her hand on his knee. “What? What is it, honeysuckle?” Harry fastly questions, his phone slipping from his hand and dropping on the couch cushion below him.

“Lets not invite them over just yet. I'm not ready.'' Harry sighs hearing his wife's words, nodding anyway. He just wants her comfortable and happy, he would give her the moon if he could.

“Please lay down then.” her contractions only getting worse from there, Harry eventually calling his mum over to watch the little ones while he deals with his wife. Anne watches over Violet and Forest, entertaining them with their many toys while their parents deal with their apparent stubborn youngest sibling.

Harry sighs, helping his pregnant lover up because she claimed she wanted to take a walk in the garden, look at her flowers, give the animals some love before she won't be able to see them for many days due to her being in with the new baby, also being exhausted, she knows her body is gonna be rundown after this. “You don’t have to do this, sweetpea.” Harry sighs for the millionth time today, helping Y/n up and wrapping an arm around her back. “Oh,” she says, her tone catching Harry's attention. “Hm?” Y/n laughs under her breath, catching his eyes with hers. “Maybe you should call them now.” Harry's browns pinch together, releasing an uneven breath. “Why?”

“Because my water just broke.”

That brings them to where they are now, Y/n and Harry in the birth pool, Harry once again sitting behind her, comforting her through everything. “I know you want to push but you can't, you're only five centimetres dilated. Halfway there!” The midwife says, only making Y/n groan, her head resting back on Harry's shoulder. Harry rests his cheek on the top of her head, he feels for her- he really does, and if he could have carried all three of their little ones he would have, but sadly he can't so he thanks her every day. “I'm so sorry, honey. God, I wish I could do something.” Harry shakily says, his voice quivering the slightest and his bottom lip jutting out in the slightest, but noticeable pout. “I hate that you're in pain.” Harry whimpers, nosing at the top of her head before kissing over it many times.

Y/n turns her head, catching her husband's eyes with hers. Y/n softly laughs when she sees her husband, giving him a peck before she rubs his stubbly cheek. “H, I'm okay. I've done this two other times. Everything is going to be okay.” She comforts Harry, the man nodding and quickly pulling himself together, feeling pathetic for having a little break down while his wife is literally about to give birth, she should be the one nearly crying- not him.

“Yeah,” Harry breathes out through his lips roughly, massaging her hips that are sunk under the warm water. Y/n sinks into his touch, her hands on her bump, rubbing over it almost trying to coax her out of there. The doula rubs at y/ns arm smiling, encouraging her and telling her she's doing great- but she isn't paying much attention, she's more focused on the main in her abdomen and wanting her little one out. “Come on already, baby” Y/n stresses, bringing her wet hand up to wipe at the sweat that has beaded at her hairline.

The process continues on slowly, the midwife continuing to check- the progress only being a half of a centimetres. Harry and Y/n both know it's only been a few hours but it's already been a long and hard (and stressful) day, their emotions are all over the place and Y/n and Harry's bodys are both going through it, of course mostly Y/n’s. “She will be here soon, sunshine. Dont stress about it, it's not good for her.” Harry whispers in her ear, holding a lemon printed glass up to her lips, periodically helping her drink a bit of water and letting her eat the ice chips that the midwife allowed her since she wasn't too far gone. She sucks from the straw, pulling away after a bit.

Harry can tell that she is starting to get frustrated, as much as she is trying to conceal it. He knows her like the back of his hand- she might snap soon and start crying and that's the last thing they need. “Hey, do you want the kids in here? Or maybe get in a different position? I know you're not comfortable, I just want you to be okay, honey.” Y/n shakily sighs, pushing a hand through her hair and shrugging.

Y/n is finally pushing. The midwife between her legs, guiding their new bundle of joy out. Harry is behind her, his arms wrapped around her, his lips over her cheeks and shoulders while he cheers her on. Then the doula outside of the birth pool, on her left, calming her and brushing her hair out of her eyes every time it flies out of her bun Harry had pulled up for her. “My god baby, you are doing amazing. Violet and Forest and going to be so excited to see you two.” Y/n breathes heavily as her head falls against his shoulder, smiling weakly at him. He places a kiss on her forehead letting his lips linger. She pushes again, her head lifting up while she tries to push out their little girl, her cheek read and hand squeezing harrys as hard as she can, growing frustrated with herself at how weak she feels, she just wants her out already.

“Dont get frustrated, honey. Everything is okay.” Harry coos into her ear, small tears starting to bead down his face. Y/n focuses on his words, closing her eyes and letting herself sink into her husband and relax for two second before she is in her birth haze again and in blinding pain trying to focus on getting their little one out. “Hey, hey, focus on getting her out. Take a minute to breathe. Everything is okay.” Their doula says, brushing her hair back, Y/n nodding and giving another hard push. “Her head is out!” the midwife announces, Harry smiling and looking down to peek at his baby. He lets out a soft silent sob when he sees her face for the first time, and even though she is covered in goo she is still one of the most gorgeous girls he has ever seen, his wife and Violet being the other ones. Y/ns cheeks are red and tears are running down her face, she's exhausted already and wishing she could push her out quicker.

“Give me a good push!” the midwife urges, making Y/n sob, tired. She gives the best push she can, the midwife maneuvering the shoulders out. Harry caresses her cheek, giving it a peck before the midwife motions for Harry to come down. “Please, comfort her.” Harry says softly to the doula, moving along in the water and meeting the midwife. The midwife directs him on what to do, telling him how to hold the baby and what exactly to do once she is fully out. “Okay, push one more time, sweetpea.” Harry says, looking up at his wife. Y/n nods, pushing one last time while Harry guides the baby out with the assistants of the midwife, their new baby now fully out, crying.

“Oh, she's beautiful, my love.” Harry smiles, holding his baby girl in his arms, cradling her to his bare chest while the midwife prepares to clean her, quickly pulling her from harry and wiping off the goo, washing off the little hair she had and cleaning out her ear, eyes, and mouth, then setting her bad in Harry's arms. “Isn't she just amazing.” Harry smiles, sitting next to his wife, preparing to cut the umbilical cord. He cuts it quickly, making sure it's cut well before kissing over her head. “Welcome to the word Lavender styles” Y/n coos, counting over her fingers and toes after placing a soft kiss on her foot.

The chaos of the house has died down, just the five members now in the house after Anne had spent a while visiting. “She's chunky isn't she?” Y/n weakly smiles, harry chuckling and nodding. Violet sitting between his legs and Forest laying on his mummas lap, the styles family tried, but happier than ever. “I was taken aback when i pulled her out, she's a healthy one.'' Harry smiles, his hand rubbing over his newborn's belly, kissing her chubby cheeks. Y/n smiles, giving her fat thigh a squeeze, “our little Lavender.” she coos, her eyes almost fluttering shut. Harry pouts, running a hand over the top of her head.

“Hey, why dont I make you something you eat, then you can go to sleep.” Y/n smiles, both her hand occupied with lulling Forest to sleep with soft scratches to his back and softly massaging Lavender's chunky thigh. “I've got to feed her.” Y/n reminds, she hast fed her yet- Harry has been a bit of a hog but she didn't mind, she loved seeing him and their babies together. “I'll go make you something sweet pea, you feed her.” Harry smiles, not taking no for an answer because he is already delicately placing her in Y/ns arms and taking Violet along with him to make something yummy.

Harry and Violet come back not too long after, Harry smiling widely as he carries a smoothie bowl with chia seeds, coconut shreds, honey, and berries over the top. Violet smiles the same smile as her daddy, carrying a big cup of water that Y/n is sure Harry made her carry with both hands and walk slowly back. “Is she eating well?” Harry asks, setting the bowl down on the bedside table before taking the cup from Violet, taking her and helping her on the bed. Y/n nods, Harry peeking at Lavender, watching as she opens her big round eyes making him chuckle, kissing her chubby cheeks. Harry sets on the bed softly so he doesn't disrupt the two or cause Y/n any more discomfort.

He collects a spoonful of the thick smoothie on the spoon, holding it to Y/ns mouth. “You're spoon feeding me?” Harry nods, nods verbally answering her because he knows if he does it would only open her up to object it even more. Y/n can't even deny it, she's weak, exhausted, emotionally and physically drained, so she of course opens up her mouth and lets him spoon feed her like he does their children. “Thank you for ever-” Harry shakes his head, instantly shushing her. “Thank you. You gave me my three beautiful children, I can never repay you. I dont know how you do it. I love you.” Harry says, smiling and pressing a kiss to her forehead, letting his lips rest there.

“I love you.”

Hiii!! sorry for any typos!! i checked over it a thousand times so please let me know if there are any and let me know your thoughts!! There are some more blurbs to come from Y/ns pregnancy so look out for that!! there is only one more part is the cottagecore!harry series but i will still write blurbs and whatnot about cottagecore!harry so he will not be forgotten!!! thank you all for reading and supporting me and being so kind!! i love you all sm<3

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