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honourablejester · 1 year

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Thoughts on Pacing and Emotions in Writing

Talking about horror lately, about different genres of horror and why they’re scary, what fears they’re evoking and how, have me thinking generally about some stuff about writing. About mood, about pacing, about pacing to create mood, and various other things. And I figured I’d take a bit of time to try and pull that jumble of thoughts out into something resembling coherence. So. We’ll see how that goes.

First, some knowledge going in, I’m very much a short-form writer. Between two and twenty thousand words is my bailiwick, usually, and I’m not good at longer forms, so your mileage may vary here on how well stuff works in different formats. But. I read and watch a shit tonne of shit, so there’s probably some threads that work regardless.

This started from thinking about two things. Mood, and pacing. Because one of the things that I often notice that I’m not happy with when I read/watch something is the pacing. Stuff feels like it comes too fast or it takes too long, it just feels like it’s not hitting the rhythm I need it to. And, yes, this is always subjective, but it definitely is a noticeable thing. And mood is a linked thing, because often what the pacing is failing to do is establish or sustain the mood. So I thought I’d have a delve around about what works and why it works. (Again, note, always subjective).

This started from horror, because horror is definitely one of those genres where the mood or lack thereof is extremely noticeable. Horror is about mood, about tone, about emotion. And we’ll circle this, because all writing is about those things, but horror is one of those genres that’s very explicit about it, because horror as a genre is about a very specific set of emotions. Namely fear, dread, uneasiness, shock, sometimes revulsion. Horror is about evoking and exploring negative emotions, and it’s primarily centred around fear. So. It’s easier in many ways to notice when horror is or isn’t hitting its mark. Allowing, naturally, for different things being more or less frightening to different people, and so some subgenres working better or worse for a particular person from a standing start. But it’s still noticeable when something would normally be creepy/terrifying to you, and in this instance it’s just not. It’s not working. So you look for reasons why.

I’ve said before that in horror, mood is key. Horror’s whole point is to evoke and build an atmosphere of a specific emotion. The primary thing you need to do when writing horror is set the mood. Create the atmosphere. And then sustain or break it as best fits your story.

But. The thing is. That is not just a horror thing. That’s actually a basic thing about any story you want to write. But I think that’s not always made explicit to people trying to create one.

Stories are about emotions. On a base level, they’re about having an effect on people. Creating a world and a narrative that will evoke a response. So a basic thing you need to do when you’re writing one is identify what response you’re trying to evoke and about what.

The reason for this is that, when you know what’s important, and when you know what you want people to feel about it, you can then work on consciously structuring the story to show that.

When you think about it, when you read or watch a story that doesn’t work for you, a lot of the time it is because that story clearly wants you to feel something, it wants you to react a certain way, but you’re just not, because, at least for you, it didn’t do the work to get you there. Like, this is a love story but god I don’t care about these people or if they get/stay together. Or, this is a horror story, but I’m more bored than scared.

And other times they don’t work because you don’t know what they wanted you to feel. You go into this thing and you get all the way through and you’re still left wondering at the end, what was the point of all that? Now, I want to pause here, because that can actually be the point, you can have a story where the goal was to leave you confused and wondering what the point was, so this can be done on purpose, but … What writers usually don’t want people to wind up feeling at the end is “… Yes? And?”. You can want someone to realise that a system or a premise is a mess that would and should leave people floundering and confused, but you don’t want them to read your writing and feel nothing. You don’t want them to go, well, that was an hour of my life I’m not getting back.

Pulling back slightly here, I’m not trying to be negative, it’s just that this sort of thing is often easier to notice when it is going wrong. If it’s working, it’s invisible, because this is what stories are. They’re a construction someone made that makes you feel things. That take you on a journey where you don’t notice hours of your life slipping by, because you’re somewhere else and feeling every moment of it. It’s the strange thing about most things, they’re only (or at least more) noticeable when they’re going wrong, so a lot of the time it feels easier to give negative examples of things, to point out where they don’t work, and from there examine why. But you can look at things that are working as well, and hopefully we’ll get to that.

But. Getting back to the point. Some things I think are important to do somewhere near the start of your writing process would be to ask the following things:

What is important in this story, what do I want people to react to and feel things about in it?

What feelings do I want them to be having about it?

And the easiest way I’ve found to do this is to go back to the initial idea you had. When you came up with this thing, the seed of this story, what about it made you want to write it? What was the thing that excited you, that made you want to show it? When you go back, what was the moment?

Was it, I’ve had a horrible notion, and I want other people to be as horrified as I am?

Was it, I have this scene in my head, this triumph, and I want other people to feel the victory?

Was it, this system had a huge impact on me, and I want to explore, and bring other people to explore with me, how it would affect other types of people too?

Was it, this idea for a dragon is fucking cool, and people should know the awesomeness of it?

Was it, I want to show the bleakness and loneliness you can feel even when everything looks all right on the surface?

Go back, drill it down, and find the moment. And I think, maybe this is just me, but it’s usually baked into the initial idea. It’s the thing that made you want to write. It’s the idea that caught you, the thing you felt about it, that you want to share.

And then, when you get that, that’s the lodestone. That’s what you’re structuring around. This is what you want everything in the story to show, to build to, to evoke.

And here is where pacing comes in. Obviously, a shit tonne of other things too, here’s kind of where everything comes in, because everything in your story, all of your techniques and elements, will obviously all be tailored around trying to produce your intended effect. But. I started out from horror, and mood, and pacing, so that’s where I’ll be going for the minute.

Pacing is about, not necessarily length, but about the right amount of build to produce the intended effect. You could argue it’s about ratio, maybe, how much bang to how much buck, but that’s a little … That’s not quite it, I think.

Pacing is about what you want to matter and how much time you spend on that.

In horror, mood is what matters. You want to take the amount of time you need to build an atmosphere, so that your bursts of emotion, of shock, of terror, of revulsion, hit the way you want them to. Because there are some things about emotion that shape how you can do this. Emotions, particularly strong ones, are hard to sustain. A burst of fear is visceral and immediate, but the longer it goes the more it gets subsumed into something more low-grade, more continuous. The system adapts to the new normal. And that can be good or that can be bad. You could want to build to a more low-grade, almost normalised dread. Or you could want to build a base sense of uneasiness first, and build to a burst of more visceral terror. The important thing to do is identify what effect you want to have, and then you work out how to accomplish it.

And this is what pacing is about. You have to work out what you want to build, and how much build it needs to be effective.

I want to think of examples of this, of mood and emotion evoked specifically by the pacing. I’ve got a couple of them.

One bit of classical music where the pacing famously does a lot of work is Grieg’s In The Hall Of The Mountain King. AKA ‘Stress, the Three Minute Musical’. Because this is so clearly a confident tootle around that devolves, very rapidly but very deliberately, into a frantic fucking chase scene. It starts out so confident, someone striding around the halls, a repeating motif of the same few notes, but gradually the stress creeps in, it’s getting faster, and by the end of it the king is chasing you through this goddamn hall and you are feeling every second of it. And it’s just tempo. It’s just pacing. Well, no, there’s a lot of things happening and helping, but the pacing is a visceral part of the experience. Because it built. You started out confident, steady, deliberate, and you got faster and faster, more uneasy, and then you were bolting, terrified. And this doesn’t take long, again, this is three minutes worth of music, but the steady devolution took you on a whole goddamn journey in those three minutes. There’s an arc, a steady, visceral, noticeable arc, from where you started to where you finished. Raw terror wrought wordlessly by a few repeating notes and a gradual increase in pace.

And, another important thing, but the music doesn’t lose control of this devolution. It stays deliberate. You know what is happening, and you know why it’s happening. You can track the rate at which it’s happening. You can see from the first hints, where the unease starts to creep in, where it’s going and where it will end up. You can feel and track the build. It didn’t jump from ‘calm and confident’ straight to ‘bolting in terror’. This wasn’t a startle effect, it wasn’t a loud blaring noise out of nowhere. It was a build. You saw the trajectory coming, and that did not, in any way, make it less effective. It made it more so. Because that build of ‘oh shit oh shit oh shit’ is the point. That trajectory from ‘I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine, maybe I’m not fine, maybe I’m not fine, oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck’ is the whole journey this piece takes you on.

Pacing isn’t about length, it’s not about word count or song length, it’s not about ‘do this for this amount of time’, it’s about how to guide someone from one place to another in such a way as to create an effect.

Another example is the infamous first five/ten minutes of UP. Carl and Ellie’s story. AKA Pixar absolutely ripping your heart out and smashing it on the floor in under ten minutes. This few minute segment is doing two things. Firstly, it’s a whole absolutely heart-crushing story on its own. It takes us from childhood happiness through adult struggles to the crippling agony of loss all by itself. It takes you through hopeful promises made in innocence, and left by the wayside of adult responsibilities, and finally, crushingly, unfulfilled, because tragedy happened just as it was finally coming to fruition. You will be fucking sobbing by the end of it (well, no, again, people do have different responses to things, but a significant number of people will be absolutely shattered by the end of this). There’s an internal arc to the segment that brings you on a self-contained journey.

But there’s also an effect this segment has on the other journey, the journey of the movie overall. Because this tiny section sets up Carl’s promise, Paradise Falls, and it sets up why it matters. It sets up the entire rest of the movie, where Carl is starting from, what he’s obsessed with, why he’s obsessed with it, how much it matters later when he finally heals enough to be able to connect to other things, other people, enough to even put them before this promise. It … It sets up the entire emotional journey of the movie. It sets up what matters.

That’s what pacing is too. It’s taking the time to establish what matters in a story and why. Enough time. Not too much, not too little. Just enough time to show what matters, whether that’s five minutes at the start of a ninety minute movie or something more sustained throughout. Mileage will vary over how much time is needed for what, and not everyone will feel that length of time the same way. But how much emotion would have been lost throughout UP if they hadn’t take those five minutes at the start to show us why so many things mattered? If you want something to matter, if you want it to have an effect, you do have to take some time to establish and explain and build it.

There are various ways to do this. UP took a particular approach, establishing something in its own little segment at the start. You don’t have to preface the explanation, you can build in it and through in other ways. Explanation can be backdated, or a reveal, an impact, all by itself. You can build frustration and confusion over a character’s actions over a period, and then reveal the origin, so that everyone’s looking back over everything that happened and every reaction they had to it previously with new eyes. Again, it’s about what effect you want, and how to get to it. In this case, the frustration is the build, increasing the effect of the explanation, while in UP the explanation was the starting point, and the slow healing is the build to the emotional denouement.

And finally, to sort of loop this back around to horror, well, by a side route, I want to talk about using pacing to build a mood and an emotion and a tension. Not with a horror story, but with a thriller. I want to talk about Assault on Precinct 13 (1976), because it’s one of those movies that made me notice pacing and the effect it can have.

Assault on Precinct 13 is, ostensibly, about a gangland siege on a mostly-decommissioned police station that’s working its last few days before going silent. It is broadly an action thriller. But it’s also about urban isolation, and the unique circumstances created by violence, and the actions and bonds and relationships allowed by violence that don’t work outside of it.

And a lot of that is built by the pacing of the movie, and in particular the pacing of the opening half hour. Because it’s slow. Famously, to the point that John Carpenter himself said that he wondered often later if he should have shortened the opening half hour, gotten to the action faster. And many people, myself very much included, gave an emphatic no to that. Because the time taken by that opening half hour builds through so much of the rest of the movie. Which is, I do have to say, only an hour and a half long. He took pretty much a third of the runtime before even getting to the ‘action’. And it worked.

Because what the opening half hour establishes, with its slow sunlit trawl through suburban gangland LA, its stultifying, insect-haunted window onto the last, routine-filled gasps of a dying police station, its calmly and quietly horrific sunlit murders, its fleeing man and the car leisurely hunting him down through the sunshine, is build the mood. Build the isolation, these pockets of people surrounded and swallowed by this sunlit vista, these bursts of violence that it swallows completely, so that no one even notices. It sets up everything. How the siege even happens, the vast urban emptiness that surrounds the station, how it’s already so far on its way out that no one even notices it going dark, how murders happen in broad daylight and no one notices, so why would they notice an already-dead station coming under siege? There’s five people in there, no one’s going to notice if they die.

That supposedly empty half hour, before any of the real ‘action’ starts, establishes everything you need to know about why the action starts, and why the action matters. Because no one’s coming. No one cares to come. This whole end of the city, never mind this station, is dead and abandoned to violence already. So these people, these few people you meet enduring their incredibly boring last few days out here, will shortly be on their own, fighting for their lives, and the only people who can help and matter to them are each other. They’re in their own little world out here, and they’ll have to survive it by their own merits, and pay for it with their own strength.

And then … at the end. When the outside world does come back in. They have to deal with the fact that what they built together, during this violent, isolated time, won’t survive the outside world. Because the rules are different out there, where things like murder do matter. The things you did to survive might not be valued when you make it out, because the rules are different now, but you’re still left with the effect they had on you. The violence gets swallowed unremarked by the outside world, but you still have the scars and the friendships and the memories.

(Look, Bishop having to hand Wilson back to the prison system, despite everything they’ve just been through, because Wilson is still a murderer, and that still matters, hit me hard, okay?)

Assault on Precinct 13 basically took its time to build up a mood, a droning, sunlit emptiness full of unremarked violence, that will shortly close around and inform everything that happens later. Because the mood is important, it affects how we feel about what we see, sets the tone for what we’re going into, primes the emotions to either be vindicated or shocked later.

(For real, watch this movie. And not the oughties remake. Or, well, do watch that too, but after, because it’s an excellent illustration of how the events of the original might stay the same, but without the same amount of time and mood and setting, the effect will be different).

The thing I have with pacing is, the thing I keep coming back to is, you need to take the right amount of time to set up and show what’s important. You need an amount of context to show why particular actions, emotions, people, matter later on. Because actions on their own, incidents, aren’t enough on their own. A death could mean any number of different things, it could be played for tragedy or vindication or victory or even nothing at all, a throwaway bit of violence that no one will care about. The fact that someone dies is not enough on its own, we have to know why it matters that they die, and what we’re going to feel about it.

Pacing means taking the right amount of time to set things up so that they will pay off in the right way later. And pacing something right means doing your best to know what is important, how you want it to pay off later, so that you can get a feel for how much of what you need to show and when and how and in what order.

And, yes, there’s always an element of subjectivity to any of this. Nothing will land for everyone, people just react too differently for that. What’s too slow for some is too fast for others, and what matters to some will not always be what was intended to matter. But. You at least want to know what your intent is, so you can give it your best shot.

Mood matters. Time matters. Description, emotion, pacing, matters. Take your time. I don’t necessarily mean go slow, by that, I mean take the time to pull yourself back every so often to reorientate on where you’re going, what effect you want it to have, and how you’re going to get there. Take the needed time, however long or little it might be. Because humans work on context, and stories are vacuums, they only contain what you put into them (well, and what the reader brings into them), so you’re going to have to take the time to build that context. If you want something to matter, if you want it to have an effect, you have to provide the groundwork and the context for why it matters.

Was that coherent at all? I have no idea. But, well. Have some thoughts on pacing and mood and why it matters?

#long post #meta #writing #pacing #mood #setting up what's important #identifying what's important #rambling about writing #media analysis #or attempts thereof

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literal-metaphor · 10 months

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Dear God – Soundscape

I have been trying to create a soundscape, working with the idea of jumbling time through the thought process for the performance, however, I have hit a few walls with this.

Firstly, layering thoughts from past, present, and future on top of each other for just one minute of the track has taken me 2 hours. This track would need to be 20 minutes long and I just don’t have the time to dedicate to this.

Secondly, I am not 100% sure on what I will be doing during the performance so creating a soundscape that is about what I am thinking before, during, and after the performance is incredibly difficult, maybe even impossible.

Thirdly, this soundscape would not ring true to how I felt during the writing of it. While I was writing the text, yes there were tonnes of thoughts swirling around my head but they were all questions akin to the ones I wrote down. Additionally, I wrote this at a time where I felt scared, alone, and empty. It makes more sense to me to have no sound during the performance in order to mirror my emotions, as opposed to making a soundscape relating to my thoughts.

I have decided therefore not to have sound during the performance and instead to only speak text in a live capacity.

#soundscape #time is an illusion #autobiographical performance #contemporary performance

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justmegeorgie · 1 year

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I know for a fact I am going to regret posting this later, but hey, no one’s going to read this anyways.

Ever since I moved to where I am now, when I was only 7, turning 8, a lot has happened. Then again, it’s life, a lot happens in a tiny span, and sometimes you can’t do anything about it because it just happens.

It’s been really tough, to be honest.

I’ve lost my childhood best friend, who I love with every piece of soul and heart, I have lost my grandad to cancer, my other grandmother to dementia and Alzheimer’s, and I have just lost every single friend I ever had. It’s so tough.

Tonight, I cried so hard, for the first time in months, and I never knew I had it in me to do it that violently, in a way. It all just tumbled out, all my feelings, my thoughts, the pieces of my heart, the useless threading of my soul, and it was all lost through tears.

A tonne of measly little tears, and violent sobs.

Everyone has blown up on me, calling me every name under the sun, and for what?

A girl who wanted to sit back and see someone break because she wanted to see them suffer.

A singular lie had all my friends turn on me, hate me, verbally abuse me. She isolated me.

Well, I isolated me.

I’ve had to move schools because it became so bad for my mental health that I couldn’t cope, and the teachers would do nothing about it. Absolutely nothing. They watched me break down, tears, sobs, mumbled words and a jumbled mind trying to spew out everything it was feeling. And they did nothing. When I confessed to them about a guy two years above me in school who sexually assaulted me, they did nothing. They did nothing.

On the other hand, I met this guy.

My goodness, I think I fell in love at first message.

He messaged me on Wizz, saying he might as well shoot his shot, and I told him to. He’s so pretty. A few pick up lines later, he added me on snapchat, and the past night or so, we’ve been going back and forth with snaps. His voice is beautiful, so is his laugh. I love the way he speaks. He calls me his love.

I want to his love.

But I don’t know if he wants me to be.

I guess that’s a pro in spite of all the cons, right?

I damn hope so.

Because I’ve never had to cover my mouth and let out a squeal so powerful it could put the Leaning Tower of Pisa back into its original stance, to stand tall and proud. I’ve never had to gossip to my cousin about him so much that just the thought of him has be folding into myself. I’ve never had to take a few seconds before I could send a snapchat back because just seeing him not care if I spammed the chat, or when he calls me “my love”.

He makes me happy, but I don’t want to get hurt.

I’ve been through so much.

I don’t want to get hurt, but I’m in that much emotional and physical pain that I want to give it a chance because I think this may be the last chance for anyone.

Turns out, he lives two hours away from me. I’m not happy about the distance, but at least he doesn’t live in another country, or on the other side of England, right? I’m happy, as long as he is happy.

And I hope to whatever God is out there and listening to my jumbled thoughts, that he is happy.

Even if I don’t make him happy.

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flutternozzle · 2 years

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i was trying to figure out when i might have first got into pokemon a few weeks ago, but i gave up bcos i was trying to use the release dates of tcg sets and promotions i can remember (like the tazos in walkers crisps) to pinpoint a timeframe.. but all the dates i could find seemed too early to me, bcos i’m sure i’d have been too young to remember?? 😵‍💫

but i was struggling 2 sleep the other night and some memories randomly came back 2 me, and now i’m even More confused 😭 i remembered that a couple of the first ~rare~ cards i had were a butterfree and a dark persian reverse holo, both from legendary collection..

bcos i traded away the dark persian not long after, and i was rly upset abt it 🙁

so, legendary collection apparently came out around may 2002, and if that was the first set i started collecting, that would have been while i was 5 years old and in reception at school, which fits perfectly with around the time and age i thought i probably got into pokemon!!

but the only problem is, i can remember getting packs of pokemon cards as old as “jungle” which.. doesn’t fit in with a timeline that makes sense at all, bcos jungle came out some time between june 1999 and february 2000, when i’d have only been 3??? 😵‍💫

another thing that throws everything into question is, not long after i got into pokemon, my cousins and one of their friends gave me a Tonne of their old pokemon cards, cos they’d outgrown them by that time.. and they were all base set, jungle and fossil cards, that they’d obviously had for quite a while before that point?? so how do those old cards fit in with me also being able to remember getting packs of jungle and fossil from the local newsagents my parents used to buy me cards from?? 🤔

the only thing i can think of that makes any sense, is if when i got into collecting pokemon cards around the release of legendary collection, the local newsagents still had old stock of sets like jungle and fossil in, and then once demand started going up from the pokemon craze at my school, they started getting the newer sets in too?? 😧

i can also remember getting packs of the neo series sets, from a gaming shop in town.. i wonder if we started going there once i was more seriously into collecting the cards, maybe later in 2002, and unlike the local newsagents which still only had the older sets, the gaming shop actually had the newer sets in?? i’ll probably never be able to know for sure, but this is the only way i can make sense of my jumbled early memories of collecting the cards 😭

#ellie talks pkmn

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de-spawnhellspawn · 5 years

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Dust: Remnants of the Past [pt1]

There’s a theory that dust is the remnants of Humanity 1.0. It’s the magic of past humans compressed into crystals, (like coal is dinosaur corpse). But all the humans had the same magic, right? So why are there so many types of dust?

I think I have an answer.

There are currently ten types of dust, (red, blue, yellow, green, dark blue, cyan, white, purple, bright orange, dark orange and pale blue). Of which the first four are the elemental dusts.

This is Salem demonstrating magic in The Lost Fable. Notice that there are four orbs and six ‘parts’ below. Adding up to 10, (you can see where this is going).

My theory is that magic is made of ten ‘parts’ and each type of dust is one of the different ‘parts’. But why would it not just be multicoloured?

In the same chapter is Salem’s daughter demonstrating her magic (it’s a bad pic, screenshots are pain). Here she lacks the four orbs and only has the six parts. Possibly meaning that she lacks the other ‘parts’ of magic.

So maybe it’s possible for an individual to only have one ‘part’ of magic, fossilising into one pure type of dust. This could also explain why some dusts are rarer (Amity Arena states that Hard Light Dust is the rarest kind), because there were less magic users with that ‘part’, or combination of parts.

Summary below

Basically:

Magic is divided into ten ‘parts’ corresponding to each type of dust

What type of dust made depends on the ‘parts’ within a human 1.0 (which is why some dusts are rarer)

Some humans have more/less of the ten magic ‘parts’

#rwby #mytheory #crackpot thoughts #theory #Salem #Ozpin #its late and i cant be bothered to edit this #pt 2 might be a while #i have a tonne of thoughts all jumbled #this is complicated #ugh #posts on impluse

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inevitably-johnlocked · 3 years

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Hi Steph! I really want to write a fic, but I'm not sure where to start. (This is actually my first time trying to write something!) I have an idea for it, but I'm not really sure how to go from an idea to an actual story. Plus, I think I'm a terrible writer, which is making me hesitant to write it. Do you have any tips/advice for me? Thanks in advance!

Hi Nonny!

*HUGS* First of all: WRITE THAT FIC. No author was a brilliant genius on their first go, and only through writing more and more, do you improve your craft. AND some people “revisit” stuff years later as “remix” fics, and even artists do it so that you and they can see how much they’ve grown!

SO WRITE IT.

That said, @jbaillier actually has a tonne of writing tips (just click on the “Chapter Index” pulldown menu to see what the topics are, I don’t think there’s a masterpage othrwise) and does a videocast about fanfiction that you can check out, so yeah, it’s a good place as any to start!

But from experience, and as not a prolific writer by any stretch of the imagination, I can say start small, jot down your ideas and paragraphs of stories you have! It’s what I’m currently doing with the few stories I have written – I write any ideas I have at ALL, and any paragraph snippets, and divide them up. So like, do you have the main plot planned out? Then write it out. They’re called drafts for a reason! They’re not meant to be amazing. For me, I have PARAGRAPHS of stories all jumbled in Google Docs, and I just occasionally go back to them when I have another idea, or when I figured out how I’m going to tie one part of a paragraph chunk to another. Any lines I’m not sure about deleting yet, I change the font colour to red, so that I know I WANT to get rid of it, or it doesn’t fit in where it is currently, so I should go back to it later.

But again, this is how someone who writes for a hobby outside of daily blogging does this stuff... it’s a method I’ve used since I was younger (though I used to hand write EVERYTHING before typing it out), and more recently when I was writing meta AND currently replying to asks – if I have / had an idea for a response, I write it all out, and draft it to go back to edit later on. It’s always worked for me.

But again, different methods work for different people. I know some authors like to write start to finish, and then edit from there. Some write the ending first and work backwards. Some do brainstorming sessions and make those little idea trees. It’s all different for everyone based on how people’s thought processes work. As I said, my brain works in chunks, so I HAVE to write those ideas and paragraphs I have down before I forget, or it WILL be gone permanently.

So yeah, lovely, just write it because you want to write it. Why do you feel like you shouldn’t write it just because you’re new to it? That’s very disheartening to me :( Don’t let people discourage you.

As I’ve said in the past: even Stephen King, one of the most prolific authors of our time, got rejected by publishers the first go ‘round.

And if you’re uncertain start small with ficlets and work your way up. Honestly, there’s no “right way” to do things. Just do it because you’re passionate about it, because you WANT to write it.

And if and when you do publish it, Nonny, let me know, please. I would love to share with everyone <3

Good luck!! <3 We’re all here for you! <3

#steph replies #my advice #i am not a professional #writing advice #chatting with nonnies #Anonymous

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jatparker · 3 years

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Stars

Word count: 1.9K

Summary: Best friends Peter and Y/N loved to watch the stars together. They’d climb onto the roof every Friday night and stay there until the sun comes up. One day Peter finally plucks up the courage to ask her out on a date

Climbing onto the roof of her apartment shouldn’t have been such a big deal. She’d done it so many times before, but she’d always had Spider-Man, fucking Spider-Man!, by her side. It didn’t help that she had to sneak her way up with a backpack full of picnic food, but having Peter there made it less daunting.

Of course, this had to be the one time Peter was actually interning under Tony Stark. He wasn’t swinging around the city; he was making coffees and organising paperwork. Sucks to be him, she thought with a smile. But he promised he would be there and Y/N knew he would.

Since they were fourteen, Y/N and Peter made their way onto the roof of their apartment complex to watch the stars. They were kind of hard to see, blocked out by the light pollution. So, when Y/N was fifteen, she bought him a telescope. She’d saved up for weeks and done countless shifts at the little pizza place where she worked. But it was all worth it, just for the smile that came with it.

They’d both agreed, once they’d got their licences, that the two of them would take a trip out of Queens. Leave everything behind, their worries and responsibilities, and go stargazing in the middle of butt fuck nowhere. They’d bring a telescope, a few blankets and a change of clothes. All they needed was each other and the stars.

Y/N was setting up the blankets and setting out the food when the red figure swung into view. The expensive telescope was precariously under his arm (it was a wonder he hadn’t broken it yet). “You need to be careful with that thing,” Y/N warned in way of greeting. “I’m not buying you another one if you break it.”

Rolling his eyes, Peter pulled off the mask. But he grinned once he saw their usual set up. Cushions, blankets and a bowl of crisps, he didn’t know how Y/N managed to carry it all up here. “You ready to gaze at some stars?”

And so, Peter set about setting up the telescope as Y/N began eating the food. She already had a blanket wrapped around her shoulders and the temperature outside had yet to drop. Or maybe Peter's superhuman body just ran a little hotter than everybody else’s. He was content to stay in the spider suit while she hogged the blankets.

And so, they watched the stars, taking turns with the telescope. Peter had actually taken the time out of his studies and the internship to research constellations and became quite the astrology nerd. He searched for the constellations in the telescope and then pointed them out to Y/N.

The two sat on the roof for hours, talking, looking at the stars, bitching about Y/N’s least favourite teacher and so on. They stayed until the sun rose and the sky was painted orange.

Peter stood and began to stretch. “I better go before May starts to panic,” he said and gathered up the telescope.

“Hold your horses, Pete.” Y/N still had a blanket around her shoulders and had a cushion tucked under her arm. She was in the process of gathering up everything, but things kept falling out of her arms. “You’re not going to leave me here with all of this, are you?”

He only smiled, pulled the mask back over his face and leapt off the side of the building. That fucker, she thought and continued gathering up her stuff.

***

Y/N couldn’t quite understand it when Peter had called an emergency stargaze on a Monday. Ste had a tonne of homework as well as a lack of sleep to make up for.

She trudged up the fire escape, rather unenthusiastically, only for Peter to not be there. Instead, blankets were spread out in their usual spot and pillows surrounded them. But the telescope wasn’t there. Instead there was a note taped to one of the cushions.

Please don’t leave! I’ll be back soon, I promise. The answers the the algebra and biology homework are on the back - Pete

It wasn’t like Peter to just give out answers. He was always pushing Y/N to do her best, to try and work out the answers on her own before he swooped in and saved her ass from detention. Y/N wasn’t going to pass up this rare opportunity.

She watched the sunset alone, snapping a quick picture when the sky turned pink. Her homework took hours, even when she was copying Peters (slightly confusing) answers. By the time she was done she was using her phone as a torch and her hand was cramping.

A sudden woosh! filled the air and someone landed on the roof beside her. The person stumbled ever so slightly, but quickly regained his balance, somehow keeping hold of the boxes in his hands. “Did somebody order pizza?”

“Peter Parker you’re a lifesaver!” Y/N called as he sat beside her and opened the first box. She stole a slice and quickly ate it. “And thanks for the answers. God knows I wouldn’t be graduating without you.”

They made light work of the pizza, sitting silently as they ate. Y/N had had head on Peter's shoulder as she stuffed her face. A little bit of cheese had stuck to her face, but neither of them had noticed it yet.

“So,” Y/N started after wiping the sauce (and cheese) away from her face. “Why did you call me up here? What’s going on?”

Peter suddenly panicked. He had been going over this in his head since he first picked up the pizza. And ate the first two boxes because of nerves alone. It was why he had left her up here for so long. Being in love with your best friend was never easy.

“I just…” He struggled to find the words, wringing his hands together to try and somewhat calm his nerves. “Today was tough and I thought we could use it,” he said quietly, looking at his feet. He blew it. He totally blew it.

“You’re the best, Parker!” She grinned and leaned her entire body against him. Without the blanket around her shoulders she was shivering in the cold night. Peter wrapped his arms around her and looked out across Queens.

***

There was a lot Peter wanted to say to Y/N, he just didn’t know how to do it. Every time he tried his words would get jumbled or he’d chicken out.

“What do you actually like about her?” MJ asked as they waited for Y/N and Ned in the cafeteria.

Peter considered her words. He’d never really thought about it that far, he knew he liked Y/N (knew he liked her a lot) but he’d never tried to put those feelings into words. “She’s my best friend, right?” He started, still trying to find the words. “She knows everything about me, everything I like and don’t like, and for some reason she still chooses to be around me. I don’t have to hide any part of myself around her! She makes me feel comfortable to be me where I’ve always been made to feel like I have to be more than I am. When I’m with her I don’t want to swing off and disappear until she leaves. And she’s just incredible.”

Peter fell silent as Ned and Y/N approached the table. They slid themselves into their seats and instantly dominated the conversation. They spoke about Star Wars or the Hobbit or whatever they were into that week.

A note was suddenly placed in front of Peter. Tell her everything you just told me. He snatched it up before anyone could see and hit it in his pocket, his cheeks pinks. “You feeling alright, Parker?”

“Yep,” he choked out and cleared his throat. “Everything’s fine.”

But Y/N wasn’t convinced. “As long as you’re sure,” she mumbled and eyed him suspiciously. Ned quickly pulled her back into the conversation and Peter silently thanked him.

***

It was their usual Friday when Y/N took a trip up to the roof. He had been quiet and distant all week; she wasn’t sure if he was going to show or not.

When she got there, with a blanket stuffed into her bag and a pillow under her arm, she gasped.

There was Peter Parker, looking dapper in a tattered suit. His arms were braced against the railing that went around the roof and looked down at the bustling street below. He knew she was there, but chose to let her come to him.

Y/N set down her bag and her pillow and slowly approached him. “What’s going on, Parker?” Her voice was quiet as she reached for the railing and stood beside him. Last time this had happened, he’d just come from his Uncle Ben's funeral. The two had spent that night crying and reminiscing.

He turned to her, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. You took Liz Allen to homecoming and her dad was one of the bad guys, you can do this. He was still nervous, but he had to do this. It was now or never.

“I’ve loved you since we were kids.”

“I love you too, Pete. What’s going on?” She urged.

So, Peter tried again. “Y/N.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. “You’re someone who makes me feel comfortable being myself. You know every part of me and there’s nothing I have to hide from you. When I’m with you, I don’t have to be anymore than I am and-” the paper slipped from between his fingers, pulled away by the wind. “Shit,” he mumbled, trying to reach for it. It tumbled through the air, out of his grasp.

Y/N was silent. Peter had half a mind to get on his knees and beg for her to say something, anything.

“I think I get what you’re trying to say,” she said at last and stepped closer. Peter sucked in a breath, his chest tight. “Can we start this night over? This time, I’ll do the talking.” Peter rapidly nodded his head and Y/N took his hand.

They pulled the blanket from Y/N’s bag and sat on it. She took a minute to gather her words before finally speaking. “Hey Peter, I’m in love with you and I have been for the last year. I think we should go on a date,” she said, words filled with confidence. “This Friday, before we come up here for stargazing.” Y/N was looking at him, eyes filled with hope.

“I’ll pick you up at six.” Peter grinned and leaned back, opening his arms for her.

“You better bring flowers for my mum. It’s not a real date without them.”

“What do you take me for? Cheap?”

48 notes · View notes

p4lparker · 4 years

Text

Lose Myself

I grabbed my books from my locker and shoved them roughly into my bag- this day had been awful! Freaking Harris had been a huge pain in my ass- he constantly called me out to answer his stupid chem. questions; questions I had no idea about, because the numbers in the chemical equation made no sense to me- they were all jumbled as usual, and his constant need to belittle me was seriously infuriating. I think the only way I managed to not concoct a Molotov cocktail and throw it straight into that douche bag’s face; was the fact that Stiles was sat next to me. The adorable dork drew a picture of an anchor on a piece of paper before sliding it over to me- to remind me, remind us both, we could keep ourselves grounded- we could help each other stay grounded. The next bit of paper that was shoved into my peripheral was a note; My house later, I need to kick your sorry ass at Mortal Combat. The small note made me grin, for a few reasons; the foremost being he was going to try to cheer me up from my shitty day- no matter if he already had crap to do- he’d ditch those plans to help me, the other reason was the fact that he thought he could actually kick my ass.

My other classes were also pretty terrible, I continued to sulk and slam my possessions around until Stiles slid into view- leaning against the locker next to my own. His grin was plastered on to his innocent face- being all infectious and almost, almost, making an identical grin claim my own sour features.

“Okay, you ready? Or do you want to beat up on your bag and books some more?” Stiles questioned, his voice only mildly unsure; showing that he was slightly scared of my reaction. I just rolled my eyes and slammed my locker door shut, grabbing his arm I led him out to his jeep and waited for him to get the hint. He grinned and unlocked the vehicle allowing us both to slide in and buckle up as bags were thrown haphazardly into the back seat.

Stiles focused his attention on the road, as I focused mine on finding a song to distract me. I settled on some random song, I didn’t recognise and sat back- lounging in the well-worn seat. The drive to the Stillinski residence took little to no time- the unrecognised song I played had quickly changed to yet another song I couldn’t recall the name of; Stiles though was mouthing along to the words quite happily, he tapped the beat out on the steering wheel as he continued to focus on the road. Which was a feat in itself; the weather had decided to take a turn for the worst pelting the windshield with heavy rain- I decided then at that moment that I had completely chosen the wrong outfit. Stiles continued to drive to his home- a drive which upsettingly didn’t last too long at all, in no time at all we were pulling up to the sidewalk; Stiles cut off the engine and looked to the skies as if cursing the sudden weather changes. I sighed as I knew we’d have to eventually leave the safe and dry confines of the jeep. Turning my face towards Stiles, a frown marring my features I held my tongue waiting for him to take charge- his face took on a matching expression.

“Okay- I’ll grab the bags from the back, while you make a mad dash for the door and unlock it, then I’ll run like Gump!” Stiles commanded in a serious tone of voice with a look of sheer determination holding his features now; I smirked at his reference before giving him a mock salute of understanding. I took a long deep breath before unbuckling my confining seat-belt and shoving the door of the jeep open, jumping out and slamming the door shut behind me; I began to run towards the door, ready to unlock it and enter- I came to an abrupt stop in front of the door it wasn’t until I was standing in front of it expectantly that I realised I didn’t in fact have the keys. Growling as I turned on my heel and prepared myself to run back out into the torrential downpour which had become more and more frustrating. I jogged back to the jeep and watched as Stiles ventured to the front carrying all of the bags; my oversized satchel hand-baggy type thing which Lydia insisted I buy as it complimented my new style perfectly, his own back pack and lacrosse bag all balanced precariously upon his arms- which I could see straining in an impressive way, they also seemed to be more muscular than I remembered them being and I struggled to tear my eyes from them.

It was at that precise moment that I realised neither of us were moving. Meaning we were both stood still, getting more and more soaked as the water pouring from above saturated us- I watched in avid fascination as Stiles juggled the bags; his arms continuing to flex and strain, my eyes were fixated as I watched the muscle twitch and writhe as if for my own visual pleasure- it took a few seconds to realise what Stiles was actually trying and failing to achieve. The keys just out of reach of his beautiful and teasingly long fingers, as the aforementioned objects were buried so deeply within the confines of his front jeans pocket. I decided now was as good a time as any to rip my eyes away from their activity of appraising Stiles’ and his physique- I stepped towards him, and took matters into my own hands- literally. Raising my hand to let it rest on his soggy t-shirt clad chest- gaining his attention to tell him to chill, I trailed my hand to the front pocket of his jeans. I let my eyes flicker up to meet his own chocolaty gaze which was widened. I continued to hold his gaze as I slid my hand into his pocket and began the search for the cool metal which was a tell-tail sign of his keys- it seemed like his eyes widened even more, if that was even possible.

I found the keys easily enough, but I ceased my actions of pulling them free from their entrapment- instead choosing to watch the way Stiles’ face contorted into different expressions. His eyes roaming around my face, focusing on my lips before dropping lower; I felt as his breathing seemed to become slightly hitched and noticed as his jeans seemed to feel slightly more snug around my hand which grasped the solid collection of keys. I watched as he drew his bottom lip between his teeth and began to gnaw on it before clamping down on it hard as I shifted my hand, trying to remove it from his pocket. I watched in interest as his eyes seemed to become darker- as he stared at one fixed point on my person; my chest. I felt my brows furrow in confusion before the answer and realisation hit me full force like a tonne of bricks- it almost felt like I’d run metaphorically into a cinder block wall! Stiles’ unwavering and glazed eyes were focused solely on my sodden and see-through blouse; which due to it’s drenched state was allowing the creamy lacy bra I had on beneath to be revealed and visually devoured by the man in front of me. We both stood there, frozen in that moment; ignoring the rain pounding down on us. Ignoring the fact that we were steadily and surely getting more drenched as the seconds passed by. I knew I didn’t want to move my body all that much, as I felt a familiar warmth spread through my body and settle in my lower stomach- beginning to drip it’s way into my core. I dragged my bottom lip into my mouth, biting it sharply as Stiles had his own.

A car zooming past seemed to break us both from our hormone riddled and driven moment. I blinked and shook my head slightly, remembering why I had my hand buried in Stiles’ pocket to begin with; I gripped the keys before extricating them from his person and stepping away quickly as I let the moment crash to a sudden halt. I ran towards the door and successfully unlocked it, turning to beckon Stiles in also. I abruptly met his chest with my face as he was already standing close behind me. I stifled the gasp and stepped back into the home. I waited until Stiles had dropped the bags and closed the door before handing him the keys for him to lock it. I wordlessly walked to the kitchen and grabbed us both a bottle of soda from the well-stocked fridge, throwing one to him quickly and soundlessly- Stiles caught it effortlessly and undid the cap, taking a long swig of the carbonated drink. His gaze never left me as he continued to drink, I looked away first feeling slightly awkward standing in an uncalled for staring competition.

“Is it cool if I grab a shower and stuff?” I asked, breaking the silence which had encompassed us. I didn’t get a verbal confirmation; instead Stiles gave a jerk of his head, I returned his terse nod and wandered upstairs to his room and then to his bathroom. I closed the door behind me before turning to the shower and twisting the lever until the water began a steady flow- the steam slowly but surely filing up to room. I shed my soggy clothes when the water was warm enough and jumped under the flowing water; allowing the soothing water to cascade down my body, I quickly lathered up my body washing away the grime from the day and shampooed my hair. I finished my shower quickly, not wanting to waste any of the water or run up the Stilinski’s water bill. Once I ensured the water was shut off properly I left the confines of the shower cubicle and searched for a nice fluffy towel, the search didn’t last for too long thankfully- and I was able to wrap myself in a soft and deliciously snuggly towel, drying off quickly- and securing the towel around my chest. I ventured out of the small bathroom and entered the main bedroom; upon my re-entry Stiles’ room, I spotted him sitting at the edge of his bed- staring directly at the door I’d just walked through, and directly at me. I don’t know what it was, I couldn’t quite put my finger on it; but something was different, something felt different.

It was in that brief moment, as I looked at him; really looked at him I could see he was different. Stiles, my Stiles was conflicted and tired; just so damned tired. I knew for a fact that he was barely sleeping; too many nightmares since saving his dad, since sacrificing himself- the terror that plagued his slumber kept him awake and too frightened to close his eyes. Those thoughts and images were taking their toll on him- the only time I’d known him not to wake himself screaming was whenever he napped or accidently fell asleep as we watched a movie. I felt myself worry my bottom lip as I continued to stare at him and his tired eyes seem to focus solely on me. I found it too much; I couldn’t look at him without feeling at fault somehow. I needed to make more time for him; for us to watch movies or something, just time for him to sleep and regain the parts of his personality which were almost missing. It was me who eventually looked elsewhere; my gaze landing on the bowl of too hot popcorn and the pile of movies beside it. Stiles must have noticed my change of focus.

“I thought we were gonna game tonight?” I asked, an eyebrow raised, one hand raised to keep my towel secure around my chest and the other raised to point at the collection of movies and the treats.

“Change of plan. I thought a movie night would be more fun. I’m gonna jump in the shower. You can change, I’m pretty sure you have some clothes left in my closet; pick a movie while I’m in there?” Stiles muttered as he slipped past me- I turned and watched him as he closed the door; his face looked confused and conflicted and there was something else, something I couldn’t name lurking in his eyes.

The door closing with a soft click pushed me to turn and search for some clothes and to pick a movie as requested. I ventured to the closet and searched through it; finding a section of the hanging space cordoned off simply for my; shirts and hoodies, a pair of sweats were neatly folded on the floor in a space cleared from his own bottoms. I don’t know what touched me about that; that image of my clothes sharing the space of his closet, but something did- and it was almost like it should be like that, it felt right to see our clothes hanging together. I shook my head to stop that train of thought before it left the station. I abandoned my task and decided to make a movie selection instead, I perused the titles Stiles had gathered and smiled at the usual suspects; Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Iron Man and American Pie. All of the series Stiles would use as ‘go to’ selections- one’s he’d always hope to watch. I grabbed the Iron Man series; cause I was a sucker for Robert Downey Junior.

I meandered back over to the closet and let my eyes drift over the sheer amount of plaid Stiles actually owned; it was vaguely unsettling to see it all bunched here together like this, I let my fingers graze over the collected softness. My eyes were drawn towards a familiar and particular shirt; it’s bright colour was so fantastically Stiles I struggled to keep the smile from forming on my lips. I let my hand trail to the shirt, feeling almost welcomed by the memorable fabric; I pulled it gently from it’s hanger and held the fabric in my hands, before pulling it onto my dry and cooling body. Fastening most of the buttons, leaving the top two undone; I realised my underwear was currently situated in the bathroom with Stiles- my bra probably still soggy, but hopefully drying and my underwear dry but not on my person. I dropped the towel and placed it in the hamper ready for when I’d do the laundry for them at the weekend. I was just looking over my reflection in the mirror; ensuring that all of the necessities were covered until I could retrieve my missing clothing- when the door opened, Stiles walking out already dry and wearing sweat pants which hung distractingly low on his slim hips. His chest was bare, and his hair was dripping rivulets of water down his neck, to his shoulders, to his chest and lower. Lower until it dripped into the toned muscle of his stomach and further down; meeting the thin thatch of hair comprising his happy trial. Stiles cleared his throat, causing me to meet his eyes; my own slightly wide as if I was a rabbit in headlights- he’d caught me ogling him like he was a piece of meat!

“Are you wearing my shirt?” Stiles asked quietly; his eyes staring straight at the fabric which was the only thing covering my body from his gaze. I felt the blush cover my cheeks as his gaze lingered, I didn’t trust my voice so instead I just nodded. Stiles’ gaze was still locked on the shirt, he cleared his throat nodding as if he were distracted. I nodded my head as if to end the not-quite conversation, I walked to the bathroom quickly and collected my underwear before yanking it on unceremoniously underneath the shirt. When I walked back out Stiles had decided put a shirt on, he was sat comfortably on his bed; his back leaning against the wall already watching the millionaire genius work in the movie. The room was silent and sombre; it was as if the terrors Stiles faced in his sleep were now forcing themselves into his waking life.

I decided it was time to change up this funky mood we were both in; leaning against the door frame I smiled at him as he looked in my direction- I returned his smile with a grin. Before lunging forward and throwing myself on to his bed causing him to bounce from his position. The silence was suddenly broken by Stiles’ raucous laughter; it was boisterous, loud and beautiful- like music to my ears. I missed this sound, it warmed my heart so completely. As he continued to laugh he knocked the bowl of pop-corn over and it’s contents went flying all over his navy blue bed-spread and the both of us. It wasn’t long before I had joined in with his humour, our laughter soon drowned out the noise coming from the movie playing in front of us. As our laughter died down a little I did an impression of Stiles bouncing round and knocking the popcorn over; an impression which was incredibly accurate, flailing arms and all- which resulted in a handful of pop-corn being thrown at me. A gasp tore from my throat as my laughter ceased- a grin still on my face, Stiles on the other hand laughed louder and harder- his hands actually grasping his stomach, as if physically holding himself together, attempting to control the mirth he was now slave to.

Sitting up on my knees, I watched as he continued to chortle- deciding enough was enough. I ran my fingers over his neck, smirking as his laughter became more desperate and bordered hysterical, the more I continued to tickle him. His body became uncontrolled and his movements quickly became more jerky as he desperately tried to wriggle free from my tickling torture. I quickly batted one of his jerking legs away from my head as he almost kicked me in his twitchy state. Once his leg was settled back on the bed and away from the general vicinity of my face; I threw my own leg over his waist; settling my weight onto his hips. Throughout this body re-arrangement, Stiles was busy laughing and trying to grab my merciless fingers as they continued their assault.

His laughter was ringing out loud and proud; it was warming my heart, and felt like it was warming my entire being, his hysterical chortles soon turned to scream-like peels of laughter as they ripped from his grinning mouth. My own laughter was still ringing out, mixing with his own and the sounds coming from the movie playing; it created a cacophony of noise, which the neighbours surely heard. I was too distracted by the mass of sounds surrounding me to notice that Stiles had finally managed to grab hold of my tickling fingers- pulling them abruptly from his neck as he swiftly sat up, me still firmly seated in his lap. I noticed all too late that his grinning face was suddenly inches from my own, my laughter silenced as it caught in my throat at suddenly being so close to him. I could see a glint in his mocha coloured eyes, sparkling and shining brightly as he stared at my shocked face- instead of just grinning, his face took on a look of triumph. I gasped, suddenly realising how we were sat; him holding my hands captive as I straddled him to his bed. My legs either side of waist, my weight resting firmly on his hips and lap- my fingers gripped in Stiles’ firm grasp.

I watched- my gaze wide and my lips open as Stiles’ triumphant grin was replaced by a smirk before dropping from his features altogether, as he too began to realise and take note of our current position. I stared as his eyes dropped to somewhere lower on my face- my lips beginning to tingle as if they knew they were his sole focus. My breathing hitched, as his pink tongue darted out to moisten his lips- before quickly closing the miniscule gap between us and pressing them softly against my own. My eyes widened a fraction- before slipping shut. It was a barely there kiss, just his lips gently pressing against my own, a barely there pressure. But it felt like much, much more. It was as if the air suddenly changed around us, becoming charged, like a spark was crackling around us. Then just as I was about to throw caution to the wind- and really kiss him, kiss him like I meant it. I felt him move slightly back from me, my eyes were still closed- so I didn’t see his expression, my lips were still slightly puckered- left wanting more and tingling with anticipation. I opened my eyes to see Stiles staring, waiting and trying to gauge my reaction. He must have struggled to figure me out, because in those few seconds it took for me to figure out; he had indeed kissed me, and that I wanted him to do it some more. Stiles had pushed himself away. A blush and a frown collecting themselves on his face- taking one hand from my wrist, he raised it to rub at the back of his neck nervously, he stopped his nervous tick shortly and took- instead to blinking anxiously.

I shook my head, still trying to collect my thoughts. Finding it increasingly difficult. My lips were tingling, I tried to bite them to make the sensation cease; though that did nothing but make the feeling worse. I clenched the fingers of my unhindered right hand, before finally deciding ‘To hell with it’. Raising it to grab the back of his neck and yanking his face unceremoniously towards my own, if this were to be witnessed by another; it would seem aggressive, violent and possibly as if I was trying to initiate some sort of facial battle. I realised I wasn’t paying all that much attention to what was actually happening, it wasn’t until I felt Stiles push himself closer to me again did I become invested.

His lips were soft and inviting, as they pressed against my own- there was much more pressure this time as I was still forcefully gripping his neck and crushing his face to my own. To soon I realised I wanted, no needed more.

More contact.

More pressure.

More Stiles.

I gently turned my head slightly to allow for better access; opening my lips and melding them to his. Moving them perfectly in sync, tasting more of him. I felt him return the favour, his lips parting to allow him more of a hint of me. With my lips already parted, I could dip my tongue out to run across his lips. My request for entrance to his mouth was granted fairly quickly- I slithered my tongue in, seeking more of a taste of him, dipping it inside his mouth and exploring this new territory.

The groan that echoed around the room, also vibrated trough my chest; I had made him groan. I smirked; my body moving of it’s own accord, pushing my lips more forcefully- if that was even possible- against his own, my hand smoothing up his neck until it was thrust deep within the hair at the base of his head. His other hand released my wrist and both secured themselves at my waist; fisting and bunching the fabric of his shirt, all the while tugging me closer. My hips began to roll and rub and grind down on his own. Searching for the friction I needed so desperately. A moan flew from my lips at the sensation and what sounded almost like a growl leaving that of Stiles’.

The kiss progressed, hands wandered and before I knew it; I felt light-headed from the lack of oxygen. I pried my lips from Stiles’, but he needed more contact- his own trailing down my jaw to the sensitive column of my neck. His kisses were sloppy and rough; his teeth nipping and tongue laving over the skin. My own bottom lip was drawn between my teeth, in an attempt to keep my moans and whimpers silent as delicate skin was given such sultry attention. My hands found their way to the hem of his shirt; tugging and pulling impatiently, hoping to give him the hint to remove the offensive fabric now! I needed MORE!

The shirt was yanked over his head quickly; the message received loud and clear. His hands began to tug up my own borrowed shirt; completely ignoring the buttons that was keeping it fastened together. Soon enough it was pulled gently from my frame and thrown haphazardly somewhere behind Stiles. He took this opportunity to let his eyes trail over the newly revealed flesh; my eyes doing the same and devouring the sight before me. His pale skin was smooth and almost hairless, apart from that trail of hair that led to unchartered territories. His dark eyes, now almost black in colour- stared directly at what was hinted to him earlier; his jaw dropping slightly. I could feel my cheeks flame under his scrutiny; so to distract his gaze, I gently placed one of his hands on my bare breast- squeezing it at a pressure which caused a moan to slip past my lips, with my other hand I gently slid it towards his sweatpants. Where an obvious reaction to what was happening was taking place- I slipped my hand over the top of his prominent and possibly painful bulge, palming him through his bottoms- feeling him become impossibly harder.

As he felt the pressure of my hand on his arousal, and his groped my breast he let out an animalistic growl; reminding me of the supernatural creatures we ran with, before diving into my neck and laving it with attention once more. After ensuring a mark would be left, purple and angry yet oh so pleasurable, he began a journey down my chest. Stopping to attend to kissing them passionately, before continuing down my body. He reached my hips, his lips skimming over my stomach and the centre of my panties- where a patch of wetness was extremely visible, allowing him to know I was as turned on and aroused by the events taking place as he was. He looked up towards my face; our eyes locking, his cheeks were slightly pink, his lips glistening and I was assuming my own looked similar.

“C..can I try something? Its something I’ve watched, in porn obviously cause I’m not some creeper who peeps through people bedroom windows- not that the bedroom is the only place you can have sex in.. Not that I’m assuming we’re automatically going to have sex.. But if we are, I’d be totally fine with that.. cause I’m me and you’re.. well you! And gahhh! I wanna taste…” Stiles let out in one big breathe, mumbling towards the end and almost whispering that very last part; as if to scared to acknowledge what was so obviously going to happen between us. He was obviously nervous, as was I; but my need to feel more. My need for him was almost to the point I felt I would explode if I didn’t get more.

More him.

More skin.

More pleasure.

I just smiled and nodded my head, almost too eagerly. Sucking in a breathe as he smirked and winked at me before licking a stripe up the centre of my underwear. His nimble fingers pried my panties from my hips and slid them down my legs, until I was finally left bare before him. His lips found my thigh, before grazing open mouthed kisses towards the area I needed him most; his tongue poking out and tasting the skin underneath, his teeth soon joined the party skimming over the skin also- this only made me grunt and whine at the sensation and tension he causing me. I was about to complain- to tell him to get on with it already, until I felt his tongue licking a strip up my centre instead of my impatient urging leaving my lips a gasp was torn from them first.

I was soon too lost in the tsunami of joy and pleasure he was giving me to actually notice what his tongue was doing to me, it was all on big desire driven blur. Leading to a tightening in my stomach; which was almost unbearable until, suddenly, it wasn’t unbearable anymore as moans so loud left my throat- moans so loud they were embarrassing and sounded rather pornographic to be truthful. I could feel Stiles’ lips wrapping around my clit, dragging me through my orgasm and ensuring it lasted a good while before he chuckled. He sat back on his knees; looking directly at my grinning face before letting out a ‘whoop’ of joy, almost as if he himself was surprised he managed to do that- so smug that he’d managed to make me a moaning mess on his bed.

I breathed out a long breathe; giving him a thumbs up as a sign he did good and I was absolutely fan-fucking-tastic; before wrapping my legs around his waist and throwing my weight, causing us to roll allowing me to situate myself on top of him. I smirked at his gaping mouth; his breaths coming out heavier as my hips moved over his erection, I was in control now, and I could tell he was feeling more turned on by the way his large hands were gripping roughly at my hips- almost guiding my movements and pressing me down harder so our groins met grinding together furiously. I slithered my way down his body; kissing licking and biting, leaving my mark all over his delicious pale skin before tugging his sweatpants and boxers down his legs. Once he was bare in front of me, I found my eyes drawn to the mystery that had been contained in his pants; he was large, larger than I expected- I was almost worried how he’d fit, I was no virgin by any means, but Jesus. Stiles Stillinski- my best friend and soon to be bed mate; was hung as fuck.

I began to lower my face towards it, wanting to repay the favour; to see how large he was and if he would fit inside me in any sense of the word, and I simply wanted to wrap my lips around him and have him squirming and at my mercy. Just as my lips were about to make contact; I felt his hands grip my chin, pulling it up and silently informing me he wanted me. And he wanted me now; just to check, I watched him as he shook his head- continuing to pull me up his body. As one hand lightly gripped my throat in an erotic gesture the other groped clumsily with his bedside table. He let out a frustrated sigh, letting my throat go and pushing me back gently so he could sit up and search for the protection we needed more thoroughly. He continued to sigh, muttering something about “Trying to be sexy” as I let out a small chuckle. I assumed he finally found the condoms as he let out another very Stiles-like whoop- he ripped open the small foil package before slipping it on quickly pumping himself; one, two three times, almost teasing me that I wasn’t able to. Before leaning forwards, wrapping his large hand around my neck again and pulling me into a kiss that was full of teeth and biting.

I continued to move towards him until I was once again situated above him. Gripping him tightly in my hand- smirking as he let out a groan, I guided him towards my entrance and slipped him in partially. Before sinking down on to him quickly; allowing him to fill me and stretch me in the most delicious way as moans and growls were ripped from our throats at the pleasure and sensation rolled over both of us. I began rolling my hips against him when I was comfortable with his sheer size; slowly beginning to move up and down on him allowing him to slip in and out of me at a quicker pace.

I watched as his face morphed into one of sheer joy, his mouth open, eyes clenched shut. He was beautiful. Sweat beginning to bead upon his brow, his arms swiftly wrapping around my waist and twisting until he was hovering over me. One hand still pleasantly wrapped around my throat, holding me in place and allowing me to know who was in control as of that moment. I felt him smirk and thrust into me at a quick pace.

“Fuuuck! Stiles.. Faster..Harder Please!” I groaned out, hoping to find that euphoria which was steadily coming towards me. I felt him respond; his hand tightening slightly as his hips pistoned towards me; fucking directly into the bed. His growls only making this experience all the more pleasurable. I felt my finish coming, I knew it would happen and felt myself clench tightly around Stiles. Who let out a surprised whine and suddenly became still as he too met his end.

“Oh. My. God!. That was incredible, you were incredible. I just whew..” Stiles breathed into my neck, still trying to catch his breathe a couple of minutes later. I grinned, dragging my nails teasingly down his back- he pulled out achingly slow, almost making me wish he was still hard so we could go another round. He disposed of the protection, before wrapping his arms around my body and pulling m under the covers. His head found its way to my chest and his breaths soon matched my own as they became slower and more peaceful as sleep took us.

The last thought I had before I allowed slumber to conquer me, was focused mainly on how Stiles and I would act tomorrow morning once we were awake and facing each other naked and laid.

#stiles x reader #stiles smut #stiles fanfiction #stiles stilinski #stiles x y/n #stiles x you #dylan o'brein as stiles stlinski #d o'b x you #d o'b x y/n smut

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merryfortune · 5 years

Text

Nosocomephobia

Fandom: Yu-Gi-Oh! Vrains

Ship: Jin/Spectre

Word Count: 2.1k

Warnings: hospitals, depiction of a panic attack, references to the Lost Incidents

Spectre knocked on the door and kept the bouquet of flowers in his other hand tightly by his side. He waited and then he heard a weak voice, “Come in,” and he followed the meek instruction. He opened the door and crept inside. His stomach knotted, and he felt sick. Violently so and he could feel his skin growing hotter and wet with panicky sweat. They were two very different people, he thinks, and yet, he had forced himself to visit regardless.

Jin was relaxing, face up to the ceiling almost in pretence of a nap but his eyes were open, in his bed. The sheets were a crisp and pristine white which were so bright, despite being quite used, that they hurt Spectre’s eyes. He felt the twitch of fear inside of himself, but he managed regardless. He forced himself to ignore it, even though it caused him to slow his steps as he approached the bedside.

Fortunately, Jin did not seem to mind as he became distracted by a remote. His bed whirred and soon, he was propped up. He indicated that a chair was close to his bedside, silently offering it for Spectre’s comfort but refused to sit and meet Jin’s eyeline as he propped himself up so that he may meet his companion more properly. But Spectre refused all such courtesy.

“I brought you flowers,” Spectre said, “I thought that would be polite. Brighten up your room, I suppose.” His voice was scratchy, and he was not meeting Jin’s gaze.

“Thank you, that’s very kind of you, Spectre.” Jin murmured.

“I don’t suppose you have a vase or similar?” Spectre asked, not particularly caring for Jin’s sentiments, and he glanced around the room.

The room was bleak and sterile. It was completely and utterly human; devoid of anything organic with shapeless pleated curtains and idling machinery dotting the corners of the room. It represented everything Spectre detested.

Spectre had a deep hatred of many things, human things but hospitals were, possibly, the worst of the lot and being here now, he was reminded of why. He didn’t know how Jin could stand it. They were all the same. Too clean, too white, too human. Nothing natural about them and the slow, constant beeps of machines. The windows were too small, and they were so bare. Nothing on the walls except reminders of what you were to the professionals who were not paid enough to care about more than how you were represented on those statistics. Spectre detests hospitals.

But his hand had been forced by Ryoken who thought it would be a good idea to visit. If it were up to Spectre, he would have waited until Jin was discharged but that seemed like an eternity away despite his grand improvements in condition post being used as Lightning’s servant. His podium, really. And even then, there was no way that Spectre would be permitted to even draw in close to the Kusanagi residence. So, it was now or not at all and Spectre, despite his reservations and fears and loathing, did not want it to be not at all.

Still, Spectre’s gaze, and his consequent musings, returned to what was before him. And that was that, until further notice, Jin was going to reside in hospice care, and they were supposed to be amicable. Thus, Spectre answered his own question now that his reverie, lulled, had finally broken.

“No, you don’t…” Spectre mused, with one last sweeping glance throughout his surroundings, as unnerving as they were.

“It’s okay, I can have a nurse find one for us.” Jin said.

“No. Absolutely not.” Spectre snapped.

Both Jin and Spectre were surprised by how loud Spectre’s voice had been. Spectre turned regretful, but Jin was forgiving. He knew that Spectre hadn’t meant it. Though, his hands twitched in betrayal to such good, sweet nature.

“Alright then…” Jin murmured. “I’ll just, um, hold onto them until later then.”

“If that’s what you want.” Spectre said, turning over the bouquet to Jin.

Jin delicately accepted it and his complexion changed with the bouquet’s flowers reflecting upon him, almost smiling yearnful smiles to him. He looked nice with the different flowers in his arms, admiring them. Spectre had wanted to bring Jin spider lilies but the moment Ryoken had learned of such a plan, he immediately had their Knights to tag along with Spectre on his endeavour to buy a bouquet. After all, spider lilies seemed too hateful a gift given that Jin was in a hospital and they were a symbol of death. Spectre still thought it oddly appropriate, even now.

“Thank you. I really love them.” Jin said.

There was genuine joy in Jin’s voice. It warmed Spectre’s heart. He hadn’t thought the gift anything more than a token but, he was weak when it came to people who could enjoy flowers.

“You’re welcome.” Spectre said. “Now, if you will, I would like to be excused. I’ve completed my… mission, for lack of a better word.”

“No. Please stay… You’re my only company today.” Jin said, licking his lips and his hand made a feeble move forward. Had Spectre been closer, Jin may have touched him. Grabbed his hand or similar.

“…I am not exactly a toy, Jin.” Spectre decided to reply.

“Oh. You’re busy? That’s alright then…” Jin said.

“Thank you for understanding.” Spectre said.

“But, please, are you sure you can’t just stay a little longer? I wanna apologise.” Jin said.

Spectre blinked. “Apologise? What for?” he scoffed.

“I was… I nearly… We – no, I – hurt you, Spectre. When you… when you lost that du-” Jin mumbled.

“That wasn’t you. That was Lightning’s manipulations of you. I absolve you of any guilt you may feel regarding me.” interjected Spectre. He took a breath. “Now, I really must be leaving, Jin.”

“Alright, bye, bye…” Jin said. “Thank you again for the flowers.”

“I make no promises, but I hope to see you again s-”

“Oh, I didn’t realise that you had a guest.”

Spectre’s nerves prickled as an unidentified, female voice interrupted him. An icy chill sent shockwaves through his body. He turned, robotically, and watched a woman let herself into the room. She had trays upon trays stacked on a cart. She was dressed in nursing scrubs, a dull, turquoise blue. She appeared harmless enough, but her appearance was more than enough to set Spectre off, but he remained strong. Composed.

“Are you a friend of Jin’s?” she asked.

“No. I-I’m not, sorry. I must be leaving, sorry.” Spectre said, tripping on his own words.

Jin stiffened in his bed. He was uncertain as to what was happening, but he didn’t feel rejected. If anything, he was taken asunder by a confused sort of concern. Something bad was about to happen – was already happening – and he didn’t know what the exact cause of it or how to prevent it. For now, he resolved to tread tentatively.

“He’s a friend of a friend, ma’am.” Jin said. “Now, would you please let him pass?”

“Did he bring you those flowers, Jin?” she asked, choosing to ignore Jin’s request but she flashed at smile at Spectre.

“Yes.” Jin replied.

She set aside the cart, unthinkingly, and continued to block Spectre’s path out of the room. He was so close to the entryway and yet so far. His stomach knotted and the woman came closer to Spectre’s bedside. She brushed up against Spectre and another shiver was sent down his spine. His hands felt aflame.

“Aw, aren’t they pretty?” she mused, and she reached across for them, to pet them. “I can go fetch a vase for ‘em, if you like.

“Don’t touch them!” Spectre all but roared.

The room fell silent in the wake of his yell. He began to tremble like a leaf, until his legs gave out and he collapsed. Thoughts turned jumbled in his head whilst he tasted bile in his mouth. Hands clamped over his ears and his chin to his knees, cowering against the underside of the bed. The room was deathly quiet save for his quiet, almost mad mutterings. Spectre all but shut down.

“P-Please leave, ma’am. Y-You’re upsetting my friend.” Jin resolutely piped up.

The nurse had a realisation which came tumbling down on her like a tonne of bricks. She immediately backed off and took her cart with her. Though, despite her departure, Spectre’s relief was not imminent.

In his head, he was trapped with all the sounds and scents he despised Everything from the dull, monotonous beep of the machines monitoring Jin’s heart rate to the smell of sanitiser. It all gave him a headache; all of which was intensified by memories which he had thought that he had overcome a long time ago but, apparently not.

Spectre may have found enjoyment in the Lost Incident, despite the electrocution and the starvation he was subject to, but he found no such thing in the aftermath of it. The hospital bed that he had been confined to in the wake of it had been more of a torturous prison than the little white room that he had spent six months inside of. And that had left a lasting impression upon him.

Jin put down the flowers. He began to tear apart his made bed. He pulled out a blanket.

“Would you like a blanket?” Jin asked.

Spectre breathed heavily. “No. I would not like a blanket.”

“I’m sorry.” mumbled Jin. “What about water?”

Spectre slowly rose from his crouched position. But his legs felt weak so, he took a perch on Jin’s bed rather than standing. From there, he focused on his breathing and staring only at his shoes, so intently that he could have bore a hole in the spick-and-span leather. He licked his lips and wondered how his mouth had become so dry.

“Yes please.” Spectre said.

Jin lifted his cup from his bedside and offered it to Spectre. “You’re not fussy, are you?” he asked.

Spectre shook his head, he was but, he was desperate so he was willing to put his preferences aside in haste, and accepted the cup. His fingers were twitchy, shaky. He drank greedily from it. It wasn’t nice. It was overly processed so he disliked it, but it felt nice to have something wet in his parched mouth regardless.

“Thank you.” Spectre said, breathing a sigh of relief.

“I-It’s no problem.” Jin mumbled. “I’m sorry. I should have let you leave sooner…”

“No, it’s quite lucky that I stayed. I would rather have had my… episode in here, in privacy, than in the hallway.” Spectre told him.

“Oh.”

Spectre got up and though there was a slight wobble to his movements, he was able to remain composed. He fluffed up his jacket, dusting off specks which only existed in his imagination. He turned around, slightly, and grimaced. It was a strange expression, self-pitying yet sympathetic.

“You’re a lot braver than people give you credit for, Jin. Or maybe you just seem that way because you’ve lived my personal Hell.” Spectre said.

Jin blushed. “Y-You’re too kind, Spectre…”

“I’m really not.” Spectre dryly replied with an awkward expression which suited him better than his prior grimace.

“If you say so…” Jin sighed. “I’ll see you later, then? Maybe?”

“Yes. I will… see you later.” Spectre said.

“Or not. I – I don’t want you to be dragged back to the hospital if it makes you uncomfortable.” Jin stammered.

“Thank you, Jin. But, it’s really nothing. I’m fine.” Spectre lied.

“We’ll find a compromise.” Jin insisted.

Spectre shrugged. “If you say so.”

“And I promise to take good care of the flowers you gave me, as well. I promise not to let the nurse touch them, if you like.” Jin said as he reached across back to his bedside table to return the bouquet to his lap.

Spectre softened. Jin truly looked like the picture of perfection with the different flowers in his grasp. So, finally, Spectre drew in closer to Jin and he felt a romantic instruction twinge deep inside of him. He caressed Jin’s face and gave him a quick, chaste peck on his cheek. Jin stiffened to his touch, his cheeks burned.

“Thank you for your consideration, Jin,” Spectre said as he replaced the distance between them again, “now, I’m going to finally excuse myself, my dear.”

“S-Sure… Sounds good. H-Have a – Have a safe trip back to, um, where ever it is y-you live.” Jin stammered.

Spectre nodded and with a strangely heavy heart, he excused himself from Jin’s room. As Spectre left, he felt a bit more courage in himself than when he had entered the hospital. Although, such things petered out as he had to pass yet more people dressed in scrubs and similar, but it was nice to know, to understand, there was at least one room in this wretched place that he could find some salvation in. Even if it was only for a short time.

#writing tag #subservientshipping #yugioh vrains #vrains #yugioh #spectre (vrains)#jin kusanagi #kusanagi jin #jin kolter #i wrote this literally at the beginning of february and just didn't post it #originally i was gonna post it last saturday but then i was possessed by bl/ack f/orest c/ake #anyway its my god given duty to help break up all the dss fics on ao3

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yuqibabe · 5 years

Text

- A Touch of Silver - (BTS)

Angel/Demon AU

Genre: Fluff, Smut, Angst and possible Gore.

Pairing: Taehyung and Jungkook.

Summary:

“Heaven was surprisingly very similar to life on Earth, only here in Heaven did sin cease to exist. Or so Jungkook thought.”

Warnings: Angst.

Chapter One - Empty Words.

Three years.

It had been three years since Taehyung had vanished.

However, he wasn’t the only one. The week prior to his disappearance was filled with strange occurrences. Angels all over the place were vanishing, not a single trace left behind to give any leads as to where they went. They were gone, just like that, as if they had never existed in the first place.

Jungkook had spent the first year searching for his lover endlessly, helping as much as The Guardians would allow him. Every single time he thought he was even a little bit closer to finding Taehyung, he was always met with another dead end. Every lead, every new piece of information, anything that was remotely linked to Taehyung’s whereabouts, was cut short and erased. It frustrated Jungkook so much, he was confused, and most of all, hurt. Why did Taehyung leave him?

It was a question that haunted the angel, kept him up at night and sent him into a spiral of seemingly inescapable sorrow. He spent those very nights letting his tears wash over his red cheeks, stinging his swollen eyes. Jungkook confined himself to his room, locking the door and letting his miserable thoughts devour his mind until he passed out of exhaustion due to his endless sobs.

But that was two years ago.

“Jungkook are you even listening to me?”

Snapping out of his daze, Jungkook lifted his eyes to land on the face of his best friend. Out of all his features, the most striking one was the thick, plump lips, that were currently pulled slightly downwards at the corners in a frown.

“Uh, I- yea sorry Jimin” Jungkook apologized half-heartedly. Jimin eyed Jungkook up and down, his dark brown eyes swirling with concern. “Everything alright?” He asked softly.

This is where Jungkook lies. He’s been through this exact scenario with Jimin countless times before.

The angel would get lost in the questions and the doubt that clouded his mind, that he’d forget that he was in the middle of a conversation, forget that he was wasn’t alone, physically. This usually happened around Jimin. Since the smaller angel had stuck around Jungkook ever since the night, wanting to make sure he was okay. Which Jungkook never was. Jimin would pull the angel away and into a private space, stare seriously into Jungkook’s miserable, tired eyes and say: “Now tell me what’s really going on?” To which the younger would respond by breaking down, holding onto Jimin weakly as incoherent words tumbled from his lips between choked sobs. Jimin was there for him when he felt like no one was. But that was two years ago. Jungkook was okay now, right? Wrong.

“Yea, I’m fine” Jungkook replied with a few nods. Turning his head away to stare blankly out the cafe window. His fingers gently drumming on the mug tucked between his soft palms.

Jimin let out a long sigh, his eyes flickering between Jungkook and his own mug before he spoke.

“You can stay at mine tonight if you want?” He offered, shuffling in his seat.

“Huh?”

“I said, you can stay at mine if you’d like.”

Jimin wasn’t an idiot. He knew what day it was. It wasn’t an anniversary, you celebrated anniversaries, not something like today.

Jungkook pursed his lips and nodded, muttering thanks.

The pair had left the cafe on Jungkook’s request. Jimin followed blindly for almost half an hour, letting Jungkook gently tug him onwards. He soon realised where the younger had taken them after he had passed through the golden bars of the tall gate.

“The Garden of Eden.”

Jungkook crouched down by a clear river that meandered gently through the meadow forests. His wings fluttered slightly as he dipped his fingertips into the cold water, letting the running water glide through his fingers. Jimin walked slowly over to where Jungkook was, taking in his surroundings, for he had only been here a few times.

The Garden of Eden was a sacred, serene, and most of all untouched area of land. It had remained that way after Heaven had reclaimed it as their own from the Humans. The reason was that the Humans had abused what was given to them as a gift, a paradise where they could live in peace and prosper.

Jungkook shook his hand, letting water droplets splatter from his fingertips. He wrapped his arms around his legs and tucked his chin into the gap, as his bottom rested weightlessly on the grass and flowers. His pearl coloured wings were relaxed and hung loosely from between his shoulder blades.

Jimin stood next to him, brown eyes catching glimpses of deer that pranced soundlessly through the trees on the other side of the river.

“We used to come here a lot.” The younger murmured softly. His voice barely audible amongst the sounds of birds chirping happily to each other.

“You and-”

“Yea.”

The pair remained in a comfortable silence.

Jimin squinted slightly as the rays of light filtering through the trees caught his eyes. He crouched down and sat next to Jungkook. His larger wings settling behind him, gingerly touching the feathers of the younger’s.

Out of the blue, Jungkook started laughing softly to himself. Jimin raised a brow in question and stared at Jungkook. “He used to chase around the deer trying to catch one for me. He never actually got one, but it was funny watching him run around for hours and hours. And we used to roll down the hills and once we reached the bottom, we’d just lie on the grass next to each other staring up at the sky. It was those moments where I’d felt so much happiness. This was our place and it was just us then.” Jungkook’s laughter died down and his cheeks reddened with oncoming tears, but none came. “But now it’s just me...”

Jimin didn’t hesitate to gently pull Jungkook into his embrace, gently curling one of his wings around him. The latter stayed silent, but slid his arms around Jimin’s small waist and held him tightly, burying his face into his chest. They didn’t need to exchange words, just being in each other’s company like this was enough to momentarily soothe Jungkook’s internal loneliness.

“Do you want to go back to my place?” The older spoke softly after a few minutes.

Jungkook nodded his head in Jimin’s chest but made no move to get up, he just held onto him. The angel patted his arm gently, urging to get him up. Jimin struggled to remove Jungkook’s arms that enveloped his torso but managed to break free eventually. He pulled the younger up and jokingly grunted, “ugh… you weigh a tonne.”

Jungkook pushed Jimin lightly and shook his head, “not as much as you”

“Whatever, Tiny Wings” The shorter smirked, glad he managed to lighten the mood, even if it was temporarily.

Jungkook spent the rest of their walk back to Jimin’s house defending the size of his wings, flapping them softly.

It didn’t take long for Jungkook to slip back into his depressive state after they entered Jimin’s house. The angel had led Jungkook to his room and left some pyjamas on the bed for him to change into, whilst he cooked up something to eat.

Jungkook hesitantly got changed, lethargically tugging off his clothes and pulling on the soft fabric of the pyjamas. He remained in the bedroom, sitting cross-legged on the grey bed sheets and drawing soothing patterns onto the skin of his palm with his thumb.

He raised his head as he heard Jimin shuffling into the room, opening the door with his back as his hands were occupied with two bowls of something that smelt delicious. Jungkook’s hunger ignited at the strong savoury scent and his brown eyes grew wide as he eagerly reached for one of the dishes.

“I hope you like it!” Jimin smiled softly as he sat down in front of Jungkook, hungrily eating up the food.

“It’s delicious” The younger mumbled before gulping down another mouthful.

The pair finished their dinner, not long after Jimin had brought it in, and set their bowls on the bedside table. The smaller angel coughed, trying to get Jungkook’s attention. The latter looked up to Jimin’s questioning eyes and slightly tilted head as if he were analysing him like some sort of scientist, with Jungkook being his experiment.

Jungkook equally returned the stare. “What?”

Jimin’s expression softened, “do you want to talk about it?”

Any other day and the younger would have been okay, but hearing those words from Jimin caused the memories to resurface and plague his mind. Jungkook didn’t even remember much from that night, just bits and pieces. It was like trying to remember a dream, things never quite making sense because he couldn’t conjure up everything that had happened. Words, sentences, touches, everything that was exchanged that night was jumbled, some parts missing. The only thing he solidly remembered was the promise, those few words had him stuck in that very same spiral of inescapable sorrow. They buzzed around his head, never once for a second did he forget them.

“You’ll come back... right?”

“Yea, yea, of course. I promise.”

Jungkook’s bottom lip trembled at the memory as if it only happened yesterday. “Why did he leave me?” He choked out the words, no longer fighting the tears he had been holding off for those many hours he had spent with Jimin.

“I-I don’t know Jungkook…” Jimin admitted. Jungkook cried harder, sobs wracking his body and his little wings bobbing up and down weakly with every cry.

“It’s my f-fault isn’t it? I d-did something...wrong. H-he was right to leave me... I-” He was cut off by Jimin pulling him towards his chest and holding him close, hands rubbing circles into his back as he cooed gentle words into his ear. Jungkook clung to the angel, his fingers gingerly fiddling with the feathers of his larger wings. It comforted Jungkook to touch other angel's wings, they were incredibly soft, fragile and sensitive, it made him feel less vulnerable, especially in a state like this.

“I-I’m such a screw-up” His sobs were muffled by Jimin’s shirt. The older shushed him softly, gently pushing him away and cupping Jungkook’s tear stained cheeks, wiping away the drops with the pads of his thumbs. The younger looked at Jimin through his bleary eyes.

“You are not a screw-up Jungkook, okay?” Jimin caressed his cheek. Jungkook nodded weakly, sniffling, but the outflow of tears still continued.

“He’s not coming back, is he? He l-lied to me.”

“Shh...It’s okay” The smaller brushed the strands of Jungkook’s fringe that hung in front of his eyes away with tender fingers. Jungkook shuffled closer to Jimin until he was straddling his lap, cuddling into his warm chest once again. Jimin accepted him and wrapped his arms around Jungkook, gently scratching the back of his head in an attempt to calm him, fingers running through his soft hair soothingly.

Jimin rocked their bodies side to side as Jungkook continued to whimper into his chest, saying muffled words about how he was ‘worthless’, to which Jimin would reassure him and tell him otherwise.

“You’re more than that Jungkook, you’re amazing, you’re perfect. He was a fool to leave you” Jungkook lifted his head to look at Jimin with a desolate expression. Eyebrows angled upwards and his red nose twitching with every sniffle.

“R-really?”

“Yes, really,” Jimin assured softly with a nod, stroking his hair comfortingly. “I think you’re the most considerate, generous and loving angel out there. You don’t deserve to feel like this at all, but you are going to get through this and you’ll always have me. You know that Jungkook because I’ve told you hundreds of times before, and I’ll keep reminding you if I have to.”

Jungkook smiled weakly at Jimin, his eyes flitting down to the angel’s plump lips. It was only for a split second, almost unnoticeable, but he knew Jimin saw it. Especially since the older now had his eyes lowered to Jungkook’s own lips, slowly leaning towards them. He lifted his gaze, as his mouth grazed gingerly over Jungkook’s, asking for permission with his dark brown eyes, staring into the younger’s still teary eyes.

“J-Jimin…” Jungkook breathed out, feeling so light-headed from his crying and now the lack of space between their lips as they met shyly.

The angel’s eyes closed as Jimin’s mouth pressed gingerly against his. The warmth that spread through his body as they slowly moved against each other in little touches. His heart racing as they parted from the kiss that seemed to last for only milliseconds.

“Is this okay?” Jimin whispered softly, cupping his face with his small hand. Jungkook nodded, timidly capturing Jimin’s lips once more.

The older pushed Jungkook backwards so he was lying on top of him, not letting their warm bodies separate as well as their mouths. They were best friends, yet they were kissing, sharing so much with each other as if they were lovers.

This wasn’t the first time they had done this. The first time it had happened, it was an impulse on Jimin’s side, leaning forward and stealing a gentle kiss from Jungkook’s trembling lips as he cried. Surprisingly, it calmed the younger down, soothed his frantic thoughts until it was only them. He liked it, he really did, but it was never him. The dull ache in his chest would pound on no matter what Jimin did.

Jungkook continued to cry, tears pooling in his eyes and streaming down his rosy, stinging cheeks. Pulling the older closer with his arms wrapped around his neck, hands now running through his wings.

“Shh… Shh, it’s okay, it’s okay” Jimin caressed his cheek, wiping away the salty tears and whispering those sweet nothings in between their static lips touching slowly.

Jimin pulled away from Jungkook, looking sympathetically into his brown eyes that were contaminated with grief. “You still love him don’t you?” He murmured softly.

The younger nodded slowly, a new wave of sorrow hit him, piercing right into his chest. His pain and sorrow grew and the sickly feeling of not knowing churned his stomach. He clutched onto Jimin and pulled him down to lie next to him, holding onto the angel’s torso weakly as his wings drooped and hung lowly.

“I still feel like he’s here… L-like he’s going to come back, but h-he never does” Jungkook whimpered. The older ran his fingers through Jungkook’s hair in repetitive strokes, pressing warm kisses onto his scalp and listening to the younger ramble incoherent cries to him.

“I miss Taehyung”

“...I know Jungkook, I know”

The angel curled his wing underneath Jungkook’s body, cradling him comfortingly with his soft feathers. They stayed like that for hours until Jungkook’s cries had slowed to a stop and his breathing had regulated in slow exhales of slumber.

Jimin pressed a lingering kiss to Jungkook’s pouting lips and pulled his body closer as he closed his eyes, basking in the comfort of Jungkook’s limbs that had woven around his narrow body. His small wing that had rested over his chest along with his arm that wrapped around him. He soon fell asleep, letting the darkness wash over his tired mind.

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theshatteredrose · 6 years

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An Ear to Listen and A Voice to Comfort - Etrian Odyssey 4 Fanfic

Summary: Logre, bewildered by his own emotions, speaks with Isiah before allowing Nitish to give him a few words of comfort.

Characters: Logre, Isiah, Nitish

Pairings: Platonic Logre with Isiah and Nitish

AN: GOD, I nearly cried writing this Q^Q But we’re finally getting somewhere with Logre~ It’s all up hill from here for Logre, I promise! Fluff and precious moments await. Until then, though, get ready to start crying :’D

Ao3 | Wattpad | FFNet

~*~*~*~*~*~

Logre lay sprawled awkwardly on the bed; his arm listlessly flopped over his face and eyes. A low, but deep-seated headache was beginning to make its presence known to him. His eyes also burn with a gritty sensation and his chest felt heavy. He probably had a fever, too, just to top it all off.

He, however, was pretty certain he knew the reason he felt like...shit.

Crying like a child was the cause.

It was almost terrifying in a way how he couldn't stop himself from crying. He eventually did, obviously, but it took him so long. Ten, fifteen minutes perhaps. Of course he first tried to play off the sudden bout of crying as a side effect of whatever sleeping aid those three guys used on him. But he knew it wasn't true. It was from the pent-up emotions that he locked away for over ten years finally reaching their breaking point.

He just broke down.

The shock, the surprise, the sheer relief. It all acuminated into one large crying fit. He shouldn't be all that surprised, to be honest. He always knew at the back of his mind that one day the stress of having to hide for ten years, of having to lie to those he learnt to care for, to lie to himself would one day come back to bite him in the ass.

He should probably be grateful that it happened in a secluded room at the Researchers' Clinic. And not out in the wilderness of one of the labyrinths.

It was...all Jeroden's fault. Yeah. Jeroden was always able to make him feel and see things that no one else could. Emperor Afrdor himself once said, so long ago, that Jeroden was able to put some different expressions on his face.

Speaking of which, he was sure the others of his guild were worried. Nitish, after all, could sense emotions. And he would have unwittingly experienced a tonne of them with him. And what of those three guys that ambushed him? he vaguely remembered hearing the voices of his guildmates before the shocking revealing of Jeroden's return.

Gods, Jeroden...

All his thoughts would returned to that man. No matter whatever else he tried to think about, they would do a complete 360 and return back to Jeroden. His thoughts were a jumbled mess. Understandable, probably. But it didn't make the act of thinking any easier.

Honestly, all he could think was that Jeroden was alive. He was alive. The more he thought about it, the less he cared about the other circumstances of what happened to him. He was alive.

And...apparently in love with him.

Gods, that was another thing that was continuously running around in his head. Jeroden was sarcastic but he wasn't a liar. And he wouldn't lie about something like that. But...dear god, that man deserved so much better. So much better.

But…it also made his heart quicken. Almost as if he was…happy by the thought. He pushed that aside, though.

The sound of the doorhandle moving and unhitching the lock pulled Logre from his thoughts. He didn't move, however. Just kept his pitiful slouched resting on the bed. Even as he heard the sound of boots clack against the hard flooring to make their way over to him.

A sweet scent touched his nose as a hand landed on his shoulder.

"Let's do something about that headache of yours," came Isiah's voice.

Logre sighed and dropped his arm away from his eyes. Though the light of the room hurt his eyes for a moment, he was immediately able to recognised Isiah as he stood near the bed. One hand continued to rest on his shoulder while the other held a tea cup, no doubt filled with some kind of herbal tea that would help with his emotion induced headache.

"Yeah, ok," Logre murmured, his voice thick yet tired. And he pushed himself to sit up, though it took quite a bit of effort to do so. His head also spun from the movement and he had to sit on the edge of the bed with his head in his hands for a few moments.

And Isiah's hand stayed on his shoulder the entire time, waiting. Probably silently uttering a refresh spell or two to help make him feel better. Isiah wasn't the motherly type, as one would imagine those in the healing profession would be, but he was a bloody good medic. And Logre was glad that he was there.

Silently, Logre lifted his head from his hands and turned in Isiah's direction, only to find the cup of herbal tea pushed toward him.

"Drink this," Isiah instructed. "It'll help with the headache. And maybe clear your mind a little."

The sweet scent was something Logre hadn't encountered before, but he trusted Isiah and his brothers. They knew their stuff, after all.

"How are you feeling?" Isiah finally asked him as he walked to stand a foot or so in front of him, but leaned back against the medical counter behind him.

And Logre uttered a mirthless laugh. Normally he would brush off such concern, insist that he was fine with a half-smile before abruptly changing the subject. But he couldn't do that now. Not with Isiah. Not that the previous habit worked too well with him, anyway.

"I honestly haven't a fucking clue," Logre replied with a croaky voice.

"Just word vomit it all out for me then," Isiah suggested.

Vomit wasn't the best word for Isiah to use at the moment. Honestly, after learning that Jeroden had endured hell for ten years as a farmer, not knowing what the hell was going on and having to leave everything behind made Logre want to vomit. He just couldn't imagine having to live like that on his own...

Then again, he kinda did, didn't he?

Logre took a long sip of his tea, letting the warm liquid wash down his throat to his stomach. There was a flowery taste mixed with honey. It was sweet, but not overly so. It tasted nice. Warm and inviting. Just concentrating on drinking this tea actually made him feel a little better.

But he knew that Isiah would like to know how he was truly feeling. What happened to him. He must look like a wreck. Really, Isiah hadn't pointed it out, so he must look like total shit.

Logre finished his tea in silence, Isiah waiting patiently for him as he placed the empty cup onto the bed next to him. He then took a moment to try to compose himself, to gather his thoughts in a manner that would make sense. He tried to treat it as if he was giving a report for a mission or request. Get to the key points as quickly as possible and as rationally as possible.

Of course as soon as the words "Jeroden is a friend of mine" all composure went out the window and he just ended up blubbering about what Jeroden had told him, how he was another soldier to aid the emperor's mission, how he was betrayed, how Logre thought him dead after witnessing his airship crash.

Everything came out all jumbled. A complete and utter mess. Much like him to be completely frank.

"I see," Isiah murmured after Logre had blurted it all out. "Your reactions are completely justifiable. To have someone you thought dead return to your life? That would be like my old man returning from the grave. If he did that with me, well...I don't know how I would react. Punch him in the guts?"

Despite himself, Logre felt his lips twitch into a half smile. "I'd imagine he would expect nothing less."

Isiah suddenly pushed away from the counter and folded his arms across his chest. Not exactly in a stern manner, but a firm one nonetheless. "There's something else, isn't there?"

Yes, of course there was. The most confusing thing of all.

"He's...also in love with me," Logre confessed, swallowing back the bubble of guilt that lodged in the back of his throat.

Isiah shifted on his feet and unexpectedly snorted. "So he comes back into your life by potentially saving your life, whisking you away to safety before unleashing a few bombshells and then admitting to be in love with you? Well, one can't say that he doesn’t do things by half."

A laugh bubbled up from Logre's throat so unexpectedly that it caught him by surprise. Still, he laughed lowly and it felt relieving in a way. "No, he certainly doesn't. Never have," he murmured as he harshly rubbed at his eyes with the heels of his palms.

"Is that one of the reasons you're feeling so out of sorts?" Isiah asked as he shoved his hands into his pockets. "Are your thoughts now centring on why he would be?"

Logre didn't, couldn't reply.

Isiah, however, seemed to continue for him. "Let me guess; something along the lines of deserving so much better than a bitter, scarred old man like you? Hmm? Am I close?"

Spot on, actually. As per usual. By the gods, it was unnerving when he did that. And Nitish was supposed to be the psychic one.

Isiah suddenly gave him with a stern, piercing look. "Logre, you're thirty-three years old. You have at least another sixty years left in you. Are you seriously going to spend the next several decades moping about the past? Something you had no control over? Something you still have no control over?"

...Trust Isiah to ask him such a hard question.

He...had been living in the past, hadn't he?

"Nitish would also like to speak with you," Isiah suddenly said.

Logre couldn't prevent himself from wincing. He was about to decline, not wanting to cause the runemaster further stress with his raging emotions at the moment, but Isiah clamped a hand on his shoulder. And Logre knew the medic long enough to know what whenever he did that, he wasn't going to take no for an answer. And...it also meant that what he had requested of him was to the benefit of his health.

"It'll be good for you," Isiah continued. "Nitish has become quite adept at understanding the emotions of others. And I'm fairly certain that you've become confused by your own. At least let him talk you through some of them."

He...had a point. He had pushed aside his own feelings for so long that they're become foreign to him.

"You've experienced more emotions in the last twenty-four hours than you had in the entire ten years you've been here," Isiah said as he dropped his hand from his shoulder and shoved both of his hands into the pockets of his white medical coat. "Now, he's waiting outside for you. Just let him see you at least. Everyone is worried."

"I know," Logre relented with a sigh. "Tell them I'm sorry, yeah?"

"I can but they'll return that there's nothing to be sorry about, so it's a waste of time," Isiah countered as he turned and walked to the door.

Logre sighed again and leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees. Perhaps it would help him to speak with Nitish. He felt awkward, foolish even to burden a younger man like that. Especially one who he had been in charge of protecting during their mission. But Nitish wasn't a child anymore. He had grown a lot over the last year.

Unlike him, it seemed.

The door opened and Logre lifted his head to watch as Nitish step into the room. He paused to close the door silently behind him before he turned to give Logre his full attention. His face appeared slightly pale, as if he hadn't been able to rest for the past few hours, and his eyes seemed...sad. He, however, held himself high, his shoulders relaxed, and his hands folded in front of him. He had always very elegant and graceful.

"How are you feeling?" he asked softly.

Foolish, to be completely honest. A emotionally-stunted soldier rediscovering the world of emotions and feelings.

Nitish's gaze softened further, as if able to hear his musings. Or at least read his facial expressions and emotions. He sighed and closed the distance between them. He then sat on the bed next to Logre, his hands folded neatly atop of his lap. He gazed down at them for a moment, silent. And Logre remained silent, too.

Finally, after a somewhat awkward silence, Nitish seemed to nod to himself before he lifted his eyes and looked at Logre. "Give me your hand," he unexpectedly requested.

Logre was surprised by the request, but he soon realised that Nitish could better understand an object, or in this case a person's aura if he touched them in some way. It allowed for him to ground himself while freely exploring their aura.

Though he was reluctant, Logre offered Nitish one of his hands. His left. Scarred and battled hardened over the years. Nothing like Nitish's flawless, slender hands. Even so, Nitish clasped his hand tightly with both of his without hesitation. And he closed his eyes for a moment.

"Relief," Nitish said after another moment of silence, though his eyes remained closed. "You're happy that Jeroden is alive. You've missed him so much. Much more than you thought. Much more than you realised. It is that realisation that made you fall into a state of shock when Jeroden returned to you."

Logre's mouth dropped open in surprise to hear that. He, of course, gaped at Nitish, though the talented runemaster continued to gently stroke his thumb over the back of Logre's hand, seemingly oblivious to his bewilderment.

"The shock you felt when you learnt of some truth, of him, led to a moment of excitement, to know that he wasn't taken from you in such a way," Nitish continued, undaunted. "But that was quickly overridden with guilt. Guilt that you had seemingly forgotten him. Guilt that you had languished in your own despair while he suffered through his. Guilt that you had accepted that he was dead, even though you also felt that you should have held more firmly onto the belief that he was still alive somewhere."

...By the gods, how...?

Nitish slowly opened his eyes and turned to look up at him. "You consider yourself selfish, but you are one of the most selfless people I have, we have ever known. But that selflessness has turned you into a martyr. You won't allow yourself to be happy. Because you think you don't deserve it. All because you tried your best to honour your emperor’s memory and dream for the empire."

"Th-that's not true..." Logre tried to argue back, but his voice was unexpectedly and unnervingly weak and thick with emotion.

Nitish shook his head and released his hand, only to push himself to his feet and unexpectedly step in front of Logre and wound his arms around his neck, gently guiding him to rest his forehead against his chest. Logre fell limp and completely speechless as Nitish rested his cheek atop of Logre's head.

"These emotions aren't new," Nitish explained. "They've always been there. But you've pushed them aside, ignored them whenever they flared up. All for the sake of others."

That...that simply wasn't true. It couldn't be. He was just a stupid old man being used as a puppet for an empire he thought he knew but didn't.

"But now you've been presented with the opportunity to share with Jeroden all the things you thought you never would again," Nitish said as he leaned back to frame Logre's face in his hands and tilt his head back to look up at him. "Don't let this opportunity slip away."

He...was right. Jeroden was back in his life. Back and alive. Scarred like him. Bitter like him in some aspects. But he was alive. And happy to see him as well. God, oh god that was all that mattered in the end. He had his friend back.

His...friend?

That pledge…

"Please," Nitish whispered, his blue eyes shimmering with unshed tears. "Let yourself be happy."

"I...don't know how," Logre pitifully murmured in return, well aware now that more tears were pooling in his eyes.

"The first step is to say you want to try," Nitish gently returned. "So say it. Say it aloud."

There words were there. On his lips. But it felt so hard. "I...want to try to be happy for once."

Though his eyes were teary, Nitish smiled at him. A bright smile of relief. "Yes. We will help you. Now is your time to be watched over by everyone."

That...sounded nice. It won't be easy. He likely wouldn't make it easy. But it would be unintentional. Brought on by habit. But he...he really wanted to try. Just try it. Try to look to the future instead of the past. He wasn't tied there anymore. He was...free now, wasn't he? Was that one of the reasons why he continues to cling to the past? Because he didn't know what else to do?

Nitish suddenly hugged him again, his arms around his neck. And this time Logre found the strength to wrap his arms around him in return, actually letting himself enjoy the comfort of his embrace.

"I'm so proud of you," Nitish unexpectedly said. "Now we all can move on and look to the future. All of us. Together."

Yeah. He'd like that very much.

#Etrian Odyssey #etrian odyssey 4 #fanfiction #ALE/C Crew #Phaedron Guild

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eatplantswanderoften · 5 years

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The New Me

Well, as I have said many times in these blog posts, its been a hot minute. I have had some major hesitations about writing another one of these posts. Maybe because of the misconceptions from my last post, maybe its because I don’t want to accept how I look now is the real me, maybe because I was too damn busy. Regardless of the reason, here I am, putting my clusterfuck of emotions, thoughts, and feelings out on the interwebs for the interested few to read.

A lot has changed since my last post. I’ve made a lot of progress, small or otherwise, and I’ve gotta say I am hella proud of myself. Don’t get me wrong, I have had my tough days; weeks even, but, one step at a time, I’m moving forward. Like this age-old meme showing expected vs actual success, my progress likely resembles that of a drunk, blind mole rat running though a laboratory maze. But hey, I’m trying right?

Biggest thing is, I finally accepted I needed help. Not from a peer, not from my family, but honest to goodness psychological help. And to no one’s surprise but my own, it’s really fucking helping. Making connections between these shitty feelings and the bad habits they support has helped me become even more self aware of exactly what it is I am doing to myself. Trying to change these habits, understand these feelings, has allowed me to finally start to get over the hump in my recovery I couldn’t surpass on willpower and caffeine alone. Am I better? Hell fucking no, but I sure as hell am getting there. I know this disorder will be something I struggle with my whole life, but anything I can do to make each day just a little bit easier, you bet your sweet bippy I am going to try.

Mindset; a word I have thrown around a lot. Something that, for me anyways, has always been a hard thing to change, no matter how much I think I do it. Like me, my mindset is a stubborn shit who doesn’t really like change. Going from believing I need to be the skinniest person in the room and that food should constantly be restricted to “hey, I’m not the skinniest, but I am full and happy” is not easy, let me tell you. The constant comparison to other people is exhausting but something that I still do daily (although desperately trying to stop). Constantly asking for reassurance if my meal isn’t too big, if I look fat, etc., is not only exhausting and annoying to the people I ask, but also to myself. Every time I compare or seek reassurance I feel as though I let myself down. So, I took this failure, and turned it into a goal.

Instead of just eating more and stopping the comparison to simplyget better, I decided I wanted to be strong. And I don’t just mean looking muscular, I decided I wanted to train like a powerlifter. So I got a few training sessions, and thats what I am doing. My thought process is, if my lifts are not improving, if I am not making a noticeable progression, I’m not fueling my body properly. Logically, this lack of fuel means I need to eat. Surprisingly, this simple science combined with my goal oriented, obsessive personality, was enough to give me the push I needed. I have been allowing myself just a little more freedom with food. I drink a little smoothie every morning, I actually allow myself to have an alcoholic drink every now and again, and I occasionally and increasingly *brace yourself* allow myself to eat until I am full. I know, I know, that doesn’t seem like a big deal. But for me, it’s huge.

Guess what? I hit deadlift, squat and bench PRs this week (which isn’t a mass amount of weight considering how much strength I had lost, but hey, it’s still a fucking win in my books). Another thing; this extra food and fuel really hasn’t made me gain a whole tonne of weight yet. Don’t get me wrong, I know that this will be part of the progression, but I think I am starting to become ok with it. I look stronger, healthier…I FEEL stronger and healthier. If that means I have a little more cushion around my tummy and a little more chub to my cheeks; so be it. I caught myself getting on the scale last week after a weekend away and it had gone down a few pounds. You know what? (sorry, I realize I ask a ridiculous amount of rhetorical questions) I felt disappointed. If that alone isn’t some sort of progress, I don’t know what is. The feeling was fleeting, mixed the next day with doubts and anxiety when it went back to my normal weight, but hey, it was there, it was clear, and it was real.

One of my “bits of homework” was to track how much I look at my gut in the mirror and think ugh. This is something I would do almost every time I went to the bathroom or walked by a mirror. Which, for someone who drinks upwards of 6 liters of water a day, is a whole fucking lot. Funny thing the mind is though, I found because I knew that I had to write down each time, I stopped doing it at all. Or, looking at another part of my body that I am happy with. That week of tracking allowed me to see that hey, maybe this new body isn’t so bad after all. I still look at my gut and think ugh sometimes, but maybe only once a day instead of all day every day. Now when I look in a mirror, or anytime for that matter, I don’t feel the constant need to suck in. I am allowed to be bloated; I’m allowed to have some fluff. Maybe the biggest realization I’ve had is literally no one gives a rat’s ass about my abs except me. But when a stranger comes over to me in the gym and tells me I look phenomenal and making great progress (really happened, I promise), that means a lot.

I know this post, especially that last paragraph, is a bit jumbled, but so are my thoughts. I jump everyday from feeling great, to hating my new body, then to loving it once again. So here I am, chubby cheeked and cranky, at the end of a day of eating, drinking far too much water, and *full disclosure* being pretty damn constipated. Love it or hate it, this is the new me, the stronger me, the healing me. As always, thank you, dear reader, for stopping by. Stay tuned for more neurotic ramblings and progress updates.

Your perpetually hungry herbivore,

Nat

#eating disoder recovery

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wwe-fluff-fic · 7 years

Text

Undertaker - Fun and Games

Undertaker - Prompt #58 and #94: “You look cute with a baby bump” and “Ow! Ow! Stop hitting me!”

Request for @1967-impala-dreams. Written by Moxxii.

Warnings - Fluff? Idk

Word Count - 673 words.

Finally, a normal night in with your fiancee, Mark, more commonly known as - The Undertaker. Recently he’d been so busy with RAW; trying to increase their ratings and it meant that you and him had barely any alone time together. But tonight it was just you two - well three if you count the tiny baby growing in your stomach that he was currently unaware of. For the past few weeks you had been wearing baggy jumpers to hide the ever growing baby bump that had begin to form - and luckily he hadn’t noticed or pointed it out. You wanted to surprise him in some sort of cute way you hadn’t quite figured out yet

But tonight you were so glad that you once again got to spend some quality time with your man just watching movies and eating food - this whole pregnancy thing was a shit tonne of effort! Well you thought it was going to be peaceful, but for some reason your often docile fiancee was being extremely energetic; tickling your sides and play wrestling with you on the bed. Which would’ve been fine if you weren’t so lethargic from the hours of flights and lack of sleep due to the baby. But even him being slightly more excitable than you fancied wasn’t going to prevent you having a good night in.

However, being a wrestler yourself you were used to the playful pins, hits and bumps Mark would give you and they wouldn’t normally affect you at all, but with him being in that sort of playful mood and you being at a crucial mark in your pregnancy you knew that it was tonight you were going to have to tell him - but that sort of slipped your mind once you had started watching films; encased lovingly in your mans arms.

You were snuggled up in between Mark’s arms when suddenly he started to jab your sides in order to tickle you laughing manically , as giggles bubbled from your lips and they continued as he started placing mock slaps across your arms and legs. You reciprocated with your own chops across his muscular, tattooed arms and chest. It was all fun and games still he grabbed you off of the bed by slinging you over his shoulder and you knew exactly what was coming - a mock chokeslam. He gripped you softly by your throat as he put you in the chokeslam position and slapped you not to harshly but hard enough for the slightest twinge of pain to shoot through your back. You panicked knowing the chokeslam was next and a jumble of words fell from your lips “Ow! Ow! Stop hitting me!” you screamed. His hand instantly moved away from your neck and worry embraced every inch of his face.

“Shit, Y/N. I’m sorry did i hit you too hard” his hand rubbed circles where he had previously slapped.

“No, no i didn’t even hurt i just kinda didn’t want you to chokeslam me and i panicked and over reacted” you blushed. His face contorted in confusion; knowing you usually find the chokeslam hilarious. “There’s something i need to tell you” you bit your lip nervous about his reaction as his eyes widened waiting for the bombshell. “I-i’m pregnant” you stuttered a crimson blush gracing your cheeks.

“That’s the reason for all of the baggy jumpers!” he shouted his hands instantly going to the hem of your tapout jumper, hurriedly lifting it over your head to expose your small yet prominent bump. His eyes widened as he rubbed the precious bump “you look cute with a baby bump, that’s our baby in there” in mused. “God I am so fucking lucky to have you.” He bent down and placed a kiss on your lips which you jumped into wrapping your legs round his waist “No more chokeslams baby” he chuckled as you giggled laying back down on the bed in his safe embrace.

I’m the lucky one here. You thought, smiling at the thought of your perfect little family.

A/N: Our first undertaker imagine is here! Sorry for using his real name but i couldn’t call him taker haha! Anywayyysss i also suck so bad at titles but hope you enjoy ~ Moxxii

#wwe imagines #wwe imagine #wwe oneshot #wwe oneshots #wwe fluff #wwe writing #wwe drabble #wwe prompt #wwe x reader #wwe fanfiction #undertaker imagine #undertaker imagines #undertaker oneshot #undertaker fluff #undertaker prompt #undertaker x reader #undertaker request #undertaker x oc

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ortheaux · 6 years

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i originally wrote this post to talk about the gathering on wednesday where a bunch of us met up for the first time since we flew out to the riviera for my birthday (except for our christmas party obviously), because i had to talk to my friends about the incident after the xmas party, and it was the first time i had to face it in front of a group. it was a big thing as it was my first speedbump since my ptsd breakthrough and the upwards trend of healthy growth and activity in my life - but tumblr’s new feature where it allows you to delete WHOLE paragraphs of text at once literally deleted the WHOLE of the beginning of the post, so my original process as it happened was lost and i was super gutted about it! but the gist is, we needed to discuss it so that that person wouldn’t accidentally be invited to our gatherings because the fact is, that person crossed a big line of trust, and displayed a complete disrespect for both me and my relationship and what i want, after i had constantly expressed not reciprocating their feelings, so to wait until i was black out drunk that december, ply me with alcohol and seize an opportunity to push for one moment, to force vulnerability the only way they seemed to know how instead of respecting me as a friend was completely unforgivable and it was a big signal that the person needed to be purged from my life, as they erased all the good things about our friendship for that one shitty, desperate moment to get at me and ignore what i wanted. so, i gave my friends the basics, but all the feelings of pain and betrayal actually affected me really negatively, and i had felt really shaky and awful when i got home afterwards, which surprised me because i realised that i hadn’t really processed it enough to sit in front of our friends and admit how naive i had been, as they had warned me of something like this happening because of that person’s vibe coupled with their feeling towards me, but it was difficult for me to swallow having had such a long term friendship with that person already. i had advocated hard for that person and gotten burned, and i hadn’t confronted the reality of what that meant until the moment i was sitting in front of them, and that’s not even to mention the dormant pain of the loss of nearly a decade of friendship and the pure betrayal and confusion about trust that were bubbling underneath the surface of the box i’d stored the incident away in. point is, it all came to a head, and i felt like it was a big crossroad, in terms of how i would decide to deal with this big injection of an unhealthy event and the feelings attached to it, as it was my first speedbump. would i retreat into unhealthy coping mechanisms? would it steamroll me and make me backslide? the time to find out was that night, the next day and whether or not it would paralyse me or push me to look inwards, and forge myself another path to be able to continue to grow. the rest of this post is from the morning after, where i talk about my process and where i went from there.

so anyhow i’m meant to be catching a movie with czes later on and my body and mind feel super lethargic and heavy, which is all the more reason to

- yank it the hell out of bed, and implement a schedule for eating today starting with breakfast, so as not to let mental lethargy give way to ptsd-brain meal skips, - exercise bike for 20 minutes (as it always makes me just feel really good and gets my blood pumping!), - jump in the shower but change back into pyjamas for a while and just have a nice read of my new book from elizabeth on the sofa with some tea and incense, as that’s happy place + a spot of escapism + a gift from a dear friend, then just relax until it’s time to get ready to go - making sure to wear some flowy, comfortable clothes (likely a blouse) and minimal makeup (as fussing will stress me out a bit) - and then we can go and hit the swanky cinema! we’re going to one with sofas instead of seats and restaurant food instead of cinema bites so it should be really chill and is perfect for my headspace i think.

i genuinely find that when i start to feel really stressed or am overwhelmed by something, anxiety can make the mind race a mile a minute and it can turn my thoughts into a huge jumbled ball of noise and mess, all the letters from the sentences morphing and becoming tangled, and that can turn into full blown ptsd panic episodes if i give in to it, OR inversely my unhealthy protective instinct/coping mechanism is to shut down and it switches off the lights on the messy, tangled thoughts/emotions/feelings ball, but firstly, the ball just stays there and waits for me in the dark and secondly, it switches off the lights on everything nice going through my mind too, all my pleasant/happy feelings having to get through the ball to get to me and they arrive diluted, completely watered down! so i’ve found that making lists and schedules is actually a really effective way for me to avoid both of those routes. route 1 and route 2 are where my unhealthy brain goes, and route 3 is where i’m training my brain to go during a speedbump or crisis. making a list helps me to stop and examine the ball, untangle it one by one and organise/line out the most poignant or important thoughts and issues in straight, concise lines, so i can comprehensively map out what i’m going to actively do about each thing, and WHEN i’m going to do it, separating out which things i can change and which things i need to talk about or approach differently, which i can actively do once these things are ironed out clearly in front of me in plain text, without the panic and confusion or any pressure of anyone else’s involvement or expectations. the schedule is then written for each individual point/thing as it again makes things clear and precise as to the course of action, and i can actively tick them off and that’s how i work best, as well as it offering a huge amount of structure to what previously was an overwhelming mess of increasingly incoherent feelings and ideas tangled together, and i make them for things both large and small. so the structure for today is there to organise and relax me after yesterday, and even having a small schedule to relax (which i know sounds really odd but productivity is relaxing to me so it’s just really helpful) has made me feel tonnes better within myself already, and now i feel more confident about moving through this! it’s just a process of practising grounding techniques for the initial overwhelming feelings and the rising panic, and then a way for me to anchor myself and organise and structure myself in the best way that suits and relaxes me, lining it in tune with my affinity for productivity and small goal achievements leading to a bigger personal accomplishment. seems simple i guess, but i’ve found that thinking comprehensively is 100% the best way to nip the big things in the bud for me personally, and i’m genuinely thankful to have found a structured and personally tailored way out of being walled in and stuck, helpless to my disorder.

i wanted to make sure i documented how i felt about this whole thing, because i know that it really affected me and because it was the first bump since a fairly consistent upward period of building for me, which is always actually quite a make or break time, as well as a test of how much growing i’m really doing, and frankly whether or not i’m just being grandiose about having a few good weeks, only to backslide and fall back into unhealthy cycles etc. i put that processing/metaphor bit in as some insight as to how i see the feelings of my disorder and anxieties as they manifest in real time, and how i come to make certain decisions and work with or around my disorder for anyone that wants to know, and i figure that even though it’s not super articulate and involves a bunch of visualisations and disjointed metaphors, it is written in my mental processing language and if it helps even one person understand me a bit better, that’s great and counts towards my goal of staying away from closing off and walling everyone out(and myself inside!), making myself more accessible and easy to understand, and if it helps someone else in the way of solidarity or putting a little mental picture to a process they couldn’t verbalise, then that’s pretty cool!!

so, that’s enough waffling i think - i’ll have you know i’m on a schedule! 😉✨

#personal #my first PTSD speedbump since my breakthrough #very confusing and waffly though so i wouldn't read unless you need/want to know as i lost half the post and had to disclaim it!#WHY WOULD YOU MAKE IT POSSIBLE TO DELETE ENTIRE PARAGRAPHS LMAO #jfc.#ptsd #ptsd journey #ptsd recovery #annasequilibrium #actuallyptsd

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