#which was like oh my god am i bad person or making a wrong choice

[lilgynt]

YEAH BE SHOCKED AND SAD THAT IM LEAVING YEAHHHHHHHHHHH

#personal #should have let me shit more #my supervisor is very sad and said she hates to see me go #my mom is like no shit she’s sad and ur boss is shocked ur quality speaks volumes of ur work #but omggggg you guys like meeeeeeeeeeee #which was like oh my god am i bad person or making a wrong choice #no i’m not and it’s fine and gg said i wanted to kill myself everyday here which is all true i just need reassurance #also to my moms question if they gave me stupid money no bc the same issues would be here #it’s not a matter of the work i can do the work very well #like very well #but like. i can’t keep working with other departments just piling work that isn’t mine in my department #and being weird about it when it’s not my #fucking job. can’t deal with escalations not reading the description of the problem and then wasting 30+ minutes #or getting to the end of my 10 hour shift and being told i’m trying to avoid work bc using the correct avenues for handing off calls #i feel hostage every night and that’s not fair! #or being stressed about using the bathroom for longer than 10 minutes in a 10 hour shift #and being expected to go during my breaks and lunches which could get pushed to literally the end of my shift #like 10 hour shift lunch schedule like half way which one break one lunch having lunch that early evil #but having it scheduled for what. like five hours in but then don’t get it till i’m 9 hours into my shift like that’s crazy

[inhonoredglory]

Aziraphale’s Choice, the Job Connection, and Michael Sheen’s Morality

Update: Michael Sheen liked this post on Twitter, so I'm fairly certain there is a lot of validity to it.

I’ve had time to process Aziraphale’s choice at the end of Season 2. And I think only blaming the religious trauma misses something important in Aziraphale’s character. I think what happened was also Aziraphale’s own conscious choice––as a growth from his trauma, in fact. Hear me out.

Since November 2022 I’ve been haunted by something Michael Sheen said at the MCM London Comic Con. At the Q&A, someone asked him about which fantasy creature he enjoyed playing most and Michael (bless him, truly) veered on a tangent about angels and goodness and how, specifically,

We as a society tend to sort of undervalue goodness. It’s sort of seen as sort of somehow weak and a bit nimby and “oh it’s nice.” And I think to be good takes enormous reserves of courage and stamina. I mean, you have to look the dark in the face to be truly good and to be truly of the light…. The idea that goodness is somehow lesser and less interesting and not as kind of muscular and as passionate and as fierce as evil somehow and darkness, I think is nonsense. The idea of being able to portray an angel, a being of love. I love seeing the things people have put online about angels being ferocious creatures, and I love that. I think that’s a really good representation of what goodness can be, what it should be, I suppose.

I was looking forward to BAMF!Aziraphale all season long, and I think that’s what we got in the end. Remember Neil said that the Job minisode was important for Aziraphale’s story. Remember how Aziraphale sat on that rock and reconciled to himself that he MUST go to Hell, because he lied and thwarted the will of God. He believed that––truly, honestly, with the faith of a child, but the bravery of a soldier.

Aziraphale, a being of love with more goodness than all of Heaven combined, believed he needed to walk through the Gates of Hell because it was the Right Thing to do. (Like Job, he didn’t understand his sin but believed he needed to sacrifice his happiness to do the Right Thing.)

That’s why we saw Aziraphale as a soldier this season: the bookshop battle, the halo. But yes, the ending as well.

Because Aziraphale never wanted to go to Heaven, and he never wanted to go there without Crowley.

But it was Crowley who taught him that he could, even SHOULD, act when his moral heart told him something was wrong. While Crowley was willing to run away and let the world burn, it was Aziraphale (in that bandstand at the end of the world) who stood his ground and said No. We can make a difference. We can save everyone.

And Aziraphale knew he could not give up the ace up his sleeve (his position as an angel) to talk to God and make them see the truth in his heart.

I was messed up by Ineffable Bureaucracy (Boxfly) getting their happy ending when our Ineffable Husbands didn’t, but I see now that them running away served to prove something to Aziraphale. (And I am fully convinced that Gabriel and Beelzebub saw the example of the Ineffables at the Not-pocalypse and took inspiration from them for choosing to ditch their respective sides)

But my point is that Aziraphale saw them, and in some ways, they looked like him and Crowley. And he saw how Gabriel, the biggest bully in Heaven, was also like him in a way (a being capable of love) and also just a child when he wasn’t influenced by the poison of Heaven. Muriel, too, wasn’t a bad person. The Metatron also seemed to have grown more flexible with his morality (from Aziraphale's perspective). Like Earth, Heaven was shades of (light?) gray.

Aziraphale is too good an angel not to believe in hope. Or forgiveness (something he’s very good at it).

Aziraphale has been scarred by Heaven all his life. But with the cracks in Heaven’s armor (cracks he and Crowley helped create), Aziraphale is seeing something else. A chance to change them. They did terrible things to him, but he is better than them, and because of Crowley, he feels ready to face them.

(Will it work? Can Heaven change, institutionally? Probably not, but I can't blame Aziraphale for trying.)

At the cafe, the Metatron said something big was coming in the Great Plan. Aziraphale knows how trapped he had felt when he didn’t have God’s ear the first time something huge happened in the Big Plan. He can’t take a chance again to risk the world by not having a foot in the door of Heaven. That’s why we saw individual human deaths (or the threat of death) so much more this season: Elspeth, Wee Morag, Job’s children, the 1940s magician. Aziraphale almost killed a child when he couldn’t get through to God, and he’s not going through that again.

“We could make a difference.” We could save everyone.

Remember what Michael Sheen said about courage and doing good––and having to “look the dark in the face to be truly good.” That’s what happened when Aziraphale was willing to go to Hell for his actions. That’s what happened when he decided he had to go to Heaven, where he had been abused and belittled and made to feel small. He decided to willingly go into the Lion’s Den, to face his abusers and his anxiety, to make them better so that they would not try to destroy the world again.

Him, just one angel. He needed Crowley to be there with him, to help him be brave, to ask the questions that Heaven needed to hear, to tell them God was wrong. Crowley is the inspiration that drives Aziraphale’s change, Crowley is the engine that fuels Aziraphale’s courage.

But then Crowley tells him that going to Heaven is stupid. That they don’t need Heaven. And he’s right. Aziraphale knows he’s right.

Aziraphale doesn’t need Heaven; Heaven needs him. They just don’t know how much they need him, or how much humanity needs him there, too. (If everyone who ran for office was corrupt, how can the system change?)

Terry Pratchett (in the Discworld book, Small Gods) is scathing of God, organized religion, and the corrupt people religion empowers, but he is sympathetic to the individual who has real, pure faith and a good heart. In fact, the everyman protagonist of Small Gods is a better person than the god he serves, and in the end, he ends up changing the church to be better, more open-minded, and more humanist than god could ever do alone.

Aziraphale is willing to go to the darkest places to do the Right Thing, and Heaven is no exception. When Crowley says that Heaven is toxic, that’s exactly why Aziraphale knows he needs to go there. “You’re exactly is different from my exactly.”

____

In the aftermath of Trump's election in the US, Brexit happened in 2018. Michael Sheen felt compelled to figure out what was going on in his country after this shock. But he was living in Los Angeles with Sarah Silverman at the time, and she also wanted to become more politically active in the US.

Sheen: “I felt a responsibility to do something, but it [meant] coming back [to Britain] – which was difficult for us, because we were very important to each other. But we both acknowledge that each of us had to do what we needed to do.” In the end, they split up and Michael moved back to the UK.

Sometimes doing the Right Thing means sacrificing your own happiness. Sometimes it means going to Hell. Sometimes it means going to Heaven. Sometimes it means losing a relationship.

And that’s why what happened in the end was so difficult for Aziraphale. Because he loves Crowley desperately. He wants to be together. He wanted that kiss for thousands of years. He knows that taking command of Heaven means they would never again have to bow to the demands of a God they couldn’t understand, or run from a Hell who still came after them. They could change the rules of the game.

And he’s still going to do that. But it hurts him that he has to do that alone.

#good omens #good omens 2 #ineffable husbands #it's kinda like capt america: civil war #with Azi as Tony Stark: traumatized and trying to do the right thing #and Crowley being Steve Rogers: fuck the establishment let's go rogue #gos2spoilers #good omens meta #good omens 2 meta #go s2 #michael sheen #go s2 meta #go meta #*mine #*mymeta #ineffables husbands #ineffable soulmates #*mybest

[thrashkink-coven]

One thing I love so much about Father Lucifer and Lord Leviathan…. you know what, Prince Cerberus and Faviel too… is their pure patience and understanding of the human condition. It’s something that organized religion never allowed much space for in my experiences. We are always expected to make the best choice. To be pure and clean, to be better than yesterday.

Right now I’m working hard on improving some skills. I am disabled, I suffer from neuropathy and a chronic migraine disorder. These last few years I’ve been struggling with it really bad, but thanks to some new meds and some good habits I’m more or less coming out of my bad rut. My spirits have been greatly aiding me in getting back on my feet (literally).

But some days, like today, I just… don’t care. I wanna smoke weed and be lazy all day. I want to jerk off and eat like shit and let the dishes pile up. I want to be a nothing person, just for a little bit while I work up the motivation to do better tomorrow, and if not tomorrow then maybe the day after that. Whatever, I don’t care, at least not today. I don’t want to be mindful, I don’t want to be enlightened. I don’t want to make art or be inspired. I just want to be a slob.

And you know what? That’s OKAY!

Working alongside these powerful entities can sometimes feel like I have to be on the ball all the time. I have to be this living God who is always improving and learning. But I don’t, and they don’t expect me to be.

As much as they want my initiative and commitment, the truth of the matter is that I’m human. I’m not an angel or a God, that’s a good thing. It’s amazing that I get to witness and learn from these incredible spirits whilst still having the comfort of my human limits. I’m a human, not a machine, I can’t be great all the time. Being hard on myself won’t make me grow faster, it’ll just make me miserable during periods of rest.

Lucifer encourages indulgence but not depravity. Today I came to him and basically said “Father, I’m sorry I’m so tired. I’m sorry I haven’t been reading. I know I should be doing better. I don’t know what’s wrong with me… I honestly just want to crawl back into bed right now. Show me how to get rid of these feelings.”

and his response to that was “There is nothing wrong with you. Get some rest. Indulge in your pleasure and heal, human. If the moon can wax and wane then the human spirit can certainly do so as well.”

which honestly was not the answer I was expecting. I was expecting “discipline yourself”, “repeat this affirmation”, “get off your lazy ass, you’re better than this”.

Lucifer is always quick to put me on the right path when I’m swaying into bad habits or depressive states. But he assured me that that’s not what I’m going through right now.

“A lack of progress is not equivalent to failure.”

It affected me deeply to be called “human” by him like that, like he branded me with a definition. Feeble human who wants to be so much but can only do so much. Little human with enormous dreams and aspirations. Oh you, little human, don’t you know that you’re so small? Don’t you know that you are of the world? Can’t you just rest for a day? Can’t you just accept that? Don’t you know you are human?

It’s an interesting thing to think about when sitting before someone like Lucifer, who is always so beautiful and perfect in every way. Unnaturally so, inhumanly so. Making that sharp distinction between me, human, and him, God made me feel… understood…

Lol, something about that is so characteristically fatherly of him. It immediately made me feel so much better.

Within Christianity there’s this hard emphasis on being as much like God as possible, and as little like a human and possible, because humans are naturally bad and sinful. But I have to keep reminding myself that Im not stuck in that worldview anymore. I don’t have to be like God because Im not a God. Im a human. That’s a very very good thing. Being a human means that I get to witness God without the burden of being one. That’s incredible.

So today, I will probably just do a lot of nothing. Maybe I’ll go on a walk later and feed some crows. Whatever I do, I don’t have to feel guilty about it. I’m only human, after all.

Thank you, Father Lucifer. I love you.

#magick #witchcraft #occultism #pagan #demonology #paganism #witch community #witch aesthetic #witchblr #grimoire #lucifer devotee #luciferian witch #lucifer deity #deity witchcraft #deity work

[docholligay]

Doc is it okay to like irredeemable trash media? Something that makes you smile but is the intellectual/moral equivalent of eating Skittles for breakfast?

I am not your priest nor your God, and you can't receive absolution from me. What I think is only worth the value you give it. I take no responsibility for how much you care about this, just want to come out of the gate with that.

Now, to the question at hand. I actually think "eating skittles for breakfast" is a GREAT comparison. People often get on my ass, affectionately, about how I can be in such good shape and eat a bunch of chicken wings and whiskey and taco bell, and here it is: I don't do that most of the time.

There's nothing wrong with watching really dumb TV, eating shit with maybe one (1) nutrient, reading only YA novels, or moving only from the couch to the computer daily, imbibing a bit in silly juice, what have you. But. If you make these indulgences a daily thing, it'll start to show on you. That's just the reality. Everything in life is a muscle. You can huff going up the stairs and you can struggle to assess complex situations. You can struggle to get through a college-level text and you can get malnutrition.

Of course there are outliers, but for the vast majority of us, these are the consequences of our consistent choices. I am good at running because I run. I was not good at running when i started to run, and I would not be good at running if I stopped running for a year. I am good at understand complex texts because i read them. I am not a good artist because I do not draw. I can't do pushups because I don't do them.

(If you are a person who is special and so none of this applies to you because there is no way you could ever make choices that would make you better at anything, that's great for you! I assume you are intelligent enough to know this, and so go, much in the way that I do when I look at discussions of "Who the hell doesn't like bacon?" will simply say, 'oh cool, this doesn't apply to me." Because who would need a stranger to reassure them of what they already know? That would be weird.)

So, I love some really stupid things. I cannot believe I am saying this in public, because I am genuinely ashamed in this moment, but I love to watch 90 day fiancee. It's genuine trash. It is not good and it's also bad. Even the Golden Girls, which I don't feel quite such horror about, isn't really working my brain cells, if we're all living in a space of honesty. I read Louis L'Amour, a man with MAYBE four plotlines over 100+ books. But I don't do that ALL the time. I make sure to keep myself mentally conditioned to be the sort of mentally agile person i want to be.

If that's not important to you, then that is actually okay. I don't by and large, unless we're very close, care about what people do to themselves mentally or physically. I figure it's your life. But I just want everyone to be honest about it, let's not kid ourselves here. I am actually not just as good at critiquing ballet as someone who follows and studies ballet, for example. And I am not gonna trust the media discernment of someone who only watches kids' shows anymore than I'm gonna trust the palate of someone who only eats kid food.

That's also fine! we gotta get over this idea that we have to be likeable to everyone AND A L S O that everyone is honor-bound to like you unless you're actively mean to them. If someone's really into watches football and hates physical activity, we are probably not going to be friends because I don't know much about football and often absent-mindedly walk several miles while chatting. That's not a moral judgment. If someone is like, 'I do not want to be your friend because I don't want to talk about the things you like" I think that is totally fair.

So, is it okay with me, that you like dumb shit? Sure, as long as you have a balanced diet of thoughtful shit! But if you're not looking to be someone I am impressed with, then you don't have to care.

[ananke-xiii]

There's a line from s11e20 "Don't call me Shurley" that got stuck into my little nogging and it's when Chuck tells Metatron "You were just the closest angel to the door when I walked into the room".

Now assuming that Chuck is a lying liar who lies I still like this line because it says way more about Chuck than about Metatron. Then Chuck goes on and delivers his cheap shot: "There's nothing special about you, Metatron. Not then… not now".

(Little aside: AND THEN Amara comes in a few episodes later and calls Metatron "The secretary"?! I mean, how can people not love her? Yes, she might have eaten a few souls so what? Sue her! He brother has eliminated WORLDS because Dean wouldn't bend the knee to him, who's the crazy sibling, huh? *insert a meta about Dean only willing to bend the knee to Cas in Purgatory and all the entendres intended*).

Anyway, for all his pettiness and shrewdness (Metatron is a great villain and I will die on this hill), Metatron replies with surprising grace:

"And I don't care if I was just the angel nearest the door. You picked me. Your light shined on me – Me! Oh, and the warmth. But then you left me. You left all of us."

My little fragile heart trembled a little to these words because... well, it's like the OG trauma, isn't it? To be chosen by your parents, to be loved unconditionally, to be somebody's favorite person... Oh, the warmth.

And so it hit me, I finally saw why I love SPN's angels so much. They are ALL (Cas included) a bunch of children screaming and kicking their feet because they want to be loved, thinking that if they follow their orders, if they fulfill their duties they will be loved.

They are all Lucifer minus the action and the mark.

These are Chuck's words to soothe Lucifer in "We Happy Few": I did. I was supposed to love all creation equally. I wasn’t supposed to have favorites. But you… You were mine. I gave you the Mark because I loved you the most, because I thought you were strong enough to bear it. And when I saw that I was wrong… When I watched my choice devour my most cherished son, I hated myself, and so I punished you. And I am so sorry."

Yes, Chuck is a lying liar who lies. Maybe he chose Lucifer because he was the one closest to the door. Who knows? Chuck doesn't care. Every angel's deepest desire is to be loved by God, to be the chosen one, to be his favorite. Which is both sad and... human? I guess it's a tragedy from the human perspective but maybe the human perspective is limited.

I don't really like the finale with Jack as God for a variety of reasons but, conceptually, the idea of a half-angel and half-human (Kelly Kline you will NOT be forgotten) becoming god is not that bad (Hello Jesus!). Especially if the half-angel part is theoretically (well in pratice too but I mean biology what amirite?)Lucifer's. Because, as Sam says in "We Happy Few": I-I can’t believe I’m actually about to say this, but… um. Lucifer is right.

At the end of the day, SPN as a narrative, did, in a very convoluted and maybe unintentional way, agree with Lucifer.

Like, Lucifer was right. And I know that if we put on our morality glasses Lucifer is evil incarnate etc but honestly? By the same lensens, the whole heavenly host is kinda evil. They ALL (Cas included) did a lot of pretty horrible stuff. All the horror and the pain for a God that doesn't care.

So I guess what should have been explored in Dabb's era was not so much nurture vs nature but more "what does it mean to be half-angel?" 'Cause really, ALL angels are a little bit like Lucifer. And if no angel really represents "good" what are we, humans, left with? Does the question "nurture vs nature" even makes sense?

There's really nothing SPECIAL about any of us, humans, angels, demons, monsters. We ALL want to just be chosen and loved unconditionally. It turns out angels are not that different from humans, aren't they?

#spn #supernatural #spn brainrot #metatron #chuck shurley #lucifer #amara #i'm fascinated by lucifer and amara #i wanna talk about them for hours #sam had to agree with luficer that was awkward #spn finale #jack kline #spn season 11 #spn season 15 #spn angels

[thereismusicinmysoul]

Work was closed today because of an ice storm, so I took the unexpected day off to finally finish the pleated wrap skirt I've been working on since early November! I got really rambly about the whole thing so here's a picture of the finished product and I'll drop the rest below the cut.

This project came about because I've been watching The Sleuth of the Ming Dynasty with some friends and I DESIRE a swooshy skirt. While I didn't follow any patterns and wasn't setting out to make the same exact style of skirt, it was definitely influential. (This skirt brought to you by numerous tutorial videos, including one on Chinese mamianqun's and one on Korean hanbok's, and an absolute refusal to actually follow anyone's instructions. No pattern, we die like men)

It's been almost 10 years since I've done any sewing, so I decided to buy sheets from the thrift store so that I wouldn't cry as hard if things went horribly or I had to trash the project. (Don't get me wrong, I still cried. Because Oh Golly did things go wrong. But it wasn't as tragic as if I'd used full price fabric from Joann's, ya feel?) So from there the idea grew from "pleated wrap skirt" (my rationale: I don't have to be precise in my measurements, straight hem, but still lots of swoosh) to "make this skirt out of a queen size top sheet with as little waste as possible" because who doesn't love a challenge?

....and oh what a challenge it ended up. I plotted things out in my notebook, planned how I would cut everything, and oh let me tell you: rationally I knew how big the sheet was. But laying it out to cut it? So huge. So much fabric. It covered my entire bedroom floor. All of this going into a single skirt oh god what have I gotten myself into? But this part actually went the smoothest of the whole process! Because...

I wasn't doing normal pleats. Since I was trying to make the swooshiest dress with as much of the fabric as I had, I did "deep pleats" which is. A normal pleat but if you shove more fabric inside the pleat. No one wanted to explain to me exactly how to do this. The one person I found who did gave me MATH about it. And boy am I bad at math. Used a pillowcase to practice and wrap my head around how the math worked (the intangible makes no sense to me, I must hold it in my hands), sorted the math, started pleating for real! Measured my pinned pleats and it came up way shorter than anticipated. Have I mentioned it's been a hot minute since I've sewn? Also this was my first attempt ever at pleats. SO! I unpinned everything, made my deep pleats slightly less deep, pinned them all up again, and then blessedly listened to my Grammy's advice to baste the pleats first. Because horror of horrors, my measurements were right the first time and now my fabric was too long for the waistband I'd already put Quite A Lot Of Effort Into. Like, it's a wrap skirt. I would've just made do. But no. It wouldn't even fit.

Within this process, I sewed together my three skirt panels, put in a pocket (oh the choices I made. This pocket did not survive to the completion of the skirt because it was BAD. I was terrified that the fabric wouldn't hold up to the weight of me dripping my phone into it and covered the ENTIRE pocket in interfacing. This would be fine if I'd wanted it to fuck up the way the skirt lay, but this was not in fact what I wanted. I am however very proud of the placement I worked out for it, it sits inside one of the pleats so it isn't visible), hemmed the WHOLE FUCKING THING (look. Again. I knew it was a lot of fabric. But it did not occur to me that I would be hemming fucking 240" across the bottom, plus 30" up either side. I used ALL of my pins to accomplish this), and made a very lovely waistband and ties.

Now it is at this point that I went out of town for thanksgiving, remembered I had other Christmas crafting plans, started a new job working more hours, and left this skirt to languish until a few weeks ago when I finally had the heart to rip out all of those pleats, remembered I wanted to redo the pocket while I was here (and let me tell you, I needn't have worried about the strength of the pocket. I had that fucker in there GOOD. I think it took longer picking out that single pocket than it took taking out all of the pleats), and then set about redoing everything.

Now something you may not know about me is I exist in somewhat of a state of chaos. I try to write things down to negate this, but uh. Guess who didn't write down where she left off, and couldn't decipher the mad scientist notes that made sense in the heat of the moment, but not several months later? That would be me. Thankfully I was able to sort things out, get the pocket put back in, got the pleats pinned in record time, and praise whatever deity you may recognize, it was the right length this time! So this afternoon, I attached it to the waistband, did a very lovely "stitch in the ditch" (that I had to take out because something got fucked up in the back and it wouldn't lay right. I never regretted how closely I matched the thread to the fabric more than I did in that moment), REDID all that stitching, and now I have a skirt!

Ultimately, I don't actually know if I'll wear it. I no longer own many tops that lay well with a skirt without making me hate my body, and I don't know that I like the length. Maybe a shopping trip and cutting off several inches (...oh god I'll have to re-hem it...) will make me like it on myself better, but even if I don't and I never wear it, this has been a really fun and fulfilling project! I'm satisfied just with having completed it and I've learned a lot in the process! And hey, for going into this refusing to follow a pattern, with a goal of "use the entire sheet in the skirt" I think it came out pretty nicely. Plus, if nothing else, I can pleat like an absolute pro now.

#kayleeblogs #what an adventure this was. truly a fun experience tho even for all that I'm being dramatic about all the bumps along the way #and hey! a skirt! and it swooshes!

[polyamorouspunk]

hii taking you up on your advice offer 😭 ur poly so maybe u have more experience with this than me, how would i break up with my longterm partner?

we’ve been dating for 2 years, it really has seemed perfect but lately idk its just felt wrong. we’ve kinda planned our lives around eachother and moving in together once we graduate, but i cant make myself want to kiss them or be romantic anymore, i dont want to respond to their texts, i get annoyed at them for no reason. they havent done anything wrong theyre wonderful its a “its not you its me” situation to a T.

all of our friends are mutual friends, but most of them were technically my friends first (all the people they used to hang out with sucked) so im scared if we break up they wont have anyone to talk to about it. i really dont want to hurt them.

i honestly might realize this is just me being dumb and all of this will pass and ill want to be with them still once it does, but since i have no clue how id break it off i feel so trapped. i want to know i have a way out if things dont get better, i want to stay with them because i truly changed my mind not because i didnt have a choice.

Not in a poly sense but just a “have had a few relationships” sense I guess I can offer advice.

So I’ve never actually broken up with anyone before, except for the last guy I was messing around with (Catboy) just because as much as I had sooo much feelings for him it was like the most unhealthy “relationship” for me. Like I finally realized like “oh I’m actually NOT better off seeing him, my mental health is ACTUALLY worse” because of his shenanigans.

However, I did have a long term partner who I dated for 6 years who we had plans to move in together and get married etc. same kind of deal, all their friends were my friends. And they dumped me, and yeah, it was really fucking hard even though I knew everyone was going to take my side. And the one person who didn’t I ended up not speaking to anymore because I was like if you’re not going to realize that I’m the only one whose going to keep talking to you because my ex doesn’t give a shit about keeping in contact with people, then that’s on you.

I was devestated. This was like 3 years ago at this point and pretty much right up until about this year I felt like I was somehow “living in the wrong timeline” and like my entire life’s trajectory had been pulled out from underneath me. Not from the breakup so much as them just deciding they never wanted to speak to me again, that I was bad for their mental health, etc. which I always told them if I’m ever bad for your mental health then break up with me, and I meant it and stand by that and their decision, but it still fucking hurt.

Like if that’s what they had to do that’s what they had to do. If that’s what you have to do then that’s what you have to do. While I am of course resentful to my ex, and I hope they get hit by a car or something sometimes, I do stand by their decision that if I wasn’t good for them then I’m happy they left me behind. I don’t know if other people are going to have that same view upon being dumped. I mean like I said I still hate them. But to say that they should have stayed with me for my sake is hypocritical.

Not only that, but an issue of intimacy was occurring between us during the lead-up to the breakup. And as soon as I wasn’t with them anymore and I was able to be with Catboy instead I got a taste of what I had been missing and GOD it felt so good. For the first time ever I felt like someone actually wanted to be intimate with me. It was an amazing feeling. My ex dumping me opened up the door for me to have things I was missing in that relationship. So it wasn’t all bad, for sure.

You have to do what you have to do for yourself. You come first. If you need to break up with your partner, or take space, or whatever, you just have to go for it if you really think it’s what’s best for you.

#punk gets mail #the punk gives good advice

[cosmichighpriestess]

You can run but you can't hide, from your ego death. But there's nothing to be afraid of. People do all kinds of things to avoid feeling to suppress and ignore their triggers, they drink, they smoke constantly, they constantly distract themselves remember how strong it is to feel because it's not weak at all if everyone is avoiding it. I am the example of what feeling your pain looks like because I didn't use substances to numb my pain (not better just a personal choice). Healing is possible and I am the living proof of what hundreds of ego deaths look like.

The ego is a mask that is used to experience physical reality. It creates an illusion of separation between your persona you've created on Earth and your soul. There is no actual separation but it creates the experience and illusion of separation. Your ego thinks that it has to control everything and manipulate everything to experience self-empowerment but it's actually a half wit. The ego only knows what is happening in the present now moment. The higher mind can see into the future. Say to the ego, " Oh, hello shadow, hello darkness, hello insecurity, hello hatred why are we feeling threatened by something that has no control over us?"

You can't cover it up with a smile, you can't mask it or avoid it you just need to feel your way through it. You can never get rid of your ego until you transition through death. It's staying there but it needs to be operating through the neutral ego rather than operating through the negative ego because it was designed to be neutral. Don't worry, you can get rid of the negative ego but you definitely should begin to accept your ego will always be a part of you until real physicalized death. The ego feels comfortable when it has a plan so it feels triggered by people who trust their heart because, they don't plan things out they just go with the flow. The ego needs to put God in a limited box because it thinks that is how life is supposed to be, it feels threatened by no plan. The ego is only 1% of what you are. Even if you are operating and using 100% of that 1% of the ego it is still a very small part of your structure.

The ego is pretending to be a persona that you agree to be and to be able to have a physical experience as a human on Earth. It's a personality structure. It can be as simple as just changing your clothes and style or as massive as doing deep inner self reflection. Say," I am ready, I am willing, and I am not afraid to embrace all sides of me and give love to the aspects of myself that I judged negatively. "

The ego doesn't have the power to tell you how things should be, what you should do, what you should say where you should go, how you should see things Etc. You have all the power to decide what your preferred reality looks like, what you should do and how you should think , basically the ego is similarly designed as a cruise control option on a car, or just like putting on prescription glasses to help you see more clearly because everything would be blurry without the ego.

You can look at your different options in the video game in life and decide which one looks like the best option in that moment to get you to a higher level of the game, Earth. Remember, you are the path, you are the way, you're the entire Universe and sometimes you just feel like you're walking through a maze blindly just making random choices, based off your state of realized consciousness but you are always moving towards your highest timeline no matter what choice you make you're doing everything perfectly,even if it looks bad on the outside it can just feel a little rough when we feel like we're making the wrong choices.

So you can see the video game or physical reality more clearly instead of it glitching out and being blurry. The ego just makes it more clear so you can see the different options you have to choose in the video game,in life which is just an illusion from the projection of your consciousness. The ego is not thinking for you it is just making it more clear to see you were actually the one deciding everything the entire time, you decide what you do, what you say and how you think.

Stop worrying about the physical world and circumstances you have the power to change by going within and reprogramming your beliefs and old programs. You keep forgetting you are not the ego completely, you are Source, an infinite, multi-dimensional, immortal soul. You run the show. The body-mind lacks things, the body-mind takes it's surroundings to be permanently real. The body-mind has a very limited viewpoint, it knows what it knows, it's essentially a monkey ego mindset on autopilot. Remember the subconscious mind does not have eyes, it believes what you tell it to be true for you. It doesn't know the difference between imagination and reality. So decide your dream life and it will believe you.

There's no right or wrong just neutral and meaningless beliefs and choices. Your higher self knows exactly what needs to happen and is guiding you always but if you're not connected with your higher self then you can feel very lost because you're not paying attention to the signs and the synchronicities from all around you. How do you connect with your higher self? Find a place to sit down alone away from other people and distractions and say out loud or to yourself," I would like to connect with you higher self, what is the best option for me available right now?" And then wait for your answer in silence works best in nature. If you need to, ask them to send you a yellow butterfly or a blue butterfly or whatever you want. Your higher self is constantly guiding you and constantly trying to get your attention but if you are ignoring your own ego death it has to become louder and louder until you finally give in and surrender,listen and drop your pride.

Remember death is not the end and neither is your ego death, they're both just new doors you're opening in the consciousness of your house. So of course it can feel terrifying to think about it but embrace the ego death, the realizations, the chaos, embrace change because without change we don't evolve or survive. It is survival of the fittest, not everyone is going to make it a lot of people are going to actually physically die, and leave earth because they avoided looking inwards and taking accountability for their actions, they refused to drop their pride, they let their ego take over, because they actually had the ability to look inwards but their negative ego was so blurry, and so misused that they weren't able to look inwards accurately at themselves and they became very abusive and they are getting left behind on darker lower timelines, and you don't want to get left behind by avoiding your ego deaths. Don't instruct the ego to be in charge of everything, this creates the negative ego which eventually cracks.

There's no hurry, there's no rush, you don't have to force an ego death with substances, you are the drug and there's nothing to be afraid of because you are an eternal, infinite, limitless being, and you can be immortal if you choose to be in that state of consciousness. The heart knows the way because your heart has a mind too and the ego will begin to relax when it understands it's not bad, it's not evil, it's not the devil, it just IS, and the heart is leading the way. That way the ego can begin to enjoy physical reality and just sit back and relax and let the heart lead the way. The ego is the physical mind and the higher mind is your non-physical self.

The higher self is the bridge to receive communication from your soul. When you give the higher self permission to take over the wheel of your life, it will begin making all the highest choices for you and you get to just sit back and watch yourself Elevate higher to higher levels of the game. The ego will begin to fall in love with your heart-mind and it will see that the heart is the highest intelligence and knows the way to go. Remember to be easy on yourself, connect with the Universe, which is just all YOU and give yourself all the time that you need to stop beating yourself up and show yourself some self love and care. Don't take everything so seriously, all is well. It's not that serious. Embrace your new point of view. Home is where the heart is. Live from your heart and be at peace.

#ego death

[takashi0]

I don’t know if you’re still accepting the pride asks and this may be too personal but I’d be curious if you answered 24 (your relationship with your religion and your lgbt identity) and 33 (what you find the most important about your identity)

>24. Do you practice any religion, if so how does it play into your LGBT identity? Do you feel welcomed by your spiritual community?

Christian. Protestant. Between Denominations. Probably a Universalist.

Truth be told I used to be homophobic when I was young, but the first thing that chipped that away was my mom, of all people, who asked the question of "If being gay is a choice why wouldn't you choose to be straight to avoid all the mistreatment?"

Which sounds shitty but even still, a victory is a victory.

After that, for as much time as I spend bitching on tumblr and the insistence this place has on taking the wrong approach of building up (minority) groups by tearing (majority) groups down, it did help me further build the notion of "oh yeah, gay people are actual human beings who suffer and deserve better."

And beyond that, I learned about non-mainstream analyses of Biblical text, namely how the passages bigots use to justify their views aren't what they claim and so I have pretty much no cognitive dissonance between my faith and my identity.

That being said?

Fuck no I don't feel welcomed by my community. I've pretty much resigned myself to never, EVER coming out as Bi. At least not until my Granddad passes on. Because I know the odds of me being accepted are next to nil. And it sucks because my family are generally decent people EXCEPT when it comes to LGBT issues.

And the constant news feed of people in the """Kweer community""" caring more about "owning the straights" and deciding "let's take every awful stereotype Homophobes have about us and be that way unironically even when it's actively detrimental to us" and the inevitable backlash sure as fuck isn't helping that.

They're all gonna think I'm some kind of demonic freak who wants to fuck children because God fucking forbid people understand why "maybe we shouldn't have Kink shit and Children in the same location" is a bad idea.

I love Jesus as much as I always have but my family will reject me based on my identity and many of my views politically and the wider "Queer Community" has made it clear they feel the exact same way.

No I'm not bitter, why do you ask?

>33. What about your LGBT identity do you feel proud of/ want to recognize/celebrate?

"Proud" is a strong word. I'm not really "proud" of being Bi, but I'm not ashamed of it either. I just am. To me it's not just like. Some big fucking thing with which to make a big hoopla over, it's just another facet that's as trivial as my race or me being a man.

Though I suppose it has considerably expanded my horizons and taste in smut, lmao.

Though in terms of "Want to recognize" how about actually recognizing that I like Men AND Women? Can I do that and not be treated like Diet Gay or Diet Straight or like I need to "Pick a side?" or some bullshit like that?

#discourse #disc horse #long post

[gillianthecat]

thoughts while watching

Be My Favorite episode 2

* Pink hair steaks! Someone mentioned it on here and I haven't met the guy yet, but I like them in the opening credits.

* Kawi acts like a 10 year old throwing a tantrum. Isn't he supposed to be 30? If this keeps up I may find him too annoying to like, despite the character theoretically being interesting to me.

* "You're right about one thing. I'm hot." 😂 Ok Pisaeng, no false modesty here, I see. Campus King my beloved.

* Sorry bud, but how do you make it to 30 without realizing other people get lonely. Ah, well he is self aware about this at least.

* Pisaeng is somehow already endeared by this disaster of a human being. I shall endeavor to see Kawi through his eyes. (Endeared is very charming on Pisaeng.)

* omg this confession that wasn't a confession... that maybe isn't so fake after all? 👀 i am so curious to get a glimpse inside Pisaeng's mind. This moment was well done.

* This caretaking is so sweet and careful.

* The time travel dandelion takes him between specific moments. That's a good way to set it up. There's no room in our tight schedule of falling in love for accidental detours to 1993. Or last Tuesday.

* [I'm still not warming up to Krist's acting, alas. I may have to think of this character more as a concept than an embodied person.]

* Ouch.

* And changing the past changes the present! So what is their relationship in this iteration of it? Ah! Kawi's now their best man.

* Time travel is always tricky to write. I guess the approach they're using here is that Kawi doesn't remember any of the changed intervening years? He's mentally on one path, bouncing back and forth, while everyone else's memories change based on how Kawi changed the past and the effects rippling out from that. And it seems like he can only go back to the past (2015) at the point he left it? Which is a wise choice, so that the events of 2015 will proceed in a linear manner.

* Such an earnest determined boy. So proud of him for taking the chance to stop hiding himself away. And I'm pretty sure something's going to go wrong 😂

* I think I actually like Pear more with the way she's ignoring Kawi here. She's gonna be nice to everyone, but she has her own life to live, thank you very much.

* Pisaeng is flirting so hard with Kawi and he has no idea, he's so fixated on his preexisting idea of the world.

* Pink highlights is here! Let's found out who he is... Oooh. I think I like him. Max. And I'm glad to see that Kawi is also trying to fix other things in the past besides "losing" Pear. Currently I'm most intrigued about what went down with Max and him.

* God, this poor kid is running around trying to fix everything at once. He's winning my sympathy with this.

* Um... Not so sure that it's a good idea to give the time travel mcguffin away. (I assume he's going to fail though so it will be fine 😂) He's very fixated on the idea that giving her this one specific object will fix everything and give him the life he wanted. It's actually a very plausible emotion, getting stuck that way.

* 🤣 I guess I paused a second too early; he figured that one out on his own.

* Oh good, Pisaeng at least thinks he should confess he's not the secret buddy, even if he doesn't manage to do it. I like Pear's friend. And the over vibe of awkwardness in this classroom scene.

* Oh, but I suddenly remembered during this argument in the bedroom, that Pisaeng was Kawi's secret buddy. Did he ever give him anything??

* Also, love how you keep yelling at Pisaeng that he's handsome, bud. Certainly it doesn't mean anything.

* Pisaeng is so endeared by all of Kawi's bad behavior. Every pot has its lid, etc. Kawi's already making himself into his sugar baby lol. (But I am curious as to how P&P ended up engaged after all this.)?

* So ummm... Kawi is actually 30 here... but he's acting like a 7 year old kid. I mean, it's obviously working for Pisaeng; he's charmed beneath his outward annoyance. But what's going with Kawi? Is he letting his inner child out, as part of his steps to redoing his past? Is it because he's figured out that Pisaeng likes it?

* Pear is like, "ok? It's just a secret buddy thing, why would I be mad over it?" And her express when Pisaeng gets up to go—"please don't leave me along with this weirdo." So far she (and the mysterious Max) are my faves.

* Interesting watching this one along with Star Struck. Very different tone re. class difference issues.

* I saw gifs of The Kiss on my dash, so let's see how it happens. Pisaeng looks drunk and miserable stumbling into Kawi's room. That was a desperate lunge, a man reaching for a life raft. And a cliffhanger!

* Oh my goodness, and of course Pisaeng went back to the claw machine to win a the blue thing for his starting-to-become-a-big-crush. That is the cutest thing. I like that despite his incipient crush he so far shows no jealousy of Kawi going after Pear; he's in fact eager to help and try and make Kawi happy with it. Does Pisaeng not yet realize he's getting a crush? Does he know that he's queer?

* Aww and he spends hours and a fortune in tokens and doesn't even get it 🥺 (at least that they'll show us this episode). I kinda adore him, whatever his taste in men.

The end. So far I neither love nor hate this show. There's a lot a like, some stuff that doesn't really work for me (mainly Kawi, at least as depicted by Krist) but enough to intrigue me to keep watching.

Now I'm going to go read what everyone else has been saying about it!

#kind of like liveblogging #gillianthecat reacts to bl #be my favorite #gtc on bmf

[kaybreezy3000]

The Anti Hero's Pitfall of Arrogance

Five Hargreeves / Female OC

What happens when you disarm an exceptionally arrogant person, one that is a self-absorbed, teleporting, teenaged superhero?

The answer is not great things.

Get ready for a taste of Five like you've never had before...

(Chapters Three and Four Post)

- This AU starts off when the Hargreeves are 16 and but is based off the show. It's going to give you a look inside Five's mind at that time of his life and not all of it is good, but I promise it's not all bad. I always make sure to give our boy his day to shine.

Warnings and Tags: sexually explicit content, flashbacks, teen bad behavior, survival horror, bad decisions, regret, POV Five, aggression issues, suffering, humor and angst and fluff, redemption, sweet Five and mean Five in same story, Dolores is a factor, hurt Number Five, Five makes fun and dirty check lists in this one, Young Five is really something, Plot twists and many tags left off to avoid spoiling the story.

Link to Full Summary and Chapter One and Chapter Two

Chapter Three: House On Fire

I followed her.

I felt like I had no choice.

Or maybe I did it because of her very nice-looking butt that was within my hands reach. She wasn’t even trying to cover it, so how could me looking at it be my fault?

Well…maybe she was covering it, but that towel wasn’t doing a great job. It was way too small, and I could see her flawlessly rounded ass cheeks just fine, not that I hadn’t already seen everything else too, but this was all still blowing my mind and I was hardly thinking with my entire brain. 

Even in the very dim light as she was showering, just seeing those perky tits nearly did me in.

My conduct was normally never so rudimentary. I knew that I was acting out of character and that I was better than this.

In my fucked-up brain, I believed that I was better than her, but it was easier to blame my ill-thought-out decision to come in there on anything but myself.

Just the fact that I met up with a girl, all so I could possibly fool around with her was wrong. Me thinking she went to a respected private school somehow made it easier for me to reconcile, but even as dense as I was, I knew that it was something entirely different if the girl was homeless and not at all who she originally appeared to be.

The second she realized I was following her, she let go of my arm and I could have left, but I still didn’t retreat.

That would have been even worse than the first time I blinked away, so I rationalized that was a good enough reason for blindly following her like I was a lost puppy.

What I should have done right then was apologize for showing up like I'd just done after openly blowing her off on the street, and then I also shouldn’t have gaped at her after that, but no, apologizing for either of those things was far from what I did.

It might have been guilt that made me finally pull my eyes off her cute ass, but it was probably just my training kicking in. I glanced around us making sure it was safe. Again, all I saw was the old, deserted workspace where her things were laid out. It was cold, damp, and dark and it didn’t seem right at all, but there appeared to be no immediate danger here.

I nearly ran into her when she stopped and turned my way, and I could tell she thought that was funny because her eyes crinkled at the corners, and she held a hand over her mouth for a second or two in an effort to hide that she was cracking up over my inability to walk.

“Gosh... I can’t believe you are here. I didn’t really think you would come, and then I saw you-" She paused, her smile getting bigger as she carefully hoisted up her bath towel, which showed me less of her chest but offered a better view of her legs. “I am so excited. I am a huge fan of the Umbrella Academy, but mostly that’s because of you.” Even in the dim light I could see her blushing from saying that and I was eating up. “I mean… Oh, my God, that sounds so dumb, I am sorry.”

She looked so worked up over seeing me; it was helping me feel less uncomfortable, but only a little.

“I know this looks bad,” she said, gesturing around her, “but I can explain. This situation is temporary. I swear I’m not a weirdo or anything.” She laughed again ad this time her laugh came out much more openly and I found that I liked the sound of it. It was delicate and feminine, just like her voice and everything about her. “Not that people living on the streets are weirdos or anything, it’s just that something bad happened and well…” She didn’t finish and I didn’t press her about it, because truthfully, I didn't care about anything other than watching her. 

Being a little less of an ass, I cleared my throat while looking around aimlessly to try and keep my eyes off areas of her that I shouldn’t be looking at, like the drops of water dripping from her hair that then slipped down in-between her breasts.

“Ah, yeah," I mumbled, acting totally unaware of what she was talking about. "Sorry about that. At first, I didn’t realize that was you on the corner.” My eyes continued to dart anywhere but at her as I anxiously rubbed the back of my neck and continued lying. “I mean, I didn't recognize you without that school uniform on,” I clarified, before I stupidity rambled on. “I read your note. It sounded like you had something important you needed to see me about. Being available to help people is sort of what we do. I am here, so...”

She said nothing, so I raised a brow at her, indicating that she needed to lead this.

Going with the ‘Superhero, here at your service’ thing was such a dumb thing to say, because helping your normal average people on the street was not at all what Reginal Hargreeves was about or what we normally did at The Umbrella Academy, but seeing as most my blood wasn’t pumping to my brain, that was all I had.

Her eyes widened with what I assumed was recognition, and her hands tightened around her towel as I did my best to level a hard stare at her again.

“Uhm, wah-w-would you just give me a second,” she stuttered. “I just… I am sorry, I’m so nervous. I still can’t believe it’s really you, like the real live Five Hargreeves, with me, here.”

She bit her lower lip with her upper teeth as her eyes trailed up and down, taking me in like I was the most amazing thing she'd ever seen.

“Ah… I just need to-”

She quickly bent down, frantically digging through a plastic bag with what appeared to be clothing in it.

“I can’t imagine what you think of me,” she said as she waved her hand at all her things, “of all this, and-" She looked up from her crouched position. “You know, with this place and my whole improvised shower thing. Since I thought you changed your mind about meeting me, and it started to rain, I figured I may as well enjoy a rinse, but you are probably thinking all sorts of things about me doing that,” she added, snatching a shirt out of her pile.

“I don’t think anything, and I didn’t see anything," I replied, way too quickly, but I'd already lied once, and she didn’t call me out on it, so I figured that I may as well lie again because she obviously was too rattled to call me out on it. 

“Oh... Okay.” Her lips pulled to the side like something was bothering her. “I only wore that uniform because I wanted to look less…” she looked down at her hands, “-less me, I guess. It's just, when I heard about the press conference today, I jumped at the chance to go and I wanted to look nice, so that’s why I wore that.” Her head very slowly shook side to side, then she looked back up. “I did go to that school, but I don’t anymore.”

“Sure,” I indifferently retorted as I tucked both my hands in my pockets rather that anxiously fiddle with my blazer's lapels.

With a puff of air to blow my hair out of my eyes, I tipped back on the balls of my feet in an effort to look as cool and calm as possible.

“That’s…ah, fine," I added. "I wasn’t trying to make it seem like it matters or anything So, yeah... I am going to just look over this way so you can-” I pulled my hand out of my pocket, gesturing the other way, then I turned, giving her a moment to make herself decent.

Behind me, I could hear more rustling, then a few seconds later, the area we were standing in lit up with a warm glow of light. It totally took me off guard, and despite the fact that the girl was trying to get dressed, I immediately turned back her way.

My mouth gaped as I breathed, “What the-"

Her big blue eyes looked startled as I felt.

“It was so dark in here. Isn’t this better?” she worriedly asked, interrupting me from asking how in the hell she managed to light so many candles that fast.

I nodded an affirmative yes, as I thickly swallowed.

My mouth felt dry, and my hands felt so unbelievably hot.

I could see her much better now. She wasn’t fully naked or in her little towel anymore, but she was only wearing a long white t-shirt and it didn’t appear to be her size because it was falling off one of her shoulders, exposing her slender upper arm and the delicate curve of her collar bone. Behind her, I could see that along the ledge of dirty windows that faced out to the factory floor, she had dozens of candles that I hadn’t noticed before, and each one and many of the others that were strewn about were all lit. There were at least thirty or more, but I never heard a strike of a match or the flick of a lighter.

“How’d you-"

She raised a hand, stopping me because when she did, I got a glimpse of her lacey little red panties. Then I turned red, and she giggled at my gawking wide-eyed reaction to that.

“I’m making you uncomfortable,” she taunted.

“No.”

I knew my fast answer was as unconvincing as all my others, but I couldn’t help it.

The girl inched closer.

“Hey, I promise I won’t bite. Not unless you want me to,” she purred. “I meant it when I said that you are my favorite member of the Umbrella Academy. I really did want to meet you and that was in part because I figured you would be the only one willing to listen to me, but I really like you too, Five.”

She was right in front of me now. I held my ground. Something felt off, but when she reached out and took my wrist, pulling my hand out of my pocket, I didn’t pull away. Instead, I let her pull me closer.

“Why am I your favorite?” I quietly asked.

She smiled. “Because you are extremely smart. You always seem to be a million steps ahead of the rest.”

In the glowing candlelight I could see her cheeks light up from saying that, but it only made her look more beautiful. 

“You are my favorite because you are, well… Because you are so-” She looked down, eyeing my neck or maybe my tie, I wasn't sure. “I feel so silly saying this to you, because you are you, and you are famous, and so incredible and everything, but you are my favorite because you are so charmingly mannered and serious all the time and because you are so uniquely handsome."

With each thing she said, I felt like my brain could not compute. “You think I am handsome?” I asked, sounding like a complete buffoon.

“Yes, I do. I have a huge crush on you. I think you are so hot,” she breathed as her fingers ran across the inside of my palm. She twisted one foot around her opposite ankle and her knee bumped into my leg, brushing against my nerdy knee sock.

She was so close. All I wanted to do was touch her.

Again, my eyes felt drawn to her body, especially to her chest because I could see plain as day that she was chilled from the night air coming in from outside.

When I looked back up, she quirked a brow, confidently holding my hungry stare. Her long lashes fluttered as she leaned in expectantly and one of her hands fell against my chest with a teasing softness.

“It’s pretty clear that you like what you see too,” she said, followed by another giggle. “I don’t mind if you do. I am glad you find me attractive. I may have been dangling an intentional carrot when I promised to make this worth your while. But that's only because I really wanted you to come tonight. I did ask you to meet me because I needed to talk to you about something important, but we can definitely do more than talk if you want that. I really, really like you, Five, like a lot."

Her toes bumped my shoes and my eyes moved down to see there was no space left between us.

“It looks like you want to touch me. Do you?”

“Yes," I said as my voice shook.

My answer was so pathetically soft, but I felt at a loss for words, so I was lucky anything came out. This girl was all I could think about, and she was knocking me off my game big time.

Her smile looked so sincere. “I’m all yours then."

Holy shit. This was it.

This is what I came for, so…

Leaning in, I tilted my head down like I assumed you should do if you’re going to try and kiss someone slightly shorter than you. She silently reciprocated my small overture, clearing the distance between us.

My eyes automatically shut.

Then, as if I was having an outer body experience, I felt my mouth pressing against hers.

Wow.

Her lips were smooth as silk. I could smell her even better now; the flowery scent and heat of her body were pulling my mind out of that dank factory and taking away all my usual anxieties and racing thoughts.

All I felt was her.

Right then, I understand why people did this.

I was finally getting what all the fuss was about and why my brothers were constantly going on and on about it.

Who knew that something as simple as kissing was so awesome?

I am sure that I grazed her mouth too hard at first, but I didn’t know how to do it. That was the point in coming there. I didn’t know how to do any of this, but I found that I was desperately wanting to know, and lucky me, I was getting exactly what I came for.

Thoughts of me being better than her, and her being a homeless teenager, one that obviously wasn’t in the best situation, faded far into the recesses of my mind. Everything that normally bogged me down became just more background noise like the steady thrum coming from the rain.

Feeling the warm pressure of her lips against mine sent a rousing prickling sensation up and down my spine. I felt like every one of my nerve endings ignited, and I wanted to wrap my arms around her and hold her, but instead, I let up because I didn’t want to scare her off. I didn’t want to pull away from this feeling yet, but thankfully she didn’t want it to end either. As soon as I stopped kissing her, she advanced, pushing her mouth to mine again. 

She still had one of my hands in hers and my other hand felt like it needed to be somewhere other than dangling uselessly at my side, so the next thing I knew, it was resting on her slender waist. The cotton fabric of her shirt slid under my hand as my fingers dug into her hip, latching on. She wasn’t trying to get away, but something in me, something that I didn’t quite understand, wanted her as close as possible and needed to make sure she didn't leave me just yet.

Her lips parted against mine and feeling that, I let my tongue dip inside her mouth like I'd heard you should do. She allowed it and even massaged my tongue back with hers.

It felt unreal and I felt very, very erotically wet and hot.

First time seeing a real naked chick (other than in one of Diego’s Playboys that he kept under the floorboard under his bed): Check

First kiss: Check.

First ‘French’ kiss: Check

This one experience was such a great idea. I would have no shortage of things to lord over my moronic brothers if they were making fun of me and I felt the need to shut them down.

A few minutes later, after more soft tongue twisting, I risked moving my arm around her so that my hand was laying across her lower back and, in doing so, the sexiest sound came out of her. Then to even further prove that she was enjoying this as much as me, she pushed her curvy little body flush with mine, her hip falling even more perfectly between my legs.

My first reaction was to move myself back to a safer distance because I was sure that she could feel my dick and that’s because I sure as hell could feel it. I’d been fighting a hard-on since I first saw her buck naked and I was steadily losing that fight the longer I was in her presence.

Oh, but fuck she felt so good. God help me...

Instead of shying away from my body’s response to her, it seemed that she was loving it. She rubbed her body against my pelvic region and that sealed it. There was no slowing down that not so little physiological reaction I was having.

I could feel my dick getting full hard. Before this, when my hands were in my pockets, I had tried to conceal how turned on I was by tucking it up under the waistband of my briefs in the trusty hide your boner method, but now that was doing little to nothing in hiding the fact that I was very turned on.

When our lips finally parted, I was noticeably breathless, but so was she as she asked, “Do you want me to touch you?”

I didn’t know what she meant. I was touching her, and she was already touching me. As I kissed her, she moved her hands up around my shoulders. Her fingers had been gently moving through the hair at the nap of my neck the entire time and it felt so God damn amazing.

When I didn’t answer her question, she lowered one of her hands, taking one of mine under hers. She took it off her hip, placing it back on her ass in an assertive way that caused a smacking sound on impact. It made me startle at first, but I also couldn't begin to hold in my growing smile over how much I liked that.

She giggled as my fingers splayed across the thin lacy fabric covering her. Trying to make her smile even more, I dipped a finger under the fabric over one of her cheeks as I held my breath in a failed attempt to contain my elation over her letting me do this.

“You can touch me, Five. I want you to,” she assured even though it was already apparent that she was fine with this.

After that open invitation to do more, my other hand joined in the fun, groping her butt cheeks. They were firm yet jiggly and so unbelievably exciting to play with. I cupped them possessively, just enough to lift her off the floor a tiny bit. She seemed to like it and I did too and not just because that caused the weight of her to press into me in the most pleasurable way. She was so easy to lift; it made me feel so powerful and that was not a feeling I was used to. I won nearly every match between me and my siblings during training, but that was not because I was big and strong. My only sibling smaller than me was Vanya, and she and I only had interactions that were in conversation, not combat.

With a smile, I dove back in, kissing her even more confidently. It was sloppy and fucking fantastic, and her reaction to it was great.

There was no mistaking her wiggly hips trying to drive me even more nuts as they rolled against my erection.

This was crazy. I knew that. But I didn’t want to stop.

She felt so perfect. She tasted so damn delicious; like she’d been eating fruity flavored candy. I loved the way her mouth felt as it moved with mine. I loved how her body felt under my hands as I let them explore just a little more freely. Moving up the back of her shirt, my palm slid along her velvety skin, edging upwards.

The girl clearly meant that she liked me and that I could touch her as I wished because when I went for it, tickling my fingers across the side of her breast, she made another one of those amazing little noises.

I broke our heated kiss. “Is this okay?” I asked, wanting to be sure before I did anything else.

“Yes. What you are doing feels so good, Five. Touch me however you want,” she breathlessly assured, her swollen lips parting in a soft gasp as I let my fingers trail over her chest. I let her nipples catch between my fingers, relishing in how hard they were, but I was still too jumpy to stay and play with them more than that even though I was all but salivating as I thought about diving under her shirt and taking her with my mouth.

Feeling up a girl’s warm and so soft and tantalizingly squishy boobs: Big Boner Check!

Her head tipped back, and her eyes closed as I continued to let my fingers explore and I carefully studied her responses.

“Are you cold?” My question came out slightly cocky, but I couldn’t help it. Her tits were so hard! I knew she liked this.

Her eyes slowly opened as a cute smirk pulled her lips to the side. “No. I am far from cold. In fact, I don’t usually get cold like normal people do.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, it’s my magical superpower and it makes it much easier when taking a shower in the rain or when you’re trying to stay warm on particularly cold nights when you are forced to sleep outside. But even with my talents, I am not planning on staying around here for winter,” she replied as I pressed her up against me just a little tighter, letting her hips dance against the bulge in my pants that was dying for as much attention as it could get.

“Where are you going?” I mindlessly asked because I was only a tiny bit focused on our conversation.

The girl’s hand moved under my blazer. I could feel her trying to work up the bottom of my knitted vest as she answered. “I’m not sure yet, but somewhere warmer. After everything, I think that I need a fresh start.”

When she was done running her warm hand under my shirt and over my abs, she pulled it free then dropped it down over the stretched wool fabric of my shorts, and there was no preventing the groan like noise that followed.

“Oh my God, that feels so good. Please don't stop," I breathed as she worked her hand over me.

Getting my boner felt up by a hot chick: Check!

My hair fell over my closed eyes as my body leaned into her touch. I couldn’t believe this was happening. I couldn't help rutting into her hand to increase the sensation.

“Like I said, Five, I really like you,” she whispered alongside my ear, further sending electrifying tingles across my overheated skin.

With each hard pass of her hand over the fabric of my shorts, I felt myself winding tighter. The reality that she could make me come in my pants by simply groping my dick through my clothes was becoming a very real prospect with each second that passed, but to only further add to my inability to back away and my dismay, she started to lower herself.

“What are you doing?” I frantically asked.

I seriously didn’t know, and I urgently felt the need to pull her back up so I could bury my face against her neck and she could continue to touch me like that.

As I gazed down at her in question, her fingers quickly popped the button holding my waistband closed, and no sooner had she done that, then she was examining my fly. As her fingers pulled down the tiny piece of metal holding my zip up, both my hands flung downwards to prevent my dick from springing out in her face, but she smiled up at me with those beautiful sparkling ocean eyes of hers, looking like she was not at all concerned about that happening.

“I want you to like me too, Five. I want to do this for you and for me. I want to make you feel good,” she said.

I didn’t know what to say to that. My mind was spiraling and coming up with zero.

When her hand came up, moving my hands aside, I didn't fight it.

“Oh fuck!” I moaned as she leaned in and pressed her hot lips over the thin fabric cover of my cotton boxers.

Her warm hand pushed aside my pants as she began placing the softest kisses up my entire length.

“Has anyone ever done this for you before?” she asked, letting her words vibrate my aching tip.

The fabric of my underwear was wet from my pre-cum and when she licked at it and then happily smiled up at me afterwards, I croaked out a very embarrassing, “No, never.”

She beamed even more over my answer, then she began working my shorts and my briefs down my trembling legs.

“I’m surprised to hear that,” she mused as her warm hand tenderly ran back up my left leg and then reached over to tug where my pants got stuck on my other thigh.

Her eyes flit up to mine as I watched her shuffling my clothing down as far as she could. Once she had my uniform shorts and underwear down to my knees, I widened my stance in anticipation of her jerking me off because that’s what I figured was going to happen because she was already stroking me.

It felt odd but also so empowering as I stood over her, watching her seemingly taking pleasure in pleasuring me. I was having all sorts of dirty thoughts about doing more to her, but I kept them to myself as I focused on her hand moving where only mine had ever been before.

“Five Hargreeves, you aren’t what I expected.” When our eyes met, her grin told me that she meant that as somewhat of a joke, but in what way exactly, I didn’t understand, and at the moment, I didn’t care. “I figured by how eager and wonderful you are at kissing, that someone with your sexy skills and fame, would have had plenty of opportunities to get sucked off.”

Just hearing her say that made my cock twitch and more liquid slowly drip out of me, but the moment her lips molded around my swollen bulb of flesh, that’s what made me lose it.

I helplessly swayed backwards. The sudden shuffling of my feet and the scuffing sounds of my shoes as I miraculously stopped myself from falling, all mixed with my uncontained squeak of a moan, and it made it sound like something bad was happening to me and I was trying to get away, but that was far from it.

“You really want to do this?” I asked even though she was already sucking on my dick as the words came sputtering out of my mouth.

Her tongue swirled around before she popped her mouth off and she grinned at me with those cherry red lips.

“Yes, I do, but I have only done this two other times and that was with the same guy. I have only been with one person Five, and from what I understand of it, everyone likes it differently, so don’t be scared to help me make this better for you.”

Well, that little piece of information definitely helped ease my worries about STDs, and it also helped ease the lingering thought that maybe she was not only homeless, but maybe that she was also the type to try and earn money by hanging out on dark street corners picking up drunk strangers on their way home from bars.

I nodded that I understood what she meant by helping her even though I didn’t, then she placed her mouth on me again and began really working me over.

On her knees, her face was at the perfect height for this as she bobbed her head, letting her mouth wet my length, inch by inch. Gazing down at her as she performed this act on me, I very gently placed my hand on her head, feeling her damp hair slip under my fingers before I gently tucked it back behind her ears so I could see what she was doing better.

Getting my dick sucked: Ch-Check yeah!

This was turning into way more than I could have ever imagined. I was knocking off sexual millstones at an alarming rate, but I was normally fast and good at everything I did, so excelling at this wasn’t really anything that shocking, and in that glorious moment, I found myself feeling pretty damn pleased with myself about it.

The sight of my dick moving in and out of her mouth was enough to make me feel like I could do anything. My hips very slowly began to push towards her mouth each time she took me in. This got her making tiny moaning noises of her own and I also found that she was taking me deeper with each thrust, so it had to be okay.

“You are so good at this,” I encouraged because saying that seemed like the right thing to do, and that smart move got me rewarded with her free hand falling over mine where it was still gently resting on her head, her fingers lacing with my own.

I was confused at first, but when she applied pressure to the back of my hand, essentially forcing my dick deeper in her mouth, I got it.

“Are you sure?” I breathed as my feet shifted, causing a deep squeaking sound followed by a sharp squeak as one of my shoes slipped on the water that must have dripped from her hair on to the floor. The old floorboards creaked again as I dug in, looking for any kind of traction as I started to pump my hips a little harder even though she hadn't replied yet.

She made a sound that had to mean yes, and that was it. My entire body felt like it was already quivering in anticipation of my release, but that didn’t stop me from taking her by the back of the head like she had shown me so I could fuck her mouth at the very brutal pace I was used to jerking myself.

All at once, the hand she had been using to assist in blowing me was down at my tensely flexed thigh, and it was joined by her other hand on my other leg shortly after my throbbing dick started to slam down what her throat.

I could see and feel her gagging a few times, but she contained that reaction very quickly. Her short nails dug into my skin, but other than that, it didn’t seem like she wanted me to stop, so I didn’t.

The familiar tension was building in my balls, and I knew the inevitable was coming. Breathing in quick shallow puffs of air as I took a few final marvelous feeling diggers at her wonderful mouth, I finally let up on her hair, letting go of her completely.

The pulsing heat was on its way.

I tried to step back, shifting my weight on one foot to back away and pull out, but she held me tight, even moving one of her hands up to cling to the bottom of my academy jacket so I couldn't escape.

My entire body shuddered as her mouth continued to glide over me. She swallowed my waves of pleasure as they tore out of me, and her other hand made sure to help drain every last quivering ounce of seed I was spurting as she milked my shaft.

I could hardly see straight. My eyes kept falling shut as I shook all over. Feeling beyond dizzy, I’d have to force them open again as I held on to her shoulders because I honestly needed the support her small frame was giving me.

It probably took me a full minute to focus my vision. When I did, I saw that she was still on her knees, but I already knew that her mouth wasn’t on me anymore. The girl’s cheeks were very red, and her eyes looked watery. She was even sniffling a little.

As the euphoria faded, my feelings of deep remorse began creeping in. I was way too rough. I forced myself down her throat, gagging her and cutting off her ability to breathe and for some reason she let me do it, but still, I shouldn't have.

Even as she wiped at her eyes and started to stand up, she tried to smile, clearly making an effort to ease my worries.

Her trembling lips looked so beautiful. I didn't understand it, or her, especially her attraction to me. I had just defiled her and treated her like my own personal cum dump, yet she looked like she was in love with me.

Her soft laugh that came out sounding so genuine as she peered up at me and it helped shake off most of the guilt I was struggling very hard to suppress.

“Again, Five Hargreeves, meeting you had been full of surprises, but also not.”

“What do you mean?” I asked as I fumbled with my underwear and my shorts, pulling them up and fastening them as best I could because I was still somewhat hard and again had to adjust myself northwards in accordance with that.

“I mean that you know what you want, and you know how to get it. I like that, so please don’t take it as a bad thing. And for the other thing, about not being surprising... Well, yeah. All guys like their dicks sucked," she said with another laugh that I think wasn't to make fun of me, but I wasn't really sure.

As was the norm in my brief conversation with the girl, I didn’t know how to reply to that.

“That was truly an unforgettable experience. You were so good at-" I started to say, but then stopped because the right words to thank her for blowing me wouldn’t form in my mouth.

“Thank you for the compliment.” She chuckled at my ineloquence as she straightened her baggy shirt, but a second later it slid down her slender shoulder again.

She crossed her arms over her chest as she continued to smile. It was as if she was waiting for something else. She probably had a right to be expecting something else from me after what she just did.

I didn't know what exactly that would be or what I should do. Hardly thinking, but at least realizing that I should say something other than a few muttered words, I began rambling again.

“Phoebe, was it?”

She smirked as she shifted her weight just a little, lifting one of her bare feet so her toes were rubbing over the top of one of my dusty black shoes. Her bare foot left a clean streak on top of the hard leather as it whipped away some of the dirt that had gotten kicked up on me from the filthy floor.

“Yes. It’s Phoebe. But you can call me Fee.” She appeared to be laughing off my only now recalling her name. “Everyone who knows me does.”

I didn't know her, but I said, “Okay, Fee.” I ran my hand back over my hair as I glanced around, feeling like a total idiot. “So, ah…you said that you don’t live here?”

“No. This place is temporary. I used to live on campus with my mom. Like I said," she laughed at me again, "I used to go there. My mom was employed by them as an instructor under a work visa, so I was lucky enough to get a chance to apply on a student visa and I got in.”

“Where’s your mom?”

I realized this was all something she mentioned before, and I also realized it was rude of me not to have asked more about her or her situation earlier, but I didn’t mention that or that I had actually thought she probably stole the uniform or that I thought she was probably making it up that she attended such a prestigious school.

“My mom passed away three months ago. They diagnosed her with stage four cancer and things happened very fast after that.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, but why are you here in a place like this, hanging out on the streets at night?”

For the first time, the girl looked slightly offended. She pulled her foot back from where she had left it next to mine.

She let out a tired sounding sigh. Her eyes looked unfocused as she looked off at a pile of books on the floor next to her bedding. “The reason I am here in this dump is because I had nowhere else to go. Homeless shelters aren’t great or safe, and right now they aren’t an option for me anyway.”

“Don’t you have family?”

“All we had was each other. Mom was an only child and her parents wanted nothing to do with her after she decided to keep me.”

“Why would they do that?”

She shrugged. “Because she was so young. She was doing her own thing, traveling around the world at the time. They weren’t happy about her choice to delay going to university and then when she came home with a baby and wouldn’t tell them anything about how it happened, that was it. They were stuck up, heartless assholes who cared more about their precious reputation than their own child, so they disowned her.”

“Where are your grandparents now?”

She was giving me a look like she didn’t understand why I wasn’t getting this. “For one, those people who left my mom and I to rot are not my grandparents, and two, the last I knew, they are still in France, living just outside of Paris. When my mom was dying, social services and the kind people from U.S. immigration were ready to ship me off to go live with them but I wasn’t having that. I want nothing to do with them and I know the feeling is mutual. They were only taking me in because the law said that they had to.”

“But how are you going to live here?” I stopped and shook my head back at her in disbelief. “I don’t mean here, but like here, in the states. You can’t be much different in age than me, so you can’t live on the streets. If you were on a student visa that would mean you aren't a citizen, right?”

She all out laughed at that and rolled her eyes. “I am almost seventeen, just like you, and my citizenship in the U.S. is a temporary issue, just like my housing situation. I was born in Albania, so technically I guess that means I could claim citizenship there or in France since my mom was French, but I'm not going to do that. I am no child and I'll figure it out. Just like my mom, I am very resourceful.”

“Okay,” I replied sharply, still not understanding what this was all about. “What did you say you wanted to talk to me about? You did say that didn’t you?”

The girl named Fee unfolded arm arms, looking up at me with so much emotion in her expression that I didn’t understand.

“I wanted to tell you that there are others like you out there.”

“What? What do you mean, others like me?”

She licked her lips as her eyes pulled away from mine, looking across the room at the rusty old desk pushed up against the farthest wall. The candles she had grouped together on top of it suddenly flickered. It must have been a gust of wind that blew in from the hole in the roof on the other side of the wall, but to me, it felt like it was getting hotter in there, not colder as the storm outside got stronger and the rain pelted down harder on the roof.

A sad looking smile appeared in place of her other mysterious expression as she looked back up at me.

“I mean that you and your adoptive siblings aren’t the only ones that were born with special powers.”

Taking a step back, I cocked my chin to the side as I narrowed my eyes at her.

“How would you know that? What is this really about? Why do I get the feeling that you are full of shit and that you are trying to get something out of me with all this?”

I shot off that rapid fire of questions and none of them came out very nice, but I couldn't help myself. I was getting very defensive and anxious all of a sudden.

The heat in the room vanished and I could see my breath and hers.

Something felt very wrong.

There was a small puff of air out of her nose and that pretty smile disappeared. “I want a lot of things, but I don’t like what you are implying. I didn’t ask you to meet me so I could get something from you. And I know that there are others like you because I met one of them.”

“Okay, so you say you’ve met one of these other super powered people out there and I’m just supposed to take your word for it? I don’t even know you, so I have no reason to trust a word you say, and what difference does it make if there are other kids like me and my family out there. Why should I care?”

“You should care because Sir Reginal Hargreeves isn’t telling you guys everything he knows and he is clearly using you, and you are right, you don’t know me, but you did just blow your wad in my mouth, so I think that makes us somewhat friendly, wouldn’t you say? You trusted me enough to do that, so why are you being like this to me now?"

My jaw dropped as I clenched my fists at my sides.

“What, you think that you can shower me with compliments and flirt with me and then give me a blow job and then what, I’m going to ask you to come back to the Academy with me and we are going to live happily ever after or some other crazy delusional shit like that?”

Her laughter would have sounded beautiful if it wasn’t coming out to mock me. “Wow! No, that is not what this was about. I told you that I liked you because I do, or I did. Now I feel very stupid for letting myself feel that way about you.”

The girl’s eyes glossed over as she poked a finger at my chest, pushing me back with it, proving that even though she was smaller than me, she was not scared of me, and I didn't like that one bit.

“I actually looked up to you. Fuck!" she furiously yelled as she threw her hands up. "Stupid me because I even idolized you out of all of them! I thought you were different and that you would care to know that you were being lied to.”

“I don’t get it!” I yelled back. “Nothing you just said matters even if it were true. I already know that my dad is using us! There is nothing to idolize about my life, so you were wrong in thinking anything like that involving me. You don’t know what it’s like to be one of us!”

“Yeah, I don’t. You are right about that, but I didn’t idolize you because of your life. I just thought you were something you weren’t. I do know people and when I saw all your fake smiles, I knew that you weren't happy and that you aren’t being given a choice in how you live. I just wanted to let you know that you have one if you are willing to take it. If anything, I wasn’t trying to shack up with you and all the cool kids at the super powered snob academy. I was actually foolishly thinking you might want to leave that place. You don’t owe that horrible man anything for taking you in. You’d be fine if you left him.”

“And how do you know that, huh? You seem to think you know a lot of things, but I really doubt that. I'm also doubting that anything that comes out of your mouth is true.”

If looks could kill, I would have been dead.

“God damn, Five, you are mean when all the walls come crashing down around you," she spat back hatefully. "I never would have guessed you would have been like this.” She laughed away her tears and straightened her back as she stared me down. “You are right. I don’t know everything, but now I can see that you aren't who I thought. You are a total prick who lashes out at anyone that threatens the bogus reality you built around yourself."

“Oh yeah! And what bogus reality are you referring to?”

“The one where you are so terrified of being rejected that you do everything in your power to make it seem like being loved or accepted doesn’t matter to you. You are scared of making yourself vulnerable but it's the only way you will ever get the thing you really want which is acknowledgement. Even big arrogant assholes like you want to be liked. Actually, people like you want it more than anything and I'm pretty sure that’s part of your problem. I know that you and your family aren’t in that place because you want to be. I just thought that maybe knowing that you weren’t alone with your powers out here in this messed up real world would help you see that you could walk away from all that crap, and it would be okay. Like I said, I really liked you, Five. I was wrong to care, but I did.”

My mind was a torrent of thoughts about what she said. It felt like she was deliberately trying to hurt me, and it made me so fucking mad that she was talking about majorly private things like she could see right through me. It was like she knew just how to push my buttons.

I couldn't let her get the better of me.

I had never felt so weak and exposed, not even when I was younger and dad verbally tore me apart, or when he would leave me broken and sick with blood oozing out of my nose and ears from over exertion after one of our lovely private training sessions. He didn’t care about me at all even though I desperately wanted him to. To make that all even worse, it was Grace that would have to scoop my limp body off the floor. My traitorous tears would stain her cheerfully patterned dresses as she did her best to sooth me in her motherly yet robotically programmed way. It was just another hit, another insult among so many others that slowly closed off my heart to the world around me.

“I am not scared of anything, and you don’t know anything about me!" I screamed. "You are a dirty, homeless, Umbrella Academy obsessed slut that is just disappointed that I am not falling for your manipulative bullshit. You have no fucking clue what you are talking about, not about my family, or about what I want!”

I watched her confidence crumble with each cruel word I said.

I smiled.

The candles flickered again, this time the room became fully dark before the flames calmed and it slowly illuminated again. During that confusing and rage-filled moment, she must have swiftly stepped back away from me because now her back was up against the wall, and she was standing on sparkling shards of glass from one of the broken windows. She looked terrified and it was clear that getting away from me was more important than preventing foot lacerations.

My mind was a mess. Her hands were in front of her, held up in a defensive way. She actually thought I was going to try to hurt her and that and seeing her bleeding feet made me even more mad.

“Sure, whatever, just calm down," she said. Her body was visibly shaking, and her voice quivered in fear even though all I had done was yell sort of crazily at her. “I am sorry I wasted my time telling you that stuff. I thought maybe you would have already started to piece all that stuff together and that it was possible you already knew that you guys weren’t the only ones born this way. If you didn’t know, I thought you’d care and maybe you'd at least want to meet my friend, but I see now that you don’t and that this was a big misconception on my part.”

There was a moment of silence and in it, I thought about telling her that I thought she was a lying piece of trash, but something in me knew that was going too far and that it wasn’t fair to do to her after everything that I had already just said and after everything that had just happened between us.

I had no right to call her a dirty slut. If she was one, then I was worse.

None of this was right or fair, not my life or hers, but I couldn’t wrap my head around the truth of that or the things she said, and I unleashed my hatred and resentment on her with no filter.

“Please just leave,” she whispered as her tear-filled eyes fell to her injured feet.

With a sudden flash of blue and an instinctive blink, I did go, but I couldn’t let go but I couldn't let it go.

~~~~~~~

Then the next evening at dinner with my family, I made an even bigger mistake. After agonizing all day over what happened, I found the silence of my siblings ignoring each other, as dad ignored all of us, too much to take. Not even Vanya’s worried looks were enough to thwart my immense anger.

I hated all of this.

I hated my life.

After starting a useless argument about my abilities with dad and getting his usual nonsense that I wasn’t good enough to time travel, with the smile of a mad man pulling on my lips, I took off out of the dining room as he called out begging me to come back.

For the first time ever, Reginald sounded scared.

And he should have been. I was about to ruin my life.

I was about to walk away from it all and leave them and all my pain behind.

Riding high on adrenaline and defiance, at first, I thought I’d done it.

As I propelled my body forward in time, the atoms crackling and snapping as they repeatedly broke apart and pieced back together, I sent myself years ahead of them. I appeared out of my burst of blue swirling light while sprinting down the block away from our home.

I felt free for the first time ever.

I couldn’t control it, but I foolishly thought I could. I kept pushing forward, thrusting my power out like never before and I felt so fucking superior compared to the world around me while doing it.

They were wrong!

That girl was wrong!

Dad was wrong!

I knew that I was better than them and this proved it.

Then, I stopped in my tracks, looking around me, my mind muddled in sudden confusion.

My entire world was on fire.

Panicking, I tried to go back but my power failed me, again and again.

I ran down the block, dodging burning debris as I raced back to my family.

Stopping at the crumbling gates of what was once my home, I watched with tears streaming down my face as the flames and black smoke rose out of the piles of rubble. 

Everything was gone.

They were all dead, and it was just me on what was left of our burning planet, stuck twelve years in the future.

For the first time, I had no one left to blame but myself.

-----------------------------------------

Chapter Four: Train Wreck Fucking Dumpster Fire

The funny thing about passing out is you don't remember doing it, but as I come to, it's pretty obvious I fainted.

I am extremely disoriented, and my face feels like it slammed straight into the ground. Consequently, I have several loose teeth. I can still taste the coppery taste of blood in my gummy mouth, and I can feel a disgusting layer of dried spittle on my chin.

I roll over on my back with a low, very pained sounding groan crawling out of me.

I am hardly functioning well enough to take stock of my situation, but I know that I need to. It’s still light out and the ruthless heat hasn’t let up. With an even sicker feeling sinking in, I realize I might be paralyzed from the waist down, because when I try to move my legs, I can’t. After a few more tries, I find that I can move them but it’s extremely minimal.

“Dolores?” I weakly cry.

I can see her. She’s trapped in our cart, watching me splayed out on my back, sizzling like I am laying in a huge frying pan.

My heart feels like it’s trying to jump right out of my chest, and that’s because my body is fighting to maintain its required oxygen levels. I am no doctor, but I am aware that I’m dangerously overheating.

I fall over and over and over as I ineffectively try to get up.

I helplessly cry out again.

This pattern goes on for an undetermined amount of time and that’s because I black out several more times. Each attempt only pushes me further past my limit, causing my blood pressure to drop even lower.

It’s not until waking in the darkness that I am able to stay awake long enough to pull the wagon closer.

I know that I am going to die here and it’s from my own foolish mistakes.

I never should have left the city where I at least knew my surroundings and had some idea of what to expect. Again, my inability to question my own flawed reasoning is what has placed me in the hands of yet another cruel and torturous fate.

As I tug the strap that’s still hooked around me, the tires of my cart slowly roll up next to my side. From there I can wrench myself up enough to reach inside and pull out our bag with filled with the minimal food rations we have left.

I have no actual water, but I am literally dying for even the smallest amount of it. If I don’t get some moisture in me, my organs will start to shut down. My blood is already full of toxic levels of sludge.

‘You have to get up, Five. I’m getting really scared.’ 

“I know. I am sorry. I'm trying,” I say in panting gasps for breath.

My head is pounding, and I can hardly bring myself to say that, even though Dolores deserves so much more from me after all I have put her through.

Struggling to open the tin can with my corroded opener takes every bit of focus and strength I have left. After shakily wolfing down the mystery contents, I drop the rest of the way back down to the ground, falling against the sun hardened soil hard enough to give myself whiplash.

I black out again and I don’t wake until the next day when the sun’s rays are beating down on us all over again. Upon first opening my eyes, I am greeted with the evidence of my dinner on the ground next to my bruised face. I only vaguely remember vomiting.

I still can’t move my legs enough to get myself up and stay up, but I do manage to pull my injured foot within reach, and with extreme difficulty, I eventually get my boot off and roll up my pant leg to examine the damage.

I am greeted with the tell-tale signs of advanced inflammation, rash, and intense red lines streaming from the soiled bandages. The markings move all the way up what I can see of my leg, and I know this is very bad news and it’s the reason I am in such bad shape.

Infection is a big mean bitch and she’s clearly out to get me with vengeance because I am a supreme asshole.

I cleaned the laceration as best I could when it happened, and I covered it and taped over the hole in my boot. I took the antibiotics I had with me in my medical kit, but that evidently wasn’t enough. Some kind of nasty bacteria must have gotten inside the wound anyway. The drugs were expired but I had thought they were still good and not rendered useless by the extreme temperatures they have been exposed to, but like so many other things, I was wrong in thinking that. I was also very stupid to wander after dark in what was left of that house that I came past because that’s when the knife-like shard of glass sliced right through my weathered leather boot and dug deeper in when I tripped and fell further on to it.

Ironically, I am going to die next to a gigantic crater made by what I presume had to have been something from outer space and was also probably the same thing that is responsible for killing everyone else. The size of the hole indicates that the piece of space rock that collided here was big enough to end all life on Earth, so that at least explains what happened. For all I know, this may not be the only place of impact. Based on what seems to be complete ecosystem failure in every direction I have gone, I am betting it isn’t.

Up until now, I could only guess it was the fucking moon or a meter or something like that smashing into Earth that ended it all, because the newspapers I found didn’t have any talk of looming nuclear war and he moon was missing. I had found it very suspicious that my childhood home was destroyed right before the rest of the world was left in ruins, but perhaps the two things had nothing to do with each other. The eyeball Luther was holding likely means nothing world saving and has nothing to do with the lack of lunar activity in my sky, but I’ll never know.

The thought of laying here, again all day, slow cooking until I am gone, with the pain I am already in… I just can’t.

As I start to lose it and hot tears distort my vision, I feel a manic smile pulling at my cracked lips.

“Dolores, this is it,” I hoarsely laugh, crazed over the fact that after suffering over these years here, this is how I go. “If I could just get back, I might be able to save them somehow, but I failed them and everyone else.” One single tear tries to escape the corner of my eye, but it doesn’t make it far. The arid air sucks it away, just like it’s going to soon devour me.

Feeling a final burst of panic and desperation mixed with sheer terror that I am clearly having a problem suppressing, I throw everything I have left into sitting up one more time. Reaching for the wagon, I tip the whole thing on its side, dumping our belongings and my beloved onto the ground next to me.

“I’m sorry,” I gasp over and over as I tow Dolores across the dirt into my arms. My body shudders as I fold myself around her rigid frame, looking for the comfort that she is always willing to give. Even she feels like she’s on fire, but I won’t let her go.

At least we can lay here together, burning.

‘I love you so much,’ she whispers in her unconditional, beautifully compassionate way.

“I know. I love you too, sweetheart. I am so fucking sorry.”

Not at all thinking straight, when I open my eyes again, looking over her shoulder, I see the shiny black revolver laying there. My labored breath catches, and I instantaneously reach for it.

‘Don’t,’ Dolores frantically begs.

She knows the real reason I carry this gun with us, and it isn’t for protection or hunting. There is nothing to hunt and no one we need protection from other than me.

My throat makes a thick, sticky sound when I try to swallow. I can feel my hand shaking as I clamp my eyes shut. The barrel of the gun is painfully hot as I drive it inside my mouth.

‘Please, Five. No!’

God damn it!

Yanking the gun back, I scream as I pull the fucking trigger over and over, sending a deafening round after round out into the nothing around us.

Rage and defeat and pain, that’s all there is left as my hand flops down and I drop the weapon so I can hold her. Again, I tell the only person that ever loved me that I am sorry I failed them as I shut my eyes and wait for the hurt to end.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sometime later, I’m pulled from unconsciousness by something other than the dead silence of our wasteland of death.

Other than the sound of rain, wind, or things that are storm related, there is usually no other background noise in my world. Sometimes the eerie sound of a building collapsing, or even the explosions that were very frequent in those beginning months, could make me look up from whatever pile of rubble I was digging around in, but that is very infrequent these days. There is no reason to look up now.

I stopped hoping to hear real voices a long time ago. This strange sound in the distance isn’t a voice, but it is another human made sound I am familiar with.

The low, echoing bang, bang, bang fills the crater in the vast open space around me, causing the sound to circle back in an impressive refraction of sound.

My breaths are coming so shallow at this point, I know I am not going to make it to nightfall. I feel like I can’t even open my eyes, but my mind is processing this.

Bang, bang, bang....

It happens again in a steady pattern that seems intentional.

I know that sound. I can’t tell what direction it’s coming from, but I know what it is.

It's a powerful gun, one like a rifle and the way sounds when you fire it.

Guns need people to fire them...

But I’m alone. This doesn’t make sense.

Just as I’m drifting off again, it happens again. Three times.

Bang, bang, BANG!

Even though I am hardly thinking, it dawns on me that this is similar to the pattern for Morse code. It’s like someone is sending out a distress signal.

I begin forcing my filmy eyes open, peering out as they burn and blur. Of course, I see nothing other than the heat waves swimming across the ground, creating a mirage effect that makes it look like I’m lying in a river of water, dying by drowning rather than baking like a pathetically skeletal and unsatisfying piece of meat.

Sliding my hand a few inches from where it’s been feebly pressed against Dolores's back, I bump into the revolver.

My stiff fingers wrap around the scorching grip. I am unable to raise my arm, but I twist my wrist enough to fire the weapon out at a small angle from the ground.

The popping sound reverberates in the otherwise motionless air. The sound repeats over and over until it fades away.

I wait because I have nothing else that I can do.

Nothing. Just silence.

I start to think I imagined hearing anything at all.

I shut my eyes again.

I only had one shot left. I left one in the chamber on purpose. That small piece of lead had been my last chance to end my suffering quicker. I had decided I couldn’t do it, but that doesn’t mean that knowing the option was still there wasn't something that was giving me some fucked-up form of solace if I couldn’t take this anymore.

The hope that someone is out there is what circles around and around in what is left of my mind as I drift off into the fiery nothing that makes my parched body rack in waves of fevered chills until even that subsides again.

~~~~~~~~~~~

My mind is gone, lost to the insanity of my thirst. I know this because I swear, I just heard a braaaping, rumbling like sound moving across the landscape somewhere not that far away.

Hearing things that don’t make sense, that’s how the mind of a once admired genius is going out. Figures.

The idea that it might be thunder hits me and that idea isn’t that nuts, but it’s too late anyway. Even if it did rain, I have no way of collecting it in this condition and I still have a raging infection taking hold of me at an alarmingly fast rate, and that’s no doubt because it’s being fueled by extreme dehydration.

In my confused state, it does eventually occur to me that thunder doesn’t sound like this. It stops, then there’s intermittent random intervals between the growls.

This isn’t stopping and it’s getting closer, but I still don’t understand what it is.

Sudden thoughts of getting eaten by a monstrous creature from my childhood nightmares terrorize my mind even though that’s so far out there and doesn’t make any damn sense.

The only thing that gets me to open my eyes at this point is my crazed level of dread over what I perceive to be a very frightening sound. I am sure that a terrifying beast is bounding across the dirt and is about to dig its jagged teeth into me, ripping my body to shreds any second.

Squinting, I don’t understand what I’m seeing even though I am seeing it.

A cloud of dust is blooming out from what looks like a very fast-moving metallic object. My fingernails dig into the hard clay as I try to push up so I can look at it as it shoots past, but I can’t raise my head enough and I lose sight of it.

Holy Shit!

It’s not a huge, green scaly monster!

Panic rips through me when I finally realize that someone or something just drove past me.

Help.

I try to scream but I can’t even do that anymore.

“Help!” My voice cracks. The word comes out so weak, the sound of it feels like it’s sucked up in a vacuum. The effort of my sobs and the thundering vibration sends pain buzzing through my head.

My brain feels like it’s going to rattle out of my skull. If I could cover my ears I would, but my arms are near useless at this point as they remain tangled around Dolores.

The piercing sound abruptly stops but the ringing in my ears doesn’t.

I swear I hear the garbled sounds of a voice behind me. Then all of a sudden, I see legs! I can’t focus my vision enough to see anything other than what has to be a person's shoes.

It’s a real fucking person!

This time when I try to speak, my plea for help comes out as an unintelligible and pathetically pained moan.

“Shit, shit, shit,” the voice curses repeatedly as their figure looms over me.

I feel the strange sense of something touching my neck, pulling down my scarf as what must be cool fingers press just under my jaw, up against my windpipe. Then I hear more cursing and the same fingers traveling along my exposed leg all the way down to my bare foot.

Again, I moan, and I moan even more when Dolores suddenly gets removed from my limp arms.

“No,” I breathe in protest to the blurry face in front of mine.

The sun is setting, I can tell that much. The pink rays from it are reflecting off this person’s reflective goggles.

Even though they are very cautious about it, when they lift just my head up off the ground, it leaves me feeling like I am a piece of petrified gum being pried off the bottom of a table at a greasy dinner.

God…I miss Griddys. I would die for a donut and a coffee.

Not happening, and you ARE dying, you crazy dipshit!

I whimper as my body protests the movement and my head sickly swims as it lays in what I assume is this person's lap.

A distinctly female sounding voice coming from above tenderly hushes my cries. “Hang in there. I am going to help you.”

Her hand brushes across my grimy forehead, sliding back the wrap of my scarf from my head. Then, though it’s impossible, the person’s hand stops in place over my throbbing brain, and both my skin and her hand seem to get remarkably colder. It feels heavenly and I don’t care at all when the icy fingers gently slip over my eyes too.

A divine liquid begins to tickle my split and bloodied lips, making me instantaneously respond by opening them further to accept the glacially cold water being offered.

“There, that’s it,” she encourages, to which I sputter and cough violently on the first swallow. The water stops so I can catch my breath, then I feel the bottle press against my mouth again. “Try to go slow.”

It doesn’t matter that I can see nothing and I’m totally at their mercy. I’d do anything this angel said.

The hand shielding my eyes and making my aching head feel so much better, moves away, only to be replaced a moment later, cooler again. It feels like actual ice, not the palm of someone’s hand.

I can’t help but marvel over the glorious feel of it. It reminds me of when I was just a little boy and I had the flu so bad that Grace had to stay with me all night, repeatedly doing anything and everything she could to ease my pain, including placing dozens of cold clothes against my burning brow.

The water stops when I start coughing again, and the icy feeling moves to my neck again, trying to unfurrow the tight wrapping even more.

“There, that’s better.” It feels like chilly kisses are covering my skin as she touches me. My body shivers. “You are really burning up. You are lucky I had a flat tire moment where I did, because that's the only reason I heard you trying to signal for help. If I'd found you sooner..." She pauses to wipe my face with something. I have no idea what with, but it feels so much better after some of the filth is removed. "I have been looking for you all day. But there’s nothing out here. That’s why I didn’t come out this far until now. When I heard that last shot, I knew you were due west of me, so I knew you had to be somewhere near the crater, which also explains why I was able to hear the shots from that far away. There’s nothing out here to absorb the sound.”

It seems like she's trying to apologize. At first, I don’t know what she’s talking about with the signal thing, but after a minute or so of slowly drinking this stranger’s extremely valuable water, I remember.

Those first shots she’s talking about weren’t a signal for help, at least not in the way she thinks.

The hand on my head moves away and I hear her rummaging through my things. Thanks to having some liberation from the oppressive heat, I am able to find the strength to open my eyes so I can find Dolores. I have to know if she’s okay.

I quickly see that she is, but she’s been discarded in the pile of my other things. I want to reach out to her, but I’m not sure if I can. She tells me it’s okay and to keep drinking, so I do as she says.

I see the woman’s hand snatching up the bottle of antibiotics that I had tried to use. She holds it up above me so she can read it.

“They didn’t work,” I whisper as water runs down my chin.

She seems startled by me talking. “Clearly not,” she mutters before going back to propping my head more so I can drink easier.  She tosses the pills aside and presses her cold hand to my head again. “By the looks of things, you are going to need something that does work as soon as possible, and I don’t have anything with me, or a way to get you back with me to where I do unless you can get up and hold on to me as we ride.”

She says it all so fast, and with the way my brain is working, I don’t get that I’m supposed to respond. All I can think about is how great this feels and how awesome it would have been to have had a working vehicle of any kind over the last two weeks. My mechanical abilities are far from anything even remotely helpful and though at times I have had vehicles started and used them, keeping them working is another story and getting them around in this disaster is a whole different challenge that makes walking much more logical.

But then again, this magical woman did it, so maybe I should have tried harder.

“Well, do you think you can? Hold on to me, I mean?” she asks, interrupting my ridiculously scattered thoughts.

She pulls back the water and after swallowing my thick saliva a few times, and forcing my brain to work somewhat more rationally, I reply very quietly. “I can’t get up.”

The woman sighs but it doesn’t sound like she's mad about my predicament and what she says next proves that she's not.

“That’s okay. I can go back and get medicine. I will come back for you.”

“No,” I moan like a big baby.

“It’s okay, I promise I’ll come back. Driving around out here is not easy on everyday tires but I have an off-road jeep that can make the journey if I am very careful. It’s going to take maybe two hours or more depending on a few factors, but I don’t know how else to do it. If I try to pull you in this wagon, for one you won't fit, and two, I am not sure you’ll make it. It’s too far and it’s going to take too long,” she explains, already shifting my head off her lap.

I have no ability to stop her from leaving. I can only impotently let her position my head on the jacket she just took off and rolled up into a makeshift pillow for me.

As I lay on my side watching her scrambling around, I can see her some better. As I already gathered, my rescuer is a female. Since she took off her protective outer layer, sacrificing it to me, I can see that she’s wearing a rainbow colored, tie-dyed sleeveless top that’s cropped at the bottom. It reminds me of something Klaus would try to get away with wearing under his uniform jacket whenever dad wasn’t around. In my moment of delusion, I find that old memory of him, defiantly strutting around the academy until he got caught and severely punished, very funny for some reason.

The muscles in my face try to pull my mouth in a look to reflect that sentimental yet sad thought but I am not sure I am actually smiling.

Her pants look almost identical to mine in their utilitarian, multi pocket, militaristic style, but hers are forest green, not grunge covered gray. Her arms and her midriff are tanned unlike mine. I almost always stay covered out of necessity. I am like a ghost.

She looks healthy. Contrasting my dreadful condition, she isn’t skin and bones, but she is very thin and couldn’t be more than a hundred pounds, standing at about five-three in her laced-up riding boots. Even from my spot laying on the ground looking up, I can tell she’s petite.

When she pulls my cart over, I can see her muscles straining. She places it behind me where the sun’s setting rays are burning my back. I feel the instant relief from the small shade it provides.

After doing that, she comes around in front of me, looking for a few more things as her lengthy braid swings across her back. Her hair looks reddish or maybe it’s just the light from the setting sun. I can’t tell.

This time when she comes to me, I can see her face because her goggles are pushed up and her own scarf is pulled down, revealing rosy cheek bones and vibrant blue eyes. She is all color and glowing life compared to the muted harsh tones of this barren landscape, but it’s the kind looking and startlingly familiar smile that makes me suddenly stop breathing. It looks so much like the one that’s been haunting me since I saw it over five years ago.

This smile is a shade different. It’s slightly more mature, along with the face wearing it, but…

Holy Hell.

Phoebe?

Quickly running the math in my mind, I conclude that she’d be thirty-three years old now, not twenty-one like I am, and that is because for her, it would have been twelve years before the world abruptly ended and then five years since. For me, my world crashed and burned just one day after I met her. 

This couldn’t be her. That’s crazy.

My heart feels like it could stop even though it’s dangerously racing as my body aggressively refuses to give up in its fight to stay in the world of the living-the world that I just found out I am not the only living member of.

The woman gets down next to me again, her hand coming up to my face to turn my chin to her bottle the way she did before. Her impossibly icy hand presses against my chapped cheek and I lean into it.

“Come on. Let’s get the rest of this in you. I will leave you with more water and if you feel better from drinking that one, maybe you could eat something?” She waves her hand at my last three cans of food that I only now see that she placed within reach. “Don’t worry, I have more.” I can tell that she’s concerned about my hollow looking appearance as her eyes slowly move over my face. She purses her pink lips unhappily. “I won’t take long. Now that I finally found someone, there’s no way in hell I’m going to let them die,” she declares with a breathy chuckle. "The real problem seems to be that you are about as dried out as someone can get before becoming one with the dirt. I don’t think this infection is that bad yet, but I’m sure it feels that way with everything else you have going on. I have strong meds and I know they will work. You are going to make it, I promise.”

Even if I wasn't drinking and I could reply, I wouldn’t know what to say. A thank you would be a start but there’s so much more than that running through my mixed-up head.

Of all the people that could finally find me, it’s her. I know it is. It’s her voice too. I recognize it now. It’s impossible, just like her velvety cold touch in this heat, but it’s her.

After assuring me that I’m going to live, she patiently stays with me utill I finish all her water. And just like she said, she brings back another and it’s equally cold. I can even see the condensation on the outside of the metal canteen.

Crouching down, she reaches for my left wrist, removing my clenched fingers from the ground so she can make me take the bottle from her. My filthy shirt sleeve pulls up from the motion.

“Do you-" Her words abruptly cut off as her eyes land on my tattoo. “No way…” Her lips part and her brows furrow as she stares at the black umbrella branding that I was adorned with as a child. “You can’t be…” She leans in closer, her eyes wide as they look into mine.

All I can do is lay there and stare back, feeling some better but still very much like death and feel equally as floored as she is that this is happening. After a minute of us looking at each other, in utter shock and disbelief, I finally speak up, confirming what I'm sure she's figuring out.

“I am sorry, Fee,” I breathe.  

The line between her brow grows deeper.

“Five?”

“Yeah.”

She shakes her head back and forth as she unscrews the cap and pushes the next bottle closer to my mouth.

“Thank you,” I feebly offer, because I can’t think of anything else to say and I feel like I might throw up the precious water I just guzzled, so I focus on keeping that down and just breathing instead.

My eyes followed her hand as she reaches out and brushes back some of my long hair that’s stuck to various areas of my gritty face. Her amazing fever reducing fingers run along my jawline as she inspects me. I clench the bottle tighter to my chest as I force a few deep breaths in place of my extremely shallow ones.

I know what she is seeing and I’m sure it doesn’t look good. The look of malnourishment mixing with the scruffy, dark, almost black hair growing on my weather-beaten skin, are probably making it very hard to tell that I am the stuck-up jerk that she had so badly wanted to meet when she was just young girl who wanted so desperately to believe that someone like me was actually going to care about someone like her.

“How is this possible?” she asks, her voice coming out in beautifully hushed sounding wonder. “I mean, how did you end up here? They said you disappeared. It was the day right after that night. You look so…”

She doesn’t finish her thought, so I can only guess what she was going to say. Perhaps it's that I look terrible or maybe even that I look weirdly childish. Both would be right because I am basically a heap of useless garbage, and in spite of the way I look, I am a real grown-up like she is, but I am sure I look much younger still because of all the intermittent rounds of starvation I've been through, this moment being one of them.

Also, am not as old at her even though at one time, we were the same age.

I physically changed in the last five years, but definitely not for the better.

I shut my eyes for a second or two before reopening to the slightest traces of tears trying to form anyway. Rather than looking angry that the last man on Earth is probably the last person she’d want it to be, she looks so incredibly troubled.

“Have you been here the entire time?”

I can feel my lips trembling, but I can’t help it. I feel so awful, and that, and the memories of all that has happened since I last saw her, are merging with my current state of mind and it isn’t putting me in a very good place to act better.

“It’s okay. It’s going to be okay. You don’t have to talk.” She leans in, anxiously adjusting her jacket under my head. Then she tries to move my legs in a more comfortable way for me. Everything hurts and I know she can tell because she moves a blanket from my pack, placing it between my knees so my bones don’t rub together so badly.

More tears threaten to spill over that simple, kind act, but what Phoebe does next for me is nothing but extraordinary.

Folding her hands together as if she’s trying to crush something between her cupped palms, she shuts her eyes tightly. Her whole body seems to tremble from the effort of what she's doing. A moment later, she opens her hands, and at the same time, she reveals what looks like small ice chunks. Reaching up and taking her yellow bandana from around her neck, she dumps the sparkling crystals in the fabric and then props the cold pack against my forehead.

Totally thrown by this, I look over at Dolores.

"It’s her, the one you told me about and she’s special, like you. You’re going to make it, Five!’

Even though there’s tears in Dolores’s eyes, she sounds so happy.

“Can you make it till I get back?” Phoebe’s worried eyes run over me again and it reminds me of exactly how Dolores looks at me when she's distressed over something dumb that I'm doing or have already done despite her warnings.

 Jeezus. I am such a dickhead.

“Yes,” I croak.

She nods, then pushes herself up.

“It’s going to be dark soon, but don’t worry, I am coming back no matter what, so don’t die on me or I am going to be super pissed, Hargreeves.” The corner of her mouth quirks up just a bit.  “And I don’t mean pissed like I was the last time I saw your stupidly handsome face.”

Even though she’s rightly concerned about leaving, she is trying to ease my worries by teasing me and it makes my chest hurt even more. The foreign sound of her unrestrained laughter is so nice to hear. Like years ago, when I first heard it, I love how it sounds and makes me feel.

It’s nuts considering how close I am to death, but my chest is moving up and down as air swiftly moves in and out of my lungs and I could almost laugh over that threatening, and insulting, and sort of flattering comment she just gave me.

She had once told me she thought I was so smart and handsome, and hearing her praise made my head even bigger than it already was. I was so pathetically starved for attention; she was right about that and so many other things she said about me. But we both know she was wrong in both those two assessments. 

Something in my expression must amuse her even more because she smiles at me in that full way that I remember her doing that one fateful night.

I still don’t understand it.

She begins to move behind me where I presume her motorbike is, but all of a sudden, she stops. Swiftly bending down, she takes Dolores by the crook of her arm, hoisting her up.

Placing Dolores down next to me, Fee smiles again, but this time it’s at her, not me.

“Please make sure that he drinks that and doesn’t kick the bucket before I get back.”

Fee is talking as if Dolores can understand her, which of course she can, but it’s still throwing me to see her talking to her the same way I do.

Even weirder, Dolores replies that she will, and I'm so confused, I am only halfway certain Fee didn't hear it. Either way, seeming satisfied with how she’s leaving me, my savior moves to go, swiftly heading out of my sight as I drowsily close my eyes.

“I don’t deserve this, Phoebe.”

There were so many things I didn’t see that one night we were together. I was just a stupid teenaged boy that couldn't concern myself with looking at other people and their suffering. She tried to tell me who she was, and what she could do, but I ignored it. I used her and then I viciously put her down for daring to point out the truth that I was too stubborn and arrogant to see. I have had many lonely years to think about that night and I have never forgiven myself for it or for so many other horrible things I did.

Phoebe comes back. She bends down in front of me. Again, she pushes the bottle towards my mouth. “Yes, you do. You deserve what happened to you. Now don’t die.”

Her lips spread in the most curious looking smirk, then she gets up, and this time I know she’s leaving when I hear the loud roar of the two-stroke engine revving a few times before she tears off over the empty landscape.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Fee does come back, but I have no idea how long she was gone because after slowly finishing the next canteen, I drifted off in a fit of intense shivers.

Waking to the sight of hazy headlights beaming across the open field couldn’t be a better feeling even though my fever is so much worse again. I’m shaking even more, but it’s not from cold.

I peer out from under my blanket. The wind picked up at some point and it’s whipping across the landscape, covering me in suffocating dust. I can just make her out as she rushes my way from the driver side of the vehicle.

“You still in there, Five?” she anxiously questions the moment she’s on her knees in front of me.

Dolores gets moved back again. A cold hand covers my heated brow.

“Yes,” I cough out, proving that I’m alive.

“Come on,” she says as she starts uncovering me, “we need to get you away from this enormous shit hole you decided to take a dirt nap by.”

My body isn’t working, and I can hardly find the strength to cling to her as she lifts me, but she manages to roll me into a sitting position.

“Alrighty, on three. I am going to pick you up, just hang on. I will try to take as much of your weight as I can, okay?”

“Okay.”

“One, two, thrrr…eeEE!  Shhhh- shhh -IT!”

She gets me up alright, but right after that, my weight proves too much for her when my body limply tumbles into hers. I nearly knock us both back down to the ground. Stumbling backwards, Fee’s knees swiftly lock and the heels of her boots skit and skirt in the dirt before plowing down to prevent our fall.

“I was not expecting you to be so heavy,” she gasps.

She is clearly struggling, and I feel awful about that and just plain awful, especially when I start to dry heave on her. Thankfully nothing comes out or she'd have puke running down her back.

“I am sorry,” I wheeze, holding her as tight as I can. I try to put weight on my good foot and the other but the lightning like jolts of pain shooting up from my feet are making my legs about as useful as mush.

“It’s okay,” she grates out through what sounds like very clenched teeth.

My feet all but drag as she trudges the few yards to the jeep where she smartly left one of the back doors open. I tumble into the back seat, then Fee has to pull me the rest of the way in from the other side.

I feel so sick, more heaves have me hanging my head down to the floor as I start to weakly cry. “Dolores!” I sob just as Fee slams the door shut.

There is no way to explain how relieved I feel when the door opens again and Phoebe has her. The backseat area is cramped but Fee throws the passenger seat forward and places Dolores on the floor in the back behind it so she's easily within my reach.  

If Fee sees me crying, she doesn’t let on. As soon as she saves Dolores, she's off again and all I can do is lay here. My head feels like it’s spinning as I listen to the back hatch open and things banging around. I realize that she must be loading my things, and even maybe my treasured cart, but I can’t help her.

It doesn’t take more than a few minutes before she’s done and back with me. Opening the back door, opposite from where my head is, Phoebe gets back in. The dome light is dim when she flicks it on, but I can see that her bright clothing is now covered in the same silt that I am bathed in. Not stopping, she reaches in front and grabs a bag. Taking things out, she immediately starts cleaning her hands with sanitizing wipes and what smells like rubbing alcohol.

“I know you feel horrible, and this ride isn’t going to help that, but I am going to try to make it as tolerable as I can.”

I silently lay there, watching as she discards her soiled materials on the floor at her feet, and then starts in, working the button on my cuff so she can get my sleeve up on my left arm.

“It's been a long time, but I have done this many times back when my mom was sick, so don’t be scared, I sort of know what I am doing.” She laughs but it sounds nervous despite her assurances and shot at humor over what has to be a very sad and tragic memory.

The chill of the alcohol as she cleans my skin sends a new wave of shudders through my burning body. I shut my eyes as I feel the syringe prick me, then I hear the ripping of tape before she seals the needle down on my arm so it can’t slip out.

“Okay. That part was easier than I thought. Your veins are very easy to see.”

She breathes a sigh of relief as she scrambles around. Peering up at her again, I see her pulling out a clear bag of fluid and more medicines and supplies all in sterile wrappings.

“I found all this stuff at a clinic that was miraculously still mostly standing. The drugs should be good,” she explains as she hangs the bag on the clothing hook above my head and extends the clear plastic tubing down, attaching it to one of the two ports sticking out of my arm. “We are going to pump you full of nutrients and I will inject the Ceftriaxone all one go. It’s great for treating infections that other antibiotics might not be able to fight, so I'm sure it will do the trick.”

With a determined look in her eyes, she lays her fingers against my arm to steady them so she can slowly inject the drug into the other port that isn’t attached to the bag over my head.

“There, two things out of the way.” Fee appears apologetic for leaning on me as she adjusts herself a little, moving her weight off my pelvis, but I hadn’t even noticed her backside was pressed up on me. “I need to watch you for a little while, just to make sure you aren’t having any bad reactions to the meds. Then, if this part goes well, I have something I can give you to help you get through the trip back to where I have safe shelter,” she explained.

Her hand falls on my upper thigh, rubbing softly and I don’t think she realizes that she’s doing it until my eyes move from hers to her hand. She stops, and starts to take it away, but I sluggishly move my arm with the IV in it over enough to place my trembling hand on top of hers to stop her retreat.

“Thank you for saving me.”

She smiles. “You’re welcome.” The wind outside blows hard enough that the jeep gets rocked from one of the harder gusts. She scrunches her mouth in a funny way. “This weather sucks, huh?” 

“Ah-huh.”

Fee lets out a pretty little laugh over my lame answer.

“Yeah,” she says, still giggling, “it usually does out here and pretty much everywhere else I've been, but playing with the extremes of hot and cold are my areas of specialty, so I can tolerate most of this crap climate we have found ourselves in. But, when these nasty winds come with all the sand, I can’t do shit to make it better.”

I want to laugh over that, but I can’t. Instead, I gulp down a sob and look at Dolores again.

“I am sorry for what I did to you.” My words come out broken by the incredible emotion behind them.

She says nothing, so I hesitantly look back at her. Her smile falters for a moment before the quick easy kindness returns to brighten her stunning features.

“I know, Five. It’s okay," she quietly replies as she gently squeezes my leg.

Confused and on the verge of losing it again, I shut my eyes to block the tears.

I feel her moving her hand away again and I reactively increase my hold on it, and she stops again.

“Hey...it's okay," she quickly assures. "That was a long time ago. I may have been very naïve, but even back then I understood enough to realize that you were acting like that and saying that stuff because you were very messed up. We both were. I was young and so romantically inexperienced.”

She chuckles at herself over that, then bends down and starts picking up the trash as she further took the blame from me.

“I was crushing on you big time and I thought maybe I could make you like me too, and you'd happily want to run away with me if I could show that we were the same. That was crazy and I didn’t tell you everything, and I didn't act right either. I was wrong for not being totally honest about my intentions, and you called me out on it, and you were right to be mad, because I was up to something very misguided, but even so, you were an impressively douchey top shelf dick weed.”

Her mouth pulls to the side in a grin that looks exactly the way I remembered it when she was flirting with me, only now, it's even more beautiful.

“True,” I agree, "But I still want you to know how sorry I am for everything."

The hand she has resting on my thigh pulls away and I have to fight the urge not to reach for it again.

“Five, I forgave you a long time ago, but I accept your apology if you accept mine.”

There’s no hiding my tears from her now, so I don’t even try.

Another strong wind blows the side of the jeep making her look out anxiously into the shadows behind the dark glass. “I need to get us out of here before the tires get buried in this shitstorm. As you found out, when you are out this far, things can get very bad, very fast. Why were you here of all places, what happened to you?”

I don’t say anything, so she looks away again and finishes cleaning up, then she starts trying to adjust my legs for me, even reaching in back to grab a clean looking pillow for my head and a blanket to tuck between my legs again. “Never mind. You don’t have to talk. I think it’s safe to say you’re okay with the meds at this point, so just rest. I’ll get us out of here.”

Fee leans over and starts to brush my hair back out of my face again by tucking it behind my ear. A breathy sound of contentment escapes from my parted lips.

Seeing as I can't even begin to hide how nice this feels to me, she babied me even more, running her cold fingers over my temples over and over and the light pressure feels like it's helping push all the pain away.

My throat clenches and my eyes burn as I start to speak. “I thought there might be somewhere better. That’s why I did this.”

Phoebe’s hand stops and she pulls it back even though I wish she wouldn't. “What happened?��� she asks.

Again, I feel like she’s asking me about the ‘big what happened,’ not just about why I wandered into a desert of nothingness to die. It’s easier to look at Dolores again, so I roll my head to the side, burying my dirty face in the clean smelling pillow.

“I made a big mistake. Instead of just leaving my life behind like you said I should do if I wasn't happy with it, I ran from it, only I didn’t think it through. When I took off the day after we met, I didn’t mean to jump so far, or to this.”

“You have been here since then, all alone?”

“Yes."

The sound of the sandstorm fills the void as she appears to think about that.

"I couldn’t get back. I tried and tried. I still try. This whole time, I thought I was the only one left. I did this to myself, and I hurt so many people. I know I deserve this, but it’s been so hard,” I whisper as I bite down and swallow the cannon ball sized lump in my throat.

Phoebe shuffles the things in her hands, and I see that she has another vile and syringe at the ready.

“No, you don’t deserve this. No one does. And I didn’t find anyone either, not until you. I never wanted anything bad to happen to you and I am so sorry that it did.”

She sticks the needle in the bottle, pulling the plunger back to fill it. She spurts out some of the liquid to clear the needle before she sticks it in my arm.

“The only reason I survived is because I didn’t burn or get buried when the shock waves hit," she added. "And then the only reason I have persisted after the world fell into a seemingly endless atomic winter for the first two years is because I can regulate my temperature and even the temperatures of other things. I don’t know how you made it this long in these conditions.”

She looks so sad again and I don’t know what to say.

“You can make ice,” I breathe as I verbalize just one of the zillion things running through my head.

She smiles and then looks down at her hands. “I can manipulate water to either very hot or very cold extremes. I can also somewhat control or create fire. Turns out those two things come in very handy in the apocalypse, especially when that includes being able to pull water molecules from the atmosphere, even when it seems there are none, as you saw with the ice thing.”

It’s as I am thinking about that, linking it back to the thousands and thousands of charred bodies I have seen, and the cold feel of her hands, and her dozens of magical candles around us that one night, amazing yet horrible night that I suddenly realize I don’t feel any pain.

“Wha-dd-you-" I start to groggily ask.

“Just sleep, Five. We can talk all you want when you’re better.”

Thinking of the past, my mind and body slip away into a numb bliss, but I know I am not alone anymore.

Link to chapters 5, 6, and 7 to complete the story and also find and extended scene link.

Thanks for reading. If you are enjoying it, let me know. Three more chapters to go and I will be posting them all together very soon.😘

Master Post List to all my Five Centric stories and art

Link to my other Tumblr posts

Link to this and my other works on A03

#number five #umbrella academy smut #number five smut #number five fanfiction #number five female oc #the umbrella academy number five #umbrella academy five hargreeves #the umbrella academy imagine #number five imagine #number 5 #number five x oc #kaybreezy-on-a03 #tua five #number five hargreeves #smut with feelings #smut with plot #whump writing #shocker end #saddness #strength

[docholligay]

The House in Fata Morgana: Intro

I have never reviewed a visual novel before, but @iscahwynn made me a very generous offer and a long line of patience, knowing that we are trying something very new. To that end: Please don’t spoil me for the game at all! If you are reading this, I have only gotten through the part written above, and I don’t want to be corrected, even if I’m wrong, even if I’ve missed something, i don’t want to have anything confirmed or denied, and I don’t need any trigger warnings or extraneous explanation. Iscah would like my pure, naive experience of the game. Thank you!

So i’m going into this game, and i have no idea what to expect. I am not very visual novel savvy: i have played a hardful of them, but not enough to say that I know them well. Largely, I have assumed that they would never be more for me than “fun,” which is a perfectly fine place to exist, but not on the scale of where I would put my favorite pieces of media. 

I have no idea where this visual novel is going to come down, but I will say in the intro, it has my attention. 

Before I go any further, I want to say I do have one assumption going into it, based on my knowledge. Fata Morgana. A fata morgana is an illusion, often specifically a castle upside down, generally above water, and it is a natural phenomenon, but I deeply suspect that ‘natural’ has nothing to do with anything ehere, and so I focus instead on the qualities of illusion, specifically illusion of nobility, and also that fata morgana is based on Morgan LeFay, the evil fairy-sort-of-depending-on-the-version queen that opposes King Arthur. So the DESTRUCTION of nobility, of good faith, of honor, of all that, is bound up in that idea. So, I don’t know jack or shit about visual novels, but I do know about fatas morgana.

First thing I see when I open the game is this: 

Now, we love a strong disclaimer. I love potentially disturbing content, and I love that people are so stupid In These Times that you have to specifically say, 'Just because I wrote

a character doing a bad thing does not mean I necessarily believe in bad things.’ Because anything where you say ‘You may have to excuse me’ usually means that we are going to push things, this is not going to be an easy romper room kind of game, that we are going to toy with the edge. And I love that! I am grown, and I want grown games. 

The second thing i see is this: 

And I think, “Oh, this game is going to try and scare me. Cool. I’m in.” And immediately put on my headphones. 

I don’t yet know if the game is in fact going to try and scare me, but I will say that the sound layering in this game so far is absolutely fantastic, the song that they sing in the intro I can’t pick out the language of, and that may just be a failing on my part, but it adds to the mystery for me, I, like the Master, have no idea where we’ve come from or where we’re going. I really love, personally, that the game is not voice acted, as I have discovered that tends to make visual novels more immersive for me, versus how voice acting takes me out of the moment. I think i’m very much in the minority there, and that’s fine, but I found myself in the moment, reading the story rather than having to hear it. 

So we are the ones that are carried across time, back to the house again and again, the ones ‘crucified’ and now that was an intersting choice to me, because obviously this game is dabbling in some Christian and I think specifically Catholic garb, but crucifixion, is, historically, punishment for a crime. So what is it that we’ve committed, here? What can it be that we are not even allowed to die, but God brings us back again and again? 

Speaking of which, i find it really interesting the way that “You”--the story is mostly told in second person--is capitalized, like the name of God. Is that a mistake in the translation (again, PLEASE do not tell me) or is that meanignful and I’m meant to be paying attention to it? What is the master of the house but a little god?

 Having just read Rebecca, I’m thinking a lot about masters and servants and strong masters and strong servants, and it does strike me particularly in that vein when she says “If you cannot remember who you are, then who am I to serve?*” because if he cannot be master than she must become it, right? She is our only guide throughout all this, she is the one who leads us down the darkened hallway, and we don’t even know her name. But she holds all the power. 

I do think I might have fucked up the very first choice because I didn’t realize it was a choice! The game so far has some really glorious background and text styling, but because of it I had no clue what I was actually looking at and I didn’t say good morning. I doubt that has fucked the whole game but it frustrated me ahaha. But now I know what it looks like and I think I can make better choices. 

I am so glad they cleared up the mirror thing instantly, they saw the hole and closed it up, my very first idea was to go look in a mirror and see what I look like, who I am. I love that it is totally lost to us, we aren’t allowed to deal hint at who we might be. I suppose the only indicator given is that we are a man, since Master is used, instead of Miss or Mistress or Madam, depending on one’s leanings. But the game could be taking the assertion that the masculine form is neutral, as with actor and aviator and such things, no matter how much I hate it. I could be wrong here. 

In general, the story’s hook is absolutely working for me. I am so excited to move onto the door and see what the hell it is that has gone on in this house, utterly devoid of love or light or life. 

*I broadly think that line is correct. However, my one complaint with the game is it absolutely will not run windowed so I can reference it while writing this. Very very annoying. 

#Doc plays The House In Fata Morgana #Doc plays games #commission review #I really need a tag for those so I can give examples of what you get

[rhaenyras]

when men say shit like "booo hooo i need to work 8h per day in a stupid factory or in a coal mine to earn a living wage while lucky privileged women only need to sell one (1) feet picture per week or marry rich and they're settled for life".... i cannot even begin to make the full unabridged list of all the points they're missing or intentionally trying not to see. because, point one, my hermano, you should probably take this very valid complaint to your employer. the permeating capitalistic rethoric we're all wallowing in has led you to believe that you cannot change the status quo and therefore you have come to accept your subjugation with complacency. in this state of supposed powerlessness and self-pity daze, you would never dare question your direct superior or the power dynamic they impose on you, in fact the only thing you feel brave enough to do is take your frustrations out on unemployed people surviving on welfare, immigrants, or sex workers. and that's literally the dumbest shit you could ever do because it's NOT them exploiting your labour by also deliberately allowing you just enough crumbs to keep your head above the water AND simultaneously pounding into your brain the mere delusion that you should indeed feel mildly content with your situation, because that's how it's always been and that's what you were born to do and that's what everyone else is doing and how dare you question that. anyone with a solid foothold on reality would tell you just as much, no? plus communism is just unfeasible and crazy and just as bad as fascism, after all. while capitalism just feels so right and has virtually no downsides or long-term consequences for the environment or humankind, am i right?

point second, women put out more work than anyone on this god-forsaken piece of junk floating in space and don't you ever dare say otherwise because, again, you'll only sound ridiculous and out of touch. women are responsible for ALL the care and emotional labour you have ever encountered or demanded in your life. in fact, without women and the enormous staggering gigantic weight of childbearing + childrearing + homemaking placed on their back since birth for millennia, you wouldn't even be breathing right now, and perhaps that wouldn't be such a bad thing now, would it?

furthermore, even if we're choosing to stupidly ignore the weight of being expected to care and assist every child or old person in your proximity, it's still worth mentioning that black and brown women make up 85% of the workforce employed in garments sweatshops, under appalling working conditions and laughable wages. I don't know what sort of tale you're telling yourselves but it seems to me that women are still getting the short end of the stick here as even the ones benefiting from white privilege are still, in fact, working "regular jobs" and being paid less for it than the average male coworker, while still not shying away from all the unpaid unseen labour that sustains entire households and family dynamics, the absence of which would lead to the downfall of patriarchal order and the world as we know it.

oh and as per the feet picture turn of phrase y'all keep coming back to.... I don't know how to explain to you that having your entire body and every single part of it commodified and sexualised and turned into a "kink" for men to get off to is not something you should be jealous of. the fact that there MAY be some money in it, might look like privilege and luck to you, but it's actually the only way women could find to own this unreciprocated unsolicited male desire and, being the resilient resourceful survivors that we are, we turned it into a viable career path, which still, doesn't come without its challenges and pitfalls, and should not really be idealized, as in many cases, it is not even a woman's first choice.

the latest wave of feminism has only now begun to try and correct all the wrongs and is still timidly attempting to recalibrate the scales of rights so that they're not too heavily tipped in your favor anymore. and even still, we probably won't reach full equality for the next 200 years because of all the lousy ignorant pathetic obtrusive misinformed bullshit you keep spreading, pushing back our efforts of several decades (-: the least you could do is literally just to SHUT UP and let the anti-capitalistic feminist agenda advance without further hindrance from the likes of socially unaware pricks in tinfoil hats like y'all.

#im...mad today #i know this is all wasted on tumblr because the men i talk of are simply not on here #but still.... i had it in me and i needed to get it out #i might actually post it to ig #rant.txt #feminism

[uglypastels]

(i literally typed this into my notes so i could keep going back to the chapter to make sure i didn’t forget anything and i still feel like i’m forgetting smth and i think it pasted weird so. my bad)

okay so first things first, comments on ch. 7

-amazing. amazing. amazing. amazing. wtf. this fic is like crack and i’m abt to change my address to the inside of your walls

-omg the dream with munson being a total sweetheart!!

-the kiss then slap then second kiss!!?!! (also OH MY GOD THEY FINALLY KISSED)

-and he knew she was going through his shit and reading his letter and even tho he was mad he held it back to first make sure she was okay

-and while they were arguing he still was trying to look out for her and *literally* catching her fall and holding her up (i could die).

-i love him being a little bossy bitch and the slight manhandling like😳😏😔😩 don’t get me wrong i love bossy/dom!eddie fics but they don’t hit as hard if he’s not got a brat to tame…so this is like perfect. (and if u felt so inclined to include even a little more manhandling going forward, i personally would melt this fic down and shoot it into my veins. if not, that’s okay too!)

now some lingering questions that are eating me alive that i’m SO looking forward to getting answers to

-what the fuck did munson give harrington a choice on if not ignore her or die?? what tf did eddie even say to him!!?

-reader wasn’t supposed to be on the ship!?

-reader’s crew did something horrible, possibly to munson and his crew??

also 👉👈 i saw u answered an ask that there could be a nsfw scene and i am begging with my whole heart🥺

peeps, dont read this ask if you havent caught up on Not Wholly Evil

i dont think the walls in my house are big enough but hey, you do you <3 you would mostly get to experience me sitting at my computer for 5 hours straight, constantly getting distracted and then annoyed that I'm not making any progress in the story haha

he is a sweetheaart, deep deep down, but ya know, it's hard to show that when the lady kinda hates your guts

im sorry but idk what she was thinking, it wasn't slick lol, and it is his ship so he knows everything that happens around.

im such a whore for manhandling and i had originally included more of it in the fic but i also don't want to make it like too aggressive because don't want it to get too dark (you should have seen my original draft. she went fucking through it yikes) but yeah i mean stuff might happen who knows (i don't. the planning for this fic is abysmal) and the same goes for the smut.

see the thing i think happened (i say as if im an oracle writing down these events and not making it fucking up in my own head dafuq) but ok- so the thing with Eddie is, he's a bit of a maniac, and i feel like he thinks he gave steve a choice, which was probably consisting of mainly threats, but it was technically a choice + i steve absolutely knew what eddie was up to so he just let it slide because fuck ok, get yo girl i guess.

hey, i said it from the very first chapter! its all in their baby

and about that last question... you'll have to wait and see

ok, so, this was such a treat to wake up to!!! thank you so much for the asks you do not understand how much i love answering these

#uglypastels answers #eddielives1986

[mejomonster]

I started Never Let Me Go part 1 ep 1:

1. Oh my god they batmanned the main character immediately. No time wasting. Turning 18, loves his dad, setup to fulfill family legacy, just wants dad alive and proud of his dad? Dad shot in the RAIN WHILE EXITING

Screaming crying in the rain oh My god

Don't get me wrong, I loved it, I'm loving the setup, it's just WOW do u see it coming they got real quick to the point I love it

2. STAR STUDDED CAST at least 3 guys from The Gifted Graduation and I'm beyond hype about it, I'm absolutely over the moon. My favorite dude is in this I'm practically in tears <3 ;-;

3. For that matter, the vibes? Actually REALLY similar to The Gifted. More realism rather than sci fi, so like The Eclipse. But visually and tonally it's leaning FAR HEAVIER into serious plot like The Gifted with queer relationships IN it but not like the main point. The Eclipse balanced both a murder mystery political protest plot WITH some very ship style shot scenes of boys standing super close and flirting for the sake of a flirty scene, but a bit subverted in that Khaotung and all queer characters on the show were heavily clearly coded as queer men, khaotungs character as a femme queer man, and so those bl fluffy romance type cliches had a certain realism to them even when the cheesy usual music played. I expect THIS show is going to go the 3 Will Be Free route, where there's a main queer romance as a center point but it's not going to be presented too reliant on fluffy shippy they fell on each other and MUSIC SWELLED CUTESY scenes. Oh sure, they may share a shower or fall on each other for sure! But I think the romantic tropes will be handled in a more grounded way as a compliment/intensification to the plot and character romance rather than the vehicles that PUSH the romance and story to begin with. (Actually now thinking about it both The Eclipse AND GAP do a really good job using cutesy fluff tropes but as a compliment to a queer character focused story to like make me feel great I Get a gushy cute over the top scene while still feeling it makes logical sense for the story). So basically... I think tonally this show is going to be like Not Me and 3 Will Be Free and I'm SO HYPE FOR IT. It's my personal preference. I imagine it'll feel initially "slow" to some people, but for me it feels the intro episode is setting up and introducing the individual characters and arcs and themes and setup well which is a good strong opening. (GAP does this while also playing with cute tropes so you can do both if you want a slightly less heavy opening ep).

4. LOVE the visuals. Again, reminds me a LOT of The Gifted Graduation visually in color choices - it's more colorful like Moonlight Chicken, but there's also a lot of more muted looking color choices that remind me of The Gifted. That make the school feel realistic rather than rom com set (like I love Bad Buddy and I love its design choices but it also leans into the bright vivid visual style which is more sitcom and romcom then heavy drama palette). The color scheme is a lot more like The Eclipse, The Gifted, Girl From Nowhere, more muted and I'm hoping it's an indication we'll get some suspense and mystery in the story like other Thai shows that go for these kinds of visuals.

5. I'm happy to say it feels like it's own thing and not a kinnporsche knockoff. I definitely Want more gang grey moral character gay adventure stories even if they are heavily inspired by other stuff or not (I LOVE 3 will be free, manner of death, history 3 trapped, and am always happy for more thriller gay stuff). But when I initially heard this show premise I expected a mafia boss and bodyguard premise. While it may eventually evolve into that setup.... these initial characters are NOT like kinn and Porsche. They're 18 for one and both in the point of life of deciding life paths, which changes the whole trajectory wildly (and in this rare instance despite me not liking high school settings I like the choice... they're 18 truly about to go to college. And the premise reminds me of The Gifted so I imagine the transition of some innocence to no innocence and involved in the corruption of the world and reality fully and no longer being naive and needing to make hard decisions will be major themes in this. Or at LEAST feature at some point. And people becoming adults are a decent character choice for telling that kind of story.) I just like a Lot of the unique choices this shows opening with, I didn't expect a story this thought out and I'm excited

And I'm only done with ep 1 part 1!!! I'm hype

#lb #never let me go