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[iwouldexistwithoutyou]

I miss this blog.

Beetlejuice and Lydia (Beetlejuice shooter and cocktail)

Beetlejuice Ingredients: 2 Blackberries 1 oz. Black sambuca 1 oz. Irish cream 

Directions: Add berries to a shot glass. Pour black sambuca into shot glass. Using a barspoon, layer the Irish cream on top. 

Lydia Ingredients: 2 oz. Lemon vodka 4 oz. Blood orange soda 1 splash Lime juice Drizzle of grenadine

Directions: Add all ingredients over ice and stir.

This cocktail was created by Secret of the Booze and is being featured as day one of our Halloween takeover event.

[kagihirapotato]

lu guang’s bridon arc fit means everything to me

[doublxpresso]

doomed to stay sober....

[suddencolds]

The Worst Timing | [4/?]

happy friday, everyone! here is part 4 (5.3k words) as a little pre-valentines-day installment :) [part 1] is here! this chapter was a pain to edit; i think i deleted + rewrote about a fifth of it in the revision process

anyways, i promised this chapter would be the wedding, so... please enjoy the wedding

this is an OC fic - here is a list of everything I've written w these two!

Summary: Yves invites Vincent to a wedding, in France, where the rest of his family will be in attendance. It's a very important wedding, so he's definitely not going to let anything—much less the flu—ruin it. (ft. fake dating, an international trip, downplaying illness, sharing a hotel room)

—

It’s a hectic morning.

Yves wakes up with the sinking realization that the medicine he took yesterday has worn off entirely. That is to say, he wakes up with the kind of unshakeable exhaustion he only feels when he’s coming down with something bad. His head is throbbing—sharp, cutting pain lances through his skull as soon as he finds it in himself to get out of bed.

All of that is inconsequential. He takes two pills from the cold/flu medicine blister pack with a generous few sips of water, brushes his teeth, washes his face in the sink with water cold enough to jolt him awake, and heads out.

He finds Aimee early, to ask her if she needs any help with anything. Then he makes himself available to the relatives that need him. There’s a last minute printing issue with the seating cards, so he goes through all of them again, finds the ones that are misprinted, talks extensively with the hotel’s front desk to explain what selection he needs to get reprinted and why, gets redirected towards the hotel’s business center, and finally gets them reprinted properly in one of the storerooms in the back. He lines the cards up and cuts them manually with a paper cutter he finds in one of the conference rooms on the first floor.

Then he takes a shuttle to the wedding venue to help set out all the seating cards according to a seating plan Genevieve texts him, but it’s windy enough outside that he has to find a way to weigh them all down. The venue has card holder stands, thankfully, but he doesn’t figure that out until he spends a good fifteen minutes asking around for them.

Then he waits twenty minutes in the cold for the shuttle back—the shuttles are thankfully in operation, but they’re running infrequently enough at this hour to be a slight inconvenience. By the time he gets on the shuttle, he’s shivering hard, even in his jacket, and his hands are almost numb from the cold.

The temperature certainly doesn’t help with the pressure in his sinuses, or with the sore throat that he’s had for a few days now. Perhaps it’s a blessing that the shuttle is near-empty save for him, because no one is there to question it when he ducks into his elbow with every loud, wrenching sneeze, or the coughing fit that almost inevitably follows.

When he gets back, he finds a sewing kit for Roy’s sister, Solaine—they don’t sell them at the convenience store downstairs, but he finds some in one of the tourist shops on the opposite end of the first floor of the hotel—for some last minute fixes to the way it’s hemmed. He delivers some safety pins from Victoire to one of his aunts, picks up breakfast pastries from the café across the street for his parents.

He takes a quick, hot shower, hot enough that the entire bathroom steams up because of it, and hopes that no one can hear the way every sneeze sounds so terribly, unnecessarily loud, even in the presence of his rapidly depleting voice. He rehearses his speech from memory and then rehearses it again, thinking through his notes on the pauses and the reflections. He irons his suit out, for good measure.

If he stops and lingers too long, it becomes quickly evident just how exhausted he is, just how unwell he feels when there’s nothing strictly keeping him on his feet. So instead, he makes himself useful where he can, busies himself with whatever he finds, if only because it’s the best distraction he can think of—if only because it’s the one distraction he has the luxury to take.

—

Lunch is a quick affair—he’s not especially hungry, and there will be more than enough food at the reception, so he grabs two pastries from downstairs, a coffee with two shots of espresso, and heads back up. Sitting down and eating them in the hotel room is somehow worse than running errands—like this, he can’t chalk his exhaustion up to his hectic morning, can’t attribute the heavy, shivery feeling that’s been following him all day the cold weather outside. 

Three more hours until the wedding. Anticipation always feels the worst, like this, when it’s nearly inseparable from worry—just a tangle of emotions in his chest.

He exhales.

Vincent is off—somewhere. Getting lunch, maybe, or getting ready for the wedding somewhere else. Yves has exchanged maybe all of twenty words with him this morning—do you know if our room has a sewing kit? Or, I’m going to stop by the café downstairs. Do you want me to get you anything?

Truthfully, Yves isn’t feeling much better today. His nose is running a little less now, thanks to the cold medicine, but the headache that he’s had all morning hasn’t gotten any less persistent. Even with his suit jacket on, he still can’t quite manage to get warm. He’s sneezing a little less, but each sneeze catches him off guard, harsh and sudden and embarrassingly loud.

But Vincent—who is, on average, unusually perceptive—hasn’t said anything about any of it. Yves tries not to think too hard about it. The less Vincent is worried about him, the better. Maybe he’s just preoccupied with other things.

He finishes his pastries at the small coffee table in the living room, downs half of his coffee, and then leans back in his chair and shuts his eyes.

His head hurts. He feels dizzy, even though he’s sitting perfectly still—as if the ground beneath him isn’t quite as steady as it should be—a strange feeling of vertigo. Surely if he sits here for just awhile longer, that feeling will go away.

He doesn’t fall asleep, exactly, but it’s a close thing. The discomfort doesn’t let up, either—no amount of massaging his temples seems to make the headache any better, and no amount of shuteye seems to do anything to lessen the exhaustion he feels. Maybe if he takes a nap he’ll wake up feeling passably fine. But he thinks it’s just as likely that he’ll get woken up early—by a phone call, or a text, or a knock on the door—to be told that he’s needed somewhere, and that alone is enough of a deterrent to keep him from properly falling asleep.

From somewhere at the edge of consciousness, he hears footsteps out in the hallway.

Someone’s here, then. He should let them in. But before he can bring himself to stand up and head over to the door, he hears the sound of the room card being inserted into its slot, hears the click of the door as it unlocks.

Someone—Vincent—shuts the door quietly behind him. When he spots Yves, he looks a little surprised.

“I didn’t think I’d find you here,” he says.

Yves blinks. His face feels unusually hot. “I got lunch,” he says, clearing his throat. “Well, I fidished it, but if I’d known you’d be getting back, I would’ve gotten somethidg for you.”

“I’m surprised you made it back,” Vincent says, leaving his shoes in a neat line at the door. “Are you done putting out all the fires now?” Yves laughs, though it turns into a cough. “For the foreseeable future, yes. Sorry i— hhH!” He twists over his shoulder, away from Vincent, to cover the sneeze in a manner that does not come at the expense of his suit jacket. “hHh-! iiDDzschh-IEW! snf-! Sorry I’ve barely been around this mornidg.”

Vincent is his own person—Yves has no doubt that he’s entirely self-sufficient when it comes to travel—but still, Yves is the only person Vincent really knows here. He’s not sure he can claim he’d be good company in his current state, but he feels like maybe he ought to be around more often—to translate, or to serve as the conversational buffer, or something else.

“It’s no problem,” Vincent says, frowning. “You were busy.”

“Still. If we were actually datidg, I think this would make me a slightly terrible boyfriend.”

“If we were actually dating, I would understand that you have important things in your life to attend to,” Vincent says.

Yves laughs. “Like cutting sixty sheets of paper into even rectangles?”

“Is that what you were out doing all morning?”

“Among other things.”

“Then yes,” Vincent says. He stops just short of the coffee table where Yves is sitting. “Are you finally off of paper-cutting duty?”

“God, I hope so. Weddings are always so hectic, even if you’re only peripherally idvolved. It’s like everyone’s worried about things going wrong beforehand, but then when you finally get to them, they always go fine.”

“Have you been to a lot of weddings in your life?”

Yves considers this. “Cobpared to the average person? Probably.”

“Then you should listen to your own advice,” Vincent tells him. 

“What?”

“It’s going to be fine.”

Yves blinks. If Vincent can tell that he is nervous after a three minute conversation with him, then Yves must really not be doing a good job at hiding it.

“That’s what I’m hoping for,” he says. He really is tired. Maybe another cup of coffee, or two, will help—he can hardly think of anything more mortifying than nodding off halfway through the vows. “I don’t think I’ll forgive mbyself if it doesn’t.”

—

It’s a near-perfect wedding.

The weather is as temperate as it gets at this time of year. It’s sunny out, and brisk enough that no one feels stuffy in their suit jackets and their summer dresses.

The wedding venue is like something out of a storybook—the white stone paths, arcing around a circular fountain, the water a clear, searing blue; the rows and rows of flowers that crowd around it. Flowers—roses, peonies, tulips, gardenias—line the walkways, strung up over arches in crisscrossing rows of sprawling green leaves.

When Aimee and Genevieve walk down the aisle, Leon grins; Victoire turns away to wipe at her eyes. When they say their vows, Yves feels a tightness in his chest, a fierce sort of pride. He knew, of course, that this moment would make him emotional.

But nothing compares to seeing them here, right here, smiling. Aimee’s hair is half up, half down, held in place with a half moon clip that winks white under the sunshine. Genevieve is wearing a long white dress—her hair is braided into a crown, threaded with flowers, a translucent lace veil settling over her shoulders. The afternoon sunlight trickles over them, gleaming. And Yves—

Yves has always believed in love.

Perhaps it’s overly idealistic—he’s certainly been told as much before—but he believes in it still. He believed in it even before he started dating Erika, and he believed in it after they broke up, too. It’s not so much the idea that people can be soulmates, more the idea that people can spend thirty or fifty or seventy years together and not tire of each other, the idea that the little mundanities of life might be made special in the presence of someone whose existence sublimates them endlessly into interest. The idea that two people who may not ever fully understand each other might try, ceaselessly, to get close. 

He remembers: hearing about Genevieve, over text and over call; at first peripherally, but then frequently. He regrets, sometimes, that he wasn’t there more for the both of them, that he could only help from an ocean away with celebrations and holidays and special events, that he still doesn’t know Genevieve as well as he’d like to.

But a part of him thinks, now, that maybe it was a privilege, too, watching from afar. Hearing about the dates secondhand, from Aimee, all of it filtered through her own excitement—hearing Aimee talk about everything that left an impression on her. It would have been different, of course, if he had really been there. But in a way, it is a little fitting that his first impression of Genevieve—his first mental portrait of her—was by someone who was already already half in love with her.

And he remembers: Aimee, unusually quiet one night over Facetime, sitting cross legged in the living room of their new apartment. The world, dark outside through the living room windows, even though for him it was only mid afternoon. The way she’d smiled, wistful, staring off into the distance at some point he couldn’t see. I think I might marry her, she had said.

She had said it like she was certain. He finds himself going back to that moment, to her certainty. He’s always wondered—how had she known? How had she been so sure of it, even then? 

But the way Genevieve takes Aimee’s hands, during the vow—the way her hands tremble slightly with it, the particular carefulness with which she handles the ring—all of it makes him think that he’s been right to believe in this, in them, in love. After all, what more convincing proof is there than this?

—

All in all, it is nearly perfect.

Nearly, save for how unwell he feels, how self conscious he is about not making it expressly known. Yves shivers through the entire ceremony, occasionally lifting the collar of his suit jacket to muffle a harsh, wrenching sneeze into the fabric. He’ll get it dry cleaned later. Beside him, Vincent looks to him, his head tilted in question—and, after Yves smiles apologetically at him—says nothing.

He makes it through, as a combination of everything—the adrenaline, the cold medicine, the four espressos he’d had this morning and the energy drink he’d downed right before the ceremony to keep himself awake. 

He doesn’t have a thermometer, doesn’t know what kind of temperature he’s running, but he has a hunch that it’s higher than it should be. It’s freezing outside—cold enough that he can’t keep himself from shivering, even when he tries—but no one else seems to be as cold as he is. He can only hope, now, that no one else notices him ducking into his jacket, periodically, to catch another sneeze, or wiping his nose on the back of his hand to keep it from openly running.

The world looks fever-bright, fuzzy around some edges but unusually sharp around others. He’s awake, but in the sort of uncomfortable, all-consuming way where it feels like he’s too nervous to get any sleep at all.

He feels only half-present during the cocktail hour, while Aimee and Genevieve take their pictures. He thinks he should make himself useful somehow—help with positioning props for photos or with setting up the proper lighting or whatever else—or, at the very least, converse with the relatives that he hasn’t had much of a chance to catch up with yet.

Instead, he sits, half hunched over at one of the side tables, and tries not to shiver too visibly. His head hurts with the sort of sharp, incessant pain that makes it near-impossible to focus on anything else. 

“Are you okay?” Vincent asks him. 

Yves looks over to him. Vincent looks concerned—his eyebrows are furrowed, his mouth set into a frown—and Yves—

Yves considers it, for a moment: telling Vincent the truth. That it’s taking everything in him to appear even remotely presentable. That a part of him is nervous that he’ll crash before he gives his speech. That he might have overestimated his own ability to get through four more hours of this, outside in the cold.

“Of course,” he says instead, with the best smile he can muster, because what else is there to say?

He doesn’t end up having any drinks, even though he’s usually a fan of cocktails. Leon offers him one, and when Yves shakes his head, shrugs and heads off to find someone else, which Yves thinks is probably the best. He’s a little too out of it to keep tabs on where all the others are—there are enough people that it’d be hard to spot everyone in the first place, but like this, it feels impossible.

And Vincent is… surprisingly, absent, for much of it. Yves considers texting him a couple times, just to see where he might be, but then decides against it. If Vincent has found something fun to do, then Yves definitely isn’t going to keep him from doing it.

Except, a small part of him says, he’d explicitly told Vincent not to worry about him. It doesn’t have to be your problem, he’d said, and Vincent had stared back at him, blankly, except was his expression really blank, then? Hadn’t he seemed a little hurt? After all of this is over, Yves really ought to apologize to him for all of the trouble—for making this whole wedding a lot more stressful than it should’ve been.

Vincent had known, after all, that he was nervous just this morning, even though Yves hadn’t wanted for it to show. And perhaps Vincent has always been perceptive, but Yves likes to think he isn’t always so obvious. Vincent is here to enjoy his vacation in France, first and foremost. Yves doesn’t want anything—not the fever he feels brewing, not the nervousness he feels regarding the wedding—to get in the way of that.

But right now, Vincent is nowhere to be found, so he tables the apology for later. For now, he just has to get through the entirety of the wedding. He spends a good part of the hour in the same seat, blowing his nose into cocktail napkins, wishing he had packed something warmer that would fit the dress code.

He makes polite conversation with whoever stops by, and tries—and fails—to ignore the fact that it feels like his head is going to split. Maybe he should’ve picked up some aspirin at the convenience store, too, though it’s not like he has the time to go back and get it now. And, anyways, as painful as it is, it’s really just a headache. How bad could it be?

—

At six, he finds his seat for dinner. A couple minutes later, Vincent takes a seat next to him. Yves turns to speak to him, only, he has to turn away to muffle a throat-scraping fit of coughs into his elbow.

The coughing fit lasts longer than he anticipates. When he looks up at last, Vincent is already in conversation with the person next to him, who Yves recognizes to be one of Genevieve’s friends—perhaps one of the ones he ate dinner with the night before, though Yves can’t be sure. Yves hunts down another cocktail napkin to blow his nose into—it’s starting to run worse now that the sun is starting to set.

When it comes time to give his toast, he’s afraid, for a moment, that he might forget what to say. That he might trip up mid-speech, despite all of the practice. That his current affliction might make itself clearly, embarrassingly apparent right when everyone’s attention is focused on him.

But the speech goes well. He gives his speech in French. His voice is noticeably off, but he hasn’t lost it entirely, and if he has to resort to clearing his throat as quietly as he can in between sentences, it’s a small sacrifice. Aimee giggles at the anecdote he tells about her in grad school, texting him about meeting Genevieve for the first time at a networking event. He throws in a couple inside jokes—references to things he’s heard his extended family laugh about during their yearly summer reunions, things that he can tie back into the wedding that he hopes might land well with this audience—and then he tells everyone about a surprise party he worked with Genevieve to plan, last summer, for Aimee’s birthday: how she’d stayed up late to make sure everything was carefully accounted for. How he’d known, then, from how seriously she was taking it, by how well she seemed to know Aimee already, that she would be the one. 

The jokes seem to land, for the way everyone—buoyed from the adrenaline of the wedding and in part thanks to the cocktails, he’s sure—laughs, and by the end, Genevieve is beaming, and Aimee breaks tradition to run up to him and give him a tight hug. After that, he asks everyone to raise their glasses in a toast—“To Aimee and Genevieve,” he says, “what a joy it is to see the team you’ve been rooting for win,” and the room erupts into clamor—into applause and cheer and the resounding clinking of glasses.

Then someone he recognizes as one of Genevieve’s closest friends stands to give her toast, and for the first time today, Yves lets himself relax in his seat. Only, it isn’t really relaxing—after all of the caffeine, he feels simultaneously exhausted and strangely, artificially alert, in a way that feels a little wrong.

The rest of the wedding should be smooth sailing, he thinks. The ceremony is over. His speech was fine. He just needs to stay through dinner and the cake cutting, and then he can ride the shuttle back with everyone else, and then—

—And then he’ll be back at his hotel room, where he can apologize to Vincent for perhaps being the very reason why this vacation hasn’t been as stress-free as it should’ve been, considering that it’s likely one of the few reprieves he and Vincent are supposed to get until busy season winds down.

He blinks, rubs a hand over his face, sniffling. He really does feel dizzy.

It’s usually like this. Yves thinks he should probably be wiser by now. If there’s anything he’s learned from past experiences—attending that end-of-semester crew meeting with the flu, or getting through the second half of finals week his senior year of university with a high fever—it’s that half a week of ignoring all of his symptoms is going to catch up to him eventually. 

Usually he’s better at defining what constitutes eventually.

He feels a familiar prickle in his nose—the kind that he knows once he gives in to will plague him for the rest of the hour. The cold medicine must be wearing off. Better to do this elsewhere—anywhere instead of here, on the courtyard, where everyone is eating dinner.

“I’ll be right back,” he says to Vincent. Then, without waiting for a response, he rises from his seat and heads off in the direction of the nearest restroom. There’s one in the main building, past the catering stations, the ballroom, the indoor bar.

“Hey, Yves,” someone—his sister—says, when he’s halfway to the building.

He stops walking. “What’s up?”

“You nailed that speech,” she says.

“In no small part thadks to you,” Yves says, forcing himself to turn and face her with a smile. “I’m glad we cut it down. And by we I mean, mostly you.”

“You were a hit,” Victoire says. “And it was funny. I liked the anecdotes you picked. I don’t think people would’ve minded if it were longer.” 

“Three mbidutes was the perfect length. Ady longer and people would’ve started losidg idterest— hHh-!” Yves thinks, a little frustratedly, that he always has the most inconvenient timing. “Excuse mbe, I— HHehh!” He lifts his arm to his face, twisting away. “hHhEH’iiDZSSchh’iiEW!”

When he turns back around to face her, Victoire is staring at him with the sort of calculating look that Yves is sure is not a good thing.

“You’re still sick?” she asks.

He blinks at her. “A little,” he says. “I’ll get some sleep todight.” 

She nods. “Does Vincent know?”

The question startles him into laughing, which he immediately regrets, for the way it makes him cough. “That I’mb sick?” he asks. “Yeah, I’d assume so. We share a room.”

“Assume? So you haven’t talked to him about it?”

“Whether or ndot I have a cold is not the mbost enthralling conversation topic,” Yves says.

“But you’re dating,” she says, as if that explains everything.

It explains nothing. “Yes, glad you ndoticed.”

“I just mean that — I mean, he got breakfast with us the other day, which you weren’t there for, and then we had the rehearsal dinner, which he wasn’t invited to. And during the cocktail hour, you were sitting alone.”

“I’mb not sure where you’re goidg with this,” Yves says, if only because he doesn’t want to be having this conversation right now. “But if you’re wondering whether—” He veers away again, pressing his arm to his face. “hh… Hehh-! hhHH’GKTT-SHHiiew!Ugh, sorry… Hh… HEHh’IIDZZSCHh-yyEEew! snf-! If you’re wondering whether we got into a fight, or sobething, then the answer is no.”

“It’s not that.” Victoire hesitates, for a moment, as if she’s still thinking about what to say. She probably is. She’s always been deliberate with her words. “It kind of seems like—well, like you’re doing that thing you always do.”

“What thidg I always do?” 

“You know.” She looks at him, her expression carefully, deceptively neutral. “Avoiding the people who care about you when something’s wrong.”

“I have ndo idea what you’re talking about.” Yves glances wistfully over to the bathroom. “I do really ndeed to pee, you know.”

He half expects her to press, but she just sighs. “Okay,” she says. “Don’t let me keep you.”

It’s a convenient out, and he takes it. The walk over is thankfully not too long—the bathroom turns out to be located just a couple hallways down from the entrance, but it’s hidden enough that it’s a little hard to find. For now, that’s a good thing.

He imagines the wedding party might move inside shortly after dinner, but as it stands, the building is mercifully empty. The restroom on the first floor is nicer than expected—warm lighting, floor to ceiling mirrors, polished white sinks on a black granite countertop. He braces himself against the countertop, suppressing another shiver. 

His nose is running slightly. He reaches over and grabs a couple paper towels from the dispenser, just to be safe.

It’s not a moment too early. It’s only moments after that he’s pitching forwards into the paper towels with a harsh—

 “HhH’iiDZSSCHh-IIEW!” 

The sound echoes off the tiled walls. Yves finds himself coughing, afterwards. The medicine must really be wearing off, then, for the way his nose is starting to run incessantly—for the way the discomfort prickles at his skin, suggesting a fever. It’s a good thing there’s no one here to see him like this.

“hHEHh’iIZssCHH-iiEW! snf-! hHEh… HDDt’TSSCHH-iEEW!” The sneezes are harsher than usual, too, and forceful enough to snap him forward at the waist. He stays hunched over for a moment, steadying himself with the side of the countertop, and tries, somewhat unsuccessfully, to catch his breath. 

The bathroom feels frigidly cold. He shivers, reaches up with trembling hands to try to button up his suit. His nose is starting to tickle again. It feels like he might be here forever, like one wrong breath might be enough to—

“hhH…. hHEH…. hhHEH’DJJJSHH’iiEEW!” The paper towels in his hand must be drenched now, but before he can get a chance to replace them, his breath catches again. “hhEH’GKTT-SHhhEw!” It’s immediately clear, from the subsequent twinge in his nose, that he’s not done. For a moment, he wonders if the sneezes will ever let up—if he’ll be stuck in the bathroom all evening, trying to keep his illness under wraps.

Before he can entertain the thought properly, he finds himself jerking forward again, his eyes snapping shut—

“Hehh… hEHh’IIZSCHH-YYEEW! hHihhH’-iiTsSHHH-YYEW!”

He blows his nose, as gently as he can, but the paper towel is rougher against his skin. When he looks up afterwards, blinking tears out of his vision, his nose looks noticeably red. 

It takes all the resolve in him to not just slump against the wall.

His next breath comes in wrong, and he finds himself coughing—harsh, grating coughs which seem to go on and on, leaving him feeling distinctly lightheaded.

He can’t stay here. He needs to make it back to dinner, where the others are waiting for him. He has to get back before Vincent starts wondering where he’s gone.

Yves squeezes his eyes shut. If he’s being honest with himself, he feels awful. Nothing he does seems to do anything to assuage the chill that’s settled persistently over him, the uncomfortable, shivery feeling that makes him want to curl up somewhere warm, sleep the next day and a half away.

Would it be so bad for him to stay here for just a little longer? To send a text to Vincent to let him know he’ll be back in twenty? It’s not the most comfortable of places, but it would be the easiest to explain if someone ends up finding him here. Anywhere else might suggest that he has a big enough problem to deliberately hide away instead of properly enjoying the festivities, like he should be doing, which is not the impression he wants to give off at all.

He tries to think of a convincing enough excuse, but nothing he can think of takes precedence over a wedding dinner, of all things. It should be fine if he goes back now, but any longer might be pushing things.

And, anyways, he feels guilty for even considering it. The others are waiting for him. He has to show up, and at the very least, be courteous where he has to, make pleasant conversation when he can. He has to make sure Aimee and Genevieve are having fun, and that Leon and Victoire are doing fine, and that nothing needs to get done logistically, and that Vincent is not there alone, surrounded by strangers speaking a language he’s just started to learn.

His head is pounding. He tosses the paper towels into the bin, leans his weight against the countertop, squeezes his eyes shut. The exhaustion from the past few days of on-and-off sleep must be catching up with him. His head is pounding.

He can do this. More aptly put, it’s not a question of whether he can. He has to do this.

He splashes his face with cold water, washes his hands in the sink, dries his face with another generous handful of paper towels, and heads towards the door. He feels almost too tired to stand, but that’s only a temporary concern. It won’t be a problem once he gets back to his seat.

Everyone is waiting for him, he tells himself. Soon, they might be asking where he’s gone. He needs to show them that he’s there—present and attentive and engaged, just like he promised everyone he’d be. No one expects any less of him, after all.

It’s with that in mind that he presses forward. He makes it down a couple hallways before he finds himself having to lean against the wall to catch his balance, shutting his eyes against the sudden wave of disorientation. He inhales, slowly. Exhales.

Fuck. Perhaps he’s dizzier than he’d expected.

“Yves?” He freezes. Vincent is not supposed to be here. Vincent can’t see him right now, not in this state. He forces himself to smile. “What’s up?”

“You disappeared,” Vincent says. “I wanted to make sure…”

His voice shutters, sounding distant and close by all at once. “...that everything was okay.”

“It is,” Yves says. “I was just about to head back.” “We can head back together,” Vincent says. It’s not that long of a walk—just a couple minutes, at most, to the exit Vincent presumably came in from, and then back down the stone path that leads to the courtyard.

“You didn’t have to come find me. I’m really fine.” Yves shifts his weight off from the wall. Takes a couple steps halting towards the exit, which is a mistake.

It all registers simultaneously: the darkness encroaching upon the edges of his vision, the surge of panic in his chest. The world, suddenly angled wrongly, tilts towards him. He thinks he is definitely going to owe Vincent an apology.

[ Part 5 ]

[icewindandboringhorror]

Would most people realistically use 'carry' and 'convey' as synonyms in typical speech?? Seems a slightly reaching comparison to me lol

[veifei]

boxing arc of LCLA goes crazy tbh we've got qiao ling busting the boys' time shenanigans (and her not believing at first until they prove it via HER being involved in said time shenanigans); we've got cheng xiaoshi's parasocial relationship w his idol shuang hai (man is obsessed); he's shaking crying downing drinks w shuang hai cos said boxing CHAKPION has no one to confide in except two twenty something year olds who did some sleuthing for him; cheng xiaoshi's all like "im your BIGGEST fan why are u being such a LOSER right now 🥲" and lu guang is sitting there quietly except for when scolding cxs for drinking too much too fast 😭😭😭 i love this show

[winedogs]

made Jay take pics with this can of dog beer thrice bc I kept thinking “well what if he won’t do it at the beach”

[icterid-rubus]

Hmm I want to text the classmate I drove home from the reunion to ask about their resources for alterations and sewing and also to get me a foothold on having a new friend, but I’m worried it may come off weird. They are quiet and I definitely did the lions share of chatting and laughing, although I think they had fun too. And before I left we spoke through our car windows about staying in contact. I don’t know if I should wait until like mid December or early January instead to reach out again.

[vampthropologist]

"Alright, Alright, It's a hell of a feeling though!"

My 69th song of the list this year. You heard that right. P!atD was one of my childhood bands. Requested by @galaxyempire-lilith

No text versions under cut. Please click for full quality!!!

Took big inspiration from the lyrics and those pinterest images of young adults/teens in shopping carts in empty parking lots.

[moviebunny]

Jax is a prideful control freak asshole. No matter what happens he wants to preserve his pride (if he feels it’s being threatened) or reclaim it. If he can’t change the situation to put himself on top, he’ll try to drag someone, ANYONE down to his level. So, anytime you see him trying to reassert himself you also know deep down he’s freaking out. This kind of contrast between the actions and mental interior of the character makes me so excited I want to cry. I love Jax. 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

^^^^ me

[oysterie]

Honestly I think my cat has been eating too much at once and that's why he's throwing up a bit

[myownprivatcidaho]

alcohol tasted AWFUL to me the first 21.5 years of my life and then this past christmas break sth clikced and now suddenly.... i like it. and I'm enjoying that i like it and NOW am enjoying drunkenness almost every evening (im much less of a lightweofht than i look but much more of one than i like to think) and im wondering if maybe i shld be ..... concerned.

[fragmentedblade]

I don't know, it's silly, but I really love this story. I fell in love with the details and how everything cohered beyond my expectations, how the little details in worldbuilding made big things click and make sense even though they seemed typical fiction "too much but you have to suspend belief" things at first. And I actually honestly think most of the things some parts of fandom complain about are not only coherent, but some of the best more nuanced aspects of the writing. Everything that I thought and interpreted, even to the most minute details, was confirmed. Even, again, to the most minute details I loved but thought I was being stupid for paying so much attention to, because surely they couldn't mean as much as I thought they did. Yet they did.

[tea-and-naps]

been meaning to dive headfirst into the whole post human lore but im scared of being disappointed

need a 2 hour long video essay about it

[soleriana]

fleeting soul

Your soul already knows its purpose. It was created with an inherent inclination toward truth, toward Allah, toward something beyond this world. But the moment it was placed in a body, in this dunya, it got layered with influences, culture, ego, desires, trauma, expectations. So growth, real growth, isn’t about becoming something new, but rather removing what isn’t truly you. Stripping away the distractions, the illusions, the attachments that keep you from being aligned with what your soul has always known.

That’s why the idea of living as a stranger is so important. This world makes you forget who you are. It pulls you into its rhythm, telling you what to value, what to chase, what defines you. But the more you detach from it, the more you start seeing clearly. The more you recognize that you were never meant to fit here. And that’s not a tragedy, it’s a reminder.

So when you feel like you’re struggling with growth, like you can’t feel it, maybe that’s because you’re expecting it to be something tangible. But it’s not about adding something new to yourself. It’s about peeling away everything that isn’t you until all that’s left is who Allah created you to be. The part of you that was always meant to return to Him.

[astrobei]

crazy what one crumb of professional validation can do for your entire outlook on life