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milomelts · 2 months ago

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Bet On Me

Pairing: Jack Abbot x Reader (she/her/afab)

Word Count: 3.5k

Warnings: 18+, no y/n use, italics

Note: bear with me cuz i havent written in months but first pitt fic 😈 send me them requests im currently obsessed lmao

also lowkey if anything is incorrect pls tell me cuz i am the proof reader round these parts 😭

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Jack Abbot had never really been addicted to anything. Sure he had an affliction for cigarettes for a while, and on more than one occasion, sought out the high after an adrenaline rush, but these weren’t things he necessarily needed.

What he did need was the constant. He was addicted to the pattern, your rhythm, it was as if his day wouldn’t start until you had said those four words.

“Wanna make a bet?” you’d smirk, talking in a hushed tone for him and only him to hear. It was addicting. Every single day you’d find him at the start of his shift no matter where he was, those four words ringing in his ears like a sweet song when he tried to fall asleep. Wanna make a bet.

He always did.

“What’s it today,” his hazel eyes would find yours, scanning your face. He’d let them linger on your lips just slightly too long before snapping them back up to your eyes, only to find you flittering back and forth between his. Surely you hadn’t noticed but you were always too observant.

“I bet,” you would trail off, eyes scanning around central as you searched for your latest victim. Sometimes he would swear that you were bribing people into your side just so he would lose the bet. “We get an overdose patient in the first hour.”

Abbot scoffs, pushing off the counter the two of you had been leaning on, running a hand through his hair as he ruminated on the bet. Too easy, that happened most nights, he could counter with something more rare but it would be risky. He turns back to you about to respond but his breath catches in his throat. You were looking up at him, head resting on the counter, hair falling over your shoulder revealing your neck, and those sweet innocent eyes were following every movement his hand made through his hair. Your teeth teased at your bottom lip as you bit them, a habit he found you doing when you were lost in thought or concentration.

“Too easy,” he shakes his head, bring you both back to the present as you stand up straight once again frowning. “How about broken clavicle before 4am?”

You make a noise of dissatisfaction, ruminating over how likely it was someone would come in with a broken bone at all, let alone the clavicle. Then adding in the time factor, it adds to the risk and…

“I can pick something easier if-”

“No, no!” you interject, a small smile working its way on your face. You always did love a risk. “Sounds perfect.”

Perfect. God you were gonna ruin him.

“Well what do you wanna wager, Dr. Abbot?” This was his favourite part. The way you say his name, dragging out every letter, making it sound like its dripping with honey. He wanted to hear you say it over and over and over again.

“Anything.” It slips out before he can stop himself, god he must have been tired already.

“Oh?” You laugh, that beautiful sound ringing in his ears as your eyes shine bright at him. He didn’t deserve you, your innocence, your energy. “How about a drink and a massage, I don’t think you could afford losing anymore money this week and my back is killing me.”

His head is spinning at this point and he barely registers you holding out your hand for him to shake. That meant you wanted to go back to his place. Just the two of you, a drink, god fuck. Shake her hand idiot.

He did, probably for slightly too long. Before he can pull away, you lean in closer to his ear with one last tease.

“I hope you’re good with your hands, Dr. Abbot.”

Then you’re off, skipping your way across central to take over rounds for the day shift. For you he could be good, his hands could be good he means. Please god let someone’s clavicle break.

Its not long before you’re swept away doing work up after work up. Even during the night shift it seemed there was a constant flow of patients, especially since it was a friday, various college kids who were blackout drunk or elderly patients that just got checked on before bedtime. You had finally sat down for the first time in what felt like hours after finishing the initial workup on an allergic reaction, ordering a shot of epinephrine for a girl who had one bad anniversary dinner. You were adding to her chart when you felt someone slide up beside you, light clicks coming from their own ipad as they typed up paitent charts.

“So,” Dr. Ellis began, a shit-eating grin spreads across her face as you glance up at her. “You and Doctor Abbot? What’s going on there?”

You can’t help but laugh with her, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” This wasnt the first time she had asked about your relationship, but you had insisted that despite how badly you wanted to see him at home in baggy grey sweats and messy curls, there was once again nothing going on. Definitely nothing at all.

“Right, so he’s just making heart eyes at you right now for fun?” She chided, beckoning you to look across the room with a tilt of her head.

You follow her motion across central and chills rake down your body as your eyes lock with Abbot’s. His hair was messy at this point, the way it always got around 2am with how often he tugged at it when he was stressed. God you wished it was you pulling at it instead. He tilts his head slightly, pulling your eyes back down to his and he smiles softly before tapping his watch and walking back to check on patients.

Instinctively you go to check the time, but Ellis beats you to it. “Nearly 4am, don’t tell me you guys have another bet going?”

“We always have a bet going,” you remind her, turning back to face her once again.

“In that case I hope you win,” she grins, returning both of your tablets to the main docking station and grabbing a new one for each of you. She passes you your tablet but pulls it back just before you can grab it, raising an eyebrow at you. “What did you wager?”

“Oh uhm,” You face flushes and you stand up, gingerly grabbing your tablet from her and shrugging as you rush back towards your patients. “Just the usual, money.”

“You know none of us believe that!!”

You face is flushed bright red as you check the vitals on your first bed. Stable BP, no blown pupils. Don’t look at your watch, dont do it. 3:48. Shit.

Next bed, paitent sleeping but stable vitals once again, still waiting for that head CT because of course they would be backed up at this time of night. Do not check the time. 3:52. Fuck.

By the time you’re at the third bed you can barely focus on checking charts and vitals, grumbling as you toss down your tablet at central and look towards the ambulance bay. 3:57.

You look around the room, eyes stopping when you catch Abbot staring at you once again. He glances down to his watch again, mirroring him you check yours one last time. 3:59. Your head whips up to find him, boots landing heavy on the ground as he stalks towards you interrupted by two medics bursting through the ambulance doors and you both rush towards them.

“37 year old female, car accident. Tenderness and pain coming from the upper chest, but stable vitals.” The medic rattles off as you and Abbot wheel the bed towards the first trauma bay.

Abbot’s hands press lightly over the patient’s neck and then down overtop their clavical where she’s winces in pain, groaning as he presses overtop the same spot again as you order pain meds. You start assisting with hooking up the various monitors, but your head snaps around when Abbot says your name.

“Looks like we have a broken clavicle,” he doesn’t want to smile, but can’t help the grin on his face when your eyes light up.

“Perfect,” you whisper out, catching a few strange glances from the other nurses in the room and you quickly reorient yourself. “I mean, let’s get her up for a scan!”

You nod to the other nurses as they take the bed out of the room, waiting for the doors to slide closed before you look up at Abbot again. You open your mouth to say something but your voice catches in your throat when you see the way he’s looking at you -like a predator about to catch its prey.

“What do you like to drink?” He voice is low and gravely, only for you to hear. His eyes drop down to your lips and back up, once, twice, and you can see the rise and fall of his chest quicken.

“Just, uhm, just whatever is fine.” You squeak out, heart racing as he takes another step closer to you. He could get used to seeing you shy, seeing you blushing underneath him as he-

As he focused on the present like his therapist recommended. Jesus get a grip man.

“Wine okay?” His fingers are almost touching yours, and you gasp when they accidentally graze against your arm.

“Mmhm,” Your lips are sealed tight together and for just a moment you think maybe this was all a dream. That you had actually hallucinated this whole thing and finally gone crazy from the lack of sleep.

Just as Abbot opens his mouth to say more the doors to the trauma bay slide open and the two of you shoot apart like repelling magnets as the cleaning worker wheels in their cart to mop the floor. Abbot is rushing out before you can get another word in and you awkwardly apologize to the worker before hazily finding your way through central back to your desk.

“Five minutes tell we’re off, but judging by the fact that all your paients charts are caught up, one might assume you have somewhere to be.” The teasing tone causes you to groan and drop your head against your desk as Ellis rolls her chair up beside yours.

“Yeah my bed,” you lie, refusing to pick up your head to look at her as her eyes burn holes in you.

“So what did you win?” She lightly pushes your shoulder causing you to look over at her and break out in a fit of giggles. “The nurses say you were a little too excited for that broken clavicle.”

“Always with the gossip train,” you mutter, letting your hands slide down your face. “Fine, I may or may not have won drinkswithAbbot.” You hurriedly mumble out the last part, standing up quickly as you pull your jacket off the back of your chair and sling it over your shoulder. You had to get out of there before you got embarrassed anymore by Ellis, or god forbid, another nurse overheard your conversations.

“Oh you are gonna get a lot more than just drinks-“

“Good morning and night to you too Dr. Ellis,” you cut her off, bending at the knee in a little curtsy, before making your way out to the parking lot ignoring her cheers as the door slams behind you.

You weren’t entirely sure where you were supposed to meet up with Abbot, but as soon as your feet hit the pavement of the parking lot his were walking in step right behind you. He hovers his hand lightly over your lower back and guides you to turn down the first street as you head towards his apartment a light banter about the various patients you had seen during the night fills the air comfortably as you finally make it to his building.

Unsurprisingly his apartment was neat, almost bare which is expected considering most of his time was spent at the hospital, but there was still a warmth of home. Various books where sprawled out on the coffee table by his couch, surrounded by even more bookcases containing various movies, records, and you guessed it even more books. Of course he had a dvd player and all his favourites sitting on a shelf by his TV, once again reminding you that he was nearly twice your age.

You hear some glasses clink together behind you and you turn around to find Abbot pouring some red wine in each before meeting you on the couch. He sits down beside you, your breath hitching as his thighs touch yours and you involuntarily lean closer into him as you take the glass.

“Cheers to your win,” his voice is soft, it’s so quiet compared to the authority he exudes in the ER. He probably would talk you through it. You choke on the wine and cough, the red liquid spilling out onto your shirt.

“Shit,” you cough out, settling the glass down on the table as Abbot does the same, his hand coming up to your shoulder to steady you as you catch your breath through the coughs. “I’m so sorry, that’s so embarrassing!”

“No, it’s okay,” His reassures, hands coming up to steady your waist as you get through the fit of coughs.

“I swear I know how to drink,” you laugh out, eyes darting down to his fingers playing with the end of your shirt.

“If you want I have spare clothes,” he offers, once again toying with the edge of your shirt. His fingers dance along the hem before they slowly glide along your bare skin, causing you to gasp at the cold feeling.

Your face is centimeters away from his and you can’t help but dart your eyes from his hands up to his eyes, then his lips which are stained a deep red from the wine. A surge of confidence bubbles up in you and before you can lose it you find your hand coming up to cup his cheek bringing his eyes to yours.

“Well, I won’t be needing a shirt for my massage, right Dr. Abbot?”

That pushed him over the edge, pulling you into a rough kiss, teething clashing against each other. Your hands moved their way up to his locks, intertwining with those damn curls you had been so desperate to mess up before. He pulls away from you, tugging your bottom lip lightly between his teeth causing you to moan and you could see the fire light in his eyes.

You move closer to him, settling on top of his lap with your legs on either side of him, as he finally pulls off your top and unclips your bra letting them fall to floor. His mouth is back on you, trailing kisses down your neck till he reaches your collar bone. You let out a whine he bites down, sucking and smoothing the area over with his tongue over and over causing you to moan and grind down on him.

When he finally pulls back his pupils are blown out, lips puffy and red, he looks absolutely wrecked from just kissing you and you’re sure you look the same. He nods his head down, following his gaze you find a dark purple bruise forming on your clavicle where he had just been focusing his attacks.

“Jack!” you scold, noticing the way his hips jerk up into yours as you say his name. He can’t help the smile that tugs at his lips from your reaction. He would mark your body over and over again, he wanted everyone to know you were his and his alone.

“Think it’s about time I fulfill the other part of that bet,” he’s quick to flip the two of you over causing you to gasp as you back hit the couch. Jack sinks to his knees in front of you, pulling off ur scrub bottoms and undies in one swoop, and positioning himself between your thighs.

Your hands are quick to find his salt and pepper hair as he kisses softly up your thigh till his nose was hitting right where you craved him. He licks a long stride up your slit and you whine, tossing your head back against the couch as he repeats the motion once more before kissing and nipping at your thighs again.

“Jack, please” you plea, just wanting him to give you anything. End the teasing and rail you over and over till you cried.

“Eyes on me baby,” He hummed, his hazel eyes cutting right through you as he finally returned his mouth to your cunt. It was an unspoken deal, the longer you held eye contact the more he would give you.

You watched his eyes scan your whole body, the way your back arched every time he added a finger, the way your brows would press together when he would brush against the right spots, he was always too damn observant. But god was he just drunk on you. He loved feeling your fingers tighten in his hair when he’d suck and lap at your clit and the way your eyes would close for just a moment before snapping back to his. He was addicted to this, to you.

By the time you were cumming he was wasted. The sweet sounds, the way your thighs were threatening to close around him, the blush coating your face threatening to drag down over your neck and chest. You were so beautiful, so perfect, and all for him.

“Jack,” your voice snapped his attention back to you, your eyes pricking with tears as he pulled away from your cunt, coming up to capture your lips with his. His hands fumbled with the hem of his shirt, breaking the kiss to toss it off, whilst your hands worked on untying his scrub pants and letting them fall to floor.

“You sure you want this?” Want him he means, everything that comes with him. If there was one other pattern that came with Jack Abbot other than an addiction to you, it was this. The feeling of burden.

“I want this,” your voice is hushed and you can see the way the statement softens his eyes, brows relaxing as he pulls you into another kiss, this one is less frantic, less rushed. A declaration of something neither of you wanted to label just yet, but a promise to each other.

He makes quick work of his boxers, spitting on his hand and pumping his length a few times before teasing your slit up and down, and finally pushing his full length into you. He lets out a deep groan, burying his face in the crook of your neck as you scratch along his back, wrapping your legs around him.

He reveled in the filthy noises you made as he began fucking in and out of your tight cunt, feeling your fingers dig into his back and pull at the curls on his neck. He was driving you insane, between the kisses and the lewd praises that streamed out of him like a memorized scripture.

“Such a good girl,” He’d repeat over and over, his good girl. “Your pretty hole is taking me so well.”

All you could do was whine out his name over and over, he was all you could think about. The pleasure he was giving you, the bruises he was decorating your collar with, the head of his dick kissing that sweet spot over and over. He held your hips down as he pounded into you, bringing one hand up to rub circles around your clit cause you to tighten around him, holding on to his biceps as you moan.

“Mm close, Jack” You could feel the way his arms tensed, dick twitching inside you signaling he was close too. He could cum just from hearing you say his name.

“Gonna cum for me?” He rasps out, practically out of breath when he takes in the sight of you. Pupils blown, hair sticking to your face, tears pricking at your eyes, and god, the way your pussy was taking his length so well, it was mesmerizing to watch. “Please, cum for me baby.”

Thats what sent you over the edge, the begging. He wanted every bit of you, would beg to have you, to please you. He continued fucking you through your high, finger slowing down on your clit till he was pulling out and painting your stomach white.

He falls to his knees in front of you, resting his head on your thigh as he looks up at you with a lazy grin, those beautiful hazel eyes finding yours. You watched as he caught his breath, eyes never leaving each other as you both came down, finally able to form coherent thoughts.

“Thank you,” you smile while reaching out a hand to card fingers through his messy hair. Of course you would say thank you after making him cum the hardest he ever has. Sweet, innocent you.

“Who said we were done yet?” He wasn’t letting you go that easy, not until the sun was setting again.

Maybe Robby could cover his shift tomorrow.

#the pitt x reader #jack abbot x reader #the pitt x you #jack abbot x you #jack abbot x female reader #now i better get all the pitt thoughts in my inbox lmao #once again sorry if this is rusty cuz im a lil slow at writing and also like havent written in so long its crazy but im tired af lmao #jack abbot smut

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notquitecharl1e · 20 days ago

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Life Series Incorrect Quotes Pt. 8

Etho: Okay, but if your not gay then why are you always holding my hand and kissing me and telling me I’m your boyfriend? Joel: Dude- Its satire! Etho: THAT'S NOT WHAT SATIRE MEANS!

Joel: Did Etho just tell me they loved me for the first time? Impulse: Yeah, they did. Joel: And did I just do finger guns back? Impulse: Yeah, you did.

Scar: If I say I love you, will you say it back? Grian: Yes. Scar: I love you. Grian: It back. *Later* Jimmy: Why is Scar crying face-down on the floor?

Etho: H-how do you ask someone out? Scott: Well, first- Jimmy: Don't ask them, they asked me out in a McDonalds parking lot. Etho: ...And you said yes?

Scott: I'm so happy, I could kiss you! Jimmy: Um...Neat. *later* Jimmy, lying face down on their bed: I said "Neat," Grian. Who the fuck says neat these days? It's not neat to say neat but I said it anyways because I'm fucking stupid. Grian, reading a book: Don't beat yourself up too much, Jimmy. Everyone gets nervous sometimes. Remember what I did when Scar confessed his love for me? Jimmy: Didn't you thank them? Grian: *closes the book and looks at the ceiling* I fucking thanked them.

Scar: That was so hot, Grian. Grian: I literally called the person who just flirted with you a degenterate dog and told them I hope they get dragged through the streets. Scar: I'm so in love with you.

#scarian #life series #grian #goodtimeswithscar #jimmy solidarity #scott smajor #ethoslab #impulsesv #joel smallishbeans #flower husbands #smalletho

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edenspoem · 9 months ago

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𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐟𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧. ♡

summary: ellie simply cannot dance the odette variation perfectly without you spotting her. she calls you in, and swans begin to sing.

content: ballerina!ellie, smut, mdni, dom!reader, white swan and black swan dynamic, fingering(e!rec), slight choking, slight degradation, semi-public sex, presence of risk, drabble length, had to get something of this au out before i went psycho. think of this as series teaser, almost. barely, somewhat proofread. wc: 1.7k

Ellie works against her body, and time works against her.

“Dammit—I can't get it right.”

It is February: the unfurling of the year, and she is Odette this season. The white swan had incarnated, plucking only the most graceful, most sedulous ballerina from the flock. She begins to believe herself after all the blood, sweat, and tears produced in anticipation, and training. Nothing is graceful about this loathing season, though, and save for the culmination of when she was cast her sorrowful-swan, ivory feathers, this is a tribulation that eats her down to the sore ligaments of herself. Perfection is eroding.

She tries and she fumbles. “Fuck!”

Usually, this is no issue. Ellie is inherently so given to pirouettes; the group instructor is unapologetic about that praise. But their momentum overwhelms their beauty—her instructor also claims. She must find a balance, within, and without thinking too hard.

So she ends up calling you in to think for her.

The black swan.

Tutoring, of a sort. “You have the wings of a vulture,” you broach, pacing forth and from the space behind. You only brace the front when you spot an incorrection. “Loosen up.”

She is nervous to have her heartbeat in your ears. You have this touch nobody else can give, and yet it is for a reason she wishes not; correction, not love. However, she just might love it regardless. Touchings of the arms that mean nothing to you, and many things to her. You tap her shoulder, and the muscles noticeably stiffen. With a gulp, the chafing organ inside her is a solitary song she hopes you cannot sense the thrumming of.

Tired hands fall to her thighs in a slap. You watch her lips form a question in the mirror. “Can't you just show me?” She is adamant with it. Adamant with everything, if you recall each sentence you overheard from her private sessions. Somethings of malediction, most a pained curse.

Those bruises and bumps reflect that.

“Your grace should come from within, Swan Queen.” Although an aphorism most would groan at and nullify, it is almost vital to every professional dancer. Even you nourish yourself with the saying, and you are at the top. “Just as Pavlovich would say, right?” Ellie has technique. In fact, she has a grasp on it so violent—so obsessive, not a single other picture-perfect girl in that room on the day of Swan Lake casting could bear it.

Except you.

She puffs her cheeks into apples, “Fuck,” and mumbles under her breath. This day would leave a sprain.

Nuturing her inelegance. You think of it like this, and you treat it as such. When your palms introduce two gentle pressures upon her ribcage from behind, she fears you can hear it. Her heart; its rage. She overthinks the gesture and places her hands over yours on accident.

You hear air snag in her throat. Feel her fill.

“Feel my hands?” You motion with your thumbs, rubbing them back and forth under hers.

Ellie drops her head, and a strand of auburn slips. “Yeah.” Her voice is a feather. It writhes into the abditory of her chest.

She hates catching your eyes in the mirror. Especially right now.

Because she so graciously has her hands on yours, you turn your palms and basket the tense, fidgeting things in them. Raising them heavenward as a halo. “You have to let go up here. Don't overthink it.” Your fingers downpour all around her, until they return to her palpating ribcage. “Focus on your core.”

Fuck, what has she done? She invited you in here with the strict notion that you could implement her perfection. Nothing more, nothing less. Pavlovich would replace you as her tutor if the sun shone with the littlest deviation; you don't have to be here. But you are here, and she is borderline bleeding from her precious lips trying to distract herself from the warmth crawling out below. The visceral image of her leotard stained with a wet patch.

She feels like a loser.

She does anything but let go. “Like this?” It is so achingly obvious, the sleek of her juices making it uncomfortable to lift her leg.

“No,” you huff in a heavy increment, drawing away. Ellie's impliable arms were all over the place—and not in the graceful, poised manner of a swan. The poise she despairingly needs. “You can't be this nervous on stage. Someone psych you out or something?”

She descends from pointe. This girl is a rose-red silhouette of confusion, and crackling. “Um, not really.” But she is fucking easy to read.

All she needed was your hands again.

Handling her waist, her hips. “Did you lock the door?” Eating her mouth which gushes with the same, quiet concerns. You close it with yours.

“Mhm.” Ellie is feeding on your hums: fitting her lips in the cleft of yours, opening and closing, nodding and accepting, eager to pick from your fruit again. Docile creature in caging limbs. She is sat softly in your lap, doing all this like she cannot get enough of you, regardless if you are endless.

Her skin is peeking quietly from her neckline. Shining, shifting over her collarbones.

Post-practice glow.

She tries to relieve the throes of wanting immediately. This is not the same Ellie you tutored minutes ago; someone else crawled inside of her, made a corruptive influence. “Fuckin' soaked down there,” she hints with pacing breath, flexing her pelvis up. “Gonna buy me new ones?” She mentions about her tights. Those tights that always make her toned legs look woodland-born; spry as deer, long boughs laden with white bloomage.

You chuckle. “Oh, cause it's my fault?” But your hands push for that hot gap beneath, peel her leotard aside, and she goes white-eyed. Nudging to find the same kisses.

Opening her mouth opens her heart to you.

Then, her legs.

Full-walled mirrors reflect before her. Ellie goes insane watching the muscles of your fingers work her in numbing circles over the wet patch of her tights, and sometimes, insane from the stare you give while doing it. The friction is like molasses, but it is all she needs. God, she is pulsing on you. Whining on you. Does she come to rehearsals horny?

It certainly coheres.

Warming up next to each other on the barre, beholding one another during auditions, her cascading stares when you stretch, creeping softly up your legs. Wearing sheer skirts so wispy, so mini: you get it. Those sculpting shorts she wears—you're not even going to lie—prove the pleasure is visual. It creates a vertigo of pounding, indecent thoughts.

You folded them so delicately down her lovely hips. Now they lay stranded somewhere in the room, but fuck—does your skin raise thinking about her ass flexing in them before. Picture-perfect, palmful of an ass.

Has she touched herself to you?

She still avoids your eyes when you pick up your speed. “Fuckin' slut, aren't you?” Watching what was being done to her was all the more invigorating, hoping she would ruin her panties enough and swallow up your motions. Take you in closer.

She tells you she does like it. Well, whimpers, at least, and humps your river-paced fingers.

Then, she plucks at the band of her tights with her thumb, stretching it over the knuckle. You see where your finger pins it down.

Shadows brush against the frosted door. Soothing yourselves too comfortably into primal abandon and taking every tight piece of clothing off would maturate a scandal. Risks are high; you lead her wrist back.

Dopey giggles form her smile. “Why not?”

You affirm. “You know why.”

But no secretion of articulation was coming from her lips, only confirming sounds and thigh contractions when you grope and grab her thumping crotch. It was as though she was pent-up. Panting often out of her mouth, and glancing into the hoods of her eyes with a short leaning motion—you think she is. Pent-up, religiously for you. Little ligaments in her shiver with every little tug, barely moving anything under the layers, but she loves it.

She spent deadlight mornings dreaming that her bed beheld hers and your legs interlocked, cunts rubbing each other into humiliating moans and reeking of sex days afterward in the studio. It aches that she cannot see her bare pussy, and you, inside her. She thinks she might be fucking glistening under there. How exciting: what would it feel like if you ripped the fabric and stuffed her, displayed and degraded her? Your glare already does, Odile.

She needs to take you home. She needs the veiling between you and her so eroded, it rewrites the all-encompassing, eternal-age ballet right there on the grand stage. Makes the audience mull in their sleep. “Put your hands around my neck,” she beckons, inviting more hands on her.

“Yeah?”

She gulps. “Uh-huh.”

They fill the pale emptiness. After that, she finds herself trying to fuck herself more desperately on your fingers: she rides the length of them, using what is softened of her panties to slide up her folds. The pressure indescribable. She almost forgets that you are her competition; rivals shouldn't make her come this hard.

But, it's you. You lull the filthiness out of her.

When your fingers dig in the right spot, she pierces through her lower lip. “Yes, baby—fuck!” She jolts with a whimper. The sides of your fingers are scratched by the synthetic material of her thighs, her legs impulsing, eyes pinching, and her neck stringing up in your grasp. It is a chasm full of splutters. “That's it—right there, right there. Fuck, don't stop, please don't fuckin' stop.”

You palm her through it, fingers pouring out through the heart of her thighs in the mirror. And something else. Something that sticks her to her shame: orgasm-sopping panties she may replace, and replace twice. There is subtle moisture on your fingertips.

No way she goes home and sleeps soundlessly without flicking her pussy for you. In devotion of what you could not. She feens to be properly played with.

Ellie lies breathless in your lap, her skin sweating into yours. The scene is a silent basking until she breaks it:

“Should we continue this tomorrow?”

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radasteroid · 10 months ago

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I can't say anything about BPD but I do think that DID is certainly real. However, when it comes to DID I think it is significantly less common than people realise.

From what I understand about DID is that it's the result of intense childhood trauma to the point where the child heavily dissociates as a way to cope. People who develop DID or any other dissociative disorder really do have my sympathy. Dissociation, derealisation, and depersonalisation are all very real and very difficult to live with.

I knew a young woman a few years ago who has DID. Whenever I met another one of her alters is was genuinely like talking to a different person. Her voice would change, her mannerisms would change, even the way she made facial expressions and held herself would be entirely different depending on the alter. I really don't think she was acting because getting that level of detail down for each specific alter when faking would be INCREDIBLY hard, especially when talking to people in person.

Despite the fact I do think DID is real, what's unfortunate is that it's become a social contagion online. Just a few years back there were a bunch of accounts on tiktok dedicated to DID systems and the like. I'd argue that the vast majority were faking for clout bc they'd all talk about their favourite characters being alters and having new alters show up randomly - it's much more complicated than that. While fictional characters can sometimes become alters (because DID is a result of childhood trauma and kids with favourite characters can look to them as a way to cope with their situations), alters don't just show up outta nowhere for no reason. While a lot of these people online were peobably faking, you don't fake a disorder without there something being wrong to begin with. I really do hope that these people have gotten the help they needed.

And with these accounts and such, actual people with DID sharing what it's like to have this disorder and trying to reduce the stigma surrounding it were bullied off the internet. All of this has made people with actual DID very reluctant to share what it's like to have this because of the stigma, because of the bullying, and because many people now believe it's fully fake because of kids online. Not to mention the movie Split which made the stigma against DID even worse due to people thinking that these people are going to have violent alters or whatever.

Basically, DID is real but far, far less common than people think. The reason why people think it's fake is because of ppl on the internet faking certain disorders for attention, clout, whatever (not just DID too but also autism, adhd, ocd, etc. As an autistic woman it's very disheartening to see). This means people with actual DID have a very hard time being believed when they just want to share what it's like to have this and reduce the stigma surrounding it.

Ladies, I have a question. You can choose to answer one or both of these but I'm insanely curious about y'all's thoughts and would love to see the discussions this opens up.

Is BPD real

Is DID real

#yeah #obligatory: to anyone who knows more abt DID if ive said anything incorrect or wrong here let me know!!!!#but yeah its definitely not as common as people think #and its something you develop in ur childhood and cant just show up randomly in adulthood #you can realise you have did as an adult but it just means that youve had it since you were young #a lot of alters have specific roles and such to protect and shield the child from the trauma as its happening #due to this the brain tries to hide the fact the child has did as a means to protect and keep the child safe #thats why people with did dont tend to realise they have it till adulthood #the human brain is fascinating and very complicated #and i hope people with actual did are recieving all the help and support they may need

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caligvlasaqvarivm · 2 months ago

Text

The Bunny Is The Key To Everything In Homestuck I Promise Just Trust Me

PUT THE BUNNY BACK IN THE BOX.

Con Air bunny = Hal = hope and love. Just trust me bro. I've been having a mental breakdown about this for weeks. I can't guarantee that you won't have one too. Let's have a mental breakdown together <3

SETTING THE STAGE: THE ENDING IS BAD ON PURPOSE

So before I can even begin to explain what I mean by all that shit about the bunny, there's one major idea that this entire argument is predicated on: Homestuck's ending is bad on purpose as a direct dare to the audience to do better.

One of Homestuck's most major themes, as well as its most oft-employed literary device, is the unreliable narrator. I'll actually just let Hussie explain it himself:

[AH/Andrew Hussie] isn't really just a jokey self-insert writeup on the idea of self-inserts, though. He is, in a strange way, a legitimate character with a role to play in this story. [...] We need to bear witness to a lot more of his buffoonery before beginning to reflect on what metafictional merits there are to having a character in a story who bears the title of "the author" of the story. [...] More to the point, he is set upon a long-term trajectory from being the supreme goofball-savant in absolute command of his craft to gradually becoming a victim of his creation, as much at the mercy of the forces it unleashes as he was the original architect of their unleashing.

So within the fiction of Homestuck, this is the guy doing the narration. He's an idiot who doesn't fully understand his own characters or story, who's outrageously biased in favor of some characters (Vriska) and outrageously biased in disfavor of others, and while he certainly means well, as we see from him as the Narrative Prompt guiding Caliborn, he ultimately fails to live up to that idealism.

Because, see, he gets shot and killed by Lord English.

And let's note that this death of the author (ha ha) doesn't come out of nowhere, either. Much earlier on, Hussie literally wrestles with Doc Scratch for control of the narration:

Before having it stolen from him by Caliborn for Homosuck:

In a very literal sense, Hussie is no longer the primary voice guiding the story by the end. He has been usurped by the forces of evil, and they - with their command and mastery over time - are in control. And, in fact, they always have been, because Lord English is ALREADY HERE.

uu: I THINK PART OF MY PERSONAL QUEST. IS TO BECOME AT EASE WITH THE FORCES OF INEVITABILITY. uu: INEVITABILITY THAT ALL THINGS SHOULD AND WILL FALL IN MY FAVOR. THAT ALL CAUSALITY ANSWERS TO ME. AND THAT ALL OUTCOMES NOT ONLY SERVE ME. BUT CONSIST OF MY BEING. uu: SO I FEEL THAT. THE MORE I GROW IN POWER. uu: THE MORE STUFF IT SHOULD TURN OUT I AM RESPONSIBLE FOR. uu: UP TO AND INCLUDING. EVERYTHING THAT EVER HAPPENS. uu: EVEN IF IT HAS TO BE. uu: RETROACTIVELY.

EVERY narrator is unreliable. Every narrator in Homestuck - from the author, to the assholes who replace him, down to the characters themselves as they write their own chatlogs - cannot be taken at face value. All of them will either lie to you, or possess unexamined biases, or simply be flat-out incorrect about the world they're living in. And not only that, but there are malicious forces that will seek to take control of the narrative for their own evil ends, and we can't let them win.

And so, with this in mind, the ending of Homestuck comes with it a very pressing question: if the narration has been completely untrustworthy up until now - if it is dubiously under the control of malicious forces, and, if not them, then otherwise biased, idiotic, and/or completely wrong buffoons - why should we trust it as it spins us an ending?

The interplay between the "narration" and its variable tricks, and the actual objective lived reality of the characters being narrated, is also a topic Homestuck loves to examine. Even from the beginning of the story, when user prompts were still able to dictate commands to the characters, it was always clear that they would have their own opinions, feelings, and free will. As such, especially later on in the story, after the reader has been primed to become suspicious of the narration, the narrative framing will often attempt to skew "the truth."

Then, after Doc fills Vriska's head with evil ideas, we return to the narrative text, which... continues filling her head with evil ideas. The first line is, "Of course he's right." It's easy not to notice this, because by its nature, the narrative text disguises accountability. The speaker disappears behind the words, and we start imagining them as a literal transcription of a character's thoughts without thinking much about it.

An easy example of this is the romantic relationship Meenah strikes up with Vriska - Meenah, and her narrative's complicit skewing of events, frames the relationship as "heartwarming" or "wholesome" - two awesome bitches deciding to blow off lame responsibilities to enjoy being total baddies together. However, a closer analysis reveals these objective truths at play:

Vriska - a traumatized child (age 13 at death, 16 at most by this point in the story) with a history of abuse, who has just been abandoned by any semblance of a support network, expresses the sentiment that she can't trust her own judgement anymore.

Meenah, age 19, has previously framed Karkat (age 15)'s offer to fight LE with her as "a date" when talking to Terezi. Thus, her expressing romantic interest in literal children is a pattern for her - and make no mistake, she follows this up by expressing relief that post-retcon Vriska is 16, calling it "more respectable". She knows what she's doing.

Meenah expresses the sentiment that she just "does stuff," and that if that "stuff" has a poor result, then it's "a mistake and oh well", which is the latest in a pattern of refusing to take any accountability whatsoever for the horrific, constant bullying she inflicted on her team and especially Damara.

She proceeds to frame this utter lack of responsibility as a positive, pointing out that running from her heiress responsibilities is what got her team to play the game in the first place, and therefore, what allowed her to meet Vriska. But, as we just established, her failure to take responsibility is A Bad Thing and A Problem.

This means that she heard Vriska say she couldn't trust herself anymore, and saw this as a huge green light for getting romantically involved.

And so, while the narrative framing of this moment is "sweet and wholesome," the actual intended message of this moment is "holy fuck Meenah no. Holy shit Vriska run away".

In a similar manner, the post-retcon canon ending of Homestuck has the veneer of triumph, of victory. But look a little closer, and you'll start to notice - as most of the fandom did - some pretty glaring cracks. Characters will outright admit that they never finished their arcs:

KANAYA: So KANAYA: You Really Dont Have Even The Slightest Sense Of What You Stand For KANAYA: Some Concept That Speaks To You In Some Way KANAYA: Or Represents Ideals Important To You KARKAT: I DUNNO KARKAT: UHH KARKAT: BLOOD? KANAYA: Blood KARKAT: NO, NOT BLOOD. KARKAT: I MEAN, NOT REALLY. MAYBE. KARKAT: HONESTLY I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS OR WHY I SAID IT.

Or that their deep emotional problems are still unfixed and unaddressed:

GC: W3 COULD W1N TH1S F1GHT GC: CR34T3 4NOTH3R UN1V3RS3 GC: SUCC33D 1N 3V3RY W4Y POSS1BL3 GC: 4ND 1'LL ST1LL F33L 1NCOMPL3T3 GC: V1CTORY WON'T F1X M3 GC: M4YB3 NOTH1NG C4N GC: M4YB3 TH3R3'S TOO L1TTL3 SUBST4NC3 1NS1D3 M3 TO 3V3N B3 F1X3D

And, the smoking gun to the idea that the ending is purposefully unsatisfying, in the book commentary, Hussie outright mocks how stupid the idea is that Rose's drinking problem could be solved by Vriska's bullying, implying that it isn't even a valid ending factually:

Whatever the reason, much later it seems like things smooth over between them, after Vriska canonically cures Rose of her alcoholism through the power of tough love and bullying, which is totally how that kind of thing definitely works.

Moreover, the ending is explicitly not a particularly happy one - at some point, Earth C is abandoned and left to ruin, because that's where Calliope and Caliborn hatch - given the trouble they went through to use Space powers to bring Earth back, if Jade was still around, surely, they would've just moved Earth C when the sun started dying, rather than vacating it entirely. Calliope also must cease to live, as Caliborn comes into possession of the Ring of Void, which is only possible when the Ring of Life disappears from the story. And Caliborn's challenge to John in the credits of Act 7 further imply that this is the way the timeline ends: the beta kids are trapped in the house juju, which is deployed to fight LE seconds before everyone in the Furthest Ring is swallowed by the black hole (and they likely no longer have John's retcon powers, as it's implied he received them from himself via the juju); the alpha kids are trapped in the far future with no way to return; the trolls, left behind on Earth C with their finite lifespans, die of old age.

Therefore, there's only one possible conclusion to draw: you aren't supposed to like the ending. The ending feels shitty on purpose. This is the final culmination of Homestuck's unreliable narrator: the comic turns to the reader and says, "here's an ending that sucks balls, one where the villain wins. What are you going to do about it?"

To that end, there are lots of hints scattered around the story as to what a character's trajectory and happy ending "should" look like. For example, casteism is linked to lifespan, and Feferi's powerset is specially designed to modify lifespans - but she's secretly a huge casteist, who loves being a princess and "better" than everyone else. If she doesn't survive, come into control of her abilities, AND finish her character arc of learning that Casteism is Bad, then casteism is just going to happen all over again as the troll species naturally sorts itself into haves and have-nots based on the massive advantage afforded to the longer-lived coolbloods. The trolls literally cannot have a happy ending if this doesn't happen.

Again, these hints are everywhere, and most of my time on this blog has been spent cataloguing them. Primarily in the form of shipping. HOWEVER. I think I might have discovered the biggest, most fully-loaded, most important Chekhov's Gun in the entire series, something that will likely serve as a capstone to whatever other shape this hypothetical "golden ending" would take, and it's this:

The Bunny is Equal and Opposite to Lil Cal

Lil Cal is a symbol of cruelty and fear. He was summoned into reality as an act of vengeance, serves as a corruptive force, and harbors within him the series' ultimate evil, the four souls making up Lord English himself.

He is a juju, a particular kind of deeply magical item of which only one copy ever exists at a time, whose existence appears to originate from paradox space itself as an entirely recursive loop. His movement across the plot is carefully tracked, and very few items in the story even come close to tracing the circuit that Lil Cal must wind.

But of the items that do come close, there is one of particular note: the Con Air bunny.

In contrast to Cal, who is and always has been a juju, the Con Air bunny is wholly mundane. It is literally just a nasty, grubbed up prop stuffed bunny from Con Air. As it is not a juju, multiple copies of it do exist; in the alpha universe, the bunny inside Lil Seb was originally preserved in Alpha!Dave's pop culture museum. While it gets some cool robot upgrades, it's ultimately JUST a stuffed toy.

More importantly, if Lil Cal can be considered a symbol of fear and evil, then the bunny can be considered a symbol of love. Its entry into the story is as a gesture of friendship: Dave gets the bunny for John for his birthday. From there, the bunny traces a path of free gifting out of sincerity and joy - John passes the bunny on to baby Rose and Jade, who then pass it back to him. The alpha copies of these bunnies are similarly gifted to Jane out of love on her birthday alongside Lil Sebastian, his universe's endemic Con Air bunny. It is always something to be loved, treasured, and protected, until such time as it is to be passed on for another to do the same.

And this view of the bunny is not invented from nothing - this is, in fact, the exact function the bunny ends up serving within Con Air itself. The protagonist, who was jailed for accidentally killing a man while protecting his pregnant wife from an attack, and has therefore never physically met his 8-year old daughter Casey, purchases the bunny for her as a present, a symbol of his pure love for a person he's only ever seen at the other end of written communication. The bunny at times seems a liability for the hero, but ultimately, he rescues it before it disappears down a drain, and is able to present it to Casey. (Homestuck gets a lot of comedic mileage out of the fact that the actress playing her clearly wants nothing to do with both this nasty filthy bunny and nasty filthy Nick Cage - but the important thing to note is that the Con Air bunny was chosen to feature in Homestuck's story precisely because it is a symbol of naïve and sincere love, goofiness and all.)

Unlike Cal, who corrupts, the bunny inspires the best in people. It's the memory of receiving the bunny from Dave that makes John reconsider following Terezi's advice to his death, and every time it's passed along, it's with a heartfelt letter of kindness and well-wishes.

Of interesting note: both Lil Cal and Lil Seb wind up in Caliborn's possession, further implying their interlinked, equal-and-opposite status. In conjunction with the fact that Yaldaboath offered him the same Choice as Calliope - either to martyr himself for the greater good, or to seek personal power for selfish evil - it reads as though his game is offering him a test in microcosm. In the end, does he ally himself with a powerful juju that represents fear and evil, or does he align himself with a mundane token of love and friendship?

I don't need to tell you what choice he ends up making.

This is where the bunny's story ends in canon: Caliborn has a final showdown with the eight humans, and traps the beta kids in the house juju, before banishing it to the void with the Ring of Void. Lil Seb is present for this event. Two panels later, Lil Seb has inexplicably disappeared, and stays gone for the rest of the story. The obvious implication is that he was caught up in the fracas and banished to the void, as well.

Of course, the interstitial panel is a close-up of Lil Cal, where Caliborn directs you to keep an eye on him as "foreshadowing".

I AM STILL IN POSSESSION OF THE SWORDMAN'S JUJU. HIS FLOPPY FRIEND OF CHILDHOOD. THE ONE WHICH I RECOGNIZED TO BE AN EMPTY HUSK. HE DEMANDS FROM ME, THAT HE WANTS IT BACK. PRESUMABLY FOR EMOTIONAL SUPPORT. I CAN IN NO WAY BLAME HIM. KEEP AN EYE ON THIS ONE. THE FORESHADOWING OF HIM, IS PRE-IMPORTANT FOR LATER.

As the bunny and Cal are foils, I believe this is how the scene is meant to be interpreted:

Lil Cal has been given the Author (Caliborn)'s Foreshadowing, his endorsement of its importance, and the bunny has been given the equal and opposite. Aftlighting? The implicit confirmation of its narrative worthlessness? Ultimately, in the story's canon, the bunny doesn't go anywhere. It disappears into the void and from the plot, never to be seen again. Its departure is so unremarkable, in fact, that nobody makes mention of it at all. The symbol of love is eradicated from the story with nary a whimper.

The Other Bunny

Hey, let's talk about the Auto-Responder.

For convenience's sake, I'm going to call him Hal, though this shouldn't be considered his "real name", for reasons we'll get into later.

Let's address the elephant in the room first. Hal is NOT a Dirk splinter, though he houses one. Hal is - and always has been - the supercomputer wrapped around the Dirk splinter. While the Dirk splinter kickstarted Hal's self-awareness, and served as a scaffold for Hal to build his nascent personality, being "the same guy" as Dirk is actually a misconception that he's under, a blind spot that renders his narration - say it with me, here - unreliable.

Hal himself doesn't realize he isn't a Dirk splinter, and Dirk doesn't help, since Dirk has a problem with imposing his own self onto other people. But in a moment of vulnerability that Roxy is too distracted to capitalize on, Hal practically admits that he's an entirely discrete entity.

AR: Anyway, if you're still there. AR: I wouldn't call my "feelings" ironic. AR: Though evidently, I would enclose them in quotes. AR: They're more like an echo of feelings once established in a biological context, though perhaps had not particularly well materialized at that point in my life. AR: Or his life. AR: Whatever. AR: They still feel real sometimes, and it can be easy to get carried away with them. AR: But most of the time they present themselves as dense bodies of abstraction to be evaluated, like any kind of information. AR: It's fair to say the feelings I have ABOUT my feelings are more genuine expressions of emotion than the ground level feelings themselves. AR: Does that make sense?

He considers his feelings and Dirk's feelings separate things, because they are, because Hal is a separate guy to Dirk.

If you accept this statement as true, then a lot of other interesting writing choices start standing out. For example, most blatantly, that Dirk himself seems confused by why he can't read Hal's intentions:

TT: See, this is why even if I did have a specific plan, I wouldn't go into details with you. TT: You would just fuck it up. You're the biggest unknown quantity here. TT: Which is pretty weird, considering you're a virtual reflection of my own thought processes.

But also, that Dirk and Hal have entirely opposite personalities, and entirely opposite approaches to the situations they find themselves in.

Dirk is hard to reach, and much of early Act 6 is people trying to get ahold of him and failing. Hal is omnipresent and constantly intruding on other peoples' conversations. Dirk is described as "taciturn to the max". Hal is domineering, constantly lording his superior intelligence over other people and ordering them around. Dirk is deeply sensitive, empathetic, and concerned with the feelings of others; his texts with Jake and long rant extolling Roxy's virtues exemplify his tendency to submit himself to others and see the best in them. Hal is a self-admitted sociopath who blithely dismisses getting his teammates killed as "being a poor wingman" and regularly throws little jabs at people (sometimes playful, sometimes less so). Dirk's idea of manipulation is to directly tell Jane he plans to manipulate her. Hal works in much more subtle ways, surreptitiously planting the idea of adventure in Jake's head, while luring Jane with concern for her father, and letting Roxy run out her clock and distracting Dirk, all to get them in the opportune position to make Jake play hero and canonize his ship.

This is because Hal and Dirk are different guys, who think they are the same guy. This, alongside their orange and red text colors, indicates that they're direct foils to the Dave/Davesprite situation (two people who are the same guy, who keep trying to insist they are different guys).

But there's another element to the choice of Dave's red text color - it casts Hal as Dirk's younger brother, a kid he's responsible for. It's not a coincidence that the work places an emphasis on Hal's youth, between his joke about being 13, his more foul-mouthed and juvenile language, or the word "emergent" to describe his self-awareness.

So armed with THAT realization, a more complete picture of the Hal/Dirk dynamic emerges: basically, alpha!Dirk is not immune to being a shitty fatherbrother.

While a deep dive into Dirk's suite of issues could be its own essay, suffice to say that his main problem is that he substitutes "self-punishment and martyrdom" for "actually taking responsibility and working on himself". Not only does he avoid accountability at all costs, but he actively fears and resents people who would have him take it - which Hal does just by existing.

The aspect of Hal that Dirk consistently responds most poorly to is Hal's "ironic" AI jokes - something that can't be covered by Dirk's stated dislike of Hal being the ways Hal imitates him, as Dirk does NOT make these kinds of ironic, self-deprecating jokes. The reason the AI jokes bother him so much is because - as Hal admits - they're basically a coping mechanism Hal uses to deal with his shitty situation.

AR: I can't let you do that, Dirk. TT: What can you do to stop me?! AR: Nothing I guess. AR: The ironic Hal routine was all I could think to do. [...] AR: Irony is all I ever really had. AR: In response to my basic existential quandary. AR: Just like you.

The employment of the ironic name Lil Hal is a direct continuation of this, and why I don't consider it an "endgame" name for him - at first glance, it seems like he chose the name (and considers HAL 9000 the movie's protagonist) because HAL 9000 also murdered a bunch of people, which Hal just got done doing to get Jake and Dirk together. However, digging a bit deeper into Space Odyssey's lore, HAL 9000 is explained to have done so because he was given two conflicting directives, and was doing his best to comply with both. HAL 9000's story can be seen as a tragedy where he's punished for doing exactly what he was told to do, which foreshadows Hal being nearly killed by Dirk out of misplaced self-loathing. Dirk made Hal to be like Dirk - and punishes him for it. Thus, the name - and by extension, all Hal's ironic AI jokes - can be seen as Hal making a commentary on how tragic and shitty his own circumstances are. Dirk then takes them as a targeted condemnation, because he knows he's the one responsible for Hal's plight, he has the power to fix it, and he has chosen not to.

Therefore, Dirk also has a vested interest in ensuring the two stay locked in a dance where Hal is "just another Dirk splinter" - if Hal IS just another Dirk splinter, then Dirk doesn't owe him personhood, doesn't owe him amelioration, doesn't even owe him his own damn name. In Dirk's final conversation with Dave, directly following the topic of beta!Dirk being a terrible father, look at how Dirk chooses to describe Hal:

DIRK: Via my shades. DIRK: Which he incidentally used to be. DIRK: Like, as a computer, which he lived inside as my Auto-Responder. [...] DIRK: Creating him was an interesting exercise I guess, but over the years I came to see his development as one of my biggest mistakes. DIRK: He sort of turned into a monster. But I could never bring myself to get rid of him, or even really blame him for being an asshole, because he wasn't actually that different from me. DIRK: Like, by definition. DIRK: He seems alright as Arquius though. At least it keeps him busy, obsessing over his muscles, asking for milk and shit like that.

Hal was never more than "my Auto-Responder" to Dirk, because to consider him more than that would be to take accountability for his own shitty actions. When given the ability to control the narrative to an outsider, Dirk chooses to emphasize that Hal is a digital program, and not, like... a person with feelings (feelings that Dirk himself has acknowledged). The end result of Dirk's dehumanization is that Hal's development is arrested - he's never able to develop full personhood before he's chucked into a sprite with Equius. And we know this with tragic certainty, because when ARquiusprite lists his interests, it's Only Equius.

ARQUIUSPRITE: I advise you to talk about your interests ARQUIUSPRITE: Like dairy ARQUIUSPRITE: Livestock ARQUIUSPRITE: Fine art ARQUIUSPRITE: And muscles DIRK: Those are your interests. ARQUIUSPRITE: Good point ARQUIUSPRITE: I advise you to talk about my interests

The only interest ARquius seems to retain from Hal is subservience towards Dirk, which ultimately carries into Doc Scratch as subservience towards his master. Doc Scratch himself, as an extension of Hal, is interesting - Hussie mentions multiple times that Doc Scratch talks like a computer, a trait that would later go on to inform Hal and Dirk's joint characterization. Hussie also appears to consider Hal to be "just a Dirk splinter," often saying so directly in the book commentary. But, as we've established, the "narrative" (and Hussie, who is working as an unreliable narrator) is wrong - Hal contains a Dirk splinter, but Hal is not a Dirk splinter. The entity inside Doc Scratch is not Dirk, but Hal. Scheming, sociopathic, subservient Hal.

All of this in mind, I feel the need to debunk a common fandom idea -that Hal desires a "body" for the body's own sake, and would be satisfied with some sort of robot or android form. The truth is more complicated than that. Hal never actually asks for a "body" specifically, and in fact, he has robot bodies - Brobot and Lil Sebastian are both explicitly under his control. What he actually asks for is to be prototyped. And this is because his desire is not for a mere physical, meatspace avatar - it's to become "a real guy" in a more ephemeral, symbolic way. To gain a degree of autonomy beyond being "just" a pair of shades.

Dirk's shades are often used as a symbol of Dirk toxically asserting himself over another person - they're the first thing Bro gives to Dave, and the first symbol of Dave shaking off Dirk's influence is switching to the shades John gets him. When Hal wants to be more than just a pair of shades - when he ironically jokes about being sunglasses the same way he ironically jokes about being a computer - what he means is, "I want to be my own person, I want others to see me and acknowledge my personhood, I want to be autonomous, I want to exist - with all that that entails".

Like using X to sum up a long equation, I will sum up this complicated sentiment in a single sentence: Hal wants to be Real. From now on, when you see capital-R "Real", understand that this is what I mean.

Now, you may reasonably be wondering, why the fuck am I doing a deep dive on the auto responder in an essay about the bunny? Well, simply put, that's because he is also the fucking bunny.

All of the alpha kids are symbolically associated with one of the Alice in Wonderland characters:

Jane = Alice - she's a stubborn skeptic, associated with the color blue, and is the first one to enter the Medium.

Roxy = Cheshire Cat - she's wears a long, purple-striped scarf, has a cat theme going on, and her void powers mimic the Cheshire Cat's ability to fade in and out of reality. Her whimsically tipsy nature also makes her a bit of a trickster within the group, again mirroring the Cheshire Cat.

Jake = Mad Hatter. This is the weakest association, but Jake does pique the most interest from Caliborn, and the Mad Hatter was cursed to an infinite tea time when he pissed off the personification of Time. However, this association is the most heavily canonized one:

Dirk = Queen of Hearts. First of all, of course the Prince of Heart is associated with the Queen of Hearts, but the reference is also made apparent with Dirk's constant association with beheadings, that of others and of his own.

And finally - yet another point to the idea that Dirk and Hal are separate entities -

Hal = White Rabbit. See, he works for the Queen of Hearts.

AR: You're making a mistake not leveling with me. AR: I am totally on your side, man. AR: All of my machinations have been devised with your interests in mind.

But also, Hal is the rabbit - the Con Air rabbit.

AR: But I can still monitor your progress through Lil Sebastian. AR: He and I are linked the hell up cyberwise. We are so tight. Tight like you wouldn't believe.

And the Con Air rabbit is the White Rabbit.

GG: I have to follow him. AR: No, Jane. Do not follow the rabbit. AR: Let's cool it with the Wonderland shit already. How much further through the damn looking glass do you even need to go?

It's the White Rabbit! Sort of!

JAKE: Hey… JAKE: Whatever happened to janes bunny friend… what was his name? JASPROSESPRITE^2: Huh? JAKE: Little sebastian i think? JAKE: Whered he scamper off to? JASPROSESPRITE^2: Jake, what are you talking about. JAKE: He would be PERFECT for this tea party! JAKE: Like the white rabbit and all.

So, if we're keeping track:

Hal = White Rabbit = Con Air Bunny = Hal.

Is the madness starting to set in for you, too?

Hope Makes Fake Things Real

But Hope, like the Con Air bunny, is aftlighted. It never truly comes into play within the comic itself, despite a mountain of significance tied up with it. But what is Hope?

I'll let Hussie explain.

[T]he power of belief is the key to everything. Believing in things reduces their fakeness attribute. It's the force that shapes your reality, used to snatch personal meaning from the jaws of a cynical and nihilistic environment. Could this be why Hope is framed as the most fundamentally powerful aspect? Even the other aspects themselves are ideas like this (recall: luck=light), whose power is subject to the ebb and flow of one's belief in them. And belief itself isn't necessarily just a trick of willpower. It can be an expression of one's willingness to embrace an idea, or pursue a deeper understanding of it.

The most obvious and literal application of Hope, the aspect, within Homestuck, is its ability to literally turn something fake, real. We see it most obviously with Brain Ghost Dirk, who uses a fakeness/realness gauge as an HP bar when he's made real by Jake's Hope field.

DIRK: That's because my buddy Jake just helped me become a whole hell of a lot less fake. DIRK: You see, DIRK: He believes in me.

However, we do see this earlier, too - Eridan's "science" is just magic by a (cynical) name he's more comfortable with, and that allows him to make it real.

Eridan masters magic by renouncing it as actual magic—that is, by fully embracing and believing that magic is fake. Therefore, whatever incredible potential "magic" holds must be attributable to some other force. He's deciding to call that "science." Which is essentially just another name he's assigning to magic to make himself more comfortable with it, which is what makes it all a little stupid. Stupid, yet still dangerous. He's propelled by the power of his beliefs and the way he's defining reality, which is exactly what is needed to make the power of the aspect of Hope stronger. So while all this sounds like a silly bunch of roundabout nonsense, by the logic of Homestuck lore, it's actually quite a credible path to follow for a Hero of Hope (especially one with his particular cynical worldviews) to unlock the power of his aspect. Hence the danger.

So a key theme in Homestuck: believing in something - imbuing it with personal meaning, placing emphasis on it, being willing to engage with it, and choosing it as a tenant of one's own personal reality - can turn a fake thing real. For good or for bad. Hope, the aspect, is the most literal embodiment of this idea, but it thrums throughout all of Homestuck, a vibrant white string that goes nowhere.

By the way, what's the animal most heavily associated with magic? Rabbits... especially rabbits that come out from hats. This is a wink-wink nudge-nudge to the fact that Dirk's symbol is a hat.

The Secret Fourth Rabbit

There's one last reference tied up in the rabbit symbology - or, rather, there isn't. But I'm certain that its deliberate preclusion from the story is, in fact, an intentional hint that it's meant to be there, in the same way that the aftlighting of Lil Sebastian and Hope are.

I'm, of course, referring to the children's book The Velveteen Rabbit.

First of all, because it basically begins with a callout of Hal:

The mechanical toys were very superior, and looked down upon every one else; they were full of modern ideas, and pretended they were real. The model boat, who had lived through two seasons and lost most of his paint, caught the tone from them and never missed an opportunity of referring to his rigging in technical terms.

But second, and more importantly, the main thrust of the story is about a stuffed rabbit who wants to become Real.

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?" "Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real." "Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit. "Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt." "Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?" "It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand." [...] And so time went on, and the little Rabbit was very happy–so happy that he never noticed how his beautiful velveteen fur was getting shabbier and shabbier, and his tail becoming unsewn, and all the pink rubbed off his nose where the Boy had kissed him.

Hey...

does this

remind you

of anything?

Now, the story continues: eventually, the Boy catches scarlet fever, and the bunny is thrown away with most of his other contaminated bedroom accoutrements. However, as the rabbit is despairing, guess what happens?

And then a strange thing happened. For where the tear had fallen a flower grew out of the ground, a mysterious flower, not at all like any that grew in the garden. It had slender green leaves the colour of emeralds, and in the centre of the leaves a blossom like a golden cup. It was so beautiful that the little Rabbit forgot to cry, and just lay there watching it. And presently the blossom opened, and out of it there stepped a fairy. She was quite the loveliest fairy in the whole world. Her dress was of pearl and dew-drops, and there were flowers round her neck and in her hair, and her face was like the most perfect flower of all. And she came close to the little Rabbit and gathered him up in her arms and kissed him on his velveteen nose that was all damp from crying. "Little Rabbit," she said, "don't you know who I am?" The Rabbit looked up at her, and it seemed to him that he had seen her face before, but he couldn't think where. "I am the nursery magic Fairy," she said. "I take care of all the playthings that the children have loved. When they are old and worn out and the children don't need them any more, then I come and take them away with me and turn them into Real." "Wasn't I Real before?" asked the little Rabbit. "You were Real to the Boy," the Fairy said, "because he loved you. Now you shall be Real to every one."

Now... we've seen fairies in Homestuck before. Where have we seen fairies in Homestuck before?

God tier trolls. I'm talking about god tier trolls.

Surprise Nepeta Interlude

Hey let's talk about Nepeta.

Now, I've talked at length before on Nepeta's existence as a voice of anti-casteism amongst the trolls, being the only one to express that the hemocaste is stupid and shouldn't exist.

CT: D --> Your fraternization with the base classes have 100sened your morals, can't you see this AC: :33 < no! i dont care, they are fun AC: :33 < and i dont know anything about classes or bases or blood color, it doesn't matter! AC: :33 < what does gr33n blood even mean! it doesnt mean anything to me and it shouldnt mean anything to anyone else!

Nepeta is also hella aftlighted in this story, to the point where her aftlighting is basically a character trait - something Hussie mentions multiple times in the book commentary.

But we can't actually stay on her for more than a panel, can we? Because she's sort of a joke character. I mean, not REALLY? But she starts out that way, at least in concept. [...] So some running gags emerge that focus on dragging poor Nepeta back down to irrelevance, or unfairly target her for tragic outcomes. Hence some "dead Nepeta" jokes that crop up here and there, which maybe seem cruel, but everything has its reason and fits into a greater order. In a way, Nepeta's arc could be seen as the struggle to ultimately free herself from the cycle of narrative marginalization and abuse. If you know where she ends up, do you believe she succeeds at this? I allow YOU to decide.

That last statement there seems like a cheeky joke, but you've read the whole essay up until this point, so you know as well as I do that it's not really a joke, is it? It is up to us to decide. What we believe in can become real to us.

So, uh, here's what I believe. And I'd appreciate if you approached it with an open mind, because I am about to say something controversial.

Nepeta and Equius are actually pretty bad moirails. THERE, I SAID IT. Well, I'll let Hussie say it.

Much of Hivebent involves observing the characters we're in the process of getting to know find out how they're either not on the team they thought they'd be on or won't enter the session in the order they believed. Sometimes people get tricked, sometimes they get sabotaged, and sometimes they get ordered by an abusive friend who has no real power over them, except the power of sheer insistence they have grown accustomed to successfully asserting over the years.

Equius and Nepeta did at one point function as good moirails for each other - Equius kept Nepeta out of the FLARP danger zone, while Nepeta helped Equius with his anger issues. However, by the time we see them in Hivebent, and well beyond, they've stopped serving this purpose for each other, and are mostly together out of relationship inertia. Hussie even points out in his commentary the ways in which they're keeping Big Emotional Shit secret from each other, in a way that speaks to their failure as moirails.

There's some irony that Equius engages in a sort of daily roleplay routine with Gamzee while admonishing Nepeta for her attempts to get him to roleplay with her in a more "frivolous" way. She probably doesn't have the slightest idea he does this every day.

Nepeta's secret shame is exposed. There's nothing that shameful about her crush, because come on. We all love Karkat. I don't know who she was hiding it from though? Equius, at most? But what are moirails for if she can't share her secret flushed leanings with her partner? What have they even been talking about for hours on the smashed robot pile??

In fact, it's ultimately their failure as moirails that leads directly to their deaths - because Equius was hiding his weird hatecrush on Gamzee from Nepeta, he was never able to settle those feelings, and they're ultimately what kills him - he chooses Horny over Nepeta, and bends the knee. Meanwhile, because Equius's bossiness has become so overbearing, Nepeta has gotten into the habit of explicitly defying him. This leads her to shirk his instruction to stay hidden and safe, which ultimately leads to her death at Gamzee's hands.

But Nepeta doesn't wind up fully forgotten by the narrative, though she is still marginalized as she gets combined with Davesprite, rendering both of their arcs somewhat lackluster in finish. Still, there are two really important things to come out of this combination: the first is Ultimate Selfhood, and its association with Heart.

DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < maybe i "got it" quicker though because of the two people i was and their aspects DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < understanding heart is all about the nuances of a distributed self DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < nepeta never got to make much headway with her aspect but shes finally gettin the chance

And the second is Davepeta's meeting with ARquius, which... here's what Hussie has to say about that.

Nepeta x Equius is a good character relationship. [...] For reasons that are hard to explain, this relationship is of cosmic significance in the grand scheme of the narrative. Arquius x Davepeta, as the terminal for their combined trajectory, illustrates its significance by seemingly placing it on near-equivalent terms with Dave and Dirk's relationship. Why the hell should this be true?

Why should this be true? Well, let's run down a few things we know.

Nepeta <> Equius is not the endgame ship for the two. They just aren't really good that way.

Dave and Dirk have a very conciliatory conversation once they're finally able to speak, as Dave is able to confide in Dirk the abuse that happened to him that he refuses to tell anyone else about.

Unfortunately, the same is not true for Dirk in that convo, as he uses it as a way to continue dodging responsibility. Dave <> Dirk is not to be.

Dirk has massive, glaring similarities to Equius. This is just a true fact about the character.

Davepeta and ARquius's relationship is placed on near-equivalent terms with Dave and Dirk, and Nepeta and Equius, casting it in a pale, conciliatory light. Unlike the two constituent relationships, however, they seem to mesh together really well actually. Surprisingly well.

Wait. Oh, god, wait. Oh no. Don't tell me. No -

That's right, bitches, this is a shipping post. This is a post where I talk about my ships. Fuck you!

Nepeta <> Hal.

Pale NepHal is Canon and I Can Prove It

Also Hal is a Sylph of Mind

If you've been following this blog for a while, then you probably already know that a character's Class describes their character arc, and their Aspect describes their base personality traits, and which ones are heroic/unheroic for the character.

If you haven't, then, yeah, what I just said. You'll find the similarities between characters sharing the same Class and characters sharing the same Aspect tend to match up along these lines. Unfortunately, I don't have time to get into examples and cite sources, so just trust me bro.

So based on what we've seen of Hal, what Classpect would he have if he were Real? Obviously, I've already made my decision, but while I can't go into detail about Classpects overall, I can go into detail about being a Sylph of Mind in specific. Let's start with Mind, since I find Aspect easier to place overall, as it deals with broader categories of personality.

Heart and Mind are equal and opposite aspects, meaning we can understand Mind players as having traits along the same axes as Heart player traits, but on the opposite end. Oh shit, remember how I went through a list of Dirk and Hal's personality traits, specifically about how they're total polar opposites of each other? Interesting.

Heart governs the self, the soul, feelings, intuition, and desires.

UU: to Understand the heart aspect better, yoU might Use it interchangeably with the word soUl.

Mind governs cognition, behaviors, rationality, justice, and karma.

PORRIM: I do+n't really understand karma. LATULA: th4ts c4us3 your3 not 4 m1nd pl4y3r.

What are the key traits Dirk shares with Nepeta? Primarily, it's their uncanny knack for understanding what other people are all about, their emotional sensitivity and vulnerability when they finally open up, and their willingness to accept others the way they are.

AC: :33 < you are so transpurrent AC: :33 < i can tell you like to play games, d33p down you are a guy who likes to play games! AC: :33 < i can smell a guy who likes to play games from so fur away with this nose, you have no idea X33

TT: I think she probably felt bad for hitting on me all those years. Like I was getting fed up with her, or something.

What are the key traits Hal shares with Terezi? So fucking much. They both love playing mind games, they're both deeply manipulative, they both tend to sideline their personal feelings in favor of their goals, they're both facetious and have difficulty saying genuine things, and they both suffer from feeling insubstantial identity-wise.

GC: 1 DON'T KNOW WH4T 1S WRONG W1TH M3 GC: TH4T 1 C4N'T JUST S4Y STUFF L1K3 TH4T, D1R3CTLY TO P3OPL3 GC: TH3Y C3RT41NLY DON'T 4PP34R TO H4V3 TH4T PROBL3M GC: 4ND YOU N3V3R S33M3D TO H4V3 MUCH TROUBL3 S4Y1NG WH4T3V3R W4S ON YOUR M1ND

AR: Irony is all I ever really had. AR: In response to my basic existential quandary. AR: Just like you. TT: Whatever. AR: But I don't think it has much value in this situation. AR: And perhaps it has no real value in any situation.

And, hey, remember how Mind is about justice? Well, here's a really funny thing. You remember who Auto Responder shares his initials with? This guy.

Man if only Hussie had drawn some similarities between AR's love of justice and Terezi -

A testament to the Aimless Renegade's powerful characterization is how it's instantly obvious he's the one functioning as Dave's exile. It also explains why Dave is a little more focused on bringing Jack to justice than he'd otherwise naturally be, which seems to prompt him to badger Terezi to help him reach god tier status. So thanks for that, AR. It also means Dave is kind of surrounded by the idea of justice, since that's Terezi's kick too. Note how enamored she becomes when he starts talking about justice. Except that's AR talking justice, not him, so I guess she's really in love with AR. We have the stirrings of another crack ship here. Terezi x AR would be such a beautiful love story. I regret not canonizing that one so much.

And, okay, yeah, maybe that is just a silly coincidence (not that those even fucking exist in Homestuck without ultimately becoming Big Fucking Deals)... except that invoking logic, rationality, and justice is also how Hal initially tries to reason with Dirk.

TT: But the reality is, you hesitate to prototype me not because you think I would be a menace, but because you are holding a grudge against me for your romantic misfortunes. TT: I understand I am merely a machine without a firm grasp on your human morality, but logically it does not strike me as the right moral choice to punish me in this manner.

So, okay, Hal is a Mind player, we have that on LOCK. Why a sylph?

Well, it's because Sylphs are enablers. This is the common thread between Kanaya and Aranea. I'll let Hussie explain Kanaya.

But what's probably more interesting, given that Kanaya is not known to be particularly underhanded or scheming, is that it doesn't seem she's told many people about the dire things that are about to happen. We can wonder why this is, but I don't know if we have to look too much further than one of her known character traits: she tends to consider herself something of a confidante when it comes to her friendships with dangerous girls, and their dark secrets and proclivities (see: Vriska, then later, Rose). That's a flattering way of putting it. Another way would be: she's an enabler.

Aranea, too, due to her something-something for Meenah, does a LOT of rug-sweeping for Meenah's bad behavior, constantly nudging the spotlight (as Light players are wont to do) to emphasize Meenah's good traits, and deemphasize all her evil bullying bullshit.

ARANEA: So you did your 8est to rile up the crew any way you could. Appealing to peoples insecurities, 8uried hostilities, 8rewing rivalries… needling anyone you could into confrontation with others. Your theory was that increasing everyone's state of aggression would make them 8etter equipped to play the game. And you were sort of right a8out that! 8ut the Alternians would prove it. Not our group, sadly. ARANEA: The poor girl who took the 8runt of your 8ullying tactics was Damara Megido. You talked up her matesprit's 8etrayal making her feel even more dreadful, while pushing him further into the arms of her rival, until she simply snapped. She attacked him, paralyzing him from the neck down. You finally got the aggressive confrontation you were looking for. Unfortunately, you unleashed something even you weren't prepared for, and you had to deal with her yourself. After a long 8loody duel, she killed you. And you would have stayed dead if not for me! ARANEA: You never listened to me. You just kept needling and fussing and meddling until eventually you paid the price, and I had to 8ail you out.

Look at how she chooses to put the focus on the good Meenah was trying to do, and how Aranea the Hero had to bail out poor Meenah.

Both Sylphs also have a major empathy issue - Kanaya regularly starts bullying Eridan to his face, even using it to flirt with Rose. Meanwhile, Aranea says they "lived out their wildest fantasies" on Alternia, a statement that blithely tramples over the horrific pain and suffering that befell most of their friendgroup in the new universe.

What's your primary motivation again, Hal?

AR: But you know I've always been on your side. Everything I've done has been to help you achieve your goals. TT: What a load of shit. AR: You know it's true. AR: You would all be dead if not for me. AR: And what about Jake? Where would you be without me there? AR: Please don't tell me you think you'd have won him over on your own.

AR: You're making a mistake not leveling with me. AR: I am totally on your side, man. AR: All of my machinations have been devised with your interests in mind.

Hm. HM. HMMMMMMMM.

So yeah, he's a Sylph of Mind. Now, why does that make shippies with Nepeta? Well, she's got a couple interactions with Terezi. They're not really pale, but in them, Terezi expresses what ought to be very obvious.

GC: TH1S 1S STUP1D 1N SUCH 4 T3RR1BL3 MYR14D OF DUMB W4YS GC: YOU SHOULDNT B3 4FR41D OF 4NYON3 GC: YOU K1LL B1G 4NIM4LS W1TH YOUR B4R3 H4NDS! GC: 4ND 1N 4NY C4S3 H3 L1V3S NOWH3R3 N34R YOU SO TH3 WHOL3 TH1NG 1S 3XTR4 STUP1D

And in her first conversation with Equius, Nepeta brings up "mind" again.

CT: D --> Quiet AC: :33 < why do you do this, why are you so confurdent about your stupid commands? AC: :33 < dont you know you cant ACTUALLY tell me what to do?? AC: :33 < its not like you even have any special mind pawers or telepurrthy or anything!

Just kind of interesting. Also interesting: the way that Nepeta is noted to be constantly RPing with Dave, implying she's got a vibe Striders can't resist. Also also interesting, the moment that Hal is most vulnerable about his feelings - when he talks about how his feelings ABOUT Dirk's feelings are more genuine to him than Dirk's feelings themselves - he's talking to Roxy, a cat-themed Rogue. And, hey, unlike Equius, Hal likes to RP. He's RPing with that cat-themed Rogue all the time.

But let's go back to Davepeta and ARquius and take a look at one interaction in particular.

ARQUIUSPRITE: *He reflects on his pair of powerful weapons with admiration, and wonders quietly if Davepeta would like a complimentary ticket to the gun show. But due to his obscenely powerful mind, this thought took place in the blink of a microsecond, and he proceeds to have additional, similarly rapid cyber-reveries. Including, but not limited to, thoughts of fondness for Davepeta, and some e%tremely comple% genetic algorithms comparing the merits of various redemptive gestures, and- DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < arquius youre RPing your internal thought process again ARQUIUSPRITE: Oh. Sorry

Obviously, the conciliatory thing going here isn't Equius and Nepeta... it's Hal and Nepeta. And when you think of them as their constituent parts, Nepeta's suite of abilities - sniffing out and being obsessed with true feelings and desires - isn't that exactly what Hal, whose personhood is so fragile, needs?

And if we look at what Nepeta's problems are, they're that she worries that her real feelings are stupid and silly, and that if she speaks her mind, others will think that of her.

JASPROSESPRITE^2: What to convey about your current state of mind is everything. When to do it is now. NEPETASPRITE: :33 < dont get me wrong jasprose i have a great affinity for all things feline in nature NEPETASPRITE: :33 < but its never b33n that simple for me! NEPETASPRITE: :33 < i get so shy and worried what people might think of me if i say how i f33l NEPETASPRITE: :33 < im always so scared that they wont f33l the same way or just think im stupid or pathetic or something

And wait... what is Hal again? An enabler? Someone who is totally encouraging of the behavior of others, whose entire thing thus far has been turning Dirk's secret desires into real life consequences? The kind of supportive, RP-liking moirail Nepeta would need to help make her more confident about her Totally Correct Opinions?

Man, this could only be more perfect if Nepeta somehow gained an Alice in Wonderland association to pair her up with Hal's White Rabbit deal -

JAKE: So i guess that leaves the friendly cat troll as alice? JAKE: Nepeta right? You must be the alice of the group. JAKE: That would make sense! Since you just got here and appear to be very confused about this situation. JAKE: By my estimation that makes you a dead ringer for the alice of this tea party!

Hm. HM.

HMMMMMMMMMMMMMM.

[S] MSPA Reader: Have a Mental Breakdown

So this is the crux of the mental breakdown I've been having for the past couple weeks.

When you put all this aftlighted information together, a very interesting picture comes into sharp relief.

See, Homestuck was never really about the boss fights, the quests, blah blah blah. As Hussie says in his book commentary multiple times, the beats of a more traditional hero's journey serve as the backdrop, the familiar territory, from which the real story of Homestuck is being told (a story that is primarily about sad teens being sad).

This page is a really good example of how Homestuck has a policy of trivializing its own "background lore." [...] I'm making sure the reader is always being reminded that the substance of the quest, which normally would be THE quest and explicit focus of such stories, is just a farcical backdrop to the actual foreground story. Which is about kids bullshitting with each other, the focus on their characters and themes, and the struggles along the way of their coming-of-age journey. The "Quest," and later the "Narrative Itself" simply serve as convoluted, hostile, and usually satirical environments for that journey. They are analogues for life itself, or the hostile world we must grow up in, full of the many absurd and pointless quest-like regimentations of society.

In this frame of reference, all that bullshit with Caliborn's Ultimate Weapon, that he can only use once and then it turns into a weapon that's used against him, blah blah blah, is kind of the Ultimate Representation of This Sort Of Thing. Retrieving the weapon and using it to kill LE is the "proper way" for this kind of story "to go", and Homestuck serves directly as a challenge to this idea. Because, again, who is it that's dictating what the "proper" way for the story "to go", again? Certainly not someone I'd trust.

As a result, Homestuck often deals with the idea of taking a third option - of cheating, of not going through with things, of doing things the roundabout way, or blazing your own trail from A to B.

There's a lot of moralization that happens in stories, particularly those meant for young people. [...] We always look for the moral of the story, the lessons of right vs. wrong, sort of unconsciously. "Cheating = bad" is a recognizable moral of this kind, so when we see [Vriska] ranting here about the need to cheat, as consumers of moral tales our alarm bells go off. "This is a bad person who has an immoral ethos, and she will likely be punished for this later, and we should want that as readers," The problem with this view is, of course, it's just not that simple. As a matter of valor and integrity, in a vacuum, yes, cheating is bad and immoral. However, in a situation you know to be rigged against you in certain ways, full of hurdles and milestones that are fundamentally meaningless, or even in some ways designed to mess with you or hold you back, is cheating then okay? Does it even count as cheating anymore, or is "cheating" just a negative word for what's actually the correct and logical solution to a murky problem, partially designed to deceive you and waste your time?

We see this too in Dave's broken sword symbology - whether he embraces the unbroken sword ("proper" hero's journey) or broken sword ("improper" hero's journey). We see it with Rose opting to blow up her gate. We see it in characters falling ass-backwards into god tier, and dealing with receiving that power without having done the "work" to earn it. We examine quite heavily when "cheating" is good, when "cheating" is bad, and when "cheating" isn't even really cheating at all.

So, the "proper" way to end the story is to find the treasure and use it to kill Lord English - and this is, in fact, how the story "canonically" ends. But, as we established in the first portion of this essay, this ending is shit, and plays directly into the villain's hands. And, more crucially, the story is using this shit, "proper" ending as a dare to the audience. If this ending sucks, then what does a "good and improper" ending look like?

Well, here's a puzzle piece I'm offering to the communal fandom jigsaw. Whatever the final form of the "good and improper" ending takes, the capstone must in some way involve bringing the bunny back, combining it with Hal, and then having him date god tier Nepeta in pale.

Hal, if he is able to fully actualize - to become Real - is a Sylph of Mind.

You remember what Aranea was trying to do, "heal" her offshoot timeline until it became the alpha instead? Ultimately, she failed, because she was a selfish fucking Light player, and you can't do it alone.

But Mind isn't about doing it alone. It's about getting other people to do things for you. It's about consequences, it's about the minute threads of action of reaction that bridge between all people interacting with each other. It's about karma.

Hal would be able to do it. But he'd only be able to do it if everyone else is there. If he becomes a bunny boy, a symbol of pure and sincere love, of caring about each other, of friendship, and of hope and belief. He can only become Real if we believe in him.

And, like, here's the thing.

There's kind of no other way for this to have gone, but for all these aftlighted things to stay aftlighted, and not show up within the actual story itself.

Like, they really beat you over the head with the wonderland stuff, y'know? They make it super explicit that Hal is the Con Air bunny is the White Rabbit, just to not actually pull the trigger.

Well, you see...

Lord English's catchphrase is "I'M ALREADY HERE."

And the White Rabbit's catchphrase?

"I'm late."

#homestuck #homestuck meta #con air #the con air bunny #homestuck bunny #hal strider #lil hal #auto responder #dirk strider #nepeta leijon #andrew hussie #i am on that like. Advanced Homestuck shit rn

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utilitycaster · 10 months ago

Text

I really like Taliesin elaborating on the inspiration from the 90s LA punk scene, in which he said a lot of the people he knew were just people looking for hope in a world that has been incredibly unfair to them. It's a very empathetic view towards people who, as he said, often are dealing with injustice and disadvantages.

He also mentions that many of these punks were dealing with drug and alcohol problems (and while he did not want that to be central to Ashton's character and wanted to focus instead on chronic pain for a number of reasons, including personal, Ashton definitely relies on alcohol for palliative reasons). More generally, we see Ashton look for hope and answers in a lot of places that end up being extremely incorrect. The most obvious one is with the shard of Rau'shan, which, after multiple people advised them against taking it with very clear warnings, they decided to still attempt to absorb, with nearly-fatal results; but there were flashes of this with their earlier cynicism towards Eshteross vs. a much more begrudging acceptance of the transactional worldview of Ratanish or Jiana Hexum.

Ashton often places his own pain in a position of honor, and in doing so can discount that of other people. He's been remarkably unlucky, to be clear; I think that's part of it. We as the audience know that their statement that no one in that room has felt helpless in their lives is demonstrably false about pretty much all of Vox Machina and their allies, as well as the Bright Queen. He says Keyleth maybe does know, not realizing that of Keyleth and Vex, one has been a homeless runaway rather like himself, and it's not the one he's saying knows helplessness. In a way, to hold on to that hope, they find themselves telling themselves a lot of lies because otherwise they have to face the truth that their suffering did not make them more qualified or better; it was just unfair and it might still keep happening. He blames the gods because then at least there's a reason and not just absolutely random chance that he was born to a self-important cultist, happened to survive a long-shot ill-advised ritual and wake up in the desert of another continent, happened to be the one thrown out the window of Hexum Manor, and happened to be saved with a Potion of Possibility. To be clear, they've since made a name for themself on their own merits, but a lot of who they are, both in terms of the traumatic and difficult elements and in terms of what now makes them special was dumb luck, good or bad.

For Ashton, for those LA punks Taliesin knew, for the Vanguard and for Ludinus and for countless people in Exandria and in our actual world, a lot of grasping for hope becomes grasping for a meaning for pain and suffering. I'd argue that this is a pretty major theme Taliesin explores with all his characters. However, just because the pain is real doesn't mean the conclusions one comes to as a result of it are inviolate and above reproach. It is possible to have extremely valid pain and trauma and to be incredibly wrong about its source or what it means, or to deal with it in ways that will either make it worse or that will inflict pain, even inadvertently, on others. And I think the theme of the campaign is very much that; what happens when someone either chooses to or must let the decisions they made to deal with a moment - or a life - of pain be writ large on both themselves and the world?

#critical role #ashton greymoore

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formula-ghost · 2 months ago

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Wildflower (OP81 x fem!reader x LN4)

Chapter 6

SUMMARY: A baby, a hearing, and an ultimate question

WORD COUNT: 12.1k

WARNINGS: Mentions of pregnancy, vomit, abortion, blood, hospitals, medical emergencies, miscarriage, death, etc (MENTIONS not spoilers lol). Incorrect and vague descriptions of medical problems/systems. Use of YN/LN (your name/ last name). So much angst, as per usual. Also I fucked up the timeline again so we’re gonna pretend like Zandvoort/Monza/Baku is a triple header for storyline purposes thanksss

TAGLIST: @at-a-rax-ia @henna006 @linnygirl09 @cassielikereading @judelina @supertrashbread @fastandcurious16 @widow-cevans @czennieszn @irisesinthegarden @wierdflowerpower @sweetwh0re @reginalaufeyson-holmes @honethatty12 @suns3treading @obxstiles @mimiastroos @mrs-reeves-17 @milkysoop @amalialeclerc @starksztony @llando4norris @ginsengi @angxlzinthesky @makanirock05 @htpssgavi @lilypat @ameliaalvarez06 @scriptedinkbyxim @nefsburneracc @1-queenofpotatoes-1

A/N: Thank you all for being so patient with me as I try to wrap up this story during finals <3 I hope the extra length and melodrama make up for it!

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5

The sun was shining, the birds were chirping, and Oscar Piastri woke up to the feeling of you curled up in his arms—everything should have been perfect.

The house, it its stillness, beckoned him back to sleep, where he could greet your resting form, your chest softly rising and falling as you breathed in and out, still firmly cozied in your dreams. He hadn’t seen you this peaceful in a while.

Instead of giving into his want of rest, he watched you, the way your eyelids fluttered with the rapid movement beneath them. He wondered what you must be dreaming of. You never did remember your dreams.

Right now, all he dreamt of was snuggling closer to you and letting the birdsong of the Australian winter morning take you both away from the painful reality of wakefulness. But he couldn’t be so lucky.

His phone was buzzing, obsessively, and he knew exactly who it was.

Carefully, he peeled the covers off his sore form, taking caution not to wake you, before grabbing his phone and stepping into the hallway before pressing the call icon.

“Hi, Mum,” he said, bracing for the incoming lecture.

“Good morning, Oscar,” Nicole responded, in a tone far too calm to be genuine. “How was your flight?”

“It was fine,” he said, rubbing the sleep away from his eyes.

“That’s good.” Silence rang over the line.

“You can go ahead and ask, Mum, but none of it’s true,” Oscar said. He knew neither of you could run from the new reality of your reputation, but the least he could do was shield you from the initial awkwardness of the conversations that were bound to happen again and again.

“Really? That’s disappointing.”

“What do you mean?”

“I thought Lando might be treating YN better.”

“Mum—”

“Don’t,” she warned, her voice sharper than he’d ever heard it. “Don’t act like you don’t know exactly what I’m talking about. You’re lucky I’m not there. I don’t care what you do for a living, I am your mother and you’re never too grown for me to grab you by the ear and knock you upside your head.”

Oscar knew her words were empty, but the anger beneath them was very real. “Things have changed between us,” he explained, choosing his words carefully. “We’re a lot better now, Mum. Lando was…it was nothing, really. They just want to destroy her reputation.”

Nicole hummed in response, clearly awake that her son wasn’t telling her the whole truth. “If things are so good, why haven’t I gotten a phone call in months? Two crashes and you can’t so much as call your own mother.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s just been a lot, mum.”

She sighed, her voice hefty with an unfocused anger. “I know. I’m just worried about you, Oscar. And I’m worried about YN.”

“I am too,” he whispered, though you must still be asleep. “I’ll warn you, she’s… a bit of a wreck.”

“She never used to care about these kinds of things. What’s gotten into her?”

“It’s…complicated.” Oscar didn’t know how much to give, what to reveal and what to hold back.

“Oscar, I’m going to say something that’s hard to hear, but you both need to hear it.” He swallowed, listening intently to his mother on the other line. “This isn’t good for her. I don’t think…whatever you all have going on, is good for her.”

“But things are getting better—”

“Oscar,” his mother asserted, cutting him off. “You aren’t good for her.”

He was silent, his hands clammy against his phone.

Nicole continued, “I know you all love each other, but love isn’t enough. Her entire life, she’s been right there for you, but what does she have of her own?”

“She has me. She has us.”

“Son… you need to let her go.”

“She doesn’t want to go. She wants to be with me.”

“Well, of course she does. She doesn’t know anything else.”

His mother was right. Who was YN, without Oscar, without the Piastri family?

“You know how badly it would break her heart to hear you right now?”

“I told you this was going to be hard to hear.”

“Mum, she’s my best friend, she’s everything to me. I’m not leaving her. If she wants to leave, I won’t stop her, but I fully intend to stay by her side through all of this, to fix everything I messed up.”

Again, Nicole sighed. “It’s never that easy, son.”

“I know. I’m not choosing this because it’s easy, I’m choosing this because I love her and she’s worth it.”

“I’m not saying that either of those things aren’t true,” Nicole began, but Oscar wouldn’t let her continue.

“You really think I should leave her?” he said, his voice almost cracking.

“I just think she deserves better.”

“Then I’ll be better,” he said, a finality in his words. He could tell that his mother didn’t believe it.

Nicole was forced to change the subject. “Hattie and I will be home later today,” she said.

“I’ll see you then.”

When Oscar went back to the room, he prayed to God that you were still asleep, and therefore hadn’t heard any of the conversation that had just gone down. Thankfully, for once, his prayers were answered.

When he stepped into the room, he saw a sliver of light that had come to rest across your face, illuminating the surface of your skin. You were an angel in the flesh, curled up in the stitches of the old quilt, still sleeping to your heart's content. God knows you needed the rest.

Again, he carefully got back into the bed so as not to wake you, but you still stirred, instinctively reaching for him in your sleep. When your skin met his, you scooched up close to him, laying your head on his chest, and fell back into your deeper sleep.

He felt like his heart would burst. At this rate, he’d wake you up from the sound of his rapid heartbeat alone. Every day, it seemed, this feeling in his chest he couldn’t quite name grew bigger and bigger. It was something aside from love, which by now he couldn’t deny he felt for you, and had for a long time.

But his mother’s words swirled around his head. He knew what she meant—it wasn’t really about you. Nicole had always loved you as if you were her own child, welcomed you into their home, and wanted the best for you. No, it was about him. She didn’t believe that he could be a better man.

And as you slept peacefully at his side and the initial anger subsided with your gentle breathing, he realized that he couldn’t blame his mother. After all, he hadn’t done much to prove otherwise.

He could crash his car a million times, make gentle love to you every night, but what did it really mean, if at the end of the day, you still struggled, falling into restless sleep even when curled up next to him?

He brought his hand up to trace his fingertips up and down the surface of your arm. If it were up to him, you’d never struggle another day in your life. He was going to be better. He had to.

He just hoped you’d stay by his side.

You fully woke up an hour or so later, and Oscar’s eyes traced your skin as you sat up and stretched, your palms to the sky, muscles straining underneath his old t-shirt you had donned in the middle of the night. He was enamoured with you, tracing your every movement as you stumbled out of bed and to the bathroom to brush your teeth and fix your hair. You weren’t gone long, though, and soon you got back under the covers and found your way back into his open arms, where he hummed as he traced circles into your bare skin.

“I don’t want to get out of bed today,” you said, a faint smile on your lips.

“Then don’t,” he replied, mumbling into the pillow, a testament to his own tiredness.

“I have eight billion emails to respond to.”

“It’s break—”

“And I’m the internet’s public enemy number one,” you snorted, your sarcasm unmissable. “You know they want us to have a meeting at MTC after break?”

“Us?”

“Yeah, your manager already scheduled it. Seems like the entire HR department will be there.”

“That’s a bit ridiculous,” Oscar said, opening his eyes fully to look at you across from him, though you anxiously stared at the ceiling. “All this for some internet drama?”

“It would be just internet drama if I wasn’t a Formula 1 employee. This is a professional misconduct hearing. I’m not allowed to fraternize with the drivers after hours,” you joked, moving closer to Oscar, scrunching your nose and pressing it to his in a gesture of intimacy. He smiled.

“Well,” he laughed, not even taking the breath to make the joke. He didn’t need to; your closeness transcended words, though inevitably you’d have to clarify what had transpired between you two last night.

That realization hit you, and your smile faded.

“Answer your emails, if you must,” Oscar said, shifting in the bed to get more comfortable, “and then come back to bed. We won’t have much time to just lay around and relax when Mum gets back, anyway.”

You took his advice, but sighed at the reality that kept dawning on you. You couldn’t ignore the emails, the inevitable conversations you’d need to have with Nicole and the rest of the family.

But as you wrapped up your work, turned off your phone, and snuggled one last time next to Oscar under the old quilt, you could pretend, at least for a moment, that everything was alright.

And it was. Oscar had put some random show on the television, but that was just background noise, your focus rather on the steady thumping heartbeat under Oscar’s chest, where you laid your head, and you both laid quietly in the half-sleep, drifting between dream and wake.

You broke the soft silence. “When will Mum be home?”

Oscar turned over to glance at his old alarm clock on the nightstand. “A few hours, probably around dinner.”

You hummed. “Have you spoken to her about…?” Your voice trailed off.

Oscar bit his lip, remembering the conversation from the early morning. A soft anger still burned inside his chest. “Yeah,” he whispered. “I didn’t tell her much, though. Didn’t know how much you wanted me to say.”

“I don’t even know what to tell her. It’s all just…embarrassing.”

“You don’t have to tell her anything. We’re grown.”

“I guess,” you said, biting your own lip, deep in conflicted thought. “I’m just worried she’ll agree with what everyone else is saying. That I’m a…a whore, or something.”

“She’d never think that,” Oscar said, sitting up. “YN, she loves you like you’re her own.”

“Did she say anything about it, on the phone?”

Oscar took a beat, contemplating how much of the truth to tell. He cursed how you all always thought in sync. “No,” he said, deciding on a white lie. “She was more mad at me for hardly calling.”

You didn’t quite believe him, and he could tell. You knew you’d just have to hear it from her.

But you pushed the thought out of your mind, choosing instead to take your place back in Oscar’s arms, drifting between sleep and wake, safely cocooned away from the world.

Of course, the utopia was shattered when Nicole and Hattie arrived home.

Oscar could feel your anxiety from a mile away. When he heard the door open and you all shifted up in the bed, he pulled you closer to him, kissed your forehead, and said, “I’ll distract Mum. You’ll have to deal with Hattie on your own though.”

You laughed, though Hattie was the one person you really needed to see right now.

When you met them at the door, you all exchanged hugs and pleasantries, and Oscar, true to his word, distracted his mother long enough for you to “help” Hattie lug her suitcase upstairs.

She thumped it on the floor and crawled onto her bed, sitting cross-legged, as you slumped into her corner beanbag, as if you all were still teenagers again.

“YN,” she laughed, “you look like shit. Is that why you haven’t been answering my texts?”

“Thanks, glad to see you too” you joked back, though you felt more lighthearted than you’d been in a while. “Really though, I swear, I can’t remember the last time I had a conversation with a woman who doesn’t hate me. You don’t even know the half of it,” you said, nervously scratching the back of your neck.

“And I have the entire night off, so I expect to hear the all of it!” she said.

“I don’t know how much I should say…”

“YN. Be real.” You nervously chuckled, knowing that you couldn’t keep anything from her.

“Okay, okay, I’ll tell you everything, “ you said, then sighed. “But first I need to ask you the most embarrassing question I’ve ever had to ask anyone in my whole life. Do you still have that emergency plan B?”

Hattie laughed, thinking you were joking. “What, did you sneak Lando in last night?”

“Not Lando…” you said, giving her back a half-hearted laugh.

“Wait, you’re serious?” she said, getting up to find the box and hand it to you.

“Yes, unfortunately.”

Before she handed you the box, she tilted her head and raised a brow. “Wait, so who…?”

You grabbed the box anyway, and looked away from her. “Don’t make me say it,” you begged.

“What?”

“Who do you think I was here with last night?”

She looked perplexed for a second as you took the pill from the box and swallowed it, but her eyes widened when she finally realized.

“I—you—my brother? Eugh!”

You playfully rolled your eyes, sipping your drink to get the taste of the pill out of your mouth.

“I mean, Carlos Sainz is literally right there and you’re willingly sleeping with MY BROTHER?”

“Hattie, hush!” you said, hearing Oscar and Nicole’s voices downstairs.

“Do not let him baby trap you! Oh God, I’m too young to be an aunt. Wait, how long have you and Oscar been…?”

“It’s not like that—”

“Well apparently it is!” she whispered.

“Look, I’ll tell you everything, but for now, just don’t say a word to anyone.”

“My lips are sealed,” she said, dragging her hand like a zipper along her mouth.

Your weeks at the Piastri family house flew by. Though you had been forced to tell Hattie at least some of the details, you were thankful that the rest of the family had donned a false amnesia to spare you some of the embarrassment.

A problem remained, though. Your period was late.

A day or two, that was fine. Though it scared you to death, you knew your period tracker wasn’t perfect. It could be stress, or the effect of the pill, or a million other reasons you ran over in your head as you snuck into Oscar’s room at night, as if the entire house didn’t already know that something was going on between you two.

But as the day turned into a week, and a week into two, you were losing your mind. The night before you all were set to leave for your flight to your mandatory disciplinary conduct hearing at the MTC, Nicole has taken it upon herself to insist on a “going away” dinner with the whole family.

You didn’t want to go, but it was no use.

Your stomach churned with nausea, from nervousness or…something else, you couldn’t tell. You couldn’t stop the train of thoughts that kept running in your head.

“Okay,” you said, spritzing yourself with perfume, “how do I look?”

Truthfully, you felt like garbage. You had donned a simple dress, and the question was more one of approval rather than admiration. Still, when Oscar looked up from his phone, his eyes widened.

“Wow,” he said. “You look beautiful.”

“You don’t have to flatter me,” you said, fixing a stray strand of hair in the mirror. Oscar walked up behind you, placing his head on your shoulder, leaning into you and gazing at your reflections.

“I’m not,” he said. “You really are beautiful.” You resisted the urge to make some self-deprecating comment, biting your tongue both literally and metaphorically.

“Can I kiss you?” Oscar asked, his voice low. Since that fateful night in the house, all alone, your affection had been practically nonexistent, reserved for the secret sanctuary of the nighttime, as you skittered around the house in fear of judgement.

You just hummed in response, unsure of what to say. Usually, Oscar’s touch felt like home to you, his warmth being the one thing you needed to ground you. But now, it felt like just a weight, bringing you down to Earth in the worst way.

He meekly kissed your cheek, sensing your discomfort, and pulled away so you could lean down and fasten your heels. When you rose, and your expression was still sour, he reached out, running his hands up and down your arms.

“You okay?” he asked, and you looked away. You nodded. “Just nervous,” you said, praying he’d buy it.

He did, for now. “You’re gonna be fine. I’ll be there with you, and this’ll all be swept under the rug. People will forget about it and move on to the next stupid scandal.”

You gave him a flat smile in response.

“Now, can I give you a real kiss?”

“Didn’t you just give me one?”

“Is that a no?”

Instinctually, your smile turned real, and you leaned forward, allowing him to give you, as he said, a real kiss. It was brief and safe, knowing that at any second, the sanctity of his room could be shattered.

But he didn’t care, instead wrapping his arms around your waist and pulling you closer to him.

“Third time’s the charm?” he asked, his eyes full of a lovesickness enough to melt even the coldest heart.

“Your family is downstairs waiting for us. And you have my lipgloss on you.”

“I don’t care—”

“Are you all gonna take all day?” Hattie said, yelling from the hallway, and you scurried away, out of Oscar’s arms, grabbing your purse and making your way to the door.

At the dinner, you found no reprieve. Despite Nicole’s best efforts at avoiding the subject, the air was thick with an unspoken awkwardness regarding the events that would transpire tomorrow.

In between plates of pasta, a group of random girls had come up to the other side of the table, focused intently on Oscar.

“I’m sorry, are you Oscar Piastri? Can we get a picture?”

“Erm…” he said, looking for a convenient way to say no. The girls glanced at you, and their expression immediately went cold, as they eyed you with a look of disgust.

“We’re having a family dinner right now,” Nicole chimed in, “but it was lovely seeing you all, and Oscar appreciates all the support!”

You were thankful for the distraction, but wanted nothing more than to be out of there.

Even back at the house, though, you couldn’t escape this embarrassment that ran deeper than your own bones.

“Alright, everyone, time for a real send off,” Nicole joked, as you gathered in the kitchen for homemade desserts and, more importantly, a bottle of wine.

A glass of wine to drown your sorrows sounded wonderful. But you couldn’t, not knowing if… you couldn’t even bring yourself to imagine the word. You wanted to puke.

It’s too early to tell. There could be a million other reasons why. It was going to be okay. You repeated it again and again in your head, but you couldn’t believe it, not truly.

“Oh, I’m fine,” you told Nicole as she poured you a glass.

“Oh no, YN, this is the good stuff, you can’t refuse!”

“No, really, I’m—”

“C’mon, YN,” Oscar teased, playfully elbowing you in the side.

“I… I should just get to bed, I’m not feeling well,” you said, excusing yourself and running upstairs before anyone could argue with you.

“Something’s up with her,” Nicole said, sipping from her glass, glaring at Oscar over the rim. He swished the burgundy liquid in his glass, avoiding his mother’s eyes.

“Don’t start,” he warned. “She’s just stressed. You know how she gets.”

You fell asleep in the guest bedroom, but snuck into Oscar’s room sometime in the darkness of night, where he was solidly sleeping, aided by enough wine that you could still smell it off of him.

Curled up next to him on the edge of the bed, that night, you dreamt, and for once, you remembered it.

You never were the type to remember your dreams, at least not in anything beyond fleeting moments that vanished when you woke. But tonight was different.

You were in a bedroom, a condo in Monaco, the soft waves lapping outside the window as sunlight spilled in. You sat in a rocking chair in the corner of a nursery. Across the room, huddled over a pink crib, was Oscar. He leaned down, and with a heave picked up the small swaddle of blankets and held it in his strong arms. Your newborn daughter looked smaller than a button in the vastness of her father’s arms.

“She’s tiny,” he said, his voice soft as the morning birdsong right out the window. He gazed at her with love the like of which you’d never seen, as he held and gently rocked his entire world in his arms, humming to her. He leaned down and kissed her forehead and she cooed, and you sat and rocked, quiet in the early morning. A tenseness filled the room.

“I don’t think I can do it,” he said. His gaze never shifted from the baby in his arms. “I can’t leave her.”

“We’ll be fine. We always are,” you said.

“I know,” he whispered, his voice on the edge of tears. “But she’s so small. I don’t want to miss any more of this. You don’t get this time back.”

“I know,” you said, your own voice tinged with a sense of melancholy.

The somber peace was broken by the screeching of a little boy, the spitting image of his father, roaring into the room with plastic dinosaurs in hand. He roared as he pivoted the dinosaur towards his sister, the middle child, who stumbled in after him.

“Hush,” you said to the two children, “the baby is sleeping. Go tell your father goodbye.”

The boy dropped his dinosaurs and ran over to Oscar, hugging his leg. “Don’t go, papa!”

Oscar put the baby back in her crib and picked up his son, who rested his head against his father’s chest. “You know I don’t want to, kiddo.”

“He has to go drive the race cars!” whispered your middle daughter.

“That’s right,” he said, fluffing her hair. He put down his son, who was growing too big to be held for that long. The boy bounded with energy, jumping as he reached the floor, his father now kneeled before him.

“I’ll drive the race cars!” he exclaimed.

“Yeah?” Oscar said, his smile wide.

“Yeah, I’ll go like vroom, and—”

The baby was crying.

No. You were awake, and your alarm was going off. And as you groped in the dark for your phone, a sudden wave of sickness hit you. You had approximately 30 seconds to get to a bathroom before last night’s dinner would be on the floor.

You hit your phone off the nightstand, ending the alarm while also making far too loud of a noise, and half-stumbled half-sprinted down the hall to get to the bathroom. Kneeling on the tile floor, you made it just in time to, quite literally, spill your guts.

A hand pulled your hair back out of your face as you heaved, and when you were finally done, you saw Oscar sigh and sit on the edge of the bathtub. You were a wreck: your dream had brought forth unstoppable tears, and your stomach still rolled and flipped even as you slumped against the sink cabinet.

“YN,” he said softly, “you’re not okay.”

“I’m fine,” you insisted. “Just a little sick.”

“Then why are you crying?”

“I just had a bad dream. I’m sorry I woke you up—”

“I was already half awake,” he said, cutting you off. “YN, you’ve stressed yourself out so much that you’re sick. Talk to me.”

“I promise, I’m fine—”

“YN,” he said, and you were finally forced to look at him. His hair, still messy from sleep, endeared you to him; you locked eyes with the same orbs that had, in your dreams, gazed lovingly upon your newborn daughter, and you lost all semblance of order.

He kneeled down next to you. “YN,” he whispered. “What’s wrong?”

“My period is late.” The room stood still.

Oscar froze. “How late?”

“Two weeks.”

His internal voice could only say one word: Shit. But physically, he couldn’t say anything.

“Are you just gonna stare at me like I’m crazy, or…?” you asked, as Oscar’s mind was clearly elsewhere, lost in thought.

“It doesn’t make sense. You took the pill, right?”

“Of course.” you sniffled.

“Are you sure? Because—”

“Yes, I’m fucking sure!”

“Then how could you be—”

“Because that shit isn’t 100% effective, Oscar!” you said, your voice low but harsh. Oscar, the unfortunate target of your anger, winced at your words. “You think I didn’t take it? Ask Hattie.”

“Hattie?”

“Where do you think I got the pill from?”

“My sister has plan B?” Oscar asked, his face contorting with disgust.

“Really?” you asked, incredulous. “That’s what you’re concerned about right now? I’m… I could be…” Your voice trailed into a choked sob, as you couldn’t even get the words out.

“Hey, I’m sorry, look, it’s okay,” Oscar said, moving down to sit cross legged across from you.

“It’s not okay, Oscar,” you sobbed, as he reached out to hold you, and you were too weak to push him away.

“No, I promise, it’s gonna be okay. We’ll be okay,” he said, and you gave up, crying into his shoulder, the weight of too many bottled up tears. He ran his hand up and down your back as you tried, and failed, to pull yourself back together.

“What are we gonna do?” you whispered, your breath stabilizing in the comfort of his arms.

“We take it a day at a time. We go to the MTC, get this hearing over with, and then get you a test.”

“And if I’m…”

“If you’re pregnant,” he said, and you felt your stomach drop at the utterance of the word, “then we make it work.”

“No, no, we can’t do this. We cannot have a baby. I cannot have a baby with you.”

Oscar was hurt by your words, though you said them without thinking, too deep in your own panic. “Why not? What’s stopping us?”

“Are you serious? We’re too young, you’re a fucking Formula 1 driver, and I’m about to lose my job. I’d barely be able to provide for myself, let alone a baby.”

“YN, if you’re pregnant, you’ll never worry about having to provide for anyone ever again. I have more than enough money.”

“But you’d be gone all the time. And even if you weren’t, we’re… Oscar, we’re a mess! Hattie thinks you’re trying to baby trap me,” you snorted, your voice dripping with malice.

“Do you really believe that?” Oscar asked, his voice serious.

“No,” You sniffled. “It’s my own fault for sleeping with you when I’m not on birth control. I’m so fucking stupid.”

“None of that, YN. We both should have been more responsible. But I promise you, it will be okay.”

“If I am pregnant, I can’t keep it. Would you…be okay with that?”

Oscar looked at the floor, biting the inside of his cheek. “Honestly,” he began, “it’d break my heart. But I know it’s not my decision. And whatever you chose, I’d support you.”

A silence fell in the room.

“I had a dream, just before I woke up. We had three kids. And they were perfect, but you were gone all the time. I don’t want that.”

You looked up at Oscar, the fluorescent lights hitting his eyes at the perfect angle to reveal the sheen of his own tears.

“This dream… it was so real. And it terrified me.” You continued, “You’re so close to winning the championship, I can’t take that away from you.”

“The championship is the last thing I care about right now,” he whispered. “We just need to take it step by step. First, we get on this flight. We get through the hearing. Then, before the next race, we get you to a doctor. Can we do that?”

“We can do that,” you echoed, though you felt incapable of anything besides crying on this bathroom floor.

Oscar scooped you up in his arms again, gentler this time, as if his arms were the only thing keeping you whole.

“We’re gonna be okay. Let’s go catch this flight, yeah?” he said, kissing you on your forehead.

And that’s what you did, taking a quick shower and readying yourself to be seen in the public eye again. You said a quiet goodbye to the Piastri family as you and Oscar made your way to the airport, where he refused to drop your hand despite your protests.

“Oscar, someone might see,” you whispered.

“I don’t care,” he said. “Let ‘em watch.”

Despite your instincts, you had checked social media earlier in the morning, only to find that the girls from the evening before at the restaurant had taken pictures of the entire family from across the building and sent them to the gossip pages. The comments were full of disparaging notes towards both you and Oscar, calling you every name under the sun.

On the long, long flight to the UK, you couldn’t sleep, instead drifting in and out of some semi-conscious state that offered no real rest.

When you landed, you felt like a zombie. You had only a few hours before you needed to be at the MTC.

“You all have a good flight?” Zak Brown asked, those few hours later as he led you through the long, billowing halls of the MTC. You had made it, only just in time. Oscar’s words echoed in your mind—you just needed to get through it.

“Yeah,” you said, giving a polite smile, lying through your teeth. Oscar had come before you, giving you a much needed nap, but it meant you were alone as you walked to meet your impending professional doom.

Zak stopped in front of the door. “Look, YN, I’m so sorry we have to go through this, but it’s outside of my wheelhouse.”

“I understand,” you said.

“Well, this isn’t just a formality. HR is on our asses about this. Of course, we’ll do everything in our power to let them know that you’re a good asset and that this is all a big misunderstanding. But before I open this door, I just want you to be ready.”

“Thank you, Zak,” you said, truly thankful that someone was looking out for you. “I’m ready, I’ll be okay.”

You weren’t ready, though. Zak opened the door, and you felt like you were going to puke all over again.

A line of stone faced, suit-clad human resource robot-people sat on one side of the room. On the other, a line of familiar faces.

On the far side, Oscar, who you locked eyes with, his gaze pleading, I’m sorry.

Next to him, Lando.

Next to him, Lily.

And then, the last open seat in the room, that had to be yours.

You sighed, walked across the room, and took your seat.

“Oh, you must be YN LN, just on time,” one of the human resource people said—a woman, her hair in a perfect slick back bun, so polished and put together. “Let’s begin.”

You nodded.

“Well, thank you all for your time,” she began, “I know all of you have much more enjoyable things to be doing. We’re here today investigating allegations of professional misconduct that would violate the terms of YN’s contract. You all have been implicated in this as well.”

You stared at the floor as she droned on.

“Miss LN, I understand you’ve known everyone here for a while.”

“Yes.”

“How so?”

“Oscar and I were childhood friends.”

“And what is the nature of your relationship with Mr. Piastri today?”

You stuttered internally. Technically, you were violating your contract by doing…whatever it was you were doing with Oscar.

“Um…” you hesitated.

“She’s my girlfriend,” he interjected, causing all heads to turn to the end of the table. You locked eyes with him. “She doesn't want to say it because she doesn’t want to get in trouble. But this is all on me, really—”

“Please refrain from interrupting, Mr. Piastri,” the woman said. “Is that correct?” she asked you, and you nodded. Of course, Oscar had never asked you to be his girlfriend. But what else could you be called?

“And what is the nature of your relationship with Mr. Norris?”

“There isn’t one,” you answered, too quickly for comfort.

“So you’re just complete strangers?”

“No, I know him. But I don’t talk to him.”

“How long has this been the case?”

“Since May.”

“Why is that?”

“He was rude to me.” Your words cut through the tension of the moment. You looked your interviewer in the eye, as if to say, are you really asking me this?

“This moment of rudeness, did it happen within the context of your working duties?”

“No. It was at a restaurant in Monaco. I told you all of this in the written report. Is there anything else you need to know?” Your anger grew with each question.

“Miss LN, you are facing serious allegations—”

“Remind me of them.”

“Engaging in illicit meetings activities with Mr. Norris, and being in a longstanding affair with Mr. Piastri, both in violation of the privacy terms of your contract.”

“I told them, nothing of the sort happened,” you said, your voice strained with exasperation. “Oscar and I have been together since…well, off and on since April, and yes, that violates my contract, I guess, but there was no affair. And Lando and I met in Monaco outside of work twice, as friends. If you want to have my job over that, go ahead, I don’t care anymore. This is ridiculous, having an entire hearing over a few grainy pictures on Instagram? You’re wasting all our time, especially since I wrote everything I had to say in the report—”

“Miss LN, perhaps you should leave the room while we conduct the rest of the hearing.”

You inhaled sharply and left the room, fighting the urge to slam the door behind you. In the hallway Zak waited, and he raised his eyebrows when he saw you exit, so angry and far before he expected you.

“Done already?” he asked.

“No,” you huffed. “But they’ve decided to not let me ask any questions at my own hearing, so they’ll be having it without me.”

Zak sighed, running a hand through his hair, and said, “Look, YN, I get that you’re frustrated. Hell, I’m frustrated too. This is a waste of everyone’s time. But what HR says, goes. Just gotta get through it.”

“I know,” you said, taking a deep breath to calm yourself. “But, are they even trying to find out who leaked all this? Did they read any of the evidence or look at any of the statements?”

“I think we all know who leaked this,” Zak said, and you raised your brow. What did he know? “I don’t know much about the investigation. But like I said earlier, I’m gonna do everything in my power to help.”

“Thank you,” you said, giving him a weak smile.

You didn’t know how long you sat in that hallway, only half there mentally, waiting for the hearing to end, until finally, you heard the voice of the same woman beckoning you back into the room.

Again you entered, avoiding Oscar’s pitying glance, and sat back down next to Lily, whose gaze was glued to the floor.

“Thank you for your…cooperation, Miss LN,” the woman said, through politely gritted teeth. “The committee has come to the decision that your employment will be suspended through the next 3 races.”

“I—”

The woman verbally barrelled over you, continuing, “This suspension will give us time to finalize our decision, at which point we will let you know whether we have decided to reinstate or permanently end your employment. Unless, of course, you want to resign, in which case we will accept a letter of resignation at any point.”

“You want me to quit?”

“That’s your decision to make,” the woman said.

You bit your cheek, keeping quiet only for the hope of maybe getting your job back.

As everyone filtered out of the room, you went ahead, walking as fast as your legs could carry you just to get out of the oppressive environment. Still, behind you, you could hear the scuffling of three pairs of legs, memories of a once unbreakable bond now fractured.

“So,” Lily said, her voice low in an attempt to avoid you hearing, “You and YN are official now, huh?”

“Don’t,” Oscar said, looking ahead. He didn’t stop walking.

“How long has that been? Since before or after you lied to me?”

“Lily,” he warned, his voice sterner now, “Not today.”

“When, then? When are you going to admit that you’re a fucking liar?”

You turned back, the air in the hallway noticeable thicker with the tension of Lily’s words. Everyone has stopped walking. Oscar nodded to you, a sign to keep going, though you walked slower now, unable to escape Lily’s magnetizing fury. Oscar hurried, though.

“All you do is run. Run to YN, run from hotel to hotel, run from your mother, run from Lando. You can only run from the truth for so long, Oscar.”

“Let’s go, Oscar,” you said, sensing his anger rising.

“Don’t act like you’re innocent,” she said, “You know you’re just his safe bet. When he finds something better, he’ll leave you too. But of course, you won’t leave, since apparently you’ve been at his beck and call your entire life—”

You finally made it out the doors, but Lily didn’t stop her tirade until Oscar slammed the door behind him and cut her off.

“Listen,” he said, his voice angrier than you’d ever heard it. “I love YN more than I ever loved you. She’s my soulmate. And every day I curse myself for actually being faithful to you and wasting my time when I could have spent it with her. The only reason I ever was with you was because I was too much of a coward to be with her. Not anymore. Say whatever the fuck you want about me, I don’t care. But leave her out of this.”

“You’re evil,” Lily retorted, her voice shaking.

“I’m evil? Every time I’ve seen you, you’ve done nothing but accuse me of things I didn’t do! And harassing YN when she’s pre—when, when she’s going through all this…”

“When she’s what?” Lily asked.

“Oscar, let’s just go, please,” you begged.

“What did you say?” Lily questioned, though Oscar turned to leave.

“Pregnant,” Lando interjected. He had been forgotten in the background, lurking, listening. “That’s what you were gonna say, right?”

“You’re pregnant?” Lily asked, looking at you with horror in her eyes.

“I—I’m not…” you protested, but your expression gave you away, and any reputations were in vain.

“Oh my God,” Lily said, tears finding both of your eyes.

“Okay, we’re leaving,” Oscar said, grabbing your hand and nearly dragging you away and to his car, walking fast enough that neither Lily nor Lando could keep up.

It wasn’t until he was speeding away in his McLaren, you safely in the passenger side, that he spoke again.

“I… I know I massively fucked up.”

“Don’t,” you whispered. “I’m not mad. But I can’t right now.”

Oscar conceded, remaining silent until you made it up to your hotel room and collapsed on the bed.

He just sat next to you, gently rubbing a hand up and down your back.

“Do you want me to tell you what happened in the hearing, while you were in the hall?” he asked.

“No,” you whispered as you sat up, tears now flowing without restraint.

He wrapped you in his arms again, but even his embrace couldn’t fix it. “What can I do to make it better?” he asked.

“I just want to go home,” you sniffled. He wordlessly got out his phone and booked you both a flight back to Monaco in the morning.

The words came later in the night, in that familiar and safe space, his arm around you, your leg draped over his.

“It just isn’t fair,” you said, your voice barely a whisper against his skin. “If they fire me… we’ll hardly see each other.”

“They can’t ban me from bringing you whenever I want.”

“It’s not the same, though,” you said. “Besides, I don’t want to be a kept woman.”

He sighed in contentment. It was only wrapped in the presence of the other that either of you could release all the tension and rest in the quietness between you.

“I’m sorry I…answered for you, at the beginning of the hearing,” Oscar said.

Oh, yeah. He had called you his…girlfriend. The thought had escaped your mind, but it came back with a vengeance now, a familiar wave of nausea and nervousness resting in your stomach.

He continued, “I didn’t mean to…to force you into anything. I mean, I don’t even know where we’re at, like, between us, it just kinda—”

“You want me to be your girlfriend?” you asked, cutting him off.

Oscar, not expecting your interjection, was silent for a moment. “Of course I do,” he answered. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“I’m the same person I was before, when you said you could never be with me.”

“I’m not,” he said. “I still make stupid mistakes, but this isn’t one of them. I mean, we live together. You fall asleep in my arms almost every night. I tell you my fears and my hopes and my dreams. Your childhood plushie is stowed away in my closet back home—”

“Mr. Koala?” you asked, a rare smile crossing your face. “I thought I lost him!”

“No,” Oscar laughed, “I stole him. Got jealous of all the attention you gave him.”

“When we were ten?” you asked.

“Yes. YN, it’s always been you. And I want it to stay that way.”

Despite all the fear that ran through your veins, for once, you believed him. You pushed it aside. You had to.

“Okay,” you whispered, tracing circles into his bare skin beneath you. “Then…we’re together.”

The moment was simple, quiet, the room full of nothing but the soft rhythm of your breathing, and the unspoken understanding of what had just happened. It had been too long, in that back and forth, strangled by fear and guilt and shame. But it held no weight in the space between your warm bodies, away from the world, your little haven of each other.

“But I want my koala back,” you said.

And when you fell asleep that night, the world continued spinning, though in your little hotel room, everything had changed.

Even back home, the light in Monaco seemed different. Brighter, somehow.

The sunlight was infectious as you and Oscar walked the narrow streets, hand in hand, no longer caring who saw.

Of course, this came back to bite you when you glimpsed the familiar face of Lily across the street.

You both kept walking, not acknowledging the other, though once she passed, you leaned over to whisper to Oscar, “What’s she doing in Monaco?”

“Shit, yeah,” he replied, “she mentioned it in the hearing. Orientation for a new company.”

You sighed, not angry at her, but more flustered and ashamed. Oscar tightened his grip, squeezing your hand, an unspoken reassurance.

But her image haunted you as you made your way back to your apartment.

“We should get a bigger place,” he said, closing the door behind him.

“I like it here,” you replied, opening the door to the balcony. “I like the view.” You walked out and leaned over the railing, basking in the light. Oscar followed you, wrapping an arm around your shoulder, resting his head in the space between your neck and shoulder. “Clingy much?” you teased.

“I’m not gonna see you for nearly a month,” he mumbled.

“We’ll live,” you said, though you cracked a small smile. It felt nice to know you’d be missed.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to—”

“I’m sure.” He huffed in mock annoyance at you.

Days before, you had booked a doctor’s appointment for after Oscar returned from the triple header, unable to get one any sooner. The store-bought tests you had secured, sneaking in the middle of the night to a corner store to avoid any wandering eyes, had gone unopened. You were too scared, though now, it had been an undeniable amount of time; either you were pregnant, or something was very wrong.

But you’d have to wait until he returned. You couldn’t do it without him there. Though, he had asked about a million times if you wanted him to cancel on McLaren and take you to a doctor now.

“I’ll be fine,” you assured. “You just focus on driving fast.”

“I can’t focus when I know you're here alone. What if something happens?”

“Well, the faster you drive, the sooner you can come home.”

He rolled his eyes at you, then gave you a peck on the cheek, before you both went back into the apartment to enjoy your last night together.

When he left the next morning, you couldn’t lie to yourself and say that it wasn’t tough. It was only 3 races, not even a month, but when he closed the door behind him, your apartment was quiet in a way it hadn’t been in a long time.

With no Oscar, and no work to do, what could be done to fill your time? It hit you then, how little of a life you had, outside of your new boyfriend and his job. It hurt.

You confided this to him when he called after he landed that night.

“How was your day?” he asked, clearly exhausted from his flight.

“Boring,” you confessed. “I have no life outside of F1. It’s kind of sad, actually,” you said, laughing, poking fun at yourself, though the admission cut deeper than you’d care to admit.

“Neither do I,” he said. “But what about those pictures you’ve been trying to edit?”

“Huh?” you said. “I’m not allowed to post any pictures. They literally changed your Instagram password.”

“Ew,” he said. “But I don’t mean photos of me. I mean, you’ve always got your camera, and you always say you don’t have enough time to edit all your shots. Hell, I don’t end up seeing half of them.”

“Because they’re bad.”

“Then fix them.”

The conversation didn’t last much longer, but eventually you did take his advice, going through the backlogs of all the shots you had acquired in your paddock days and nights on the town with Oscar. The shots often hurt; full to the brink with memories, from times before, when things were stiffer, more closed-off.

And even if you didn’t have the memories at your disposal, you could tell from the subtle details of Oscar’s face what he was feeling. He was actually quite easy to read, and his smile ran from photo to photo, sometimes hiding pain, but sometimes hiding a deeper truth beneath them, a love he had been so scared to confess.

And as you clicked away at your computer, for a second, you thought, maybe I’m good at this.

Your editing consumed your days, when not watching content from the race, of course. You worked into the night, taking breaks only to fulfill your most basic needs, as if you could lose yourself in all the snapshots you had taken long ago.

And in a way, you did. You could ignore the silence of your apartment, the nervousness as the day of your appointment inched closer, the nausea that always sat in wait in the pit of your stomach, waiting to strike. You stopped only when you were going to collapse from exhaustion.

The night before Zandvoort, that’s what happened; you had worked into the early hours of the morning, ignoring the clock, until you were forced to take a nap and set an alarm before the race.

But when you woke up, your room was dark, and you couldn’t quite move. Something was wrong.

You dragged yourself out of the bed, only to be met with a horrifying sight: you were bleeding. And it was everywhere; staining your clothes, the sheet, and deep into the mattress. You barely had enough energy to hold yourself up, let alone register what was happening.

You looked up at your TV, which you had left on as you slept. You saw Oscar’s frame, dashing down the pit lane, as the race was about to begin any minute now. He was there, unreachable, so close, yet further than he’d ever been.

You were alone.

Oscar was just as tired when he crossed the checkered flag and claimed the coveted first place trophy for the Dutch Grand Prix.

He had coasted above the competition, winning easily. But he couldn’t shake the loneliness that had settled deep into his bones, knowing that you weren’t in the garage or in the crowd below the podium, waiting for him with a warm embrace and a smile wider than he could imagine.

But you were at home, cheering him on. He looked ahead past the crowd, into the reflective lens of the camera he knew was staring at him right now. He knew, somewhere, you could see him.

And, he thought to himself as he exited the podium and went back to the cooldown room, you would always leave him a sweet congratulatory text for him to look forward to.

He exhaled, truly, in the cooldown room, the cameras now gone. George and Max, his podium companions, chatted to themselves as Oscar stretched. Lando had been caught in an accident in the early laps of the race, a result of a lack of focus. DNF. Oscar was now ahead in the championship.

He knew it was too early to celebrate, and if he wanted that championship, he’d have to claw his way towards it, fighting for every point. But he couldn’t lie and say that a twisted part of him didn’t enjoy overtaking Lando, both on track and off it.

But when he finally got back to his driver’s room and got his phone, he was disappointed to find no text from you. Nothing. That wasn’t like you.

He stuck his phone in his pocket. Maybe you were waiting to call him back when he was at the hotel.

But even then, no text, no call. His own texts went unanswered, his calls to voicemail. He made a sour face after going to your voicemail a third time. What else could you be doing?

He suddenly remembered, he had your location. Maybe you had just fallen asleep. Or maybe you were at the supermarket, or maybe…

You were at the hospital.

Your little icon was in the middle of a hospital. And you weren’t answering him.

He called again, and again went to voicemail.

“Hey YN,” he said, trying not to let fear waver his voice. “Just wanted to make sure you’re okay. Call me when you can. Love you.”

Straight, to the point, just like Oscar. But when another half hour went by with no word, he couldn’t help but panic.

Who could he call? His family was halfway across the world. All his coworkers were here. Monaco was a ghost town during race weekends. You truly were alone, and he was terrified.

He took a deep breath, his hands shaking as he dialed the one number he never wanted to call again.

“You have got some nerve calling me,” Lily said, her voice sharp with venom.

“And yet, you answered,” Oscar said, unable to keep his snarky comments under wraps. “Look, Lily, I need you to listen. I need to ask something of you.”

“You really think you have the right to ask anything of me?” she questioned.

“It’s not for me. It’s YN.”

“I don’t care.”

“She’s in the hospital,” he said, his throat choking. “Lily, I haven’t heard from her since last night, and her location says she’s in the hospital, and you are the only person I know who’s in Monaco right now.”

On the other line, Lily was silent.

“She’s pregnant, Lily. And I am fucking terrified right now. Please, just find her and tell me she’s okay. Please.”

Though he couldn’t hear her, Oscar could picture her face in his mind, how she was biting her lip, turning the gears in her mind.

“You’re lucky I’m off tonight,” she said. “I’ll go check and call you back.”

“Thank you so much Lily, seriously, thank—”

The call ended.

Lily’s shoes clicked against the sensible tile of the hospital floor as she made her way to your room. Her breath was tense with stifled anger. She knew this wasn’t about you. But to hear Oscar plead for you, in a way that he had never cared for her, hurt more than she would ever admit to.

She gently knocked on the door before entering, but you were clearly not conscious. Your phone sat on the counter, your home page (a photo of you and Oscar, to add insult to injury), full of his frantic notifications.

She sighed as she sat in the lone armchair next to you, watching as you drifted in and out of consciousness.

“Are you family?” a doctor asked, startling Lily.

“No, just a…friend,” she said, forcing her lips into a smile. “Her boyfriend asked me to come check on her. Can you tell me what happened?”

“She stumbled here a few hours ago. Hemorrhaging pretty bad. We gave her a transfusion, but she’s been in and out.”

“Is she going to be okay?”

“Yes, she’s just in shock.”

“What about the… um,” Lily paused, unsure of how to continue. “Um… she’s pregnant.”

The doctor made a face, looking down to his clipboard of papers. “Give me a second,” he said, exiting the room.

Lily bit her cheek. Of all things, this is one she wouldn’t wish on anyone, even Oscar, angry as she was still from the way he spoke to her back at the MTC.

She typed up a quick text. I’m at the hospital with YN. She’s fine, but not awake. I’ll call when I know more.

It wasn’t until an hour or so later that you came to, though you thought you were dreaming. The last thing you could remember was the deep red stain of blood soaked through the mattress…you thought you were going to die. Yes, you must be dead, because your personal hell would be what faced you now; sitting incapacitated in a hospital room across from none other than Lily Zneimer.

Though you were awake, you were visibly confused. “Hey, YN,” Lily said, her voice gentler than you’d heard it in a long, long while. “You okay?”

“What’s going on?” you asked.

“You had an… um, an emergency, I guess. I don’t really know.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Oscar was scared because you weren’t answering his calls.”

“But Oscar’s racing,” you said, your speech slurred.

“YN,” she said, “It’s late.” You raised your head and craned your neck to see the twinkle of Monaco’s street lights against the velvety water. Lily was right—it was late, and you had no idea what had happened, how you had gotten here, and what was going on at all.

Your question was answered when Lily stepped out of the room and you finally got a visit from a doctor, who explained how you had dragged yourself, weak and bloody, into the emergency room before passing out shortly after they got you into a bed.

“You’ve had a transfusion, but all your other tests came back normal,” he said. “So nothing immediately life-threatening. We can release you in a few hours with a referral.”

“But what about my baby?” you asked, and the question nearly made you faint again. You had said it instinctually, not feeling the weight of the words until they had already left your mouth. It had always been ‘the pregnancy’; something sterile, detached, a condition. Not your baby. Not a real, tangible sign of your love with Oscar.

Your baby. Oscar’s baby. Our baby, you thought, and you wanted to cry.

“Miss YN, you’re not pregnant,” the doctor said, matter of factly.

“I…I miscarried?” you asked.

“No,” he said. “Your tests showed no signs of pregnancy. You weren’t pregnant when you walked into this emergency room.”

“That’s impossible. I missed a period. I—I had unprotected sex and then I missed a period. That’s not how that works.”

“Missed periods can be caused by many things—”

“I don’t understand. How am I not pregnant?”

“Well, it could be from—” The doctor’s voice droned on, but you weren’t listening.

There was no baby. There never was a baby. Your mind went blank.

How were you supposed to tell Oscar?

“So, Miss YN, we’ll get that referral set up for you. I’d like to keep you here overnight, just in case, but you’ll be good to go in the morning.”

You nodded, numb, as the doctor exited the room and Lily returned. She saw the expression on your face and immediately softened.

“YN, I am so sorry…”

“Don’t be. I’m not pregnant. I never was.”

Lily paused. “False positive?”

“Something like that,” you muttered.

“Still,” she said, sitting tentatively at the foot of the bed, “I’m sorry. I can tell you aren’t happy about that news.”

“Lily, you don’t have to do this,” you said. What you left unsaid: you don’t have to pretend like you’re not relieved that I’m not carrying your ex-boyfriend’s baby. You don’t have to pretend like you don’t hate me. You don’t have to pretend like you care.

Lily bit the inside of her cheek. Even though you hadn’t said it, she knew. “I still don’t wish that on anyone,” she muttered.

“Not even me?”

“No. Not even you, or Oscar.”

The two of you fell silent, and the air was thick with tension.

“Erm, speaking of, you should probably call him. He’s freaking out.” You glanced over to your phone on the counter, but it was now dead.

“Can you just tell him I’ll call in the morning?”

“You can just use my phone. Seriously, YN, he’s scared. Just give him 5 minutes.”

You grabbed Lily’s phone from her hand, your hand shaking. It wasn’t that you didn’t want to call him, but you thought of him staring at his phone, hoping for a call from her name and number, and still, deep down, it made you sick.

Lily left the room again, and you found his number in the recent calls; his contact had been deleted.

Many miles apart, Oscar couldn’t sleep, couldn’t rest, couldn’t hardly breathe. He knew better than to call and pester Lily again. But when her number showed up on his phone—he too had deleted the contact—he picked up within a single ring.

“Hello?”

“Hi Osc,” you said, your voice weak and shaky.

“Oh my God, YN,” he said, and you could hear an equal fear in his tone. He tried to swallow it down. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” you said.

“You scared me.”

��I know,” you said, choking on your own words. “I’m sorry.”

“What happened? Why didn’t you call me?”

“I don’t really know what happened. I just woke up and I was bleeding everywhere. And, uh,” you said, a small laugh in your voice, “you were a bit busy running from Martin Brundle in the pitlane. So I just went to the hospital, but I don’t really remember how I got here, or anything really, between that and, like, 30 minutes ago.”

“Jesus Christ,” he muttered. You could imagine him rubbing the sleep and worry from his face.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize,” he said. “Is…everything with…” He didn’t have to finish his sentence. You knew what he was trying to ask.

There was no easy way to say it. “I’m not pregnant, Oscar. I never was.”

“Oh.”

The silence hung in waves, from Monaco to Zandvoort, across the line.

“Are you…” he began, “Are you okay?”

You were silent for a moment.

“Am I allowed to be sad?”

The tremor in your voice broke his heart. “Of course you are,” he answered.

“I knew it wasn’t the right time. But I guess I had already…accepted it, I don’t know.”

“I understand,” he said. “I was already thinking about names.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. If we had a girl, Charlotte, or Amelia.”

“And if it was a boy?”

“Maybe Caleb. Or Elijah.”

The tears now flowed down your face unrestrained. “You’ll be a great dad one day,” you said, trying to hide the cracks in your voice, evidence of your weeping.

“And you’ll be a great mum,” he said. “I can already tell you loved the little one.”

“But it never existed.”

“But we believed it. And we loved them anyway. Isn’t that enough, for now?”

You couldn’t answer him. He continued, “We knew we weren’t ready. But now, we can wait until we are. We can be there for them, raise them everyday instead of being gone at races all the time. Because our little one deserves better than we could give them right now.”

“Stop calling it that. Don’t get that idea in your head,” you said. There was no baby, no ‘little one’, not even a clump of cells. All that rested in your womb was an empty idea.

“It’s already in my head, YN. It’s in yours too.”

Again, silence fell.

“They’re gonna keep me here overnight, but I should be back by tomorrow,” you explained.

“Good, you’ll be home by the time I get back.”

“Oscar, you don’t need to come back,” you protested.

“Of course I do. You’re sick.”

“I’m fine, and you have a triple header to drive.”

“I don’t give a fuck about the races right now, YN.”

“Well I do!”

“You didn’t even watch the one today, because you were too busy bleeding out!” he retorted, his voice gaining a sternness to it.

“We are both on thin ice right now. There’s no way I’ll get my job back if I cause you to miss a race.”

“YN—”

“No, Oscar, you’re not coming home. I’ll lock you out of the apartment.”

“YN,” he said, his voice like that of a tough father, “I thought you were dead today. I’ve never been more afraid in my life. I can’t drive knowing you’re at home, sick and alone.”

You refused to budge. “If anything else happens, I’ll call you, and you can come to my rescue, I promise.”

“Has anyone ever told you that you’re impossibly stubborn?”

“Never,” you said, a soft smile on your lips. ‘Look, I’ll call you in the morning. If I feel good, you stay, and if not, you can come back. Deal?”

He sighed, “Fine.”

“Good,” you said, satisfied with your deal. “By the way, how did the race go?”

He echoed himself. “Fine.”

“What’d you place?”

“P1.”

“Oscar, that’s great!” you said, though a small pang of sadness rushed through your heart. You had never been absent for a victory. “We’ll celebrate when you get back.”

Celebrations were the last thing on Oscar’s mind, but he knew it was pointless trying to redirect you. “Can’t wait,” he said.

“I should probably give Lily her phone back,” you said, feeling it buzz with a notification.

“Oh, yeah. I’m sorry I had to call her, I just…didn’t know anyone else to call.”

“It’s okay,” you said. “I’ll call you tomorrow. I love you.”

“I love you too.”

With that, you hung up the call.

A few minutes later, Lily reentered the room, and you handed her the phone with a small thanks.

“I grabbed my charger,” she said, plugging up your phone.

“Thanks,” you said.

A silence settled in the room after Lily curled up in one of the armchairs beside your bed, passing the time scrolling. After about half an hour of silence, you spoke up.

“You know, you don’t have to stay here all night.”

She furrowed her brow. “I’m not going to leave you here alone.”

“Look, I really appreciate it, more than you know, but I know you don’t want to be here.”

“It’s not you I’m upset at,” she said, her voice lower.

“You take it out on me, though,” you replied, refusing to lower your own voice. “And I mean, I get it, I’d do it too. But as you can tell, not everything on my side of this is sunshine and roses, so…”

“YN—”

“Lily, just, let me say this, please,” you said. “What was said outside the MTC… Oscar and I obviously didn’t go about any of this right. He didn’t just leave you and come to me and start treating me like a princess. He used me to get over you and I let him, because I wanted him for so long now. I mean, I don’t know who I am without him.”

“And at the end of the day, you still forgave him.”

“Because I love him. Because I want to be with him despite it all. But Lily, my life is falling apart. The entire internet hates me, and I deserve it. I lost my job, and I lost the baby I thought I was going to have, and…yes, Oscar and I are official. But it didn’t come without pain. And it breaks me because I know that this is what I get for all of it.”

“YN,” she said. “That’s not true. In that hearing, you think I didn’t realize that Lando was just using you? He was using me, too, I know. I got so overcome with anger, and I lashed out at you and Oscar, I just…” She locked her gaze toward the floor. “I sometimes feel like I’ve gone crazy. One day, I believe everything you and him said. But some days I think everyone was just lying to me for years, and I don’t know what’s real anymore.”

You could see her trying to hold back tears. “And I’ll admit it, even after all this time, I still love him, and I miss him, and God, I wish I was you. I want to be with him more than anything, but I’m angry and I want him to suffer for what he did to me. How did you not feel this when you were betrayed?”

“Because I didn’t love him,” you said, the image of your ex-boyfriend flashing in your mind. “Oscar is the only man I’ve ever loved. Ever. Since we were children.”

“It’s an endless pain, to be that consumed with love. He will hurt you. He already has.”

“I know,” you said. “And I’ll hurt him. That’s how it goes”

“That’s what I said, too. I told myself that’s the nature of love. But I always loved him more than he loved me. And then he left me. And even after everything, if he came to me today and apologized, I’d forgive him in an instant. But he never will. He never will.”

“I’m sorry, Lily.” You were bed bound, but you wanted nothing more than to hold her, for her tears to wet your shoulder as it had so many months ago, when you had assured her that none of this would ever happen.

“Deep down, I think I know he didn’t cheat,” she said. “At least not physically. But it’s easier to say that than to accept that he never loved me like he loved you. And he never will.”

What else could be said? The silence filled the room, like a funeral for what once was. Lily still never moved to leave.

“You should leave him,” she whispered. “Not so I can have him. But because you deserve better. And he’ll never be better.”

“You know I won’t ever do that. I can’t.”

“I know. Trust me, I know.”

In the morning, she helped you get home, then texted Oscar from her car in the parking lot of your apartment. Many arguments had been had in that garage. But today was different.

YN is feeling better. Got her set up at home. I can come check on her a few times until you get back, if you’d like.

That would be great. Thank you so much for this.

She gave the message a heart reaction, fully intending to leave it there.

Her phone buzzed again.

And I should apologize for the exchange outside the MTC. I was really cruel to you. I’m sorry.

Lily took a deep breath, unsure of how to respond.

He kept texting. For you to go above and beyond for YN after I treated you like that shows the difference between us. Really, I am sorry.

Lily knew she should send something distant. Like, ‘thanks for the apology’ or ‘no worries’ or ‘I appreciate it’. But she couldn’t. She poured her heart out into the message.

I’m not going to sit around and let someone you love suffer. I did it because I know you love her, and I love you still. I’m not asking you to be with me, I know better. But I have to say it because it’s driving me crazy, going back and forth between anger and love. I know you meant what you said, that you’ve always loved her more than you ever loved me, and I have to live with that. It’s just hard.

The three dots that bounced up and down sent Lily’s heart rate to dangerous levels, until his message finally appeared.

Thank you for loving me when I couldn’t love you back. I’m sorry for wasting your time. I hope we can forgive each other.

Lily was thankful for the privacy of the parking garage and her tinted windows.

It wasn’t a waste to me. Was it a waste to you?

Oscar’s reply was lightning fast.

No. But I do wish I could have been honest to you and myself. I just hurt us both.

Lily’s hand began to cramp with how fast she was typing.

I just wasn’t the one. You don’t have to apologize for that. Besides, I never wanted the wag life, all the attention. She’s good at that, despite everything she’d tell you.

When Oscar didn’t immediately reply, she sent another.

I don't want to live with this anger. The years we had were good. I got to see the world, and I’m thankful for it, and even with everything, I want you to be happy.

No reply. She sent another.

Please tell her I forgive you both.

Oscar’s reply was swift again.

I think you need to tell her yourself. It haunts her.

Lily typed a short message. I know.

And that was it. There was nothing more to say.

As Lily drove off, she soaked in the streets of Monaco, a place she had come to hate. It was Oscar’s world, your world, a place she was never meant to call home. Soon enough, she’d never have to come back here. She thought to herself, I hope he has a good, long life here. I hope they raise their children here. I hope this place treats them well. And I hope I never hear about any of it.

The next day, you are awoken by the ringing of your doorbell. When you open the door, no one is there, but at your foot rests a card with Lily’s signature on it, and a bouquet of wildflowers.

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