#(to the point i couldnt sleep without bright lights and id have to have something heavy sitting next to my bed)

[ink-livi]

Mmmm thinking about zombies again... :]

[banditthewriter]

Southbound - Ryan Brenner

Prompt: maybe reader is running from something and they meet. Just something on the actual train, traveling. Never seen anything like that for Ryan yet. He's always in a town. Anyway. Hope you are inspired. I remember a drabble forever ago like that Prompter: @russosprettydiamondnow

I believe you meant this drabble. I took bits and pieces of that, the rest of your request, and the song Southbound from Jackie and Ryan to create... whatever this is. I hope you like it!

Tags are at the bottom. Let me know if you would like to be added to one of my tag lists! *gif not mine* Enjoy!

*****

The train was beginning to rumble, the wheels turning ever so slightly. You checked both directions before you threw your bag into the open car, back towards the space that was hidden in the dark. The gloves made it difficult to get a good grip and you had a moment of worry that you wouldn’t make it before the train sped up.

A hand wrapped around your wrist and you felt a tug. A body emerged from the darkness and you were met with what looked like a pair of black eyes.

“On three,” the man said as he counted down.

On three he tugged you up just as you jumped. Right on time as the train finally gathered enough speed to really get moving. You stumbled into the man that had helped you up, your breathing heavy as you tried to ignore how close you had come to not making it.

“Thank you,” you said cautiously as you finally stepped away from him, your eyes darting over to where you had thrown your bag.

It was resting next to his bags and you wondered if you had hit him with it when you had tossed it. You moved over and grabbed it, the familiar sensation of moving in a train car that was barreling down the tracks feeling as normal to you as walking on solid ground.

He gave you a quick nod before he moved over to this side of the car. He looked as comfortable on the train as you did, his feet not faltering once. As he settled down, you saw him position himself with his bags strategically so that if he had to run, he could do it quickly.

A regular, you decided as you sat down with your back against the wall of the car. He was on the other side, his body angled just enough towards yours that you could see him when light filtered in through the open door you had just climbed through.

And just as you were watching him, he was watching you. You didn’t notice it at first, that feeling of being stared at, but you caught a glimpse of his dark eyes as the light shone on them just right.

“I can move to another car if you’re…”

Uncomfortable, your mind supplied. And while you were grateful that he offered to leave, you weren’t about to make him hop train cars in the pitch dark. You hadn’t traveled with someone in a while but you didn’t think he was a danger to you.

Not that you were going to operate on faith alone.

“You were here first,” you said instead with a shrug. Then you gave your bag a brief pat. “Plus I have pepper spray.”

He laughed and you caught a quick glimpse of a nod. He didn’t seem to be offended by your statement at least.

There was something in his hand, something the light glinted off of. You were about to rethink your decision to let him stay when it lit up. Dim and small, it was enough to recognize that it was a cell phone. A cheap one, purchased at a gas station or something like it.

It wasn’t like you missed the mindless scrolling on Facebook, but you to admit that you missed Netflix sometimes.

The time seemed to stretch on from there. At some point he had leaned back, his head resting against the metal wall. You could tell from brief bright spots that he was kept glancing at you. With every glimpse you wondered if he was going to introduce himself or if you’d just refer to him as your silent companion.

“I’m Y/N,” you offered across the space between the two of you.

“Ryan,” he said with a smile. He gave a quick look around the car and then back to you. “Going my way?”

You smiled and shifted a little against the hard floor under you.

“At least until the next stop.”

He smiled again and tilted his head back. You took it to mean the end of the conversation, at least for now, but you couldn’t help but notice his eyes darting to you before he closed them.

------

The train had stopped and you knew that the men would be making their way up and down the cars to make sure that there weren’t any stowaways. Ryan had offered to stick with you until you were both out of the station since this seemed to be where both of you were making a temporary stop.

It’d been a few days on the train together, taking turns keeping watch while the other slept or while you transferred from one car to another to keep from being discovered. There wasn’t a conversation about it; you both just fell into the habit.

Now Ryan was tugging you towards an abandoned building right off the tracks, pressing you back so that you were more hidden than he was. The sound of someone coming by had you tugging Ryan in closer to make sure that he was hidden as well.

His guitar case rested against your hip as he molded his body against yours, his head tilted to keep an ear out for the man that was nearby.

How long had it been since you’d been this close to a person? Hell, how long had it been since you spoke to another person?

Ryan turned his head back to you, opening his mouth to say something. You watched his tongue dart out and wet his bottom lip, those dark brown eyes moving over your face. This close you could smell the layer of sweat that probably covered both of you, the smell of trains and the cold air. His hat was tugged a little low on his head, darkening his eyes, but you couldn’t look away.

Could he hear your heart beating faster? Did he see the way your breath caught when your eyes met his?

He stepped backwards and gave you a brief nod.

“He’s gone,” he said as he looked out towards the street. “I guess this is where we say goodbye.”

You swallowed and shifted your bag on your shoulders. He had a bag over his shoulder and that ever present guitar hanging from his hand.

“Or,” you said uncertainly as you looked away, feigning nonchalance, “we could keep traveling together? You said that you weren’t headed anywhere particularly and, well, neither am I.”

The silence drew your eyes back to him. Ryan tilted his head a bit and you could see a smile growing on his lips.

“Sounds like a good idea,” he said simply as he looked out towards the street once more. “Want to get something to eat? I know someone here that would be happy to let us crash on their couch for a few days while we figure out where we want to go next.”

And just like that, you weren’t alone anymore.

------

“Portland is about a two day trip,” Ryan said as he tapped his fingers against the map that was spread out between the two of you on the table. “Or, I don’t know, maybe we could double back? You said you were from this area, right?”

Six months of traveling with Ryan and you were surprised that this was the first time you’d come this close to home. Or what had been home once upon a time.

“I don’t want to go back there,” you said firmly, your eyes not moving from the map.

His hand reached out and hesitantly covered yours. In the time you had been traveling with Ryan he was always respectful and courteous. He was a tactile person, something you hadn’t expected for some reason, but he was always so careful with you.

You had woken him up more than once with your startled screams. The first time he had looked so surprised and worried about you that you’d let it slip out without meaning.

“I was in an abusive relationship,” you had said as you futilely tried to curl your fingers into the wooden floor of the train car you were in. “He uh, it uh. I left, but I guess some of it followed me.”

You hadn’t given him more than that and he never asked. Both of you had shared bits and pieces of your lives, unable to travel for six months without sharing something personal. 

You knew about his rough childhood, his lack of any support or people to rely on. He told you how he got into train jumping and why he preferred it to any other way of life.

In return you told him about your great uncle being the reason you started riding trains, how you hadn’t made a lot of good choices over the years.

You never talked more about your ex and he didn’t ask.

He still wasn’t asking after your outburst but you could see it in his eyes as his hand covered yours on the table of the coffee house you both had gone into to get out of the heat.

“I didn’t mean it that way,” he explained softly, his eyes darting around to make sure that no one was watching the two of you. “I’d never make you do something like that. I just meant that you knew the area better than I do so you should be the one to pick our next step.”

Ashamed for your outburst, you turned your hand over in his so that you could wrap your fingers around his before you nodded, turning your eyes to the map.

It wasn’t the first touch that you had initiated, but he treated each one like the first. He smiled and cherished the moment, his fingers brushing against yours softly. The touch had once elicited a quiet gasp from you but now you simply smiled and continued to stare at the map.

“This way,” you said as you used your free hand to trace a railroad track in the opposite direction. “It’ll take us somewhere new.”

Ryan squeezed your fingers gently and you looked up to meet his eyes.

“I like new things,” he said with a smile.

------

“Hey,” you whispered as you crept over to where Ryan was sleeping on a pallet on the floor. “Are you still awake?”

He smiled even though his eyes were closed, lifting up the blanket for you to slip in with him. It was another friend of his that were letting you crash but they didn’t have any beds open. Ryan had let you have the couch but it hadn’t felt right.

You curled around him carefully, your fingers drifting over his chest. You had been pleasantly surprised by the tattoos he had, your eyes tracing the ink long before you ever dared to try with your fingers. But now you felt like it was okay, it was allowed.

More than that it was welcomed.

“Bad dream?”

He curved his body towards yours, his eyes still closed as he tugged you in a little closer. You felt his lips brush gently against your cheek and couldn’t help the smile that overcame you.

He was always so careful with you.

“Got used to your snoring,” you joked as you ran your hand over his shoulder and tucking against the back of his neck. “Without that or the sound of a train, I have a hard time falling asleep.”

He dug his fingers teasingly into your side, huffing out a laugh when you wiggled against the touch. When you looked up, you saw that he was staring at you. He raised his hand and brushed his fingers against your jaw.

The touch felt as relaxed and familiar as if he had done it a hundred times before. Things with Ryan had felt like that almost from day one. From that first night he helped you onto the moving train and had introduced himself, you had felt like you had known him your whole life.

Making sure that his eyes were locked on yours, you leaned forward until your lips brushed his. He pulled back an inch, his eyes darting back and forth over yours as if checking before he gave a quick nod. Then he surged forward, claiming your mouth in a kiss that made your entire body melt. He cupped your cheek as he kissed you, his whole body somehow wrapping around you.

“Y/N,” he whispered when he pulled back, smiling as wide as you’d ever seen. “If you only knew how long I’d been wanting to do that.”

You smiled back and rolled your body against his, eager to taste the kiss that you loved to see.

“Show me,” you whispered back, out of breath and blissfully happy.

And he did.

------

The train rambled down the tracks, jostling you where you had been drifting off. You shifted a bit, your head resting on Ryan’s shoulder. He made a noise in the back of his throat and tugged you in closer, his hand on your hip a comforting presence.

Through the partially open car door you could see the scenery rush by, a blur. The train would be getting to your next destination in a few hours and you’d have to wake Ryan up before then so you could both be ready, but there was time for him to rest.

You had once thought that it felt like you had known Ryan your whole life, but that was wrong. It was more like you had climbed onto that train and found something you were missing. Not a part of your heart or your soul or something sappy like that, although you knew Ryan wouldn’t mind the comparison.

You’d found safety in Ryan’s arms. You found a place to call home.

And as long as he was with you, you weren’t worried about anything that you may come upon. You were content to just ride the train and enjoy the journey.

X

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[angel-scythe]

I need you : Chapter 9

Hi people !

Thanks again to be there! I hope you will love it! This is a short chapter where nothing big happen and still... !!

If you want to read it on ao3, smash my door |   °| or keep reading?

“I’m here since

8

Days”

 That was the little board in front of Niles was saying. The man was sat on the couch, sorting out the mail. His phone was just near the board. He glanced toward his room as he did so often. His room and then the whole apartment. That austerity started to really bother him. He tried to keep himself busy to stay in this reality. Gavin’s reality. But sometimes, like now, it became really hard.

Everything was pushing him to retreat on himself.

When he had realized that, at the moment where Gavin took out the trash, he had turned off the TV. He didn’t want to stay in front of TV, looking all the time the same documentary. When he was doing something, he wasn’t mopping on himself the problem? He wasn’t able to get up and busy him with anything… He could only do what was within reach.

And it was few things.

When the door opened, he tried to get up but as much he could push on his arms, he felt his legs really weak and let himself fall in the couch as soon as Gavin was in the house. He didn’t saw him but that was okay. The Android came to him and took the empty bowl of soup to bring it back to the kitchen.

“Tonight, I’ll prepare you another soup, you’ll love it, I think.”

“Tonight?”

Gavin looked toward Niles.

“Don’t you think eating more than one time a day wouldn’t be a good thing?”

“I don’t know, Gavin.”

“If you eat well, you’ll have more strength and you’ll be able to do more.”

“I’ve a bad appetite…” Niles remembered.

The Android turned his head and started to make the dishes. In fact, the man appreciated the other didn’t force him. He tried a bit but he wouldn’t do it again and again until he’ll yield.

Maybe in few days, he’ll be able to eat? But not now. Even though that should give him strength.

He could see progress and yet that was already a big change for him…

He wanted to do a lot of things but he also knew he should not hurry the things. He even looked for exercise to muscle his legs and be able to walk again without Gavin help. Though he’d  love to throw his arms around his neck any time.

“I’m a little robot, short and strong. Here are my handles, just turn me on. When I get all warmed up, watch me go. Sometimes fast and sometimes slow.”

That song…that soft song. He continued to whisper it, all the time. He did it when he was doing repetitive task, or when he was alone. He didn’t get the song though but still liked to hear Gavin sung it.

When the Android had finish to clean everything, he came in the living room and stretched himself. He still had his random uniform with white jacket and blue lighting. He came next to Niles.

“How is the mail?”

“Sort out.”

“Nice.”

Niles took his phone.

“Do you want to help me?”

“For what?”

“I’d like to bright this apartment. There is… nothing there…”

“Yay! That would be fun! First, you need a Hang in there cat poster.”

“Okay.” Niles gave him the phone. “Choose it.”

“Why?”

“You’re living there too so I think it will be nice if you decorate with me. And I’ve poor taste,” he added with a face.

“Do you think I’ve better taste?” he laughed.

“Yeah? You thought about the poster.”

Gavin nodded but for him, it was a joke.

“You don’t think about a thing? In movie you like for example? People you like?”

Nines thought about that. He couldn’t remember his mother decorating, in fact. Even in his childhood house it wasn’t really bright. The only thing a bit odd he could remember, it was the lot of flowers everywhere. She could take care of them for hours.

“I know what I want.”

“Yay?”

“Let’s take a pic’.”

“Of us?”

Niles nodded. He could upload the photo on one of his tablet and he’ll keep it activate to have the picture. He also could use another for one with him and Connor. Or use a program for the images to switch?

Gavin smiled. “You see, you’ve wonderful idea. I like that. I don’t often take a pic’ with someone but there, I’m really excited.”

“So… it happened?”

The Android glanced to him and shrugged, letting out a little ‘yay’.

“Let’s take that pic’. What do you want? We look like bitch? We’re silly? We’re serious? We’re cop! … No, not cop. Cop sucks. We can be cute also. You’re cute.” He tilted his head with a smile. “And sexy.”

“You’re beautiful.”

“Thanks!”

“Let’s take a pic’ that look like us. That’s what I’d like.”

“Then you must pass your arms around my neck!”

Niles pressed himself against him and passed an arm around his shoulders. Gavin hugged him back and when he started to take the pics, they were looking each other because… what looking else?

  Gavin stretched as the Human was looking furniture on his telephone. Except the poster and the photo, he hadn’t choice anything. He really wasn’t good at that. Each time, he asked to the Android his advices. But he couldn’t decide. Each time he looked all those things, that seemed useless for him, too bright? Too big? Too ridicule? And when he asked to Gavin his advice… He loved everything. More it was useless, bright, big and ridicule, more he loved. He seemed to think it was the point to decorating.

But he couldn’t. He needed something useful.

And he felt so stupid because he needed so much to have something useful when it wasn’t the point. For example, he even never had a coverlet.

“I can’t do that,” he finally gave up.

“Hang in there!” Gavin said, pushing him at the temple.

“Hm… Maybe.”

“Let’s try from somewhere else. What do you need?”

“I need…”

Niles groaned. He had everything he needed, of course. When he needed something, he bought it and there we are.

“Where did you live when you were cop?” he asked. “What did you have there?”

Gavin looked away and took the skirts of his hoodie to tug it.

Damn. He had made a mistake.

Once again.

“I lived at the Precinct. With the others Androids. We were supposed to be in Standby and used when they needed us…”

“But you…”

“I quickly stopped to go in Standby. But… I wasn’t a Deviant yet.”

Niles nodded. In fact, he didn’t know well the Androids. He had few cases but due to his mother’s relation with them, and Elijah Kamski, he didn’t really know what he should know about them. The most he knew, it was because of case he had with Connor.

That wasn’t much.

Gavin probably knew better than him if he was Deviant yet or not. Thought he’d said he was surely already since he stopped to do what he must do…

“Still, there was nothing there.”

“Then, you should definitely help me.”

“You only ask that because you don’t know what to do!”

“Just a bit.”

Gavin smiled to him. “You can’t fool me!” He bent over him and looked the phone.

Niles was looking for colorful pencil. Why not? It was a start.

“Hm… What room do you want change the most?” the Android asked.

The Human frowned. It was hard. Each room needed to be changed if you think about brightening everything. But he needed to do something important. He needed to change because he wanted to be able to face this world again. He felt so many strange things now. A second he felt he could do the difference, got up and just start to live again and the last one, everything was crumbling in the floor.

It was like trying to do a beautiful drawing with domino in the middle of the storm.

He couldn’t even figure out what drawing he wanted to do since the wind was so powerful.

Gavin stared him patiently, glancing sometime toward the window where you could see the snow. He even looked him as he was pushing back that hoodie. He wanted to rise and turn around the sofa to kiss that LED which never stopped changing its color. In a way, you could think this GV200 was weak but for Niles who never showed emotion because it was bad, that looked so powerful.

Sometimes, he was jealous of his brother because he had so much joy in his live. Each time he thought about him, there was a mix of powerful joy and awful sadness because he didn’t get why they were twin, raised in the same way and still…

“Can you sleep?”

“No. Only went to standby.”

“So you find no interest at sleeping?”

“It’s strange to explain. I can if I want and sometime, I even can… dream? I think?” He shrugged. “Never analyzed that.”

“What are you doing when I’m sleeping?”

Gavin shrugged. “Stuff.” He watched him. “What are you trying to ask?”

Niles sighed and looked his phone. In fact, the Android’s chin was almost on his shoulder and he could feel his warm. That pushed his heart to beat way faster.

“Don’t look at me like that, Niles Stern. I was a great Detective, you know. Dare to ask.”

“Will you say ‘yes’?” Niles said.

“It’s not the question I expected,” Gavin smiled.

“But if you say no…”

“You’re a tiny asshole.” Gavin looked him from toe to head. “You’re a big asshole! Even depress like you’re, you seem to be really skilled to have what you want? Seeing you in an interrogation room was probably really hot.”

“Never watched me doing that,” Niles replied. He sighed and his thumb pressed the screen, now black, of his phone. “Will you be okay… to sleep with me?”

“Yes.”

“Then…” Niles glanced toward his bedroom.

He never had needed a double bed, only a bed for him and nothing else. Yes, he had already brought partner there but he never intended to share the night with them as long as they had receive enough pleasure.

One time, Connor had been there and taunted him a bit because he wanted to sleep with him but except that, he really never had needed a bed for two.

Though he wasn’t sure he really needed one now. Being on Gavin was so good…

The GV200 was waiting for him to talk so he finished.

“We need to have a new bed.”

“Yeah! That’s the spirit! Take the most useless and ridicule one!”

Niles winced a bit. “Do you want? Maybe we could have something useful?”

“But not common. We will have a bedspread really zany.”

“Okay.”

Niles activated his phone and started to look. Gavin didn’t miss he wanted a coverlet with cat and he saw a lot very nice. This one with a bunch of cat, the other black with a white cat, this one with a big kitten. Or this one with “my place, cat’s place” with the cat’s place so big. What about the grumpy cat? The cat doing a fuck? So much! He could have chosen them all. And then, Niles found the ‘perfect one’, ‘really nice and zany’.

A white one with an effect like you had a cat sleeping in the edge of the cover.

“This one!”

“Damn you’re so cute,” Gavin said before kissing his cheek.

“You like it?” Niles asked.

“Yay! And for the bed?”

The man put this bedspread in the basket, knowing he’ll need some blankets and cover and maybe more pillow but first looked after a bed. He felt bold! Gavin was there and he was looking and he thought the quilt he had chosen was zany! He was doing well and he felt a bit of excitation. He couldn’t wait to try that and to send a pic to Connor. He will be so impress!

For the bed, he searched a lot.

He saw Gavin looking excited when they found a hamburger bed but he really couldn’t buy that. And that wouldn’t be cute with the bedspread! They find bed with soft curtains around and he liked that but it didn’t seem crazy enough. However, if he didn’t find a thing, that will be that.

They passed by high-tech and strange bed, even kid-bed like with the mattress in big boat or other strangeness like that.

It was hard because sometimes, it seemed like Gavin was really up for one but he couldn’t. Or it was way too expensive. For example, they both liked the one surrounded by woods but it was ten thousand dollars! Niles didn’t understand of that could work.

Some were funny thought. They laughed at the chocolate-bed and Gavin was really hyped by the big cat though that looked more like a joke than a bed. They found out a bed in a skull and Niles was a bit pleased but he could never sleep in that because it didn’t look comfy at all.

And there, he found something perfect!

“This one. What do you think about this one?”

It was an elevated bed but under it, there was a cupboard, some drawer and bookshelves.

Niles turned his head toward since Gavin hadn’t say a thing.

“It’s not good?”

Gavin bent on him and kissed him tenderly. “It’s perfect,” he said.

“You looked disappointed,” the man said, frowning.

Though, he had a tiny-tiny smile because of the kiss. It was just a peck, something quick but honestly? It was perfect and full of love.

“Absolutely not.” In fact, he was disappointed by himself.

That level of zany was sweet and perfect for Niles.

“Do you think you need something else for your room?”

“Blankets, pillows… What do you think else?”

Gavin shook his head.

“We don’t need to hurry up. This will be already awesome.”

“Okay,” Niles replied.

The GV200 watched him as he was looking for the materials they needed. Instead of white, maroon, black, grey, the Human went for color a bit brightly. He liked the blue-grey since few days and the light blue so he chose those tones.

“I’m really proud of you,” Gavin said softly to him.

And Niles’ heart shivered because… guess what? Except Connor, nobody never said that to him…

[rachelisnotatwork]

Iceland: finally we see the light!

The worst bit about flying to Iceland, or I should probably add flying to Iceland when you are too cheap to pay for a decent airline, is that you have to dress like you are going on a solo trek to the South Pole in order to reduce the weight in your suitcase. Luckily it was quite cold the day we left but we were still glowing, red-faced, as we headed to the airport wearing snow boots, scarves, big coats, all our heaviest stuff in our hand luggage etc.

The flight there was pretty uneventful and it was a beautifully clear day, which meant for good views over the sleeping tourist by the window. When we arrived we just had to pick up our car and go.

Now by this stage in the “life of constant holidays” game, we are pretty much Hertz deluxe members which means what normally happens is we book a smart car and turn up to be upgraded to a minibus. Often we have to scale back the excesses of the upgrade because we don’t want the hassle of trying to park a giant car/fuelling up a giant car. So we were pretty confident that whilst we’d booked a tiny and shit car, that wouldn’t be what we were given. Well that smugness came to an abrupt end when we collected our tiny and shit car. Turns out that Iceland isn’t one of those free upgrade locations...and car rental is expensive here so they had no desire to give us a freebie. So we puttered into town in our tiny and shit car, a journey made far more stressful than it needed to be by the fact that Marcel’s phone is an early adopter of Brexit and the GPS locator dot on google maps only seems to work in the UK. After a lot of swearing we did make it to our surprisingly chilly airbnb. It was in a converted garage and the host had made the interesting decision not to install an extractor fan but instead keep the windows open 24/7 (in Iceland electricity is pretty much free so no one cares about their heating bills). We closed the windows because the humidity definitely wasn’t our problem. 

We decided in the evening we’d go to the Pizza Restaurant we liked, so we headed into town, struggled to park (there’s a lot of snow, which means getting a tiny shit car into a space is quite hard) and skittered down the pavement in the -10c weather to the restaurant. Only to find it had stopped being a pizza joint last week and was now trialling its new menu. I wasn’t hugely keen as they didn’t have much of a vegetarian selection but Marcel didn’t want to re-park or go out walking in the cold so decided to stick with it.

I asked for a pearl barley dish, without the lamb that was supposed to be on top of it. Marcel selected their rutabaga dish. I advised him not to select this as vegetarian is always interpreted in expensive restaurants as “on a diet”. He said I was being silly and it would be a decent portion. He ended up with a palm-sized dish of pureed rutabaga with some crispy slices of it on top. Didn’t want to say “I told you so” but felt I had to, because that’s what life is like in a long-term relationship. 

The next day we headed out of town after a delicious breakfast somewhere that looked like a construction site, but was actually a decent cafe. We had quite a long way to drive so we decided we’d drive straight out to Vik and lunch there. As we headed out of town, the roads got pretty icy and once the wind picked up there were drifts of snow on the road. Always reassuring to see some people digging out a 4 x 4 that’s skidded off the road when you are in a tiny 2WD city car with about 4 inches of clearance.

We had lunch in Vik, which has got much busier since the last time we were there (it has 2 places you can lunch now rather than one) and went for a quick but windy walk on the beach, before setting off again.

We wanted to visit Jökulsárlón the next day in the morning and since there’s not much in the way of accommodation in those parts we had booked into a place called the Fosshotel Glacier Lagoon. It was surprisingly busy and we had to park right the other side of the car park. In my business putting on my gloves, I completely failed to notice Marcel getting out the car and immediately falling over on the ice, but thankfully he was uninjured and thus was able to complete his usual suitcase duties.

Our room had a pretty nice window seat overlooking the view down to the sea so we snuggled up on there and read books before dinner. The only option was the hotel restaurant and I decided I didn’t want to know how much I was going to pay for dinner so refused to do the conversions. It was an...interesting meal. My starter involved so much horse radish I spent the rest of dinner constantly wanting to sneeze. We’d decided we wanted to go hang out in the sauna after dinner so were slightly impatiently waiting for the bill, which they were tardy bringing. The delay was soon compensated for though by the announcement from the staff just after we’d paid our bill that the Northern lights were visible outside. We immediately stampeded onto the balcony to see a very impressive green streak of light across the sky.

We were torn between “this could disappear any second” and “I’m really cold and I want to go get my coat” so in the end we made a mad dash for our room, layers and my camera. Maddeningly, I almost always bring my tripod with me on holiday, but this time pressed for space and weight and with so many unsuccessful trips behind us I’d not bothered. I’m not sure I’d have photographed things much better with it though, because I hadn’t really appreciated that there’s nothing really to focus on through your view finder when what you are trying to photograph is green shimmering light on a black background. I tried though.

It did look amazing. We walked out to the front of the hotel (which incidentally involved us and a bunch of other guests stampeding past the sauna full of confused nude people to get out the quickest exit) and stood in the snow, watching the green waves slowly undulate and shiver across the sky. I hadn’t really got a grasp on the speed of how they move before. Sometimes they seemed like they barely moved at all, and indeed for at least an hour there was one solid green band across the sky that didn’t really change. In other areas you had to look at the edges to notice any movement at all. But occasionally something rapid would furl and unfurl and move across the whole sky in 10-20 seconds.

The other thing that I hadn’t anticipated is that I guess the light in the atmosphere warps our perception of the light from the stars so they looked very unfamiliar. Much bluer than normal and Sirius was swapping between flashing blue and orange so rapidly we thought it was a plane for a while.

Eventually we got cold so went back inside and sat on our window seat and watched it until about midnight. After that it had got pretty dim and we decided we’d better shut the blinds or neither of us would really get any sleep.

The next morning we rose with the dawn and headed over to Jökulsárlón. We did not want to pay 28 euros a head for breakfast in our hotel and we’d vaguely remembered there was a cafe there, so we decided to eat there. I don’t remember the food options being so basic last time. It has also got considerably busier so the indoor toilet is no longer open to visitors and we had to go out to the (thankfully perfectly clean) portaloos in the car park which were absolutely freezing. Climbing up a small hillock to look over the lagoon exposed us to such lacerating winds that my phone promptly went from 98% battery to 9% from the horrors of the cold. I had to tuck it inside all my layers to keep it alive. It was beautiful though.

There are two things to see at Jökulsárlón- the lagoon where ice bergs calve and you can see cute seals pop in and out between them and the so-called Diamond Beach where the ice bergs meet the sea and often get washed up on the shore. Last time we’d driven between the two sites but with the thick snow on the ground we didn’t dare take our car to the beach and instead plodded through the deep snow and strong winds over there.

It was beautiful, especially since unlike last time the sun was out and was glittering through the ice. However the wind was so cold it burnt my face, which ended up really painful and weirdly bright red on one side by the time we returned to the car.

We had gone to Jökulsárlón quite early because we had another 5 hours drive ahead to our Airbnb in Seyðisfjörður. The only reason we’d come back to Iceland was we’d loved our airbnb in Seyðisfjörður so much the last time we’d been there that we resolved we’d return one winter and just hang out there. And this was our plan.

The views as we drove east were spectacular. 

The road conditions driving out east were….pretty appalling. After Jökulsárlón, there aren’t many tourists which means there really isn’t much traffic. I think we saw more reindeers than cars as we fishtailed on ice and wondered why in the hell they only had crash barriers off the side of some of the roads that hooked around cliffs over the sea. At one point we drove past an abandoned van on it’s side with “accident” tape around it. By the time it was getting dark there was such a high wind driving over one of the passes you couldn’t see more than the 5m road marking pole in front of you. Which is when you really rue your car rental choices of a Kia Rio.

The winds had at least calmed down a bit by the time we arrived in Seyðisfjörður. All we had to do was get up our drive to our airbnb overlooking the valley. I said to Marcel I hoped the car would make it. He said he wouldn’t mind if we got stuck in the snow now because we could walk to our airbnb. He had to say that...seconds later our car gently skidded off the road and into the huge snow bank on the side of the drive.

Our hosts had apparently been supposed to email saying meet them in the town because the drive way had been blocked by a lot of snow, but they hadn’t. However they did use their monster truck to spend the next 45 minutes extracting us from the snowbank, so swings and roundabouts. In the end we ended up leaving our car at their house in town and getting a lift up to our cabin with our stuff. Thankfully we’d already done a shop and planned to self-cater so we could recuperate from the long and slightly terrifying drive with a soak in the hot tub and dinner.

Our hosts had been very emphatic that we could ask them for lifts in and out of town whenever we wanted, but a combination of Britishness and embarrassment about disturbing their dinner to get them to dig our car out meant that we decided to walk into town instead. It was a pretty gentle and pleasant 2.5km downhill and we felt very smug especially when we saw some locals “walking” their dog by driving slowly as the dog chased the car (later saw the tracks of someone who’d been driving their snowmobile to exercise their dog). 

The supermarket in town was...weirdly British. There were McVities digestives (Marcel discovered the chocolate and caramel ones on this holiday so I ended up having two packets wedged in my pocket for the journey home). Suede was playing over the tannoy. And a woman, who turned out to be the owner with a very strong midlands accent on the till. Apparently she met her Icelandic husband in Nottingham.

We pottered back up the hill (slightly less pleasant walk against gravity and into the wind when it is -12c outside) and spent the rest of the day living the dream eating biscuits, reading books and popping in and out of the hot tub. Just as good as I remembered it.

The next day we got slightly more adventurous and decided to go on a little snowshoeing adventure. It was -14c out and REALLY windy so I decided I didn’t want to venture far. Marcel wanted to go on the ridge behind our cottage but I said it looked avalanchy so we continued along our level of the valley a bit further. I love snowshoeing but our tracks were getting covered in seconds with the waves of snow blowing across the ground and it was incredibly cold so we only stayed out for about half an hour. When we got back Marcel said he was going to ask our hosts if it were safe to go up higher into the mountains but his conclusion was that it couldn’t be an avalanche risk area or they wouldn’t have built the town there. A quick google later and we discovered that the town is the site of Iceland’s worst ever avalanche tragedy with 24 people killed at the end of the 19th century and a factory flattened at the end of the 20th century. After that we decided to stick to the hot tub in safer activities.

The next day, despite stocking up on enough chocolate digestives to last several lifetimes, we had to go back into town to start our car because we’d forgotten that car batteries don’t really like it brutally cold. So down to town we pottered. Problem was, Marcel forgot that key fob batteries also don’t like it cold and he’d left the fob in an outer pocket. So when we got to the car we couldn’t remotely open it. We had to manually open it with the key in the lock, which triggered the alarm to go off. I think our hosts, whose house we’d parked outside, were fairly sure we were actually handicapped when it came to motor vehicles. We drove the car around a little bit and then tried to park it again, only to find ourselves menaced by a goose. I know this sounds like a joke but it was hanging out in our parking space, wouldn’t move and then tried to get inside our car. We had to lure it away with crisps (not sure if salt and vinegar crisps are good for geese. If anyone found a dead goose later that day, sorry[ish]). 

We pottered back up the hill and settled down to the rest of the day; an exhausting cycle of hot tub and reading in our beautiful cottage.

By the night time it had started to lightly snow. We decided we’d have a really long final hot tub soak so lazed in there like hippos. I was trying to catch some snowflakes on my tongue (sod’s law, none seemed to fall in my mouth but they kept repeatedly landing directly on my eyeballs) and suddenly we saw the northern lights again. Which was incredibly luck considering the night was reasonably cloudy. They whirled around for about 5 minutes and then disappeared, which was a very nice last evening at our cottage.

The next day we nervously checked the road conditions and headed off. Going south there was a huge storm forecast and the road was pretty much out of bounds. Luckily we were heading back to Reyjavik via the northern route. Step one of the journey was get over the pass to Egilsstaðir. No problem. The next step of the journey, which was between Egilsstaðir and Mývatn, is the least driven part of the circular road around Iceland, Route 1. We drove for about an hour. All was well. Then we noticed some cars slowing down ahead to find that the snow had drifted across an uphill portion of the road, where a little car had skidded and got stuck on the opposite side of the road (not dangerous, because there’s about 10 cars an hour on this road). This was unsettling to us in our tiny Kia as we clearly couldn’t turn around as the Southern roads were out, there is no other road ploughed at this time of year to get around this, and our car was clearly no better suited to it than the skidded car that a jeep was now trying to rescue. Marcel got out of the car and walked the hill to better look at it. We had zero phone reception (annoyingly we did at most places along the route but we had none there) to call the roads number to see when the next snowplough was due. So in the end we decided to risk it. We skidded and skittered but we eventually made it through!  Which was both good and bad as now we were aware that if we hit any further bad road conditions we’d be really screwed as we’d be unlikely to be able to go back the way we came as the snow was continuing to drift. We did however make it to Mývatn okay, which was good because after that the road is a bit more used so a bit more ploughed.

We had lunch in the cow restaurant we’d been to before and ate rye bread cooked in a lava vent and looked out the window at the 3ft of snow piled outside and debated thermal baths over further snowshoeing. 

There was however a road that wasn’t ploughed in winter but led up to a caldera, which we thought might be nice to snowshoe on as would have a level terrain under the snow and a decent end point. So we drove down there….only to find that some extremely optimistic/dim tourist had decided to drive their 2wd small car on what was clearly an unploughed road with several feet of snow on it and got stuck, and now the entrance to the unploughed road was filled with vehicles trying to rescue them. With our plans to snowshoe thwarted, we decided to head to the Mývatn baths.

The downside of this is that they turned out to be in a selectively extremely windy spot. We got out the car to find a wind speed best described as “scouring”. We are made of stern stuff though so headed bravely onwards. The pools are obviously hot, but the wind was so strong it was generating waves in the pool (fine) and then breaking those waves into spray in the air. Which meant the only tolerable thing to do was float on your back with only your nose and mouth above water. Unfortunately I suffer from a terrible affliction known as “extremely buoyant legs” so struggled over the next hour to stop them surfacing and exposing my feet and knees to a little light hypothermia. I ended up tucking them under Marcel’s legs which are incredibly unbuoyant (how lucky that of all the people in the world I found my leg buoyancy opposite).

We eventually got out and drove onto Akureyri. Our accomodation was right in the middle of town on a steep hill. So steep and so badly gritted (which I feel is a strange thing for a road in a pretty big [for Iceland] town in a very snowy part of the world to be) that our car got stuck trying to get up it. Eventually we got enough traction to make it into the car park of our hotel, but we decided to limit dinner choices to “restaurants within walking distance”. Luckily there was a burger joint in our street that we could totter carefully to.

Our final day was 6 hours of driving to get to the airport in time for our flight. Which was pretty stressful. Not going to lie. There seemed to be an uncanny (given how empty the roads were) link between where the snow was thickest and most slippery and the sudden emergence of a large lorry barrelling along in the other direction (the ring road is a single lane in each direction for about 99% of the road). But we made it! With just enough time to collapse with nervous exhaustion and eat some sandwiches before our flight home. Despite the terrors of driving and the discovery that renting a tiny car in winter is only a good idea 75% of the time, it was an amazing relaxing week and also FINALLY we got some decent northern lights!

[theangeliemarie]

How mental health has affected my studies

by Angelie Marie Quirog

Until two years ago, I never thought Id be the person talking about how mental health has affected my studies. This was not due to ignorance or lack of education on my part. On the contrary, in fact. I just didnt like talking about myself. I know how to sit quietly with someone suffering from severe depression, and exactly what to do if someone has a panic attack. Ive never been afraid of mental illness because I feel like its been a part of my life forever.

I was 12 when it started but it wasnt until I was 15 when it got diagnosed, at first it was just severe depression and moderate anxiety but it grew to something else, Borderline Personality Disorder. I've had a rough time during my early teens, I messed with the wrong crowd, got in to fights, did unspeakable things, self-harmed, did drugs, got drunk just to feel something. It was my temporary fix.

When I was 15, I tried to kill myself. I was diagnosed with depression and put on some medication. I was referred to a therapist. And it didnt help. I couldnt do anything. I couldnt sleep but I couldnt get out of bed, I couldnt wash or put on clean clothes, I couldnt even put the light on in my room because it was too bright. I was in my senior year of high school when I stopped, I couldnt take it any longer.

Over time, I started to get better. Slowly, I found I was able to do small things; get up, make a cup of tea, maybe even read a book. I was making progress, which was starting to terrify me, because I wanted to explain that I felt like I was living someone elses life. What had happened, I wanted to know, to that person who could do all those things? My brain felt slow and sluggish in my head. Ive been writing songs and poetry all my life, suddenly I couldnt string together a simple verse. It was as if someone had taken me apart and put me back in the wrong order.

Well the truth is that mental illness has completely changed my life. I came to learn that my life simply doesnt work like that anymore. I was very embarrassed about having been so ill that Id had to drop out of University, even if it was only temporary. I felt that I was no longer one of the good ones, that I could not handle the pressures of academic life. I was also terrified of it happening again. Depression had struck so suddenly and with so little warning that I had no idea if or when it might happen again. I still dont. I began to suffer, quite badly from anxiety. If youve never had anxiety, imagine that butterfly feeling that you get when youre about to do something for the first time. Combine that with the sick sinking feeling that you get when you feel guilty, and add to that those feelings of shame that creep in on you sometimes when youre trying to get to sleep at night, those times when you remember all the stupid things that you have ever said. Then imagine changing temperature all the time, imagine being hungry but feeling so sick that you cant eat. Imagine shaking and having a dry mouth. Now imagine feeling like that all the time.

I couldnt concentrate in class and I couldnt keep up with my lessons because I had become convinced that I couldnt understand anything. My peers responded differently; some were encouraging and tried to tell me that I had such potential and that I needed to just grasp it. That only made me feel worse. Others quickly grew frustrated with me, not understanding why I was struggling, and seeing my need for help and reassurance as attention seeking. I stopped going to class. At this point, I had missed two deadlines and was beginning to feel that my return to study was a total failure. I was obvious to me, and, I thought, to everyone else, that I just didnt have what it takes. I couldnt do face them again, and then the thought of leaving my house to see them, and pretending youre okay at the same time, is quite a lot to ask of someone who sometimes cant leave the house without having a panic attack.

My life is quite different now. I have to think about everything. I cant stay out all night, and I can only occasionally have a drink. I used to be involved in everything; campaigns, societies, music, sports; now I have to choose carefully. If I begin to feel anxious or tired, I have to stop what I am doing and go home.

Currently, Id say that my mental health is in good shape. How long it will stay that way, I cannot guess. It might be forever. It might be a month. A week. A day. But I do know, however, just how important that safety net is to me.