#Guess who wrote this in three hours with a fever!

[drifting-pieces-blog-blog]

Can’t fight a fever like that

Summary: One shot. Sick/comfort/care fic. Marc has a fever and the system struggles with how to deal with it.

Warning: Fever. And then it's soft.  

Word Count:  3499

---

Everything hurt. 

Marc could feel his muscles aching all the way from his head down to his big toe. Even his joints felt a dull constant pain as if he needed to pop them just to make them settle right, yet no matter how he squirmed the ache was still there. 

Movement was a different pain. His skin felt hot and over sensitized. Any pressure or texture against him felt like fire. He would have stripped and kicked his sheets off if not for the wave of chills that rippled through him at random. 

He was hot. He was on fire. And he couldn’t get warm. Shivering and shaking only reminded him how much everything hurt. 

If only he could sleep. Just sleep it off. He could close his sore eyelids and give his dry and throbbing eyes a rest from the blaring light. Maybe then his ears would stop feeling like they were stuffed with cotton that somehow amplified every little sound. Tapping from some leaky faucet that was boring a hole into his brain. An idle engine outside that just kept thrumming and thrumming and thrumming down into his very chest and soul. 

He squirmed in his sheets, arms sliding over the raspy linen that had once been perfectly fine but now felt like sandpaper. 

Sweat beaded his forehead and ran into his burning eyes. He wanted to roll over and shove his head into his pillow but any position beside being on his back was wrong. It was all wrong. He thrashed in his sheets and felt his hair tangle and plaster to his forehead. 

He was sick and he was in the middle of a sensory overload with nothing to do but lay there and struggle not to have the ultimate melt down. It would feel good. No one was here to witness it. He was safe in his own home. He could kick the sheets off and thrash around while crying and throwing things. Oh how he wanted to take that stupid clock with the too bright glowing letters and throw it across the room… 

But the effort that would take when he could hardly sit up and reach for the ice water he had somehow managed to put next to his bed in a rare and amazing moment of forethought. 

He sipped the water through a straw, feeling the cold liquid hit his too hot mouth like a goddess bringing rains to a desert. He nearly did start to cry as he continued to sip. He had to take such small sips. His throat felt swollen and raw, threatening to reject the precious cool liquid. He had to trick it into accepting it by taking the smallest sips, letting it trickle down into his fiery pit of a stomach. 

Relief hit him as his internal fire was momentarily quenched. Sliding back down into the bed, he smiled to himself. “Take that you stupid fever.” 

Oh, but the fever was coy and just as he felt maybe he could find some comfort, the chills set in again. As if to say “Alright, you want to be cool?” 

His whole body seized up as he shivered involuntarily, bringing the pain and hyper sensory back to the front in full force. 

Somehow he managed to slip in and out of sleep. It would feel like hours of fitful sleep was on him until he opened his eyes and stared at the clock. It had been half an hour and it was only one A.M. 

He curled up into a little ball and gave in. At least the fitful dreams were an escape from his burning flesh and inability to find comfort in any way. 

But this time the dreams did not come. The fever had one last game to play as it slithered inside his mind, stretching out his thoughts and warping any sense of reality that he tried to cling to. 

The light of the clock is the moon. He reached for it. Come to me, Marc. Let me wrap you in my garments of old. Let me take you from this desert.

He woke to find himself clutching the alarm clock in his outstretched arms. He felt the buttons on top and deliriously pressed the long flat snooze button. No Khonshu. I can’t go out like this. I look terrible.  

He shoved the clock away and stared at his hands. An image came to mind. Something he could touch that would feel wonderful, even in this hyper state. 

It was golden and glittered with such an amazing pattern. Like scales or chain-mail. Yet it looked smooth and sleek as it hugged something so soft and firm and round. 

“Layla…” He held up his hand as if he could summon her by thought alone. The Scarlet Scarab outfit. Every piece of it looked so wonderful. So beautiful on her. It highlighted and complimented her own natural coloration and felt so easy to look out. No bright and taunting colors like some heroes. He could look at her for hours in this… He wanted to study her. To sit down and stare at the cloth at her waist. It looked so soft and light. To touch the stretchy fabric that clung to her thighs.. It looked cool and he wanted to know if it had a touch to it. Was it smooth? Was it lightly bumpy? Would he be able to feel each pattern? Or would he simply feel her soft body give under his fingers as he slid his hands up to the leather belt…. 

“Why didn’t I touch it?” He groaned and let his hands fall back. “Stupid suit.” He had clung to her and only felt the rough and heavy gloves of the suit. How he wished he could have taken the armor off and just felt her. Then he could know… Know what it felt like… Know what his fingers would feel… Know relief from this hell of rough bed sheets and itchy pajamas. 

Marc?

“Layla… Commer a sec. I just wanna… I gotta know…” 

Marc. 

“Is it smooth? It looks so smooth.” 

Marc!

He jolted awake, eyelids fluttering. “Hm. What? What is it?” 

“Marc let me take over. You’re miserable.” Steven appeared in his now melted glass of ice water. 

Melted like me. “I’m a puddle of condensation.” Marc smiled. 

“Marc, give me the body.” Steven’s face frowned at him. 

“No. I got this.” Marc attempted to roll over and only managed to slide his legs under the sheets enough to remind himself that he hated everything right now. “Ugh.” 

“You do not ‘got this’. You just likened yourself to condensation. Give me the body.” Steven reached. 

“No… It’s my fever. You don’t want this…” Marc fought back with surprising strength considering he wasn’t even sure he was seeing straight. Steven didn’t deserve to feel like this. It was miserable. Marc had felt worse. He could handle this. Steven had never even been sick before! 

“Give me the body! Marc! Let go!” Steven struggled and felt a brief moment of pain as their headache bloomed from the effort. 

“It’s mine. My fever. You can’t handle this. I got it fair and square.” Marc grinned as he lay back in a painful victory. “No fever for you.” 

Steven glared. “Alright. Fine. You want to play hard ball?” 

Marc looked at the glass with what he hoped was an expression that conveyed his victory. He grimaced and winced. “What’re you gonna do? Drink tea and eat horrible English food to chase it away? You just gonna lay here miserable and sad and going ‘Oh Marc you were right this is terrible. Take the body Marc take it back!’” He made pitiful little English sounds and coughed with the effort. 

Steven jutted his jaw out. “I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear any of that and that you’re delirious with fever.”

Marc chuckled softly, which turned to a pained moan as the headache only worsened when the muscles around his jaw tensed. 

“You asked for it.” Steven shrugged. “JAKE!” 

“No no wait! It's mine! I’m fine-” Marc fell to the back as relief washed over him. He slipped down in pure bliss as the pain washed away and at last he could rest with only the smallest of guilt lingering. He would apologize to Steven later. 

Jake lay there a moment, assessing the body and trying to figure out where Marc had gone wrong. “Ah. Idiota.” He tensed as he rolled out of bed. The stiffness was unreal and he staggered on his feet as he waited for the world to stop spinning. 

It was a slow stumble to the kitchen to refill the glass of water. A painful struggle as he forced his painful finger joints to grip the bottle of Tylenol. He took two easily then stumbled back to his bed. 

“He didn’t take anything?” Steven sounded utterly disappointed. “He was just going to lay there miserable until it passed?” 

Jake lay back with his eyes closed against the pounding headache that reminded him of fists beating him about the temple. “Si. He is always like this. Miserable until the fever breaks. Thinks it is the only way to ride it out.” 

“Why?” Steven was appalled as he watched Jake flinch and tense as he lay perfectly still on the bed as if he could somehow force the body into cooperation just as he could force Marc out of the driver’s seat. 

“I think he likes it.” Jake shrugged. “The pain. The loss of control. Self punishment perhaps. I have it now. We will recover. You can go back now.” He lifted a hand to wave Steven away, only managing to force it up a little as his fingers limply twitched. 

Steven frowned. “And you’re going to just what? Force it into submission? It’s a fever, Jake. You can’t control everything.” 

“I’m fine.” He gritted his teeth as the body started to shiver violently and Jake refused to pull up the blanket. “All in the mind. I’m not cold. It wants me to think I am cold. I know this trick. I will pull up the blankets and then be miserable and hot and sweaty.” 

Jake smiled to himself. He was not falling for this. He had fought many illnesses before. He could remember the chicken pox. Marc had been insufferable sitting there pitifully itching and crying and making it worse. Jake had shown that illness though. He had sat there perfectly still and stubborn. He had not given into the urge to itch. He was stronger than that. 

“Are you seriously going to brute force your way through this?” Steven stared as Jake grimaced and held perfectly still. The tension alone was sure to cause pain once he fully relaxed. 

“I will win. I always win. I have to win. No one is there to take care of us.” Jake shuddered and clenched his jaw tighter. “I have to do it. She was never there. There was no soup or kind words or care. I had to do this. I had to save Marc because they would not!” 

“Save?” Steven sighed. “Jake, it’s just the flu. This isn’t something you fight. This isn’t some hidden enemy that you have to pull Marc away from. You have to use a different method. You have to rest. You have to let the body just be.” 

Jake attempted to sit up as if trying to face Steven. “You think I am not strong enough? You think I haven’t done this many times before?” 

Steven jutted his chin out and nodded to himself. “Alright. That’s it. You two are going to get a serious talking to when this is over.” 

Jake wasn’t expecting it. Not from Steven. He was so focused on what he assumed was some sort of threat lurking in the corner that he was caught totally off guard when Steven yanked front from him. 

Jake made a move to take the body back but was already worn out. He slowly relaxed back as Steven struggled to his feet. 

Steven staggered around the apartment. It all felt terrible. Each step was a struggle of pain and balance. But he couldn’t just lay there feeling so uncomfortable. “Comfort…” Steven reasoned. “We need to be comfortable.” 

He gathered a few things and tossed them to the bed. “Comfort…” His quickly worn out mind latched on to anything even remotely comforting. 

He grabbed the phone from his desk and dialed. “Hey love, sorry to bother you so late…”

–

“Seriously, you’ve never had this before?” Layla set a tray down across Steven’s lap. 

“I can’t recall ever being sick.” Steven shrugged, though it was weak and painful. “I mean it makes sense… Why would she care for us when we’re sick when she wouldn’t even care for us when we were healthy?” 

He had several pillows fluffed up behind him to help him sit up and a shawl draped across his shoulders to fight off the chills or easily remove when he got too hot. 

Layla sighed and gently brushed the sweat from his forehead with a cool washcloth. “Drink.” She pointed to the hot cup of tea before him. “My father used to make this for me when I was sick. Honey, Lemon, and Ginger. Very simple but so soothing.” 

Steven blew on the cup as he held it in his hands, feeling the radiating heat soothe his sore finger joints. He took a sip and felt the instant relief on his sore throat. 

With each sip, he slowly coaxed out the one that needed this the most. 

Jake blinked down at the cup in his hands. He looked up at Layla as she reached up and again wiped his forehead. It was nice… The horrible sweaty feeling he hated so much was wiped away with the cool and gentle touch. 

He sipped the tea and found it to be such a wonderful mix of sweet and heat and tangy. Drinking it in, he relaxed back, letting his stiff back sink into the pillows. “Hermosa…” 

“See? Not so bad to relax, hm?” She smiled at him and watched him slowly relax his shoulders and neck. Each sip seemed to relax him until he looked so small in the fortress of pillows Steven had built up. 

Irritated at first with Steven’s plea for someone to just come and take care of them at this hour of the night, she suddenly understood as she looked at them now. 

He looked so fragile there, surrounded by items of attempted comfort. Things Steven had desperately pulled close as he tried to figure out what it was he needed. What would help chase away the fever dreams and painful aches. 

Every pillow and blanket was piled around them. He had changed into the softest and loosest pajamas he owned and he had even grabbed a Taweret plush that he had gotten for a laugh, tucking it in at his side to use as an armrest and something to cling to. 

“Do you think you can hold down anything?” She had made a few stops at the first open stores she had come across as she trekked to the flat in the dark. 

Jake looked up at Layla, considering the question. “Food?” 

“Yes.” She smiled. “Your body is using up so much energy to fight for you. You need to give it what it needs so it can fight properly.” 

Jake considered this and nodded his approval. The body was fighting for him. He didn’t need to do anything but give it what it needed. “Food might be nice…” He shifted back into the pillows and pulled the shawl closer around his shoulders as a light chill washed over him. 

“It will take a little time. Do you have a stuffy head at all?” She got up and moved to the kitchen, quietly pulling out some cooking supplies to heat something up. 

Jake shrugged. “Maybe a little.” 

“Hmm.” She set something on the stove then moved to get something out of her bag. She opened a jar and scooped out something that looked oily. 

Jake frowned. “What is that?” 

“Relax. You won’t even notice it.” She pushed his loose collar down gently and rubbed the ointment over his chest and collar bone. Her touch was slow and delicate as she moved her hand in small circles, rubbing in the ointment. It soothed his sore muscles and even her radiating heat was hardly noticed as he closed his eyes, letting his mind follow her fingers. 

She pressed a little harder as she rubbed his shoulders and the back of his neck, feeling the tight muscles start to give as she worked them over gently. 

Jake took a slow breath and felt his sinuses suddenly open as air at last worked past a blockage he hadn’t even known was there. He inhaled deeply and felt the body suddenly seem to release all the tension it had been storing with each shiver. 

Layla got up as Jake drifted into a relaxed slumber. His face was relaxed and she marveled at how there was no way to tell who was behind the wheel in this state. Did they all dream together? Did they share this moment or did they each dream their own piece? 

She went back to the kitchen to continue to prep the food, checking on him now and then to make sure his dreams stayed soft. 

Marc woke some time later, feeling more human than before, but still horribly weak. He helplessly flailed as he struggled to pull at the blankets that had become tangled around him. Was that a plush? He must still be delirious. 

“Good morning.” Layla looked up from her spot on the couch, setting aside one of Steven’s books. “How are you feeling?” 

Marc groaned and kicked at his blankets. “Layla?” He looked around in confusion. “What’s wrong? Why are you here? What’s that smell?” 

Something smelled wonderful and earthy. He was surprised he could smell at all as he inhaled deeply. His stomach growled loudly and he flopped back in the bed again. 

Layla got up and moved over to him, fluffing his pillows and helping him to sit up before offering him a drink of water. “You are sick. Someone needed to come care for you. You are lucky I love you, Marc. Did you think I wouldn’t want to care for you?” 

Marc sipped the water, using it as an excuse not to answer. “Just a fever.” He shrugged and brushed his hair back. He was surprised to find his face clean. 

“Hm. It doesn’t matter Marc. You should let me decide if I’m going to help you or not.” She gave him a look then moved to the kitchen. There was a brief clattering then she returned with a bowl of lentil soup. “My parents used to make this for me when I had a cold.” 

He looked down at the bowl to find a smooth yet hearty bowl of soup. He could smell the spices there that made him think of his time in Egypt. Warm and comforting it reminded him of home. Not of the hell that he had grown up in, that was not home. But of his home with Layla. Of her cooking this for him their first winter together as she cheerfully told him to eat up and warm his bones. 

Marc took a spoon full and let himself remember her sitting across from him at the table, her face nervous as he tried her soup for the first time. Her smile as he took another bite and sung his praises. He had not had it since… A regret that now he realized could be easily remedied. 

Each bite made him feel stronger and more like maybe everything before had been just a dream. 

Once finished he sat back and watched her clear the tray back to the kitchen. He smiled as he relaxed back. He could still feel the remains of the fever, but the fight was over. They had won together. 

“Thank you… For coming.” Marc looked away. 

“Of course. It’s what people do when they love one another. They take care of each other.” She smiled back at him. “And they let people take care of them.” 

Marc nodded and closed his eyes as he let his mind wander. “Hey Layla?” 

“Hm?” She moved to sit back on the couch with her book. 

“Do you still have that outfit from Cairo?” 

“Outfit? Which one?” She gave him a puzzled look. 

“The suit. The one from Taweret.” Marc pulled the shawl over his shoulders and nestled in, feeling the plush of the hippo goddess at his side. 

“Why?” Layla blinked in surprise. “I’m sure if I asked she’d be more than thrilled to lend it to me again…” 

“I bet it feels nice…” Marc drifted back to sleep, a grin on his face. 

[undead-supernova]

Right Here, Right Now

Chapter 9 / Chapter 10 / Chapter 11

Masterlist

plot: corroded coffin's eddie munson agrees to an interview for the first time in three years, alongside a new album that is most definitely about you.

Pairings: modernrockstar!Eddie x fem!popstar!Reader (curvy!reader, bisexual!reader)

Warnings: talks of familial death, depressing lyricism, angst

wc: 4.1k

note: I also wrote all of the lyrics in this chapter and made the images above of the album's cover and tracklist. I feel so proud of how much my hard work is paying off. DON'T USE THESE LYRICS ANYWHERE ELSE THANK YEW

Just one more mile.

You could do it. No, really, you could.

Tour really was coming up in the next six months and you had to build up your stamina now or else you weren’t going to survive. Things really were better now, though. You’d gotten rid of your personal trainer and switched to someone who did not suggest that you stop eating. It seemed like Sophia was a better fit anyways. If anything, she told you to eat more.

So here you were, on your poor attempt at a night run.

And you promised yourself that you wouldn’t think about him and how his album was dropping any day now.

Definitely, definitely not.

It was nearly midnight anyways, a few out from the witching hour but that’s not how it went for you. If anything, you were cursed with the threat of midnight being the worst hour of each day. It was like some switch flicked on and you were a mess of a woman, splayed out in bed and thinking. Furiously scribbling in a notebook as you lost to the thoughts in your head. Curled up in a ball in the shower, the white noise perfect for your never-ending thinking.

And who could forget sitting in your kitchen with a bowl of Kraft mac and cheese. Don’t forget the thinking.

Thinking about Eddie. His voice. The way he was willing to give you more than you deserved without any rhyme or reason. How desperate you felt to reconnect, to apologize profusely and beg for some semblance of forgiveness.

And now you were here, trying to outrun your problems while watching the headlights passing the windowpane.

Tried to stop thinking about how at any moment, Eddie could show up and you’d fall into his arms without any question. You’d tell him it didn’t matter. None of it did. And he’d say he wasn’t mad anymore and that he missed you and then you’d go on living like you once did.

Before you could lose yourself to wishing on headlights, a notification popped up on your phone.

         Spotify exclusive: Listen to Corroded Coffin’s new album now!

Without any warning, you lost your footing on the treadmill and fell backwards. Hit your head on the floor, stunned. Let the pain throb in your head for only a few seconds before you dragged your body upright and clicked on the album.

Your eyes scanned the track list, heart pumping incessantly as a bead of blood rushed down your forehead. 

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Quickly, you threw yourself into the shower to wash off before grabbing headphones and padding into your walk-in closet. Situated yourself in the back corner, your body fitting snuggly in isolation. 

And as you pressed that green play button, your grief washed over you at every line you called your favorite.

Welcome Home

         “Dad’s disappearing acts and the award-winning smile 

         saying ‘sure, I’ll be comin’ back’

         Well, I guess we’re both suckers for a little hope every once in a while

         And, mom, is that why you stayed? Waited up praying, decaying all alone

         Just so one day, you’d be able to say, ‘Welcome home’.”

Fever

         “How could you ever fight a fever? God dammit, she’s more than a flame

         Got her pinning me down, locked inside her heat wave

         Sweat dripping, flesh gripping, I melt from her gaze

         Just one more round, promise I’ll behave

         Come on, darling, why don’t you set me ablaze?”

The Cost

         “I ruined all the plans that hadn’t been made

         Loving you as the bellbirds erupted in a haunted chorus

         Rosy pink clouds turned into showers of blood and hate

         I’m trying, baby, I’m trying to find a way out for us

         But isn’t that the cost, darling? 

         Isn’t that the price of being with me?”

Tailor-Made

         “We’re the only ones walking through the neighborhood

         Sweetheart, don’t you think I know how to hide?

         I’d never speak it, but I’d buy every house if I could

         Marry you in secret, raise our kids benevolent and kind.”

Rose Petals (Interlude)

         “Take a boy-turned-man, crucifying himself at your altar

         Convince him your devoted infatuation will never falter

         Paint his skies a vibrant pink then turn him into sheet metal

         Leave him bleeding out, fractured, scattered like rose petals.”

As Good As Dead

         “What’s more cliché than a man saying he’d die without your love

         At least if I had an open vein, I’d feel something better than being numb

         ‘There’s no such thing as fate’ my thoughts screamed so fucking loud

         But there was comfort in blind faith, that ill-fated crowd

         Had a grip on your throat. Shit, maybe it always has

         But now that I’m as good as dead, I can’t help my bitter laugh.”

A Mirage of Lovers

         “There sat Elizabeth and Al,

         on the front porch of their first house

         Blind with momentary affection

         And I swear when I looked at you,

         I thought you were a lasting confection

         But I swear there’s a mirage of lovers

         Blurring in its reflection.”

Deluge

         “It’s all there in my head, all in disarray

         A cesspool of memories, a desperation for change

         Fought for my life, thought it was so I could see you

         Mother, I know that you’re not here, I’m still trying to heal

         But please tell me now that love has always been real

         Yet I wonder if you ever believed it yourself."

Hotwire

         “Al loved a nice Hotwire

         Pull ‘em apart, let them fray, twist ‘em till they go insane

         And, yeah, I guess everyone I love is the same.”

Fallen Hero (Interlude)

         “Every time I pick up a pen

         It’s destined to dry out

         And I refuse to go outside, refuse to call my friends

         What’s the point when they’ll never understand?

         I’ll leave myself behind just to have a pinch of hope

         But I come back down from daydreams covered in blood

         Just gotta learn to change, learn to change

         Learn to accept being the fallen hero."

Intangible

         “There’s beauty in the ways of intangibility 

         Like the touch of a woman in blushing gardens far away

         The curve of her hips blooming in shades of futility

         Laughter billowing like smoke lingering in the archway

         And there’s places she will never be able to evade

         A bouquet, a veil, a lover lying await in the shade.”

Out of My Hands

         “If I could hear your knock, brought back by my revery

         Each rap, each tap still committed to my memory

         But that’s up to you, darling, it’s all up to you

         And it’s the end I’m stalling, just for you

         And I love you, baby. I love you

         I hope you know I always will

         Even if it’s out of my hands.”

Wayne

         “There’s a new family in the trailer, I really wish I could believe it

         'Cause once I thought we'd buckle under the weight of all that labor

         No more scrounging up pennies for another first-aid kit

         And you’re not here, Wayne. No, you’re not here.”

Lighter

         “Give me back my lighter, any excuse to see you

         Let it flicker, sit by the flame from sunrise ’til noon

         Come running back, consider your exile foregone

         I choose you in the low glow of dusk, love you ‘til dawn.”

Makeup starting to smudge, an outrageously expensive crop top and skirt still on, you threw off your pumps and let your aching feet lead you to the kitchen. Your black, white, and neon orange plaid outfit reflected vibrantly off the refrigerator light as you decided instead to make crescent rolls. Why the fuck not? 

You were absolutely exhausted. Sleep hadn’t been an option for you in the last twenty-four hours, what with Corroded Coffin’s album keeping you awake and the promo you’d done all day. When you’d finally arrived back to your small California home, you were irritated and in desperate need of some food.

However, as the oven began to preheat, your jumbled thoughts kept piling on top of one another. The fog was too loud for you, having to rush to your living room to grab one of your many notebooks and pens. Sat at the island and just journaled.

It was hard enough knowing that Eddie had written all of that for you. About you. The disappointment, the self-loathing. The guilt of not feeling good enough. Searching through the past mistakes of his parents to make sense of the way you fell apart. As if that was the inevitable ending to any story he was destined to begin.

You felt sick.

And even though you ate every single crescent roll, your words just sunk into the page. You could’ve sworn a third of the notebook itself was smeared in grease and flakes and the intense shame rising in your chest. It was everything you’d hated about the last six months and more, all the goddamn childish emotions and wails of what was fair and what wasn’t. As if this hadn’t been your decision in the first place.

Enough was enough when you finished your plate.

“Okay,” you mumbled to yourself before letting out a sound of frustration. “Distraction. Now.”

Grabbing your laptop, you threw yourself on your couch and logged onto YouTube. Maybe you’d watch a deep dive on an amusement park. Catch up on some commentary. Look up that one video of baby sloths talking that usually had you crying from affection.

But there on the front page was an interview with Corroded Coffin on the new album. There’d already been over a million views despite being posted that morning. Something pooled in your abdomen as you saw the thumbnail, all the members posing together.

And you knew you shouldn’t.

But fuck it, what’s a little more salt to your never-ending wounds?

As you clicked on the video, some interviewer you hadn’t heard of popped up smiling before he spoke.

“Hi, my name is Marcus Sanderson and today I’m interviewing one of the most successful metal bands in recent history, Corroded Coffin. They have been hitting commercial success lately, after their incredible album, Fire Shroud, held electronic influences which have begun to redefine and evolve the genre for the modern age.

"Their most recent album, Elizabeth & Al, has only propelled them forward. I was given the rare opportunity to talk to Eddie, Jeff, Gareth, Grant, and Ronnie about not only their writing and producing process, but their personal lives. 

“First, we’ll open up with a cover of one of the band’s favorite songs of all time, ‘Solitude’ by Black Sabbath.”

It cut to the band and you couldn’t help a frustrated whine leaving your mouth at seeing him again. And, Jesus Christ, Eddie was fit like a daydream, donning a black Guns N’ Roses t-shirt with dark jeans and a long-sleeved plaid shirt tied at the waist. A shiny leather jacket, some custom-made Converse with Corroded Coffin across the bottom. Rings and bracelets galore, an obsidian choker hanging low on his neck. Black eyeliner that had wings along his lower lash line. 

You didn’t think you’d ever felt so fucking weak for him.

He stood without his guitar for once, his full attention on his singing. Jeff, Gareth, Grant, and Ronnie were all decked out too, makeup mirroring Eddie’s. All looking refreshed and well-rested. You noticed there was someone else there in the background playing the flute and as they started the song with a gentle solo, it sounded ethereal.

         “My name, it means nothing. My fortune is less

         My future is shrouded in dark wilderness.”

Eddie avoided the camera, eyes darting around the room. You could see his fingers shaking, white-knuckled around the microphone despite the stability of the stand. 

         “Sunshine is far away, clouds linger on

         Everything I possessed, now they are gone

         They are gone.”

Absentmindedly chewing on your lip, you couldn't help but let it sink in. This wasn't just the band's favorite Black Sabbath song—this was Eddie's. He'd told you how the song ripped him apart. How he'd rather die than to ever relate to it personally.

         “Oh, where can I go to and what can I do?

         Nothing can please me, only thoughts are of you

         You just left when I begged you to stay.”

He leaned back as he began to change the notes of the lyrics, his voice building into a belt. Like it was a wail, like he was the most furious man alive.

         “I’ve not stopped crying since you went away

         You went away…” 

The instrumental sounded, the flute having its own solo. Extending the moment, extending the devastation that was demolishing your soul.

Eddie was crying now, wiping the corners of his eyes in the background. Smearing his eyeliner like he didn't care, nose tinged pink through the makeup. And when he came back to the mic, you could see the pain sitting in his eyes. All glassy, all excruciatingly fragile.

         “The world is a lonely place, you’re on your own

         Guess I will go home, sit down and mourn

         Crying and thinking is all that I do

         Memories I have remind me of you

         Of you.”

The footage blurred, fading before cutting to Eddie sitting alone in a chair with the interviewer opposite him. Like they were in a house, all casual and at ease.

“We’re starting off by talking to the front man, Eddie Munson,” Marcus said to the camera, smiling before turning his attention back to Eddie. “It’s nice to see you, man. You look great.”

Eddie chuckled. “Great to be back.”

Marcus nodded. “That cover of ‘Solitude’ was incredible, by the way.”

You could see some color flood into Eddie’s cheeks. “Ah, thanks. Thank you.”

“Do you feel like you’ve been in a period of solitude?”

“Uh, to be honest, kinda. I know people are, like, freaking out just ‘cause I haven’t been in public.”

“Where’ve you been?”

“Just making sure I’m focused on the work,” He gestured to himself before mimicking a pushing motion “and not on the external stuff, you know?”

“As we all should. Would you tell me a bit about your new album? Personally, I’m curious as to why you specifically named it Elizabeth & Al.”

“Yeah, uh, those are my parents’ names. My mom passed away when I was a kid and my dad…well, he wasn’t the best. But I just couldn’t stop thinking about what happens when two people who love each other just end up falling apart. Like, you just feel like you’re as good as dead, you know? And I wondered if my parents had that sort of crash and burn before she died.

“I don’t talk about it much, but my dad had a lot of issues with addiction and gambling and crime after my mom died. I didn’t grow up with the generic parent bleep. It was more like I was his friend than a son and sometimes I was a business partner. And, I don’t know, I grew up thinking that love could’ve been so simple if he gave just a little bit of effort. But I still thought he and my mom had a simple love.”

“I’m guessing they didn’t.”

Eddie let out a shaky laugh. “Yeah, no. My dad was never really good at maintaining, like, any kind of control. And it’s so weird ‘cause all he ever did was try to have control over things. But it was self-sabotage, I think. He was never in control over his life. It felt so predestined.”

“What about your mom?”

He shrugged. “I’m not really sure. I think she just wanted love. Like, grasping for that shred of love that he provided every once in a while. ‘Cause it’s not like my dad was incapable of love. Just incapable of giving her everything. Maybe I’m projecting now, but you know what I mean.”

“So, is this album from the perspective of your parents?”

“Not exactly,” Eddie said, shaking his head. “They’re kinda just the reflection, you know? Like what I say on ‘A Mirage of Lovers’. Our parents end up being a kind of mirror we hold up to ourselves. And I think it’s up to us to decide if we’ll continue that cycle or not—especially in the face of heartbreak and loss. ‘Cause you can easily sit there and accuse yourself of being like your father or your mother. But ultimately, you’re just you. You’re not your parents.”

“And you wrote all of this within the last six months, correct?”

“Yeah, it was weird. Like, I just couldn’t stop writing. I was in such a dark place and the only thing I did was sit and write. And the band is so bleeping incredible. I showed them what I was thinking, and they were super, super receptive to it. And we got to work and got it done faster than anything else we’ve made.”

Marcus smiled, something genuine and real, shaking his head in disbelief. “That timeline really does shock me, just because it’s so seamless. There’s all these tiny details and every song just flows into one another.”

“Thanks, man. That means a lot. We kinda thought that having all the songs connect was sorta like, um, a stream of consciousness, essentially.” He started gesturing with his hands and you knew he was getting more comfortable. It almost made you smile. “Like, these thoughts all run together in a big loop. Like having one of those corkboards with all the evidence and red strings, you know? All of it just ends up running together and there’s no concrete answer. It just is.

“And, man. Jeff, Gareth, Grant, and Ronnie are just the best. They know me better than almost anyone and they seemed to automatically get what they needed to do. Just, like, boom, boom, boom. One after the other, we just got everything right. No one else helped produce this album and I think it shows just how much we’ve learned and evolved over our careers.” 

You felt something freeze inside you when the interviewer mentioned your name.

Eddie tried his best to seem unaffected, but you knew he was starting to squirm. You could see the top of his knee as it bounced.

“Are you two still together?” Marcus asked. “What’s the story there?”

Eddie’s eyes wandered the room, probably trying to calculate the best way to go. You selfishly wanted him to say nothing about the breakup, to refuse to confirm that it was truly over. 

He cleared his throat before scratching his temple. 

“My relationship with her is private and just between us. It always has. But I guess since I finally have a chance to say whatever I want to say, I want to make it very clear that the way the media has treated her has been just disgusting and unwarranted. She is not some plastic, shiny doll for everyone to point and laugh at."

Eddie then straightened his posture as he looked straight into the camera. "Oh, and let me be clear. If you’re sitting there talking about her bleeping body, then you are a piece of bleeping bleep and I hope you burn in hell.”  

Just like that, Marcus Sanderson moved on, the shot cutting away to a shot of the rest of the band sitting on a couch. But you weren’t listening anymore. Your head was swirling with a concoction of disbelief and epiphanies. Something…clicked.

Because you’d never had a partner mention you on a public scale. Never had a partner willing to scream your love from the top of the world and still retain privacy. Never had someone so willing to defend you despite your faults. Despite your arguments and downfalls.

And you were realizing that you…had done none of that for Eddie.

You’d sat there, in a dreamy haze because Eddie gave you everything he had. But had you really done any of those things back? Had you given him an ounce of what he gave you? 

You thought back to the AMAs, when you walked around your answers. Nearly yelled at him for standing up for you. Dropped his hand when he wanted to tell you how proud he was. Hell, you even broke up with him because of what other people said. He thought you wanted nothing from him, that you weren’t interested anymore. 

You never even said you loved him to his face.

You treated him exactly the way all your past partners treated you.

Eddie Munson had given you his world and you’d given him a fraction.

“I fucked up,” you whispered before you really processed what was happening. “I FUCKED UP!” you screeched, scrambling to stand up and check your phone. 

1:13am.

Immediately dropped it, watching it slide under the couch.

“FUCK!” you screamed again.

Dropping to your knees and enduring the carpet burn, you reached down and felt around for your phone. But you froze as you felt something else, something smaller in size. Pulled it out, recognizing Eddie’s lighter immediately. 

You flicked the lighter on, only encountering sparks the first two times. But when you watched it transform into a flame, something in your chest began to ache. It was the kindling of a once-wet fireplace, the first stroke of fire you’d felt in months. Teardrops fell freely down your chest as you found the will to fight.

Fight for what you knew you could never live without.

Fight for Eddie.

Give me back my lighter, any excuse to see you

Come running back, consider your exile foregone

Without any thought, you stuffed it into your top, found your phone, and popped up to search for some socks. Barely registered the color before yanking them on. You didn’t care how dressed up you were or how oily your face felt. How exhausted your body was or the residue of a crescent roll sticking to the side of your mouth.

You had to get to wherever Eddie was, and you had to get there now. If you didn’t talk to him tonight, you didn’t know if you’d make it to daylight.

But where was he?

The thought made you pause, hands shaking as you thought.

And before the panic could completely consume you, you called the one person who seemed to know everything.

“Woah, hello there.”

“Jeff.” 

“Hey, long time no see. Where you been?”

“Jeff, I’m sorry, but I really need you to tell me if Eddie is in California right now.”

“Uh, yeah, he is.” You tugged your white Keds on, breathing a sigh of relief. “He’s been holed up in his place for the last few days. Why?”

“I just need to talk to him,” you said, nearly out of breath as you started sprinting to the garage. “I need to talk to him.”

“Ever thought about calling?”

“Nope.”

Jeff’s laughter rang through the receiver. “You’re crazy, girl. I’ll give you that one.” A huff left your nose as you climbed into your car. “You gonna tell him you’re in love with him?”

“Yeah, yeah I am.”

“Finally.”

“Are you mad at me?” you asked, dreading any answer he’d give.

“Not at all. Just don’t leave him hanging this time, okay? He hasn’t been okay in a really long time.”

“Neither have I. I’m hoping to fix this and let it stay fixed.”

“Go get your man.”

As the garage door lifted, you noticed the pouring rain.

Of course it started fucking storming within the last hour and a half you’d been home. Of fucking course.

“Bye, Jeff,” you said quickly.

“Bye, girl!”

As you filed out of your driveway, a black SUV was already pulling out behind you. The protection was part of the job. You knew this. But sometimes, you just wanted to tell Scott that you had shit to do on your own.

But there was no time for this.

You just continued to drive, letting the soft hum of “The Long And Winding Road” by The Beatles lead you right back to the very place you knew you belonged.

“Scott,” James acknowledged.

“James.”

It felt like a showdown, Scott stepping in front of you at the gates. As soon as you’d arrived, you’d been prevented from pulling into the driveway. And it was James who’d crossed his arms over his dauntingly ripped chest, staring you down like you’d committed a crime.

You couldn’t blame him.

“What’s the situation?”

You tried not to roll your eyes. “I need to talk to Eddie.”

“It’s two in the morning. Kid finally fell asleep for once.”

“Let her in, James,” Scott said. “They’re people. Just let them figure it out on their own without us.”

“I really want to fix this,” you explained, earning a lifted eyebrow from James. “He’s everything to me and I know I screwed up. I know that. But I want to at least try to mend this. I’m a fucking idiot. Just…please.” Your eyes began to water. “Please let me try.”

James gave you a hard stare for what felt like ten minutes. Like he was assessing the risk. 

But then he opened the gate, stepping to the side. 

“Thank you,” you breathed, rushing past him to the door.

You knocked quite rapidly, your heartbeat matching the pace. Heard it pulse in your ears. Teetered on each foot as the adrenaline continued to catapult you further into madness. Waiting and waiting and waiting until— 

There he was, barely visible in the glow of the front porch light, eyes squinting. Messy curls frizzing, wearing a white t-shirt and gray sweatpants. No accessories, no socks on his feet.

It seemed like he finally registered it was you when he straightened his posture. Eddie gazed down at your body and back up again, eyes widening with every passing second. 

“Hey,” you finally whispered.

“Hey.”

bless @strangergraphics for always having the sickest dividers.

[edutainer2022]

So I got under the weather - fever, sore throat, snuffles, the works. But I am "busy" (tm) and, therefore, need to be "fine" (tm). So I'm indulgently reposting a little fluffy Tracy-fever piece I wrote out this summer. I may or may not be eyeing another fever-snippet in my notes. Depends on how "fine" (tm) I am. Please, enjoy!

PUPPY BASKET

A puppy basket. Jeff didn't recall who exactly coined the term - his wife or himself. Or maybe his mother. The point was - with three kids so close in age (and then two more down the line) the flues and colds, and stomach bugs tore through the bunch like a wildfire. There was not enough manpower in the household to keep up with sick boys quarantined in different rooms. So it was just easier and more expedient to stash the sniveling and coughing, and sniffling, and generally miserable puppy ball in the master bedroom. Lucy and himself took shifts sitting vigil, giving meds and fluids, kissing burning up brows. If he were planetside, of course. Later, when the boys' mother was gone, it would be, likely, Scott's room and the elder boys taking up watch hours, while he was busy with grief and work. The one time he came home from New York to find all five boys succumbed to a flu, pretty much delirious in his room, little Alan hoarse from crying - even Scott too weak from fever to call Grandma (and too anxious to call 911 lest child services got a wiff) was a memory he didn't dare revisit often.

He could distantly recall that a feverish Scott would be restless, Virgil would be cuddly, John would be clingy. Gordon would peel off any scrap of clothes on him. Someone would invariably end up upside down with feet propped on the pillow.

That morning got him investigating in Scott's room first thing. Gordon and Alan drew a short straw and were off for a supply run early on (a bright and whistling Gordon and a grumpy half-asleep Alan). Virgil was not expected down this side of 10 am, John was just back from orbit the night before. But Scott never made it to see the Tinies (did they even call the boys that anymore? Alan was starting college in a month!) off, have his run and a morning coffee-cum-strategy session with Dad - something that had become a new, cherished routine for them. The parent alarm in him, that never lay quite dormant even through the endless night of the Oort Cloud, was now blaring full force.

Fair enough, Jeff found his eldest room in an uncharacteristic disarray - a blanket kicked off all the way from the foot of the bed down to the floor, last day clothes scattered on the carpeting - something he came to recognize more as the youngest style, not Scott, who had tried to emulate Dad's military crisp order since he was five and learned to make his own bed. Scott was soon found by his father's increasingly concerned gaze in the middle of the bed, tangled sheets and disheveled curls a testament to a night of tossing and turning, breathing shallow and raspy. Jeff's immediate guess was a nightmare - heaven knows he was no stranger to warding off those, plaguing his boy's naturally light sleep. But a fine sheen of sweat, covering Scott's face and neck, belied a different answer altogether. Jeff wasn't surprised, when the brow he reached for to smooth away the soaked fringe, was burning. Scott wasn't asleep per se - eyes squeezed shut against a headache - but he definitely wasn't alert and present either. Jeff wasn't surprised, but he was getting increasingly panicked. His own mother gave him a semi-clean bill of health and was currently in Kansas, helping a friend out. The time difference made the call tricky. Not impossible, of course, there  was no inconvenience Grandma wouldn't go through for him or his boys, for which Jeff was eternally greatful, but all the more weary to disturb his getting increasingly fragile Ma more, than necessary. Kayo was visiting with her own father, so that was not an option as well. The problem was, with Grandma away, there was no medic on the island. Unless, of course... Jeff remembered Virgil determined and precise with a medscanner, and later - all business and in-trade jibberish with the medical staff at the rehab center he had to spend first months back on Earth at. Despite budding worry, as Scott keened quietly and shifted under his father's soothing touch, Jeff smiled fondly. Virgil was, arguably, the closest to his Grandpa in looks and demeanor, but it appeared he followed his Grandma's professional leanings. He should try and wake Virgil up. Scott was definitely under the weather.

As if on cue, the door opened and a gigantic burrito walked in. Jeff started. The burrito was, upon a closer inspection, a human, barefoot, wrapped up in a blanket head to toe. The walking burrito was also eliciting grunts and a lung-splitting cough. Ouch. The intruder ignored Jeff completely, sidestepped the bundle of clothes on the floor, and collapsed on the bed, next to Scott, wrapping the latter immediately in a cocoon of limbs and blanket, like a cuddle pillow. Scott is restless, Virgil is cuddly... Jeff was beginning to get a bad, bad feeling about it. A quick dive into the fluffy depths of fabric and hair confirmed his fear - Virgil had a fever too. That left...

"John!" - he had to spring from the edge of the bed with speed and agility that would make his physiotherapist proud in time to catch a swaying ginger son from planting face first on the floor. John appeared soundlessly, a ghostly vision, almost translucent where he would normally be pale. A sneeze almost send them both toppling again, but Jeff managed to maintain balance and helped John walk the short distance to the other side of the bed. There was no question how the ginger was going to spend his spiking fever - the moment he climbed onto the mattress, John attached himself to Scott side like a limpet, the way Jeff had only seen Alan do so far. When sick, Scott was restless, Virgil was cuddly, and John was clingy. Well, the more things changed, the more they stayed the same. Puppy basket is go!

Jeff was halfway through the mental checklist of things he would need to make the logistics of his three eldest sons down for the count work (fluids, medscanner and monitors to keep track of the fevers, ask Brains if the medkits were in the same spots now, call Ma as soon as the time difference would permit, coax, trick and blackmail the boys into cold meds and cough syrup, call Gordon and Alan to stay away for the day and to go fetch Grandma from the farm, make sure Brains was alright and quarantined in his lab and rooms, check himself up, because Jeff needed to be on top of his game for the sick boys - the day and the following night could be tough), when a loud shriek pierced the silence of the room. Scott was frowning and trying the disentangle himself from Virgil's death grip. Jeff reached for his agitated son's shoulder and rubbed a thumb over - in the haze of the fever Scott could get disoriented and start fighting any restraint. Jeff knew the boy would never forgive himself, if he hurt Virgil, even unintentionally. But Scott was not to be easily placated. His face contorted with effort and, likely, a worsened sinus pain, to Jeff's astonishment, the young man grabbed a barely protesting John, lifted him bodily over his own frame, like he was a... well... puppy, and stuffed him into Virgil's arms, that immediately closed the hug around a different brother, as Scott rolled to the side in a sleek stealth maneuver. He would have rolled all the way over the edge of the bed, had Dad's arms not stopped him. That must have computed to the cold addled brain as "safe", since Scott stopped struggling almost immediately and let out a snuffle in a voice Jeff hadn't heard since when the kids' mother was alive. "M'hot", Scott complained without opening his eyes. Jeff reckoned he should probably be more concerned about photosensitivity and the fact any of the boys was yet to notice or acknowledge him. Jeff made an attempt to hoist Scott up against the headrest, but thought better of it as another painful moan escaped. Instead, he sort of rolled the son back to the center of the bed, closer to the pile of other brothers. Scott seemed game for that and shifted to snuggle and spoon against John's back. That elicited a hum and a sneeze from the ginger. Virgil didn't stir. Puppy basket indeed.

Satisfied that Scott was settled for the moment and the other boys seemed to have fallen asleep, Jeff felt confident enough to go looking for the fever vigil supplies and an extra coffee for himself. But he didn't leave before leaning to reach the assorted temples and forheads for the mandatory kiss better and a soft stroke. So sue him, he missed a lot longer than eight years of being their Dad first.

A detour to the infirmary, a chat with Brains, a lot more strained one with Ma and an anxious one with the Tinies later - Jeff was on his way back to Scott's rooms. Gordon and Alan, of course, offered to come back and help with their ailing brothers immediately. But Jeff shuddered at the idea of having all five of the boys sick at once. He was good, but the tenure in space was taking its toll. The youngest boys would be well supervised under Grandma's watchful eye, till it was safe (or absolutely necessary- something Jeff tried not to dwell on) to return to the island.

The sight that greeted him upon return to the bedroom tugged the corners of his lips up despite himself. Seeing his sons sick or hurting in any way brought him no joy, but the picture was just too precious and hilarious at the same time. John had shifted upside down, somehow, so Virgil was now cuddling his brother's feet. John was also curled in an upside down ball, head resting on Scott's stomach. Scott, in an attempt to cool off, cast his long, long limbs every which way, including over Virgil's lap and head, in a comical replication of the Vitruvian Man. As Jeff stepped in, though, the eldest shifted again, to curl himself around John protectively and to draw Virgil into a side hug. Jeff needed to go ahead with the med scanners and to get the boys awake long enough to make sure they got a drink of electrolytes and some saltines, but first he paused to reach for his comm watch and snap a picture of the puppy basket. He would cherish the moment while it lasted. And he could always use it as blackmail backup against these three running themselves to the ground - under the threat of the photo being leaked to the Tinies.

[honey-tongues]

Part 2 baybeeeee. Continuation of this fic - aka what if Wyll's a masochist and desperate for Astarion's teeth in him actually?? What if I wrote it from Astarion's POV this time. What if this is careening out of control and chapter three is imminent. Ahahaha wouldn't that be nuts how's the weather

He spends some time considering Wyll.

Wyll, who is looking especially fine tonight. Sitting by the fire, rich umber skin painted sunset colors by the flames - there are shadows in his mismatched eyes, soft and used to smiling despite their twice-over otherworldly nature. His horns cast strange and eerie shadows on the ground; his body is well-built and adorned with scars that demonstrate a life of remarkably reckless service to others.

How he yet lives is a mystery for the ages, honestly.

Wyll, it turns out - in addition to spending his idle hours plotting ways to rescue ever more kittens from trees - spends rather a lot of time thinking about Astarion's mouth. More than the vampire might've guessed, and he does like to think his mouth has been the inspiration for its share of lurid fantasies, some more colorful than others -

An interesting development.

Not for the first time Astarion thanks their funny little parasites for continually opening new doors for him as they do, rife with unexpected gifts. What strange fortune! He might be tempted to kiss the ground and thank the gods for this little development had they not already betrayed his faith a thousand times over. No, that ship has long sailed.

He should be thanking the mindflayers instead, at least until such a time as they all start sprouting tentacles. He would have remained ignorant (and ignorant of his ignorance) without them. How long has Wyll been sitting on this fantasy, stewing in it? The Blade of Frontiers would've never openly admitted to wanting Astarion's fangs in him, would he. Could he?

Perhaps he couldn't, he thinks. Perhaps it's a step too far into the realm of the unthinkable for even the renowned Blade.

But perhaps not so unthinkable for Wyll.

First thing's first. Damage control. If any good is to come of this - and there is, he knows, much good that can come of this - he can't risk scaring the other man off.

He'll perhaps have to ease Wyll into the idea that - sometimes - he can have the things he wants.

Really, it's too perfect. A willing donor - and more than that, an eager donor. Not an animal, nor an enemy he has to subdue. He rolls the idea around in his head, admiring it like a pretty bauble: no need to be particularly stealthy or strong, in fact he needs only exercise restraint. No more stinking wildlife getting stuck in his teeth or fevered grappling with someone who just won't die (unless, perhaps, the illusion of the latter is something that stirs Wyll's blood).

Fresh food delivered right to his doorstep.

He's salivating just thinking about it. Moving up in the world, he thinks, giddy with excitement and making a half-baked and entirely doomed effort at not getting ahead of himself. Really, it was futile from the beginning - he cannot look this gift horse in the mouth. And it is a gift, this -

Willingness. Willingess which could be a beast entirely unlike itself, something Astarion knew all too well. It disguised itself, at times, as begrudging tolerance. Reluctant acceptance. The acknowledging of an unfortunate necessity, like doing taxes or digging latrines.

Wanting, though - wanting was different. Wyll craved it, he knew now - felt it in his bones, in the borrowed blood sitting sluggishly in his veins. Their tadpoles ensured that there were few secrets between them when they got to wriggling: he remembers the adrenaline high of battle, putting his blades to work again and again, and his reward when all but one of their enemies was felled: the last one standing, his prey, wrenched from its ill-considered task and succumbing in short order to the bite. A particularly satisfying kill. That lowly piss-pot had nearly taken Wyll's life - intolerable for reasons he does not care to examine just now, but certainly in part because Wyll is their de facto leader and the only one keeping this merry band of miscreants in line. The man's weapon had managed to make contact with Wyll's flesh, breaking the skin despite Astarion's urgent intervention - a superficial wound, spilling precious few drops of his blood. The Blade had certainly sustained worse injuries, shed far more blood in the name of the Frontiers.

Still. He took great delight in liberating all of the slaver's blood from his body in retaliation.

In the moment, he'd been entirely too focused on feeding and keeping his prey from moving overmuch - not that it would've done him any good at that range. Struggling as he was, if he managed to pull free his artery would be wrenched and split on Astarion's fangs, quite defeating the purpose of escape and robbing him of his meal besides. But it was a good meal despite having to restrain it, and his eyes had slipped shut in hapless pleasure, drinking heartily and unselfconsciously -

It was only when he heard a soft sound, not from the throat in his jaws as expected - the quiet, final noises so common to those desperately clinging to life and finding the cord severed - but from before him that Astarion opens his eyes and finds - Wyll, in the shadow of his kill, looking at him like the second coming of Strahd. Only -

His head had throbbed then, eyes widening in surprise and - quickly - comprehension. He had felt Wyll's deep-seated want curl around him with every enthusiastic gulp: the wet sounds of Astarion's industry a ballast in Wyll's brain, every nerve in his body attuned to that sound and the motions of his throat as he swallowed hungrily, devouring his victim. Astarion had moaned involuntarily at that, hot blood in his mouth made impossibly hotter by the way Wyll's good eye remained entirely focused on him. Equal parts horror and fascination - and no small amount of arousal, if his blown out pupil was any indication - were evident in his expression.

Astarion had an absurd thought, then: feeling rather like a wayward cat that's brought the mangled remains of a dead mouse to his patriar's door, ever indulgent: Here. I saw this and thought of you.

He would not have guessed Wyll's interest, not in this - and not for lack of interest in the man or his proclivities (which Astarion found himself mulling over considerably more often than he ought to). It's simply that, in his experience, monster hunters who desire their quarry carnally are also often hopelessly repressed and prone to cultivating deeply fucked up ideas about who qualifies as person and who doesn't, and whether or not that justifies whatever they intend to do to them in the moment.

Wyll isn't like that.

Repressed... maybe. It's hard to say. But never cruel. He travels alongside a vampire spawn, a Sharran cultist and a githyanki space pirate like it's a perfectly ordinary thing to do, and that was before he sprouted horns and an infernal eye. Wyll apparently saw in Astarion's most bestial features and abilities something… desirable, something to make him ache sweetly, something that no one else in camp could provide, and Astarion thrilled at the knowledge. To be wanted for the whole of what you are? It was novel. It was magnificent.

And Wyll does like him, insofar as he can tell. As a person. And isn't that an oddity! He trusts Astarion. With his life even. At the very least he certainly wasn't about to let some other vampire bite him. His survival instincts were only broken some of the time.

He treats Astarion like a man first and a monster second, not a condemnation but a practical reality: his vampirism merely a facet of his life, one that differentiates himself from others, not unlike Karlach's persnickety engine or Gale's yawning arcane hunger.

And it is this, above all else, that solidifies his decision.

Wyll is still by the fire, looking appallingly resigned to his fate when Astarion approaches him (vicious mockery is perhaps what the man anticipates, not sudden death at the hands of a ravenous vampire - what Astarion wouldn't give for such priorities!), and… increasingly nervous, and no, that won't do at all. He intercepts his path, casual, sensing a man foolishly about to talk himself out of a perfectly reasonable course of action.

"You know, dear," he says, keeping his tone as light as he can manage. Wyll isn't glass-fragile but it won't do to come on too strong, not after their unexpected meeting of the minds (as delicious as it had been). No matter how much his fangs ache in his gums, he's got to focus. He thinks about Wyll's strong pulse - in all honesty, can think of little else -

Vitality. The depth and breadth of life.

Wyll smells awfully nice.

"This could be quite fortuitous for you and I," he motions, stopping just short of being in Wyll's personal space. Wyll ponies up, sensing there's no tabling this conversation now.

"It isn't-" he starts, stops. Starts again. "I don't want you to think that's why." Piffle. The hell it's not, Astarion thinks meanly but doesn't say. His eyes narrow. Wyll's too busy contemplating his navel to notice, eyes downcast in what could have been bashfulness but which Astarion recognizes as closer kin to contriteness. For the wrong thing, of course: he feels himself an imposition when he is an oasis.

Exhausting.

"And whyever not?" he ventures, feeling rather more impatient than he lets on. He checks himself internally. He will never get far by rushing Wyll. Knows this. It is a tremulous peace they have, and too easily disrupted by frivolous desire if he's not careful and mild in his coaxing.

It's just that he's been daydreaming about his blood for weeks, to say nothing of the man who harbors it. He's salivating, and Wyll is right there, and he wants it -

More hesitation.

"I want to help you." Not an untruth, he concedes. There is no situation in which Wyll isn't volunteering to help, but it's hardly the whole of it and if he can't bring himself to say it, well. Astarion will just have to help him along.

"You want it," he says, because this is no time for ambiguity. There are things he must be certain of, that they must be certain of. Astarion again considers the difference between willing and wanting, the various shapes and shades of them. Nods absently to himself, surer now of his course. Wyll -

Wyll…

"Yes," he manages. He's getting in his head again, Astarion can tell - raw memories flit through his mind, foreign remembrances that feel like his own as they pour through the sieve of their psychic connection: Wyll standing before his father, one incident unto the next, doubt and shame and the ghost of resentment a maelstrom of miserable distraction.

Astarion shoots him a look. Soon Wyll will need to learn something he internalized long ago: getting in one's own head means getting in one's own way. Wyll's father is a thousand leagues distant. Astarion is right here.

"What do you want from me, Astarion? Yes, it's tempting. I don't- it isn't a consideration I want you to place above your own needs. It doesn't matter. We can drop it."

How pointlessly noble, he wants to sneer. As if Astarion would ever. What he needs is to sink his teeth into Wyll, feel him squirm with want of it.

Fully intends to, if only Wyll can meet him halfway.

"Or we could not drop it," Astarion volunteers, making every effort to keep his voice neutral. He feels like a teakettle simmering too-hot on the stove. Ready to boil over at the slightest encouragement, seconds from screaming -

The night is long, and he listens to Wyll's heartbeat in the absence of his own. It's strong and sure and when Wyll finally steps forward, it's all he can do to disguise his mind numbing relief as mere playful indulgence as he purrs in his ear: "My dear, consider how we might take care of one another."

Knowing that a bite is all but guaranteed at this point means he can relax a little, and he softens his approach by inches, determined to enjoy himself. For Wyll to enjoy himself. It's not every day one gets to savor a homemade meal, after all. And with such handsome presentation!

Wyll may still need some... careful attention, in order to feel more comfortable and less out of his element than admitting his desire had evidently left him. Astarion tells himself that's why he slots himself easily and comfortably in Wyll's arms, as sturdy and warm as he imagined they'd be (not that he'd thought about it). When the younger man raises tentative arms to his waist - almost boyish in his hesitation, so unlike the easy confidence with which Wyll normally navigates the world - Astarion rewards him with a smile. He's doing so well. It's precious.

Wyll asks if it will hurt. Astarion assures him it will, how very nice that will be. Promises, promises. A shiver runs through his body, and Astarion catalogues that particular reaction away for later. For now, he seeks to drive out any foolish notions of guilt on Wyll's part - knows he must, if he intends for this to happen a second time.

And he does intend a repeat performance, if his companion's at all amenable. The idea of hot blood on tap - Wyll's blood on tap - Astarion bites his tongue to prevent himself from latching onto the exposed skin of Wyll's neck, soft where he's nosing against his jawline.

"Worry not, O Blade. I rather like that you like it. Do you think I'd prefer to be where I'm not wanted?" He allows his very real displeasure at the thought to color his tone. No harm in the truth, not in this. It's important for Wyll to know his desire is reciprocated, that his desire is itself desired, one into the other and on and on.

Astarion leads him to his tent.

-

How many times has he heard the battlecry? 'The Blade does not yield!'

Except when he does, it seems.

Wyll is laying in Astarion's tent - pretty as a painting, a light sheen of sweat on his brow and collarbone catching in the low lantern light fetchingly. He's eyeing the space, taking it in - Astarion's things, physical proof of his presence if the body beside him were not enough.

He looks young here, but not uncertain: he is reminded that Wyll has only lived a fraction of his years, will only ever live a fraction of his years. He's struck by the thought that the man before him is chillingly, hauntingly... mortal. Brief even in longevity, humans hardly have time to live before they're gone. Supposing his devil blood has not altered him in as yet unforeseen ways, Wyll's fate will be the same, and if he doesn't stop with the chronic heroics his life will be shorter still.

He won't, though.

That thought invites disquiet so Astarion dismisses it out of hand. Back to business.

He looks to Wyll, who meets his eyes with a kind of defiance, a resolve born of want. Determined to go through with it, for his own ends or Astarion's (but hopefully both). He tilts his neck back gracefully, and it's Astarion's turn to stare -

"How very considerate of you, darling," he says instead. Straddling Wyll's waist, he is determined to savor the moment despite the sharp spike of hunger that takes him then. He caresses Wyll's handsome face - brushes his full lips with passing fingers in his haste, decides that's an acceptable diversion before meandering purposefully downwards, stopping fully at his throat. Admiring that most pronounced vein in his neck - thrumming with life, impossibly fast and strong beneath his fingers, sweet-smelling even through the barrier of Wyll's flesh, another temptation.

Astarion's teeth ache. He has always had a sweet tooth.

Obscene, the way he waits for it. Wyll - is holding himself back from trembling, fingers alternately clenched and wiggling, as if he keeps noticing the tension and overcorrecting. The anticipation's ruining him, though he's doing a very good job of hiding it under an otherwise self-secure veneer. Apart from his hands he is very determinedly still, rigid in the way of someone wading into unfamiliar waters. Like a virgin on his wedding night, Astarion thinks with good-natured humor. He can see the restlessness in his body, even if unpracticed eyes might not - anticipation and arousal and a sort of fear that isn't - because Astarion is trusted, but Wyll knows better than most what devastation those fangs are capable of.

But then... that is surely part of the appeal, he concedes.

His hand moves reluctantly from Wyll's neck to land on his shoulder - the better to steady himself, and give Wyll proper leverage besides, should it become necessary. He squeezes once - a reassurance, and a question.

Through the fun little psychic link he shares with his comrades, he has seen a great many things, many of which aren't fun at all. He has seen flashes of Wyll's life, heated moments that brand themselves in his memory as surely as his own assortment of traumas. He has seen Ulder Ravengard banked by fire - disappointment and shame -

Wyll's father had called him a needy creature; but as far as Astarion can tell, Wyll has only ever needed to be needed. To be... essential. He has seen it through Wyll's two eyes, and then one; has tasted the bitterness of his tears in the wake of his exile from Baldur's Gate, when for lack of other choices he made himself, at last, essential to the Frontiers.

He catches Wyll's eye. Perhaps Wyll sees something there that Astarion is not yet ready to acknowledge - slips his warm hand over Astarion's cool one and meets his gaze without rancor or fear. Strong in his surrender and generous with his bounty.

Astarion feels pulled-apart, rent thin by gratitude and desire both, his hunger a thing that lives in his heart. He says "thank you," as if it were enough.

He leans in, and Wyll closes his eyes.

[nautiscarader]

What the hecking heck happened with me - THE UNNECESSARY (and kinda boring) SEQUEL

So you might have noticed I have been absent for the past 2.5 weeks. So, where have I been? What has happened to me?

Well, you see, I got this magical music box, and when I opened it, I was transported into a different world full of talking frogs, toads and-

Wait, I've done this bit already.

....

Yeah, got into hospital. AGAIN.

Same warning as before applies, regarding medical stuff. Especially if you are eating.

Chapter 13: Wednesday Night's fever

So around three weeks ago I found myself really sapped of strength. Well, as you might recall, I basically had a fall and got wounds on my hip. Or to put it in another words:

Well, something from those wounds got infected or something and started affecting my whole body. The effect? Pretty much daily ~38C (~100F) fevers that drained me of energy.

No, buddy, the solution is paracetamol.

That was helping me daily when I was in hospital while getting some long-term antibiotics.

So, yeah, not to blow the trumpet, it was pretty much that: drips, pills, drips, pills, gastroscopy, drips, pi-wait, what did I say AND WHAT IS THIS THING-

Chapter 14: Gastroscopy

So I had to have gastroscopy done, which, in case you don't know is basically a tube with camera being inserted into your esophagus and-

Yeah, not pleasant. But the whole thing lasted only about 10 minutes, and the worst part was the first 30 seconds. So, no biggie. Now, let's talk about....

Chapter 15: Neighbours

Because they were really an odd collection.

First one was just an old dude who hated when I asked to open windows (and of course just as I was admitted spring temps have arrived)

Second one was a detective! In fact he has just solved a murder mystery that happened in the adjacent room! And the murderer was his roommate!

... yeah, he was pretty out of touch with reality, they took him after a day.

And then comes our star: Typical Janush, or Ordinary Janusz, as the Polish meme goes (don't worry if you don't get it)

This absolute unit of Polishness with huuuuge beer belly, bald spot and moustache has brought with him in his bag of holding:

coffee and sugar (nothing spectacular tbh)

TWO different chocolate waffers packs,

two strawberry chocolate bars,

Toffee sweets,

coffee sweets,

TWO different types of sausages,

home-made chicken wings,

and a jar of pickled mushrooms (fereality-indy DNI)

What else did he have in it? I don't know, and frankly, I am scared of the possibilities. This guy could give Mary Poppins a run when it comes to that bag.

He cursed like a sailor when he watched the news - and he watched all the news, he was funding the TV, so he might as well get what he's paid for.

He was also... really kind. He helped me with everything I couldn't do, sometimes faster than the nurses. Really awesome dude.

And the last one who was admitted JUST as I was leaving, was a 96-year old grandpa with some gastric problems. What problems? I don't know, but imagine a cat coughing up a furball... at a volume of a small steam locomotive. At 2 a.m. Every half an hour.

i only had to deal with him for a day.

He also brought... a flask with him.

The one they usually sell spirytus in. Now, it did NOT contain alcohol, just lemon-flavoured water.... but you had to see the nurse's reaction when he was seen casually drinking from it :) He was politely told to use other vessels.

And as a bonus, there was a guy in adjacent room who sometimes visited us and wore a curious t-shirt.... you know the "how do you do fellow kids" meme, right?

and how they just wrote "music band" in order to avoid problems with AC/DC copyright?

Well, his T-shirt had a generic basketball and words "Basketball Team est. 1992". And that's it. No other allusions to, say, Chicago Bulls, or any other team. Just that.

We have reached singularity, people.

Chapter 16: In conclusion, it was mostly boring

Yeah, I have to admit, this stay wasn't that eventful, which I guess I should count as blessing. What else to add... Oh, all the nurses were h*cking cute!

One even recognised me from my first visit!

So, yeah, now I've done the unpacking, and oh boy, you always collect lots of stuff you then forget about.

Like-

Wait, the heck is that?

It... it looks like I have written a 4k Glitch Techs G-rated fic... on my phone! Which has non-existent keyboard! Wait, that can't be right...

It's mostly done, but not finished... Still, it's a shame if it got wasted, right?

[ziezie13]

Happy Fanfiction Writers Appreciation Day!!!! Renegade Bindery has organized an event for the occasion, encouraging fans to gift bound copies to some well deserving authors. I decided to do a four part anthology for the event so that I could include as many authors as possible. The anthology, titled Sex, Love, and Rock ‘n Roll, features some of my favorite aspec wolfstar stories that I have collected over the years. These stories mean a lot to me and I’m so happy that I am able to give this gift to the authors that wrote them!

MIDNIGHT RADIO – @everythingbutcoldfire​ Sirius is an actor in his late twenties. Enter Remus: the wardrobe supervisor and dresser for his new show. SEE BUT ONE MOON – Anynomous Black has been pining for the nerdy Barista, Remus Lupin, for three months, but can’t seem to get his attention. Remus, however, has noticed the over-excited law student, but isn’t interested in being a conquest of the week. When Remus starts listening to the Marauding Hour – a University radio programme, he finds himself enraptured by one of the DJs, and starts to crush on him – hard. Little does he know that Padfoot has known him all along, and is looking for something much more than a one-off. VALENTINE'S DAY – @everythingbutcoldfire​ Remus has never really grasped how some people feel very neutral about kissing. It had never been like him to snog random people at parties. Sirius, on the other hand, happens to be a prime example of that person. STRANGERS WHEN WE MEET – @everythingbutcoldfire​ Remus is biking to the movie theater and meets a hot stranger on a motorcycle at a piece of car friendly infrastructure. You’ll never guess who it is. THE LIGHT THAT BLINDS MY EYES – @aryastark-valarmorghulis​ Sirius is in love. Remus is too, he just doesn’t know it yet. In which Sirius is demi and pines a lot, Remus is oblivious, and they should move together as soon as possible. TALK TO ME – @everythingbutcoldfire​ A tale of pining in two parts: Remus, hopelessly in love with his roommate, has to take care of him when Sirius has a fever and is a bit delirious. Sirius walks in on Remus watching a video. Remus tells him something. Sirius realizes something about himself. TEENAGE WASTELAND – @ziezie13​ Sirius Black and his best friend, James Potter, are the coolest guys in school. Their pranks are legendary and their reign is undisputed. But with graduation fast approaching and James heading off to Princeton in the fall with his girlfriend, Lily Evans, Sirius wants to get in one more epic day of hijinks and fun before the real world comes crashing down around them. HAPPY – literary_lion Sirius Black is very confused. He doesn’t know why Remus has been avoiding him, he can’t understand why none of his romance-obsessed friends believe he doesn’t get crushes, and he’s not sure why James thinks the two problems are related. THE JOY OF NOT SEX – @wereflamingo​ Sirius is confused about sex and sets out to investigate. And if that investigation includes an awful lot of snogging with one Remus Lupin, what of it? The story of how ace Sirius got together with allo Remus, to great success, and had lots of asexy not-sex with him. FEEL SOMETHING – @lovingremus​ Remus has never really grasped how some people feel very neutral about kissing. It had never been like him to snog random people at parties. Sirius, on the other hand, happens to be a prime example of that person. O NO I HOPE I DON'T FALL – @everythingbutcoldfire​ Remus and Sirius are roommates in their late twenties. They’re on a weekend trip to see a T. Rex cover band and to rent a boat for shiggles. FEELING OF INADEQUACY – @xomarauders​ Sirius struggles with his sexuality and questions if he’s worthy of Remus’ love. FAR ABOVE THE WORLD – @everythingbutcoldfire​ After a climate change apocalypse has rendered Earth uninhabitable, sixteen-year-olds Sirius and Remus live aboard a starship on course to another solar system and a new home. COLOUR ME INSIDE OUT – Anonymous In spite of their fundamental differences, Sirius Black and Remus Lupin have a happy marriage. It’s open, and they have strict rules. Only one night, a stranger at a pub turns everything upside down, and now both are afraid with these new feelings, it means everything’s falling apart. Neither of them expect this outcome when James Potter enters their lives. THESE DAYS – @everythingbutcoldfire​ An evening at Grimmauld Place, thinking about feelings, memories, and missed chances. CHERRY-COLOURED FUNK – @everythingbutcoldfire​ Remus is feeling sad about Valentine’s Day. Sirius takes him on a fake date to show him the true meaning of romance. Or to deconstruct what romance even means. A little bit of both

In order to keep this post (relatively) short you can find my introduction to the anthology here which includes some ramblings on fanfiction, asexuality/aromaticism, and Wolfstar. If you are interested in the technical stuff I have everything bookbinding related here.

More photos under the cut.

[geewaysgreendayhoodie]

guess who's back? that's right your favorite emo british boy! update under the cut of my week if you're super curious (it's long)

I got probable covid that I still have not recovered from but we don't really know because my doctor's office doesn't have any that aren't super old. I went to a total of 2 classes, that's less than how many times a day I still checked my notes. I got a new kind of intrusive thought which was super fun. I had a 3 hour nap. I built the exterior of some townhouses in the sims 4 but couldn't finish them because my dad decided to just show up and take me to his house even though he said he probably wouldn't. I didn't get to go to hot topic because of the whole being sick. my partner and I completely forgot our three month anniversary. I got a fever of almost 39°C even though my resting body temperature is like 36.4°C and like super high heart rate from pots stuff and low blood oxygen from being all respiratory virus infected. I missed my tumblr friends every day. I wrote this all with my cat laying on my chest and stomach.

[time-shardz]

Pretty Play Things~

I am once again back with a YouTube comment fic that I wrote

But this time I actually remembered to send the playlist link so here

https://youtu.be/lw-oABmOiQU

This is for my Male/gn Dom readers

Can be read by females but just not this was written with dom/male/gn readers in mind

Toxic subs get off my dick about this stuff

Might write nsfw part 2

Warnings:Implied Nsfw but no Nsfw

You rubbed your eyes tiredly as you look over the last of your assignments.

You had been working on them for a few hours now as they were due tomorrow,You get up to stretch your legs and you still to listen

”Strange”

The house was oddly quiet which was strange as your two roommates often fought and argued

But that wasn’t to say that the peace was unwelcome,just unsettling

You pull your clothing up your exposed shoulder and open your bedroom door, deciding to go get some grub.

As you step down the stairs you hear

”You F-ing Jackal,that’s not in the rules”

”Really?Your gonna question the TCG professional?”

That sounded like Kaveh and…..Cyno?

You decide to walk past the sitting room and peak in.

Your eyes scan across the room and……oh~

You lick your lips as your eyes lock onto Kaveh’s and Al Haitham’s discarded cloak.

You sniff the air and you can smell the heavy scent of alcohol.

So they were doing what you thought they were doing.

Tighnari who was facing you looked up and locked eyes with you

You could see the slight flush on his neck from the alcohol.

”Oh Y/N!”

Tighnari’s call draw the other threes attention and they look in the doorway at you

“Y/N!”

Kaveh whines out,Al Haitham just nods at you with a smile

”Y/N”

Cyno acknowledges you

You invite yourself into the room and rest your hands on Al Haitham's shoulders your warm breath tickles his neck and despite his poker face you can feel him grow warm under you and the alcohol wasn’t helping either

”Sooooo what are you Sweethearts doing?~”

While Kaveh and Al Haitham seem unaffected by the pet name unlike Tighnari and Cyno,you knew better from the way Kaveh seemed to melt slightly into the chair and Al Haitham’s sudden “fever” Tighnari’s flushes further while Cyno seems to tense up slightly while flushing just ever so slightly.

You trace your finger on Al Haitham’s collar bone and you watch Cyno’s Adam’s apple bobs as he gulps

”Well you see Y/N we’re playing strip TCG”

“Oh interesting”

As you thumb at the collar of Al Haitham’s shirt you feel him shudder slightly

”You boys wouldn’t mind if a join right?~”

Cyno and Tighnari share an unsure look

Well that makes sense they aren’t sure what I can do~

But before they can say anything Kaveh whines

”Y/N! stop playing with Al Haitham and come play with me~”

Your attention is brought back to Al Haitham and you study his flushed features

”Well I don’t mind Y/N joining in on our game”

Al Haitham’s voice comes out slightly strained

Tighnari and Cyno stare at eachother before looking back at you

”Sit down”

You plop yourself between Kaveh and Tighnari and Kaveh immediately lean onto you

Cyno starts to pull out another deck

”Have you played TCG before?”

You smirk

”I most definitely heard of it but I haven’t played it yet”

”Well I guess we will have to teach you”

Your hands comb through Kaveh’s hair and he seems to be content with the attention

”No no don’t slow the game down because of me,I quite like going into things blind”

Cyno seems some what unsure but Al Haitham backs you up

”Their a full grown adult General Mahmatra they can make decisions for themselves”

Cyno relents

”Fine but just saying I won’t go easy on you”

”Oh I’m counting on that”

1 hour later

The room was definitely warmer Tighnari had quit early as he was nearly fully striped and had said

“I’m not stupid enough to lose my dignity”

That didn’t stop him from drinking with you guys though so he was currently in the kitchen to try boil tea in an attempt to become more sober

Kaveh was currently sleeping on your lap and was striped you had notice him fall asleep after getting fully drunk and had put a blanket on him

Al Haitham had also fully striped and was currently in the bathroom

Cyno and you were the only ones left and you knew that he wouldn’t last long

He was flushed and nearly completely striped

Oh he is definitely drunk

As you place down your card you take out Cyno’s final card

Cyno in a drunk state seems stunned

”Y-You cheated!”

You place your elbows on the table and rests your head on your hands

”Oh General Mahmatra how have I cheated~”

You smile innocently

Cyno stumbles on his words as his alcohol addled brain thinks up of a reason

”You s-said you never played”

”Oh I haven’t~”

”Then ho-“

You had moved Kaveh off your lap and slam you hands on the table,you lean over and use one hand to cup Cyno’s face

Cyno freezes as he feels you nibble on his earlobe

”Doesn’t mean I don’t know how to play it General Mahmatra~”

Cyno shudders at the time of your voice and whines

He is drunker then I thought huh?

”Please”

You blink in surprise

”Please what Sweetheart?”

”I want you to ruin me”

”Gladly Sweetheart”

And you push Cyno down

You can hear Al Haitham and Tighnari coming back

Who knows maybe they’ll want to join

You don’t mind

After all what was better then a few pretty little play things?

[goshdarnitjay]

So so excited for the continuation of lonely heart settle down. I know that the fic is a huge success. Have you ever expected it to be so well received? And how do you feel having to continue such a well loved fic? Nervous or confident? Cuz I know that it can be heat revisiting a fic written so long ago do you find it easy to pick up your inspiration from where h left off or do u reckon you will be having some writers blocks?

I never in a million years thought it would gather so much approval tbh. But then again, I didn't expect What You Owe to be so well-received, either. When I leave AO3 to work on a long project, sometimes I forget that there are readers who will still be there when I get back. 😂😂 But i also never factor in mass-appeal. i write, first and foremost, for me. sometimes, i write for my three closest friends, but our tastes are p similar in a lot of ways (aside from the one who doesn't like ABO. YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE!! your sins will not be forgiven.)

It's kind of odd to think about a continuation of lonely heart, settle down., because I wrote that first chapter in such a fever-dream state. I basically wrote it over the span or four or five days (iirc) and all of it exclusively after 9-10 hour shifts at work (early morning shifts). And yet it came out so well that I am now apprehensive about continuing it when I will not be such a state. but then again, I'm not worried at the same time. After a year of working on it, I can finally enjoy What You Owe again. I resented it for the entire second half of writing it, pretty much. But those chapters and the conclusion still turned out great imo (I guess you'll see once it's fully uploaded).

I don't really worry about writer's block anymore. if i really, truly don't feel like writing, I'll just take that day off. because i know i'll get back to it the day after. rn, i am prioritizing writing over all other hobbies, because no other hobby has ever given me such prolongued joy (and frustration. sometimes i really, really hate writing, but i always love what it creates--i talk a lot about word count, because Number Go Up makes me feel good and gives me dopamine, but i truly, truly just love rereading what i've written and feeling Good About Something I've Made. i don't get that a lot in the other parts of my life).

Oh and btw Ch18 just dropped ayyyooo

[foolforharrry]

Can I Kiss You?

Summary:

Y/n has been talking to Harry online. She coincidentally gets her hands on tickets for his Denver concert and goes to his show to surprise him without his knowledge.

Full transparency here

I wrote this oneshot in september and it's the first ever smut i wrote. I've been a lil stuck on Twist Of Fate lately. So I thought it'd be fun to put it here. But please be kind to me.

This is also pretty much 3.7k words of filth :)

If you guys have anything you want me to write, I'd be more than happy to give it a shot;)

I'll shut up now

After Harry and I's video call the other day, I just laid in bed considering my life choices. Questioning how it got here and where the hell I'm going to go next.

My best friend called me at three in the fucking morning that night, in tears because something had come up. Something that would prevent her from being able to go to her Harry Styles concert in Denver.

She's been a blood fan of One Direction since they got on the X-Factor, then all five of them after the band split.

She slowly but surely made me into a fan of them, but there is just something about Harry that draws you in without even having to meet him. Just seeing a video of him is enough, really.

But since she's not going to his show, she gave me the ticket and made me promise to film every second of it. Get him to notice me.

Which is exactly what I did.

She'd told me to wear something slutty, which I shot down right away. She's way too excited for me to go see him when she can't. Just proving that I don't deserve her. But I'm not ever going to let her go.

Which brings me to now.

Harry just went off stage, the last two hours feels like a fever dream. We locked eyes a few times, his eyebrows had shot up in surprise when he recognized me. I honestly didn't think he would.

Sophie convinced me to put my hair in a half-up, half-down style. Silver necklaces resting around my neck, falling into the deep cut V-neck of my pink and blue striped crop top. A pair of tight, high waisted leather pants. Black combat boots on my feet.

The dramatic blue eye make-up and winged liner making my eyes pop, but also look like another person.

I guess the man has a great memory.

I'll never understand how he can perform the way he does. When he's up there, he looks like he's right where he belongs. Like he was meant for it. I have no idea if that's how it feels for him, obviously. I'm not psychic, but it would be pretty sick to be able to know what's going on in people's heads.

I didn't even notice that people had started filing out of the pit, the loud sound of thousands of people screaming, now lowered to a hum of the ones left talking.

I don't notice until a buff security guard waves his hand in front of my face, having been too stuck in my own head to do anything but stare at the spot Harry disappeared after sending me a wink. A fucking wink.

"Miss Adams?"

I snap my head in his direction when he speaks my name. confusion must be written all over my face because his hard features soften a little. Although I can't know for sure due to his mask, I think he's smiling.

"Yeah, that's me.", I breathe, straightening up.

"Mr Styles has requested you."

"I'm sorry, he what?" I can already feel my heart racing. This is some kind of sick joke, right? This doesn't actually happen at concerts. People don't actually get called backstage by the global superstar after his concert is finished.

The security guard who I have yet to learn his name chuckles, "If you just follow me, I'll take you to him."

Without a second thought, knowing if I do, I'll psych myself out of it if I think too much about this, I swing my legs over the fence, jogging after the security guard. The sound of my boots hitting the ground echoing around the nearly empty venue.

I keep my head down as we walk through the building, not meeting the eye of any of the people working here. Too lost in my own head again to take in any of my surroundings.

Why would he ask me to meet him?

Is he mad at me for coming here?

Is he disappointed?

What if this is like fanfiction and he ends up being in the mafia and this entire tour is just a cover for a huge drugs and weapons operation and I'm going to be chased by a dude in a skeleton mask until he stabs me, and I die?

That would be preferable to the first three options, to be honest.

"Here you are, Miss Adams." And with that, he walks away. Leaving me outside the door labelled 'Harry Styles'.

I knock my knuckles against the wood hesitantly before I can change my mind and go back home.

I'm about to turn on my heel and run like a lunatic through the building again, but just as I've turned around to leave, the door flings open and my heart stops beating in my chest.

His blue and white striped shirt is still tucked in his red trousers, but the suspenders are hanging on each side of his hips. His feet void of the red shoes he was wearing earlier.

His hair still styled in the same way with some rogue strands having fallen down across his forehead. His green eyes making me stop breathing for a second.

"Hi.", I greet him, an awkward wave of my hand just embarrassing myself further. This is why I don't talk to anyone of the opposite gender.

Harry's heart-shaped lips turn up into a smirk at my obvious nerves, "Hey, angel. Didn't know you were coming tonight. Why didn't you tell me?"

"I'm sorry, it was really last minute. My best friend, Sophie was supposed to go, but she couldn't after all and called me after we spoke on Sunday and told me to go instead. I filmed the entire thing though so she could watch the whole thing with me-''

"Can I kiss you?", Harry interrupts my rambling, making my heart skip a beat. At least he's direct about it.

My words get stuck in my throat, and I can muster is a nod.

Harry tuts, "I'm gonna need words, pretty girl." His voice lower than usual, as his eyes bore into mine.

I swallow hard, "Kiss me, please."

Without saying another word, Harry's hands cup my face as he leans down to lightly press his lips against mine. He starts backing into his dressing room, me trailing him like a lost puppy as he kicks it shut behind him.

He doesn't give me time to think before he's kissing me again, a lot more urgent this time. I kiss him back, feeling one of his hands trail down the curve of my waist until he's pushing my body against the door, my hands holding onto his bicep and jaw for some support as he swipes his tongue over my bottom lip asking for entrance.

I grant it, Harry's mouth moving against mine as his rings are freezing cold in contrast to the burning hot skin of the side of my neck.

"You're a dream, angel.", Harry murmurs against my lips. His voice is husky from lust, his eyes dark as he meets mine. "Oh, the things I wanna do to you."

I tuck my bottom lip into my mouth, letting my right hand slide down his chest, stopping at the hem of his trousers, "Why don't you show me?"

Harry groans at my words before enveloping my lips with his again, sliding his tongue into my mouth as he takes control. Both of his hands move down to grope my ass through the leather material of my pants, kneading the flesh in his ring clad fingers.

I can't help but whimper when he pulls one of his hands away, only to crack it against my ass cheek, feeling the sharp sting through my pants as he rubs the area to soothe the pain. "You want me to have my way with you? You gonna be a good girl?", Harry rasps.

"Yes, Harry. Do whatever you want with me."

"Beg.", he demands in a tone that has me squeezing my thighs together to relieve some of the pressure that's built up in my lower half.

I defiantly stare back at him, my mouth pressed into a fine line as I try to ignore how my heartbeat races at the dark look in his eyes.

Without warning, his hand is off my ass and wrapped around my neck, making me practically moan. I'm completely ruining my underwear.

"Harder."

Harry cocks his eyebrow, "You're playing a dangerous game here, love."

I open my mouth to speak, but no words come out due to the way his hand tightens around my neck, making all the ache between my legs become unbearable.

Harry seems to notice because the smirk is plastered back on his face, "You're really not that innocent are you, angel?"

"Please.", I whimper like the weak bitch I am. Desperate for anything at this point. Wanna drive a knife through my chest? Please do. Just get rid of the fucking pressure that just keep building from Harry's hand around my neck making my head spin.

"Please what?", he teases, "I'm gonna need words, angel. You know that." Leaving a trail of kisses from my jaw to the curve of my neck as he starts licking and sucking bruises on my pale skin making me arch my back, my chest pressing against his.

"Ah. Please do whatever you want with me. Use me. I don't care. Just do something. Please. Let me do something. Please. I'm begging.", I break, my hands burying themselves in his hair as he moans against my neck, pressing his hips against mine. The bulge evident in his pants, pressed against me.

Harry's teethe nibble at the sensitive skin on my neck, grinding his hips against me, "I want your pretty little mouth wrapped around my cock.", his voice is laced with lust.

"Then what are you waiting for?" I apparently have a death wish.

"Let me put that mouth to good use.", Harry growls as he lets go of me to unzip his pants, letting them pool around his ankles as he unbuttons the rest of his shirt. His cock straining against the fabric of his black briefs, making my mouth water.

He lets his material slide off his shoulders, exposing his tattooed torso. "Down on your knees for me, angel."

His voice snaps me out of my gawking over his body, dropping down to my knees, looking up at Harry as I wait for him to tell me what he wants.

Instead of telling me, he takes hold of his briefs, pulling them down his muscular legs, past the tiger tattoo, stepping out of them and the pants. Kicking them somewhere behind him as his length springs free, precum leaking from the tip.

"Can I?", I ask.

Harry nods, waiting impatiently for me to do anything when I tut, repeating the same words he told me, "I'm gonna need words, angel."

"Yes.", Harry confirms reluctantly, and I waste no time wrapping my head around his shaft, spitting on it to make the glide easier as I work him in my hand earning a low moan from Harry.

Seeing the reaction I have on him makes me squeeze my things together as my underwear is definitely ruined by now.

Without warning, I lick a stripe up his impressive length before wrapping my lips around the head while still jerking him off with my hand. Swirling my tongue around his sensitive tip, making his hips jerk forward.

When I take him deeper in my mouth, hollowing my cheeks around his cock, he releases a guttural moan, "Ah- just like that.", encouraging me to take him further until he hits the back of my throat.

I bob my head, tears springing to my eyes as I concentrate on breathing through my nose when I feel him curve down the back of my throat. My make-up is probably running down my cheeks from the way my tears fall because of the pressure in the back of my throat.

My hands hold onto his thighs for support when Harry takes hold of my hair, using my mouth for his own pleasure. His hips thrusting forward harshly as he fucks my mouth with no remorse, moans and groans streaming from him with no shame.

"You're such a good girl. Taking me so well.", Harry rasps, his voice strained as I swallow around him. "Fuck!"

Suddenly Harry rips my mouth off him, squeezing his cock while cursing, "Shit. Fucking hell. You're gonna make me come already. Need to be inside you right now."

He grabs me by the throat, making me stand on my feet before he crashes his lips against mine, probably tasting himself on me as he groans into my mouth. I fumble with the button of my pants as his tongue explores my mouth.

My skin feels like it's on fire as his hands roam my body. Groping at my tits, squeezing my sides before he urges me to raise my arms above my head, grabbing the bottom of my crop top, only breaking away from the kiss when he takes it off.

I'm left in my bra, moaning when Harry starts sucking and nibbling at the skin where my jaw meets my neck, his fingers skillfully unclasping my bra.

"Lemme take these off.", he motions to my pants when my breasts are free, grabbing the hem before dragging the tight leather down my toned legs, crouching down as he does. Kissing down my stomach, making butterflies erupt in my belly.

"God you're a dream." Harry compliments as he takes in my body, the only thing covering me being my small, black thong. "You've probably made a mess between your thighs, haven't you angel? Bet you're dripping."

"You have no idea.", I agree, seeing no point in denying it.

"May I?"

Harry looks up at me, his hands rubbing up and down my thighs. "Please." And with that, he actually rips the fabric off my body. The sting of it making me hiss in pleasurable pain as I'm completely exposed to the man who's literally on his knees in front of me.

He drags his pointer finger through my soaked heat, my hip jerking when he brushed against my clit. Making me whimper involuntarily as he groans, "You're drenched angel. Want me to take care of that ache in your tummy."

"Yes, please. I need your mouth. Your fingers. Please." I have to lean against the wall to keep myself standing when he slaps my cunt, having to fight back a scream.

Harry gets off his knees, throwing me over his shoulder like I weigh nothing only to carry me a few steps before I'm being lowered onto his sofa. A shiver going down my spine when I see him between my legs, his irises void of any green from how dilated his pupils are.

"I'm gonna make you come all over my fingers before I bury my cock inside you and fuck you until you can't remember your own name. Is that alright with you?"

Fuck me.

I blink at him, having lost the ability to form words. "I'm gonna need you to say yes, angel.", Harry reminds me.

"Yes. Fuck. Please do."

Harry smirks, "Good girl.", before enveloping my clit with his mouth, startling my body as I arch my back in pleasure as he suctions it into his mouth. Bringing his hand up to my centre, his fingers circle my entrance. His groan sending vibrations through my body, making me moan uncontrollably when he inserts two fingers into my cunt. Pumping them in and out, curling them in just the right way to hit the spot that makes me go feral.

My fingers tangle in his hair for some sort of support when he adds another finger, going faster. The pace of everything making my head spin and the pressure in my tummy build.

Harry's free hand replaces his mouth as he pulls his face away, his chin shining with my arousal. His thumb rubs fast patterns, adjusting to what gets the most reaction from me.

"Let it go, angel.", Harry urges me as his fingers drive into me even faster, making a feral moan escape me as I start squirming from the intense feeling in my body. His deep accent not making it any easier to hold on.

Suddenly the bubble pops and pleasure spreads through my entire body, making me go limp as I chant Harry's name over and over again as he helps me ride out my high before pulling his finger out of my spent body.

I feel like I'm on a cloud, floating around, so I don't register that he's ripped open a condom and rolled it onto his length until he's grabbing a hold of my waist. Flipping me onto my stomach, my knees on the floor as Harry positions himself behind me.

I'm about to ask what he's doing when he takes hold of my wrists, bringing them together behind my back before trying them together with something I can't see.

He tests it to make sure it's not too tight before asking, "This alright, angel?"

"Fuck", I breathe, "Yes. What even is that?" I use the little energy I have left to lift my head, twisting it to see a devious look on his face before he shrugs, "My suspenders. You can keep em."

And with that he places his cock at my entrance before connecting his hips with the back of my ass, making me choke on a moan at the sudden intrusion. His size causing a pleasurable pain to erupt, making me hiss in both pain and ecstasy.

He pulls out until only his tip is still inside before driving into me again, setting a rough, fast pace as he holds on to the curve of my waist as he uses my body for his own pleasure.

"Fuck- you're such a whore. Letting me use you like this in my dressing room. Such a filthy fucking slut.", Harry's voice is barely recognizable as he keeps drilling into me, wrapping his hand around my neck, forcing my body back until my back is against his burning hot chest.

I can't speak, all I can do is moan and whimper as Harry buries his face in my shoulder, I turn my head to the side, moaning harder when he digs his teeth into the skin of my shoulder. The pain becoming pleasurable almost immediately.

Harry seems to take my lack of words as an encouragement, "You're just letting me use you like the desperate little fuck toy you are. Being so loud when anyone walking past the door could hear you. I bet that's what you want, isn't it?"

"Says you who could barely keep your hands off me when I knocked on the door. And you call me desperate?", I manage to bite back. Both of us were breathless.

When Harry doesn't respond, I think he may not have heard me. Or that I just imagined myself saying it. But then he pushes my body roughly back down to the sofa again before cracking his palm against my right ass cheek. Before I can even register the stinging pain of it, another smack is heard as he does the same to my other cheek, now rubbing the area to soothe the pain. His rings making them so much more effective.

Harry wraps his hand back around my throat, harder than earlier, forcing me back up as his free hand takes hold of my jaw. Making me look at him, his face is shining with sweat, much like the rest of his body, his hair completely fallen out of its place, jaw clenched so hard I'm worried about his teeth.

"You watch your mouth, princess. Ok?"

His tone is chilling and his thrusts are harsher than before, making the muscles in my thighs shake from the intense pleasure. When I don't answer, he squeezes harder on the side of my neck, making my eyes roll back, "Answer me, angel."

"Yes- ah. No backtalk.", I moan.

"Open your mouth.", he orders. I automatically obey, my eyes widening as he leans over, spitting straight in my mouth before forcing it shut. "Swallow. Good girl."

I'm about to say something when he crashes his lips against mine again, the passion behind it overwhelming as one of his hands travel down my body, his thumb attaching to my clit again.

The new stimulation makes it impossible for me to kiss Harry back as my body squirms from the insane amount of pleasure from his big cock hitting that spot inside me over and over again and the way he's playing with my clit. Sending my brain into overdrive.

I have no control when I come abruptly, clenching around Harry as he's holding my body upright completely. My muscles having given out as all I can do is moan as I come around him.

Apparently triggering his own release as his thrusts become sloppy until he stills completely.

He helps ride both our highs out before he carefully pulls out, making me wince from how sensitive I am. Then untying my wrists.

Just as he's thrown the used condom away, there's a sharp know at the door and a voice, making me panic, "We're ready to go when you are, Harry!"

Harry on the other hand seems absolutely chill about it as he's picking our clothes off the floor, "I'm just gonna stay in tonight, Pauli. Have fun!"

I hear a low, "Old man.", before Pauli, apparently, leaves.

I cover my face with my hands in embarrassment, Harry chuckling at me as he helps me thread my useless legs through my pant legs, having out on his briefs again.

"I hate you.", I mutter, still mortified over the possibility that someone heard us. Something that went completely over my head earlier.

Harry's dimple carves into his cheek, "No, you don't. At least you didn't a few minutes ago."

I scoff as I put my bra on, "I loved your dick a few minutes ago.", I correct him.

"You're impossible.", Harry shakes his head as he's put on a pair of sweats and a hoodie before handing me one.

"It's cold out.", is Harry's response to my questioning expression.

I throw it over my head, noticing that it smells like him before standing up on shaky legs, "Where's the bathroom?"

-

[warmblanketwhump]

safe enough to fall

a little university-themed thing I wrote using @sicktember prompts: comfort item, sneaky temperature check, medicine, unlikely caregiver, and lightly inspired by these prompts

the grip of the winter’s cold was their constant, unrelenting companion - but sometimes, B just wished it would be a little less faithful.

It doesn’t ease in the morning, when B wakes up coughing with a cold nose and stiff limbs. It stays as B shivers through the lukewarm shower and the hurried layering of clothes over damp, goosebumped skin. It sticks to them like cling wrap on the bus, in the lecture hall, the windy walk to their next class, makes them tense their rattling jaw, and leaves them hunched over and huddled up, desperate to conserve any scrap of heat.

This was a fact of their university existence - that after the pleasant crispness of fall, their poor, scholarship-funded body was plunged into four months of frozen hell. They didn’t like to complain - after all, they were getting a free education. But no one told them how brutal their university’s winters would be, nor that dorm heating was little more than a few puffs of warm air every hour, or that regardless of how many layers they pulled on, they’d be chilled to the bone until late March.

Their final class of the week is in a drafty science lab, and they hold back a groan. The cold's not the only source of their dread - it was the thought of spending 90 minutes with their perky, overly friendly lab partner, A.

A, whose parents were well-off, well-known benefactors of their university. A, who lived in a nice house with proper heating and had the money for a warm winter coat. A, who obliviously chattered on about anything and everything. Besides that, they were just so...happy. All the time.

The can afford to be, B thought miserably. There was no way all that sunshine could be real.

B really tried to tamp down their bitterness, but it was hard to listen to someone gush on about their amazing weekend their family spent on some tropical island when B spent the same weekend wrapped up in blankets, trying to stay warm enough to study their nomenclature notes.

Two minutes before class, A bounds into the lab like a freed golden retriever and begins their usual volley of caffeinated questions, which B responds to in short, clipped answers. Suddenly, the questions stop and A’s brows furrow.

“You look cold. Are you okay?”

B shifts on their stool and tucks their fingers into the sleeves of their worn secondhand coat, pulling it tighter with a shudder. “I am cold. It’s winter.” They cough weakly into their elbow - the nagging cough has gripped them for weeks now.

“Are you sick?”

Direct, then. That was new. “No. At least, I don’t think so. I don’t have a fever or anything.” In truth, they had been feeling a little lower than usual the past couple of days, the chill a little deeper, the aches more pronounced, the cough a bit more painful. But in their book, that was hardly enough call themselves sick. B sniffles and A opens their mouth to comment further, but the professor calls the class to attention, and the moment is gone.

90 minutes later, they’ve got their work cut out for them - a ten-page lab report that’s going to count for nearly a quarter of their final grade. And as luck would have it, it was a partner project, which meant B got to spend more time with the equivalent of human rocket fuel.

“So...do you want to just knock this out tonight?” A's eyes dart around nervously.

B frowns - it’s almost the weekend, and they figured A would have plans with friends this evening. But B sure doesn’t have anything going on., so they don’t protest. “No… I s’pose we should get as much done as possible while it’s still fresh. Want to go to the library?”

“Ugh." A cringes. "Do we have to? That place is like a tomb.”

B huffs indignantly. “It's not that bad," they mumble in a weak defense of their favorite study spot. A shoots them a glare, and B rolls their eyes. "Do you have somewhere better? It's Friday, so most places are closing up.”

“Well, my parents decided to go on some last-minute ski trip to the Alps again, so my place is free," A says as they step out into the biting wind. "Plus, I have a ton of food and it's actually warm in there, unlike these buildings.”

The promise of decent heating and food that wasn't from the dining hall was enough for B. "Fine. Your place." The pair trudge through the bitter wind as the sun begins to set, and soon they arrive at A's parents’ home - a beautiful, winding estate just a couple minutes away from campus. B has to bite their lip to keep their jaw off the ground - in the blustering snow, this place looks straight out of a Christmas card. Another reminder of how they don’t fit in this world.

Will you stop? B chastises themselves. A having money isn't a personal attack on you. Just enjoy the free food, finish the assignment and get over it.

Despite the towering exterior, B's house was quite cozy, colored in warm neutrals and filled with soft, comfortable furniture. Just past the mudroom, they spot a big living room filled with with an enormous overstuffed couch, squashy-looking pillows, and soft throw blankets. Everything about this place screams warm. A rubs their arms, suddenly aware of how cold they are. The heat nearly makes them dizzy, and they can feel the temperature difference as it seeps into their cold skin.

"Want some cocoa?" A tosses their bag into the corner and heads for an electric kettle in the kitchen, and B follows. "It always helps me warm up." B nods. A couple minutes later, A pushes over a steaming mug with the top entirely covered in marshmallows.

B wraps their chilled fingers around the mug and takes a sip, and the warm, rich liquid feels like heaven to their cold body. "That's amazing."

A smiles. "It's the good stuff." They sip in a surprising silence for a few moments, before A sighs in resignation. "As much as I wish this was just a social call, this report isn't gonna write itself." They grab a bag of popcorn and nod their head toward the living room, and B follows dutifully. A flicks on the gas fireplace and tosses B a throw blanket, and the pair gets to work.

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

After a couple hours of studying, three instances of indignantly thrown popcorn, and a dramatic reading of the periodic table, B realized that they may have misjudged A. Deep down, under the bubbly exterior, A was a genuinely kind, sweet person. It wasn't an act - they just were human sunshine. And the longer they spent time with them, the more B realized they didn't mind their company at all.

"Alright." A drops their pencil and rubs their eyes. "If I have to balance one more equation, my brain's gonna explode. Study break time." A flips on the TV and puts the volume on low.

B leans their head back on the couch and pulls their throw blanket to their chin, trying to ward off the shivery feeling in their core. Despite the heat of the fire, the mug of hot chocolate, and the thick blanket, they just can’t seem to get warm.

Their face feels hot, but their blood feels chilled and heavy, the weight of it making them ache deep down in their bones. B wraps their arms around their knees, trying to rub away the throbbing pain and get some warmth into their skin. They glance out the picture window at the now-blowing snow. It's gonna be a miserable walk home.

"B, you're shivering." A's turning to look at them now.

B startles. "It's-It's nothing. Just a chill." The concern in A's voice triggers their flight response. "I....I should probably get back to the dorms. It’s late–" They're cut off with a hacking cough that leaves them breathless and they wince at the ache in their chest.

"B, it's snowing, and you haven't even had dinner-"

"Where's my jacket?" They push themselves up and toss the throw blanket off, instantly regretting it as the air invades their pocket of hard fought warmth. They’re trembling and dizzy and desperately freezing, but they cannot stay here. Then, the world tilts and they fall back on to the couch. For a moment, they're just laying in an icy, spinning world, trying to catch their breath, when warmth suddenly envelops them.

A's tucking the same thick grey blanket around their shivering form. As they pull away, their hand lightly brushes over B's neck, then freezes. B twists away from the gentle touch, but it’s too late. Realization floods over A's face. Caught. "You lied. You are sick."

B groans, even as their fingers weave into the chunky knit and pull the warm layer closer. "A, please. Just let me go home. I'm probably contagious. You don't want me here."

"B, you look like death warmed over. I'm not sending you out in a blizzard when you're feverish like this. I won't do it." There's a spark in their eyes and a set to A's jaw that dares B to challenge them.

B leans back, defeated. Even though they want nothing more than to run out of this room, they're too weak to stand and too cold to move. So here they'll stay.

It's okay. Someone's here. You can give in now.

No. I can't. I can't let them see me like this.

What choice do you have? You already look awful. Let them help you.

A covers them with another blanket and places a gentle hand on their back, rubbing slowly. The firelight flickers, casting light and shadow across their solemn face. “B. Tell me what you're feeling, and I'll get you what you need.”

B swallows down the rising panic, the helpless vulnerability they feel, and takes a shallow, shaky breath. “I…I guess I just feel….not right. I’m always cold...but it's...worse.” They sniffle weakly, trying to still and order their swirling thoughts. “Chills, fever, cough, sore throat, kinda stuffed up. And it just hurts everywhere.”

A nods slowly, then leaves the room. They return in a few minutes with a few small bottles, carefully scanning the labels and holding them up for B to see.

“Can you take this? Any problems with this one?” B had to take a moment and match the brand names with their usual knockoff brands, but soon they had a couple over the counter medicines picked out, along with something for their cough.

A glances at the medicine labels once more. "This one says to take with food. I've got some leftover chicken and dumpling soup I can heat up - does that sound okay?"

B nods almost imperceptibly. "Sounds wonderful." A gets up to heat the soup, and B feels the anxiety rising in their stomach when they're not in the room with them. A returns with a mug and manages to gently spoon a few sips of broth into B's mouth before B starts falling asleep, clutching the grey blanket even tighter to their shoulders.

A smiles sadly. “That blanket's my favorite whenever I'm not feeling good. It's the best thing you could have to fight off what you’ve got. Trust me.”

B curls into the soft fabric. It was as if the warm environment of the apartment and the comfort of the blanket had been a signal that it was safe to leave survival mode, rest for a moment, open the floodgates that had been holding back whatever had been ailing them for weeks.

After B takes their medicine, A’s eyes shift awkwardly around the room. “So….when you’re sick, do you like having someone with you? Or do you want to be by yourself?”

A sudden rush of emotion crashes over B. They’d so rarely had the choice. It takes all they’ve got not to throw themselves around A and beg them not to leave. “Stay, please,” they ask in a small, trembling voice. “If it’s not too much trouble.”

A smiles halfway and gently pats B’s leg. “Seeing as how I live here, I don’t think that’ll be a problem.” They take their spot at the end of the couch and pull B’s legs over their own, flicking the TV to a familiar movie. B tries to keep up with the plot, but they keep falling in and out of a fitful, restless sleep, tossing, turning, unable to get comfortable enough.

When B’s about ready to cry from exhaustion, A’s there, covering them up with another blanket, bringing them a glass of water, gently stroking the damp hair off their forehead before laying a cold cloth over it. They flinch at first, but the cool dampness eases the fire of their fever, even for just a moment. The last thing B remembers before falling unconscious is a gentle hand squeezing theirs.

It could be minutes or hours later when they jolt awake from a fever dream in a cold sweat, choking and coughing. They’ve kicked off their blankets and the cloth is nowhere to be found, but the chills are back in full force. A appears in B’s blurred vision, hand held to B’s forehead. “Poor thing. Your fever’s worse,” they murmur.

B’s still gasping for breath, curled up in the fetal position, body wracked by the shakes as they try force the words through their chattering teeth. “A...It's so cold. I’m so scared.”

If B was more lucid, they’d see something in A’s eyes crack wide open at their weak, fearful cries. A pulls the trusted grey blanket from the floor and wraps it back around B, rubbing their arms to try and make them feel warmer. There's something in the tenderness of the gesture, and B’s panicked gasps turn into soft, quiet sobs. They try and cover their face with one hand, but A’s hand is there, catching their wrist and wiping the tears away with their thumb.

“Hey. You’re gonna be okay. We just gotta get through tonight, alright?” A’s voice matches their usual cheery demeanor, but B can see the fear in their own eyes. They don’t know what they’re doing either.

“Why are you helping me?” B whispers in a tear-roughened voice.

A shrugs. "You're sick. You need help. Is it that so surprising?"

B's eyes flash a delirious spark. "You don't get it. I'm a broke scholarship student. I'm nothing like you. I'm not fun, or bubbly, or rich, or any of those things you are, and I don't fit in here. So why?"

B can't stop the words now, every single insecurity laid bare. "Why do you try to talk to me when I'm nothing but rude to you? Why'd you invite me here? Am I just a project to you? Why are you helping me? I'm not worth it!" The words spill out before B can stop them, and the raw hurt in A's eyes nearly rips B's heart out of their chest.

B claps their hand over their mouth, tears flooding their eyes. Now they've done it. They've laid it all out there. A's gonna kick them to the curb. And B won't blame them one bit.

But instead, A just looks at them, and pulls B into a hug. Their voice wavers only a bit as they whisper in B's ear: "You're not a project. You are completely worth being cared for. And you’re not the only one who knows what it feels like to not fit somewhere. Trust me.”

Alone. In a big, empty house. Studying on a Friday night. No plans of their own.

A, are you lonely, too?

Their words are so simple.

And yet they're everything B didn't know they needed to hear. A's got one arm around their shoulders, and one hand threaded through their sweaty, fever-damp hair, and they're cradling B so tightly it’s like they're the one who needs to be held.

B can't find the words to apologize or comfort them back. They're too tired for that. But they wrap their other arm around A and let their head rest on their shoulder. They stay like that for ages until their head begins to drop, and A shifts so they’re both laying down, B curled against A, A’s arm wrapped around their shoulders as they tuck a blanket around them both.

And finally, finally, B lets go. It's safe to fall, this time around. Because for the first time, there's someone there to catch them.

[adhdeancas]

Dean gets screened for ADHD

“I don’t really buy into the whole ‘shrink’ thing,” he blurted out as soon as he got in the door. The woman in the white coat raised an eyebrow at him, not unkindly. 

“Well, it’s a good thing I’m not a shrink, then.”

Dean floundered at that. He nodded and sat awkwardly in the chair across from the psychiatrist, perched on the edge, just in case. His fingertips bounced nervously against his leg. “Okay, yeah, sure, but- you know, the whole-” another indiscriminate arm wave, another soft smile. 

“Mental health?”

“My brother thought I should come.” he confirmed, sighing and resigning himself to his fate finally. He settled back further into the chair. “Well and my- my buddy.” he looked down, his heartbeat picking up a little. 

“I am going to have to ask you some questions, though.”

“Hm? Uh, yeah, go ahead, whatever you gotta do.”

Dr. Pearson took out her clipboard, an action which stopped Dean in his tracks. He was starting to feel a little boxed in. “So, first off, what are you here for? I mean, besides placating your brother.”

Dean grinned at her, the knot in his chest loosening a little. “Yeah, uh… so my brother and my… friend, they think I’ve got ADHD”

“Do you think you have ADHD?”

Dean blinked at her. “I- I dunno, I mean, I’m a little old for that, ain’t I?”

The doctor shrugged. “ADHD doesn’t have an age limit. And you’re never too old to improve your life.”

Dean held his hands up in defense. He didn’t want her to think he was just flat out dismissing it, but… “Don’t get me wrong, I’m fucked up in a thousand different ways, but for once… my life kinda feels… good. I got a good thing going. Don’t know how much I wanna change.” It felt like way too much to mess with, what if he messed it up? 

The psychiatrist nodded, interested. “Tell me about that. Your life now. It’s a recent change?”

Dean scratched the back of his neck. “Yeah. Me and my family, we got past some pretty big stuff not too long ago, and uh… I got into a relationship, a good one,” he cleared his throat and wiped his palms off on his pants. “I moved and everything, and I kind of have a kid. And I have a job, a real job, for the first time in my goddamn life.” He looked up and beamed, so proud of his bar. His bar. He swore, everytime he talked about his life it sounded like a fever dream. 

The psychiatrist returned his smile, which made him feel like a third grader. “Those sound like some pretty big changes. Congratulations. And you said you had different circumstances before? Would you characterize any of your past life events as traumatic?”

Dean laughed, actually cackled then. “Uh, all of them?” From the patronizing smile the doc was wearing, he guessed she didn’t believe him. “I- I was a soldier, kinda. For a while. Seen a lot of bad shit.” The doctor nodded; she started scribbling something down on her paperwork. “I’m not, like, traumatized or anything, though.”

A genuine smile pulled at Dr. Pearson’s lips as she wrote, and Dean leaned forward, eager to see what kinda joke she thought he was pitching. “You know, in all my years of being a psychiatrist, almost no one has wanted to admit they have trauma.” She looked at him and shrugged. “Most people, at least, most people who come to see me, have trauma.”

Dean crossed his arms, knowing it made him look cartoonishly uncomfortable and not being able to stop himself anyway. “Okay, can we move past this part of the- whatever? Exam?”

She nodded, surprising Dean. “We can do the ADHD screening now.”

“What, so all the rest of that was for shits and giggles?”

“Background.” She was unfazed. “Okay, now I’m going to ask you some questions about your attention and work habits and how your day to day functions, they’re called executive dysfunctions, how they work and how they present in your mind. It’s going to be a lot of questions. You don’t have to worry about any right answers, there aren’t any. And if you want to expand more on an answer, please feel free. All information helps me get a more accurate picture of your mindspace.”

Dean blinked. Once. Twice. He didn’t mean to zone out, he really didn’t, but his brain just kinda glazed over the words, like they went in one ear and out the other without translating into English. The doctor waited patiently, and he nodded his go-ahead, hoping it was the right answer. “Yeah, sure.”

She cleared her throat and flipped the page on her clipboard, looking down at a list of questions she apparently had. There were a lot of questions, some of them confused Dean, and he had to think about them a lot. He’d never thought about thinking so much in his life. His brain just worked, what the hell was he supposed to say about it? 

“Are you organized?”

“Yeah, totally. Except when, y’know, if I’m going through a rough few days, then… nobody wants to do laundry when they feel like shit.”

“So your ability to maintain your cleanliness relies on your mental state?”

“Yeah, doesn’t everyone’s?”

“So, what goes through your mind if you’re having a rough day, or week, and you see laundry on the floor. Or dishes in the sink. What do you think, what do you do?”

“Well, I think I should clean it up, obviously.”

“And you do?”

He shrugged, embarrassed. “It’s a lot of work.” He shakes his head. “No it’s not, I know that stuff would take me like three minutes but… I gotta get up first.”

“Do you find it hard to concentrate on work?”

“Yeah. I mean, sometimes. Research, fuck yeah. I swear to- I swear, I can’t read more than three pages before I-” He waved a hand in front of his eyes. She seemed to get it. “But if it’s like- cars, then I can work for hours and just - zone the fuck out.”

“What about watching tv? Can you sit on the couch and relax?”

“Yeah!” Dean started confidently, but then wavered. “Well, unless, I’ve like- I dunno, sometimes I just need to do something with my hands, y’know? Or some days, my car is my couch. All I need is my Baby, the open road, some music… But I can watch a good marathon, don’t get me wrong. One time I watched John Wayne’s entire life’s work in one sitting.”

“Do you lose things often?”

“All the fucking time. It’s why I try to be organized. My keys, my guns, my wallet, I know where that stuff is, I always put it in the same place.”

“Like a cubby or a bedside table?”

“Uh…” He scratched his head. Maybe he was batshit. Every answer he said made him sound crazier and crazier. “No. So, I put my keys on this one shelf of the bar while I’m there, my hus- Cas got this cutesy little key holder from a garage sale, so that’s where I keep ‘em at home. Wallet on this one ledge in the kitchen, and I’ve got a gun in basically every room.” He was hoping she wouldn’t fixate on the gun thing. Luckily, she didn’t. 

“But other than those things, you lose?”

“Yeah. I- I found this one ring I lost years ago in my trunk a few months ago, and I’ve been wearing it every day. But I took it off because-” He coughed. He took it off because he and Cas were fucking on their living room couch while Jack was with Sam for the weekend and he hadn’t wanted any… roughness to his fingers. “I took it off and set it down, and I knew where I set it down, right? But then I was afraid of losing it again, so I didn’t look for it, even though I know I knew where it was. So like four days later I finally look for it, and it’s not there.” He sighed heavily, and looked up just in time to see Dr. Pearson looking at him like he was a mummy who’d come back to life and started talking about the intricacies of hieroglyphics. Okay, so he had ADHD, apparently. That was ADHD. 

Dean left with a prescription for a when-needed stimulant and a weirdly light feeling in his chest. It took him five weeks to find his ring, right where Cas had put it in his bathroom drawer. He had laughed at Dean when he yelled at him, which brought Dean back down to a self-deprecating laugh. Later, Dean forwarded him an article about ADHD and object impermanence, and Cas started immediately giving Dean things he found if he thought he’d lost them. Which. Was A Solution.

[ibijau]

Futures past pt2 / On AO3

Lan Xichen awakens from a dream that isn't his, and must make a decision

Lan Xichen awoke to a desperate scream stuck in his throat.

He couldn’t breathe.

He couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t, he couldn’t, he was going to…

His throat relaxed at last, just enough for him to wail in despair. Heavy tears stained his face and he curled up on his side, still half choking, scratching at his own neck until it bled.

Footsteps came to his door. He heard a voice calling his name, familiar and filled with worry, but he was gasping for air too badly to answer. The only sounds he could make were sobs and weak, pained moans. Getting worried, his uncle entered his bedroom and hurried to his bed.

“Xichen, what’s wrong?” Lan Qiren asked, grabbing his nephew’s hands so he wouldn’t hurt himself anymore, checking his forehead for a fever, his wrist for a pulse.

Lan Xichen’s heart was beating too hard, too fast, nearly making sick, and still he couldn’t quite breathe. He grasped his uncle’s hand, needing the comfort, the closeness. Needing the reminder he wasn’t alone, because…

Because he would be alone, someday. So desperately alone, and it would be his own fault.

The thought, the memory that didn’t quite belong to him, wrenched another sob out of him.

“Is something wrong?” Lan Wangji’s voice asked from further away.

Through the tears, Lan Xichen spotted his younger brother hovering in the doorway, so sleepy he hadn't even grabbed his ribbon, looking quite worried. Out of habit Lan Xichen tried to open his mouth and comfort Lan Wangji, but all that came out was a breathless growl that made the younger boy even more distraught. 

It took a long while for Lan Xichen to calm down. Lan Qiren stayed at his side the entire time, having sent Lan Wangji back to bed. Holding Lan Xichen's hands, he hummed a melody, a lullaby of sorts which soothed his nephew, just as it had when Lan Xichen had been a child. 

"It was just a nightmare," Lan Xichen said when his voice returned to him. "Apologies for the inconvenience, shufu." 

"A rather strong one then," Lan Qiren replied. "If you want to share it, I will listen." 

It was tempting. But if Lan Qiren didn't believe him, Lan Xichen would seem mad. And if he did believe him… Lan Xichen shivered at the thought. He couldn't burden others with that, it would be too cruel. 

He shook his head. 

"It was only a bad dream," Lan Xichen said. "With your permission, I will stay up a little and find ways to occupy myself until I feel like sleeping again." 

"I might have medicine to help you fall asleep," Lan Qiren offered. 

"No need, I just need a little more time. Please don't let me inconvenience you any longer, shufu." 

Lan Qiren looked unconvinced, but did not insist, and soon enough Lan Xichen was left alone again. 

The first thing he did was to stand up and go to the window, where he filled his lungs with all the fresh air he could. Nights were cold, each breath made his chest burn a little more, but he didn't stop until the pain was nearly unbearable. 

The second thing he did was to light a candle, take some paper and ink, and start writing. 

He wrote for most of what remained of the night, lest he should forget some crucial detail about that dream he'd had. Or rather… not a dream, not quite. A memory then. 

His memory, and yet not. 

The entire life of the man he would become, if nothing was done to set things right. 

A man who would be blind to injustice. A man who, while seeking to protect his two dearest friends, would only push them faster to their death. A man broken by the weight of every wrongful choice he had made, after spending nearly half a lifetime trusting the wrong person. 

In short, a man Lan Xichen did not want to become. 

Exhausted and wrecked by emotions that weren't entirely his own, Lan Xichen had no way of knowing why this knowledge of the future had come to him. He was only certain that this vision, awful as it had been, was no mere fantasy. This had happened, or would happen, unless he took proper measures to prevent it. 

Having finished writing it all down, Lan Xichen hid his grim prediction and went back to sleep, falling on his bed like a stone. No more nightmares plagued him that night. A small mercy. He wasn't sure he could have withstood it again. 

When morning came, Lan Xichen rose at the habitual hour and tried to get ready for the day. The habitual rhythm of the Cloud Recesses allowed for few exceptions, and he didn't want to call more attention upon himself by asking for favours. But as he was getting dressed, his uncle came into his room, took one look at him, and ordered him to take the day off. Lan Xichen ought to have protested, but this suited him too well.

First, because he was exhausted. 

Second, because he needed to come up with a plan. He had half expected that in the sunlight, that vision of his would melt like snow in spring. Instead, it only seemed to have taken a stronger hold upon his mind. This would happen, because it had already happened. 

Lan Xichen sat on his bed, his half feverish notes sprawled in front of him, and considered the situation. 

There was a war coming, but that was no surprise. Nobody with any understanding of politics could have missed that. If nothing else, Nie Mingjue was craving for a chance to start that war, eager to avenge his father. 

Speaking of Nie Mingjue, Lan Xichen would play such a role in his death that it wouldn't be exaggerated to call him a murderer (someone would, the memories told him) though the actual plot was due to Jin Guangshan and some other person Lan Xichen had yet to meet, that Jin Guangyao who he would be so fond of. 

His other closest friend in that future he foresaw, and someone whose death he took a more active part in (but only reluctantly, someone would say, only when forced, and ought he not be ashamed that even after everything he still favoured the wrong friend?). 

There were other matters of course, his father's death, his brother's decades long infatuation… but Lan Xichen felt that what truly caused the vision to come to him was that matter with the men who would be his sworn brothers. 

It was for this that he was blamed and shamed by the one person he'd most overlooked, whose opinion had gone from utterly inconsequential to being of utmost importance. 

Nie Huaisang. 

Even with the certainty of those future memories, Lan Xichen half wanted to laugh at the idea that Nie Huaisang could ever harm anyone. 

It wasn't that Lan Xichen looked down on the younger boy, and more that he didn't pay enough attention to him to feel anything about him. Nie Huaisang was foolish, lazy, and spoiled, three things Nie Mingjue frequently complained about even though he had his share of responsibility in that, being the one who did most of the spoiling. Aside from that… Lan Xichen future memories told him that Nie Huaisang was, or would be, an artist of some skill, and that was the only compliment he would have been able to pay him, for the longest time. 

Nie Huaisang would also be a cold, ruthless man ready to risk countless lives for revenge, one who would grow to hate Lan Xichen, one who would let him stand beside a murderer for a decade because he suspected him of being an accomplice. One who would tell him… 

Lan Xichen found himself nearly choking again, the memories overwhelming him once more. He had to painfully force each breath in, then out again, until his body remembered how to do it. 

Nie Huaisang, if pushed to it, would turn into a terrifying man. But at present, he was still just a foolish and innocent boy, so if Lan Xichen made an effort, surely he had time to make Nie Huaisang see that he could be trusted in a crisis. 

Of course the plan was to avoid the crisis in question. Nie Mingjue couldn't be allowed to die, not when he was Lan Xichen's dearest friend, not when his death would have been so cruel and unjust. Lan Xichen, who now knew too much about certain people, felt certain he could change this terrible future he had foreseen. Still, just in case, it wouldn't hurt to get Nie Huaisang on his side. 

It wouldn't be fun, but it might turn out useful someday. 

  -

The first thing Lan Xichen did, once he had decided on a course of action, was to head for Lan Qiren's office and ask his uncle whether it might not be prudent to have copies of the books in their library, at the very least those most unique or precious. That library would burn someday, and it was something his future self would always regret, even if this at least really hadn’t been his fault.

Lan Qiren blinked at him like a startled owl. Lan Xichen almost laughed, and then nearly cried, hit by the sudden realisation that his uncle was roughly the same age he would be when the truth about Nie Mingjue’s death would be revealed, if not a little younger. He tried to hide it with that beard of his, and the difference in generation had made it less obvious to his nephews, but Lan Qiren wasn’t old at all. He must have been so young when he started caring for his nephews.

“Why would we need copies?” Lan Qiren asked. “The chances of two books being needed at the same time are low, and patience is a good quality to practice."

Lan Xichen bit his lip, trying to find an explanation that wouldn't bring forth too many questions. Before he could, his uncle spoke again. 

"That dream last night wasn't just a normal nightmare," Lan Qiren guessed. "Your spiritual energy wasn't circulating right, I thought it might have been a qi deviation, but… did you see something instead?" 

"Something terrible is coming," Lan Xichen confirmed. After a brief hesitation, he added: "The Wens are looking to start a war. They will start it, given half a chance. We have two years, more or less." 

Lan Qiren looked shaken by the news, but not particularly surprised as such. 

"They will attack us? Here?" 

Lan Xichen nodded. "The library will burn, and other parts of the Cloud Recesses as well." 

Habitations, a few classrooms, part of the training grounds… but the true loss was really the library, the heart of their sect, the source of so much knowledge. 

Lan Qiren was silent for a while, weighing their options. 

"If we take direct action to make duplicates, it will call attention to us, and draw the Wen's suspicions. I will start making copies of precious texts myself, along with others I can trust. For less sensitive documents, I will assign their copies to disciples in need of punishment. It will be educational for them, useful for us."

"I'll help as well," Lan Xichen offered. 

"I expected you would volunteer,” his uncle said with a thin smile. “Was there anything else to that vision you had?" 

Lan Xichen hesitated. 

He thought of that boy he had yet to meet, Wei Wuxian, who would raise the dead and use them as deadly weapons, sowing death and destruction around him, all because he'd sacrificed everything for his beloved shidi. 

He thought of Lan Wangji with his back shredded by the discipline whips, weakened to the point he nearly died, yet unrepentant. 

He thought of the Lotus Piers slaughtered, of Nie Mingjue dead, of his own guilt driving him to withdraw from the world. 

He thought of Nie Huaisang, going from overlooked little idiot to becoming the most dangerous man in the cultivation world. 

"No, uncle," Lan Xichen said. "There was nothing more." 

At least, nothing that he should burden his uncle with, when he already dealt with so much. 

Let Lan Qiren save the library, and Lan Xichen would find a way to solve the rest. 

  -

In spite of preparations for the upcoming new batch of guest disciples, Lan Xichen found time to start copying some treaties. It was not easy work when no mistake could be tolerated, but that difficulty was actually welcome. It helped him be more tired, and being truly exhausted was the only way he could fall asleep since that vision of the future. 

Contrary to his expectations, the vision hadn't faded with time as a true dream would have. Instead it melted into his own memories, manifesting as a particularly vivid series of déjà-vu. Much like true memories, Lan Xichen found he couldn't actually remember every single detail of every moment. Unless he had been paying attention when those future memories formed, then he remembered as little as he might recall what he'd had for breakfast on a specific day five months earlier. 

So when the Nie juniors arrived, a few days earlier than expected, Lan Xichen wasn't surprised. His other self had been annoyed by this interruption to everyone's schedule, but now Lan Xichen was just curious to meet Nie Huaisang again, knowing what he was capable of. When Lan Qiren asked him to come greet those Nie disciples, Lan Xichen agreed very quickly.

Because of the long climb up the mountain, because his cultivation was so poor and his general capacity so low, Nie Huaisang was breathless and sweaty when he arrived at the gate of the Cloud Recesses. Combined with his short height and his frail stature, it made for a sharp contrast with the disciples accompanying him. Lan Xichen just couldn’t imagine anyone less scary than this boy who chatted rather too easily with Lan Qiren, disregarding the difference in age and capacity between them. Nie Huaisang really had little to show for himself. He wasn’t even particularly good-looking presently, though he would become surprisingly handsome in due time.

Nie Huaisang would become many things, over the years.

As Lan Qiren guided the Nie disciples toward the house that would be theirs for the duration of their stay in the Cloud Recesses, Lan Xichen watched Nie Huaisang attentively, trying to catch some sign of the sharp and cruel man he was destined to become someday. But there was just nothing, no hint of coldness, no particular cunning.

Nothing at all until…

“I’d love a tour of the Cloud Recesses!” Nie Huaisang excitedly asked, looking directly at Lan Xichen. “Lan gongzi, would you please give me a tour? I’m sure there’s no one who could do it better than you.”

Lan Xichen shivered. He didn’t think this had happened in the future he remembered… or could it be that his future self hadn’t committed such a thing to memory? He would have had no reason to, never guessing how important his interactions with Nie Huaisang would turn out to be. Quite possibly, he had just refused that request, busy with other things.

Lan Xichen tried to refuse, in fact, but Nie Huaisang was insistent enough that to deny him any further would have made him a bad host. Worse, it might have attracted questions from his uncle, who might have suspected that Lan Xichen hadn’t told him everything he’d seen in his nightmare. Besides, Lan Xichen had already determined he would make efforts to earn Nie Huaisang’s trust so the future wouldn’t repeat itself, so why not start immediately?

When the time came for it, the tour went rather better than Lan Xichen might have expected. Nie Huaisang was surprisingly attentive to what was explained to him about the Cloud Recesses, which went against what previous encounters and those future memories had established. But no, that was unfair, Lan Xichen realised. Nie Huaisang, right from the start, had always been quite curious about those very few things that interested him.

It was just surprising that the Cloud Recesses would fall in that category.

By the time Nie Huaisang asked about things to do for fun, Lan Xichen had relaxed a little, and even boldly suggested that the younger boy might be interested in trying new things, even musical cultivation if he wished. He felt quite confident that whatever had happened in that other future, he could easily avoid it. All he had to do was keep Nie Mingjue safe, keep Nie Huaisang happy, and everything would be…

“I do like music a lot,” Nie Huaisang said pensively. “My father used to say I have a good ear for it. Not like da-ge. He wouldn’t know one melody from another even if his life depended on it!”

Lan Xichen froze.

He could just see Nie Mingjue, in prey to a killing rage that only stopped with his own death. Nie Mingjue’s body, headless, desecrated, cut to pieces and held together only through sheer rage and red thread that his little brother had sewn into his flesh. And that melody, that twisted mockery of a Lan healing song…

Lan Xichen shivered at the moment, suddenly nearly as breathless as he had been when waking up from that nightmare.

But he had been well trained, and when he noticed Nie Huaisang’s worry, Lan Xichen pulled himself back together, forcing himself to smile and chat amicably in spite of the specter of a pain he refused to ever feel again.

This time, he would make sure no one he loved died because of his mistakes.

[zmediaoutlet]

fic: the apprentice year

Here’s something I wrote for a zine, a while back. Maybe someone’s in the mood for quiet s8 angst.

(read on AO3)

It's raining when Sam crashes the car. Middle of the night, Texas somewhere. Not enough sleep, not that sleep could possibly help, and bad visibility, and this numbness that started in his gut but has taken over every part of him. Not the best conditions. Narrow two-lane highway, headlights blurring through the dark wet, and then there's a flash—white-and-brown and small, a dog?—and he swerves hard, and then it's—squeal of brakes, the tires sliding, a smash.

He breathes slow, both hands curled around the steering wheel. Car's still on, rumbling idle. His head hurts. Hard to see through the rain but it looks like he killed a sapling. He unclenches one hand from the wheel and touches his forehead—wet—and the windshield's cracked again, and he turns around in the seat to see the dog bolting off down the road. He opens the door and steps out into the mud and, yes. A broken tree, and a mile marker crumpled, and the paint all scraped up, and the windshield. He wipes his forehead again and his fingers are smeared red. He puts that hand on the car and then has to—his legs crumple—he crouches, letting the car take his weight, feeling the engine in his bones. He can't think, with the rain this loud. His head hurts. He says, out loud, "I don't think I can do it," but it's hard to hear over the downpour, and anyway, no one's there to hear. No one's there.

*

There's a mechanic down the street from a motel. The windshield will be three hundred and that feels like too much but then, who would Sam ask, who'd be honest. He asks them to repaint, too, so he doesn't have to see the gouges of his fuckup. The mechanic looks at his forehead instead of at his eyes. "You get that looked at, sir?" he says.

Sam walks through the damp morning to the motel. The clerk frowns at him but Sam puts a hundred in cash on the counter and then there's the room, dim with the curtains drawn. Two beds—why? Habit. He's been sleeping in the car so that people won't ask the question. Trying to sleep. He takes off his wet muddy clothes and runs a shower, hot, and there's mud on his hands and blood too and the cut on his head bleeds pink against the white tub, and he's so tired he wants to just sit down, right there in the bathtub and let the water pound against his face and make it so he can't think about anything else, so he can't, so he won't have to—but he can't. He has to pick up the car at some point. He turns off the shower and dries off and walks naked through the dim room to the bed closer to the door and he crawls under the blanket and puts his face into the pillow and thinks that he won't sleep, because how can he sleep in a queen bed in a motel room in a town he doesn't know without his brother. He can't possibly. He can't, but he has to, because his brother is dead.

*

It took a while to come to that conclusion. Dick was gone. The air, throbbing thick and strange. The room empty. Sam stood alone in that awful building with distant alarms wailing and his head and heart entirely still, because there had been a place where his brother was, and now he wasn't there anymore.

He did research. He asked questions. He prayed, and when there were no answers to his praying he burned acacia and camphor and blood-red petals of anemone and demanded a demon, but none came. He knelt on the road at midnight with dirt caked under his broken nails and was prepared to offer—what little it was worth, that he could offer—but no one arrived to take a deal. It was like the world he'd always known was there, that darker mystery that swirled under the daytime normalcy everyone else knew, had just vanished. Gone. He was finally free to live a life that was average, and safe, and boring, but what did it matter—how could it matter, without Dean.

There was booze but then there wasn't. There was a brief, considering moment when a dealer in Kansas City saw Sam's expression and offered relief, but it would've failed the same way the booze had. There was staying up until he had no choice but to pass out in the backseat and forgetting to eat and driving, nowhere, with no destination in mind, because what was there? A job, a ghost, a brutal and pointless putting of one foot in front of the other, when the only thing that had ever mattered, the only thing that had made the life he'd chosen worth choosing, was—

He drove until he nearly hit a dog, and hit a tree instead. He stopped not because he wanted to but because there didn't seem to be any point in driving more. He got a motel. He slept, because that was all there was left to do.

*

When he wakes up the room is dim with afternoon. The sun on the other side of the building. A reflection, from the vacancy sign outside, that throws up a white square on the wall. He watches it for a while, tracking how it moves slow over the wallpaper, thinning out as the sun falls. A slow eclipse, until it disappears.

What the hell, he hears.

He sits up, ignores the head-throb from moving. There, boots on the carpet, standing in the way of the bathroom, looking around like the motel's a surprise—six feet (forget the lie about the extra inch) and strong and beautiful as he ever, ever was—Sam swallows, drags in air that feels like it can't fit in his chest with everything that's roaring up in it—Dean frowns, and looks at him, and says, in a voice that sounds distant, Sammy, what the fuck.

Sam stands up and staggers. His head, god. He tries to step forward and it's Dean who comes to him, looking around, saying what's going on, where is this—are you— and Sam braces on the bedside table and reaches out but then Dean flickers, somehow, like a broadcast jolted with static, and Sam's hand curls in the air between them, his body flinching even if his mind doesn't quite get it yet.

Dean stops in his tracks and looks down. Spreads his hands, looking at the scarred knuckles and the more-scarred palms. Sam manages to get himself under control and stands up straight, and takes the step that means he's inches away, but no longer dazed from waking he can see: Dean's not here. Dean's not quite here. There's an almost-shimmery distance to him. A projection, on an inadequate screen. Sam looks at his face and just faintly the outlines of the room present are present, showing through him. A bitter taste in the back of his throat and he swallows, again, but manages to say, out loud, "Are you real?"

Dean looks up at him, brow furrowed. Could ask you the same thing, sport. Sam laughs, sort of, caught in his throat, and Dean's face changes. Jesus, you look like shit.

"Thanks," Sam says. Dean flickers again and it's nauseating to see the blank space where he was, even if he half-solidifies a second later. "God. I—can't believe this is happening."

Okay, but what is happening, Dean says, and looks around again. This isn't… He shakes his head and even half-there Sam can see the confusion, the annoyance at the confusion. His brother. His chest aches. I wasn't here. Where's here?

"Texas," Sam says. He still hasn't caught the name of the town. He reaches out because he can't not and his fingers brush—what? Nothing. The air's insubstantial because it's air. Dean looks down at his chest where Sam's not touching him and he says, very quiet, shit , and then he looks up and says shit, Sam , more loudly, and he reaches up and doesn't touch Sam's face because of course he can't, and it's only then that Sam realizes he's crying.

Hey , Dean says, and Sam shakes his head. "It's fine," he says, although of course it's not fine. Dean's eyes, concerned, and his nose with the bump Sam's so often traced with one finger, and his mouth, full and worried. He passes his thumb over where he ought to be able to touch Dean's bottom lip and Dean's eyelids flicker, his mouth parting. Sam shakes his head again, dizzy. Dean. He didn't think he'd see him again, outside of an afterlife he hadn't yet decided to try for.

Texas, huh? Dean says, after a few seconds. He smiles, fake devil-may-care, the expression that Sam's always loved and kind of wanted to smack him for, in equal measure. He looks Sam up and down, and raises his eyebrows, and says, guess it's true they make things bigger here, and it's only then that Sam remembers that he's naked, and even like this, a ghost or a hallucination or a fever-dream, Dean can make him roll his eyes. Dean's grin widens and he passes a never-there touch over Sam's bare chest. Hey, slugger, can't blame me for—

He disappears.

Sam stands there, alone, for a few seconds. He breathes deep, in and out. He passes his hand through the space where Dean wasn't and of course there's nothing there, and then he sits back down, on the bed, braced on his knees, looking at the faded plaid of the wallpaper and the day through the flimsy curtain. His face is still wet and so he knows—he hasn't cried, since that day, so he knows that something happened today that was different from all the ones that came before it. Dean's dead, gone, and yet he isn't. Sam licks his lips. That means there's—something to do.

*

He eats. He sleeps. He goes and picks up the car, and the mechanic looks less concerned when Sam takes the keys. He goes back to the room and reads a book, for a few hours, and doesn't remember a thing when he lifts his eyes from the page. He showers, again, before bed, and when he comes out the room is hot, and he taps the air conditioner and realizes, shit. Busted.

The clerk in the office is unhelpful. "I can move your room," he says, reluctant to do even that, but Sam's not leaving the room where he saw Dean. "Maintenance guy quit, so we're gonna have to call someone, might be a day or two."

Sam looks at him and chews the inside of his cheek. "You have the last guy's tools?"

He's never fixed an air conditioner but he knows how to use the internet. It turns out it's a little harder than the diagrams make it look. While he's got sweat between his shoulderblades and he's considering percussive maintenance that there's a huff of a laugh, behind him, and Dean says dude, you look like you're gonna have a stroke .

Behind him, raised eyebrows and amusement. A cut on his cheek—new? From what? "Sue me," Sam says, irritated. "I didn't go to HVAC school." Dean's grinning and the irritation washes away like it was never there. Sam steps forward and Dean's face changes, too, looking all over him. "Dean," Sam says, and feels— "Where are you? What's going on?"

Dean shakes his head. You know as much as I do, man. He hesitates. It's like—I've been asleep and I just woke up, but I can't remember what I was dreaming about.

Are you dead. The sentence forms under Sam's tongue and he swallows it. If Dean doesn't know then asking won't help, and if he is then Sam's sunk the same way he's been for the last month. Are you real is the next question, but then if he's not real then that means Sam's crazy, and Sam knows from crazy and, really, if he is, this is the best crazy he could hope for.

Dean's looking at him, not smiling at all, now. I miss you , Dean says, unexpectedly. He flickers—like he did before, a projection cutting out—but he's shaking his head hard when he resolidifies. Shit. I don't—I don't know what that is. I don't get it. You're right here and I'm missing you. How does that work?

"I don't know," Sam says, "but I know exactly what you mean."

The corner of Dean's mouth turns up, but it's not glad. Sam breathes out slowly, the hard knot of grief in his chest barely allayed. 

It feels impossible. Maybe it is. He doesn't try to reach out again and neither does Dean. Dean's eyes flick up to the A/C unit and he jerks his chin. You need to take out the compressor , he says. Check the fuse box. I can walk you through it.

Sam's eyes are hot. "I know how to check a fuse," he says, and Dean raises his eyebrows at him. "Not completely useless."

Prove it , Dean says. Bitch .

Sam rolls his eyes and turns away so Dean won't see that they're wet, and does.

*

Dean comes and goes according to some clock Sam doesn't get to see. Most days, Sam doesn't do much. He eats, showers, shits, sleeps. He watches bad daytime TV and not-much-better nighttime TV. He reads. He takes the car out on drives through the country. Flat around here, and what little green there is browning in the heat of summer. The office manager says he can stay at the motel for free if he keeps fixing things and so he does, and sometimes he's got his head under a kitchenette sink trying to figure out how not to dump backed-up foulness onto his face when there's a presence, all of a sudden, and his brother's voice saying why the hell are you using that wrench?

Sam's alone except when he's with Dean. The days smooth out into a routine. He wakes up sometimes and Dean's sitting there, on the edge of the bed somehow even though he can't really touch anything, and Dean'll say took you long enough, sleeping beauty , and Sam will roll his eyes and say, "Look who's talking, didn't you sleep through an actual earthquake once?" and Dean will grin and Sam will stretch out on his back and they'll bicker about the time in Portland, Maine, when Dad tanned both their hides for not being ready for the werewolf hunt at midnight, and they both insisted it was the other's job to set the alarm. I told you , Dean'll say, eyes crinkled like he's trying not to laugh, and Sam'll launch into his theory about how Dean's memory is shot from too much booze, and they'll waste the time, that way, ragging on each other. Other times Dean will be quiet, and so Sam will too, and they'll look at each other with their hands an inch apart on the blanket, and Dean will say, after a while, you remember? and Sam won't know what he's referring to, exactly, but he'll swallow and he'll say that, yeah, yeah. He remembers.

Moonlight makes Dean's face a strange, alien blue. In the day he's golden, gorgeous, cracks jokes and makes fun of the way Sam holds a screwdriver. Sometimes he has bruises; sometimes there's blood dried on the angles of his eyesocket. Once he shows up holding his ribs like something got him, wherever he is, and he just sits with his back to the kitchen cabinets while Sam fixes a garbage disposal and rambles about some time in Tulane when he dropped a ghoul and then banged a supermodel, that same night. "Oh, really," Sam says, pulling open the gears while he tries not to think about splintered bones, about the fragility of lungs, about the soft vulnerable edge of Dean's beating heart. "Tyra Banks or Kate Moss?"

Okay, Dean says, and does it sound thin? Hurt? So maybe not a 'super' model. But she was hot. He rolls his head to look at Sam and winks. Not as hot as some people, though. Don't worry .

"I was in a panic," Sam says, dry, and Dean chuffs laughing and then coughs, pained, and says, nodding at Sam's job, you're gonna want a 5/8ths for that , and in the next second he's gone. Sam braces his hands on the counter and breathes deep for a solid minute, bleeding inside his chest, before he goes into the toolbox, and gets the 5/8ths wrench.

*

The first time they were young, even if at the time Sam would've said otherwise. Their dad was gone and they were alone, really alone, for the first time in their lives—only, they weren't. They'd never been. An argument and a bad night and going out and finding Dean sitting on the hood of some wreck in Bobby's junkyard, and they'd said—he can't remember. Not everything. He does remember very precisely the moment when he gripped Dean's wrist and Dean looked up at him like he was surprised and Sam had said, you know, Dean, you know what I— and Dean had covered Sam's mouth with three fingers like it wouldn't be true, if he didn't say it. But then he tugged his hand away and he leaned up and kissed Sam, anyway, so it didn't matter so much, if Sam said it or didn't. That was the first time.

Over the years they fell closer together and farther apart. They hurt each other, sometimes so badly Sam thought it'd be forever broken and he'd just have to live that way, with his ribs split apart, bleeding where anyone could see. When they came back together it felt like nothing could ever split them up again. Not demons, or angels, or death.

The last time, they were in a cabin in Montana, and they were going to do something nuts in the morning. What else was new. It was quick, and then it was slow, and afterward Dean lay half-sprawled over Sam's chest, the two of them sticking together with sweat and worse, and Dean tipped his forehead against Sam's collarbone and sighed. This is such a dumb plan , he said, and Sam drew two fingers up from between his shoulderblades to the little soft hollow at the top of his spine, where his hair was shorn to velvet, and where Sam tended to bury his nose, when they slept in the same bed. When they let themselves do that. Yeah, Sam said, after too long, but when has that ever stopped us? Dean snorted, and rolled away, and Sam curled behind him that night in the too-small bed, and in the morning, for once, Dean woke up first, and he smacked Sam's shin and said come on, sleeping beauty, time to ride , and Sam groaned and got up and didn't think about it, much, and then that night Dean was dead. Gone, or dead.

He thinks about it, now. What he would've done, if he knew that was the last time he'd be allowed to touch his brother. What he might've said, if they'd had the chance. Before hell—before hell for both of them—they'd known what was coming down the pipe, and they'd been scared, and they hadn't screwed either time, or slept together, even. They sat, shoulder-to-shoulder, staying awake past midnight and through to dawn, and when it was time—they'd gotten in a goodbye, each of them, and Sam had ached to know how little that was. How it wasn't enough. This time—he didn't get a goodbye. He gets to look, but not touch. He gets to smile at him nearly every day and he gets Dean's jokes and his ridiculous stories and his safe, sure guidance, his eyes on Sam's speaking the promise they always gave each other—and it isn't, it isn't nearly, it isn't close, to enough.

*

Summer passes into fall, and fall into winter. Sam doesn't reach for the wrong wrench as often. He takes a drive through a cool twilight and when he opens the motel room door with a six-pack in hand, Dean appears one second later, looking out at the car through the window, and he says hey, how's the carb treating you?

He sits at the table in the room, taking the carburetor apart piece by careful piece. Dean looks over his shoulder, leaning on the table (somehow), pointing out where Sam's screwing it up (constantly). "Maybe if you weren't breathing down my neck," Sam says, and Dean snorts and says wouldn't have to if you'd ever paid attention to anything that wasn't Eskimo poetry , and then Sam tells Dean that Eskimo isn't an appropriate word to use, and Dean tells Sam that he need to clear the sand out of his vagina, and—it's not enough, but god if Sam isn't happier than he's been in—how long? Since the last time Dean was sitting right there, with his arms folded over the back of a chair, grinning at Sam and getting under his skin and just being—everything. Everything that mattered.

It starts to rain, before Sam's done. He leaves all the parts spread out and clean to dry on the table and sinks onto the couch with his beer, and Dean looking at him still from his backwards perch on the chair, and his grin softened down to something else. "What," Sam says, tipping his head against the wall. He's feeling mellow. In pain, maybe crazy. Content. Desperate. The usual. He's gotten used to it. Thinking maybe it'll be this way, ever after. Thinking he can handle it, if that's so. Dean's here even if he's not here, and that means that Sam doesn't want to be anywhere else.

Dean's got a bruise on his cheekbone, again. A cut on his lower lip. He looks tired. He flickers, precursor maybe to disappearing, but he stays. In the dim light he looks almost real. Almost present, like Sam could reach out and get his hand around his jaw and tell him everything he's ever thought, everything he ever wished for the two of them. How he meant it, when he told Dean there was nothing he wouldn't do. Even live, if that's what it came down to, just for the hope to see Dean's face, one more time.

The rain's loud, on the eaves of the motel. Dean hasn't said anything. Still just watching, his eyes steady. His mouth that soft curve. "What?" Sam says, again.

Oh, Dean says, quiet. You know.

Sam does.

[alarajrogers]

Everything Makes Sense: The Human Body and Energy

I wrote a thing. It is a very long thing. It probably contains very little information that most people didn’t already know, but it puts it together in a way I’ve never seen it before.

Most of it will be behind the cut but you get the first few paragraphs out here where you can see them.

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Everything Makes Sense: The Human Body and Energy

So you know how you read all this bullshit about “X improves your energy” and “Y gives you quick energy but then you crash” and “Z improves your metabolism” and it all just sounds like words? Technobabble from the world of science fiction television shows?

It may surprise you to know that practically everything you’ve ever personally observed about energy levels makes sense, as do a lot of the layperson observations you’ve heard in your life, and that there are really good reasons why being sick makes you sleepy and why exercising hard on weekends when you’re a slug all week is bad for you, and that all of this is very understandable from a layperson perspective. Or maybe not, maybe you know all this. I’ve spent years knowing all this, but recently it just dawned on me that it’s all interconnected.  All the things I know are pieces of an amazing whole.

So I’m going to explain this revelation I’ve had, and when you read it, my guess is you’ll come away thinking “But I knew all that already… but now I understand how it all works together!”

Metabolism

First, let’s talk about metabolism. What is it?

We usually use the term to mean something like “the speed at which my body does the things I’m not consciously controlling it to do.” Like, “I have a really fast metabolism, so food just runs right through me!” Or “I have a very slow metabolism so I have to be real careful about how much I drink.”

To metabolize means for a living thing to process something it has ingested. Metabolism is usually used to mean the process of converting food and nutrients into energy. Sometimes we use it to mean the levels of efficiency or speed at which a body does this, which is where we get “a fast metabolism”. Here, I’m going to try to use metabolism specifically to mean the process by which your body converts stuff to energy.

Life Energy

No, a vampire from an alien planet can’t suck it out of you, but you really do have life energy! Otherwise, you wouldn’t be alive.

The fundamental molecule of life energy, the thing that if it wasn’t there no life processes would be possible because they would not have any energy to work, is a battery called ATP. Its full name, adenosine triphosphate, is a bit of a mouthful, but it basically means that this is a molecule with three phosphorus atoms.

You may have learned in chemistry class, once upon a time, that chemical reactions can be endothermic – they use up energy – or exothermic – they emit energy. Fire is an exothermic reaction; you get it started with heat, usually, but it generates a lot more heat than it took to make it burn in the first place. Your baking soda and vinegar volcano from the science fair a long time ago is also an exothermic reaction. You didn’t put any energy into it to make it bubble like that. On the other hand, melting ice is endothermic. You don’t get any energy when ice melts. It uses up energy to melt.

When ATP releases one of its phosphorus atoms, it becomes ADP – adenosine diphosphate, meaning just two phosphorus atoms! This is an exothermic reaction. ATP turning into ADP is what powers pretty much every single endothermic reaction in your cells. It’s the battery that you run on.

Charging the Battery

Fortunately ADP is rechargeable! An endothermic reaction turns it back into ATP.

The mitochondria do this. You may be thinking, “aren’t they something the lady who wrote A Wrinkle In Time made up?” And you’d be close. The mitochondria appeared in the sequel to A Wrinkle in Time, A Wind in the Door. Madeleine L’Engle didn’t make them up, but she did make up “farandolae”, little creatures in the mitochondria, which don’t exist as far as we know. (Although, if scientists do discover little thingies in the mitochondria that let it do its work, they’ll probably name them farandolae because scientists are big geeks.)

Mitochondria in reality are organelles, components of a cell that do work. They’re independent organelles, which have their own DNA and do all their own reproduction. The only other things we know that work like that are chloroplasts, which are only found in plants… so far. (Personally I think being able to photosynthesize from my skin would be awesome and I am eagerly awaiting the day that genetic engineering allows us to put chloroplasts in human skin, but this isn’t a thing yet.)

Mitochondria combine glucose – a molecule made of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, in the formula C6H12O6 – with oxygen, an element that comprises about 22% of our atmosphere, to create carbon dioxide (there’s that di again, meaning two – carbon dioxide is one carbon and two oxygens), water (our old favorite, H2O, sometimes called “dihydrogen monoxide” as a joke about weird chemical names), and enough energy to put a phosphorus atom on a molecule of ADP. Now it’s ATP again! Glucose and oxygen combine in an exothermic reaction.

(Ever wonder why all life on earth depends on the sun? Converting CO2 and H2O into glucose and oxygen is an endothermic reaction. Plants use their chloroplasts to absorb energy from the sun so they can convert CO2 and water into glucose and oxygen. Then animals, like us, eat the plants to get the glucose, and breathe the oxygen. Without the sun, chloroplasts wouldn’t work, plants wouldn’t make glucose, and we’d all starve.)

The Basic Things We Need For This To Work

There are a lot of components going into this system.

The mitochondria need a steady supply of oxygen, but oxygen, being a highly reactive molecule, can’t just float around in the bloodstream like glucose can. (Glucose is iffy too, more on this later.) Hemoglobin, a molecule made with iron, bonds to oxygen and can carry it around safely. Red blood cells are full of hemoglobin. They float in the bloodstream, which goes everywhere in the body. Vitamin B12 is involved in the production of these red blood cells. The bloodstream also carries glucose, but hopefully not too much of it, because glucose is also a reactive molecule and if you have too much, it starts tearing shit up.

The lungs draw in the oxygen that the red blood cells carry, and expel the carbon dioxide. The heart forces the blood to go around and around in this system of blood vessels. The pancreas makes insulin, the hormone that binds up the glucose and regulates how much of it is available in your bloodstream for your cells to take. The speed with which all of this happens can be regulated by thyroid hormone, which requires iodine, and also a working thyroid.

You need all that and a million other things for the system to work perfectly. If the system does not work perfectly, you’re not making as much energy as you could be. That’s pretty obvious.

But here is the thing that’s obvious once you spell it out, and yet, we so often behave, as a society, like we don’t understand it or don’t believe it:

An optimized system still puts out a finite amount of energy at any given time.

If you were in perfect health, right now, you would still have a limited supply of life energy to work with.

We know this. But we behave as if it’s not true. As if we can power through exhaustion with willpower, because being exhausted is a flaw in the system, rather than a really obvious application of the laws of thermodynamics.

What Uses All That Energy?

We also often don’t think about the systems that use those energy, and what they use it for.

The Brain:

The brain is a huge energy hog, using up a whopping 20-25% of all of the body’s energy while awake and conscious (or dreaming – a dreaming mind is as active as a conscious one.) Asleep (but not in REM sleep), the brain still uses about 85% of that, which, lemme do some math here, is 17% if the waking mind was using 20%. A living being can drop to about 50% of that with certain types of anesthesia, but that – the minimum required for a brain to keep a body alive – is still 10% of total energy consumption.

It's not clear how much energy on top of that a very active brain needs. Estimates of how much energy complex and difficult thought consume range from 100 calories a day to 6000! It’s plainly not much on top of basic consciousness, or there’d be no such thing as a fat person doing highly intellectual work all the time, but it’s evident that it’s something.

The Muscles:

We all know about this one. Hard-working muscles use up a lot of energy. How much? Well, swimming, one of the few activities we do that can fully engage the leg muscles and the arm muscles to the same high level at the same time, can burn as much as a quarter of a normal daily intake of calories in a single hour. Most of the time our muscles are not working that hard, but anything more strenuous than vegging out on a couch does burn resources.

The Immune System:

This guy. This guy is the one everyone forgets. The immune system is hard at work all the time protecting you from infections (and, if you’re one of the zillions of people who have allergies or autoimmune disorders, things like cat dander, pollen, and yourself apparently), but when an infection has actually taken hold, the immune system goes into high gear. Most of the responses you experience when you’re sick – nausea, coughing, sneezing, runny or stuffy nose, fever – are actually things the immune system is doing to you to get rid of the infection. Nausea, to expel it through the mouth. Diarrhea, to expel it through the anus. Coughing, to expel it from the lungs, and sneezing, to expel it from the sinus cavities. Mucus, to trap it so it can be expelled. Fever, to kill it, because germs are a lot more sensitive to temperature variation than you, a large multi-celled creature, are. It takes a lot of energy to do all that. Plus there’s white blood cells and T cells and antibodies, all doing their thing.

The Digestive System:

Ever hear the expression “It takes money to make money?” That’s true of life energy as well. The work of moving your food all along the gastrointestinal tract, breaking it down, squeezing and mushing it, making the enzymes to convert it to molecules small enough to get out into the bloodstream, and then pushing the waste out – that’s a lot of effort. There’s no such thing as a free lunch!

The Reproductive System:

Making sperm costs energy. Making a lining for an egg and then expelling it if it’s not used costs energy. Firing up the hormones that cause libido costs energy. And then there’s all the energy burned by the muscles in actually having sex.

Heart and Lungs:

Typically we don’t think of these things as needing a lot of energy because, quite simply, your body’s going to take the energy it needs to run these essential systems whether you want to or not. There’s no re-allocation of baseline energy away from the heart and lungs. But in exercise, when the oxygen demands and the needs of the muscle cells to get more and more fuel increase, the heart and lungs need more energy too.

This is a rough breakdown. You have other systems – we haven’t talked about kidneys and liver and stuff like that – but we’re going to look at these systems in our simplified model.

Everything takes energy. And you have a finite pool of it. Eating more food does not give you more energy – your mitochondria can only work as fast as they can work. If you weren’t at capacity, then yes, food can give you a boost, but it consumes energy first because digestion is work, and if you’re at capacity, any extra calories get stuffed away as fat because extra circulating glucose is bad for you.

By the way, this is why sugar gives you a quick pick-me-up, and should probably be considered a stimulant! Sugar – sucrose, which is basically 2 glucose molecules smushed together, or fructose, which is glucose but in a different shape – supplies your bloodstream with glucose fast, with very little extra work. And it can start doing it in your mouth, because your saliva can break sucrose into glucose and your mucuous membranes can pull glucose into your bloodstream.

But as soon as you start ingesting sugar, your pancreas revs up your insulin production (assuming you don’t have diabetes, or that if you do, it’s type II and not so advanced that you basically don’t have your own insulin anymore.) Insulin, you may recall, is the hormone that keeps circulating glucose levels in your bloodstream down to the levels where the mitochondria can use all of it and there isn’t a lot extra. Extra glucose that nobody is using damages your blood vessels, making them harder and less elastic, which is why circulation problems are a big thing with diabetes, and why my feet are SO FUCKING COLD all winter, not that I’m bitter or anything.

So. You ate sugar, and your body prepared to balance your glucose levels with a lot of insulin. But then all you ate was sugar. You didn’t add fats or proteins or complex carbohydrates in any significant amounts to keep the glucose coming after the initial burst was over. So now you have all this insulin and it went and picked up all the extra glucose and now you know what? Not only is there no extra glucose anymore, there isn’t even enough to keep the home fires burning! Woo, dizzy. Low blood sugar hits the brain hard, because the brain is the energy hog, and feels any dip in energy levels before any other body systems do.

In short, you may have given yourself a quick burst of extra fuel, but in the long run, it may actually make your energy levels drop. And if you ate a substantial meal to go with that quick snack… now we have to send power to the digestive system. And that is why eating more food does not give you more energy unless you’re starving. (Or diabetic, more on this later.)

Energy Trade-offs:

You know the drill. Finite amount of energy. Many systems competing for it. Brain takes the most. So what happens when one system suddenly needs extra?

1.       Complex thought shuts down.

I know you’ve experienced this. You’re overtired, or you’ve just done hard exercise, or you have eaten a big meal, or you are sick. You can no longer brain at the levels you expect. Study? Maybe, but retention and comprehension will suuuuck. Math? Probably not. Reading? Depending on how difficult reading in general is for you, maybe this is just the thing, but the topic’s going to be light and easy to comprehend, like fiction, or maybe this article here that you’re reading. Or, maybe reading’s out of the picture. Watching TV? For most people, this is ideal, but if you’re autistic and have an auditory processing disorder and facial recognition issues, hoo boy. Not that I know anybody like that, or anything.

2.       Muscles need to be at rest.

Muscles don’t have to move a lot. You could be sitting on a couch. You could be laying in a lawn chair. You’re awake, but you don’t want to move your muscles because it’s hard.

When what you lack to burn your fuel is not glucose, but oxygen, you can get by sometimes. As long as there’s some oxygen. But the byproduct of making energy without enough oxygen is called lactic acid. Which is acid, and it’s in your muscles. Not good! Nobody likes extra acid in places where extra acid shouldn’t be. So your muscles burn. The good news is, the body breaks down lactic acid pretty fast. The bad news is, you may be building it up faster than the body can break it down.

Hard exercise? You’re gonna feel the burn. But you may run into this same problem attempting to walk to the bathroom if you’re very very sick, because all the energy has been re-routed to the immune system, so there’s nothing there for the muscles.

3.       Consciousness itself shuts off.

The unconscious brain still consumes a lot of energy, but we’re cutting what we can, and you being conscious is not helping here. Shut down anything we don’t immediately need to use. That includes consciousness.

If you are bleeding out and there’s not enough blood in your body to carry the fuel –

If your blood pressure is low or your heart has stopped working and so the fuel isn’t moving fast enough to where it needs to be –

If your circulating glucose is too low because there’s too much damn insulin –

If there isn’t enough water in the body, so blood pressure drops because blood is mostly water –

If you have a fever, which makes all the chemical reactions in your body go kind of screwy and inefficient –

-- You pass out. You cannot remain conscious because your body has to cut services to keep the whole thing going, and this is how.

Sometimes stupid shit triggers this reaction. Like vasovagal syncope, which can happen from triggers like extreme emotional stress or the sight of blood. Like getting blood drawn (which is probably also vasovagal syncope but seems to have a more physiological basis than some of the other things that can cause it, given that it can occur in people who are absolutely cheerful and fascinated by the fact that blood is leaving their body and not upset about it at all. Not that I would know anything about that, either.)

4.       Or, you are highly encouraged to shut down consciousness.

The digestive system is hard at work. There’s no emergency, per se, but this work would get done a lot faster and with less stress if you would just go the fuck to sleep. Thus, “carb coma” or what the cartoon “The Boondocks” called “The Itis.”

The immune system is busting its ass. Things aren’t so serious that you need to pass out. Falling asleep vs. fainting is kind of like shutting down your computer vs. suddenly losing power. You definitely want to go to sleep if the situation is not dire enough to require immediate shutdown of consciousness.

Your body needs to run nightly maintenance. Several systems that operate in low gear when you’re awake need to rev up, and your brain actually needs to do some shit to organize your memories while you’re not recording new ones, and extra energy is needed for the immune system because it’s doing nightly sweeps. Or something like that. We don’t really understand everything that sleep does for us, but we know that if we don’t get it:

-          The pancreas doesn’t work right, resulting in getting fat and maybe diabetes

-          Also high blood pressure

-          Also memories are kind of shit

-          Also the immune system doesn’t work too well

We don’t actually know how your brain would operate without sleep if it wasn’t saturated with the “go the fuck to sleep” chemical GABA, which is broken down while you’re sleeping. GABA does a lot of things, but in this context, GABA builds up in your body to send the signal to your brain to stop using so much damn energy and sleep already. And if you attempt to function mentally with high GABA levels… well, you can’t, okay? Your brain is full of GABA receptors that tell it to turn things off. So those things are turning off. How well does your computer run when it's in the middle of shutting down? I thought so.

(Actually we kind of do. There are chemicals that block tiredness. People who use these chemicals can function on significantly less sleep at significantly higher cognitive levels than people who are not on these chemicals. But the stuff like the high blood pressure, the diabetes, the immune system weakening… all that appears to still be happening. Sleep happens for a reason.)

5.       Other systems that are highly dependent on energy levels shut down.

 -          Exercised your ass off? Now your digestive and immune systems have been tamped down because the energy went to your muscles. Eating when the digestive system isn’t working at full capacity results in stomach cramps or nausea. Forcing the digestive system to work when the muscles need maximum energy levels causes muscle cramps. This is why you’re not supposed to go swimming after a big meal – muscle cramps while swimming can kill you.

-          Ate a big meal? I bet you are not feeling like having sex right now. Probably also not winning any chess tournaments. And don’t move around too much!

-          Feeling sick? Cough, runny nose, sneezing? You’re probably not too hungry. (Especially not when you have a fever. Fevers burn a lot of energy.) You probably do not feel much like having sex. Your muscles ache and you don’t want to move around much. And you are sleepy.

-          Feeling randy, baby? You are probably not also feeling hungry.

What Happens When We Game The System?

I briefly mentioned stimulants above – chemicals that artificially reroute energy levels back to the brain, improving concentration and mental acuity, at the expense of everything else.

Well, not literally everything else. Stimulants suppress pain to some slight extent, increase heart rate and blood flow, and make your muscles more eager to do work. Many people report that stimulant use also makes them horny. So those systems are in good shape too. But you know what took a hit? Your digestive system and your immune system. Now, your digestive system… you can feel that immediately. People take stimulants in order to lose weight, sometimes, because they’ll suppress your appetite. Energy rerouting to brain and muscles means the body shuts down digestion. What’s already there will get processed but let’s not add to it, okay?

You did not feel your immune system slow down and weaken. You won’t, today. But maybe tomorrow you’ll get sick. Maybe the day after that.

Oh, but you gotta work, right? The boss won’t tolerate you not coming in. So you stuff yourself full of stimulants – pseudoephedrine, dries up your nose and keeps you awake; caffeine, keeps you focused – and go to work anyway. With energy being forced away from your immune system to keep your brain and your muscles working. That’s not gonna work out well for you, now is it. You wanna pull the military off the front lines to have a parade, when you’re being actively invaded?

Keeping your brain functioning at full capacity, continuing to use your muscles, when you’re sick, will slow your recovery time, because you took the energy away from your immune system to pump it through your brain. Because the amount of energy you can produce is finite, and relatively fixed.

Oh, you can improve some things. Your blood and everything it does, and practically every chemical reaction in your body, is totally dependent on the presence of water, so stay well hydrated. Stock your body well with the vitamins and minerals you need to make all these things function. Are you getting enough oxygen, citizen? Eat food, but with the right balance of carbs and proteins and fats so that your digestive system isn’t overtaxed, you don’t end up with an insulin spike, and you’re not wasting resources. If your system lacked any of these things, then you can improve metabolic efficiency, and your energy levels, by providing them.

But stimulants can’t give you energy. They can make you feel like they did because the energy is going to places where your conscious mind can feel it… but they didn’t increase the amount of energy you have. Resources are being taken away from other areas. Your immune system is taking a serious hit right now. And you can’t feel that, but it’s gonna fuck you up later.

Brains That Have To Work Extra Hard At Basic Stuff

This is a simplified model, but: all brains are full of little modules that do things. And consciousness, ego, is actually pretty bad at most stuff. The little modules that do things are like dedicated co-processors for specific tasks. Spatial processing. Language acquisition. Basic math. Recognizing faces. Managing executive functions.

The neurotypical mind comes with a basic set of things that neurotypicals don’t even realize exist unless they study psychology or spend a lot of time with neurodivergent people, because they all have them. The thing that recognizes faces. The thing that processes sound into speech. The thing that generates speech from thought. The thing that picks up social rules. The thing that can look at letters and figure out easily and quickly how to pronounce them. The thing that tunes in to body language cues. The thing that’s always aware of how loud you’re talking. The thing that enables you to kind of guess how much time has passed. The thing that lets you control what you’re paying attention to. The thing that does basic math.

Many of these little modules need to be trained – language and math and reading don’t suddenly appear in people’s brains, they’re taught – but once trained, the little modules just… do the thing. The person doesn’t have to think about it. They no longer experience any sense of “I’m doing a thing”, it’s just happening.  

Not all neurodivergent minds have these things. Many such minds have found a workaround. Use conscious processing power, not black box processing power, because the black box isn’t there, but main cortex is. You can apply intelligence to solve problems like “who is that guy, I know that I know him” and “what are the words those people are saying” and “how do I turn those letters into a sound”. “How do I keep track of how much time I am spending on this?” “How do I make myself do shit that bores me?” We use conscious mind processing power, not the much more efficient black boxes that people aren’t even aware they have.

But what happens when energy is sucked away from the conscious mind, and we’re reduced to vegetating, still awake but without the ability to perform complex thought right now?

If we’re routing skills through the conscious mind, we will lose those skills in proportion to how much we lose the ability to think in general, as energy is drawn away from the brain. And NTs, using the much more efficient black box modules, have no idea that this is even a thing that can happen. It would take far more drastic energy loss for them to lose the work the black boxes do.

Some of us have black boxes that the average NT does not have. I can do complex worldbuilding in my head when I’m so exhausted I can’t talk anymore. There are people who just know the answers to complex arithmetic problems the way most of us just know the answer to 2 times 5. Some people have advanced spatial processing coprocessors that mean they’re almost never lost, because they’re effortlessly creating a map of their surroundings any time they go anywhere, and something in their head is tracking what direction they are in and what turns they’ve made. But some of us do not. Not all of us get a trade, skill for skill. And some of us get black boxes that turn out to be kind of useless. Like, suppose a person more or less effortlessly memorizes the name of every dinosaur ever discovered. Unless they are a paleontologist, when is that going to help?

The important thing to note here is that even a small drop in energy can cause a noticeable drop in an ND’s ability to fake being “normal”, because they are using a less efficient means of computing to perform those skills, and it cuts out on them when energy has to draw down from the brain to go somewhere else.

Spoonies

People with auto-immune disorders are constantly using high levels of energy to do useless and self-destructive shit (not that they want to, but their immune system did not ask first), because their immune system is always on high alert against things like their own nervous system. Overactive immune system consumes energy; body parts taking damage consume energy.

People with cancer or other diseases that lead them to take chemo are burning a lot of energy trying to replenish vital functional cells that the chemo keeps killing. Chemo destroys fast-dividing cells… like white blood cells, and the ones in your mucous membranes, and the ones in your hair follicles. And you can do without hair, but you sort of need your mucous membranes and your white blood cells.

People with fatigue disorders might be suffering from an auto-immune issue, or they might be suffering from a metabolic issue. For instance, low levels of thyroid hormone will cause metabolic processes across the board to slow down, drastically decreasing the available energy.

People with depression might literally actually have a fatigue disorder that manifests in not having enough energy to process serotonin and dopamine correctly. Also, serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine are brain chemicals that do energy routing, having an effect on what the body is putting energy into. Failures to produce enough of those or at appropriate times, or spending energy breaking them down when you still need them, will screw with the body’s ability to deliver energy to the right places.

Whatever the reason, if you have a disorder that drains your energy… even if that’s all it does, even if it literally has no other symptoms, having something that lowers your available energy for your brain and muscles makes it literally impossible for you to function at the levels you would like to. Like, the same way it is impossible for a Chevy Malibu to go 800 miles on one tank of gas. The available energy is not there. Either it is going someplace stupid that you’d rather it didn’t, or metabolism itself just isn’t working well.

If you are neither a spoonie nor neurodivergent, odds are, your body’s working at a reasonably high level of efficiency already, so you can get a dramatic improvement when you find one of the few things you lack, and you fill that need. Hydrate? (Everything runs on water) Exercise? (Speeds up circulation, and fitness in general will cause your metabolism to be more efficient) Vitamins? (Sure, if you’re missing some, vitamins are real useful.)

But if the problem is, you’re pouring energy into activities society requires you to engage in but your brain cannot do them easily and efficiently, so they cost you a lot more than others; if the problem is, your body is wasting a lot of energy on an immune response to things that shouldn’t need an immune response; if the problem is, there’s a food your body can’t break down, so you’re eating enough to feel full but never getting enough energy from it; if the problem is, your metabolism is lacking something esoteric that almost everyone else has enough of, so it’s nearly impossible to figure out what’s missing… exercise and hydration and vitamins will not help. Or, they may help, if you were lacking them, but they won’t fix the problem.

Expecting you to just push through a lack of energy through willpower is a total misunderstanding of how the brain and body work. You cannot do what you don’t have energy to do, and if you route energy to your brain or muscles to accomplish something that requires really pushing yourself, you are taking it away from somewhere else. Probably your immune system. So you’ll get sick. And then you’ll be even more overtaxed.

It’s amazing the degree to which ignorant people think that all bodies literally work the exact same way. (And yet many of these ignoramuses think that people of a different race are somehow completely different from them in some fundamental way. Make it make sense.) What’s even worse is the number of doctors who believe that the only way bodies can malfunction are the ways they happen to know about, so anything outside their experience is fake.

But if you understand how complex the system is and how variable the things that can go wrong with it are, and you understand the role of energy, and energy distribution, in the body, it becomes obvious. You can’t force yourself to do what you don’t have the energy to do without taking it away from somewhere else.

Weight and Energy

There is no question that it’s possible for a human to get to a place where their weight is a severe drain on their energy levels. But very few people are actually there.

Muscle is heavier than fat. But muscle does the work of dragging the weight of a body around. A body with good muscle tone – fat but fit – is in a much better position, in terms of energy production and distribution, than a thin body with weak muscles.

Fat actively helps with energy conservation in the cold. A fit fat person – someone whose musculature is strong and healthy enough that they have no difficulty moving their own weight – has reserves to burn in the event of a disorder that consumes so much energy, it inhibits digestion. (To be honest, so does a weak fat person, but they’re losing energy every time they move because they’re too heavy for their own muscles. But this is true of physical weakness in general.)

Not everyone can be fit! Exercise, if you recall, is one of those things that burns a lot of energy! If you already have very little energy, you’re going to have a very hard time exercising enough to become fit.

All of this is normal. It’s natural. It makes sense. Why would being fat automatically make you less healthy in all situations than someone thin? Being underweight is correlated with a significantly shorter lifespan than being overweight.

I’m Gonna Talk About Diabetes Here

We’re told over and over that there’s a giant health crisis among Americans of increased obesity, and this is causing diabetes.

Bullshit.

Consider this. Diabetes is a disorder where you don’t produce enough insulin, but many Type II diabetics got that way because their body massively overproduced insulin to the point where they wore out their pancreatic cells. Remember when I said insulin takes circulating glucose out of the blood stream and stuffs it somewhere safe? You know where it stuffs it? Fat cells. Doctors have been telling people that being overweight causes diabetes… when we know for a fact that diabetes is caused by insulin resistance, a condition where the cells don’t respond well to insulin, so insulin levels go up, and the body’s ability to produce its own insulin is worn down by heavy overproduction. Do the math. You had high levels of insulin production for years because your cells were resistant to insulin? Insulin stores sugar in fat cells, as fat? Gosh, I wonder if the condition that led to your becoming diabetic happened to be the exact same condition that caused you to get fat!

In a case like that, losing weight wouldn’t do jack shit for your insulin, but changing the way you eat so there’s less circulating sugar in the first place would, and this would cause you to store less in your fat cells, which would cause you to lose weight. But it’s not the weight loss that helped you. You couldn’t solve your problem by cutting calories, because calories didn’t get you into this position. High levels of circulating glucose did. Exercising super hard and going on a diet and actually losing weight – which would be hard, because super high levels of insulin storing all that sugar as fat, and yet your blood sugar is still high because your cells don’t respond to the insulin, but let’s say you pull it off – that does nothing. Maybe you see an improvement in your symptoms because eating very little produces very little circulating blood sugar… though now you’ve got some other symptoms. Namely, no energy. And any improvement you experienced is temporary, because you’re addressing a symptom, not the problem.

Doctors know that insulin stores sugar as fat. Doctors know that diabetic people with Type II generate higher and higher levels of insulin as their body tries to compensate for not responding to it, until finally the cells give up and the patient needs to take artificial insulin. And yet, somehow, we are still hearing “fat causes diabetes, lose weight and you won’t get diabetes!” There’s a disconnect here.

Overclocking

I’m going to talk about something as dangerous as fuck here.

When your body’s natural systems are not regulating your blood sugar, and so you can have greater than normal levels of sugar in your bloodstream… this can make the pie higher.

Remember I said you can’t increase your energy levels by adding more fuel, because the mitochondria can only work as hard as they can work? Well, that’s not completely true. Mitochondria can apparently work harder than that, if they have access to more sugar. It’s just that more sugar is destroying your circulatory system, resulting in damage to your retinas, the nerves in your hands and feet, your ability to regulate the temperature of those extremities, the speed at which you can grow back skin in an injury, and, oh, pretty much everything else.

Get to a certain level of blood sugar and you feel like absolute shit. But in the range between that – higher than you should be but lower than the levels you can actually feel bad in – you have more energy.

This is fucking awful, to be honest. Everyone wants more energy! Energy helps you get shit done! More energy to the brain makes your brain work better.

And you want the sugar. You want the high glucose. You don’t know that’s what you want, but you know you crave sweets and carbs, and when your glucose is high (but not too high), it’s a stimulant. You’re awake, you can focus, your mental energy is good. Cut down the way they tell you that you need to, when you’re diabetic, and now you’re sluggish and depressed.

It’s killing you slowly but not doing it is depressing and hard and the slow death isn’t causing you any significant amount of suffering, until it does, and then it’s too late.

Sugar is a drug and you’re addicted. But it’s food. There are no regulations to protect you from eating all the food you want. There is no social opprobrium in general against sweet foods or carb-high snacks. (If you are fat you might suffer from this, but thin people are allowed to eat whatever the fuck they want, and honestly if you’re fat you will probably catch shit for eating a nice big steak, which is a lot better for you if you’re diabetic than a piece of toast.)

You’re overclocking your brain, the same way gamers overclock their PCs to get higher performance. Except that when they melt their CPU they can just buy a new one. You are not buying a new brain anytime soon.

I Am Not A Doctor

I didn’t go to medical school. I did study biology at the graduate school level, but no medical degree.

But everything I’m saying is backed up by pretty much any source I look at. It’s just that the conclusions that I’m drawing, while they are logical outgrowths of the things I’m saying, are for some mysterious reason not the conclusion that people who go to medical school are drawing.

Bodies are all different. Bodies are very complicated with many interlocking systems. Many, many things can go wrong with bodies. Far more things than science is fully aware of yet. Therefore it makes perfect sense that if someone is tired all the time for no good reason, there is a good reason and we just don’t know what it is. If someone can’t easily do a thing another person can do, that is absolutely normal and expected, unless that other thing is something that falls into a range that most humans can easily do. Then all of a sudden it becomes impossible to imagine that a human couldn’t do it? Bullshit. We don’t understand the brain perfectly.

It is absolutely normal that when a person’s energy levels are high, they have the resources to accomplish things they cannot do when their resources are low. The notion that if you’re disabled, there’s a thing you can’t do and you can never do it and that is the way it has to be, is nonsensical. Yes, of course some people are disabled in that way. If you have no legs, then no matter how much energy you have, you will never have legs. But you might be a lot better able to tolerate uncomfortable prosthetics when your energy levels are high.

“If you could do it today then why couldn’t you do it yesterday?” I don’t know, Karen, why couldn’t you vacuum your carpet after you’d been working all day, when you were pushing that vacuum around with no trouble last weekend? People can accomplish more when they have more energy. Doing things consumes energy. Once your energy is consumed, the fact that it can only replenish at a finite rate means you have to wait to get more. While you’re waiting, you can’t do stuff, because stuff takes energy, that you don’t have, because you used it up on other stuff. What part of this is unclear?

Being fat is a symptom of underlying conditions in most of the diseases that it’s correlated with. It’s not that being fat is unhealthy, like losing weight would make you healthy again; it’s that it is a symptom of your disorder that shows up before the more definitive symptoms do. It is possible to improve your health by exercising and changing what you eat, and sometimes, this may result in weight loss, but it wasn’t the weight loss that improved your health. It was becoming fitter (more muscle) and eating stuff that isn’t poisoning you because some of your metabolic pathways don’t work. If you don’t lose weight, you may still be getting healthier.

(I suspect it’s actually true that being fat will damage your joints. You’re putting more of a load on them, so it makes logical sense. What doesn’t make sense is to say that being fat causes diabetes and high blood pressure when we know for a fact that overly high levels of insulin cause both being fat and diabetic, and overly high levels of blood sugar cause high blood pressure, heart disease, and general circulation problems, so. Um. All of these things come from insulin resistance? That is the problem? Not the weight, that’s a symptom?)

And sometimes, sugar is an addictive drug. If you’re feeling self-satisfied because you’re not an alcoholic, and you don’t smoke, and you’ve never taken an illegal drug, but you can’t do without your blueberry muffin in the morning and your ice cream after dinner… stop feeling superior to people addicted to illegal substances or well-known vices. The only difference between them and you is that you got addicted to a substance that will kill you but that is safe for most people, and because it improves your mood and your productivity, capitalism is more than happy to let you indulge it until you drop dead.

[sunsetsandcurves]

(Hi I can’t stop thinking about the last thing you wrote me so imma send another one feel free to ignore if you’ve got too many prompts) lukebobby and fever?

"Luke. Stop being an idiot."

Bobby loves Luke, he really does. But sometimes, he just feels like grabbing him by the shoulders and shaking him until some common sense manages to get to his brain. Like now.

It's late at night and they all should have probably gone home hours ago, but they have a gig in three days and Luke's somehow written four songs in the span of a week, and he wants to play them all in their next week perfectly- which should be impossible, but they've always managed to catch miracles.

But Luke's sweating and he's pale and his voice's becoming hoarser every time, and Bobby knows him well enough to just know he's sick.

It's honestly kind of obvious. Everyone could tell, but Luke still manages to have energy to play and sing and jump around and Bobby's getting pissed at his lack of self care.

Luke stucks his tongue at him and cleans the sweat covering his face with his arm, and Bobby grimaces because. Gross.

"I'm okay. Let's keep going."

Alex sighs and puts his drumsticks down, stretching his arms and standing up.

"I'm beat dude, I just want to go home."

Reggie nods and puts down his bass as well.

"Alex's right. It's like- midnight, and you're clearly sick and I'm tired and you should probably go home."

Luke pouts, but then nods.

"Alright. But we need to practice on Sunday too because-"

Bobby rolls his eyes and places a hand on Luke's shoulder, trying to keep himself from shaking him.

"Yeah. Whatever you say. I'll walk you home."

They say goodbye to the guys and Bobby walks beside Luke, placing a hand on his lower back. He's getting worried, because Luke's steps are lethargic and he's sweating even now, his skin heated and his cheeks flushed.

"You okay?" He asks in a whisper. Luke nods and then bites his lip.

"Do you think I- um- I could crash at your place tonight? I had a fight with my mom and I don't feel like dealing with her right now."

Luke's fights with his parents are becoming more serious every time- Bobby's genuinely scared he'll end up saying something he'll regret or doing something stupid. But Luke's eyes are glistening and he looks exhausted so he nods.

"Yeah, of course. You can crash at my place whenever you want."

Bobby's house is empty, as always, and he grabs a couple of water bottles and climbs the staris slowly behind Luke, who looks like he's about to fall over.

They go to his room and Luke throws himself in his bed, laying on his stomach.

"If you were feeling like shit, we could've cut the rehearsal short," he mutters, but Bobby can tell his voice is heavy with concern.

Luke raises his head up a bit and sighs. "If we're going to make it big we need to be more than good, dude. We need to be-"

"Perfect. I know." Bobby sits beside him and then places his hand on Luke's forehead, and then hisses. "You have a fever, Luke," he whispers, moving his hand to the back of his neck. "You really are an idiot."

"Shut up and hug me. Please," he says the last part with this, vunerable, soft tone and Bobby sighs and wishes he could understand Luke's need to be perfect a little bit better.

"I'll get you some meds first."

He walks to his bathroom and grabs the first thing he guesses it'll work and walks back to his room. Luke's somehow fallen asleep in the two minutes since he left, so he has to shake him awake and convince him of taking the pills.

He lays down beside him and passes an arm around Luke, who sighs in his sleep but comes closer to him.

He really is an idiot. But Bobby loves him anyway.

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Not sure about this one but Lukebobby makes me soft 🥺

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Taglist: @readyrogueone @burntchromas @julieandthequeers

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Send me a ship and a word and I'll write a little something!: no longer taking prompts.