#I don’t know how and that makes it worse bc I’m looking back on teen me who could pretend for days and power through

[whoblewboobear]

Knowing that I have to go home after an 8-hour shift at the job I hate to force myself to deep clean the depression nest my room has become while neck deep in the same depressive episode for the past 3 months on top of chronic pain makes me wanna scream like can I just smoke weed and sleep on the couch instead pls?

[specialagentlokitty]

Hotch x Teen!reader - please help me

Hi, I don’t know if you take requests at the moment but I’ve been craving some hotch hurt/comfort (mostly comfort) fics and as you write for him + your writing is amazing, I thought why not request, now it’s perfectly fine if you don’t want to write this Aaron Hotchner x teen!reader who has abusive parents and Hotch and reader are neighbors and reader asks Hotch for help knowing he’s an FBI agent (maybe Hotch has suspected before that the parents are abusive bc of yelling and he has seen reader with injuries) - @panic-in-the-multiverse 💜

TW: abusive parents

As Hotch came home after a long day, he stopped outside his door and looked to the apartment next to his, hearing the yelling.

Sighing to himself, he rested his back against his door, trying to listen to whatever was going on.

He stayed put for a few moments before he gave up and went inside his apartment, as much as he wanted to check everything was okay, he knew he couldn’t.

The last time he did that it seemed to make the screaming and shouting worse.

But he still worried.

He’d called the police before, but it never went any further, and he couldn’t exactly barge into the place without any cause.

All he had was his suspicions, and that wasn’t enough cause to break down the door.

Setting his stuff down, he walked over to his kitchen to make himself a drink when he heard a door slam, and he sighed.

He knew who it was.

It was you.

And he walked to his door opening it, seeing you sitting on the steps.

“Hey, you want a drink?” He asked.

You looked up and shook your head.

“No thanks… going out..”

Hotch sighed softly.

“It’s late, come on, I don’t want you walking around this late you’re too young.”

“I’m a teenager…”

He smiled.

“And you’re still young, so come on, I’ve got your favourite hot chocolate and marshmallows.”

You stood up and followed him inside, and he led you to the table, making your drink he set it in front of you and he sat next to you.

“Where’s Jack…?” You asked quietly.

“He’s staying at a friends, what’s going on?”

“Nothing.”

You sipped your hot chocolate.

“I heard the shouting. You know if you need help I can help you right? You just need to talk to me.”

“Nothings going on. It’s fine. Just me playing a game.”

Hotch looked at you, and he sighed to himself, he could see how tired you were and how low and worn out you were.

He wouldn’t force you to talk to him, so all he could do was offer you a place on his couch to sleep and some food.

But when morning came around you were already gone, he assumed back to your apartment.

He didn’t see you for a week, he had a case, and he couldn’t help but worry about you, so as he was coming back, when he saw you leaving the apartment, quietly closing the door he stopped.

“(Y/N)?” He asked.

You spun around to look at him, and he stared at you in shock.

You had a black eye, busted lip, dried blood on your face under your nose and your knuckles were bloodied and cracked.

“Jesus Christ (Y/N) what happened?”

He unlocked his door and ushered you inside and you stood there.

“Dad!”

Jack came running over and you turned around so he wouldn’t see the state you were in, and Hotch quickly took Jack to bed, spoke to the babysitter and saw her out then lead you to the couch.

He sat you down and grabbed some things, walking over and sitting on the coffee table.

“You’ve got to tell me what’s going on, please.”

He began to clean your hands first while you held ice to eye with your other hand.

You clenched your jaw, and titled your head back trying to hold back your tears.

“I can’t do this anymore Mr Hotchner…” you whispered.

“What’s going on, talk to me, okay? I can help you if you let me.”

You sniffled a little, and said nothing.

“You parents did this didn’t they?” He asked quietly.

You nodded your head and looked at him.

“I don’t get why they hate me so much…”

“Some people are just horrible. Can I ask you some questions?”

You nodded your head and he asked you some questions, and you told him everything he wanted to know.

He finished cleaning your wounds, and set everything aside.

“Do you need somewhere to stay?”

You nodded.

“Alright, that’s alright, you can stay here okay? We’ll set the couch up for you, then we’ll figure something else out tomorrow.”

You weakly nodded again, and he looked at you sadly.

All the fight you had left in you was gone, you were broken.

“I don’t want to go back there…”

You grabbed the fabric of his blazer sleeve.

“Help me…” you begged.

Hotch immediately sat next to you, pulling you in for a warm hug and you seemed to just freeze and it broke him even more.

You’d never been comforted, never been held with such care like a child should’ve been, treated with tender and love, supported and cared for by your parents.

And he was determined to help you, he would do anything he could to help you and stop you from ever going back there, even if it meant you living there

[spop-romanticizes-abuse]

I like ur takes and I just wanted to share some stuff from another side. I watched spop as I was in my teen years, incredibly sheltered, queer, and lashing out because I was also dealing with abusive family dynamics. So… yeah I shipped it. I idealized it. And I heavily identified with Catra. But unlike with Zuko(who I also identify with) Catra didn’t change.

Every time she’d travel to a new part of the world I thought omg her moment is coming! Escape!! But she’d just get into a slap fight with Adora and then go back to the Horde. It was so strange it felt like every other character was in a story progression show and Catra was the villain of an episodic show until s5

And s5 was…. Weird. I don’t understand how Catra has a change of heart by getting more hurt by Horde Prime. She was getting hurt the whole series??? I still cried and was elated at the series finale but only bc I wanted an Adora who’d forgive me and love me and say I wasn’t bad. And I think a lot of people are like that.

Everything about the way Catra is framed points to her redemption even in the first episode… but it just makes me feel insulted now. To me as a survivor… it’s like they waved a magic wand and killed off the abuser and gave Catra a gf and that was supposed to fix it. It doesn’t work like that. My abuser died and it made things WORSE for a while (I think it would especially damage someone like Adora since Shadow Weaver “sacrificed” herself and therefore can’t be bad ever) . And I’m not looking for hyper realism in a Princess cartoon but at the time I watched it I couldn’t have really used yknow ?? Some guidance??? Something that wasn’t a fantasy lala ending that once the initial high wore off left me feeling confused and hollow. There is nothing in spop that teaches you how to get that kind of happy ending. Especially if you’re Catra who just says I love you and is suddenly resurrecting ponytail Jesus. To the me who identified with her, it was mostly about wanting to FEEL redeemed through her. FEELING strong and badass and GOOD and like things would be okay even if I was never a princess type. The actual result was feeling like I would never attain a happy ending of any sort because Catra’s didn’t feel real and her “arc” had no footsteps to follow in. How do you make a kids show and not teach good lessons??? Idk the show bad no matter who you identified with was my whole point.

At least I had/have zuko.

Also shipping zuko x sokka x suki is based I do too lmao.

first off, i'm so sorry about all the trauma you went through. i hope you are healing now, and thank you for sharing your story.

secondly, i think this is what a lot of fans felt. i can understand that people relate to catra. hell, even i relate to her a little. i know what it's like to be considered useless and weak, and to desperately want validation from a parent. i get it. when i say i dislike catra, it's not because she's a traumatized child or even because she adopted many of the toxic habits that shadow weaver portrayed. it's that she faced no consequences for any of this.

as much as spop tried to be mature, in the end, it was really childish. s5 got rid of all the complexity and just went "everyone deserves forgiveness", ignoring all of the glaring issues it had yet to solve. the protagonists forgave catra because the writers wanted them to, not because that's how it would have went down in real life.

most spop critics aren't heartless monsters who despise abuse victims, they are people who relate to either catra or adora. and they just want to see a better representation of abuse victims.

it would have been much more fulfilling and satisfying to have catra and adora take some time explore themselves and heal from their trauma, separated from each other. this kind of relationship is harmful for both of them. as long as adora is with catra, she'll continue blaming herself and putting pressure on herself, feeling as if she was responsible for everyone's problems. and as long as catra stays with adora, she'll continue deflecting her issues and being envious of adora. they needed time away from each other, but spop chose to invalidate trauma instead.

it's a pity that spop was one of the very few representation we had, at the time it came out, so people genuinely believe that c//a is a healthy ship, because they don't have many other examples to compare it to. i'm glad there are more and more queer shows coming out lately, and most of them seem to portray healthy relationships.

[jackfrombaskinrobbins]

daredevil fam x teen!intern!reader [pt. 1]

CLICK HERE FOR PT. 2

type of writing: headcanons / scenario

word count: 1.5k

request: yes / no

original request: DYING over your matt post– i'm a sucker for casual family hcs with teen readers, it's always the cutest !! could i request something similar like the whole team (nelson, murdock, & page) taking care of an intern? just a teen who usually takes care of filing ends up wandering into the whole found family dynamic they have set up? thanks !

dynamic: daredevil fam (nelson murdock & page) x teen!intern!reader

characters: reader, matt murdock, foggy nelson, karen page

a/n: hiii tysm for this request!!! i love found family hc's too -- especially with daredevil bc i feel like i haven't seen many :( if y'all ever have more daredevil requests like this i would be more than happy to write them!!

taglist: @nutellani @thecloudedmind

(fill out this form if you'd like to be on my taglist!!)

-----------------------✰----------------------

your school had an internship program.

basically, during the last few weeks of the year, everyone in your grade was matched up with a company to go be interns!

and sometimes that led to summer jobs which was cool

anyways so you were pretty excited

you had been looking forward to getting your assignment for a while now.

you had told the people who assigned the internships that you were interested in law, and you were holding out for a good assignment

but you were kind of worried because a lot of people were interested in law as well

so finally the day came

and you were confused to see someplace called “nelson, murdock, and page” listed there

like who the heck were these people

even worse, a couple of the really egocentric & mean kids got internships at landman & zack.

LANDMAN & ZACK

and they were really rubbing it in.

“y/n, where did you get assigned?”

“uh.. nelson, murdock, and page.”

“huh, never heard of them. i got assigned to landman and zack!!! aren’t you happy for me?”

blech

anyway the first day that you were supposed to go came finally

the one upside to being assigned to nelson, murdock, and page was that it was fairly close to where you lived

like only a block or two!!

you honestly weren’t sure what to bring so you kind of overpacked

well not crazy but still

you probably wouldn’t need three packs of pencils AND two staplers

but hey, this was new york! anything could happen.

you took a deep breath as you walked in, and as you approached the door, you could hear what sounded like an argument inside.

“listen karen, i’m not gonna take it anymore! the shamrock shake is gross!!”

btw i agree with that statement not that it’s relevant but still its nasty spearmint is blech

oop back to what i was writing

“foggy, you’re wrong. it’s what really makes spring for me!!”

“hey, you two. there’s someone outside.”

and just like that, the two who were arguing turned to face the door. 

you gave a sheepish wave, embarrassed that you hadn’t just walked in.

“aw, no way!! are you the intern? uhm… your name… uh..” said the shamrock shake hater

“y/n.” said another man, the peacekeeper, it seemed. 

you had remembered the internship assigner telling you one of the lawyers was blind

and judging by the red glasses, this was the one.

“yeah, that’s me. you must be murdock… i think.”

“call me matt.” he said, extending a hand for you to shake.

then the woman, (shamrock shake lover), also extended her hand.

“i’m karen. it’ll be nice to have someone new around here!!”

“yeah”, said the shamrock shake hater, “nice to have someone to do all the filing!”

“oh.. filing?” you asked, brow furrowing. 

you could feel yourself deflating a little bit.

“don’t worry, there’ll be plenty of interesting stuff for you to do y/n.” matt spoke, a small smile on his face.

“foggy, how about you show them how to do it?” karen said right after, pointing at shamrock shake hater.

foggy, now.

“aw, karen!! you know i’m no good at filing!!”

“that’s a lie. you just pretend to be bad at it to get out of doing it.” karen replied, and matt nodded.

a big dramatic sigh from foggy

“al-RIGHT, al-RIGHT! jeez. c’mon y/n. seems like we have work to do!!”

you couldn’t help but laugh bc these people were ridiculous

in a good way

at least for now!

turns out foggy WAS good at filing

and apparently you were too!!

he made a game out of it to see who could unlock the cabinet & put the folder in the right spot first

and not to brag, but you always won :) 

he even bet his lunch that you couldn’t beat his time!

“don’t mess with them, foggy. i think they’ve shown they can run circles around you.” karen laughed as he challenged you

and yet he still did it!!!

and you won!!!!!!!!!!!

!!!!!!!!!!!!

so you had a delicious sandwich & chips for lunch courtesy of foggy nelson :D 

the rest of the day was pretty nice too

like most of it was filing but matt told you about some of the cases they were working on

and karen was so sweet like y’all were gossiping fr

she told you about all the crazy stuff that happened at the firm

and honestly, you were so glad you had been assigned to this firm

because were the people at landman & zack having this much fun???

no i don’t think so!!!

plus it helped that they all hated landman and zack too

foggy told you all about how stuffy and uptight everyone was there

so it was kind of a relief!

-----------------------✰----------------------

I HAD TO DO THIS IN TWO PARTS SO HERE'S THE SECOND ONE

CLICK THIS FOR PT. 2

[latenightsleeper]

On the other side

Summary/idea: Tank in a relationship, more specifically MY Tank in a relationship..with you??? A bit of a character study on them ig

Warning(s): references to childhood trauma, past abuse, self-harm, depression, death, unhealthy behaviors and coping mechanisms—this is Tank guys it’s sadly a warning in itself

Characters: Tank/Darlin

-Let’s get something straight(the only thing straight about this tbh) you knew Tank before y’all dated, just how it goes

-another thing, Christian will be apart of your life too, no matter how you feel about the guy. He’s tanks rock and their his, can’t have one without the other

-Tank would always take a relationship slow, baby steps and very small moments of vulnerability in a way they’d find comfortable

-considering that you’re seeing Tank means that you have some measure of patience, or a masochist, either works fine. You’ll need either for Tank

-getting to know Tank is like pulling teeth, actually more like trying to get your patient down to get at their teeth but you have to fight them to do that. It is a long, drawn out, painful process full of fuck ups and wrong turns.

- if you manage to chip away at Tanks walls? Pass their internal tests on you and well..it’s something, there’s no overnight change, no sudden clarity of why Tank acts the way he does

-Tank is a extremely reserved person, very secretive and holds back from engaging in conversations for multiple reasons and purposes

-most of it stemming from not being talked to enough as a child and then young teen when they moved, not a lot of people cared to talk to them and bc of that, they don’t share anything about themselves

-Still, hang around Tank and you’ll learn lots about them from simply existing near them, watching him

-Tank speaks with actions better than words, the words get all jumbled and wrong when they wanna talk so he just shows you with their actions

-Tank doesn’t actually hold things in his hands if they can help it, makes him nervous especially if what their holding is delicate in nature

-when they do however, it’s always obvious to whoever looks close enough that Tank is holding whatever he’s holding with great care. Always soft hands with this one

-speaking of hands, when you hold hands with Tank for the first time it’s very..gentle, very soft and careful. Tanks hands aren’t the smallest but their very fine ig, surprisingly slender and elegant fingers.

-depending on if their wearing gloves you can feel the calluses and scars, maybe feel how one finger still stutters due to a bad healing job from a while ago

-Warm, soft hands Tank has, very gentle when holding someone else’s since they don’t engage in physical contact like this normally.

-rubs your knuckles with their thumb or soft squeezes

-this probably goes without saying but Tank struggles with their mental health, this of course affects their relationships both romantic and platonic

-Tank will ghost you, on purpose and on accident. No if or buts, he WILL do it, sorry man :/

-Tank also has anger issues but not in the stereotypical breaking glass and yelling—no no no

-They hold their anger inside of them, a tight and careful grip on that ball of rage in them. Tank very rarely would lash out and very rarely would that be physical, he may not talk much but when they do and when Tank is angry? Makes you wish he’d just punch you honestly

-Tank normally leaves when they feel like they could hurt someone or they feel that careful control they have on themselves slip a little.

-hence the ghosting

-he will leave for hours, never saying anything about what they did during those hours (sometimes even days) but they do return

-they normally apologize

-if you ask about their childhood they won’t say much, very clinical about it, no feelings attached to it

-Tank would say “ it was a life I lived..it could have been a lot worse so I’m…grateful..for what I got.. “

-they also have RSD or Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria, any form of rejection—made up in their head or not is damaging

-one of the reasons he’s so distant honesty, their life has been one rejection after another

-he has many many scars, tank doesn’t care about them but knows they can make others..dicey

-many of them were infected on them but some were..done by their own hands

-anyway, have I ever mentioned how Tank loves to cook? Bc they do, greatly but they don’t get to cook a lot

-so if you get close enough, expect lots of homemade food containers for you

-is actually a good grill master, they learned a lot from their father and uncles when they had em

-is actually very proud to be apart of the Shaw pack

-despite receiving very little physical affection, when you get close enough Tank is very touchy

-pinky linked, a hand on your back or shoulder or even waist if you’re comfortable with that. It’s not the most showy but they find it comfortable

-also expect Tank to try and hide behind you at least twice

-they will and could do your hair if you ask nicely, would honestly spend hours just brushing your hair or styling

-Tank is quiet quick witted and snarky, they just so happen to mumble and talk quietly where no one hears anything

-speaking of voice; it’s a low and raspy voice, not unpleasantly so, monotone normally unless you really get Tank going then there’s a lot of character

-Tank wouldn’t actually introduce themselves by their name, using their nickname ‘ Tank ‘ normally

-they’d let you borrow clothes-just not the leather jacket

-they live in oversized clothes, the only thing that fits them well would be their boots and gloves so there’s something for you even if you’re taller than them

-if you managed to crash at their place and you can’t sleep, if you ask really nicely and say you’ll buy them a chocolate muffin, they will play the violin for you

-sadly they don’t like playing as much as they used to due to the injuries on their hands making them shake sometimes and messing up their playing

-for some reason, most animals love Tank. Call em a Disney princess or something

[my-castles-crumbling]

hello hello,

sorry bc this is a bit long and I got a bit carried away

But basically all my life i thought my home life was super great but looking back on it, it was nice but some slightly (only slightly) questionable stuff [I want to clarify that it’s nothing physical but some of it was a little bit fucked up like I have one stand out memory but also I may have made it up bc idk sometimes I’m super sure it happened and sometimes I’m not] went down and now i notice more and more my parents making sexist/homophobic/transphobic jokes and offhand comments and then getting annoyed and yelling at me whenever I try and tell them they’re wrong. I also sort of noticed that they’re a bit too pushy and invasive of my privacy [especially my mother who loves to offload her problems onto me and has since I was pretty small and would just barge into my room at any time and tell me about them and I understand communication is important in families but I don’t think 9 is a good age for your mother to regularly be crying to you about how suicidal she feels but she always acted like it was a good thing so I assumed it was too idk] and it’s like half the time they treat me like I’m way younger than I am [late teen] and the other half of the time it’s like they expect me to be a mature adult and like I just want to be my actual age yk but I can’t and tbh I don’t even know how to go about doing that now bc I feel like I’ve sort of been stifled and the thing is I’m not sure how I should actually be feeling about the whole thing because I don’t think they’re actually really bad people [my parents] and I end up feeling guilty about the fact that I just don’t want to talk to them anymore [especially my mum] and like ik people who have way worse home lives than me and I feel like it’s being a bit selfish to complain bc sure they make problematic jokes but I don’t think they’d necessarily treat me worse if I came out [non-binary and pan] but also I don’t think they’d be that great about it like my brother came out as bi and they were like ok but then one time when he was away they were talking about ‘if he gets a girlfriend’ and I said ‘or a boyfriend bc he’s bi’ and they were like ‘yeah he’s bi but he’s only ever really shown interest in girls so we doubt he’s actually bi but I mean if he got a boyfriend we’d be fine with it’ and I was like on the one hand like it could be worse but it still didn’t sit right with me that they just casually assumed he was lying about it even tho he’d literally come out…

also I sort of don’t even want to come out atp to them I just want to sort of quietly cut ties or distance myself

so I sort of tried to do that [as much as I can yk being still a minor and living at home] but now I’ve got my mum not so subtly idk tryna guilt trip me. Like she’ll say shit about how I used to talk to her and now I never do and like there’s a fucking reason [I now actually have friends who I realised I feel way more comfortable around] but ok

Like a while back she came to my room and tried to do the usual complaining thing about how she’s v depressed and all and I tried to respectfully tell her she needs therapy and she got super upset with me and started crying and stormed out my room and then she came back later and tried again and I told her like as nicely as I could that I can’t handle this bc I am just a kid yk as nice as possible I cannot handle my shit let alone yours like my mental health is not great rn and like I want to be there for the ppl in my life not feeling good but also like she’s been doing this since I was pretty small and there’s literally no way I can really support her except spending more time with her maybe but then that’s bad for my mental health especially bc she’ll do offhand shit that she knows I don’t like [like I have sensory issues bc I’m neurodivergent and having a hand put on my shoulder for some reason I just ugh it’s the worst - and ever since she noticed that I would pull away she’s started doing it more and every time I pull away she makes jokes about how she must have ‘a disease or something’ and just UGH sorry it infuriates me]

so basically [sorry for the suuuper long ask] I’m not sure what the right thing to do is, like do I try and remedy the relationship with my parents [but especially my mum] or do I just sort of keep going like this till I’m at uni or what?

again sorry this is way too long

Hi love! First of all, I wanna give a TW to people reading:

TW: mentions of suicidal thoughts

Okay, I'm gonna take this one section at a time:

But basically all my life i thought my home life was super great but looking back on it, it was nice but some slightly (only slightly) questionable stuff [I want to clarify that it’s nothing physical but some of it was a little bit fucked up like I have one stand out memory but also I may have made it up bc idk sometimes I’m super sure it happened and sometimes I’m not]

Okay chances are you're not making it up. Thinking you're making it up is a super common symptom of guilt trips and gaslighting. If you think it happened...it probably did.

went down and now i notice more and more my parents making sexist/homophobic/transphobic jokes and offhand comments and then getting annoyed and yelling at me whenever I try and tell them they’re wrong.

This is NOT okay of them. They're being disrespectful.

I also sort of noticed that they’re a bit too pushy and invasive of my privacy [especially my mother who loves to offload her problems onto me and has since I was pretty small and would just barge into my room at any time and tell me about them and I understand communication is important in families but I don’t think 9 is a good age for your mother to regularly be crying to you about how suicidal she feels but she always acted like it was a good thing so I assumed it was too idk]

Uhm hi hello hi. NO. No no no. This is NOT okay. Parents do NOT tell their children about their suicidal feelings. Absolutely not. This is a classic example of parentification. You, even as a teenager, are the CHILD. You are NOT responsible for your parents, and you should not feel any sort of pressure to help with their wellbeing. Nope.

and it’s like half the time they treat me like I’m way younger than I am [late teen] and the other half of the time it’s like they expect me to be a mature adult and like I just want to be my actual age yk but I can’t and tbh I don’t even know how to go about doing that now bc I feel like I’ve sort of been stifled and the thing is I’m not sure how I should actually be feeling about the whole thing

yup. parentification. You've been expected to take on the role of a parent when convenient and act like a child when convenient. this is not okay and you're absolutely right to feel weird and bad and resentful about it.

because I don’t think they’re actually really bad people [my parents]

And here's the thing: that can also be true. A lot of times, parents can both love you/be good people AND unintentionally be hurtful. But in a way, that can be even more difficult because like...how do you explain to someone who thinks they're not being hurtful that they ARE?

and I end up feeling guilty about the fact that I just don’t want to talk to them anymore [especially my mum] and like ik people who have way worse home lives than me and I feel like it’s being a bit selfish to complain bc sure they make problematic jokes but I don’t think they’d necessarily treat me worse if I came out [non-binary and pan] but also I don’t think they’d be that great about it like my brother came out as bi and they were like ok but then one time when he was away they were talking about ‘if he gets a girlfriend’ and I said ‘or a boyfriend bc he’s bi’ and they were like ‘yeah he’s bi but he’s only ever really shown interest in girls so we doubt he’s actually bi but I mean if he got a boyfriend we’d be fine with it’ and I was like on the one hand like it could be worse but it still didn’t sit right with me that they just casually assumed he was lying about it even tho he’d literally come out… also I sort of don’t even want to come out atp to them I just want to sort of quietly cut ties or distance myself so I sort of tried to do that [as much as I can yk being still a minor and living at home] but now I’ve got my mum not so subtly idk tryna guilt trip me. Like she’ll say shit about how I used to talk to her and now I never do and like there’s a fucking reason [I now actually have friends who I realised I feel way more comfortable around] but ok Like a while back she came to my room and tried to do the usual complaining thing about how she’s v depressed and all and I tried to respectfully tell her she needs therapy and she got super upset with me and started crying and stormed out my room and then she came back later and tried again and I told her like as nicely as I could that I can’t handle this bc I am just a kid yk as nice as possible I cannot handle my shit let alone yours like my mental health is not great rn and like I want to be there for the ppl in my life not feeling good but also like she’s been doing this since I was pretty small and there’s literally no way I can really support her except spending more time with her maybe but then that’s bad for my mental health especially bc she’ll do offhand shit that she knows I don’t like [like I have sensory issues bc I’m neurodivergent and having a hand put on my shoulder for some reason I just ugh it’s the worst - and ever since she noticed that I would pull away she’s started doing it more and every time I pull away she makes jokes about how she must have ‘a disease or something’ and just UGH sorry it infuriates me]

This is what I'm saying: it's super difficult to convince someone they're being hurtful when they truly think they aren't. Trust me, my mother is the same way. But you aren't wrong for wanting to distance yourself. Also, don't compare yourself to other people. You have a DIFFERENT home life, not necessarily a better or worse one.

so basically [sorry for the suuuper long ask] I’m not sure what the right thing to do is, like do I try and remedy the relationship with my parents [but especially my mum] or do I just sort of keep going like this till I’m at uni or what? again sorry this is way too long

Don't be sorry! I guess the first thing I'd say is, all of your feelings are valid, and this sounds super difficult. I'm sorry you have to go through it <3. Here's the thing: You are right. There are some things going on in your house that aren't okay. But the reality is, your mom doesn't seem to be willing to hear your opinion about changing them. SO, where do you go from here?

I think the two major things I've had to learn with my (very similar) mother is:

Set boundaries and stick to them. If she's dumping on you and you can't handle it, tell her it's not okay. Keep politely telling her this. There is NOTHING WRONG with doing this, even if she tells you otherwise.

Take what you can get, but don't get your hopes up. Does she want to take you out to lunch? Great. She wants to hang out after school? Awesome. But don't...rely on her to be more than she is.

If you're able to do these two things in a healthy way, this might be your best bet until you turn of age and you're able to reevaluate if you want a long-term relationship or not. But honestly, if you're financially dependent on her, separating from her completely might not be the best idea if you are safe.

The ONLY thing that makes me nervous about this whole situation is your mention of your mom's suicidal thoughts, so I'll leave you with this:

if your mom is scaring you with the way she is talking, call the authorities. You are a minor, and you should NEVER have to deal with that on your own.

No matter what happens, no matter WHAT your mom does, no matter what you do or don't say/do or don't do, your mother's decisions are her own. Nothing she does is your fault.

If you feel comfortable, please DM me! I'm being genuine when I say our moms sound similar, and I would love to talk more <3

P.s. I just want to say that, you are SO smart, as a teenager, to realize that this behavior is not okay. Good for you <3

[uncloseted]

how to actively let go of shame and actually love yourself? mantras and affirmations feel so phony and my thoughts actively work to combat them almost, i feel so ashamed of my past and my mistakes that i feel like i can’t overcome them and i can’t love myself because of them? i know it’s important but how to actually make changes that don’t feel superficial, i’m not beautiful or smart or worthy so those mantras make me feel worse :/

Anonymous asked:

How to learn to love yourself and feel worthy in practical ways? Self love and mantras always seem like a mindset I can't learn or truly believe, due to my bad choices and also being treated as unworthy and unimportant and stupid it feels weird to say "i'm worthy, I deserve good things, I deserve love" when I've been show so many time that I'm not and I don't; both by my own failures and actions and by those around me, how do i practically build up self love and confidence in a way that sticks and doesn't feel like phony or like it doesn't apply to me bc I've done such bad things and I was born bad? I know a lot of my fucks ups were due to insecurity and shame and jealousy so I know i need to work on myself, but how?

Anonymous asked:

how to love yourself despite your own past and fuckups? I find it so hard to love myself and develop good self esteem when i can see in my flaws and mistakes and all i know is people treating me less than worthy, i don't feel like self love mantras apply to me because i'm not a good person or beautiful or worthy, and the things i've done and what i am and the way i've been treated prove that, but i know lacking self loves leads to envy and bad choices for me, how i do improve this?

It seems like this is something you're really struggling with and that's really impacting your life. If you can, I would really recommend looking for a therapist who can help you work through these feelings. Mental health professionals have training that can help them figure out what kinds of therapy will work for you and come up with strategies to help you start loving and appreciating yourself. If you're in the US, most health insurance plans do cover therapy, so I would start there. They should have a list of the therapists that are covered in network. PsychologyToday also has a great therapist finder that lets you get a better sense of what different therapists are like, what kinds of therapy they do, and the approach that they take. If your insurance doesn't cover therapy, there are also lower-cost online services like BetterHelp, Talkspace, Calmerry, Alma, and Open Path Collective. If you're a teenager, Teen Counseling is also an option. Working through our feelings is hard, but it's easier when we have someone on our team who can help us figure out what the next step is and keep our progress on track.

Positive Self Talk

All that said, like I was talking about here, I think figuring out how to forgive yourself and, eventually, learn how to love yourself is a process that takes time. As much as I wish there was, there's no magic bullet for self esteem. Building yourself back up, no matter what approach you take, will feel stupid and false at first. When we've spent our entire lives believing one thing about ourselves, we can't just flip a switch and believe something else. Our brains will push back on trying to change the way that we think because our brains truly believe that those thoughts are keeping us safe. But the more that we challenge those beliefs that we have about ourselves and the more that we repeat the alternatives to ourselves, the easier it becomes to start considering that it's possible they're true, and eventually the easier it becomes to believe them.

I want to be clear that I'm not saying you should recite mantras to yourself in the mirror every morning (although that can work, too). Maybe right now, that's way too much. Instead, I would try to notice when you're having a negative thought about yourself such as "I was born bad" and then gently suggest an alternative to yourself. "Is it possible that I wasn't born bad because nobody is born a bad person?" Even if you immediately reject that idea, just considering it is a start. Every time you have the thought that you were born a bad person, just gently ask yourself to consider that maybe nobody was born a bad person. The more times you do that, the more you might be able to get to "nobody is born bad." And then if you keep asking yourself to consider that nobody is born bad, you might be able to get to, "I wasn't born a bad person." The more times you ask yourself to consider the possibility that you weren't born a bad person, then you might be able to get to, "I wasn't born a bad person. Is it possible that I developed these maladaptive coping skills due to something in my childhood or the way I was raised?" It's a long and often slow process, but eventually you can get to "I did the things I did because [insert thing here- didn't have the tools to cope with feelings of jealousy/felt like I always had to look out for myself because nobody else was going to/was raised to feel ashamed of myself for being who I am/whatever], and although that doesn't make my actions okay, I can forgive myself for not having acted differently." And from there, eventually you can get to, "I am worthy of love and respect despite the things that I did." And from there, then maybe you can start looking at yourself in the mirror and saying, "I am worthy! I deserve good things! I deserve love!" But you can't just jump into the deep end with things like this; you have to take it one baby step at a time.

Other Therapies

All that said, for some people, therapies that are focused on challenging thought patterns can be really hard. If that's the case for you, it might work better to take an approach that focuses on acceptance. There are two main therapies in this group- "Dialectical Behavioral Therapy" and "Acceptance and Commitment Therapy". As I said before, it's best if you can find a therapist who specializes in this kind of therapy and who can help you work through your thoughts and feelings. But if that's not a possibility, there are some at-home resources you can use to help yourself.

Dialectical Behavioral Therapy

Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) is designed to help you manage difficult, intense emotions and to better handle interpersonal relationships. There are some good self-help DBT resources here and here. DBT has four core skills that build on each other:

Mindfulness: these are skills that are focused on being present in the current moment. Mindfulness includes things like observing your thoughts and feelings without judgement, doing a mental scan of your body from head to toe, noticing the emotions you're experiencing and describing them, and exercises where you focus on your breathing. Mindfulness helps us realize that our emotions are impermanent, which allows us to better regulate them when we're experiencing negative emotions.

Distress Tolerance: these are skills that are focused on helping you learn to cope with distressing emotions and difficult situations. Distress tolerance includes things like making a list of distracting activities for when you feel yourself headed into an emotional crisis, using grounding techniques (like describing 5 things you can see, 4 things you can hear, 3 things you can feel, 2 things you can smell, and 1 thing you can taste), and other methods of self soothing. In your case, the distress tolerance skill of radical acceptance might be particularly useful, since it focuses on accepting and making peace with things that cannot be changed, like past events, and letting go of the distress we hold because of those events. Distress tolerance skills allow us to be more confident and resilient in our day to day lives.

Emotional Regulation: these are skills that are focused on helping you manage your emotions, change negative emotions, and increase the number of positive emotions you have. Emotional regulation involves things like recognizing and naming the emotions that you're experiencing, accepting that your emotions are valid, identifying distortions in your patterns of thinking, practicing feeling uncomfortable, and coming up with a plan for when difficult situations arise.

Interpersonal Effectiveness: these are skills that are focused on helping you manage your relationships with other people. Interpersonal effectiveness involves things like identifying your communication style, learning how to listen attentively and validate other people's emotions, and how to build trust in relationships. These skills allow us to build a support network of people who can build us up when we don't feel like we can do it ourselves.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) asks us to view "negative" emotions like sadness, anger, and jealousy as a natural part of life, accept that these feelings are appropriate responses to situations that we're put in, and to commit to changing our behaviors so they're in line with our values. There are some good self-help resources for ACT here and here. The book "The Happiness Trap" by Russ Harris is also a really popular starting place. ACT has six core skills:

Acceptance: as with DBT, acceptance is a big part of ACT. In ACT, acceptance involves acknowledging and embracing difficult emotions without judgement or trying to change them.

Mindfulness: also as with DBT, mindfulness is a big part of ACT. The skills you'll build here are similar to the ones I mentioned above- observing your emotions and thoughts without judgement, meditation, doing a mental scan of your body, and breathing exercises.

Cognitive Defusion: Cognitive defusion involves distancing yourself from your thoughts and feelings, which leads you to change how you react to them and to have a more objective perspective on them. Instead of assuming that our thoughts and emotions are true, this skill teaches us to ask whether the thoughts and feelings we have are true. Techniques for this skill can include things like singing our thoughts, noticing the automatic reaction we have to certain thoughts or feelings, or using language to distance ourselves from those thoughts and feelings (For example, "I'm noticing that I'm having the feeling that I was born a bad person" instead of "I was born a bad person").

Self as Context or The Observing Self: This skill asks us to recognize that our physical and emotional states are temporary. As people, we're more than just our emotions, thoughts, and experiences. Because we are not our emotions or thoughts, we can choose how we react to the emotions and thoughts that we have. Exercises in this group can include things like exploring the roles we play in our day-to-day lives and noticing the things that stay consistent throughout those role switches that we experience.

Values: This skill asks us to identify what our personal values are. When we know what our values are and are trying our best to live in line with them, it's easier to avoid acting from a place of negativity (like shame, jealousy, anger, and fear).

Committed Action: finally, committed action asks us to create long-term goals that are in line with our values. What are the concrete steps you would need to take in order to align with your values and positively impact your life?

Final Thoughts

I know this all probably feels like a lot of work, and I would imagine that some of it doesn't feel immediately relevant to your pressing concern. But by learning these skills, either thought positive self-talk, DBT, or ACT, it will become easier to accept your past, tolerate your discomfort with the person that you used to be, change the way that you think and feel about yourself, and change the way that you interact with the world moving forward.

[catmonsterscupcakes]

i haven’t been here in a while. life feels really weird and everything keeps changing. i have an internship for my major even after i graduated. i start in 2 weeks. I know ive been constantly scared of growing up and getting older since i was a child, but ever since i turned 21 during the pandemic its gotten worse. every year i mentally countdown the months until my birthday and it’s exhausting; its always like “ x months until im x age and never this young again”. ive just always been so scared of getting older, esp bc im a woman, and society hates older women. i think because im black, gay, a woman, and neurodivergent i feel as if youth is the only privilege i have, and with each passing hour its being stripped from me. i’m really scared. i’m really scared of turning 25 because thats the big number. it’s the number ppl use in online discourse abt adults in fandoms and how they shouldn’t be there anymore. it’s when ur not considered early 20’s anymore, it’s when u only have 5 years left til ur 30 and ur not allowed to make mistakes. i’m so scared. and i’ve never even dated before bc im still in the closet, and i can’t come out bc both sides of my family are super religious and will hate me. i’ve known ive like girls for 10 years and never had a teenage romance, or a college romance bc i went to college in my hometown and it was too risky. im not even particularly good at anything, i love art but im bad at time management and get discouraged easily so i haven’t reached my full potential. i could’ve been so good if i kept practicing. i basically coasted through school and i could’ve done so much better. if i hadn’t been so depressed during high school i could’ve actually gotten into a school outside my hometown or state and gone there. i’ve lived in the same place my whole life and im bored. if i did better in college maybe id have a shot at grad school or atleast more options. but now i have an internship, a full time one, for the entire summer. and then after that i have to find more work, and then more work, and then i’ll work until i die. and i’ll never have any fun youthful college experiences or teenage experiences to look back on. i lost my teens to mental illness, and i lost my early 20’s to the pandemic and then worse mental illness. i wish the pandemic never happened, i had just started at a 4 year college at 20, and was doing good and then it hit, and i got worse. this was really long, and no one will probably read this. but i had to let it out. i feel like no one in my life gets me. i’ve been so mentally ill for so long that everyone is numb to it. and i don’t even feel comfortable with my therapist bc ive had her since i was 15 and i have to eventually find a new one bc she specializes in adolescents and im her oldest client. i’m even too old for my therapist now.

[indecisive-dizzy]

Ramble about Eddie to your heart’s content, bestie :D

I’m honestly very interested in your ideas :3

Again, don’t be scared to just ramble in my ask box, I love hearing peoples ideas

AJDKKAGAJAKAK- THANK YOU <3 <3

I'm wailing rn /pos

My AU! Disabled Eddie!! Ok so he wasn't born with his disability, it came about later.

My Current story is that he had stroke in late middle/early high school! I have done research and Yes it is possible for teens and younger to have strokes. From what I recall it can be significantly worse for them compared to adult strokes

Eddie was left with permanent complications and is disabled bc of it. He has coordination, balance, and general mobility complications among a list of other post stroke effects. I just found the word I was looking for a few days ago to describe his mobility issues, it's Ataxia!

Eddie has to deal with bouts of muscle weakness on his right side which can effect his vision. He also gets vertigo a Lot and at this point dizziness is expected every time he stands.

He uses forearm crutches when he needs extra help walking bc he does have good days where he may not need them! But for longer distances he brings them bc he's better safe than sorry. He also has cane but he doesn't use it As much.

He also has a wheelchair that he Hates. He hates having to use it. But his Really horrible days leave him unable to stand, much less walk. He wishes he could just hide it somewhere and never think about it but alas. it's important.

He dislikes the wheelchair so much bc it makes him feel useless. He is Not! I want to clarify that wheelchair users are perfectly Capable and Independent! Eddie just has an issue with overachieving and working himself too hard. He wants to be helpful and do So Much but there are some things he can't do while in his wheelchair. He was stuck in a chair for months after his stroke and it was devastating back then. He has No good memories with a wheelchair so he continues to dislike using it.

Ok putting a read more bc I am not shutting up for a While

Relationships with the neighbors! Generally the same. Barnaby doesn't chase him bc that would be mean (? I can't think of a better way to describe it)

Sally is still Sally but she's specific on her mailman hate (lmao) to make sure Eddie and everyone else knows she's not faulting him for his disability.

Hmm yeah everything else is pretty much the same. I guess everyone is also more open about offering Eddie help from time to time if he looks like he needs an extra hand. They're not persistent or anything, but if they see him struggling to carry a package or two they're more inclined to help.

I still don't know how Howdy gets his shit. Honestly If Eddie is having a crutch or chair day,, Howdy just won't get his stock unless he gets it himself. I can't think of a way for Eddie to deliver all those heavy ass boxes.

He does ask people to pick up their packages occasionally too. He tries to deliver them all himself but it's not always possible. He offers a trolley they can use.

I want to talk about angst. So this is very specific, I'll try to keep it short. growing up, Eddie lived in a four bedroom house. two downstairs master bedrooms and two upstairs normal bedrooms. Before his stroke he was upstairs, his older brother in the other room, and his older sister in the bedroom downstairs.

Afterwards he had to move downstairs. His sister Hated this. She loved her room and her private bathroom and she was very prissy about it.

This snowballed into her just,, taking all her frustrations out on Eddie. He took Her Bedroom. He's getting all the attention. Her little brother was ruining everything.

Eddie was devastated by this. He went as far as to attempt to convince his parents to let them switch rooms again. He couldn't physically walk up the stairs most days but he just wanted his big sister to not hate him anymore.

Their relationship never fully recovered. As an adult Eddie will still find ways to blame himself and feel guilty. But he just can't bring himself to talk to her.

They used to be so close. She let Eddie experiment with her makeup, they talked about fashion and boys and she helped him so so much when he was questioning his sexuality.

and then it just, fell apart. But not quietly like a loose thread but rather a house that wasn't built quite right and the screws came loose one by one.

Eddie's memory gets really fuzzy when thinking that far back. but some of those memories are burned into his mind and he wishes he could forget them like he does everything else.

[futurecorps3]

Hi. I’d like to get 🩸, please. I wrote this beast of a description some time ago and don’t really have time rn to be so kind & shorten it, so I don’t mind the potential wait/your refusal to do it. Either way, congratulations on your follower count, I look forward to interacting (in a more digestible form)

Looks: I’m in my teens. I look close to Mia Goth, though I have gray eyes. My hair is blond and thick, an overgrown wolfcut I always take care of myself. I’m 5’7, somewhat athletic. I switch between dressing like Bella Swan, dark coquettes (most often) and this masc casual style. I have a diy tattoo I did a few years back. I also have a few noticeable scars, don’t like them but the stories can be interesting. One big on my chest (sword fight), between eyebrows, left chin (knife), big few on the right arm (ironically, a crow). I wear dark fem makeup or coquette. My dominant hand is a little messed up bc it was broken in a fight as a kid and I never did anything with it so it didn’t heal well

Personality: Im an entj, he/she (male/female bigender), bi. I’m social, hardworking, brave, optimistic, ambitious, motivated. People tend to get frustrated with how closed off I can be. I’m careful with my words and I don’t talk about my life if I don’t need to. Actually, I’m not very honest at all, though if I care about someone it can change. I see it as valuing my privacy and looking after myself. Romance is a nice concept, love the books, but I tend to dodge all attempts people make at forming relationships. And the amount of people who see friendship w me as a degrading means to an end made me a tad cynical about it. Doesn’t mean I don’t like the occasional flirt though. In the right company I like to make friends laugh, unwind, be the life of the party. Doctors said I don’t have empathy and show many sights of npd. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, but it’s a part of me. I still can be decent to friends (where empathy fails I still have common sense). Honestly,I’m softer than I’d like to admit. I get on with kids nicely and I’d like a few on my own when I grow up. I’m protective of my family, my older brothers mean the world to me. Another thing that’s important is my faith. I’m polytheistic and very religious (but I respect other beliefs). I like to befriend local animals too, in my free time. People call me stubborn, I’m the kind of person to push until I succeed, even if it hurts. Privately at least. In any kind of structure I know my place and I help the team/my boss/other superiors dutifully. I try not to be very emotional, but sometimes i fail. Usually I turn to anger, though I wouldn’t turn on my loved ones. I try to be fair in my actions. Many say I’m comforting, though I see myself more as a problem solver. And yeah, perhaps I am filled with (rightful) guilt about the loss of my close family member. But that’s mine to know and for others to never find out. I have shared more here than I did (or will) with anyone irl. In private I believe I can be a little funny and silly, nonchalant even. Also soft, as my friend calls it, ‘homely’. In the end, I did manage to fit myself into quite a list of friend groups so I’d like to believe I’m not too bad to hang around

My type: I’d like someone I could relate to. Someone who would understand my ambition and drive, my issues, inspire me to try harder, but also someone who would understand my anger (even if by enabling my worse parts). Maybe even harder than me. As bad as it sounds I don’t care for morals all that much, not in a “I like bad girls/boys” kind of way. It’s just that if they don’t hold harmful beliefs (racism, sexism etc) I don’t look much further into it. Someone who wouldn’t jump on the whole romance thing right away and smother me. They have to have their own thing they do, other than love. My love language’s acts of service. And when they notice details, learn about me. It’s a running joke among my friends that I’ll end up in a rivals to lovers kind of deal bc of how stubborn and averse to romance I am. I need someone who would understand that my family comes first (before me too) and I do anything for them. And I will call my s/o out if needed too

Likes: physical activity (I used to do a ton of sports from cheer and dancing to basketball); money - having it, making it; romance novels; dogs; birds; writing stories, poems, making music, painting, though I’m not so open about it; parties; family; social interactions; my job (legal or not, anything that involves bulshitting ppl and supporting myself is nice, sry); taking care of others; cooking and baking; acting/performing; giving gifts; fashion; snow and the cold (my hand be damned, I view winter as a gift from gods); shows like Bridgerton (I’m so fine after watching Kate/Anthony storyline I swear), books like soc, pjo, the cruel Prince, dps;

Dislikes: losing/failing; deep bodies of water; whole concept of death, even if I know what comes next I can’t stand it; feeling useless; people with no drive; quitters;

Facts: Im Slavic; had basic medical training; my family would call me something akin to ‘little merchant’ in our language, bc of my talent for bargaining and talking ppl into things; normally I don’t flex half as bad; dark eyes r soo attractive to me, but if I like your goals and motives, I’m into you either way; like Hannah Montana I have the best of both worlds - I was born in the capital & I’m well versed in the life there but I spent my formative years helping on a farm (which I miss), I still more so identity as a country guy; I think revenge driven ppl are attractive but that's less of a preference, simply a thought

-💎

My guy you had me thinking for this one! It screams Kaz Brekker BUT that could also be problematic since reading your description gives a very similar vibe to his and he might not like it. ALSO YOURE THE OPPOSITE OF WYLAN AND INEJ SO THAT COULD WORK OR ABSOLUTELY NOT.

In the end, I decided… (cue drumroll)

WYLAN HENDRICKS! (Van Eck? Who?)

Your type description gave me the gentle love Wy gives <3 he’s patient, understanding and is his own person before being a lover. I can see you both reading together all the time as well as you cooking for him! I think we all perceived him (in the beginning of the books) as a soft and fragile boy but he’s a badass, he’s mature, and he’s always there to support you if you need it. He’s a sweetheart, you know him, you love him<3

[kdipshit]

What my teenage self can teach me ;

She’s just as carefree in her teens as she was when she was a child. I do not get the privilege of my teenage memories at this time, but I know they are there, and I know there is good. At some point in time, I chose to rid myself of the memories, knowing that if I ever wanted them back it would take time, to protect myself, from the emotions attached. I don’t think I was equip to deal with the intensity in which I felt all these new emotions, but I am now.

I think when I lost myself I got scared and ran home. I wasn’t looking for myself, I was looking for home, in a sense I guess, thats what it felt like I had lost.

To find home in thyself, is what I think everybody is unconsciously trying to achieve, if of course they haven’t already obtained it, thru a strong sense of self and a wonderful support system, whenever you may encounter them. I feel almost whole again, with myself back. I think the only thing stopping me from saying I’m fully whole again is the mahi that must now be done, I am ready, I am strong, I am fearless. Maybe changing the way I write is changing the way I think…who am I kidding thats definitely the case, and it can actually make sense now aswell.

At some point, the feeling becomes a choice, im okay with being a roller coaster, as long as it’s moving, I can find peace in the wind. Holding on causes my beautiful roller coaster to malfunction, and not run as smooth, it becomes scary. Let go, be free, put your arms up girl. Live and let die.

I want something that you can read, and you can feel. When I was a teenager, tumblr was home to me for some years, I was alone there, i discovered a brilliantly dark side of me which ultimately inspires my art, which ultimately inspires me as a human being, if I really think about it. The dark side, my dark side, is creative, very active, and amazingly bright from within. She can delve deep into the pits of her ocean heart, constantly moving and changing shape. I like it here, it’s chaos, but it’s peacefully done. It’s wholeheartedly done, it’s well thought out and well put together, it’s red and it’s black and it’s white and it’s loud and it’s welcoming. I’m big chillin up in my little corner of hell. Little Nikki’s room is what comes to mind lmao, kinda gives me Muir street room vibes, although I do not remember sharing that room with my sister lol.

My room has always been my safe place, and I was too busy sitting in my room thinking about it to realise I been here. I always thought I had to find a safe place… my creativity comes to life in my room, and it manifests itself on the walls, and on the floors lol. The energy of my room represents the energy of who I am, everything is external and my mark is everywhere. To come to that realisation would bring me to the present moment, and remind myself that I actually exist. I’m everywhere, happily. Happily everywhere.

I don’t want to try to be relatable, I guess I have a lot of people pleasing traits about me that I’m not sure how I got, doesn’t matter I guess bc at the end of every day, I don’t like it. I don’t like trying to constantly get approval, but I don’t know how what caused the trigger to be in the first place. My brain needs some gardening

Procrastination is delaying something knowing it will be worse later. Feelings can only manifest off of a thought. It’s scary to think about how honest I’m about to be in this ‘blog’, this mark, this spit in the universe, I guess it shouldn’t ever matter, it should just be. I’m sure if my mind could speak she would be so proper, like the way I write. I love it I love it so much.

Instead of saying ‘I’m bored’, which creates the negative emotion, say something like, ‘I am fully open to receiving inspiration’, or something maybe idk…

[talenlee]

Remote Romance Is Older Than Boomers

Remote Romance Is Older Than Boomers

Have you ever seen the word Swalk?

If you read, say, Biggles-style media, if you’re interested in World War 2 period media, you might have seen it, S W A L K, somewhere, usually on a letter, sometimes graffiti, maybe sometimes mentioned aloud. I saw it on a BC comic, by Johnny Hart, which isn’t an archive worth diving for an example. I can just imagine Hugh Lawrie saying it, in that doleful, soppy, romantic, I-know-I’m-the-stupid-person-in-the-room way of a Blackadder or Jeeves And Wooster episode, though I’ve no idea if at any point he says it. I know it came up on an episode of QI — part of a technique that came up in World War 2 for communicating a crude message to the recipient, in a way that looked deniable to anyone overseeing it.

See, you might see, on the back of an envelope, the letters SWAK or SWALK. It stood for ‘Sealed With A Loving Kiss.’ There were others like BURMA and NORWICH – and they were, mostly, filthy. It’s a touch of human contact during a period of extreme deprivation.

There’s a concern that The Youths are addicted to their phones. This is a stupid concern, mostly expressed in my experience by grandparents on facebook or in the case of the ones related to me, their forums. The fear is that these young people are caring about their phones, which they express to their friends, on facebook, which they access with their phones. This is so banal that the Lamb Council ad about Lamb Bringing Everyone Together (as long as they aren’t, for example, the 11% of the population that consider themselves some measure of vegetarian) made the same joke.

The thing that youths are engaged with, on they phones, is never really specified, except when it’s criticised in terms of relationships. Online friends, bad friends, abusive friends, cyberbullies, the potential for Online Stalkers or worse, and of course, the ever-present fear of a Digital X-Friend of some variety. After all, the line goes, they’re not real friends, and for a while there, how can you trust that they are who they say they are? This position, of uncertainty seems to be most prevalent amongst the population of the planet who give their real name and address to Facebook in the name of contacting grandchildren who then leave facebook.

When I attended the first wedding of people I knew who met and married online, it was easily twenty years ago, or something like that. It was surprising, to me, because he’d flown from England to be here, which just felt, in hindsight strange. When I was a young teenager, I had an internet girlfriend. We DM’d each other phrases like ‘kisses you’ and graduated to phone calls and then writing each other hand written letters we’d scent with our scented deoderant. Lords that’s dorky. Anyway, this was to me, a very important experience, in learning about myself and learning things I’d later regret deeply, like, you know, don’t fall out of contact with a friend because you’re embarrassed. These romances are not remarkable, they are extremely normal. I’ve even talked about how a lack of teen experimentation with romance can result in people having bad or stunted experiences in their adult life that means they’re not well equipped to handle ideas like ending relationships that are going badly.

This idea, then, and its introduction seems almost completely unnecessary to me. Most people I know are okay with some form of online dating, certainly if you’re shy and pining and there’s a difficulty in being materially present because you live in a big expensive county and have limited means. There are a number of polycules that have never met, and love has been expressed through sighs and songs on discord without ever needing something as gauche as a hand gently gripping a fistful of hair.

The thing that makes this stick in my brain, and the reason this draft has hovered around for a year for me, though, is that this is one of those many enduring times when a thing that’s called new is just another thing that’s old, and because the form of it has changed people are confused by it. Before there were IRC datefriends, there were phone partners, before there were phone partners there were CB Radio buddies, before there were CB Radio buddies there were letter-datings, and a lot of that letter writing involved people who hadn’t met yet, because they were introduced to one another by letter.

Setting aside the nobility and landed gentry of the 19th century, who featured a huge number of arranged marraiges and a network of related people getting married to people they never met and who courted in an entirely transactional way, setting that aside, the 20th century had a lot of people who moved around and got travelling and connected and hitched and made families with people based on introductions by letter and an ongoing relationship through letter-writing. In fact, there are quite a few boomers who only exist because of those relationships, so they could grow up and point to people doing the same things on their computers forty years later, and call that weird and inappropriate and unnatural.

This is a thread that runs through culture. There’s a position in the work of one Johan Huizinga, in Homo Ludens that games are fundamental to culture, that if you can’t play, you can’t make what we recognise as a culture. And play is… complicated. Flirting, for example, flirting is play, right? You’re trying to communicate an idea without saying the idea, you’re trying to discover a boundary without crossing over it, and when you discover a boundary, that boundary can then be renegotiated on the spot. It is, a type of play. And relationships don’t exist to be entirely purpose driven. They are serious, but they have that same play element; this is nice, do we want to do more of it? Do we want to change this? Do we want to commit to more of it?

These are the things I think about when I see someone complaining about something new that young people are do, because so often, the thing they’re doing isn’t very new at all, and is just the latest permutation of a very familiar human thing that is new to you.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

#Media

[millenialfanfictionaddiction]

Hey mom! It's been a while but I just wanted to get this off my chest b3cause school drama sucks.

Basically I'm going to NYC for a competition but here's the thing, the last time we went on competition trip there were so many messes the teacher had to get involved bc it was THAT bad. And the thing is that I can already feel that something bads gonna happen between me and a girl I'll call, L. She basically went behind a very good friend (ill call em IG) of mine's back and sent their convo to their ex (L was friends with both IG and their ex) and then L also has an odd sense of humor that isn't really funny most of the time. AND THEN another girl from my group just told my good ass friend (call em A) that they "didn't want to work and that it all sounded too hard 🥺" LIKE GIRL YOU LITERALLY PAYED $1,400 DOLLARS FOR THIS TRIP AND NOW YOU DON'T WANNA WORK???!! BSFFR

AND IT GETS WORSE! I also JUST found out that my ex is:

1. on the school watch list for potential school 🔫er.

2. Spread PRIVATE information about TWO of his friends to other people and then proceeded to still call em his close friends, like what????

3. is a pathological liar

4. brought weapons to school

5. tried to break up his friend group for literally no reasons by making up lies about his friend group shit talking his friend (one od the ones he spread private info abt)

6. punched a 12 year old girl bc he disagreed with her and his ex-partner (ye she punched the little sister of someone he was dating, idk what went through his mind to do such a thing)

And that's all that I can remember at THIS moment. God knows what else he's done. I would’ve never in a million years dated him, had I known this.

Anyways mom, my life is 100000% hectic rn and I feel like I'm in the middle of a high school drama TV show. smh, wish me luck on NYC, I can feel that I'll need it 😔

First off hi Pluto!! It’s been a while for sure!!

Second off, wow.. just wow! That’s honestly so much to be going through! I’m so sorry you have to deal with all this stupid drama! It sounds like everyone is turning what could be a really fun time into drama which just ruins it for everyone!

Also you’re ex sounds awful! A lot of times we don’t find out things until after we’ve either A) left the relationship or B) been involved in all the crap surrounding it. Don’t blame yourself for what you didn’t know!

Also I wish you the best luck in NYC!!!

Side note: you can totally stop reading here if you’d like to skip my “mom input” 😅 I can honestly say I have no idea what is like being a teen today. I was a teen in the early 00s. Essentially “social media” and “the internet” we all know now, wasn’t like what it is now. I didn’t have a phone until I was 16 and I never had free internet access until I was in college. The things I hear about teens, the internet and just in life makes me feel like my teen years were a cake walk. It’s funny looking 15 plus years back and laughing at the drama that happened in high school and how it seems so insignificant. I really hope things settle down for you!

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

I suspect quite a few people on this site don’t realize they are struggling with the effects of chronic trauma. In particular I think more people need to learn about the symptoms of C-PTSD.

Distinct from general PTSD, Complex PTSD is caused by prolonged, recurring stress and trauma, often occurring in childhood & adolescence over an extended period of time. There are many risk factors, including: abusive/negligent caregivers, dysfunctional family life, untreated mental/chronic illness, and being the target of bullying/social alienation.

I’m not a mental health professional and I’m not qualified to diagnose anyone, I just remember a million watt light bulb going off in my head when I first learned about C-PTSD. It was a huge OH MY FUCKING WORD eureka moment for me—it explained all these problems I was confused and angry at myself for having. The symptoms that really stood out to me were:

Negative self-perception: deep-seated feelings of shame, guilt, worthlessness, helplessness, and stigma. Feeling like you are different from everyone else, like something is fundamentally ‘bad’ or ‘wrong’ with you.

Emotional avoidance of topics, people, relationships, activities, places, things etc that might cause uncomfortable emotions such as shame, fear, or sadness. Can lead to self-isolation.

Learned helplessness: a pervasive sense of powerlessness, often combined with feelings of desensitization, wherein you gradually stop trying to escape or prevent your own suffering, even when opportunities exist. May manifest as self-neglect or self-sabotage. (I remember watching myself make bad choices and neglect my responsibilities, and having no idea why I was doing it, or how to stop myself. Eventually I just stopped caring, which led to more self-neglect.)

Hyper-vigilance: always feeling “on edge,” alert, unable to relax even in spaces that should feel safe. May be combined with an elevated “flight” response, or feelings of always being prepared to flee. (I used to hide important documents and possessions in a sort of emergency go bag, even when I was living alone and there was no logical reason other than it made me feel “prepared.”)

Difficulty regulating emotions: may include mood swings, persistent numbness, sadness, suicidal idealization, explosive anger (or inability to feel anger and other strong emotions), inability to control your emotions, confusion about why you react the way you do.

Sense of foreshortened future: assuming or feeling that you will die young. Recurring thoughts that "I'll be dead before the age of 30/40/18/21 etc." As a teenager I used to joke darkly that I didn't plan to live past 30—not because I planned to end my life, but because I simply couldn't imagine myself alive and happy in the long-term. I couldn't imagine a meaningful future where I wasn't suffering.

Emotional flashbacks: finding yourself suddenly re-experiencing feelings of helplessness, panic, despair, or anger etc, often without understanding what has triggered these feelings. Often these flashbacks don’t clearly relate to the memory of a single event (since C-PTSD is caused by repetitive events, which can blur together), making them harder to identify as flashbacks—especially if you’ve never heard the phrase “emotional flashback” and don’t know what to look for. For years I just filed it under “sometimes I overreact/freak out randomly for no reason, probably bc I am just a terrible human being.” (It turns out there was very much a reason, it was just hidden in the past. I have since learned to be kinder and less judgemental towards myself.)

There are other symptoms too, here are more links with good info.

I’ve been meaning to write this post for awhile, because I’ve noticed that a lot of the people I interact with online have risk factors and experiences similar to mine. These include:

growing up in a dysfunctional household

having caregivers who do not fulfill basic emotional needs (do not provide consistent positive attention, encouragement, support, acceptance, communication, a sense of safety and security)

on a very related note, experiencing neglect or abuse at the hand of caregivers or other adults. I also want to emphasize the significance of emotional abuse, since it is hard to recognize, easy to ignore, and utterly rampant in so many communities. In general, family dysfunction, abuse & neglect are quite difficult to identify when you are a child/teen and that is the only “normal” you have known.

(For example, in my family it manifested as an emotionally absent father I was vaguely frightened of, constant nagging from a hypercritical mother, and a house full of people who yelled and screamed at each other. It took me years to realize I grew up in an abusive environment, because there was no physical violence, because I participated in the fighting, and because my behavioral problems made me the family scapegoat. And I internalized that guilt: I thought I was the problem. But no—I was a child, and I deserved not to grow up in a household full of anger and fear and negativity. You deserved that too. You deserved to grow up safe and loved and treated with kindness.) 

anyway back to more risk factors:

being neurodivergent or chronically ill (especially without receiving proper treatment/support/accommodation)

being queer (especially in a conservative or undiverse community, or without the support and acceptance of family & friends)

being the target of bullying or harassment (from peers, teachers, authority figures, irl, online, etc)

being isolated or alienated from peers, from family, from your wider community.

growing up with chronic anxiety, discomfort, pain, fear, or distress caused by any of the above and more.

There are many other experiences that can cause chronic trauma, but these are some particularly common ones I see people in my own community struggling with. And I want more people to be aware of this, because we’ve been taught to ignore and second-guess the significance of our traumatic experiences. We’ve been taught to feel guilty for our own pain, because “other people aren’t struggling, so I shouldn’t either” or (contradictorily) “other people have it worse, so I shouldn’t complain.” But that’s not how it works—you are not other people, and you deserve to have it better. We all deserve better. We deserve to be happy. We deserve not to be in pain.

I used to think I couldn’t have a trauma disorder because (I argued in my head) the things that happened to me weren’t that bad. And then I spent five years in therapy learning to accept the full extent of my issues. I’ve since learned that trauma comes in many forms, and can happen quietly, invisibly, silently, chronically, and usually without the survivor being aware of the long-term repercussions of what they are surviving. That revelation comes later, after you have survived and must instead learn to live.

Finally, no single type of trauma is more real or harmful than any other. Severity is measured by the way the individual is affected, and the same situations affect different people in different ways. Because no one gets to choose how their brain reacts to trauma. No one gets to choose their hurt—otherwise there would be a hell of a lot less hurting in the world.

We can, however, choose to seek help. We can learn to recognize when something is wrong, we can learn when to reach out to professionals, and we can learn to educate ourselves on our injuries.

And gradually, we can learn to heal.

(posts like this brought to you by ko-fi supporters)

[nationalharryleague]

Two for the Show

Summary: Jeff plans for Harry’s new opening act to be more than that. 

Genre: Famous Fake Dating! 

Word Count: 17.1k!

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A/N: Hey babes!! This is something I’ve been working on since December now and I’m so fucking proud of it and how it turned out!!! It’s the longest thing I’ve ever written and I’m so so so excited to hear what everyone has to say!! Giant thank you’s go out to the incredible soph (@theharriediaries​) and Lu (@meetmymouth​) bc this never would have come to fruition without them and their help!! Please let me know what you think!! More of my writing can be found in my masterlist!! Happy reading y’all :)

***

Keeping appearances in the public eye is a delicate balance.

If Y/N was being honest with herself, everything Full Stop Management had ever suggested to her had worked, and very well. When they suggested her music took a more pop direction, they set her up with a team of fantastic producers and her music sales and popularity skyrocketed. And when they set up an appointment with a celebrity stylist to figure out her signature style, it worked; they turned her into the 1970’s inspired goddess she had always dreamed of being. Even the hours of media training that she had been put through worked, helping her learn how to bob and weave even the most intrusive of interview questions.

But this time, she thought they might be going too far.

“Jeff,” she began with a sigh and a doubtful shake of her head, “I don’t know about this one.”

“It’s just a few months before and during the tour,” explained the man sitting across from her at the long conference table. “You’ll be seen in public a few times to drum up publicity for the tour and your album, maybe do an interview or two together, and some light PDA.”

His expression was honest and earnest. In the time he had represented her, he had never done anything to her that didn’t help her succeed. It was not hard for her to believe that he just wanted what was best for her and her career.

But something kept holding her back.

“I just got my heart broken in the most public way,” she said softly, absentmindedly fiddling with the base of her ring finger where an engagement ring once sat. “Isn’t it a little too soon to be seen jumping back into a whirlwind romance?”

“I don’t think so. If anything, it will make James look even worse than he already does after what he did to you.” She had to admit the idea of a little revenge did perk her ears up a bit. “And it doesn’t hurt that Harry is so universally loved and known for being such a good guy.”

That was another reason she was skeptical of this entire plot. This was Harry Styles they were talking about; Harry fucking Styles. She had only met him once or twice while working out details for her to be the opening act for his upcoming tour, but she had been a big fan of his and idolized him since she was a teen. Just meeting him threw her inner 16 year old self for a loop, let alone trying to pretend she was in love with him.

In all honesty, it probably wouldn’t be too hard on her end once she got over being starstruck; she wasn’t so sure she still wasn’t kind of in love with him, or at least the version the public saw.

“Listen,” Jeff began again, his voice taking on a bluntness, “no one cares about the opening act. No one bought tickets to see you; they’re there to see Harry.” His words stung but she knew it was the truth. “But if they think you are a part of Harry’s life, they care about you too. And they will keep on caring about you after they leave the show.” Her apprehensiveness must have been clear on her face when he put on a gentle smile. “He’s a really nice person. I promise.”

“I know,” she breathed, a small pout finding its way to her lips. “Fine,” she conceded after a moment, throwing her hands up in the air dramatically to signal surrender. “I’m in.”

A triumphant grin spread across his face. “Thank you. I’ll go call Harry and tell him you’re down.” She watched as he got up from his chair and came towards her, pressing a brief and friendly kiss to the top of her head. “You won’t regret this, Y/N.”

“I better not, Azoff,” she chuckled while shaking her head slightly.

Soon she was alone in the conference room, basking in the light from the floor to ceiling windows that sat before her.

“What did I just get myself into?” she mumbled quietly to herself.

***

The answer to that question came two weeks later when she was sitting across a table from the Harry Styles at a small outdoor brunch spot in LA. Their meeting place was strategic, a small restaurant, not too flashy so it didn’t look like they were seeking attention, but outdoors where anyone could see. It was only a matter of time before he was recognized, and the sighting was almost guaranteed to be trending on Twitter only minutes later.

She couldn’t say that she wasn’t nervous. The inside of her mouth had been chewed raw and the bags under her eyes showed she had been having trouble sleeping in the nights leading up to their first appearance together. By the end of the day, she would most likely have countless articles written about her and possibly have millions of angry fangirls coming after her; even though their “relationship” wouldn’t be officially confirmed for a few weeks.

If all went to Jeff’s plan, she would become an A-lister overnight.

She stood in front of her closet for over an hour, trying on and taking off outfits before finally settling on her favorite pair of bright red corduroy flares and a crisp white textured halter top. She paired the outfit with a new pair of heeled leather boots. They were a flashy pair that were split down the middle, bright yellow on one side and white with yellow stars on the other, hoping Harry would appreciate the bold colors.

She meticulously did her makeup, sure to match her lipstick color exactly to the shade of her pants; and spent far too long in front of the mirror fussing with her hair, praying it would lay the way she wanted it to.

She knew that she was going to be photographed in some way shape or form, and with the fashion icon himself. She had to look good. He had been on the cover of Vogue for god’s sake.

When she finally arrived at the cafe, Harry sat quietly across from her. He looked casual, or as casual as Harry Styles gets. A yellow t-shirt, that was tight enough to look as if it was painted on, showed off his muscular chest and arms. His iconic tattoos illustrated his arms and she hoped he wouldn’t notice as she covertly tried to examine closely. He uncomfortably ran his palms down the legs of his high waisted denim flares that had been paired with his signature pearl necklace and ratty, but well loved, white vans.

And she couldn’t forget his rings. His signature gold ‘H’ and ‘S’ looked back at her as he gently grasped his flute filled to the brim with a mimosa, bringing it to his pink lips that were surrounded by the short stubble he had been wearing lately.

The pair sat in a slightly awkward silence, both seeming to down their mimosas quickly just because it was something to do with their hands and could occupy their lips so they didn’t have to talk.

To say she was panicking, wouldn’t be too much of an over exaggeration. She was sitting across from one of the world’s biggest stars, and as one of his biggest closeted fans. The things he could do for her career were astronomical and it was hard to ignore that, but she also had a hard time getting over the way his hair seemed to fall into perfect tousled curls and his dreamy green eyes.

She had been in love with him (or at least the idea of him) since she was 16. She couldn’t help it.

But the bottomless mimosas helped to break her anxiety, and apparently his as well, as they both began to feel a slight buzz.

“So how did Jeff end up talking you into this?” Harry eventually broke the silence, the alcohol lowering his naturally shy inhibitions just enough to kick off their conversation.

She let a playful eye roll take over her face before she began. “Oh Jeff,” she said jokingly, letting out a long sigh. “I was convinced somewhere in between ‘it’ll make your ex look bad’ and a stern ‘no one ever cares about the opening act,’” she chuckled, while sarcastically wagging her finger in the air, dramatically re-enacting his scolds.

He sucked in a breath through his teeth, letting out a dramatic ‘ouch.’ “He’s not always gentle, is he?” matching her chuckle.

“He knows where to hit you where it hurts,” she laughed, while nodding in agreement. “How did he convince you?”

“Coincidently, he also took a low blow involving my ex. I believe his words were ‘You wrote an entire album about her and haven’t dated anyone since and it makes you look kind of pathetic.’” He dramatically used air quotes and did his best impression of Jeff’s American accent. She couldn’t hold back the giggles that erupted from her.

“Oh my goodness,” she let out through slightly buzzed giggles, “you definitely win.”

From that point, their conversation began to flow more easily, easing her anxiety as she learned he was generally easy to talk to. He laughed at her jokes, and she laughed at his. He really did have the calming and disarming quality that people always said he had, like could melt down any walls and convince you to be honest with him, even if you didn’t really want to be. She was shocked to find that she wanted him to genuinely be a friend to her so badly. He was just so nice and such a good listener.

Their conversation took a turn when Harry’s super power of knowing when his picture was being taken kicked in. “Give me your hand,” he said to her, diverting from the pleasant conversation they had been having about their families. “Don’t look but there’s someone across the street taking photos of us.”

His instructions brought her back to the reality that they weren’t really friends and that all of this was for show.

She brought her hand up to meet his, strategically resting on the side of the table that faced the street, giving the camera the best view. The cool metal of his hand full of rings felt good against her skin that had been baking in the hot LA sun and he passed his thumb over her knuckles with faux affection.

She couldn’t help but feel a dishonest weight pulling on her heart. She knew everything was going to plan and this was all for the best, but it also felt slightly wrong. She played with her small heart shaped earring to distract herself from the sinking feeling.

“Harry,” she began, knowing the people across the street were out of ear shot. Her voice brought his attention from her hand back up to her eyes. “Does this feel wrong to you at all?”

“How so?”

“It just feels dishonest, like we’re lying to millions of people, our–well, mostly your fans.” She couldn’t help but correct herself.

His eyes softened at her words, like he was taking in the innocence she still held onto after only being in the industry for a short time, compared to his decade in the spotlight.

“I try not to think of it as lying,” he spoke slowly after a moment of thinking. He nodded along softly to punctuate his words. “When you think about all this as lying, it starts to weigh pretty heavy on you as a person. I try to be as honest as possible in my music and daily life, but that’s not always what people want to see. They want a show that will entertain them, and it is our job to give it to them.”

“I see,” she mused.

They sat together for another hour or so, allowing their small mimosa buzz to wear off enough for them to drive the short distances to their homes. The pair eventually found their way back to a comfortable conversation, but Harry’s comment about being in the public eye still weighed on her.

Suddenly, she wasn’t sure if all of this was worth it. Y/N was a master at dodging a question and turning the charm to 10 when it was needed, but she wasn’t a liar and she definitely wasn’t an actress. She hoped she (or Jeff) hadn’t bitten off more than she could chew with all of this.

Harry eventually walked her back to her car that was parked a few blocks away, and while she was sure he was doing it for the cameras, she didn’t doubt that he would have done it even if they weren’t there. He just seemed like that kind of guy to her; caring and trustworthy.

“Thank you for a very nice date, Harry,” she said, winking and chuckling along with the extra emphasis she put on the last word.

“My pleasure,” he smiled down at her. He moved along with her as she walked to the driver's side door, opening it for her like a perfect gentleman. The two stood close, his body hovering over her’s as they stood inside the open door. Her heart rose to her throat as he leaned down to her and pressed a gentle kiss to her burning cheek.

Y/N  looked back up at him with rosy cheeks and a tightlipped bashful smile. She watched as he walked backward carefully, taking her hand that had been locked with his until he was too far and let it fall back to her body.

She situated herself in her drivers seat and was ready to leave when she heard a knocking on the passenger side window that startled her. Harry had bent himself over and was motioning for her to roll the window down. When she did, he leaned himself in, an honest look in his eyes.

“Before you go,” he said gently. “A word of advice from someone who had been in the public eye for a long time,” he spoke with a tender yet serious tone, eyes locking with hers. “When you go home today, don’t go on social media. People are mean, and it’s just going to hurt.” She nodded along with his words and watched as he pinched his bottom lip. “And when you inevitably can’t resist, text me if you need to talk about it.”

***

They must have done a good job putting on their show because within an hour of her returning home to her apartment, they were all anyone was talking about. Their names were trending worldwide #1 on Twitter. Streams of Y/N’s debut album were up by 800%, and even Harry’s streams had taken a considerable jump. Y/N had gained 40,ooo new followers and views on every interview she had ever done were steadily rising.

All was going according to Jeff’s plan.

Harry’s words circled her brain for hours. “Don’t go on social media,” she heard him say over and over again as she paced her apartment, only stopping to look at the phone sitting on the kitchen counter every so often.

She had taken a shower, done her hair, tried to watch TV, cooked herself dinner, and even tried to sit down and write a song; it all got her nowhere fast. The unknown was eating at her inside.

Y/N broke when she heard the small ding signaling she had gotten a text message. She had all but sprinted to see who it was, reunited with the outside world through her touch screen. Unsurprisingly, it was from Jeff; the message sent to her and an unknown number she assumed to be Harry’s.

Good job, kiddos., was all it read but there was a photo attached to the message. Her heart stopped while she waited for the photo to load, cursing her slow wifi in the process. After a few breathless moments, the photo came through.

It was a screenshot from the website of one of the biggest entertainment magazines in the country. A picture of him kissing her cheek was the front page of the website.

Harry Styles and Y/N Y/L/N Rumored To Be Music’s New Power Couple Ahead of Tour

She was honestly speechless. This was huge.

She would like to say the sheer shock blurred her judgement, but the curiosity just got the better of her. Harry’s words repeated over and over again in her head, telling her not to, even as her finger connected with the icon of the little blue bird.

She was the most talked about topic in the entire world, her name hovering in bold letters on the trending page. She did everything she could to not click on her name, but her fingers did it all on her own.

The first few tweets were nice. Someone said they liked her style and that they looked cute together as a couple. Another said that they had always enjoyed her music and that they were happy for them.

But as she scrolled, it became harsher and just mean. People commented on her weight, said she couldn’t sing, and criticized her personality as seeming fake and forced. Her eyes were locked on the screen, unable to look away, as her heart began to break and few tears began to roll.

It took one final, and the most painful, tweet for her to consider deleting her account completely. She swiped out of the app fast, but the words were still burned into her brain.

Y/N is using Harry, just like she used James before he got rid of her and found someone better.

The words knocked the wind out of her, pouring salt on an open wound that had yet to heal.

She also had the little blue bird for that heartbreak as well. When she opened the app two months ago, the first thing she saw was pictures of her (former) fiance, James, with his tongue down some girl’s throat. At the time she had been devastated, her heart broken beyond repair.

It felt like no one else in the world could understand the way she was feeling. If she was in this position because of another person, they must get it too. The text to Harry was already sent before she had time to think it over.

I looked and I shouldn’t have. I’m sorry that I didn’t listen.

His response came only seconds later.

Don’t be sorry. It’s hard not to. Are you alright?

She had to think about his question, unsure if she knew the answer. Tears were still running down her face and she felt like she was a target the entire world had decided it was open season on. Logically, she knew these people never thought she would see these awful things, but it didn’t excuse the hurt she felt when she did.

I don’t know. I just don’t understand how people can be so cruel.

She felt like she was bothering him, even though he had offered to be there for her. He wasn’t her best friend, or a close confidant; he was her fake publicity boyfriend. He had real friends he wanted to talk to or maybe even a real girlfriend underwraps somewhere. Her body was wracked with guilt as she thought it over.

People are just mean on the internet, okay? They think they can say whatever they want without repercussions. I’m so sorry that you are being targeted because of me.

Before she got a chance to think through a proper response to him, her phone dinged with another text. It was from Jeff again.

Really good job, kiddos.

Y/N was confused. They hadn’t done anything else but be seen together today. Her sick sense of curiosity got her again before she opened Twitter again and looked up Harry’s name. He had tweeted for the first time in six months only a few moments ago.

@Harry_Styles: We treat people with kindness.

***

The next time she saw him was two days later at yet another public meet up Jeff had arranged for them. Unfortunately this time, she had become just as famous as Harry seemingly overnight, the flames of her new found fame growing even larger after he had sent that tweet.

While the fame had grown, the hate had calmed since his statement, which most had taken as an official declaration of their relationship. Now, that was not to Jeff’s plans.

She had to fight her way out of her apartment complex, wearing a pair of massive dark sunglasses with circular lenses and shielding her face with her hands the best she could. But she did have to admit that the electric orange fabric of her jumpsuit probably didn’t do much to help her blend in and avoid the attention of the paparazzi that had now found out where she lived.

Harry was sitting at the table by himself facing the back of the cafe when she arrived, two cups of coffee waiting before him to be drank together placed delicately on the table. He had his head down, buried in a book, before she startled him with a hug from behind. Her cheek connected with his warm neck where she buried her head into him and she took in his dizzying cologne.

She felt him jump beneath her as she wrapped her arms around his shoulders, pressing a dramatic and cheesy kiss to his cheek, feeling his light stubble prick her chapsticked lips. “My hero,” she joked, trying to bring at least a little humor to the man who had just about jumped out of his skin at her touch.

It felt like she was crossing a boundary, and she was pretty sure she was, but she just needed to thank him and a hug felt like the best way to do that while in a semi-crowded coffee shop. Also, playing up that they were madly in love didn’t hurt.

“Jesus Christ,” he breathed, a hand flying over his chest in surprise to feel his racing heartbeat. “You scared the shit out of me.” Once he settled for a moment, his arm moved across his chest to rest on her arm. His touch was gentle and soft, holding her there gently like he didn’t want her to release him from her grasp. She tried not to think about it too much as she slipped her arms off of him, making her way to the seat that was clearly meant for her across from him.

“I’m sorry that I scared you. A little jumpy today?” she teasingly questioned.

“Hey, watch it,” he playfully threatened. “I believe you called me your hero about thirty seconds ago.”

“I guess I did,” she quipped over the mug she was bringing to her lips. It was sweet but not too sweet, with cream but not too much, and still piping hot; just the way she liked it. “I don’t think it’s too far off,” she smiled before turning back to the coffee. “Good coffee,” she mused. “Just the way I like it.”

“Good. I texted Jeff for your order,” he informed her, the gesture being so thoughtful and sweet she could have melted into a puddle right there and then. “And I think ‘hero’ might be a bit much,” he tacked on.

“Don’t be humble, Harry.” While her voice was still light and held a jesting tone, she meant her words. “You made the entire internet leave me alone, for the most part,” she clarified as there were definitely some nasty messages still floating around Twitter, “in five words.”

“It was the least I could do,” he said while shaking his head slightly, seeming to deflect her words.

“You could have done absolutely nothing.” She reached across the table and grabbed his hand in hers like they had staged at the cafe a few days earlier; but this time, it was an honest gesture, not one for a role they were both meant to be playing. Her words were serious, punctuating each with a gentle nod of her head. “I mean it. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” His eyes held the same truthfulness and honesty she hoped she was mirroring in her own. “I know all of this,” he paused and gestured between them with his free hand, “is for publicity, but I consider you a friend. It was hard to watch it all go down like that. You’re a good person and you didn’t deserve all that. I had to do something.”

There was a warmth that flooded her chest. He called me his friend, she thought to herself, fighting back a big toothy grin. She had been under the impression that all of this was just work for him, something he was doing just to drum up publicity, with no personal connections at all. But him calling her a friend meant so much to her. It meant she was not alone in all this terrifying and overwhelming attention.

“I’m glad you think of me as a friend,” she said, still holding back her smile. “You’re my friend too.” He matched her close-lipped smile that had fought its way onto her face at her words.

They sat in silence together for a few moments. Harry returned to his book and Y/N answered emails; but their hands stayed connected across the small table. This silence was very different from the silence on the day they first met. It wasn’t an uncomfortable silence that sat on your tongue, begging you to break the quiet; it was peaceful and safe.

Their silence was broken when a young woman wearing a jittery smile and nervous eyes approached their table. Her voice squeaked out a mouse-like “Hi,” towards the both of them, bringing their eyes up to meet hers and instinctively breaking their hands away from each other.

“I’m so so sorry to be a bother,” she began, cheeks red and hot. “But I’m a really big fan of both of you and I would never forgive myself if I didn’t say hello.” She rambled excitedly, mostly looking at Harry, as she held her slightly shaky hands up to her chest.

“Hello,” Harry said with one of his million dollar smiles. “What’s your name?”

“I’m Emma,” she breathed.

“Well, it’s so nice to meet you Emma.” He spoke gently with her, clearly sensing her anxiety, extending his hand for her to shake. “Thank you for all of your support.”

Y/N watched closely as he spoke with her. He spoke to her like she was the only person in the room, giving her his whole undivided attention, and repeatedly thanking her as she flooded him with compliments about how his music and message of kindness meant so much to her. She was so entranced that she nearly didn’t hear her own name being said as the girl turned towards her.

“I love your music as well,” she grinned, clearly more comfortable after her short conversation with Harry. “And your jumpsuit is just incredible.” Her nervous giggle was contagious, Y/N releasing one as well at the compliment as her cheeks heated slightly. She was shocked she even knew any of her music, clearly being the less popular of the pair.  

“Thank you so much, Emma. It means a lot.”

Emma took a few quick selfies with the both of them (that would be everywhere within a few hours), said goodbye and went to leave the two, but not before she paid them one last compliment. “You two are really cute together. I’m rooting for you.”

Both of their cheeks warmed as they looked back at each other. They were quiet for a moment, unsure how to respond, before Harry turned his attention back to the girl with a coy smile. “I am too,” was all he said.

***

The next three weeks passed in a blur of tour rehearsals, fittings, and public meetings with Harry. And then all of a sudden, it was the night of the first show.

Y/N had never been so nervous in her entire life. She would be the first face seen by just over 19,000 people, tasked to warm up the crowd and prepare them for Harry, which was enough pressure. And then there was the chance that they all hated her guts.

She stood behind the curtain, listening to the loud and inpatient crowd as she paced back and forth. She white-knuckeld her guitar, trying to keep her violently shaking hands from being too visible to the crew around her. Her stomach swirled and her palms were clammy, constantly having to rub them on the pants of her icey blue jumpsuit. It fit her like a glove, the wide legged pants and slight shoulder pads, creating a perfect hourglass silhouette; the only thing she was confident in at the moment was how good she looked in it.

Her heart leapt out of her chest and she almost hit the ceiling when a small voice appeared over her shoulder, whispering “You’re going to do great,” in her ear. If her heart wasn’t about to give out before, it was now. She swung around to face him, almost hitting Harry with her guitar, letting out a small breath of relief when her eyes met his own. They always seemed to calm her down a bit.

“I’m kinda freaking out, H,” she anxiously babbled, using the nickname he had told her to call him. “This is the biggest crowd I’ve ever played in front of, and they probably all hate me because they think I’m dating you, and I have to make sure I do a good job so they start listening to my music; and I just…” she trailed off for a second, uncomfortably scratching the back of her neck, “I just can’t let you down.”

His face softened at her words, seeming to take pity on her. “Y/N,” he began, resting his hands on her shoulders and looking so deep into her eyes she felt like he could probably see her soul. “We picked you to open because people love your music and the way that you perform. You just have to go out there and do what you do best: sing your heart out and put on a good show. It’s only 25 minutes. I know you can do it.”

Every word that left his lips was laced with honesty and encouragement; just enough for Y/N to relax her furrowed brow and give her lip a break from her constant chewing. “I can do it,” she softly repeated back to him, still not breaking contact with his striking green eyes.

A stage manager passed by them, running to some other important task, but not before tapping her shoulder. “You’re on in 30 seconds,” he spoke, just as she heard the roar of the crowd begin, signalling the dimming of the lights in the arena.

“Go kick some ass,” he winked, stepping backwards from her and releasing her from his grasp. “I’ll be watching.”

Walking on stage, she wasn’t met with ‘boo’s that had plagued her nightmares, or mean looks from the audience, or rotten tomatoes thrown from the crowd.

They were screaming in excitement, screaming for her.

From the second she started playing, the crowd had her back; the ones that knew the words to her songs sang them along with her, and the ones that didn’t, happily danced to her voice. Before long, the smile she had forced onto her face was genuine, and her set passed by with ease. When her 25 minutes were up, she wasn’t sure if she wanted to get off the stage.

She took her final bow as the crowd roared, running off of the stage into the wings, looking for one person in particular. And when she found him, she threw herself into Harry’s open and waiting arms. “I told you that you were going to do great!” He spoke excitedly into her ear and he held her close to his body, his arms wrapped around her waist tight.

She liked the way it felt to be in his arms.

Pulling away from him, she saw the massive grin that he wore for her, noting how adorable his dimples were and how the excited look in his eyes made him look like a little kid. But there was more to his face than excitement, he looked proud.

“They were so nice to me, and they knew my songs, and they were screaming so loud for me, and it just went so well. I can’t believe it!” Her previous anxious chatter had become an exhilarated rambling and she felt on top of the world.

“I can,” he grinned, looking down at his watch quickly. “I have to go get changed.” If she wasn’t so amped up, she might have noticed the disappointment that flashed over his features. “Promise me you’ll watch the show?”

“Pinky swear?” She stuck up her little finger in the air.

“Pinky swear.” He kept their pinkies locked for a moment too long, then released her hand and ran backstage to get dressed.

She kept her promise and watched with excitement as the building shook when Harry took the stage.

She had never heard something quite so loud, sure her ears would be ringing when she snuggled into her bunk on the tour bus that night. Watching him perform was mesmerizing; he knew how to work a stage in every way and make every person in the arena feel like he was singing just for them. He was larger than life while performing and his little dances and mannerisms only got more pronounced the more comfortable he got on stage. He messed with Mitch, who she had only met a few hours ago (he was very nice), and constantly praised Sarah on the drums behind him, while he looked over to Adam and sent him smiles often.

Everyone in the building came for a show, and boy, did he give them one. It was amazing to watch. There was a reason she was a fan.

Bouncing off the stage, full of adrenaline and in a post-show high, he came to find her. It wasn’t hard, as she had never left her spot on the side of the stage, unable to rip her eyes away from the man before her.

“Oh my god, Harry! That was incredible!” she said with delighted amazement.

“I’m glad you liked it.” He was smiling down at her with a big toothy grin, a hand running through his sweaty hair and pushing it off his forehead. “They only get better from here.”

***

He was telling the truth. The shows only got crazier and more exciting as the tour went on, and so did their “relationship.”

About five shows in, Jeff had Harry given her his “H” ring to start wearing. Harry didn’t seem too phased by it all even though she thought it might be too much, saying “it’s like a friendship bracelet.” But it was too big for her fingers, not because she had small hands, but because Harry’s were absolutely massive. She wore it on a chain around her neck from then on and made sure to always be seen playing with it.

Fans took notice and loved it.

A little after that, Jeff sent them off to get matching manicures. Both had a melting rainbow of oranges, pinks, and browns on their fingertips, which looked amazing in the paparazzi photos of them walking around with their fingers intertwined.

The fans loved that too.

But when she “accidentally” posted a photo of Harry on her story, the entire world lost it’s shit. In the photo, he laid sprawled across a bed in only a white hotel robe that was creeping dangerously high up his thigh. He looked sleepy and slightly sweaty, in a post-fuck haze, and clothes that looked very similar to ones she had been seen wearing in public only days before were strewn across the floor. The caption read “I love getting to love you.”

The photo had strategically only been up for about 30 seconds, but by the time it was deleted thousands of people had seen it and screenshots had been taken. They quickly circulated the internet, creating a bit of scandal. But more than anything, people began to love the two of them together even more. Harry looked genuinely happy in the photo, and for most of his fans, that was all that mattered.  

They were creating a fairytale love story for an audience, but she would be lying if she said she wasn’t enjoying her role. She quite liked being his “girlfriend.”

Harry and Y/N had a way of clicking as they grew closer–quite literally as they were crammed together on a tour bus most of the time. They seemed to be able to finish each other’s sentences and always beat the other to the punchline of a joke. The pair had begun to pick up on the other’s mannerisms and habits; Y/N always teasing that Harry was going to rub his nose off one day if he kept rubbing it while he was thinking and Harry always knowing when she got enough sleep by whether or not she had put on eyeliner that morning. They swapped playlists back and forth in their bunks as they tried to doze off and always grabbed a cup of coffee for whoever had decided to sleep in the next day, now knowing the other’s order by heart.

There was only one thing she didn’t know about him that she longed to discover: what his lips felt like against her own. She could never think too hard about it though, or she may just explode.

He had become a calming presence and was currently helping her keep her cool, even though she knew the pair of interviewers across the table were getting ready to grill the pair for every detail they could get. His hand had settled on top of her knee to quell it’s nervous bouncing, but remained after she had stopped, even though no one could see his touch under the table. She watched as his thumb ran itself back and forth along the leg of her flashy orange and yellow patterned overalls and she had a hard time pulling her gaze away when the radio host across the large table began to speak.

“So Harry,” the bald man began. “Fine Line has been one of the biggest albums of the year and I just have to say I love it. It’s truly incredible.” She listened as the man continued on to sing Harry’s praises, going on to list his grammy nominations, sold out world tour, and other accolades. She couldn’t help but smile as she watched his cheeks tinge pink with the praise. She knew anyone watching would pick up on her adoring look and people fawn over it, but she knew her gaze was nothing but truthful.

“Thank you very much,” he said shyly, shaking his head slightly as he spoke into the microphone suspended in front of his face. “You’re too kind.”

“Stop being humble,” she teased him, playfully tapping him on the arm. “All of his music is fantastic,” she said turning her attention back to the man across from them, “especially Fine Line.”

“And there’s Y/N, being the supportive girlfriend,” the man chuckled.

“I support him in everything he does,” she smiled back, not having to embellish the truth at all. “He is an amazing talent and I think Fine Line shows that.”

It wasn’t hard for her to gush about him. It was actually quite easy. She absolutely adored him, as an artist, a friend, and the focus of her affection. She felt an equal warmth in her cheeks as she watched his get even pinker with her compliments.

“That’s actually something we wanted to ask you about,” the blonde woman sitting next to him piped up, a mischievous glint in her eyes that sent nervous butterflies flying around Y/N’s stomach. “One of the songs on Fine Line, Cherry to be specific, actually features the voice of Harry’s ex, Camille. How does that make you feel as his new girl?”

Y/N did her best not to gag at the woman’s question, gritting her teeth as she plastered on a polite smile. “Well, I think Cherry is a really great song and her voice at the end adds a lot,” she spoke as smoothly as she could, refusing to let on that the question rattled her. Harry’s light squeeze on her knee signalled to her that she had answered the question well.

“It’s also been three years since the song was written,” Harry cut in. “Things are obviously a lot different now.” He connected their eyes for a second while he was leaning back into his seat, sending her a short smile, but she knew him well enough to know it was genuine.

“Oh, definitely,” the woman eagerly agreed. “You’re in a great new relationship with a beautiful girl on your arm.”

“Y/N,” he emphasized her name as the woman had referred to her as a possession of his for a second time, “and I are very happy. Thank you.” To an onlooker, he was calm. To her, he was visibly uncomfortable by her words.

Y/N began to notice a clear pattern as the interview went on. Harry was asked exclusively about his music and the tour, while Y/N only became relevant to their interviewers when they wanted to mention their relationship.

When the man asked Y/N if she felt uncomfortable playing to Harry’s mainly female fanbase every night that are “so obviously jealous of her,” something snapped inside of her, sending all her hours of media training out the window. “I’m not uncomfortable at all,” she said curtly. “His music is great and he puts on an awesome show. I don’t think the audience’s gender really has anything to do with the music.” She watched the man’s face fall before she decided to go on. “And I would like to think that at least a few of them are there for me too. You do know I make music too, right?”

An indignant smirk found its way to her lips as the man stammered out, “yes, of course.”

“Okay. I was just wondering since you have only asked me questions about our relationship since we got here.”

She knew Jeff wouldn’t be happy, but at the moment, she couldn’t care less. They may not have really been dating, but the interviewers didn’t know that. All of their dismissal of her and her career was 100% real.

She had been so worked up that she didn’t even realize Harry’s hand had left her knee until it found its way to rest on her back. She leaned into his touch as he rubbed her back softly while she crossed her arms in front of her.

The interviewers looked at the two of them across the table, jaws both lying on the floor. It was quiet until Harry nonchalantly spoke. “She has a point.”

The last few minutes of the interview passed in an awkward blur that felt suffocating. She felt like she could finally take in a deep breath once they were in the back of a massive SUV being driven away from the studio.

“Jeff is going to have my head,” she mumbled under her breath, nose stuck into her phone as she scrolled Twitter to see what people were saying about her outburst. But before she could read any opinions, Harry's tattooed arm blocked her view as he gently pushed her phone down onto her lap.

“Look at me,” he murmured, beckoning her attention to the other side of the back seat. When she connected her eyes with his, his usual calming aura took over her, softening the stressed crease between her brows. “It’s going to be okay.”

“Harry, I just blew my career up into smoke because I couldn’t deal with a rude interviewer,” she huffed at him.

“No,” he disagreed softly, moving the hand that rested on her arms to interlock his fingers with one of hers. “You stuck up for yourself to people who were ignoring your work and whittling you down to your relationship.”

“But it was rude.”

“It was necessary.”

The car ride to the venue for that night’s concert was quiet, but Harry never let go of her hand, brushing his thumb over her knuckles in a comforting touch. She wasn’t sure if she ever wanted him to let go.

***

It was the early hours of the morning by the time the pair returned to their tour bus and went to crawl into their bunks.

Her performance had gone well and Harry was mesmerizing (as always). He was truly hypnotizing to watch while he performed and she hadn’t missed watching him yet, even as they drew close to the end of the tour. It was the best part of her day and she would miss it dearly after the last show.

She was almost asleep, curtain drawn and cuddled under a pile of blankets, when her cell began to ring. Her heart sank, knowing only one person who would know when she had a sliver of free time (even though it’s debatable if sleeping counts as free time). She was going to get scolded like she was a little kid in the principal's office and she knew it.

“Hi Jeff,” she answered with a sigh as she pulled the curtain back and slid from the bunk, the cold air of the tour bus nipping at her legs.

Her gaze was met by a snuggled up Harry wearing a concerned face across from her in his own bed. He never closed the curtain, not even when she asked politely to muffle his snores, always saying something about how it made him claustrophobic. He sent her a tired smile and mouthed “good luck,” extending a hand for a fist bump as she passed. Knocking their knuckles together put a brief smile on her face before she buckled in for the chewing out she was about to get.

Harry watched her intently as she paced up and down the front of the tour bus as she spoke to Jeff, too far away for him to listen in. Her face gradually turned from anxious, to surprised, to something that would have probably been happiness if she wasn’t so tired.

“Alright, thank you for everything.” She spoke softly when she finally returned to be within earshot for him. “Goodnight Jeff.”

“So?” he murmured groggily at her, brows raised in question at her.

“People loved it,” she said shocked, like she didn’t fully believe it herself. “They think I’m some kind of badass for shutting down a sexist. Which is, like, a lot,” she spoke with a disbelieving chuckle, unable to find the right words in her groggy state. “I don’t really know what to make of it.”

Harry seemed to spring up from his spot in his bed, smacking his head on the top of the bunk in the process, prompting them both to dissolve into a puddle of giggles.

“Don’t get too excited for me,” she laughed. “I cannot be the reason that you hurt yourself and have to cancel a show.”

“I was just too excited to say ‘I told you so,’” he smirked, now rubbing the side of his head through his curls.

“Cocky bastard,” she sarcastically murmured under her breath while dramatically rolling her eyes.

She watched with confusion as Harry left his bed, and after a short and frantic search for his pajama pants so he wouldn’t “offend her eyes,” he moved towards the front of the bus. Her eyes trailed him as he bent down to the small mini fridge and pulled out two beers.

“We have to celebrate.”

It was 2 AM and she had been so ready for bed after a long day. But she knew she could never say no to him. She thanked god that they had a day off tomorrow.

After retrieving her massive and lovingly worn Grateful Dead sweatshirt to protect her from the chilly air, she nearly ran to the front of the bus. His painted pink fingers moved with skill as he popped the bottle caps off with one of his rings, handing it to her and gently nudging his bottle against hers.

“Cheers,” he murmured softly as he looked down at her with a kindhearted smile.

“Cheers,” she seemed to whisper back to him, a flutter in her stomach reminding her how badly she wanted to reach out and connect her lips to his. Instead she slid into the small booth across from him, taking a long sip from the bottle as she watched him do the same.

“I want you to know that I was really proud of you today,” he said as he put his beer down on the table. “Rude interviewers are never easy and you handled it like a champ.”

“Thank you, H,” she nodded, suddenly bashful and unable to make eye contact with him. Her cheeks burned hot as she put all her focus into tracing the rim of the bottle with her finger tip.

“Hey,” he called for her attention and her eyes snapped up to meet his. “I mean it, Y/N.”

“I know you do,” she gently nodded at him. “I’m just really happy they didn’t ask about my ex,” she chuckled as she took another sip. “That would have gone very poorly.”

“Oh yeah, I was a little annoyed they brought up my ex but not yours,” he teased. “Not fair if you ask me.”

“Well, then I’m glad no one asked you.”

“Can I ask you?”

“What?”

“About your ex.”

She should have been prepared to talk about it with Harry at some point. Half of this plan had been devised to get back at James anyway. She should be able to talk about it by now, especially with someone she had grown so close to.

“I guess so,” she shrugged, trying to seem casual like the mere mention of him didn’t still hurt her heart a little bit. “What do you want to know?”

“As much as you’re willing to tell me.”

He looked soft like this, eyes slightly sleepy with a tenderness in them as he looked back at her. His hair was unruly and puffy and he was wrapped in the powder blue blanket that lived on the tour bus’ couch. She would have told him anything that he ever wanted to hear if he kept looking like this.

With a deep breath, she began to recount everything that went down.

“I met James while I was still working as a waitress. I recognized him from his movies and started a conversation, and then–to my surprise–he asked me out on a date. I had been in LA for three weeks and this insanely famous actor is asking me to go out with him, so I obviously said yes.” She paused to take a swig of her beer, before mumbling under her breath, “I should have said ‘fuck no’ to that.”

A smile ghosted over her lips as she listened to Harry’s laugh across the table. She swore that laugh could cure cancer.

“But I didn’t,” she continued. “He introduced me to the right people and helped me make the right connections in the industry, which I guess made me feel indebted to him. Does that make sense?”

“Of course,” Harry nodded, eyebrows furrowed and listening intently.

“I should have broken up with him after I signed with Jeff and the label, however awful that sounds. But he just always knew the right things to say to make me feel special and like I was the most important person in the world. Even after I found out he was talking to other girls, he was somehow able to talk himself out of it.” She shook her head as she recalled it. “You wanna hear something fucked up?”

“Always,” he said with a gentle smirk.

“He proposed to me using lines from a romcom he was working on.”

Harry nearly spit out his drink. “Holy shit, you’re kidding!”

“I wish. I didn’t find out until I went with him to the premier a few months later and the proposal scene sounded surprisingly familiar.”

“What a dirtbag.”

“I know, right?” she laughed. “Then a few weeks after that, he got papped with his tongue down another girl’s throat. That finally knocked some sense into me and I ran for the hills.”

“Fuck,” he sighed as he finished his beer. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay,” she breathed. “I don’t even feel hurt by him anymore, ya know? I just feel angry at myself for trusting him.”

“I understand but it’s not your fault he was a piece of shit,” he said as he rose from his seat and traveled to the mini fridge once again. “Another?” he asked, holding the bottle up about his head.

“Fuck it,” she shrugged. “Sure.”

She watched him skillfully pop off the tops again using just his rings, making a mental note to make him teach her how he did that, before he flopped back down in his seat.  

“At the risk of sounding like a Facebook mom, ‘you grow through what you go through,’” she chuckled, taking another long sip as she finished her first. He matched her high pitched giggle across the table and she nearly drooled beer down her front from smiling so wide.

“Amen, sister,” he agreed, raising his beer in the air.

“Oh, that was awful.” She shook her head as she descended into giggles. “Please never say that again.”

“Noted.”

“Anyway,” she began again after another sip of her drink, “I was well prepared to get my heartbroken by untrustworthy men after you, Styles.”

“I’m offended–tell me more,” he spoke quickly, his signature narcissistic smirk settling onto his features.

“I need you to know that Zayn leaving was my first real heartbreak.”

“Were the rest of us chopped liver?”

“You weren’t Zayn, I can tell you that.”

“Ouch!” He let out a loud belly laugh.

“Put yourself in my shoes for a minute, H. So first, the hottest-”

“Rude-”

“-I’m speaking. So the hottest one leaves, and then the rest of you are all like ‘we’ll be back in 18 months,’” she mocked him in a high pitched impersonation with a wave, “and then 6 months later you all mysteriously have solo careers.”

“I do not see you complaining about my solo career now, ya fame leetch.” He spoke with such humor and charisma, she couldn’t have even wished to be offended by his joke.

“Absolutely not, sir,” she said sternly, giving him a dramatic salute. “Deepest apologies from the fame leetch.” The two collapsed into giggles, laughing until their sides began to ache.

“Wait, I have a question for mega superstar Mr. Harry Styles of former One Direction fame,” she announced.

“I believe that’s me,” he bowed his head and raised his hand into the hair. “Shoot.”

She barely could get the question out, laughing too hard at her own joke. “Is Taylor Swift a good kisser?”

“Oh god,” he exasperatedly threw his hands in the air, chuckling while rolling his eyes dramatically before grinning wide as he thought over his answer. “I don’t kiss and tell,” he finally smirked.

“Wait, I have another!”

“Watch it, smart ass.”

“You think I’m smart?” she teased as she feigned flattery. “Have you ever heard of a song called ‘English Love Affair?’” He narrowed his eyes at her, a knowing smirk crossing his lips as he shook his head at her. “Also, when do I get to meet Gemma?”

“I’ll consider it when you stop bringing up her sex life, perv.”

“We’ve been dating for a few months now,” she teased as she continued to prod, emboldened by the liquid courage running through her veins as she was now half way through her next beer. “I think I should be allowed to meet the family soon. They seem delightful.”

“They would love how you have decided to rip into me like this,” he said with a cheeky smile, dimples on full display.

“Rockstars have to get knocked down a peg every once in a while.” She sarcastically shrugged. “Consider it a favor.”

She couldn’t help but think about how right this felt. Their back and forth flowed so smoothly, the banter falling from their lips without effort. Their laughter joined together in a delightful melody and she imagined they could go on this way all night.

Spending any amount of time with him made her so fucking happy; and time spent teasing each other over beers caused her to nearly explode with joy. How much she was enjoying herself was too hard to put into words.

He was safe and he was kind and he made her laugh no matter how bad his jokes were.

He was her best friend.

And for the first time, she was willing to admit that she was in love with him.

“Harry,” she hummed softly as their laughter died down to a comfortable silence. “Thank you for everything. You’ve changed my life forever and I can never repay you.”

“Just remember me when you get famous.”

“Oh shut up, I’m being serious,” she playfully scolded before letting her tone drop back into honesty. “You’re a very good person and I’m eternally grateful for you letting me be your opening act and then agreeing to this whole relationship charade.”

“I didn’t ‘let’ you be anything, Y/N. I picked you myself.”

Her brows furrowed in confusion. “What do you mean?”

“I listened to your album when it came out and fell in love with it,” he shrugged, his casual tone contradicting the surprised raise of her pulse. “When I found out Jeff also managed you, I knew I had to have you on the tour.”

Y/N was honestly stunned. She had always assumed that the tour was Jeff’s doing, a careful arrangement pairing Full Stop’s new up-and-comer with their most famous and established talent. Being offered the tour had been the biggest opportunity and honor she had ever been presented with; but she had never considered Harry himself being behind it.

“Oh,” was all she could manage to get out.

It was now his turn to be confused. “What’s so surprising about that?” he asked, reading the shock on her face like she was an open book.

“I just,” she stammered, trying to find the words in her slightly hazy state. “I never would have thought you knew who I was or listened to my music.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know,” she trailed off. “You’re you, and I’m just... me, I guess.”

He didn’t respond right away, just looking at her intently and slightly amused, sea glass eyes boring into her with a pink lip held between his teeth.

He scanned her frame, from the way her hair sat messily on top of her head and the way the massive sweatshirt swallowed her body enough to where she had pulled her knees up to her chest underneath it. Her shoulders were slumped slightly, making her appear smaller as she held her legs close to her torso and her eyebrows were knitted together in worry, slightly nervous under his intense gaze.

She downed the rest of her beer in an attempt to forget his intense attention. It didn’t work.

“You really don’t know how incredible you are, do you?” he finally asked, the corner of his lips twitching into a small smile.

She felt her whole body burn with his compliment, wanting to shrink into herself and disappear completely from his view. She finally shook her head slightly in an attempt to deflect his words, breathing his name under her breath as if to scold him for being too kind.

“You are,” he insisted, ignoring her objection. “You’re so talented and your music deserves all the attention that it gets. I am honored that I get to play a part in helping expose the world to you and what you have to offer.”

“Thank you.” Her words came out as a whisper.

“You’re welcome, love.”

His pet name made her stomach turn in a nervous excitement and a wide grin involuntarily came to her lips.

“I like it when I make you smile like that.” His words only made her beam further. “You look very pretty when you smile.”

“Stop it,” she said softly, cheeks burning hot and having a hard time making eye contact with him.

“Stop what?” He feigned innocence as he lightly teased her, smirk still prominent on his features.

“Are you flirting with me, Styles?”

“Just practicing.”

His words rang through her mind long after they had left the table and crawled back into their bunks for the night. She wished she could see inside his head to understand whatever thoughts were running around his brain.

But for now she could just peak at him through the gap she had purposely left in her curtain, wondering if she ever popped into his dreams as he slept.

He was always in hers.

***

There was a sadness mixed in with her usually thrilled mood as she took the stage for the last show of the tour. While there was an element of relief as she looked forward to some well needed rest, the adrenaline and joy of being in front of a crowd was something that she would miss dearly. She had grown into a real performer over the last two months as they zig-zagged across the US and this period of time would have a special place in her heart long after it had ended.

But there was another reason why she was so sad to see this chapter come to an end. As far as she knew, a staged breakup was not far away and the thought of being without Harry was heartbreaking. He had become her person and soon their feux falling out would be on the front page of every magazine. She wanted nothing more in the world than for their relationship to be real, but it would be forced to end before it had even truely started.

She got choked up as she sang her final song that night, letting a few tears escape as she took in the thousands of people singing her lyrics back to her, flashlights swaying in the air to the beat of the music. Taking a move from Harry’s own playbook, she took her mic and directed it to the crowd to sing as she cried. The vibrations of the drums and bass behind her nestled it’s way into her bones and the chorus of singing voices in the crowd surrounded her in a bittersweet melody.

The past two months she had been on top of the world, and as soon as this song finished, it was the beginning of the end.

She took her final bow, watching as the small tears fell forward onto the dusty stage below her. She waved and blew kisses to the crowd, then nearly ran off the stage looking for the only person she wanted to see.

Harry was right where he always was, just out of view behind the curtain, holding his arms out for her to fall into.

“Awe, babe,” he hummed sympathetically when she settled her head onto his chest, surely ruining his crisp white t-shirt with her now wet makeup. “It’s okay. Final shows are always tough.” He rubbed her back gently, in a soothing rhythm.

He smelled so good. He smelled like home.

She tilted her head up to connect her glassy eyes with his. “I just don’t want this all to end.” She knew she wasn’t just talking about the tour.

“Neither do I,” he said as his lips curved into a devilish smirk that sent her heart into palpitations. “That’s why I have one last surprise for you.”

“Oh, Harry,” she sighed while wiping the remaining tears off her cheeks. “What have you done?”

“You said you liked surprises!” he defended.

“Not surprises in front of 20,000 people!”

“I promise you’re going to love this one, okay?” His voice was softer now, encouraging and supportive. “You’re going to come out and sing an extra song with me during my set,” he revealed.

“Sing what?”

“That’s the surprise.”

“Do I even know the words?”

“You definitely know the words,” he chuckled.

“I just finished sobbing. I can’t go out there like this.”

“You can fix your makeup. I believe in you.”

“What am I going to wear?” she asked, grasping at straws at this point, doing anything she could to get out of this.

“I had Lambert put something together for you.”

“Of course you did.”

She peppered him with a few more questions, but he had a smooth and charming answer to every single one. He had thought every detail out, and as always, she couldn’t say no to him.

“Fine,” she finally exasperatedly agreed, immediately met with his excited and dimpled smile that she had fallen head over heels for.

“Perfect,” he breathed. “I have to go get ready and so do you. I already put everything you need in your dressing room, okay?” She nodded, still biting her lip anxiously. He held her by her shoulders, lowering his head to match their eye level as he leaned in close, before he spoke. “You’re going to have fun. I promise.”

“Pinky swear?”

“Pinky swear.”

Seconds after they locked their little fingers together, he pressed a quick and protective kiss to her forehead that set her whole body ablaze before running off in the direction of his dressing room. She remained stunned and frozen in her spot for a few moments trying to process what it felt like to have his lips on her for the first time since that very first day they had met.

There was no audience to perform it for or an act to keep up behind the curtain. He kissed her because he wanted to.

She was finally snapped out of her daze when a stagehand bumped into her by accident, prompting her to begin the short walk back to her dressing room. But the ghost of his lips remained on her forehead, an incessant tingle placed there by his touch.

The dress she found waiting for her was one of the most beautiful gowns she had ever set her eyes on. Made of a light purple chiffon, the wrap dress’ long sleeves and floor length skirt flowed freely. A belt cinched the wispy fabric close to her waist and a deep-v exposed her neck and chest. But the most dazzling part of the dress were the red sequined hearts that dotted the fabric and reflected the light of the dressing room like a million little mirrors.

Slipping into it, the light fabric was soft against her skin, opaque enough but still slightly sheer to let light through and show off her legs and the bright red shiny pumps Lambert had left for her. She felt the most beautiful she had ever felt in this dress, boosting her confidence and quelling her nerves about whatever the hell Harry was planning.

“One minute to curtain,” was announced in an ominous voice over the arena’s backstage speakers as she finished fixing her makeup and she all but ran to make it back to the stage in time. She only had one more chance to watch him perform and she refused to miss a second of it.

Harry dazzled as the lights focused in on him, his deep blue and fully sequined suit reflecting the light and turning him into a human disco ball. He stood close to the edge of the stage as the beginning notes of the first song began being played by the band, but he made no move towards his mic stand to sing. His eyes were closed and his arms were outstretched to the audience, taking in every scream, every tear, and the thunderous shake of the building; but also giving himself to them.

Then the show began. As usual, he was electric, but tonight was like he had turned himself up to eleven. Every note he sang was full of his heart and every dance move was done with his entire body, even his bad jokes seemed funnier tonight.

She was so mesmerized she almost forgot about his ‘surprise.’ Almost.

“Since tonight is unfortunately our last show,” he pouted. “I thought I would do something special,” he spoke to the crowd as they roared, but quickly connected his eyes with her’s in the wings. By the smirk plastered on his face, she knew she was in for it.

“I recently found out that someone very close to me was a very big fan of…” he trailed off as he dramatically pretended to search for the right words, “my previous work.” He finished with a smirk and his words prompted the loudest reaction since he had been on stage.

“Now, I told her that she would be coming on stage to join me tonight, but I didn’t exactly tell her what we would be singing and I haven’t performed this song in a very long time, so cut us some slack if we mess up. This is very unrehearsed.” He kept sneaking glances back to her, as her eyes grew wider at the stunt he was currently pulling. “But I know for a fact that she knows all the words. I listen to her sing them in the shower quite often.” He wore a cheeky dimpled grin as he looked back at her once again.

The building was shaking due to the suspense he was creating, and looking down at her hands, she realized she was to. She gripped hard onto the mic a stagehand had just shoved at her, pleading with her hands to stop their tremors.

“Now, I would love it if you could all give another warm welcome to one of my favorite people on the planet, Y/N Y/L/N!” He turned his body to her for a final time, extending his hand out for her to take. Her legs felt like jello as she walked out into the bright lights towards him, interlocking her fingers with his as a way to keep her on her feet.

The audience’s screams were deafening at seeing the two of them together and she thanked god she had her earpieces in to protect her ear drums or they would have surely burst. She could only imagine the articles that would be written about this and the thousands of tweets that were probably already being sent.

“I’m gonna kick your ass,” she mouthed at him threateningly, but she couldn’t even get through the sentence before his dazzling smile began to quell her anxiety.

“The look on your face is 100% worth getting my ass kicked,” he answered smoothly before turning his attention back to the audience. “Everyone, sing along if you know the words,” he commanded their attention. “This is Ready to Run.”

Her jaw dropped and the crowd roared as the band behind her began to play the first few chords of the song she loved and knew so well. She had admitted it a few days ago that it was one of her favorites of his ‘previous work,’ but apparently he already knew that from the few showers she had taken on the tour bus.

“There’s a lightning in your eyes I can’t deny,” he began by himself, her brain still too shocked to jump in yet. He sang the first few lines to her with a giant grin plastered on his face, hand still holding tight to hers. His eyes had a playful glint in them that seemed to say ‘just have fun.’

“There’s a devil in your smile, it’s chasing me,” she finally began to sing, Harry fading his voice out so she could take the next few lines by herself as he admired her.

He did have a devilish smile, but it was one she loved with her entire heart. As she began to sing, she felt her muscles begin to relax into the song she had sung to herself so many times before, letting her body begin to bounce to the growing rhythm as her dress flowed around her.

The stage vibrated as Sarah beat her drums to introduce the chorus. “This time I’m ready to run, escape from the city and follow the sun,” the pair sang together, eyes still locked as their voices combined into the most perfect tune. “Cause I wanna be yours, don’t you wanna be mine?” they continued the lyrics. She felt herself meaning the words leaving her mouth more and more as they went on. She did want to be his, she couldn’t deny that. “I don’t wanna get lost in the dark of the night.”

Her apprehensiveness eased further as the music picked up and the hook went on, finally allowing herself to have a bit of fun. “Wherever you are is the place I belong,” they insisted towards each other, leaning in close before Harry grabbed her hand to dramatically spin her, the beautiful shining fabric of her dress splaying out around her. The next line was mumbled through giggles by both of them, but their laughter only added to the perfect moment they were having.

They danced across the stage together like there weren’t 20,ooo pairs of eyes watching them, both singing their hearts out to each other. It began to feel like they weren’t even there. It was just Y/N and Harry, serenading each other to one of her favorite songs.

“There’s a future in my eyes I can’t foresee,” she sang to him to start the second verse.

“Unless, of course, I stay on course and keep you next to me.” Harry grabbed her by her waist and pulled her into his side as he sang the words, prompting more giggles from her. She loved the way he smiled so wide as he sang, never breaking his eye contact with her and emitting pure joy. His eyes looked honest as he sang, like he meant every word just as much as she did.

The pair made their way through the rest of the verse and second chorus, flawlessly moving around the stage like they owned it. Y/N selfishly decided to let him have the bridge all to himself, needing to hear the way his beautiful voice hit the high notes. “This time I’m ready to run,” he sang passionately, executing the downward moving riff perfectly. “I’d give everything that I got for your love,” he pointed across the stage towards her, beckoning her back close to him. She quickly skipped to him at his request.

Like she had blinked, the song was already nearing its end.

“Cause I wanna be free and I wanna be young, I’ll never look back now I’m ready to run,” they belted the last lines out to each other. The band fell quiet on their last chord and the crowd exploded, but their noise fell on deaf ears as the pair stood so close their heaving chests were almost pressed up against each other. His eyes stared down into hers and she watched as his eyes flickered quickly down to her lips.

The world ceased to exist when he pressed his mouth to hers, even if it only lasted a second. It was nothing more than a peck, but it was everything to her. Her body igniting with heat and eyes full of shock, she looked back at him in simultaneous confusion and adoration, before realizing they had been staring at each other for too long. She needed to get off the stage so he could continue with his show. She walked back slowly towards the wings, letting the hand he had still been holding fall to her side. She waved and smiled to the crowd the best she could in her clouded mind.

“Thank you everyone!” she shouted into her mic as she moved out of their view. She shoved her mic into the first set of hands that would take it as she wobbled her way over to a table with water bottles. She nearly choked as she tried to suck one down, hoping it would ease the dizzy feeling he had created with his lips. Her lips burned just as her forehead had earlier in the night.

He had kissed her. He had sang a love song with her and then he had kissed her. She couldn’t decipher if that kiss was a confirmation that he shared the same feelings for her or if it was just another act for the cameras. But his mouth felt so right against hers. They fit together like a pair of puzzle pieces. She tried to suppress the optimistic hope that rose in her chest, but it began to swallow her whole.

When she heard his next song begin, she made her way back to the spot that had become hers at the side of the stage. She watched him perform the rest of the show in a loving haze, doe eyed and hypnotized, lips still buzzing from his contact.

He gave it his all. By the last song he was out of breath, drenched in sweat, and looked like he was about to pass out at any second. The crowd applauded for minutes after he left the stage and they were still cheering when she finally caught sight of him again. His curls were stuck to his forehead and his skin was shiny and flushed. He was panting, still trying to recover from his workout of a finale show; but he was beaming. His smile seemed to turn him into a beacon, emitting a light and positive energy that drew everyone backstage towards him.

She was so transfixed on Harry as he thanked the crew and accepted congratulations from all around that she just about jumped out of her skin when Jeff slinked up behind her and whispered ‘boo’ in her ear.

“What the fuck, Jeff,” she chuckled as she caught her breath, resting her hand on her chest and feeling her racing heartbeat.

“I just wanted to congratulate you on being half of the best fake couple out there,” he teased. “That kiss was perfect. People are losing their minds over it.”

“Oh,” she said softly, feeling every emotion she was distracted from while watching Harry rush back into her. Her heart sank as she remembered all the questions that continued to haunt her since she got off stage. “Thanks,” she murmured, plastering a smile onto her face. “I’m glad we could make you proud.”

“If you two could convince me, you can convince anyone.” Jeff walked off moments later, leaving her to sit in her confused thoughts as he disappeared into the hoards of bodies waiting for their minute with Harry.

She knew that she didn’t ‘convince’ Jeff of anything on her part. Everything she did with Harry was authentic and truthful. Including the thrilled grin that appeared on her face when she finally made eye contact with the exhausted man across the room. She gave him a shy wave that he sheepishly returned, biting back a shy smile. He pointed in the direction of his dressing room and mouthed “meet me in 15.”

She could never say no to him.

Fifteen minutes later, she was knocking on the large wooden door that had a single piece of paper that read STYLES haphazardly taped onto it. When it finally flew open, she was met by a soaking wet Harry with a towel hanging dangerously low on his hips. Her eyes trailed down his body without permission, taking in the toned torso that was decorated with his beautiful tattoos. Her eyes hovered over the two ferns that sat on his pelvis, too fascinated with the dark ink to pull her eyes away just yet.

She had obviously seen him in various states of undress before. They lived together on a tour bus without much space to exist with privacy, but this was different. He wasn’t rushing to get dressed or quickly changing his outfit. And he wasn’t moving away from her gaze at all.

If she hadn’t been so entranced by him, she would have noticed he was looking her up and down in the exact same manner.

She had changed since she had seen him last. The skin-tight black velvet romper she had brought along for the afterparty now fit her snuggly and held her every curve. The dark fabric was tight and appeared almost painted on, a rainbow racing stripe making its way down either side of her chest. The short shorts of the outfit exposed nearly all of her legs and the deep neckline put much of her chest on display as well. It’s long sleeves were her favorite part, as a strip of fringe dangled from below her arms any time she moved.

“You look great,” Harry finally choked out, his voice pulling their eyes back up to the other’s face.

“Oh, thanks,” she said, slightly awkwardly. “You too.”

“Well, I’m hopefully not going to the after party dressed like this,” he chuckled before stepping aside and ushering her into the room.

His dressing room was much larger than hers and she settled herself on the brown leather couch in the corner as she waited for him to get ready, sneaking glances up from her phone often. She chuckled as she watched him spend far too long fussing with his curls in the mirror, but was quickly distracted by the way his back and arms flexed when he reached up to muse his hair. Once he was satisfied with the way it fell, he disappeared into the bathroom at the back of the room. When he emerged, he was finally dressed, allowing her to take a deep breath and to focus on something other than his bare skin for the first time since he had opened the door.

The black satin suit was simple for him, but the tight white tank top that sat underneath hugged every muscle in his torso. She knew as soon as he got in the hot club, he would lose the jacket, and she would be devastatingly distracted once again.

The narcissist took one final look at himself in the mirror before turning to her and extending a hand. “Ready, darling?”

“You just spent 15 minutes exclusively on your hair and you’re asking me if I’m ready?” she teased as she took his hand, weaving her fingers between his as they exited the room together.

He leaned down close to her ear as they walked down the now mostly empty hallway, lips brushing over the hollow of her ear as he spoke. “I could have done it faster, but you were so obviously enjoying the show.”

“Relax yourself, Magic Mike,” she muttered indignantly, but hung her head in a way she hoped he couldn’t see how flustered he made her. Was she really that obvious?

They walked hand in hand out to the parking garage, now caught in a back and forth about whether or not Harry could be a male stripper. He said yes. She said no, although she did admit at one point that he worked his mic stand like a pole.

“Hey Jeff,” he called when they finally reached the parking garage where Jeff and Glenne had been waiting for them to head to the club. “Do you think I could be a stripper?”

“I think people would pay a lot to see it, but they may be disappointed in your dancing skills.”

“Come on,” he playfully whined. “I have some moves.”

“You have one move,” Y/N cut in with a chuckle, “and it’s the wiggle.” She brought her hands up near her chest, tilted her head back while dramatically biting her lip, and swayed her arms by her sides, earning a chorus of laughter from the people around her.

She hadn’t even realized she had done the move without releasing Harry’s hand first, dragging his arm into her dance as well, until their manager commented on it. “You know, you two don’t have to be holding hands all the time and keeping the show up back here,” he said with a slightly suspicious quirk in his eyebrows.

Her smile had been in the process of fading, like they had been caught doing something wrong, before Harry answered smoothly. “We know. Just practicing.”

There were those words again. Just practicing, she thought over to herself. But was he practicing anymore? How many flirty comments, heartfelt compliments, and warm touches did it take to cross the line of practicing to the real thing?

She wasn’t sure about Harry, but she knew that she wasn’t just practicing anymore.

She knew that the way they sat nearly on top of each other in the large SUV on the way to the club felt more than friendly. And the way he hadn’t stopped touching her in some way since they left his dressing room insinuated far more than something with business-like intentions. And the way he looked at her everytime he caught her eye the entire way to the club, always with a bright smile and adoring gaze that she always returned, pulled at her heartstrings far more than they should have if this was all an act.

A sloppy and cheeky grin settled almost permanently on his features after he had a few drinks in him, his arms moving in a lazy and fluid manner as she took in his many tattoos that he had exposed when he ditched his jacket (just like she knew he would). His butterfly was visible through the tight ribbed fabric of the white tank top and the little birds that peaked out from underneath seemed to be inviting her even closer to him in her now inebriated state.

All she wanted to do was to connect her lips with his as she watched him make conversation with someone from his management, entranced by the way his perfect mouth moved as he spoke. She once again craved the shocks of electricity that were created between them at the contact and could not stop thinking about it no matter how hard she tried. The protective hand that had settled onto her hip and continued to hold her close to his body just wasn’t enough anymore.

The pair had been drinking far too much; martinis turning into vodka sodas that had turned into straight tequila shots. She believed it was tequila shot four that did her in. The last thing she remembered was licking the line of salt off the back of her hand, downing the shot, and being entranced by Harry’s eyes as she bit down on the slice of lime he held carefully with his jeweled fingers.  

***

The next morning, Y/N woke up in a hotel room that she didn’t recognize with a pounding headache and a swirling gut. It felt like she had been hit with a truck and she could barely pick her head up off the pillow.

She had so many questions about what had happened the night before. Where was she? Who let her drink that much? Whose clothes was she wearing? But most of all, what the hell happened after that fourth shot?

But she realized the worst was yet to come when she heard soft snoring coming from beside her. She knew that snoring well. It was the snoring that kept her up half the night for the last two months and the one that had almost driven her to suffocating her bus-mate in his sleep; the snoring that matched the crumbled black suit she just noticed in a ball on the floor.

It took every ounce of strength in her body to pull herself from the pillow and turn around in the bed to have her suspicions confirmed.

There he was.

His dark long eyelashes were fluttered down across the tops of his cheeks and his hair was going in every direction, skin clammy like his body was trying to rid itself of all the poison he had ingested the night before. The crumpled comforter was pushed down his stomach, his bare skin holding a sheen that helped define every dip or curve of his muscles and the tiniest bit of the band of his boxers peaked out to assure her that he at least wasn’t fully naked next to her.

Why were they in bed together? And why did he look so good? Oh my god, she thought as a possibility dawned on her. Did we sleep together?

“Harry,” she murmured softer than she intended, voice scratchy and mouth dry. The soreness at the back of her throat clued her into the copious amounts of screaming she must have done last night. He didn’t stir at her gentle coaxing, the light streaming through the windows making him look angelic as it covered him in a blanket of soft light while he continued to sleep.

It was a hard nudge to his chest that finally made him open his eyes, immediately releasing a groan she was sure she made when she regained consciousness too. He looked at her puzzled, still rubbing sleep out of his eyes as he propped himself up on his elbows. He took an equally confused look around the hotel room before looking back at her. She watched as the gears slowly turned in his head until his eyes opened wide and he spring up into a sitting position to mirror hers.

“We didn’t,” he whispered hopefully. “Oh my god, did we?” he asked, a look of horror crossing his face that matched her own.

“I have no idea,” she anxiously replied. “I was hoping you would know!”

“You don’t remember anything?”

“The last thing I remember was doing tequila shots with you.”

“I remember those.” He rubbed his eyes hard like it would somehow jog his memory. His eyebrows knit together, buried in thought as he searched his brain for a timeline. “I can follow the night up until we did karaoke.”

“We did karaoke?” she repeated incredulously and was met with a somber nod. “Do I even want to know what we sang?”

He shook his head slowly, shame clear on his face, before he finally mumbled. “We did ‘It’s Raining Men.’”

“Oh my god, no,” she whined, holding her head in her hands and rubbing her temples. There were surely videos of them sloppily singing on top of a bar circulating online and she wasn’t sure how Jeff would be able to spin that one in a positive light.

“Where’s your phone?” he asked, a hopeful glint in his eye as he reached for his own. “Maybe there’s something on there that can clue us in.” It took her a moment but she finally spotted it on the ground in the corner of the room. She said a silent prayer that it wasn’t dead or broken.

Forcing her heavy limbs out from under the covers she made her way towards the device, but not before she heard a confused sound coming from Harry. “How did you get my clothes?”

Looking down at herself and taking in the red lettering that read But Daddy I Love Him across her chest, it clicked that the t-shirt and baggy basketball shorts were his. But how they hell did she get into them?

“I think we’ve established at this point that I don’t know anything that happened after about midnight, Harry.” Her words came out laced with slight frustration. She hoped he knew she wasn’t annoyed with him, just their situation.

“Just a question, princess.”

She ignored his quip and began to search through her texts, call history, and photos, hoping to find anything at all that could help trace their steps through the night. She found nothing but a few selfies of them still at the club. One was the pair casually smiling, the next was one of him kissing her on the cheek that made her skin warm, but the final one made her snort out a laugh.

“What’s so funny?”

“I have a picture on my phone of you with two martini olives shoved up your nose,” she spoke through hysterical laughter. “Definitely birthday post material if you ask me.”

“Let me see,” he demanded with an adorable scowl.

She passed her phone over to him, still letting a few chuckles fall past her lips. “I’m gonna change your name in my phone to ‘Olive Nose Styles.”

“You're cruel.”

“You’re the one that put olives up his nose and then posed for a picture!”

“Whatever,” he grumbled, turning attention back to his own screen to continue his investigation. “There’s nothing of use on my phone either.”

The two flopped back on the bed, staring at the ceiling in the frustrated confusion. There was so much of their night that had gone up into smoke, completely unaccounted for with no clues as to what they did. Each traced their steps over and over again in their heads as they hoped desperately for a single detail that would lead them down a path to bigger memories, but it never came.

“Are we going to have to call Jeff and ask him what happened?” she finally murmured.

“I think so.”

“He’s going to put us both in client timeout, isn’t he?”

“We’re probably already there,” he groaned as he picked up his phone and hit Jefe Jeff-e in his contact list, putting the call on speaker and resting it on his still bare chest. The man on the other end picked up almost immediately.

“Morning Sleeping Beauty, I was wondering when I was going to hear from you.”

“Hi Jeff,” he groggily started then stopped, searching for the words that would make this all less uncomfortable. “Y/N and I have some questions about last night.”

Jeff let out a strained chuckle. “Yeah, that doesn’t really surprise me after last night’s bar bill.”

“Um,” Harry hummed, stammering but unable to form any real words.

“You sing about sex for a living,” she hissed at the man next to her before yanking the phone off his chest. “Jeff,” she started, taking over the conversation for them both. “Do you know if we slept together?”

“Probably not. You both were pretty unconscious when I put you in the hotel room.” His words prompted a massive sigh from both of them, looking to each other to share a relieved smile.

“Oh thank god,” they mumbled in unison.

“Jinx,” he smirked under his breath, prompting a ‘shut up’ from her.

“How did I get into Harry’s clothes?”

“I stopped by the tour bus when I realized you two probably shouldn’t be trusted not to roll out of your top bunks. I got you some clothes to sleep in before we took you guys to the hotel.”

“But why Harry’s?”

It was Jeff’s term to get squirmy. “I felt weird going through your things.”

“But you were perfectly fine with going through mine?” Harry asked, only half joking.

“Absolutely,” he deadpanned. They were all quiet for a moment before Jeff began again. “You two really don’t remember anything else that happened?”

“Everything after about two is unaccounted for,” she confessed.

“Oh,” Jeff chuckled. “So, you don’t remember when you stuck your tongues down each other’s throats on the ride home?”

Fuck.

Her eyes raced up to Harry’s from the phone she had been staring at like it held all the secrets of the night before. His easily readable features displayed all his emotions that surely matched hers. His pupils had grown in surprise, taking over nearly all the green in his wide eyes, and an embarrassed blush tinted his cheeks in a red hot flush that had reached the tips of his ears. His eyes flashed to the blank wall in front of them, running a stressed hand through his curls, like if he wasn’t looking at her, he would be able to focus better on the newly revealed information.

She couldn’t say that she didn’t relate. Her mind often went blank when she looked at him too. But right now, it was racing, occupied by anxious thoughts and intense emotions she couldn’t quite place, but felt with her entire being.

Her inevitable downward spiral was interrupted when Harry stiffly cleared his throat. “Uh,” he started, scratching the back of his neck uncomfortably. “We’ll see you later.”

“Sounds good, love birds,” Jeff replied, a clear snark apparent in his voice. Neither of the pair dignified his teasing with a response, Y/N quickly ending the call.

Silence hung heavy in the air and she let her eyes hover over the phone for too long when she settled it down on the bed, unwilling to connect her eyes with his just yet. Harry always had a way of staring into her and revealing all her cards to him before she even knew them herself. She wanted to hold them close to her chest for a moment, protecting the heart that longed for him more than anything else in the world.

There were no words exchanged between the two for a while as they silently took turns in the bathroom and occupied their hands and thoughts by their phones. They walked on eggshells anytime one neared the other. A tension like this hadn’t existed since the very first day they met, the first day they had begun to pretend.

Maybe that's why Harry was being so quiet. Maybe he never wanted to cross that line of pretending like she did. Maybe she had been blinded by his generally friendly personality and tricked herself into thinking there was anything more than a charade between them. Maybe last night really was just a drunken mistake, no matter how much she wanted it to be more.

“Maybe it’s a good thing that we don’t remember what happened last night,” she finally murmured from the opposite end of the room. She rested the side of her still heavy head and muscles against the wall, arms crossed in front of her as if they could keep her safe from the tension they had created. Her fingers nervously played with the hem of his t-shirt she was still dressed in.

“Why is it a good thing?” he almost immediately responded from the chair on the other side of the room he had settled himself into, running his hands along the satin pants of last night’s outfit he had put back on during their awkward shuffling around the room. He had even put physical space between them since they found out what happened, causing her heart to feel as if it was teetering on the edge of disintegrating.

“Well,” she stuttered, refusing to look at him and continuing to pick at her nail polish. “We’re just pretending so it would be weird if we really remembered it.”

“I don’t think it would be weird.”

“I don’t know,” she tried to maneuver her way around his response. “It might just be embarrassing to think about it.”

He let out a long and frustrated sigh, running his hands down his face. There was so much going on behind his eyes and she wished he would say something, anything, to break down the wall that hadn’t existed between them in months that was slowly reappearing.

“Do you regret it?” he asked bluntly, the abrupt question shocking her body to attention. “Do you regret any of this? Any of us?”

Did she regret drinking too much? Yes. Did she regret making out with him in front of their manager? Yes. Did she regret denying her feelings and pretending they didn’t exist for so long? Of course. But, did she regret falling in love with him? Never, not even for a second.

“No, I don’t,” she let out with a gentle shake of her head, no louder than a whisper.

“Neither do I.”

The words had barely left his lips before he crossed the room and crashed them into hers. The same fire she had felt on stage returned ten times over as his lips moved smoothly over hers, every neuron in her body lighting up like a switchboard. Her fingers reached up to curl into his hair and pull his lips impossibly closer to hers as her heart hammered in her chest with a passionate love she had kept under wraps for so long.

He tasted like the spicy peppermint toothpaste the hotel stocked in the bathroom and smelled like the tiny bottles of shampoo that rested on the side of the bathtub; but there was so much else about him that was completely unique–wholly irreplaceable and indescribable. He was just Harry.

Teeth clashed, lips were bitten, and hair was pulled as they took in every sensation the other created. His lips had been the only thought that captivated her mind since they were on stage the night before and her return to them did not disappoint. If her head wasn’t dizzy and her lungs not screaming at her for air, she would have stayed in that moment forever

When they finally disconnected, they stood against each other in a heaving and disheveled mess of heavy breathing and adoringly dazed smiles. She swore she could feel the pounding of his heart under her fingertips that rested on his chest.

“That was nice,” he eventually murmured down at her through heavy breaths, a love drunk grin finding its way onto his swollen lips.

“Yeah, I agree,” she hummed breathlessly, her anxious thoughts quiet and calm for the first time she could remember since she met him.

“I’m kind of disappointed I don’t remember doing that the first time,” he chuckled softly at her, shaking his head lightly in embarrassment with his pink tinged cheeks on full display.

“That’s okay. We were ‘just practicing’ then, right?” A giggle left her lips as she used the words against him. The same words he had used every time they let a glimpse of their true affections for each other slip past their guarded and friendly facade.

His dimples were exposed when he smiled a giant grin and let out a knowing huff, piecing together that she had caught onto his trail of excuses. “Yeah, just practicing,” he repeated softly, before his tone turned sincere and genuine. “I don’t want us to pretend anymore.”

“Good,” she said softly as her fingers slid up his neck to beckon his lips back down to hers. “I never was.”

“Neither was I.” She watched a soft smirk appear on his lips as they hovered over hers. “Do you want to keep not practicing?”

“Depends,” she quipped, lips brushing over his as she spoke. “Am I better kisser than Taylor Swift?

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR READING!! REBLOGS AND FEEDBACK MEAN THE WORLD!!! 

An extra for our babies can be found here!

[change-the-world-someday]

I'll Be Here

Oh boy I'm back baby. Here's a Derek Shepherd x Teen!reader bc I just started Grey's Anatomy. I'm well aware I've had stuff in my inbox for over a year, and frankly I'll get round to them soon. I hope this tides you over.

Derek Shepherd x Teen!Reader

Summary: Who'd have thought the child of Derek Shepherd would suffer with something even he can't cure?

A/N: I've been twitching a lot lately so this was a comfort write. Derek and Meredith don't have a relationship, and there's a bit of canon divergence.

⚠️TW⚠️ Talk and descriptions of twitching/tics

—•—

You knew the moment you woke up you were going to have a bad day.

Your alarm went off at the bright and early nine and as you made a move to turn it off, your arm twitched, almost pushing it off your nightstand. You let out a sigh, leaning down and managing to shut it off and sit up.

Until you neck starts to snap left and right, tensing and relaxing each muscle.

“Fuck’s sake,” you mutter under your breath, standing and stretching, well, as much as you can before your twitches start up again. You makes your way downstairs, finding an empty kitchen and a note on the counter. You manage to pick it up and read it.

Sorry, I got called in today. Let me know when you’re up

— Dad

You shake your head, whistling and shaking your hands. Great, so you're alone on a day where your twitches are worse than normal. You sigh and head back upstairs, almost losing balance on the stairs, and takes a quick shower before trying to style your hair. With difficulty, you get changed before reaching over and grabbing your phone. You grip it tightly, until it’s flung across the room.

“Shit,” you mumble, reaching down and picking it up. You open your messages, trying to text your dad.

Y/N

Hi, up. Bad today

It’s short, and to the untrained eye, might seem pretty rude, but to you and your dad, is a warning. Heading back to the kitchen, you try to eat a bowl of cereal. Instead, you managed to spill the cereal twice, drop milk on the floor, and then poke yourself in the side of the face a few times with your spoon instead of eating.

Your phone buzzes.

Dad

Do you need me at

home?

Y/N

No. Just bad

Dad

Do you want to come

to the hospital? You

can stay in one of the

offices if you want

You think about it for a moment, though you don’t get too long before your phone starts ringing. You pick up.

“Hi—” you whistle “—hi Dad.”

You hear him sigh. “Hey kid. Do you want to come in today? I can make sure no one stops you and you can come straight to the office.”

You click, your neck jerking forward. “You sure? I’ve—“ you whistle “—never been there before. I don’t want—“ you click “—to become a case study.”

Your dad laughs lightly down the phone. “I won’t let them. Just make your way over, and keep your earphones in. Music helps.”

You nod, before your neck twitches to the side and cracks, making your dad wince audibly. “Okay. I’ll let you know—“ you whistle and sigh, clearly getting frustrated with yourself.

“I get it. Don’t work yourself up; it’ll only make it worse. See you soon. Love you.”

A ghost of a smile passes across your face. “Love you too, Dad.”

—•—

Derek hangs up and leaves the store cupboard, almost bumping into Dr Bailey as she marches past.

“Watch where you’re going, McDreamy,” she scolds and Derek smiles, though it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. Bailey narrows her eyes. “What’s wrong?”

“Y'N's coming here. They're having a bad day,” he replies and Bailey nods, immediately catching on. “No one else knows.”

Surprisingly enough, you haven’t met anyone from Derek’s work, except for Bailey and even then, that was an accident. You'd bumped into her on a bad day and Derek had to explain what was wrong. Ever since, Bailey’s had a soft spot for you.

“Not even the chief?” She asks and Derek shakes his head. “Did you warn them?” He nods. “Well, there’s not much else you can do.”

“They're texting me when they’re a few minutes away. If I get caught in surgery, can you meet them at the doors please?”

The two stop in the corridor, Bailey pulling him over. “I have my own schedule too, Shepherd.”

Derek nods. “I know, but you’re the only other person here they know, and you know how they can get in places they don’t know…”

Bailey looks around. “If you’re caught up, you owe me one.”

Derek smiles and nods, a look of relief on his face. “Thank you.”

—•—

You're walking down the street to the hospital, constantly readjusting your earphones so they don’t fall out. Your neck keeps snapping to the side and jerking forward, earning a few odd looks from strangers. You sigh, a few minutes away from the hospital, and pull out your phone. Before you can do anything, though, you promptly throw your phone on the pavement.

Thank god your dad bought you one of those industrial phone cases. You pick it up, dodging people as you go to call your dad. He picks up after two rings.

“Hi, I’m—“ you click “—a minute away.”

“Okay. I don’t think I’m going to be able to meet you at the doors. Just walk through, take the stairs to the fifth floor, and come down the hall. I’ll be in the break room, second door on the left.”

Your eyes widen; you're going to be by yourself? Walking through a hospital? Where no one knows you?

“O-Okay,” you stammer out and your dad sighs.

“I’m sorry kid. Everything’s going to be okay. I’ll see you in a bit.”

He hangs up and you take a breath, nodding to yourself. You pocket your phone and turn your music up as loud as it can be. Your dad was right, it does ease your twitching, though not as much as you'd like.

Fall Out Boy blasts through your earphones as you walk through the doors of Seattle Grace. You refuse to make eye contact with anyone, your neck twitch making it a lot easier to achieve. You click as you make your way to the stairwell, making your way up.

You don’t hear the calls of concerns from the interns following you, trying to catch up to you.

By the time you reach the fifth floor, the two interns have gone to find Dr Bailey to try and assist them, and Dr Shepherd who can help with the disorder being presented. They haven’t had someone who needs medical attention blatantly ignore them and go to a certain department before.

You lose your balance a little as you walk through the doors to the fifth floor, your neck jerking left and right repeatedly, muscles tensing and relaxing. Your hands are shaking and you walk like a new fawn.

You reach the door and push it open, whistling and clicking as you do so. At least you can see your dad today.

—•—

Derek knows immediately what kind of day is happening when you steps into the room. You're a jerking mess, neck and shoulders tensing and relaxing as though given electric shocks. You're whistling, clicking, and your eyes have recently started screwing shut, temporarily blinding you.

And that’s with your headphones in.

“Hey Y/N,” he greets, gently taking one earbud out of your ear and leading you to the seats. At least if you're sat, you have less of a chance of hurting yourself.

“Hi Dad,” you reply until a whistle comes back out. “S-Sorry.”

“Hey,” Derek places a firm but kind hand on your shoulder, “don’t apologise. None of this is your fault.” There’s a silence between you two, only broken by the sound coming from the removed earphone. “Fall Out Boy? Nice choice.”

Your neck snaps but you give a small smile. “Thanks.”

“Do you want something to eat? Did you manage to get some breakfast?” You sigh, your hands twitching and trembling, which tells Derek everything he needs to know. “Is it a bomb-site there?”

You shake your head. “I managed—“ you whistle “—to clean up. Took ages.” Your neck jerks forward. Derek sighs, putting an arm around you and pulling you into his side. You've always been wary; you never want to hurt your dad accidentally but Derek doesn’t care. You're his kid, and nothing will change that.

“You’re okay. Do you want some lunch? We can go to the cafeteria—they’ve got some pizza in there that’s actually pretty good.”

You nod, knowing anything you try to say will be interrupted by one of your twitches. You walk alongside Derek, trying your hardest to suppress your twitching as you make your way through the hospital and into to lift, where a few others are going to different floors. Derek notices, and leans into your ear. “You don’t have to hide it here, kid. Promise.”

There’s an audible sigh of relief from you as you let out a scatter of twitches, your neck jerking forward as you whistle and click. Your hands shake and flap and you let it all go. A few of the doctors and nurses turn around to look at you, but one harsh glare from Dr Shepherd makes them all go back to minding their own business.

You exit the lift and walk through the corridors to the cafeteria. You join the queue and you feel Derek keep an arm around you, trying to help you ease your twitches. You're grateful, though you both know there isn’t much either of you can do to stop them. You sigh, putting your earphones back in and blasting some music, this time Hozier.

Derek watches you struggle, sympathy panging through his heart. He hates that you've been cursed with this, and the worst part is they can’t find anything that’s causing it. It’s not like there’s a tumour or growth on your brain Dr Shepherd can operate on, you're just stuck with it.

“Dr Shepherd, good afternoon. Who’s this?” Lindsey, the server behind the food counter, greets. Derek smiles.

“Afternoon Lindsey. This is my kid, Y/N. They're joining me at the hospital today,” he explains, gently tapping you on the shoulder and causing you to take an earphone out. “Y/N, this is Lindsey.”

“Hi,” you greet, before your neck jerks forward yet again, cracking. The two adults give a wince and Lindsey gives you a small smile.

“What would you like, hun?” She asks. You look over, or does so as best you can. You can barely stay still long enough to read the menu. “We have a standard pizza or pepperoni pizza today. We also have some ham, chicken, or cheese sandwiches and salads. Or a few pastries we can heat up if you’d prefer.”

You give her a grateful smile. “Can I—“ you whistle “—have pepperoni please? And a—“ you click “—bottle of water?”

“Sure thing, and you Dr Shepherd?”

You put your earphones back in, trying your hardest to stop twitching. The problem is, the more you try to stop it, the worse it gets. It takes a few minutes for you to get your food, and when you do, Derek carries both trays to a table and sets them down. He takes a seat opposite you, giving a small smile.

“Thanks Dad,” you thank, pulling one earphone out so you can hear the conversation. You pick up the plastic fork and spear a few chips, but before you can eat them, your hand twitches and you throw it on the floor. You sigh but before either you or your dad can make a move to pick it up, someone else does it for you.

“You better be more careful. I don’t want fries on my shoes.” You recognise that voice anywhere, and smile as you look up at Dr Bailey. You let out a small laugh.

“Hi Dr Bailey,” you greet, whistling as your head snaps to the side and back. She smiles at you.

“Heard you were coming and through I’d say hello.”

—•—

“Guys, shut up,” Cristina hisses. “Do you see?”

“See what?” George asks as they quieten down. She nods her head and the table of interns turn around to catch sight of what’s going on. Dr Bailey is talking Dr Shepherd… and you sat with them. You're not dressed in any kind of hospital gown, nor are you wearing scrubs, so who are you? And how are you making Dr Bailey smile?

Meredith watches, catching sigh of your hair, and her eyes widen. She reaches over, slapping George on the arm.

“What?” He asks.

“It’s them,” she replies, “the person from earlier. Y’know, the one who didn’t check in at reception and took the stairs. The one who ignored us!”

George’s eyes widen too, and the two get up and start to walk over, ignoring the protests of Cristina and Izzie as they reach the table. You're struggling to get a sentence out, whistling and clicking as you try to tell Dr Shepherd about something.

“Dr Shepherd!” Meredith calls out, making the conversation halt between you. “Are you with a patient?”

She misses how you cringe. Dr Shepherd frowns, which only deepens more at the crack in your neck as it jerks forward. “Dr Grey, Dr O’Malley, how can I help?”

“W-We saw, erm, this kid walk straight through and up to neurology without checking in. Do you want us to check them in and get a better examination? We were going to come to you for a consult when we saw them anyway, but since you already seem to know them…” George trails off and Dr Shepherd looks between you, the interns, and Dr Bailey.

An awkward silence falls between you, only disturbed by the occasional whistle or click from you. “I can get a wheelchair if it’s easier.”

“No need,” Dr Shepherd cuts in. “They aren’t a patient, their name’s Y/N. They're my kid and they're accompanying me to work today.” The two interns look at each other, mortified. “Now, if you excuse us, we were just having lunch.”

Your hand flexes again, making you throw your fork on the floor (the second one in the space of fifteen minutes) and sigh. You go to pick it up, only for George to beat you to it. “Here.”

“Than—“ you click as your head jerks forward “Thank you.”

“Don’t you two have places to be?” Bailey asks, less than impressed with her two interns in front of her. They both nod and scurry off, back to their table to tell Cristina and Izzie about Dr McDreamy’s kid.

—•—

“I don’t know how they cope with it,” George muses as the group of four interns sit on some beds in the back corridor, waiting to be paged for something.

“Yeah, twitching all the time. God, I’d kill myself if I had them,” Izzie continues. “Would ruin my chances at both medicine and modelling. And a lot of other things, probably.”

“Do you think they wanted to go into medicine? Y’know, before they started twitching? Or have they always had it?” Cristina asks. “Or do they have a tumour?”

“For your information,” a voice cuts in, making all four jump and turn to the source, meeting the likes of Dr Shepherd, “Y/N wants to be a lawyer.” He walks down the corridor to them, everyone’s cheeks turning red a the prospect of being caught gossiping. “The tics developed about eighteen months ago, just before we moved to Seattle. It’s not a tumour, or any kind of swelling; in fact, we have no clue what set it off.”

“Have you done an MRI? CT?” Meredith suggests and Derek nods.

“We ran everything. It all came back clean.” He looks at Cristina. “They did want to be a doctor. When we realised we couldn’t cure them, they were upset for weeks. They—“

“Talking about me?” A voice calls down the corridor and Derek’s face splits into a smile, something that doesn’t go amiss by the others. You whistle, making it to the group and taking a seat next to your dad. You lean on him… until your neck twitches and you almost fall back. Derek’s hand shoots out, supporting you.

“We were just—“ Izzie tries to say before you cut her off, clicking in the process.

“Let me guess.” You whistle. “The doctor que—“ you click “—question and how I live with—“ your neck jerks to the side “—it.”

Your dad gives you a smile. “Ten out of ten for you,” he smiles. You nod.

“Well, I used to want to—“ you click “—be a doctor, until we found out this is incurable.” You whistle. “Pretty soul-crushing.” Your neck jerks back, and if it wasn’t for your dad’s hand, you would’ve hit the wall. “And we’ve learned to adapt to it. There are—“ you click “—days where I’m fine, with only a few, and days—“ you whistle and everyone can feel the frustration radiating off you. Still, no one chooses to finish your sentence, letting you get it out yourself “—like this.”

—•—

For a while, the six make general conversation, until, slowly but surely, you start to drift off. It isn’t until there’s an odd silence that Derek notices, and he has a smile on his face as he looks down at you, asleep on his shoulder.

“They look so… peaceful,” Izzie comments quietly, the others agreeing.

“Yeah. We’ve had a few rough days this week. God knows they need the rest,” Derek mutters. He shifts to look between the four. “Any of you wake them, I’ll make sure you’re banned from the OR for a month.”

Everyone’s eyes widen as they nod in unison; they’re all begging for a chance at more surgery. Carefully, Derek manoeuvres you so your head’s lying in his lap, body stretched out on the hospital bed. He carefully cards his fingers through your hair, detangling it as gently as he can.

The interns’ pagers go off, assigning them jobs and the four rush off, leaving Derek and you to rest. He smiles, getting himself comfortable sitting on the end of the bed, back against the wall.

“Get some rest, buddy. I’ll always be here for you.”

—•—

Hope y'all enjoyed. I know it's pretty different from what I usually write, but this is for my own comfort so...

Sorry not sorry

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