#I know she's not real. okay. I'm ACUTELY AWARE.

[deoidesign]

Been thinking about her recently.

[heardsomedickwasbeinmeantoyou]

also on ao3 HERE

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“So, I overheard this guy in the line at the coffee shop this morning talking about name meanings—”

“Of course you did,” Eddie interjects, not unkindly.

Buck turned up with beers about a half hour ago, and has had his head in his phone for the last, what, twenty minutes? Something like that.

This is the first thing he's said since Eddie let him in and he sat his ass down on the couch in silence, looking like he needed Eddie to just allow him to.

Eddie did.

“—and I thought I'd look up ours.”

He's chewing on his bottom lip like it tastes good.

Eddie surprises himself by wondering if it does.

“I'm guessing you already know what Christopher means.”

Thinking back to when Shannon asked if he liked the name, Eddie smiles.

“Means 'Bearer of Christ', or something, right? We chose it because was Shannon's grandfather's name, though. He was Greek, and she adored him.”

Searching fingers instinctively find his pendant. It's positioned to the left, sitting right over his heart.

He misses his son like he'd miss a lung.

Buck looks up at him and smiles back, and Eddie feels glad the release he'd found dancing 'round his living room earlier isn't going to suddenly disappear down the bathroom sinkhole, along with his moustache.

“So, tell me, what does Edmundo mean, oh scholarly one?”

Buck's eyebrows try to meet his hairline.

“You don't know?”

Eddie tips his head back against the couch and scrunches his mouth up into nose.

“I have sisters, man, of course I know what it means. But that doesn't mean I don't want you to tell me.”

Buck seems somewhat happy with that.

“Well, it's a derivative of the Old English name Edmund, which is a combination of the words ēad and mund. The first part means prosperity, or riches, which is a bit of a bust, sorry man,” and he tries for a grin. It almost hits.

“But the the mund part means protector���which is pretty spot on, I reckon.”

Buck's eyelashes are kind of blonde, and kind of pretty. Eddie's thought it before, but there's just something about them in this light, in Eddie's house, on Eddie's couch.

“It's actually a real pretty name, Edmundo. Don't know if I've ever told you I think that.”

“Don't think I've ever told you your eyelashes are kind of pretty, so that makes us even, I guess.”

Eddie smiles at Buck, big and genuine, and somehow it's so easy.

Buck smiles back. Looks a little confused, or pleased, or both. Eddie's not sure, but either is okay with him.

“Um, thanks?”

Eddie bites his tongue between his teeth in a poor effort to stop his grin turning positively goofy.

Buck takes it for what it is, and bats his eyelashes at Eddie, silly, and laughs.

His whole demeanor then changes as he finally settles properly into the couch and gifts his lungs with what might be the first proper breath he's taken since he arrived.

“Anyway, Evan is the worst of the three. It means yew, like the tree? Which is—it symbolises, like, spirituality, and rebirth and shit like that. 'S not really, uh, me, you know?”

“You mean like Evan isn't really you?”

Buck bites at his red, red lip again.

Eddie decides it'd taste like cherry Chupa Chups.

“Yeah. But it's—my name.”

“Except it isn't though, it's it?” Eddie reminds him. “You're name is Buck, Buck. You decided that.”

“I don't know why he always insisted on calling me Evan. Or why I just—let him. It was kind of weird.”

Tommy.

"Called? Past tense?” Eddie flips his tongue in his mouth. Breathes a little more deliberately.

Buck looks at his phone again before he's slowly placing it down on the couch between them.

His fingers are touching the outside of Eddie's thigh, and Eddie's suddenly acutely aware that he still isn't wearing any pants.

Buck leaves his hand where it is.

“He, uh, he dumped me. Because I—”

Buck sucks in oxygen, a lot of it, and holds it in his lungs before puffing out his cheeks as he makes a show of blowing it back out again.

“I asked him to move in with me.”

Eddie was not expecting either of those statements.

"Ouch.”

Buck's fingers twitch against Eddie's skin, and Eddie feels it travel right down his leg and into his toes, which curl involuntarily into the carpet.

“You wanna talk about it?” he offers, kind of knowing Buck doesn't. He will when he's ready.

“Not really.”

Eddie licks at his lips. They taste like beer, and a little like confidence.

“How about Buck?”

Buck looks at him, perplexed.

Eddie's leg is starting to cramp a bit.

He doesn't move it.

“A Buck is another name for a stag, right?” he continues. “And the stag symbolises strength and purity—

“Don't forget fertility” Buck is looking at Eddie, and it feels like something.

Eddie snorts. “'Course, don't wanna forget fertility.”

Buck smiles the first proper Buck smile of the evening, and Eddie's feels it in his chest.

“Hey, hang on, how come you know so much about stags, Edmundo?”

“You did that project with Chris about the forest.”

Buck blinks at him.

“Dude that was, like, years ago. And, as you said, I was the one learning all about the woodland creatures and different types berries and toadstools, so how do you—”

“Because you told me,” Eddie shrugs a shoulder.

Buck blinks some more.

“And you—remembered that?” he asks.

In this moment, Eddie couldn't blink, nor look away from Buck, even if somebody were to pay him.

“I remember everything you tell me.”

It's weird but it's like the air itself is crackling as they sit here, just staring at each other.

They look at each other for what feels like a long time. Or maybe it's just a single heartbeat, Eddie can't really be sure.

He watches as Buck swallows, his Adam's apple a calling card.

Eddie isn't entirely sure of why he thinks of that.

Until he is.

When Buck moves his hand, it's to slide it fully onto Eddie's thigh to just sit there, right at home.

Eddie's suddenly blinking so much he's a little worried he might be stroking.

He doesn't mean to say, “Can you smell toast?” but finds himself saying it anyway.

Buck smile is both crooked and adorable.

“You worried you're having a stroke, old man?”

“We'd have been at the same school at the same time, Buck. I'm not that much older than you.”

“You are old and I am young and everyone and the universe knows this,” Buck claims, cocky and sure of himself once more.

Eddie licks at his lips again.

“I, uh, I think I finally believe you.”

Buck now mirrors him, licking his own lips.

Cherry Chupa Chups.

“You mean about the universe?” he's asking, like he doesn't almost always knew what Eddie means.

“Yeah,” Eddie breathes.

Buck waits.

Just as Eddie is thinking he really should go put some on some sweats or something, Buck must get impatient because he replies, “I think it always wanted you to believe.”

Eddie doesn't have a clue what time it is, or whether he had dinner or not, or how he got so damn lucky.

“I'm gonna choose to believe, because you believe—and I believe in you, Buck” he says, somehow both sure and unsure of absolutely everything that is to come.

At long last, he finds he is totally okay with that.

“Anyways, I can hear it now,” he tells Buck, “and I'm listening.”

.

unedited; pls be kind!

.

edited version now found HERE on ao3 if you'd like to pop across and leave me a comment xp

[etherealily]

𝕏𝕆𝕏𝕆, 𝔽𝕖𝕝𝕚𝕩.

Felix Catton + fem!reader. Warnings : Cussing. Drugs. Long.

My other Felix fics, if you have the time.

happy v-day💌

You do NOT have permission to repost and/or translate any of my fics.

Desc. : You don't want to fix him, but you do, anyway.

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Okay, okay, so he beat someone up on campus, so fucking what?

It's called being a good fucking person. Look, you do not let some utter chav get away with cat-calling a girl in the middle of the dining hall, and then a frat party, where she might have been roofied if she'd have been dumber (thank god she wasn't), and in a fucking library, just because she couldn't cause a scene. Three strikes and he was out.

But apparently, so was Felix.

"No, Sir, I'm telling you, he was--'

"Professor Walker."

Professor. Asshole. "Professor. I apologise. Professor, I'm telling you, he was being absolutely dodgy!"

"Mr. Catton, I'd advise you to stay calm--"

His fist slammed on the table, the pens on this useless waste of a PhD's desk bouncing, seemingly in tune with Felix's blood pressure. "YOU are a philosophy professor, yeah? Don't bloody talk about practical shite to me, and don't tell me what to do about what happens in the real world, when your whole career is telling people to overthink everything and keep their heads in the clouds!"

Uh, whoops.

His adrenaline shot down as fast as it had shot up and all of a sudden, he was acutely aware of his ranking in this shithole.

Student.

He's lucky he wasn't expelled.

Because the philosophy 'professor' said "young minds often reject new ideas".

Figures.

He got let off with a warning, an extremely disappointed voicemail from his mother (Felix, dear, you know philosophy was my major, that was a horrid joke to make), to sit in on one month's worth of philosophy lectures - surprisingly, without charge - and a mandatory weekly anger management session for the rest of the academic year.

That last bit was what he was most chagrined about.

He did not need a bloody shrink. GOD. He was fine. He just couldn't handle the philosophy 'professor' telling him to 'stay calm' when he was perfectly calm. Maybe he knew that would set him off. Any class with Felix in it is sure to get more listeners. So maybe it was this Professor Walker mooching off his campus-wide popularity.

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Having to miss classes wasn't exactly on your bucket list, but your body was far less used to Oxford winters than you'd expected, and so the flu decided to scrape a week off your lectures. You made up for it, though, being a swot on your first free week of Uni, and not needing to catch up on much.

However, there was definitely no chance your professor took too kindly to your absence, seeing as psychology was your major, and she expected you to be there, rain, hail or shine. Star student, you were not, but the only one taking it seriously, you were.

So here you were, sitting in front of her as she regarded you. "You need extra credit."

"Yes, Professor."

"Your career path?"

"Uh... undecided."

"Career focus?"

"Psychology.' That, you knew.

She hummed, shaking a packet of sugar before ripping the corner. You watched the tiny, crystalline cubes get engulfed by the brown of her coffee.

"You should try going into therapy."

For a moment, you almost chewed her head off.

"As a career.", she clarified, almost snorting as she saw your expression. "You interact well with people, and you have a good grasp on the subject." Ah. Say that properly, bitch.

"Here's what I'll do.", she declared, taking a large sip of her coffee - you were almost 90% sure she'd made it Irish earlier - before sliding a small, stapled pile of papers over to you. "I'll give you all the tools you'll need. See if you can get them memorized and come back for a solo quiz later this week. Then, you can begin conducting."

Conducting?

You skimmed your eyes over the stack of paper. Weekly mandatory anger management sessions. Split second, and you thought it was for you, because maybe she had heard you mentally call her a bitch.

"An extremely hardworking and well-scoring student recently got into an altercation on campus, on grounds.", she explained, and you nodded, your eyes not leaving the stack of paper.

'Conducted by' : blank. You supposed that's where you were supposed to sign.

"Although we have a strict policy against harrasment and conflict, none of the three parties involved has openly stated discrimination. The only solid thing the university has got is a confession from the initiator and witnesses from the side of the victim. But given his clean record so far, we have resorted to only this. Sessions to contain any such future outbursts."

Who even was this kid, and why was he your form of extra credit? "But I'd be using him as a lab rat, basically."

"Come again?"

"I'm not qualified or licensed to conduct these sessions, so I don't think--"

She waved you off, the bint. "It's a mere formality, no need to put stock into it. That's not to say you can slack off, half-arse it, either, but he's had no history of violence and is known to be a relatively good-tempered student."

Then why the fuck?

"We figure he can be let off easy - we'd never take sides, so this is off the record, but he was justified - and you can get extra credit, and the victim can be appeased. Quiet and a win-win-win."

The coffee now completely drained, she watched you think it over while staring blankly at the space in which you needed to sign your name. Inhaling deeply, she leaned over, gently prying it from you and flipping the page. "This bit, very important. Sort of like an NDA. No, maybe... an ANS. Agreement Not to Sue. But less official."

"This looks more like summat he should be signing. Basically, since I'm not a licensed therapist, if he doesn't get better, or gets more fucked, the Uni isn't to blame?"

"You need to sign it, too. You'll have to record the sessions, as well."

"So you know I'm not 'half-arsing' it?"

"So we know he's coming to them. But yeah. That too.", she smiled, tilting her head. "You in?"

Well, yeah, you kind of had to be, seeing as she cut marks for your absences out of sheer fucking spite.

You nodded and so did she. "Brilliant! Sign here."

Scrawling your sign - that you came up with in the eighth grade instead of fucking having fun like a kid - on the blank spots her manicured nail hovered over, you bit the inside of your cheek. Was it weird that they weren't telling you who it was?

Was it weird that the sheet had been blank when it was brought to you, meaning whoever this bloke was, he had no clue what was coming?

Uh huh. Yeah.

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"A student?! A first year fucking student? I'm getting a kid-shrink?"

"It's a mere formality. Given your record, we're sure you don't even require these sessions--"

"Professor! Come on! Can't we just say I took them?"

It's quite interesting how chill a philosophy professor can actually be once you get to know them personally. And Walker was cool, as Felix had come to find out in the past couple days of knowing him.

"Afraid not. But I'm sure she's been adequately trained by the psychology in-charge to handle these sessions."

"Why can't the in-charge do it? Would actually do summat!"

"She's busy."

He scoffed as he was handed a stapled stack of papers. "What's this, then?"

"Read it."

He did, for a while, before looking up at him with raised eyebrows. "What is this, a Liability Waiver for if she bollockses my mental health by accident?"

"More or less."

Sweet lord. "Oh, fantastic, so I'm a scapegoat, a trial for this first year, am I? See if counselling is her 'thing'?"

"You know, a more positive attitude towards this, and you might not have to go the whole year.'

"What, sayin' she'll give up?"

Walker looked almost amused, snorting. "No. I'm saying you might actually get a solution for your rage issues."

"I don't have--'

"You could learn a thing or two, Felix. Learn to calm your temper - no matter how non-existent you claim it to be - and learn how to be happier."

"Brilliant. A first year is going to teach me about the joys of non-reactivity, then? Brilliant. We'll see her keep her temper when a girl's being near groped in front of her, hm?"

"We'll need to have you sign there and there and twice on the last page, please."

"She got this before me?", he muttered, glaring at the signatures already present on the pages. "So she got to decide whether she wants to deal with me, not the other way around!? Unbelievable."

"Sign, please, Felix."

He grumbled under his breath, attempting to recall whether he'd ever even heard your name before, as he messily signed something that was probably not his signature, on each page. He has no clue what his signature is. He figured he'd sort it out when he takes over the family estate (or business), or whatever.

"None of these look the same."

"Well, this is hardly official is it? 'S long as my name's there, it's not a problem, yeah?"

"You're gonna give me a migraine before my first week as your student advisor.", he muttered, accepting the sheets back anyway. "Okay, good. Sessions start Saturday."

Fucking spectacular, now this girl was taking his weekends away.

WEEK 1

Your pen twirled between your fingers and the inside of your cheek practically split open with how frequently you'd been resorting to chewing on it lately.

You'd passed the solo quiz that your professor had set up for you, and she'd declared you 'adequately trained' to take these sessions.

Okay? And? What, were you supposed to jump in joy?

Late. This arsehole, 'Felix Catton' was his name. You just... try as you might, you couldn't place a face to the familiar name. And that face was almost ten minutes late.

But one thing you would not do is get up and leave until the hour was up. Work ethic. Wait till the last moment. With any luck, he wouldn't show up at all, and you could complain, and get extra credit some other way--

The door exploded open, and shuffling, throwing-off of a coat and grumbled-settling-down was heard, as you looked up from your notes.

"You're the first year, then?"

Oh, THIS GUY?! Whoa, whoa, whoa, yeah, you remembered him!

You nodded. "Yes. Uh, just a second, Mr. Catton.", you muttered, angling the video camera right, ignoring the scoff it elicited from the junior.

"I'm two years older than you."

"What would you like me to call you?" That plug from the Christmas party who tried to overcharge me?

He watched you fiddling with the device for a bit before sitting up, one leg crossed over another as he huffed, playing with his rings. "Felix is fine."

"Felix it is, then.", you mumbled, finally getting the thing to work, before clearing your throat and sitting up. Here we go. "So, Felix.", you began, trying to smile off the awkwardness. "We're here to just go through these Uni-mandated sessions, so that you may have an insight into conflict resolution and--"

"Do you wanna know why I'm here in this bloody session?"

You glanced over to the camera for a second, feeling like you were in a fucking Office episode, before nodding, gesturing at him to continue. Fuck, if this shite went on the record and he said summat so unbelievably stupid you were at a loss for words, you could kiss your extra credit goodbye.

"I punched a lad. Hard, till his nose bled and he couldn't stand up without support."

You nodded, flicking through the file of information you'd received from some advisor of his, Professor Walker. Nice chap. "Yes, I see that. How does that make you feel? Did it make you feel powerful?"

"Mhm.", he hummed, nodding as he glared at you, a sort of smirk on his face, like he thought this would have you freaking out about his sadistic tendencies. It's funny he thought you cared.

"Happy?'

"Very."

"I see. But one thing that's conveniently missing from your file.", you replied, eyes flicking accusatorily to the camera before reaching his eyes once more. "Is why you did it.", you stated, your fingers intertwining as you looked at him with rapt attention.

This seemed to throw him for a loop, the self-satisfied grin fading for a moment.

"Why'd you want to know, sweetheart? So that you can record me confessing to the crime on tape?", he mused, gesturing at the camera before reclining back in his seat, his arms crossed. "Because I'm sorry to disappoint your wide-eyed, freshman dreams, but I've already said it, on the record."

You frowned, tilting your head softly for a moment. "No, I'm asking, because I truly don't know. They wouldn't give me your identity, let alone your case."

"Well, I hit a lad. For cat-calling a girl."

He observed your face almost twitch for a moment, and he figured you were about to throw the camera at him, but instead, you switched it off. "And they're punishing you for it?", you asked, leaning your forearms in front of him, basically whispering although the camera was off.

Huh. Whoa, maybe you were on his side.

"Yeah, isn't it mental?", he scoffed, leaning in, too. "I figured I should get some sort of medal, y'know? Maybe a commendation from the dean."

"I wouldn't go that far, but it's good, what you did.", you laughed, softly.

"Exactly!", he huffed, a genuine smile now on his face as he leaned back, rubbing his hands over his jaw. "Wow. I- sorry, love, but I didn't expect us to, like, agree."

"No, no, yeah, totally! I thought you were a hotheaded twat. I didn't expect...", you exclaimed, gesturing at him. "Reason."

"Right. Well, okay, great! Uh, phew, yeah?"

You nodded.

"So, yeah, this is cool. We'll just... you'll take care of it, won't ya? Thanks, you're a peach.", he grinned, standing up and not believing his bloody luck!

"Hey, hey, where are you going?"

Turning, he frowned. "Well, we agree. So you'll talk to your in-charge, and say I don't need it, yeah? Oh, oh, you want me to stay the hour so you can, like, log it in. Yeah, yeah, got it.", he mumbled, nodding eagerly.

"What? No." He was, uh... clearly not on the same page as you.

His smile faded slowly. "What?"

"We've got weeks left of this."

"Yeah, but. Wait, I thought you agreed with me."

"I do. It's bonkers to punish you, but, it's mandatory, so."

"'So'? So, go do summat about it, then!", he cried, gesturing at nothing in particular. "Tell 'em there's nothing to work on!"

"I'm not just going to--"

"WHY?!"

You almost flinched. God. Maybe he did have anger issues.

"WHAT'S IN IT FOR YOU?!"

Oh, oh-- uh oh. He didn't even know why you were doing it, and you were sure he'd blow five gaskets if he did.

"Just finish it, stop causing unecessary problems!"

"No, seriously! What's in it for you?"

"SIT DOWN!"

For some reason, that, he listened to.

He slumped down.

"Shut up and do what you were instructed to do." Lord knows where you'd got the balls to talk to a junior like that.

Reaching over to turn the camera back on, you began again. "What would you like me to call you?", you repeated.

"How about I call you something and we can workshop sm'n out for me later?", he grumbled under his breath.

"Sorry? You weren't audible. What was that?"

"Nothing. Felix."

"Felix.", you echoed, nodding. "We're here to just go through these Uni-mandated sessions, so that you may have an insight into conflict resolution and live an overall, controlled and more fulfilling life and have a more fruitful experience here at Oxford.", you read off the script, jaw clenched, mirroring his dirty look.

"Yes, I'm aware, thank you, freshie."

"I'd like it if you adressed me by my name. You already know it from the sign-up form for the sessions, but I am happy to repeat it if you wish.'

"Sign-up form?", he scoffed, looking directly at the camera. "Is that what they're calling it on the record?"

"That is what it is."

"Sweet Lord, it's a Liabil-- hey.", he grimaced, narrowing his eyes at you as you kneed him from under the table.

"Right. Y/N. Am I supposed to call you 'Doctor', too, freshie?"

"Just my name is fine."

He rolled his eyes, his hands fiddling with his rings. "Let's begin with your recount of the incident."

How many bloody times?! He was about to explode.

~~

You ended the session at exactly one hour, because you couldn't take this moron anymore, for fuck's sake.

He didn't object.

Shutting off the camera, you wordlessly packed up your things, stuffing them into your bag.

"Are they payin' ya?"

You snorted, zipping up your bag before slinging it over your shoulder. "No."

"Fuckin' snake."

"How am I a snake, Felix?", you sighed, tapping an impatient foot on the floor.

"Pretending you're on my side and that. Was that just to get information for the therapy part of it? Because that was a bitch move."

"What? No, I genuinely think it's odd that they're punishing you for something like this."

"Then why?! What could they possibly offer a fresher? They wouldn't increase your scholarship for shite this petty, so-- wait. EXTRA CREDIT?!", he gasped, standing up startlingly quick. "You're doin' this for a couple points of extra credit ?! WHAT?!"

"So what if I am?", you asked, schooling your face and your voice to be the picture of calm. "Either way, these sessions are mandated if you don't want this to escalate. It'll be over before you know it."

"EXTRA CREDIT?!", he practically shrieked, as he followed you out the door. "How bloody pathetic! You're going against what you know is right for extra bloody credit?! Just fucking study!"

"It'll be over before you know it, Felix."

"For the rest of the academic year, I have to come to you every Saturday and listen to you blabbering on about how to 'take deep breaths and count to ten'.", he scoffed, incredulously, easily overtaking you and obstructing your path in more ways than one.

"Doesn't always have to be a Saturday."

Oh, he was about to actually get anger issues.

"This pisses you off, too! Come on, admit it, fresher! You don't like this any more than I do!", he declared, crossing his arms defiantly.

You sort of liked pissing him off. Gave you much more to work with, sadistically. Reaching into your bag, you handed him the tiny blue journal you'd bought. "Here."

"What is this?"

"It's for noting down your feelings. You will have to fill at least one page every day and bring it back to me during our sessions."

He gaped incredulously at you as you shouldered past him. You're giving him homework?!

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WEEK 5

"You're not taking off your helmet?"

"No. Bothers you?"

You glanced at the camera for a second, before shaking your head, the corners of your lips turned down in feigned and exaggerated indifference. "No."

"Because I'll keep it on, mud and all. I fell on the way here."

"You fell?"

"Yeah. Helmet's now my coping mechanism. Calms me, y'know?" That made no bloody sense!

"So you're keeping it on."

'You wouldn't deny me my coping mechanism, would you, Y/N?"

You sucked on your teeth, shaking your head once more. Dirt on the desk, dirt on your laptop, dirt-- FUCK!

"No, it's alright."

He grinned slyly, nodding, before sliding the journal over to you. "I filled it."

"Entirely?" It's only Week 5, what the hell?

"Yes, actually. I'm an overachiever."

You raised a brow, taking it from him and placing it next to his file.

"So. How are we doing today?", you asked, once again intertwining your fingers and placing them on the desk as you leaned closer to the imbecile.

"You're not readin' it?"

Oh, please, like you had no clue what was in there. "No, actually, I've got to directly submit this to both your advisor and my in-charge."

"What?"

"Yeah, protocol. That's why I said to take it one week at a time so we can monitor progress, but it seems you're an 'overachiever' - your words, not mine."

"Can I have it back?" His tone was almost nervous, and you were now even more certain what he'd actually bloody written in there.

You almost smirked before you remembered the presence of the camera. "You want it back, Felix?"

"Yeah, I think I, uh, used a couple of profanities."

"That's alright, I'm sure they'll understand."

"Can I please have it back?"

You shrugged, holding it out for him to take, letting him tug on it for a moment before you released it from your grasp. "Would you like another one? Since you've filled this one?"

"I'll buy my own."

"Very well. I ask again, how are you doing today?"

He huffed, momentarily looking like he was actually prepared to answer honestly. "Great."

"Great.", you echoed, your pen twirling between your fingers. "And define 'great' to you."

"Not shite.", he said through gritted teeth.

"In more elaborate, less crude terms, please, Mr. Felix.'

"I am doing well today. Not bad.", he mumbled, playing with the buckle of the helmet he'd so adamantly kept on that was now seeming a bit too bloody tight. But he couldn't take it off. Not when it was clearly bothering you. "Nothing particularly terrible or triggering has occurred."

"And is that always the standard you measure your experiences on? 'Not bad'? If nothing 'terrible or triggering' has happened, it's a 'great' day?", you asked offhandedly, noting it down. 'Not shite'.

His eyes darted up to you. "What?"

"I said, is that always the stand--"

"No, I heard you. Just... isn't that what everyone does?"

"Do you think it is? Do you think it's what everyone does? Have any of your friends told you it is what they do?"

"What do you do?"

"Me?" Were you allowed to answer this? Is that against some therapist rule? You weren't sure, and you couldn't really ask your textbook right now, could you?

He nodded, mildly intrigued.

"Personally, for me to count a day as 'great', there should be an equal balance of absence of bad things and presence of good things."

"Well, then, I fell off my bike, but I did well on a test. Is that, in your books, a 'great' day?"

"Depends. Which do you weigh more? Is falling off a bike worse than getting a bad grade, or is getting a good grade better than staying upright on a bike?"

"Getting a good grade."

"Well, then, I suppose, there's your answer."

Huh. This was an odd perspective he's never exactly... heard before. Wait, no! This shite is not working, fuck off, fresher!

"Whatever."

"Whatever indeed.", you nodded. "You seem to have a better attitude this week, to the session." He did not. But it would piss him off if he thought that you thought this was working.

"I do not."

"Oh, well, then, pardon me, my mistake. So, tell me. Why do you think it is, that you're not particularly interested in these sessions?"

"Because I don't have anger issues. If a bloke catcalls a girl once, it's whatever - still bad - but whatever. Happens. But if he keeps doin' it, almost roofies her at a party and constantly tailing her, and then tryin' to score in a fucking library, just because she can't yell out at him, that's, like... creep behaviour!"

You nodded. "Yes, you mentioned this, in the first session, and also to your student advisor, it seems.", you replied, tapping the tip of your pen at the bit of the file that mirrored what he was saying.

"And you think that that's a therapy-worthy answer."

"Why do you not think you're going to get anything out of these sessions, Felix? Even without anger issues, per se, everyone could use some guidance in controlling their emotions and resolving conflict peacefully, wouldn't you agree?"

"No, I would not agree. I think that if you're being an absolute prick , then no amount of peaceful talking is going to do anything. You need to get physical. Teach a lesson."

"I see. And you know this works because...?"

"Because he's shut up, hasn't he?"

"Right, but maybe he's still doing it. Perhaps not to that particular girl, but how do you know for sure you've 'taught him a lesson'?"

"Because- well.", he muttered. Shut up, fresher! "He's not that daft! He wouldn't risk another beating!"

"If he's daft enough to do it three times even after she expressed disinterest, Felix, I'm sure he might be 'daft' enough to 'risk another beating'."

He tsked, taking off the bloody tight fucking helmet, and running his hands through his hair. You watched the brown spill through the gaps of his fingers, before your eyes came back to his face. "You're frustrated?"

"Yes, I'm frustrated."

"What do you usually do, when you're frustrated?"

"Certainly not sit in a room with a fresher and 'talk about it'!"

"Right, I suppose you don't.", you replied, smiling. "So what is it you do?"

"I dunno, smoke?"

"Smoke?", you asked, tilting your head, noting it down. "You smoke?"

"Yeah, I smoke. What, you going to turn this into a cancer-awareness session?"

"I'm simply trying to understand you, Felix."

"What is this, like a first date, you learn shite about me, and see if I'm worth anything in your eyes?", he scoffed.

"Would that make it easier to open up?"

"No! God! What high school did you go to? Idiot."

"Oh, so we are going with the first date thing?"

"No- I- you're so stupid! I don't actually care what high school you went to! It was rhetoric!"

His outburst, oddly, was not followed by a calm and infuriating retort, in fact, you just looked back at him, disappointed, it looked like. But that was impossible, because that would mean you gave a crap, which, you couldn't. You did this for extra credit like a fuckin' try-hard, right?

The silence almost devours him whole as he looks into your eyes - why were they so... he didn't even know, that look you were giving him just... freaked him out.

"Time's up. You can leave."

What?! No, no, no, he just got here.

"Already?"

He heard the video camera shut off. "Time flies when you're actually working with me, Felix, y'know?"

"Don't get used to it, I had a shit day.'

You chuckled softly, nodding. "I won't. Have a nice rest o' your weekend, Catton."

WEEK 10

"Hello again, Felix."

"Hi."

"You seem cheery today."

"Yes, actually. I went out last night. Downed a couple pints with the lads. It was fun."

"I'm glad you had fun."

He nodded, pursing his lips as he rocked back and forth, awkwardly.

"Yes, so. If you don't mind, I'd just like to go back to some things that were left unfinished in some of the previous sessions. Let's circle back to your mention of what you do when you're frustrated. Smoke. Anything else?"

He sighed, rubbing his temple as he looked up at you. 'No. Well, if you're talking about last night, uh, drink, yeah, sometimes, but never to change my mood or whatever."

"I see. So that's all you do, when frustrated?"

"Yeah. Smoke."

"How about this. Next time you feel frustrated, instead of picking up a pack of cigarettes, pick up a pen."

"What, write down my feelings like a thirteen year old girl?"

"No, draw. On paper, on a desk, on your hand, who cares? Draw."

"Draw?"

"Yeah. It's worked for me, and you seem to be responding slightly better when I give you real life examples of what's worked and not worked for me, so."

"What, the bike thing from Session 5?! Because I-- Oh, please, you're not that bloody smart! Anyone could've said that, doesn't mean I'm 'responding better' just because you said it worked for you, you're a fuckin' fresher, everything you read in your stupid little psych textbooks would work for you!", he snapped. He didn't even know what half of that meant. He just wanted to say something.

"See, it seems that this is more what you do when you're frustrated, Felix, per my observation. You're free to correct me if I'm wrong, but since our previous sessions, this sort of insulting defensiveness is what I feel you resort to."

"'M not defensive. I just think this is pointless."

"Yes, you've made that quite apparent."

"Well, then how about you just declare me fixed?"

"It's not about declaring you, alright, it's about finishing the minimum duration provided to us by the University."

"Fine."

Silence. "So. I ask again. Why not draw?"

"Fine, I'll draw."

"Alright. Thank you, Felix. Time's up."

"What?!"

"Just kidding. You've only been here five minutes. How about... and humour me here...", you muttered, reaching under the desk and groping around until you pull out two sketchbooks. "We draw right now?"

"What, and then you analyse how fucked I am in the head?"

"Or we just draw. We don't even have to talk.", you replied, handing him the sketchbook. God, this better work. You'd had to draw info from child psych books for this guy.

~~

It took barely five minutes for him to begin talking again.

"What are these pencils?"

"Don't ask me, they're all Oxford-provided."

"What a joke. You know, when I was a fresher, I didn't even let myself think of borrowing anything from Uni, I got all my own shite, and even if I lost it, I'd ask it to be sent over from home."

"Really?" Fucking rich boy cunt.

"Mhm.", he hummed, the scratches of his incessant scribbling almost grating in the silent room, but also comfortable, somehow, blending in with the smooth swish sounds of your own, lazy strokes. "Only the best. Can't afford mistakes, can I?"

Can't afford? You'd researched him enough to know that little existed of the sort for him.

"I suppose you can't."

"Y'know, I fucking lost my shite third week of freshman year. How about you?"

"I'm handling it okay, thanks for asking." You were, in fact, not. Your assignments were all overdue by now, and you were having to pull all-nighters that bled steadily into mornings because of this new extra-credit task you'd taken on, and to top it all off, none of the other Professors seemed to care that the Uni was milking the two of you. Abusing your need to improve your grade - although you shouldn't fucking need it -and subjecting him to these sessions with none of his own volition.

"That's good to hear. How close are you to offing yourself, then?", he mused, raising a brow and licking the back of his molars as his eyes slowly reached yours. Fuck. He was onto you.

You tsked, reaching over and shutting off the camera. "You know I have better things to do than edit this to cut out your little quips, right? I really can't have you talking about offin' yourself."

"Oh, so you're also a drown-in-alcohol kind of person, I see."

What in the everloving fuck-- "God, get a fuckin' life, mate.", you muttered, reaching back up to switch the camera on after silently glaring and counting down from three.

"I'm handling it okay, thanks for asking.", you repeated.

"Huh. Really?"

"Yes. Why, is your school year not going okay?"

"No, it's going spectacular. My parents pay for an afternoon to go off once a week for a useless fresher to tell their son to meditate."

You chose not to respond to that, instead pursing your lips and continuing to draw. A flower, it seemed, your hands wished to create.

"Why do you even need extra credit?"

"I was sick, and I missed a couple classes."

"Oh, and you flunked the tests?", he asked, reaching over to grab your pencil out of your hands and use the eraser on the back of it, before tossing it back to you. Prick, and if that smirk was any indication, smug prick.

"No, actually, I'd already finished a good chunk of the syllabus content my first couple weeks so I did fine in my tests."

"So why?"

He looked genuinely curious. So genuinely curious, that you actually felt like this was a first date and he was an annoyingly inquisitive romantic candidate.

"She just didn't like the absences." Plus, everyone else just took Psych to slack off.

"That's not fair."

"Yeah, well, you beat up a creep for a girl and they're punishing you, so."

His eyes flicked over to the camera momentarily. "That's on the record."

"It should be."

═════════════════════════ ⋆⋅💙⋅⋆ ═══════════════════════

Normalcy is hard to achieve because it's never truly been attained.

Now, this kind of knowledge is only acquired when you take a philosophy class - like you - but since Felix was a PolSci-stuck-up-arsehole, it really didn't strike him that the life he'd lived before you had neither been normal nor happy.

Which is why when he found you and a couple of your friends hanging out by the lawn of a frat party, passing around a spliff, he just couldn't resist.

"Is this your coping mechanism, then?"

He reveled in the groan you replied with.

"Ladies, if you could excuse us?"

You rolled your eyes as all your mates nodded slyly before scrambling up. With hungry and suggestive looks at him and then you, they waved subtly. Spectacular. They already thought you were hooking up and now... fuck.

"Ah. I think we're gonna need that, if you will.", he called, winking as he grabbed the spliff from one of them, before settling down next to you. "See? I'm a celebrity. You should bring that up next time, see if you can't do anything with it."

"What?"

"Like, ask me about that. Incorporate it. 'How's it feel, Felix, being the life of the party, and the apple of everyone's eye?'"

"Incorp-- do you think this is a game? Like this is a play?!"

"Well, yeah. It's basicall--"

"GOD, you absolute prick! I'm here freakin' out about the syllabus, tests, and stayin' up to analyse and collate your bullshit and I have to submit it and study resources for it and--", you paused, catching your breath and glaring at him before taking a hit to calm your nerves. "And you think it's a story, like an improv session, where we add off each other.", you mumbled the last bit out.

"What are you, burnt-out from this shite?"

You didn't respond and he watched the smoke flow above the two of you. "God. You are. What sort of a freshman's burnt out by second term?"

"The kind that has to be a shrink to some anger-issued arsehole."

"Hey, c'mon, you-", he huffed, tilting his head at you. "You don't have to put too much effort into this, it's a formality."

"To you!", you yelled, sitting up in frustration, your elbow on your knee and your blunt in your fingers.

He sat up, too, sighing. "I'm sorry. For what it's worth."

"Worth nothing."

"Yeah, I can tell.", he muttered, hiding a scoff. "Gimme."

You rolled your eyes, but handed him the spliff nevertheless, which he grumbled as he took a drag of. Knees elevated to his chest, he exhaled the smoke. "This is good. Is it American?'

"How should I know?"

"You don't care what sort of weed you smoke? This actually is one of your coping methods?"

"For the love of-- lay off, man!"

"Whoa, whoa, it's a joke!"

"You're a joke!"

He almost laughed at that. Almost, because he'd had quite fucking enough of you. He didn't forget who he was just because you might have changed his perspective a little. He was still Felix motherfucking Catton, a motherfucking Upperclassman. And when he was a fresher, he had to treat his Upperclassmen with utmost respect- no, reverence - so he'll be damned if he's gonna let you sit here and call him a joke.

"Stand up."

"What?"

"Stand up."

"Why?"

"NOW, FRESHER, NOW!" Okay, the startle in your body language made him feel the tiniest bit bad, but still, it was exactly what had been done to him, and he wasn't all whiny about it.

"Okay, okay, I'm up, I'm up!", you mumbled, straightening out your shirt. "What?"

He had no clue what he wanted you to stand up for.

"So. The reason I had you shoot up..."

Think, Felix! Think!

"...Is actually quite simple, really. I'm sure you've already guessed."

"You want to get my mind off it or summat."

Sure. "Good. You're smart. And how will I be doing that?"

You shrugged. "Take me on a joyride on your stupid bicycle or summat.", you grumbled.

Sure. Let's go with that. Better than Felix's idea of making you do jumping jacks, like his seniors had done to him.

"Wow, maybe shrinks really can read minds. And at least you have one of your own.", he replied, flicking your forehead as he shepherded you over to the exit of the party. Yeah, he didn't think through how far you'd have to walk before you actually reached his bike. Oh, well. Better for him.

"So.", he began, arms swinging exaggeratedly at his side. "Have you heard anything from your in-charge yet? Walker won't tell me anything."

You shook your head. "It's all the same. 'Received tapes. Good work. Keep going.' Like I'm bloody angling for a gold star."

"Well, you're angling for the college equivalent of a gold star, which is a smidge of extra credit."

Shrugging, you seemed to agree. It was a pleasant sort of... stoned sort of quiet for the rest of the walk until his bike came into view. "There it is."

"That's the bike you fell off of after you aced your test?"

"Yeah."

"How?", you scoffed, buckling up the little helmet he offered you "Thing looks brand new."

"What, you were expecting some post-war, ancient bike?", he snorted, clambering onto the seat.

"Yeah, I thought it'd be some rusty, squeaky, rickety thing. How's this supposed to work? Where do I sit?"

"On your own bike's seat.", he replied, gesturing to the rest of the bicycle lot.

"I don't have a bloody bicycle! I'm normal! I walk to classes!"

"How close is your dorm?!"

"Quite."

"Well...", he huffed, taking off his helmet. 'Well, okay, so, just... take one."

"Take one?"

"Like... a random one. Borrow an unlocked one."

"Steal, you mean."

"Semantics."

"I'm not stealing."

He groaned. He had way too much of a heart to punish you like his seniors did.

═════════════════════════ ⋆⋅💙⋅⋆ ═══════════════════════

"Could you slow down?!"

He watched you grumble before you slowed down, allowing him to jog up next to you. "I'm going to hold onto the handlebar because I wouldn't put it past you to steal my bike and then ask me 'how did that make you feel?' in the next session."

You actually had to stop the bike to laugh for that one.

"Oh, she acts human.", he remarked, crossing his arms across his chest as he regarded you. "Alright, it's not... that funny."

But you just didn't stop laughing.

Well, until you started crying.

Maybe that weed was laced. Yeah, he was feelin' a bit off, himself. Shit.

"I mean, fuck, Felix, mate, you- you know I don't think you should be antagonized like this, yeah? You're... you, you're good, you- you helped a girl, and your anger issues are good!"

Okay, clearly the laced weed was hitting you both at the same time, somehow. Either it was causing him to mishear some sympathy from your end or causing you to express sympathy. Either way, somehow, you were both oddly on the same page.

"I don't have anger-bloody-issues.", he gritted out, tapping his fingers impatiently on the handlebar.

"No, mate, you do, but, like, they're good, you don't have to get all touchy about it. I like it, personally. Think it's good. You're stickin' it to the man and all that."

He scoffed as he shifted closer, flicking your - well, his - helmet back a bit. "You're on thin ice, 'mate'! I told you, I don't have anger iss--"

"You're yellin' at me right now!"

"I'm NOT--", he cut himself off, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "You're pissin' me off."

"Everything pisses you off! That's why they're called anger issues!', you retorted, and he swore he was close to pushing you off the bike and seeing how many minutes of meditation you'd employ not to uppercut him.

"I don't need your shrink bullshit, and you can't do it anyway! I don't get how you're burnt out, y'know? You half-arse everything!"

He barely knew you outside of these sessions. He was straight up lying, but he wanted to prove that it wasn't that easy to keep your calm when provoked. Especially not by some smart aleck swot-freshman who thinks her psych major means she can read his mind and give him lip.

Ow ow, ow. Fuck. He needed to sit. down. The 'weed' was definitely about to make him pop a blood vessel, because did he just see three stars in the sky run down in front of him? No. Can't be, yeah?

"D'you think...?", you groaned, hastily removing the helmet. "D'you think there was summat in the punch?"

"Think it was the weed."

"Weed doesn't-- oh."

He nodded, gently steering the bicycle to the nearest bench, which was barely a hundred paces away, observing your feet elevated and the pedals rotating on their own as he tugged it along.

Grunting lowly as he sat, he held out a hand for you after you leant the bicycle against a nearby streetlamp. You slumped down next to him. "This is why I don't take Donna's weed, but she swore it was clean."

"Some friend she is."

"Hey."

"Oh, please, come on. She lies to you, gives you laced weed because, what, she thought she knew best on what would calm you down? That's not what a friend does."

"What does a friend do? Take you on bicycle rides across campus?"

"I mean, sure. Why not?", he asked, gesturing around. "It's fresh air, yeah? We had some talkin' happening, as well, sorted out our differences and that, yeah?"

You chuckled, softly, shaking (and lightly clutching) your head. "And what did we sort out?"

"That you're a bit of a cunt. And I'm a twat."

"Second one is accurate."

"That statement just proved the first one.", he retorted, before scoffing and breaking into a fit of breathy giggles. "Fuck."

You watched the world spin for a while, a dizzying amalgamation of shapes and stars and colours and suddenly you were aware of the clothes on your body, the wind in your hair, the saliva on your tongue, the beat of your heart.

And that's when you did it. You weren't sure what you expected or why you did it, but you just ended up kissing him like it was summat you were meant to do next, like a script. Like clockwork.

He, to say the least, was surpised it was you who initiated it. Honestly. He'd always been a very daft person when it came to... well, boundaries, for one. Sane actions, for the other. However, there was something less daft and more... crazed about this drug-induced haze you were clouded in that rendered his self-awareness moot.

And so he kissed back.

Ravenously.

This, it seemed, according to the faux marijuana, was all he ever fucking needed. Poof, no anger issues. And for you? Poof, no stress.

It was wrong, to say the least. Not due to anything besides the fact that there was no logical person who'd put you two together. He groaned softly, almost reverently, as he gripped a couple locks of your hair, a wordless direction for you to get your idiotic arse over here. And you did. The kiss didn't break. You guys should get an award for that impressive feat.

But the real award should be for your desperate, bruising grip to sobriety, the one that eventually led to you pulling yourself away from his lips, breathlessly.

"I know what you're doing."

He wasn't one for biting his lip, so he bit down on yours, instead. "Yeah? What's that, babe?", he asked, fiddling with the button of your jeans.

"You're tryin' to get off the hook of these sessions by claiming conflict of interest 'cause of this."

Oh, fuck, he hadn't even thought of that. Would've been so fuckin' smart, and plus, he'd have got a lay out of it. But he didn't exactly feel like giving a premature end to these sessions that he'd - never fucking admit - grown sort of fond of.

"Or maybe, I'm trying to get off, period.", he whispered, kissing at your cheek.

"Yeah, right."

"Trust issues much?", he murmured, his hand gently sliding into the front of your jeans. "Maybe next session, we should work on that, sweetheart."

Fuck.

════════════════════════ ⋆⋅💙⋅⋆ ════════════════════════

No one ever tells you this - lest you experience some form of joy in life - but waking up to good smells rather than any form of sound is heaps better, calmer, lovelier.

And you woke up, not to the sound of your alarm, but to the smell of goddamn butter and toast. Like, fuck, okay. Damn. This is what life should feel like, then?

You groaned, almost ready to scream at how at peace you were, before getting out of bed, rubbing your face. You shot right back in, though. Right. You were starkers.

"Felix?!"

God, you hoped it was actually him and you hadn't had some sort of adventure after him last night.

He practically left skid marks, the way he rushed to the bedroom doorway. "Uh huh?"

"Where the fuck are my clothes?"

"Oh, I put them in the wash."

"Felix--"

"Just kidding. They're in that drawer, there." Across the room.

"Could you get them for me?"

He smirked. 'Yeah."

"'Yeah' as in you will, or 'yeah' as in you could, but you won't?"

His smirk dissolved into an almost fond simper. "You know me so well."

"I'm not walkin' out naked."

"See, what is it with you girls, gosh! As if I didn't see everything last night, now you're suddenly all coy?", he teased, yanking the drawer open and tossing you your clothes, rolling his eyes before turning around so you could change. "Last night count as a breach of, uh, what is it...?"

"Not breach. But Conflict of Interest. Yeah. So, I'm guessing you're free, now. No more sessions."

"Mm. Shame, that. I had some really interesting things written in there.", he replied, pointing to a blue notebook on the bedside table.

"Like what?"

"Like... me realising I'm falling in love with you.", he whispered, softly, hand on his heart. He paused long enough for you to begin to question whether this was dedication to his joke or an actual, sincere fuckin' confession.

"Fuck! Wow! Gullible much? I'm joking, obviously! What, you think I'd have some, like, ten lines written every day, like 'Oh, my love, oh, my love, XOXO, Felix!', or summat?"

"Well, I don't bloody know! Your'e scarily good at the poker face, y'know?"

"Why, thank you, thank you very much.", he preened, tipping an invisible hat in your direction.

"Makin' French Toast. You vegetarian? Or vegan? Nah, I don't care, you're eatin' this."

Groaning, you got up, took his offer of an unused toothbrush, and let him escort you to the bathroom. "These rich-kid-dorm-suites, I swear--"

"Jealous much?"

"I swear to fucking god, you better stop saying 'much' after everything and thinkin' it's funny!"

"Anger issues much?"

"Arsehole much?!"

He giggled, waving at you before scrambling over to the kitchen to make sure his French toast was stil intact. Not before he grabbed your imaginary 'flipping-off' from the air and brought it to his heart, as if you'd blown him a kiss, instead.

Fucking hell. You had to now spend a. money, on Ibuprofen, b. time on coming up with an explanation as to how this happened and why you still deserve that extra credit, and c. energy on having to deal with this Felix Catton guy who you'd apparently come to be relatively fond of.

Spitting out your paste and gargling the remnants out, you walked out of the bedroom to the kitchen, where Felix had laid out the toast on crappy paper plates. "Left over from a party, figured I'd use 'em."

"Thanks.", you nodded, sitting down and biting a bit off one. "It's good."

"Thanks.", he parroted, dropping the last onto his plate before turning off the stove and sitting opposite you. "So, it just violates it all? Just 'cause we shagged, you can't 'fix me' anymore?", he asked, gulping down a sip of orange juice.

"Yeah, summat like that. I might, like, be more inclined to let you off the hook or whatever."

"Mm. What about your extra credit, then? Why don't you just act like this never happened?"

"Couldn't. In good conscience."

"But then you'll be extremely stressed. Might go back to Donna and her laced weed.", he pointed out, taking a bite. "Over the summer, you'll have to catch up on your missing assignments, yeah?"

"Yeah. Fuck. Oh, yeah, I do.", you whined, your forehead on the heel of your palm.

"Come to Saltburn, then."

"What?" What was he talking about?

"My family estate. Come to Saltburn. It's a change of scenery, and it works wonders, I swear. You'll finish everything by first week of summer vacation, and the next month or so, it's all just you-time."

"Why would I come to Saltburn?"

"I just told you."

You sighed. Logically, yes, it did make sense for a change of view. But. You didn't exactly want to get dragged into whatever a normal day for Felix Catton (and Farleigh Start - his cousin, apparently!) looked like.

"It's full of old shite, though, like, ancient stuff. Cobwebs, dusty, grimy, stuffy-- hey! Stuffy and boring. You'll fit right in.", he grinned cheekily, winking as he continued to chew.

Well, fuck.

"Suspicious much?"

'Much'. You were going to strangle this guy in his own mansion, you're sure.

"Seriously, think about it, just us, ice-cream, the sea, summer. Who knows, you could go in a loser and come out with a boyfriend. Moi."

"Oh, please.", you snickered, and he followed suit.

"I just might tell you what's in that diary. XOXO, Felix, yeah, but what'd I write before it? A confession of my love? A death threat? A riddle? Poetry? Secrets?", he mused, waggling his fingers as if to spook you. "Ooh."

You scoffed, shaking your head in amusement as you took a sip of the orange juice.

"Come on. Come to Saltburn. Worth your while, I promise."

Well, fuck.

[melodyreads]

can u write a fic of reader doing a we listen and we don’t judge video for her channel with hamzah but all of hers all really messed up lies (she tells him it’s a prank and they make up)

We Listen, And We Don’t Judge (Until We Do)

a/n: I love this idea! Thank you so much for the request, I hope you enjoy <3

---

You adjust the camera, making sure the frame is just right before hitting the record. "Hey guys! I'm sure from the video title you could tell what we're playing... "We Listen, And We Don’t Judge!" you announce with a bright smile. "I had to jump on the trend, and today, I have a special guest…"

Hamzah raises a hand awkwardly, clearing his throat. "Hey, everyone… uh, yeah. I’m here. To listen. And not judge."

You and Hamzah sat on the couch of your apartment as the boy shifted uncomfortably next to you. While you had both planned to have a chill night in, Y/n convinced him to make a video on her TikTok account before they went out to get the food. Little did he know, she had something up her sleeve.

You grin mischievously. "Perfect. Let's get into it."

"We listen, and we don't judge," you both say in unison, humor lacing your tone as Hamzah gives you a quizzing look.

The first ‘confession’ pops into your mind as you say aloud. "I only pretend to like my best friend’s boyfriend, but I actually think he’s the worst person ever.’"

Hamzah tilts his head. "Wow, that’s rough... so are you just trying to be supportive?"

You bite your lip, trying to hold back a smirk. "Yeah… but, that's just how I feel you know?"

Hamzah frowns slightly. "What do you mean?"

You shrug. "You know… sometimes people just tolerate others."

He chuckles uncertainly. "You don’t mean… me, right?"

You quickly move on, continuing on to the next lie, "Okay, next one—‘I only pretend to laugh at my friend's jokes because I don't want to hurt their feelings, but honestly, they’re not funny at all.’"

Hamzah shifts beside you, his jaw tightening. "That’s… kinda mean Y/n. I mean, you should just be real."

You glance at him. "Yeah. I guess I kinda just do it to not hurt their feelings."

His face falls, just a little. "Wait. You pretend to laugh at my jokes?"

You clear your throat, pretending to move on again. "Okay, next one! ‘I once told someone I loved them, but I didn’t mean it. I just didn’t want to be alone.’"

The room goes eerily silent. Hamzah looks at you, really looks at you, and his expression darkens. "...What?"

You try to laugh it off. "I mean, haven’t we all said things we didn’t fully mean?"

Hamzah leans back, his face unreadable now. "Wow. I—uh. I don’t know what to say to that."

For the first time, guilt creeps in. His usual easygoing nature is gone, replaced by something guarded. You press your lips together, suddenly regretting pushing it this far.

"Hamzah, I—" You became acutely aware of the awkward tension. "It’s a prank."

He blinks. "What?"

You force a nervous chuckle. "It’s a prank! None of these are real. I made them all up. I just wanted to see how you'd react."

Hamzah stares at you for a long moment before shaking his head. "Right. A prank."

You reach for his arm, but he pulls back slightly. Not dramatically—just enough that you feel it.

You winced. "Hamzah, I swear, I didn’t mean any of that. It was just for the video."

He runs a hand down his face and exhales. "Yeah, okay. Whatever."

You frown. "Are you mad?"

He shrugs, avoiding your gaze. "No, just… I don’t know. You really sold it, I guess."

Your stomach twists. "Hamzah, come on. You know I’d never say anything like that for real."

He finally looks at you, eyes softer but still a little distant. "Yeah. I know. But it still kinda sucked to hear."

You swallow hard, guilt settling deep in your chest. "I’m sorry. I’ll make it up to you, okay? No more pranks like this."

He offers a small, tired smile. "Yeah. That’d be nice."

You turn back to the camera with significantly less enthusiasm. "Alright, guys, uh… maybe don’t emotionally damage your friends for content."

Hamzah forces a chuckle, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. "Yeah. Solid advice."

You stop recording, but the following silence is heavier than you expected.

After a moment, you sigh and scoot closer to him. "Hamzah, I really am sorry. I didn’t think it would hit you like that."

He stays quiet for a beat before finally meeting your gaze. "It just… made me wonder, you know? What if you actually felt that way about me?"

You reached for his hand, squeezing it gently. "I don’t. Not even a little bit. You’re my favorite person. I’d never fake anything with you."

His lips twitch into a small smile, more real this time. "Your favorite person? Even with my terrible jokes?"

You laugh. "Especially with your terrible jokes."

He finally relaxes, shaking his head. "Alright. I forgive you. But you owe me—big time."

You grin. "Deal. I’ll buy you dinner and let you pick the movie tonight."

Hamzah sighs dramatically. "Fine. But I’m not picking a movie, we're watching all of "XO Kitty" tonight.

You lay your head back on the couch dramatically. "Ugh... I did that to myself, didn’t I?"

He chuckles, this time a real one, "Yeah. But I’ll allow it."

---

a/n: I was going to go off script and end it on an angsty note, but I honestly don't think I could give you guys a bad ending. I hope you liked this!

[good-to-drive]

your analysis of paul + golden children was superb!!!! you mentioned that for children, abandonment means death. how would you say this manifested/developed in john considering his childhood (who's usually the one we think of regarding abandonment issues)?

Thank you so much, I really appreciate that!!! I always hope someone enjoys my ramblings lol. I definitely think John was deeply shaped by abandonment trauma and neglect, having had caregivers leave him, neglect him, and pass away during his childhood and adolescence, and I think you can see a mix of fear, shame, and anger connected to abandonment/rejection throughout his adult life. 

The best description I’ve read for the mindset of a child in a tumultuous family system is “Don’t let me disappear.” I touched on this here, but it all comes back to the deep, primal knowledge that without a caregiver you will die. It’s called existential fear because it’s quite literally a fear of nonexistence – it’s the knowledge that the only thing between you and death is the adult world, clashing with the knowledge that the adult world is inconsistent and unreliable. It's your survival being fundamentally dependent on a world you can’t control and, based on your experience of it, can’t trust. 

Ideally, children would never be confronted with the possibility of a caregiver dying, leaving, or neglecting them. But obviously John experienced at least two of those things, and arguably all three, and that means he was probably very acutely aware of death as a constant presence in his life. 

I know the way both Julia and Alfred abandoned him is already pretty heavily discussed, but one thing I don’t see people talking about is his life when he did live under Julia’s care.

I'm also not sure abandon is the right word for what Julia did, because I'm under the impression she may not have felt she had a real choice, but regardless it would have been abandonment to John. Children don't really understand that adults also don't control the adult world, and I'm sure he felt that if Julia wasn't his primary caregiver it was because she didn't want to be.

I don’t have an enormous amount of detail on this, but I know from this piece by Psychology in Seattle that Julia would leave John physically alone for long periods of time, particularly at night, to the point that he would have panic attacks and beg neighbors for help. And, again, when children feel abandoned or neglected it’s dying that they’re afraid of. He wasn’t just lonely and confused – though I’m sure that was part of it – he was existentially terrified. Through that experience of serious neglect, being unloved and rejected translated literally to death, which will set a horrible schema in a child's mind.

I think people might ignore this part of John's life because there’s a chance he can’t remember it, but aside from the fact that trauma can lead to early formation of memories, you don’t actually have to be able to remember something in order to be shaped and traumatized by it. And living with an early-childhood trauma you can’t remember, but which still shaped your brain and your perception of reality and your ability to ever feel okay, is a very painful and complex experience. In some ways trauma lives in the brain more than the mind, and being inside of a brain that’s been misused and twisted in a way you can’t get any clarity on is uniquely terrible. I genuinely don’t know if John could remember his early childhood, but there’s no way that experience didn’t instill deep trauma and permanently alter the way he saw and interacted with the world by instilling an early, maladaptive schema. 

It might also be a good time to mention how a schema is defined, which is something I don’t think I’ve ever explicitly done before. This article about the connection between maladaptive schemas and depression is way too long and mostly irrelevant, but this part is important:

A schema may be defined as “any broad organizing principle for making sense of one’s life experience” (Young, Kloscko, & Weishar, 2003, p. 7). While schemas can provide useful heuristics with which to organize the world, they can also be maladaptive when they involve pervasive, inflexible, and dysfunctional cognitions (e.g., Young, 1990). Expanding upon 78 EBERHART ET AL. Beck’s (1967, 1983) cognitive theory of depression, Young (Young, 1990, 1994; Young et al., 2003) has suggested that there are a number of specific maladaptive schemas that develop in childhood and are elaborated throughout life that place individuals at increased risk for psychopathology

A more straightforward explanation might be that schemas describe how you think about the world, and you usually learn them as a kid (sometimes even before you learn to talk), and everyone has them but when they’re really rigid or really negative they can cause a lot of problems in your life. One schema might be “I am unworthy of love.” That’s something a lot of people who experience early-childhood abandonment will develop, essentially explaining their abandonment to themselves by saying it must have been their own fault for not being lovable, and it echoes through their adult relationships by making love feel impossible or fake because it conflicts with one of their fundamental beliefs. A schema could also be “Most people are bad and want to hurt you,” which would make positive relationships in general very difficult to form. 

John also had his primary caregiver change early in life, when he went from being under Julia’s care to Mimi’s, which is always traumatic for children. It’s like being abandoned, except you’re also now dealing with a new caregiver who you don’t know and don’t know how to deal with. All the little things you learned for managing your relationship with your initial caregiver, the knowledge of how they usually react to things and how you can keep them appeased and thereby keep yourself safe, a sense of familiarity and the ability to know if you’re okay -- it's all stripped away, and it's utterly destabilizing and therefore terrifying. It can also make children very scared of feeling loved, because they’ve been taught on a deep level that being given love is a precursor to having love taken away. Of course, it can also make children desperate to feel loved, to be someone it’s impossible not to love. Or it can be a combination of both. 

There’s also evidence that Mimi used emotional neglect as a punishment during John's childhood – i.e. gave him the silent treatment when he did things that upset her. This is already a pretty horrible thing for a parent to do with an adult child, much less a young child who still feels (and is) utterly dependent on their caregiver for survival. I doubt I have to explain why using existential horror as a tool to torture your child when you’re unhappy with them is incredibly cruel and destructive, but it’s even worse for a child who already had a history of abandonment and neglect. And I think by reactivating his abandonment trauma in order to punish him or express dissatisfaction Mimi probably instilled in him very deeply that feeling unloved or rejected is something people do to you intentionally, because they want to see you hurt, because you've made some kind of mistake that displeased them. It would be so difficult for John to see any slight hint of rejection as anything but an intentional, malicious act meant to convey disapproval or retaliation, a conscious choice to hurt him in the absolute worst way possible because they felt he did something to deserve being hurt in the worst way possible. Because, in his experience, that’s exactly what it was.  

This would have created so much shame and self-hate connected to any kind of abandonment, as well as deep mistrust for people he loved and who therefore had the power to reject him. And for most people shame, self-hate, and mistrust are transmuted to anger and then to cruelty. I think you can see a bit of this with how John tended to react with anger when he perceived himself as rejected or overlooked (see also: John’s later relationship with George). Rejection, abandonment, and neglect were incredibly sharp tools in John’s world, both in how they were (sometimes unintentionally) used against him, and in how he himself used them when he felt abused and betrayed. 

Then when he’s still an adolescent Julia dies suddenly, and while John did have a positive relationship with her at the time of her death, it would be hard to construe it as an ideal mother-son relationship. And even if you’re past the point of wanting an ideal relationship with your parent, the fact that you didn't have one (and, in John’s case, that he’d never had a truly healthy relationship with any caregiver) will always be a source of grief. 

Not that it isn’t also horrible to lose a parent who’s been good to you (as with Paul), but it’s the difference between the emptiness of losing something wonderful and the emptiness of never having had that wonderful thing in the first place, and knowing now that you never, ever will. Even if the relationship were already dead, a parent’s death is often when you grieve what you could or should have had, and it’s like any grief in that it never completely leaves you. And the schema you build around that emptiness in order to make it survivable is usually very persistent, too. 

That being said, there’s such a thing as corrective experiences, where (usually through therapy) you reshape your experience of the world and by extension your schemas. My point being that trauma isn't fate and things can always get better.

I also think Mimi was one of these people who expresses love through control and criticism (would love to know more about her and Julia and Alfred’s childhoods, but a lot of that seems pretty opaque, which is so bizarrely universal for toxic caregivers – you know they came from somewhere, but you don’t know where, so you’re trying to draw compassion out of thin air and it’s hard). And there’s a lot to be said about how this translated to John’s relationships with women, how he was shaped by two powerful female presences in his early life who likely never made him feel fully loved, while simultaneously reiterating that being unloved is death. There are also multiple relationships with potential male authority figures that probably connected back to a perpetual state of mourning for his relationship with his father. 

I also think he’s probably like pretty much everybody who had a childhood dominated by fear in that he spent his adult life coping with anxiety and depression, and I’m guessing he was someone whose anxiety probably never dropped below about a 6/10. It’s actually kind of consistent that when people with this kind of childhood get into therapy they rate their anxiety based on their experience of the world, which is that you never really feel okay, you just feel better or worse, so they think their anxiety is around a 3-4. And then over time they start to experience moments of true calm and they realize their default state for most of their life was actually being at least somewhat activated, like a 6+, and that’s why it was so hard to think straight or keep their cool or look at things in a reasonable way. People always say you get the worst of someone when shit hits the fan, but the thing is that for some people that’s just what a normal day feels like. I don’t know how true that is for John, but I do think it’s possible, especially in his early life. 

Anyway, this is way too long, but thank you so much for the question!

[chiisana-sukima]

also, your tag about the line in Bugs where John was stalking Sam - honestly, what an eye opener cause I was kind of neutral on the line, maybe if a little more positive towards it cause, aww, John cares. But framing it in the context of just how abnormal their entire family dynamic is does kind of make it chilling.

I think it highlights that within the framework of the show that what we consider normal and healthy cannot be translated 1:1 in the show. Of course there are things that even they are aware is unhealthy in terms of their relationship and we can judge the relationship from a standpoint of our own morality. But within the show, sometimes our morality is moot and has no bearing in a world where your brother was poisoned with demon blood and you watched your mother burn on the ceiling and you've died and come back to life how many times and you are both the vessels of archangels and God treats you as his personal play toys. Not to excuse anything or everything they've done, I actively participate in discussions about the power imbalance, manipulation and violence in the show but, ya know. Perspective is important as well. Okay, I'm done and will stop leaving rambling asks in your inbox! :)

Aw, it's fine; I love rambling asks!

R.e. the fuzziness of applying rl morality to the over the top circumstances in spn, I probably have a different perspective than most viewers. Trauma loves trauma, so coming from a pretty fucked up background myself, I went and got myself a series of jobs where I've had the dubious pleasure of seeing scads and scads of the most messed up, shitty things the world has to throw at people. So, to me, many of these situations where fans routinely say "well, this is nothing like rl so we can't possibly apply real world morality" seem very much like real life and honestly even pretty straightforward to me. (I was an EMT out of high school, became a nurse, went to law school, interned as a domestic violence advocate, and ultimately worked in neurosurgical nursing and then in acute and critical care for the rest of my career).

I find people's insistence that the demon blood detox isn't analogous to irl circumstances especially frustrating, in that 1) there's Word of God from Sera that real world analogy was exactly what she was going for, 2) Cas and Bobby both present alternative treatment options to Dean on screen, and 3) I've involuntarily detoxed soooo many people irl and it's... well, saying "it's not that hard" isn't true, because of course it's awful for the patient and none too pleasant for the caregiver either, but it's not esoteric. It doesnt take specialized lore. Most of detox treatment is what's called "supportive care", meaning "we can't fix the actual problem, so we just deal with complications, try to make the person comfortable, and wait". Lay people shouldn't do it, because they dont have a code cart if it goes wrong, but they certainly can and we all know they do. The idea that there are no resources in the world except guns and handcuffs is Kripke's. It's our choice whether we want to indulge that fantasy or not, and I don't.

Even the "being God's personal play toys", I mean, obviously that's not really true for anyone, but a lot of people have so many things go wrong in their lives that it might as well be true. I really do believe there are unfortunately plenty of people who never have much of a chance for a long, healthy life from straight out of the womb. And like, it's tragic, but given that it's reality, the next step is to say "well, if you can't save everyone, then how do you minimize harm and maximize happiness".

Which tbh is a big part of why I think it's a potentially rational decision on either of Sam or Dean's parts to want to stay together despite how fraught it sometimes is. There are definitely rl circumstances where people are damaged in ways where staying with another person who understands their damage is a compelling, and imo potentially valid, option even if it can also be harmful in other ways. I think acknowledging that we're not in a position to evaluate anyone else's choice to stay with someone who harms them is an important part of being both a care provider and a compassionate human being.

All that said, I also think it's important to call things by their real names, even though it makes fandom contentious sometimes. We're a fandom full of hurt people, and I'm not gonna lie, I find that complicated. I know perfectly well that a lot of these arguments are between people who have survived various kind of shit in their real lives, and it's not always clear whether it's better to let people believe what they need to in the moment, even when it's wrong (and sometimes pretty clearly bullshit too), or whether it's better to insist that life is hard and it's okay to love people who harm you without pretending that they don't.

[gaykarstaagforever]

Kindred: The Embraced, Episode 7 (I think?; some stations played them out of order.)

This is the penultimate episode of this stupid show (in most markets). And to its credit, it's one of the better ones? It's still bad, but it doesn't shit all over the lore of the game it's adapting AS MUCH as most of these, so, we take what we can get. And it doesn't feel like it was written by an illiterate child, a rarity on this show.

That said, OMG, the mid-90s sexism, here. It's only more hilarious to me than offensive because I'm not a woman. But even I was getting pretty mad by the end.

Watch the episode before you read the rest of this. I'm not explaining the context of any of this, and I WILL BE DOING SPOILERS, because this show is free, and I am already acutely aware of how much of my own time I'm wasting talking about this terrible stupid show.

Goth did nothing wrong. He's a Nosferatu who hates the fact that his vampire clan has to hide in basements and sewers, doing gopher work for the Ventrue, when they could use Blood Magic to rule the clans, and also the world. I realize the show thinks this makes him the bad guy. But in a world where vampires are real and can use magic to become powerful monster-people...why not do that? It's goofy to expect they wouldn't. I realize the Masquerade fundamentally underpins the entire World of Darkness universe, and the reason for that is that exposing gothic monsters to a humankind that has guns and bombs will lead to endless war. But also, vampires are cool immortal zombie monsters who don't seem to suffer from being that too much, and I'm a sad emo fat man, so I'm kinda down for them taking over. Especially in the shitty universe of this bad show. Goth's argument that convinces most of the Nosferatu to join him is that Luna sucks ass as Prince of San Francisco. And he DOES - we've had entire episodes specifically about that. Like, even in this hack off-lore WoD universe, Julian Luna is a shitty Prince and everyone hates him and is constantly trying to kill / overthrow him. Daedalus loves the guy, for zero rational reason, so his counter-arguement to what Goth says is literally "everyone is right to hate our clan for being ugly and doing actual vampire stuff, just shut up and agree and join me in helping the Pretty People treat us like dogshit." Understandably, it goes over like a lead balloon, even with him being Primogen. I mean, yeah. Goth is absolutely right. Why are you submitting to this, when you don't have to? And it's not like powerful Nosferatu couldn't still maintain the Masquerade, even if they were in charge and letting vampires have fun. You can totally still do that. You can also say "fuck it" and take over the world, if you're using magic to become super powerful, which is the plan. So either way, Vote Goth 2025.

Goth's plan revolves around him kidnapping a baby, in broad daylight, to use for his vampire Blood Magic ritual. The mother of this baby is supposed to be a 17 yo single mother. And before you ask, yes, the show is NOT okay with her being that. Like, to a fucking inappropriate degree. Also she is played by an actress who was 23 at the time, and absolutely looks like it:

Does it matter how this 17 yo got pregnant? Does it matter why the father isn't with her? Does it matter that she chose not to get an abortion? No. No, it absolutely does not. But this show from 1996 SUPER thinks it does, and makes Caitlin interrogate her about all the details of this. And then inappropriately share her own related sexual trauma with this woman who just got her baby kidnapped by a monster-man, while Frank the Cop is also angrily accusing her of killing her baby and making up a story about monsters. Nice work, everyone.

Oh, Frank very quickly decides he believes her, when he remembers he's supposed to know what vampires are. He has to be reminded every episode. Because this show sucks.

They decided with this episode of their shitty vampire show to get into how young women having babies out of wedlock is a thing. They really should not have. This is already a show that only has three regular women characters, and all of them spend every second of screen time being sad about how they don't get enough dick. It is revealed, kind of out of nowhere, that the reason Caitlin hasn't had sex with Julian yet is because she got pregnant herself at 17 and gave the baby up, and so is now afraid of doing sex. Which, fine, is a thing someone can be and do. But not here. Not like this. This show uses her celibacy as a fetish, because she's hot and blonde and it's the 90s, so getting this woman naked when she doesn't want to be is all every bit of character development about her is aiming at. And they can't hold it in anymore with this episode, because they have her finally give in to Julian. SPECIFICALLY BECAUSE she just had an adventure involving a baby, and I guess that automatically makes women so sad and horny they have to ignore their trauma and do sex with men? Like I said, this show is awful. It really, really is.

It gets worse. Goth's assistant is a lady Nosferatu named Camilla. She's totally down with murdering that baby to do a Blood Ritual, until Caitlin confronts her about it. Then Camilla says that being a Nosferatu sucks because vampires can't make babies, and that before she was a vampire she had 8 kids and misses being a "fertile" mother, because Jesus Fucking Christ, men who wrote this show. At which point she suddenly decides she CAN'T kill this baby, Caitlin can rescue it, whatever, the Nosferatu can get powerful another way. ...Even though they can't, that's WHY YOU WERE DOING THE BABY THING IN THE FIRST PLACE, STUPID.

The new plan is to do the Blood Magic ritual with Julian instead of the baby. Which won't work, and Goth freaks out about it and attacks him. And Julian kills him with an axe, because Daedalus let Julian drink some of his blood, which gives Julian temporary Nosferatu Katate Fighting action? Look. It doesn't matter. The show doesn't care, and neither should you. The episode ends with Julian fucking Caitlin because she's horny about babies. We've got bigger problems here than the bad WoD lore.

Sasha and Cash are in this for 5 minutes, and suck, as usual. Cash is tasked by Julian to rescue the baby, fails as usual, but tells Julian that Goth has errected a big ritual stone circle to sacrifice the baby, out in the open in a public park. Julian tells him he did a good job. He isn't being sarcastic, and I have no idea how. Cash then confronts Sasha in The Haven, where she's hanging out with Brujah. He tells her that unless she agrees to date him again, he will be forced, as a Gangrel, to hate her racially for being a Brujah. Which is shit enough, but let's remember here that she only got turned into a Brujah vampire in the first place after Cash failed to protect her from getting abducted and SA'd by them, VERY SPECIFICALLY because they were out to humiliate Cash by SA'ing and turning his human girlfriend. So goddamn class-act all around, Cash, you godforsaken pants' load. But that scene in The Haven ends with Cash telling Sasha Goth will probably kill him, so she admits that she still loves him. Which...the fuck? And also, no, Goth isn't going to kill Cash, because Cash doesn't do shit, fails at everything, and Julian uses Caitlin to crash the ritual and kill Goth himself. Oh my god.

Lillie hates Caitlin because Julian is in love with Caitlin and not Lillie. So Lillie befriends Caitlin, drugs her with "you have to follow my orders now" serum (a thing they suddenly have), and tells her exactly where to find Camilla and the baby, in the hope that Camilla and Goth will murder this human woman. And it fails, as Lillie's plans always do. But this means Lillie knew where Goth and Camilla were, with the baby, this whole time, while Julian and Cash are desperate to locate and stop them. Goth got exiled by Julian for being a jackass, and Camilla is well-known to hate Julian and be on Goth's side. So, ONCE AGAIN, Lillie, who supposedly loves Julian so much she will kill to keep him, is in a constant state of siding with people who are actively trying to kill or overthrow him. Because the Nosferatu totally would have become Super Vampires who hate Julian if they had done the baby ritual, and they only didn't pull it off because Lillie sent Caitlin to Camilla, based on her plan that failed. And I think Julian knew she was going to do this the whole time...? Somehow? Maybe? And let it happen? Without knowing how it would go...?

Oh, and Camilla explains vampires to Caitlin, who doesn't even seem shocked, even though she isn't supposed to know what vampires are, even though she keeps making out with one. So I have no idea what is happening here. Or why it matters. Sure, yet another Masquerade violation. But if the Nosferatu are kidnapping babies from parks in broad daylight, and also setting up ritual stone circles in those same parks that are visible to everyone in broad daylight, I guess none of this matters. Ever.

Daedalus waxes philosophic about how the NEW Nosferatu are classy and well-behaved and pro-Masquerade, that they've given up being aggressive and doing Blood Magic rituals. And his implication is that this is because they were superstitious and uncivilized monster-people before the other clans got them to settle down and play nice. ...Except the Blood Ritual Goth wants to do will 100% work - that's why they're all afraid of it. And the Nosferatu totally do have cool badass vampire fighting powers that are better than anyone else's, which is why Daedalus lets Julian drink his blood to gain them temporarily. So...why did the Nosferatu ever submit in the first place? They legitimately are more powerful than the other clans. Their magic is real. Why would they have ever given that up? Why did Daedalus? They weren't confused monsters - they were cool, powerful vampires, who could easily kill everyone and hold power forever! It makes no sense that they would ever give that up. All this show had to do was suggest that MAYBE the baby Blood Ritual wouldn't work as advertised. That would clear this up. But they wanted the stakes to be high, so they didn't do that. And made Daedalus and the Nosferatu look like idiots.

And they are. Everyone is. Anyone and everyone connected to any part of this show in any way is a big stupid dumb idiot. This show sucks.

[b1ackoutartist]

Chicken

The night was cool and the sky above was a tapestry of stars. Natasha and Y/N lay side by side on the grass in a secluded corner of the park, a sense of tranquility surrounding them. They had shared a bottle of wine, and the gentle buzz added a layer of openness to their conversation.

Y/N turned her head to look at Natasha, her eyes reflecting the starlight. "You know what I dream about? Living offside, away from the chaos of the city. A house by a lake, maybe with a mini farm. Just a peaceful, quiet place," she shared, her voice soft and wistful.

Natasha turned to face her, propping herself up on one elbow. "Why don't you go for it?" she asked gently.

Y/N sighed, a small frown creasing her forehead. "Carol hates the idea. She can't see herself away from the city life."

There was a moment of silence as Natasha processed this, feeling a twinge of frustration at Carol's inability to see Y/N's needs.

As they lay there, their faces inches apart, the air between them seemed to charge with an unspoken tension. Natasha's gaze flickered to Y/N's lips, and she saw a similar longing in Y/N's eyes.

For a fleeting second, they both leaned in, drawn by a magnetic pull. Their breaths mingled, and Natasha's heart raced, pounding against her ribcage. But just as quickly as the moment came, it passed. They both pulled away simultaneously, a silent agreement to pretend it never happened.

Natasha lay back, staring up at the sky, her heart still racing from the near kiss. She was acutely aware of Y/N's presence beside her, the heat from her body, the sound of her breathing. It was a moment of unspoken connection, a testament to the depth of their bond, yet underscored by a palpable tension of what could have been.The rest of the night passed in a comfortable silence, both lost in their thoughts, the memory of their almost-kiss hanging in the air like a delicate, unspoken secret.

---

Natasha pulled up to Yelena's place, honking the horn. Yelena emerged, looking confused.

"Where are we going?" Yelena asked as she hopped into the passenger seat.

"We're borrowing a chicken," Natasha said matter-of-factly, starting the car.

"A chicken? Seriously, Nat? There are better ways to woo someone," Yelena remarked, rolling her eyes.

"It's for Y/N," Natasha said, her tone softening at the mention of Y/N's name.

Yelena sighed, "You know, you could just tell her you've been in love with her for years."

Natasha glanced at her sister and flipped her off playfully. "Just help me with this, okay?"

As they approached the farm, Yelena couldn't help but tease her sister. "You do realize that stealing a chicken is not exactly a grand romantic gesture, right?"

"It's not about the chicken, Yelena. It's about making Y/N's dream a little more real," Natasha explained, her eyes focused on the road.

Yelena shook her head, smiling at her sister's stubbornness. "Fine, but if we get caught, I'm not calling Melina to bail us out again. Last time was embarrassing enough."

Natasha chuckled, "Deal. But we won't get caught. You forget who you're with."

They arrived at the farm under the cover of darkness. The mission was simple: sneak in, grab a chicken, and sneak out. But with Yelena's constant commentary, it felt more like a comedy of errors.

"This is ridiculous, Nat. We're like two spies on a mission to save the world, except it's just a chicken," Yelena whispered as they crept towards the chicken coop.

Natasha couldn't help but laugh quietly. "Just follow my lead."

They managed to grab a chicken, though not without a few squawks and a lot of suppressed laughter. As they made their escape, Yelena couldn't resist one last comment.

"Next time you want to impress a girl, maybe stick to flowers and chocolates, okay?"

Natasha just smiled, holding the chicken carefully. "This is perfect for Y/N. You'll see."

They drove back with their feathery cargo, both sisters unable to shake the feeling of another absurd but memorable adventure added to their list.

---

The morning sun was barely up when Natasha arrived at Y/N's apartment. She knew Carol had bailed on Y/N again last night, choosing to get drunk with friends instead.

Natasha knocked firmly on the door, a mix of concern and excitement in her heart.Y/N opened the door, rubbing her eyes, her hair tousled from sleep. She looked adorably disheveled, and Natasha's heart skipped a beat.

"Nat? What are you doing here so early?" Y/N mumbled, still half-asleep.

Natasha grinned. "Morning, sleepyhead. Get ready; we're going out."

Y/N groaned, "Nat, it's too early. Come back later," she said, turning to close the door.

But Natasha stopped the door with her hand. "Nope, no going back to bed. We have a schedule to keep up with," she said with a determined look.

Y/N sighed, leaning against the door frame. "Nat, I'm really not in the mood..."

Natasha softened her tone. "Y/N, trust me. You're going to want to see this. Please?"

There was a pause as Y/N looked into Natasha's earnest eyes. Finally, she nodded, a small smile appearing on her lips. "Fine, give me fifteen minutes."

"Make it ten," Natasha said playfully, stepping back.

Y/N rolled her eyes but smiled. "Ten minutes, but I need coffee first."

Natasha's grin widened. "Deal. I'll wait here."

As Y/N disappeared to get ready, Natasha felt a flutter of excitement.

---

Natasha drove with a sense of purpose, while Y/N sat beside her, still rubbing the sleep from her eyes. The cityscape slowly gave way to open roads and green fields.

"Nat, seriously, where are we going?" Y/N asked, a mix of tiredness and curiosity in her voice.

"Just wait and see," Natasha replied, her eyes fixed on the road. Y/N glanced at Natasha, watching her focused expression. Despite her confusion and tiredness, she couldn't help but smile softly at Natasha's determined profile.

After a while, they arrived in what seemed like the middle of nowhere. Trees surrounded them, and the sounds of the city were a distant memory.

Y/N looked around, "Nat, why did you wake me up for trees?"

Without a word, Natasha took Y/N's hand and started leading her forward. The anticipation was building, and Natasha could feel her heart racing.

As they neared the lake, Y/N's eyes widened. In front of them was a little fenced area, a small wooden structure resembling a chicken coop, some straw on the ground, a chicken pecking around, and a handmade sign that read "Y/N's Little Farm."

Y/N's gaze moved from the chicken to Natasha and back again. "Nat, is this...?"

Natasha grinned, "Your mini farm by the lake. I remember what you told me that night. You shouldn't let Carol or anyone else stop you from your dreams."

Y/N looked at Natasha, her eyes brimming with unspoken emotions. The gesture, so thoughtful and so aligned with her deepest desires, struck a chord in her heart.

"Nat, this is... I don't even have words," Y/N's voice trembled slightly.

Natasha stepped closer, her expression softening. "You don't need words, Y/N."

In that moment, something shifted between them. The unspoken feelings, the tension of their near-kiss a week ago, it all came rushing back.Without thinking, Y/N leaned in and kissed Natasha.

It was a kiss filled with gratitude, realization, and a budding love that had been there all along, waiting for the right moment.

As they pulled apart, Natasha looked into Y/N's eyes, seeing a reflection of her own feelings. "I just want you to be happy, Y/N," she whispered.

Y/N squeezed Natasha's hand, her heart full. "Thank you"

[askdyo]

Random Dyo Fun Fact

(( Dyo has traveled a decent bit since abandoning his forest in Sinnoh. He has been to every Japanese-based region [Kanto, Johto, Hoenn] but not the Sevii Islands.

He has also been to Paldea, Kalos, and Galar. Paldea he spent a good bit of time in, but Kalos he was only in briefly. He didn't really like Galar that much lol He has also never been to Alola.

He currently resides in a region outside of Unova. I suspect there are a loooot of regions he has explored that aren't yet canon to the Pokémon universe. In my headcanon, I don't envision the Pokémon world map to mirror ours necessarily, just because that's so much unexplored in canon material that it's a bit wild to wrap my head around. BUT If it's similar enough, then I think Dyo has traveled around "America" a good bit.

When he has traveled in the past, he did so fairly discreetly, as seeing a nightmare man walking down the street isn't exactly chill for most humans. He would stick to more rural areas, natural environments, or if he wanted to go into more dense human areas then he would do so at night or in disguises. I am sure Dyo has the ability to disguise himself through mimicry as it's been shown kinda canonically Darkrai and other pokémon can disguise themselves as, say, humans or more common 'mons. But I don't think he's very good at it or otherwise just doesn't like to do it so he won't if he can help it. TBH I think he's too full of himself that he takes offense to the concept of pretending to be a different 'mon or human cause he's perfect as he is, duh!

Thankfully his shadow ability allows him to hide around really easily and he can people-watch and be a creepy little snoop all he wants.

Once he came over to the American side of things, he started getting bolder. While he would still hide in the shadows in most outings, he would begin stepping out and revealing himself in places he found safe.

Now, he is a sort of "known entity" in Ganymede and Marigold City and their surrounding towns and areas. Everyone just kinda knows about the funny little Darkrai man, so when they spot him in the wild they don't make a huge deal out of him, but do become acutely aware of his presence. He's like a modern urban legend. Or maybe like. How people view their local Cybertruck. But, uh... well, maybe they're nicer to him than that and don't always look at him with disdain and mockery lol I do think they'd secretly film him or try to take selfies with him though, which generally he's okay with cause he likes the attention.

I believe Unova and the American regions are separated by large bodies of water from the other regions much like they are in their real life counterparts. Dyo chose to go this great distance because he wanted to get as far away from Sinnoh as he could. Escape from his past and all that emo shit, ya know how it goes.

He has gotten a bit burnt out on traveling now, so he has no big plans to do anymore any time soon. I'm sure he'll dabble in a vacation or two if Milly plans to take him along, but since she isn't some sort of world traveler or anything either, he's pretty content just chillin' where he is. ))

[rogue-of-heart-classpecting]

Holy shit, an active classpecting blog in the year of our lord 2024! You are doing god's work soldier. Can you help me decide whether I'm an heir, bard, or mage of light?

I know that I've been 'blessed' by Light since forever- everything I'm good at is Light-related somehow, and I've had a weird streak of good luck in all the places where it really matters. But I'm also acutely aware of how fake all this Light bullshit (ie symbols, cosmic significance, narrative cohesion) is in real life. Most of the time I wish I was more okay with Void-y things like ambiguity and uncertainty, and I've actively tried to be more Void before, with mixed results. I tried to be existentialist, but deep down I just couldn't accept that Sisyphus was happy.

Basically Light really likes me but I'm a bit wary to it. What do you think?

Hi bestie! Have you considered Witch? Let’s use Jade as an example. Jade grew up with a lot of space around her. Wide open areas, island surrounded by ocean, a volcano that kind of harkens back to earth’s beginning, a magic teleporting dog… She’s also naturally good at space shit. She has a green thumb and loves chemistry, which is sort of combining things to CREATE a new thing. However, Jade’s more interesting characteristic is her preoccupation with time! She sees the future before the game even begins by awakening on prospit early. She fulfills time loops for fun. She can play the bass (although she sucks at flute) and she shows a general interest in the way space and time interact. Witches are given their aspect as a child, and they’re naturally talented with it, but they show interest in the opposite aspect and eventually use that influence to change the way they and everyone around them think about the witch’s aspect. If you have different opinions on why you think you would be something else, I would love to hear your takes on why you identify with the different classes! Helping people find their classpect is maybe my favorite part of this blog. Thanks for asking!

[ladytanithia]

I actually felt a slight compulsion to write this morning. Unfortunate that I had to be at work and couldn’t expand on it, but the scenario is fine by itself, I think. I had Miranja and Faendal in mind as I wrote this, but I left the names out in case anyone wants to imagine their own favorites! I would have made it gender neutral, but using nameless "theys" would get confusing.

They meandered through town, and she allowed him to lead so that she could watch him from behind.

His flesh, his bones, solid and real. Not a fantasy, not a dream. The weight of his footsteps making the wooden walkway creak. She was so acutely aware of the space he displaced, and she could never have described it to another person. She knew she had strange thoughts, but she didn't care. Everything else in the world was also real and solid, but somehow, it was only HIS presence that fascinated her. Even though she knew it was just the natural way of the world for weaker things to give way to stronger, for polite people to move out of the way of someone needing to get past, it still seemed to her that he easily and naturally commanded things to yield to his passage. He slid without resistance through crowds, through doorways, through grass and underbrush, through air and water, as if he were liquid.

But her belly warmed and fluttered at the still-tangible memory of his very solid flesh against hers, within hers, and her breath caught. She had to stop and close her eyes, lean against the low stone wall that encircled the market area for support. She was totally enveloped in a full sensory replay of those languid, delicious moments before they had left their rented bed this morning, and the way their slow, lazy movements had become heated and urgent. Just remembering, it felt so good, so heavenly, she thought she might... Subtly, she pressed her thighs together and contracted her pelvic floor muscles rhythmically.

"You okay?" His voice carried to her from several yards away, but when she opened her eyes, he was already close, reaching out to touch her shoulder.

"I'm fine," she smiled, a little guiltily. She'd been so close, right there in public. She felt dirty in such a good way, but she was also slightly annoyed that he'd interrupted. Do you know that just thinking about you can make me come? She bit her tongue, so very tempted to ask the question out loud, eavesdroppers be damned.

[einsteinsugly]

2001. The Final Straw.

Protective Hyde time! JH, of course. :)

*****

After standing in the waiting area for nearly thirty minutes, Becca storms out of the restaurant, and comes to a sudden stop. In total shock.

Her dad's El Camino is still sitting there, waiting.

She flings open the car door, getting in before slamming the door shut.

"What are you doing here?" She demands, "You said you'd pick me up at eight."

Dad may be rightfully paranoid, or he may be a lion protective of his cub. Or a combination of both. "Had a feeling it wouldn't go well."

Becca scoffs. She knows his drill. "You're just overprotective."

"He has a track record." An awkward silence emerges, and he nervously clears his throat. "What happened?"

She awkwardly holds up her Nokia, before slamming it into the glove compartment, with a sigh. He's going to overreact; he has a track record.

"He called me, and said something important was going on, but then he slipped out that he was going skateboarding with Zach."

He clenches his fist, in complete and utter fury. He almost slams his hand onto the dashboard, but puts in a Led Zeppelin cassette instead.

He angrily blows off some steam, as "Immigrant Song" blasts. "How about I drop an anvil on his head?"

A forced chuckle emerges from his daughter's lips, but the embarrassment still lingers. "An anvil?"

Yeah, she's thankful she didn't have to call for a ride, but it's humiliating. Her dad was literally waiting, outside of the restaurant, waiting for hell to ensue.

He changes his tune, to fit the situation. "His skateboard."

"Dad..." She's notably heartbroken, blinking back tears. "Don't even think about it."

"I'm thinkin' about it." He's still angry, and for once, Zeppelin isn't helping. "I'm gonna smash his skateboard over his fucking head."

"Don't." The nail is in the coffin, but she's still fighting away tears. "It'll be fine, I swear."

Unlike his oblivious best friend, he's acutely aware of the undertones. The real meaning, the upward battle to come. "You deserve better than Danny."

"Okay," She nervously deflects, as the reality sets in, "It was never anything that serious."

But still, Dad is unwavering. "You deserve better than Danny."

[sprnklersplashes]

so long daisy may (ao3)

fanfic fundraiser

I'm sooo normal about natalie goodman, guys

The doorbell rings once, a sharp, trilling sound that breaks through the cool air. Natalie steps back, presses her clammy palms together, waits. A car passes by behind her, faint country musing fleeting in her ears. A slight breeze picks up the edge of her coat; it dances in the air before settling down. Natalie strains her ears for movement on the other side of the door. 

She’s not coming, she realises. The house is quiet, she’s probably out, and this was a stupid idea anyway. Heat rushes to her cheeks, a pool opens in her belly that might be familiar if she let herself linger on it. She isn’t here, she thinks, and she starts to turn, shaking hands already reaching for her phone to tell Henry she’ll be home soon. Maybe later on, she’ll go on some self-pitying rant and curse that she ever thought of this.

Then, the door opens.

“Natalie.” She whirls. Her mom leans on the doorframe, smiling softly. She looks well, as she did the last time Natalie saw her. Younger, maybe. Less dark shadows beneath her eyes, actual colour in her cheeks. She looks like a person and not a ghost, and Natalie wonders if she’ll ever find it normal.

Slowly, she slides the phone back into her pocket. 

“Didn’t know you were coming over.”

“I can-I can go,” she begins. “If it’s a bad-”

“Oh, no, of course not.” Diana-Mom-opens the door wider, her arms following suit in a way that makes Natalie feel like she’s waiting for a hug. She doesn’t reciprocate, but her mom isn’t deterred. With smile lines creasing her face, she gestures down the hallway. “Come on in. I’ll get the coffee.”

Natalie just stands, held in her spot by some external force. In that second, she becomes acutely aware of how not-real this feels; as if she is a drawing of a girl, rather than a human with a life before and after this. The thought takes her and pulls her into it, stops her from breathing, or thinking, or feeling the wind against her skin.

Then it’s over as soon as it started, and she’s following her mom down the hall.

She’s been in the house for a couple of years now. It was around the same time Nat graduated college, after multiple doctors decreed she was fit to live on her own. They’d had a little graduation party here once Mom got settled, her and mom and Dad and Henry, all sitting around the table with champagne and cheesecake. It was good. Natalie had laughed and smiled and it had been good.

There’s a picture of it, framed on the wall as she passes. The wallpaper is baby blue and covered in sketches of ivy.

“Black and two sugars?” Natalie blinks. They’d ended up in the kitchen and hovered by the island, Mom pulling two mugs and a jar of coffee out of the cupboard. It’s that half-filled jar, the label ripped slightly, that pulls her back into the present and she shakes her head, pressing her thumbnail into her palm.

“I-I’m okay, Mom,” she says. Diana frowns slightly, a quick movement of her brows, but thankfully, she doesn’t press. Or maybe Natalie wants her to, because what she has to say is burning in the back of her throat and she spent the drive here wondering how the hell to bring it up. 

As her mom spoons coffee into her mug and lays cookies out on a plate, Natalie pulls at the nails on her left hand, then clumsily pulls at her right. She pulls her sleeves over her arms. It’s just the two of them, her and the woman who couldn’t judge her if she tried. Theoretically, this is the place it should be easiest. That was her logic in coming; if she can say it here, she can say it anywhere. But then why are the words so stubbornly stuck inside her?

She feels nauseous. There’s two explanations for it.

“Mom?”

“Yeah.”

She closes her eyes. Breathes out. Opens them. Just fucking say it, Nat. 

“I’m pregnant.”

The words ricochet around the room. The mug tumbles from Diana’s hands, catches on the side of the table before it clatters to the floor. Jagged white shards scatter across the tiles, the coffee splaying out around it.

Buried instincts jump to the surface, and suddenly Natalie’s skin is bristling, her nerves alive and sparking, braced for whatever she has to do next. Hold her mom back, call 911, drive her to the hospital. There’s no sense of unfairness, not yet, just her steady heartbeat and this feeling that whatever is about to happen will happen, and she’ll be the one to deal with it.

Until, it turns out, she’s not.

Diana bends down carefully. She gives Natalie a reassuring smile as she does, a silent gesture that seems to mean “I’ve got it, it’s okay”. Her palm is covered with a white-and-red check towel, and from her place at the table, Natalie watches as she carefully picks up each piece and places them on the towel. They click softly against each other, unaware of the way they set Natalie’s being ablaze. She keeps watching, waiting for her turn to jump in, for it to turn dangerous and to have to take on another burden that will eventually make her resentful. Somehow, the waiting feels worse than the crisis.

Her mom wipes up the spilled coffee, throws the soaked paper towels in the trash and turns back to her. She lays her hands on the table then slowly nods.

“You’re pregnant?” she asks. Natalie twitches. The words sound so strange in her mother’s mouth. They’d sound strange in any voice that isn’t hers or Henry’s, but hearing them from her mother, and hearing them this early, twists something deep inside her.

“Yeah,” she replies quietly. “We uh… we found out a few days ago.” She looks down at her boots, the loosely tied laces and the scattering of mud on the toes. “We did about three tests and they all came back positive.”

“Oh.”

“Henry wants to go to the hospital as well,” she goes on. “Just to make it official but I-” She sighs again, rakes her hand through her hair, and shakes her head. “I don’t get it. I mean I’ll do it and we’ll need to go eventually but I don’t get it.” A small grin tugs at her lips then, even as she scoffs around it. “Sentimental.”

“Do you want to be pregnant?” her mom asks. 

With a steady exhale, Natalie lowers her hands to the table, mirroring her mother’s pose. The question doesn’t catch her off-guard; it’s the reason she came here. One minute she was looking at another positive test, giggling to herself. Then she thought about her mom for one second and she was in the car.

For the first time in her life, the one person she wanted to see was Diana Goodman. 

In her peripheral vision, her mom’s hair flashes beside her. Her hand sits on the table beside Natalie’s, tentative, waiting, unsure. 

“Nat?” she asks again, lower this time. “Do you want to be pregnant?”

Natalie looks down, scratches her wrist. It is, in some ways, an easy question to answer, because when she saw that test she laughed out loud and she and Henry spent hours just laughing and grinning and muttering ‘holy shit’ over and over again.

Then she was left to her own devices for an hour. When Henry came back, she was shaking in the corner of the bathroom, screaming at him to leave her alone. 

“I’m…” She swallows. “I’m scared, Mom.” 

Her mom doesn’t do what most moms would do. She doesn’t sigh softly and fold her into a hug, stroke her hair and tell her everything will be okay. She doesn’t chase away her fears with a kiss on the forehead.

What she does is nod, and let out a long, steady breath. Begrudging awareness sits between them, mutual understanding that only they could share. Because really-why wouldn’t Natalie be scared? She might not be a child; freshly turned 28, she might have a good job and a nice house and a partner who would climb over barbed wire for her. She’s in a better place than her mom was, than a lot of women are when they get this news. 

And yet, she thinks, look at what else she has. Her mom’s words come back to her, still so clear after over a decade, “I see me in you”. Those words had cut her then, because how do you react to that? When the person responsible for everything you hate about yourself says that she’s somewhere in you? How can she want to be pregnant when buried in her DNA is the worst parenting blueprint suburbia has ever seen?

She chokes, and then the tears are gushing down her face. Beside her, her mom lays a hand on her shoulder, presses a tissue into her shaking hands. 

“I wish I could say you didn’t have to be,” she sighs. “But really, what business would I have saying that?”

“Yeah,” Nat whispers. Her fingers shake; familiar anger she’s worked so hard to overcome now storms through her and she doesn’t even know why. All she knows is it’s more comfortable than fear. “After all, I’m you.”

That’s when she turns to look at her, the look of shock on her face visible even as her tears distort the picture before her. Diana grows more still, Natalie’s trembling grows, and then suddenly she’s not twenty-eight but sixteen, feeling like an intruder in her own house, living in the shadow of a brother she never knew.

Her mom looks like Nat just slapped her and Natalie hates herself for it. Natalie hasn’t been okay all week and she hates Diana for it. 

“I’m you.”

“No,” Diana says. “You’re not.” Firm hands press down on her shoulders, holding her in place while her body tells her to run. Diana waits a little, until the tears clear out of her vision, and then she says again, “You’re not me.”

“Aren’t I?” she asks. “Mom, I’m a mess, and I’m angry, and I’m-”

“You’re alive,” Diana interrupts. “You feel things, even when they suck. You call yourself a cynic but you look at the world and you see what it is, not what it isn’t.” Her hands tighten on her shoulders, and Natalie can't breathe. 

“You-you said I’m…” she swallows, breathes, tries to remember all the grounding techniques she’s been taught. “You keep saying it-”

“I know I do,” she replies. “And yes, Nat, you’re like me. But you’re also not. You got out. You’re turning it around. Look at everything you have right now that I didn’t. You keep on growing and that was…” She sighs, and it sounds bitter. “That was something I didn’t know how to do for a long, long time.” Diana shakes her head, blonde curls so similar to Natalie’s falling over her shoulders. “I’m not going to tell you not to be scared. I am going to tell you that being scared is proof you’re already doing it better than me.” One hand stays on Natalie’s shoulder, the other comes to rest over her heart. Natalie hears it beat, the frantic thump-thump-thump beneath her mother’s palm. “You’re alive, Nat. You’re trying.”

“But I don’t know what to do.” She sniffles. It’s unfair, but she says it anyway. “No-one showed me what to do.” Her mom sighs at that, regret cuts across her eyes and Natalie wants to scream. It was so easy when she could just hate her and leave it at that, when she was just a distant mom Nat couldn’t understand. But here, 

“I know, Nat. I know,” her mom tells her. “But we showed what not to do, right?” She runs her hand through Nat’s hair. “So you’re already doing better than we were.”

Natalie freezes. Her whole body goes limp; were it not for her mom’s hold on her, she may have fallen to the floor. Isn’t that a first? All of a sudden, there’s something inside her slotting into place, two broken fragments she had never considered belonged together. They lock together, turn, and open something in her chest.

Her whole life, she’s only thought about what she didn’t have. 

She breathes out, slowly. Second by second. 

Diana pushes her hair back and Natalie doesn’t flinch. When she wipes her tears, she doesn’t pull away. Their eyes meet, reflections of each other, and Natalie can stand.

“You know what not to do,” her mom says again. “You know how to not be worse. Just go from there.”

“Just go from there,” Natalie repeats. Maybe it wouldn’t make sense to anyone else, but it does to her. And to Diana.

If this were a stupid sentimental movie, maybe Natalie would tell her she plans to name the baby Gabriel, but she won’t. Because this isn’t a movie and because she won’t saddle her kid with that history. She won’t grieve a boy she never knew and she won’t feel bad for it. 

With one last squeeze, Diana goes and grabs the plate of forgotten cookies from the counter.

“Have you told your dad yet?” she asks. 

“Not yet.” Natalie eases herself onto the chair and grabs a cookie from the plate. “He’s going to freak out.”

“Maybe you don’t need to tell him,” her mom says. “Maybe you can just get him a World’s Greatest Grandpa mug and let him figure it out.”

A laugh bursts out of her, so full and real and bright that it doesn’t feel real. She leans over the table, tucks one leg beneath the other, breaks her cookie in half. Tiny white crumbles stick to her fingers.

“Maybe,” she says, and for both of them, maybe is always good enough. 

[blackthorn-legion-irl]

age regresses you (respond whenever you want. i saw a free mess with someone with magic anons and i took it)

[...and you're sure it'll be alright? i know you and whatshisname know what you're doing but---]

[I hope. You can see the cracks getting deeper every day. She's overextending herself, she needs a reinforced foundation.]

[okay. and will she know any of us? 'cause if not she might run off---]

[Though the age and memories will be... fuzzy, indistinct - she will remember you from school at the very least.]

[that's. not as positive as i expected---i'll trust you on this one. just. ceasefire on the pranks, okay?]

[Agreed. ... Maybe I should never have given her access to that world.......]

---

//picrew link: https://picrew.me/en/image_maker/2058617

uh.

hey i guess? simon said this network was safe to use so uh---

they say don't reveal your real name on the internet but i don't have a real name. i'm just me. i guess call me holly. that's what everyone else calls me. it's not me but i'm used to it so.

i was running away and it hurt and i tripped over and hit my head on something and now i'm here. dude from school says i got a concussion or something. i guess 'dude from school' is sorta rude given he's one of the only ones who was actually nice to me. he's. taller than i remember but that's probably the concussion....... he keeps calling me blackthorn though. sounds like some edgy hacker name. or, well, the city in johto but i'm not a city

there's a lot of people in this house. it's scary. at least the house pokemon are nice even if the beldum won't leave me alone

//ooc under cut

so yeah we knew this was coming eventually. thanks anon for being patient :)

this is a prelude to something that happens to coincide with 100 followers (??? how) so i'm calling it an event for that even though the actual goal is to help me brain through something :v

despite the technical deadname, she's still she/her. she just hasn't chucked gender out of the window yet, it still sucks though in terms of medical conditions, all she's acutely aware of is autism/anxiety/depression, not that she'll admit to any of them.

the time period is very hazy and may be inconsistent because she repressed the majority of this time. she also thinks she's in and native to pokeworld (specifically some version of galar), due to the games being one of the only things keeping her going during this time. the 'concussion' will make her see demons as pokemon if needed.

pelipper mail etc is on, though magic anons are a lot more limited. in particular simon has negotiated immunity for the duration :v if i can't deal with something i'll filter it out, but otherwise same as anyone else

these posts will be tagged with 'holly kidthorn' if i remember.

(guess who simon is talking to and win absolutely nothing :D)

[skruffie]

okay, so "descendian"

if you're not in a lot of online Indigenous communities you're probably not sure what these "-dian" terms are. You probably have seen pretendian floating around, which is somebody who claims to be native with zero ancestry to back it up. The newer one in the mix is descendian. It's not as common as a term but here's a graphic I saw today that had been reposted by one of my cousins:

Descendian - is a person who has a remote indigenous relative WAY back in their family genealogy, and then take that indigenous Ancestor from multiple generations back to lay claim to full indigenous benefits today. That is wrong!

There's a lot that can be unpacked on this image and what this is mostly geared toward, I think, is more like... either the white people that would otherwise be called pretendians, or unfortunately this could result in lateral violence against a lot of eastern coast tribes that were the first to have contact with settlers. When my cousin had reposted this I had to really consider if or how I would respond because it makes me feel a lot. My own ancestry and reconnection journey has often felt like it was too far away and yet also too close at the same time.

(Also not to nitpick but it's not actually guaranteed you have 16-128 individual great+ grandparents because pedigree collapse is a very real thing but that is beside the point)

I really wonder whoever wrote this considers the tribes that do in fact rely on an ancestor from a specified period of time rather than concepts like blood quantum. The more generations of people we have, the farther removed those ancestors on the documents become, so at what point is that nation going to die out? When is the genocide going to be completed?

The other part of this is that even within tribal communities and with enrolled members it is not an immediate guarantee that you'll be connected to your culture. Sometimes people just... don't. Or they can't. Or their nation rejects them due to disenrollment, homophobia, transphobia, etc.

The part about this that is valid is that if you're like me and trying to repair the connections that almost got lost, it is not the same as having grown up around the culture and being recognized as part of that. Part of the reconnection journey, especially when you're also racially white, is balancing unpacking the privileges that you do have with the knowledge you have about your ethnicity. That is where you have more expertise: your own individual journey but not necessarily that of your ancestral background. A lot of the criticisms I've described here I've seen laid out from other people.

In the end I responded to my cousin with "this is an interesting one because I am constantly wondering what it actually means to be raised in an Indigenous way. My grandma got orphaned and though she was not raised with the culture or stories, she was raised to value keeping a family together" and my cousin thankfully knows that the descendians outlined here are not at all the same as the people who are earnestly trying to reconnect in a good way. That's something I appreciate, and I also know at the same time this term is going to gain more traction and be used as a paintbrush against every other person who is still reconnecting no matter if it's in good faith or not. It's not as big a deal offline as it is on the internet, but I've still seen bits of it in action and it makes me feel acutely aware when I'm walking through an Indigenous space/event/etc and especially if I'm wearing something culturally identifiable.

Sidebar: it is actually incredibly difficult for me to know the difference between what is "my right" to reclaim versus if it's just an extension of unpacking the ol' white suitcase. Ironically, there was an essay written by Gwen Benaway that compared whiteness to that of a specific cryptic I will not be naming--one that is cannibalistic and consumes everything but is never satiated, and it's something that really resonated with me when trying to work through my race versus ethnicity. Then, naturally, it came out that she was a pretendian and it left me just kind of hanging in the air about what I'm supposed to do now.

[robinnblood]

Explanation

These did just accidentally become short drabbles ngl

*I haven't rewatched some seasons in a real long time so sorry if I'm rusty on the information*

Also I didn't include bigb, etho, and impulse just because I got kinda burnt out at the end (even though I was the most excited about writing bigB, I might do that one day) just know impulse was mostly because of his betrayal in 3rd life

Bdubs- the desolation

Bdubs as the boogeyman likes to get it done with, it doesn't matter if it's an acquaintance or a friend he will kill them, he loses people’s trust with a swing of a sword, even if he wins the battle he doesn't win the war

In last life he fears losing Etho, he's told that he's already lost him and that he's not wanted anymore, he wants to disprove it but before he can he's already dead. In limited life he has the same fear that he's losing except this time he already knows it. His family doesn't love him and he's disconnected from other teams already so he just has to wait and turmoil until it's over.

Gem- the slaughter

She's new, she's fresh, she has potential.

Gem comes into the life series like a riot, immediately becoming the dominant one when it comes to pvp. Everyone already knew she was good but then she made them turn into each other. Two sides are formed in secret life once she starts to stain the server with blood, she killed, and those she killed killed, and they kept killing. She brought terror and heartbreak, people flead, they fought back, but it was no use. She lead those out for blood, she shook the server and started the biggest mass killing that wasn't the end of it all, she brought war

Scar- the lonely

He used to have a friend, in 3rd life, he used to have a friend in magic mountain but the curse of bloodlust leaves him alone, he's rejected by other groups and he dies without friends. He should have a friend in double life, but he doesn't, Grian is desperate to escape Scar and he's aware of it, forever without connection again… secret life is promising, kind of, then he's screwed over by his task, again, and again, it forces people to dislike him, to leave him to himself alone. When he wins secret life he doesn't even register he's alone again, still looking for Pearl, but she's gone. He's the only one to ever survive after a life series but that just means he's now truly alone, with no one to come find him. His only visitors are the tricks his mind plays on him to comfort him with the voices of those he once knew

Grian- the buried

Okay so this is definitely the one people were were asking about the most and I can see why, when you think of Grian he doesn't seem like he would be defined by claustrophobia, you'd probably think the eye but I didn't feel that fit his character much honestly

Grian is weighed down by his debt to Scar, what he does and how he acts is completely changed by his own suffocating guilt. He becomes restricted in what he can do like his wings were clipped, during the war in 3rd life he hides underground in the bunker hoping that being surrounded on all sides will protect him.

During double life he is trapped with scar again but this time he tries to escape, but instead his first death is underground while his soulmate suffocates in soulmates

Throughout the entirety of the life series he is trapped in a cycle of watching his allies die, he knows they'll all die but he can't escape it.

Martyn- the dark

I didn't want to rely too heavily on the watchers but with them in mind, they're an entity that is always hidden in the shadows lurking, Martyn isn't the one watching, he's the one acutely aware that something he can't see is there, hidden in the dark. The watchers are beyond the realm everyone else resides in and martyn takes a step in to it

For some non-watcher related reasons, he's always the one exploring the nether going into the unknown head first

It's never clear where he'll end, always misstepping in the wrong direction, in 3rd life he's loyal to Ren and would give his life forever him yet out lives him, double life he stumbled and landed somewhere he didn't think possible (without a soulmate) because he went in blind, limited life he blinded Impulse and Scott by doing something unexpected and unknown in the life series by not being fair in the final

Lizzie- the vast

Everything going on around Lizzie seems so much bigger than her, she has her own schemes and plots yet she always gets caught up in other people's plots, she dies in wild life because she just happened to be someplace at the wrong time that had nothing to do with her, a whole arching plot of revenge and murder and she was just there…

In last life she dies in confusion with no real idea of why she's even being targeted, in limited life she was only just a small ant randomly placed into a huge garden for a short period of time and taken out again, having to figure out the environment alone as everyone else had a more important goal in mind

Secret life she dies by pure accident forever falling in the vastness of the void as everything moves without her

Mumbo- the stranger

While yes mumbo is sort of a clown that's not why I put him as the stranger

Mumbo is silly guy but because of that it's hard to understand him, during secret life he seems obvious and inviting yet it turns out he had different intentions the whole time

He's nervous and docile but when opportunity rises he'll willingly indulge in chaos and violence, unlike his usual self he becomes bloodthirsty and needy, not wanting to let go of Grian, needing him for himself.

After he dies in wild life he's brought back, but not as himself but as a taxidermy replica, pale skin, glossed over eyes, rotting and drooling. It's someone unrecognizable who doesn't get anxious anymore, isn't worried anymore, not nice, not docile, blood thirsty and willing to betray someone he once cared for in a whim

Pearl- the lonely

I mean c'mon what else was it going to be?

Isolated in a tall tower shivering, looking into the distance to see small moving figures. The only companion is her wolf Tilly but she can't actually talk, Pearl just projects her thoughts on to her and honestly that's even more sad. She's abandoned by her soulmate and the rest of the server is terrified of her. Even when they reunite it's short lived, too short to warm up again

Even when she did have allies they die before her, leaving her to fend for herself in the end, in secret life when it's just her and Scar she doesn't die close and in his blade but out of sight, without even realizing she left.

Ren- the flesh

Ren mutilates himself, in 3rd life he kneels at the altar and willingly chooses to have his head chopped off, leaving him grayed and bloodied, he's no longer than man he was, he becomes rash, angry, and commanding, a husk of what he was, he's the meat being butchered

Even in double life we see how puts flesh on his base, disfigures it to ward off enemies, and calls it home

Wild life is obvious, he changes, tears apart, and stitches his body back together to hold on closer to martyn, his body becomes a corrupted meat pile with a voice that's not quite his anymore

Skizz- the spiral

Honestly surprised with myself that it took so long for me to get Skizz’s when it was right in front of me

Skizz spirals, he loses, he gets lower, he dies, and then loses again. After getting on his red life he starts to get manic, impatient, he needs blood.

In 3rd life he joins the red army, not out of violence but out of loyalty but he then he dies and he rushes into battle without another thought, he does it again and again, limited life he starts out with love in his heart and tries to give compliments and joy out, but then he's killed. And he's killed again right after by someone he thought he was going to team with, that's when he gets mad. He seeks out revenge and murder

He never starts violent, but all his deaths are in bloodlust

Scott- the corruption

Even though the corruption most of the time manifests with sickness and disease it also appears in unhealthy love, companionship, and loss of individuality

Scott throughout out the life series has been known for sacrifice and the support of his allies, in 3rd life he loved Jimmy to a sickening degree and died because of it, last life he was infected with the boogeyman curse and he let it take him down to his red life rather than get rid of it. Double life he had his unhealthy love with Pearl where they would harm each other but were bound together no matter what. In limited life when he's the boogeyman again he does the opposite and gets rid of the infection right away, ruining the fun.

He starts to loose his identity over the season, giving, giving, and giving more of himself to others so they have a better chance of winning, he's less prone to killing if it's not for an allie or self defense, since winning he has no attachment to the games

Joel- the extinction

Joel was a lone wolf in 3rd life, he didn't have long term allies yet was in the war that took place, he burnt walls and killed no one, the only sign of him was his lonely dogs lost in the desert after all humans had died. It was like an apocalypse had happened

Afterwards in last life he killed people every opportunity he got adding to the end of the server. Double life he burnt everything destroying just the people but their homes and civilization. He might've died early in limited life but he left craters in the earth like the aftermath of war.

But once he let go of his bloodlust and made a major change to be peaceful is when he finally prevailed and survived

Jimmy- the end

This one was easy and I had no trouble with it, for obvious reasons, he's been dead first almost every time and when he isn't he's closely trailing behind, it's always too soon, too inevitable, his story is always a cliffhanger, not even being able to see who won since he died a session before

But also, he's determined and he runs from death or in other cases actively searches for it, he wants to kill people so bad just for the rush, his pride, to prove he is more than a death loop and has effects on others, so much so that he forgets about life, he doesn't know anything about what happens after he died, how people grieve him

He'll never understand true war and bloodshed like the slaughter, he just knows the stop of a heartbeat

Tango- the desolation

The desolation manifests in heat and burns, a flaming candle, it is pain and destruction

In 3rd life he makes one mistake and is forced to dance with fire, dodge flying arrows when backed against a wall, and wear the helmet that caused this. Cruelness for the sake of it. Last life he became the flame, angry and hot, he gave kindness and was faced with cruelty, so he gave it back. In double life he meets his soulmate because of loss, he dies a pointless death and his soulmate is lost because of a pointless loss too in the end… he has destruction thrown at him and so he throws it back full force, just like last life he's angry and destructive… all over again.

Secret life is full of flames, his home burning up, and he dies like that too, pointless cruelty

Cleo- the spiral

Deceit is what Cleo despises in the life series, throughout the seasons she has faced betrayal and patterns within people

In 3rd life Ren betrays her for someone that's not even loyal to his cause and has to figure out of impulse is really on their side, she doesn't let go of last life, double life she leaves their soulmate because he's an untrustworthy soulmate, in limited life she can't trust etho with their children and bdubs because he's too loyal to etho

She has the constant theme of being cautious with people because people are so deceitful to them which leads to spiraling

If you read all that let me know which one you agree with the most

Life series members as TMA fears:

Bdubs- the desolation

Bigb- the eye

Etho- the hunt

Gem- the slaughter

Scar- the lonely

Grian- the buried

Impulse- the web

Martyn- the dark

Lizzie- the vast

Mumbo- the stranger

Pearl- the lonely

Ren- the flesh

Skizz- the spiral

Scott- the corruption

Joel- the extinction

Jimmy- the end

Tango- the desolation

Cleo- the spiral