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smalltragedy · 4 years

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* herman tommeraas, cis man + he/him | you know donovan mercer, right? they’re twenty one, and they’ve lived in irving for, like, four months? well, their spotify wrapped says they listened to ice boy by corbin like, a million times this year, which makes sense ‘cause they’ve got that whole fear hidden behind a stoic stare, bleeding from your nose and from your gums, and the night sky with all its stars, with all its mystery and unknown thing going on. i just checked and their birthday is march 15th, so they’re a pisces, which is unsurprising, all things considered. ( james, 21, est, they/them )

looks away as i finally post his intro after being kinda awol fr however long. i love him a lot n hes also bri’s character mercy’s younger brother so u hv to be nice to him. think abt mercy’s life. then think abt ducky. im sry in advance tht his intro’s a little longer ive hd ducky fr like. a year or two n i’ve been playing him a While <3 as always like this if u’d like 2 plot n i’ll try 2 msg u bck bt otherwise im gna just hop right into threads bc obv i need to. change my methods.

ABUSE, VIOLENCE, DRUG ABUSE, EYE INJURY, GANG MENTIONS TW.

mini playlist.

father ;; the front bottoms / ice boy ;; corbin / lose yourself ;; eminem / my own worst enemy ;; lit / say it ain’t so ;; weezer / maps ;; yeah yeah yeahs / star stopping ;; lil peep / benz truck ;; lil peep / trauma ;; nf / northern downpour ;; panic! at the disco / your graduation ;; modern baseball.

statistics.

full name: donovan mercer.

nickname(s): ducky.

birthday: march 15th, 1999.

zodiac: pisces sun, aquarius moon, aquarius ascending.

mbti & temperament: intp & theorist / phlegmatic.

label: the despondent.

hometown: hell’s kitchen, new york.

sexuality: bisexual (bt not out).

pinterest.

biography.

born in hell’s kitchen to vinny mercer and a mother who ran out of the hospital as fast as she could, as soon as she was able. she’d gone so quick that she’d never given ducky a middle name - just donovan. the younger brother of mercy (shoutout 2 bri)

his father’s the right-hand man of a well known mob boss named lars amaretto, and so, you can imagine the kind of environment ducky (& mercy) grew up in. weapon & drug dealings, interrogations, violence around every corner. a brutal way of living, no place to raise two children.

implied abuse tw // their father was not kind, or merciful - and ducky was a runt compared to mercy, small and sensitive and kinder than his brother. weak, and filled with softness, with big brown eyes and a smile that should’ve been able to melt ice - but it didn’t. and it never did.

he cried often, and was punished often for it until he learned to stop crying - at least in front of their father, and mercy too, at some point. only in the comfort of his room, with doors locked and blinds drawn closed. implied abuse end of tw

he dreamed, too, dreamt often. he’d been obsessed with outer space since childhood, as long as he could remember. school had once shown man landing on the moon, and ducky wanted that. wanted to be that, wanted to be there, up with the stars, discovering the unthinkable.

abuse mention // but it was discouraged, heavily so - projects destroyed by an angry fist only to be reconstructed to the best of ducky’s ability, with mercy’s help, all throughout the night. he’d saved up for a telescope when he was thirteen, but it’d been destroyed almost immediately when discovered. not a day went by that their father didn’t tell ducky that he was, first and foremost, stupid - and would always be. end of abuse mention

to the point where he stopped trying, simply. he never graduated high school.

abuse mention // anxiety mention // anyways … at the age of fifteen, he’d have enough. he was sick of the abuse, the pain - the crying behind closed doors, the sneaking around, the constant feeling of needing to escape, impending doom, anxiety attacks in the shower and in school bathrooms and at the back of the bus where nobody sat besides him because he was - that boy, the son of that man, the brother of that brute. he’d been a teenager and he’d already been an outcast by all means - an outcast in his family, no matter how hard he tried to appease vinny, and an outsider everywhere else.

the plan took months of preparation, paper ripped out from the back of his school notebook and stuffed beneath his mattress, details of his escape from a checklist of essential items to makeshift maps of bus routes to different cities.

all for nothing, the moment vinny discovered it, the edge of a map sticking out after a rushed morning.

heavy abuse tw // violence tw // it’d been the same day he’d gotten the nickname - ducky - the way the wound wrapped below his mouth, and the way it’d begun to heal - puckered, at first, like a duck’s bill. a better name than eyepatch, at the very least. the scar’d run from the arch of his left brow, across his eye, down his cheek, and below his lip. his eye sustained injury, and not allowed to see a doctor about it, it never healed properly.

eye injury // corneal scarring, impairing his left eye. astronaut dreams destroyed, but not in a matter of seconds. in the matter of an hour, maybe more - and that’d been much, much worse.

he stopped trying to run away after that. tried to be more like their father, more like mercy - more brutish, less feeling. spoke less, and less. spoke hardly at all, unless spoken to first.

still didn’t matter. still lived his days in fear, still knew it’d never change. nothing would ever change.

the mercer brothers have been floating around the north carolina scene for ~5ish years now, trailing after their father who is consistently chasing after their mother with no luck. they’re currently residing in palm motel. can we get a hell yeah?

personality & facts.

he’s actually very? intimidating? when you first meet him. mercy’s younger brother, with a criminal’s record almost as long as his - a scarred face and a mean resting face. it takes at least five minutes of conversation beyond small talk before it starts to weigh on your mind that maybe, he’s not as bad as he seems.

and - well, he isn’t. but he’s guarded - so guarded. more-so than mercy, because mercy’s quicker to anger, quicker to react, and ducky tries so hard to drown out the noise. but he’s not a robot, and his facial expressions can give him away in a second.

he’s seen what happened when mercy had a glimpse of something good in his life (though, it wasn’t actually good at all - mercy had someone, at least. at the very least) - and how quickly it’d all fallen, and so ducky puts a barrier between him and others. distant, as much as he can be.

it hurts, because ducky isn’t by any means antisocial. he doesn’t hate people - he wants to be normal, wants to have friends and a girlfriend - or maybe even a boyfriend, god - but he’s so afraid. ducky is, by nature, a very scared person. terrified to his very core. he knows there is always eyes on him, and mercy too, and he knows that nothing is worth getting someone else hurt.

you know him as mercy’s little brother, and he’s quiet you know that - but his name is ducky, and you think - he’s not too bad. and he knows this, knows the doubts. knows that it’ll get back to mercy, eventually, that his brother is nothing more but a pussy. so he fights more than he’d like to, against the guilt that buries itself deep within his chest with every thrown fist. he throws up, afterwards, in the garbage can outside. too much to drink, he says, rare grin - because grins are convincing, and grins with bleeding gums are intimidating. he learned that from his brother.

violence makes him sick to his very stomach. he can’t watch horror films, or even action films, without feeling queasy. there’s been more times than he can count where he’d thrown up after a fight, or after an interrogation, usually in private but in the occasional presence of mercy.

they fight, a lot, sometimes - ducky’s too soft, too weak, and it’s bad and it’s terrible and ducky knows that mercy’s afraid. for him, of their father, and his wraith. ducky knows that if mercy isn’t hard on him now, their father will be on him harder. still. there’s resentment, small but there, like the flame of a match. he doesn’t know what’ll happen when there’s nothing more to burn, but he doesn’t want to find out. he’s afraid to find out.

he’s still in love with the moon and the stars, and the planet’s - and their moons, too. its subdued, now, though. a silent passion - one that is often not watered, left for rot. he sneaks into engineering lectures at the community college, occasionally, or physics, or whatever peeks the small curiosity inside of him.

commits small acts of kindness when nobody looks. doors held open, the meals of elderly folk eating alone suddenly paid. picks up litter besides trash bins, and always cooks extra than what he needs and leaves the rest for mercy. it’s these small things that make him feel, just the slightest, better about himself.

because god - there are layers and layers of self-loathing. it’s a labyrinth, and he’d never speak of it - but he can’t stand his own reflection. doesn’t keep photos of his family, only a few sparingly of mercy.

a liar, sad to say. has little experience with. ehem. intimacy, and the bodies of others, but lies often and says that he does. mostly to his brother, but word travels quick - and he’s not nearly as much as a fuckboy as is rumored, having only been with a handful of girls, if even that. it’s better this way - if people know that he throws others away like they’re nothing.

he ghosts often, too, if he does get to talking with anybody. the moment ducky feels a spark, something pulling at his poor heart, he ghosts. he develops feelings too easily, too often than he’d like. has left many friendships without explanation, because of this. you know the priest in fleabag season 2? the scene where he comes to fleabag’s house? yeah. tht’s ducky!

has maybe half the amount of clients that mercy does, but he’s working on it.

pretends he doesn’t care as much as he does. pretends a lot, like there’s nothing soft to him. but a trained eye can see clearly through this. even so - even if you can see that there’s more to ducky than violence and drug deals - you’d still have to break through a dozen walls.

in the rare occasion you get him talking - i mean, talking a lot - he’ll talk about space. ramble off a dozen useless facts about dwarf stars and black holes and all of jupiter’s moons. about a video game he likes, about nothing and everything at all. but as soon as he begins, he stops - embarrassed. apologizes, shuts his mouth, disappears to wherever. anywhere but there.

drug abuse // has a. complicated relationship with benzos n xanax n a various assortment of painkillers. ironic bc he hates drugs due to. his chosen career n wldnt do most of what they sell, bt yknow. this ws inevitable. hates beer bt forces himself 2 drink it bc toxic masculinity probably man idk.

overall just … he’s a soft boy, with a big heart - bigger than anybody else in his family, that’s for sure, but his exterior is far different than that, and it’s hard to tell.

violence mention // purposely loses fights so that he doesn’t have to severely hurt someone. because sometimes he just - he was raised in a violent environment, and sometimes he snaps. sometimes ducky just fucking snaps. and his vision goes red, and he can’t control himself - because need to survive kicks in, and violence is all he knows. if someone pushes ducky - pushes him enough, he breaks. he fights back. it’s all he knows. it’s all he knows. it’s all he knows, and that’s not an excuse - and he knows this, and god, he’s so tired. he is so. tired.

wanted plots.

u look good tonight ... ;; wld love a connection in which he is feeling emotionally compromised n maybe kinda hs a thing w someone bt hes like. very unreliable n kinda ghosting bc he is very afraid n it wld b maybe bad fr them to b anything other than hook ups. cld apply to smth very intensive or smth very surface lvl i’ll take thousands.

palms sweaty ... moms spaghetti ... ;; ppl tht ducky just hs fkn brawled. cld b anybody fr any reason. ducky prob lost n he prob lost on purpose bt also ur muse cld maybe kick ducky’s ass? cld b a fake fight cld b a real fight. cld b a npc fight n then ur muse cn patch up ducky? possibilities endless. maybe they hv a nice spaghetti dinner n both of them r both bruised up frm their fight. sometimes fights end in spaghetti dinners. thanks eminnem or whatever.

own worse enemy... ;; ducky needs friends bt hes bad at making friends n sometimes he fks shit up by pushing ppl away n self sabotaging n being a major cunt n sometimes he just ghosts bt hes always very remorseful abt it? this cld b a very like. up n down friendship of any type its just. where do they stand. r they friends. r they enemies. r they lovers? probably not lovers. prob just platonic. but still its the thought tht counts.

and also ;; literally just like. anything. clients who buy off of him n like. casual friends n casual enemies n casual hookups. ppl hes ghosted. ppl hes embarrassed himself in front of. maybe ur muse tries to get ducky to socialize or maybe ducky is like. u are too much fr me. n ur muse runs off crying. endless possibilities all u hv to do is call this number now.

#abuse tw #violence tw #drug abuse tw #gangs mention #eye injury tw #irvingintro #( ducky mercer. ) about. / ice boy.#sighs sm #also sry fr hw embarrasingly late this is #did i even spell tht rigth? no #did i spell tht one right? bno.#fuck.

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queer-crusader · 4 years

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Okay update on my life since it seems talking about it doesn’t trigger another panic attack/breakdown:

So i graduated in july right

And with the end of uni, my student funding ends too

So i look for a job bc i cannot sustain myself otherwise

Except the economy is shit, because the UK is handling the pandemic almost worse than any other country in the world (we love that)

Knowing i’ll need some financial support to tie me over, i apply to universal credit

I also know my roommate, who i’ve lived with for 5 years, is moving out in october, and i will need to find someone to replace her or i end up paying £1000/month for living in this flat, which i don’t have of course

Job search becomes more frantic and exhausting and stressful

Also my dad started throwing up at some point and is eating less and is very specific about not upsetting his stomach. This is strange because he is known for his iron stomach and has not thrown up in years. I know my family history, i have my suspicions, but the doctor says it could be an ulcer. It could be fine, but my brain jumps to the worst-case scenario, because why wouldn’t it? More stress

Universal credit gets back to me - application denied

I think, hey, the category they filed me under seems wrong, i should be a habitual resident, not an EEA jobseeker, because i’ve lived here 6 years now. So i apply for an appeal, explaining the situation

Few weeks later, i receive a letter. Appeal rejected. It goes into detail how some rule that was set up in 2016 (Brexit year) lists all the reasons why just living here for 6 years, building up contacts, creating a future, feeling at home, being allowed to vote for Scottish parliament elections, is not good enough. Every sentence is like a punch in the gut. The letter boils down to fancy government words that translate to “you’re a freeloading immigrant who, according to our records, might as well be living in Fiji, and we’re giving you fuck all. Good luck surviving”

Full-blown breakdown ensues, because I’ve been fearing this ever since i arrived but was told by EVERYONE that that fear is ridiculous. I fit in, i belong, i sound English, i’m fluent, i’m passionate and well-educated about local politics, etc. I knew it wouldn’t be good enough. Race doesn’t matter; I’m European, and for the UK government, that’s good enough.

Anyway, cue the next day, and my mum phones me with news

My dad is in hospital. Turns out i was right - bowel cancer. He’s going into emergency surgery the very next day to get a tumour removed

I don’t sleep that night, for obvious reasons

Dad comes out of surgery fine, they got the whole thing, took some extra tests to see if it spread but it’s looking good so far. Meanwhile i have images of my dad, skinny as hell and with a tube up his nose seared into my brain

I fly home two days later to be with my family, who obviously need me

My dad is cleared of cancer, which is AWESOME, but we do learn that if the doctors had waited a couple days longer he could have had a perforated bowel. My mum is furious with the GP who underestimated the case

I get in touch with my landlady, saying “hey, this is my life right now, i am not in a position to search for a roommate replacement. Here’s the pics we took of the flat, can you look yourself? Also, if i don’t find a job by the end of the month, I may have to move out as well due to financial struggles, so keep in mind there’s a chance you’re going to have to look for two new tenants”

Landlady’s reply: “oh i can’t afford for the flat to be empty so i’m gonna sell it now”

So now i don’t even have an option of keeping the flat. I’ll have to move out, job or not. I can’t afford a new flat, and i can’t look for one bc a) pandemic and b) im in another country looking after my recovering dad (who is still losing weight btw, 15kg or 30-something lbs or 2.5 stone in a month, it’s horrible to see but at least he’s feeling a little better each day)

If i lose my flat, i may not be able to get a UK job. If i don’t get a UK job, chances are, i can not return to Scotland

6 years of living here, of building friendships, contacts and connections, skills for a career (which is also down the drain - theatre, an industry that is currently being killed by a lovely combo of the UK govt and the pandemic), a home, a love for the county, an intimate knowledge of the workings here, the language, the system, the stories, the history, i almost know the system here better than the Dutch one - my entire adult life. I may lose.

There is a chance i’ll be able to cling on, and god im fighting for it with the few spoons i have after all this stress, but the chance of me losing everything is equally plausible.

I have now flown back to Scotland where I put myself in self-isolation

In a week, my roommate will have moved out and i have 10 or so days left stuck in this place all by myself

I will spend this time packing up all my belongings, choosing what to take back to my parents’ place with me and what to put into storage, which i will pay for with my remaining savings and some financial support from the parents (they can’t afford much tho, my mum is unemployed and on benefits and my dad is a freelancer recovering from fucking surgery. I have no idea what their financial situation is right now, but apparently they’re okay-ish with their savings. Still, stress, and i don’t wanna burden them even more)

Then there’s the hope that the lockdown won’t have regressed back to that point where every plane is cancelled, and i’m stuck in this country without a place to call my home. (Don’t worry, i won’t end up on the street if this happens, I have friends willing to shelter me until i can fly home if they have to)

And once i’ve left, it’s only a question of when, and more promenently if, I’ll be able to return here, to Scotland.

I have never been this stressed, and i have never been this terrified. I am angry all the time (yes you can read that in Zuko’s voice lmao), I’m exhausted, and i’m fuelled by spite against prime minister Blow-Job and sheer stubbornness in refusing to feel like shit, because i just can’t be bothered with that. I just about manage to get through the day, to get up at a reasonable time, to feed myself, to shower, to exercise (because if i don’t, my wonky hip will give me hell and i’ll be in agony on top of my depression and anxiety. We love functioning bodies). But I’ll be okay. I’m trying to find solutions for everything, one step at a time. I’m taking care of myself the best i can. And if you wonder where my writing updates are, or my shitposts, or my ridiculously excited tags, then firstly, thank you for noticing ohmygod i love you, and secondly, know that i’ll be back. If God exists, know im kicking their ass. Fuck all this bullshit, my life is a mess but i REFUSE to let it stop me in my tracks. I’m too powerful, i am Brian David Gilbert’s interpretation of Sonic (either a god or can kill god and it doesn’t matter which). I’m gonna keep on truckin.

#anne speaks #long post #tw cancer #tw weight mention #tw anxiety #tw depression #ya know #all the good stuff

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kim-lexie · 5 years

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january rewind.

music.

‘dreams come true’ by NCT127. my goodness this song what a blessing and gift from our boys.

youtube

‘lay back’ by verivery. my goodness this slaps. i stan.

sf9 comeback. OUR BOYS S E R V E D. this was stellar, the concept superior. the visuals, the vocals, the choreography. like yes yes and yes. the whole album was incredible. my fave tracks ‘like the hands held tight’ and “shh”.

youtube

‘lion’ by (g)-idle. im not into girl groups, so I've actually never looked into this group but dang lion is a bop and i love this track, and it makes me feel like boss.

‘any song’ by zico. this challenge is precious and has been stuck on repeat.

dramas and movies. *spoiler alert*

parasite. i saw this a while ago and dang am i excited to say i was ahead of the hype. i must be honest i was intrigued because (1) a foreign language film was going to be at my local cinema (LIKE WOAH) and (2) CHOI WOO SHIK. so i just had to get my friends to go see it. i went in blind. i had no idea what the premise was what was gonna go down. NO IDEA. and it was unexpected intriguing and beautifully filmed. i left the film wondering and pondering the concept. you best believe i watched all the videos about the nuggets that i definitely missed in the first viewing. it is a film that makes you question and engage in discussion with those around you. i enjoyed it.

seriously incredible looking at the oscars and seeing that they won BEST PICTURE. a foreign language never winning in that category is wild. honestly never watch these shows because its always the same people and white washed. but dang i hope this opens peoples eyes to see that whole new worlds are waiting to be discovered if only they would allow themselves to be open to seeing them.

would recommend to everyone to jump into the discussion and enjoy the film because it really makes you think...

bring it on ghost. this was a good one. i saw that it was added to netflix and gave it a watch. i enjoyed all the characters and i am so glad that she wasn’t actually a ghost but a spirit that was able to wake back up and have a happy ending. i love the main leads character as he is trying to raise enough money to get rid of the “gift” that was bestowed upon him from the demon spirit. but this terrifying gift to see ghosts brings him to his now, love (cue awwwww). overall it was slightly terrifying but i appreciate the comedic relief that the two guys had from the university. i would give it a 7.5 out of 10.

chocolate. this one really got me. the flashbacks and character development. however, it had its slow moments that really made me pause and question will i even have a happy ending should i finish this. but seriously thankful i did. there were so many precious moments between the characters, and the friendship that were short but remained with the main characters from the hospice. it was interesting to see how each episode developed and showed us new friends that were only to be with us a short while but impacted the lives of our main leads dramatically. but because of you i could come this far. one of my fave quotes:

‘i came to get you. i wanted you to get more rest. but i missed you way too much.’

‘i wanted to rest with you too.’

‘as long as well hold on to hope nothing will break us down.’

i also greatly appreciate how it all became about food in the end. like seriously all the sadness and grief and they made it about the one love for food. i would rate this an 8 out of 10.

when the camilla blooms. dang i held out to watch this because everyone was talking about it and me and my know it all attitude was like it can't be that great. BUT DANG! the reason everyone was talking about it was because it is SOOO FREAKING GOOD. honestly, it reminds me so much of strong woman do bong soo. bc there are cute romantic scenes and great comedic elements and characters, but dang these scary dudes are scary...

first off, yong-sik this man is too precious and there were so many incidents that reiterated how precious/tenderhearted his character is. for example, when he was like “shouldn't we talk about last night, because i couldn't sleep a wink last night” when referring to them holding hands. him getting super jealous, and was like “dongbaek, you must hold my hand hurry!”. it was hilarious when we all thought he finally got up the courage to ask her over to his place, and her to accept for it to be a request to wash his hair because he can't with his burns. *dead*

i love pil-gu. and i love how everyone loves pil-gu because he is a great kid. he’s funny, i.e. saying to jong-ryeol (his biological dad) you’re not that great, then being semi bribed by the latest gam. his sass is ICONIC, ‘i don’t spin tops with my ears’, when referring to jong-ryeol telling him to stop playing to listen to him. i love that song-sik shows up to the baseball game and becomes “a man with a drone” to protect pil-gu. i hate how he was like i need to leave my mom for her to be happy and he bottled it up inside, this poor little nugget. he soon realizes and gives it all back bc he wants to stay with his mom. and nothing can bribe him away from the most precious thing to him.

dong-baek is such a freaking strong character! she was bomb, the character development was insane. i feel like this quote from the end really captures it:

“aren’t you just sick and tired of being intimidated all the time? people keep acting up because i’m nice to them. i’m a person who’s capable of breaking someones with my fist. and i’m a fighter who’s able to protect my own kid…i decided to become the strongest mother in the world from now on.”

she went from being chill and letting people walk all over her to becoming a boss! i also love that yong-sik allowed her to be a boss and protected her to be able to breathe easy.

“consider your life as a never ending festival. and i’ll make sure you can live as immaturely as possible.” -yong sik

because she had to grow up so fast. like he is seriously the best. waking her up and allowing her to believe in herself again. and their moment of her finally saying “i love you.” and him like, “i knew it.”

jeong-suk, her mother. this was such a sad storyline. the woman who abandoned her at the orphanage, came back after she found out her time was limited. her mother was always looking out. being there during the accident saving her. saving insurance policy. watching after pil-gu at day are. she did her best to compensate for abandoning her. freaking lost it when both her mothers, (biological and deok-sun, yong-sik’s mother) freaking knew each other prior to the current time. from when dong-baek was a little nugget and when deok-sun was pregnant with yong-sik. like what a full circle!

the whole killer aspect really threw me because everything was going good and then you'd have those cuts to the present day with bodies being found, and i did not appreciate thinking it was our main lead for the longest time. me preparing my heart to break from episode one. and then she goes and does things like going into semi-abandoned building to meet with someone who’s says they have your scooter that your missing coworker left somewhere. like this chick is gonna die. thankfully she didn’t and we got the happy ending we all wanted!

i seriously appreciated that they included the scene with pil-gu as a major league baseball player, and our happy OTP watching him on tv like thank you drama writers. i would seriously rate this a 10 out of 10.

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kippentrash · 6 years

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(1/?)The fact that I thought them saying long distance was a metaphor for how the relationship is slowburn is probably far fetched right? I think Rachel will show up in 3x14, that would be some conflict possibly because Marty is shown running with Buffy :o If I'm gonna be honest I think Muffy will get together romantically but once I meet Rachel I'll either be like "love this new character!" or "i want to cry why are you this way" JUST LET THEM BE HAPPY DISNEY I BEG YOU

(2/?) Tyrus tangents always welcome! My heart broke for both of them. Cyrus is already insecure as we’ve seen and this can’t be good for his self esteem :( TJ is obviously going through something and I’m worried for what it is. Did Kira make him insecure? Or was it something different? Either way this emotional conflict (as you pointed out) feels almost bigger than the gun. Because Cyrus trusts Tj at this point, the gun situation was the thing to cement that

(3/3) Totally agree with being outsold like this episode, while hurtful in aspects was so GOOD. We’re seeing Jonah growth, Muffy and Tyrus growth and I am here for it!! Bexie not having a wedding I was actually okay with? Hopefully Andi’ll be okay too. My cats a Burmese! He just reached his 1st year yesterday :) you have a dog??? What breed? How old? Sorry I love dogs they are great animals -ghostie anon

So like this turned out pretty long bc I addressed pretty much everything you mentioned (most elaborately the buildup and teardown of Cyrus) plus more here and there. Like, I’ve typed a lot before, and I’ve put things under a cut before, but this is LONG. Like when I first got into the fandom and typed a weeks worth of responsed for the Andi Mack Month prompts long. SO UNDER A CUT IT GOES LOL (I’m sorry again for it being practically a 5 page essay ;w;)

To summarize: Rachel will definitely be an interesting aspect of the ep, the things showed of Cyrus’s insecurities plus the fact that somersaults are ‘their thing’ makes it all the more painful, I’m really excited to see what specifically they chose to do with TJ and his insecurities, Jonah’s doing better and I don’t want Jandi to ruin that, this episode has some cool parallels to 1x11, and this episode set up so much with each of the relationships I’m ready to see unfurl. Oh and rip Andi bigtime this episode.

Oh and so you don’t need to scroll all the way down, THAT’S SO CUTE MY FRIEND HAS A BURMESE TOO!!! He always looks like he’s constantly terrified lol I don’t think he likes me. And HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO HIM!!! Doggos are amazing I have a yellow lab and I wub her sm

OKAY ONTO MY HELLA LONG RESPONSE TO YOUR ASKS I LOVE YOU AND IM REALLY SORRY IN ADVANCED

Ooo that’s a cool thought! Maybe maybe! All I thought about the long distance thing is it was to show that Marty has changed a little during their time apart and that it was a plot device to show that Buffy’s competitiveness can cause her to get in over her head still, as well as you know the Marty worrying stuff. But that’s actually really interesting I hadn’t thought of it that way! I wonder how slow burn they can make it though considering how little is left for them to work with.

Pretty much anything Muffy related will cause conflict when it comes to Rachel tbh. Like just them standing next to one another with her knowledge will be something because of the sheer amount of sparks flying between them when they so much as look at each other LOL (You can see my Muffy stan jumping out). And I’m all for it! No offense Rachel, I know you probably make Marty happy and stuff but like… Muffy. I’m honestly kind of curious how Marty and Rachel’s relationship is going to be portrayed considering it’s going to be sunk FAST and I’m pretty sure Muffy will happen extremely soon after so. We’ll see how that goes. Because Muffy is definitely endgame at this point in my opinion, whether it be ambiguous because Rachel and Marty just broke up and they want to find security in the newly rebuilt relationship they have before starting anything or something they show with full confirmation and commitment on screen.

I’m trying my best to have NO expectations of Rachel so we’ll see what happens when I meet her lol. There’s no character in this show at this point I have ZERO opinion on I think (watch me remember some as soon as I finish posting this lol), so I’m pretty sure that I’ll definitely form some feeling about her in the single episode she’s in. But I’m kind of hoping they’re not that strong of feelings. So we’ll see how that goes I don’t want to feel bad for her but I also don’t want to just despise her for being a buffer between Muffy so. WE SHALL SEE WE SHALL SEE.

As for Tyrus, oh my GODS right? Looking at it from Cyrus’s perspective might pain me even more than looking at it in TJ’s.

TJ’s the one person who’s constantly believed in him and never seems to be ashamed of Cyrus, and then this happens. He was the first one to tell Cyrus not to let anyone, even himself, tell him what he can’t do. Then take into account that somersault is one of those big moments in Cyrus’s life where TJ was there and believed in him and didn’t seem to be ashamed or put off by it, even though Cyrus and Andi had insisted it was something Cyrus was incapable of. Both him and his best friend tried to warn TJ against it, yet TJ didn’t give up on Cyrus and was so proud when he was able to do it. But now that same thing that TJ had once been proud of and shown no judgment towards and is something Cyrus considered to be their thing is what TJ winds up opting out of.

It brings me back to s2 when Cyrus said “He wants to be friends with me. Who knows why.” And it makes me really want to cri everytiem. Like you said, the gun situation built up their friendship even more and established its solidarity, and you can tell they got even closer after it. He thought they were comfortable and that he was as important to TJ as TJ was to him (which he IS), especially after the whole “only person I can talk to like this” thing. So TJ not telling Cyrus something, along with that ‘something’ negatively having to do with something he thought was special to both of them, must be a real punch in the gut. Maybe Cyrus is more secure in himself than I’m giving him credit for and is just feeling betrayed, but I think it’s more of both betrayal, humiliation, and questioning of their whole relationship (which I think I’ve posted about already lol).

AND THEN if you take when he and Jonah were supposed to wear matching jackets together and compare that to him and TJ in this scenario, I’d think that this feels even worse. TJ was the one brought up doing a matching costume in comparison to him bringing up the jackets with Jonah, and instead of just being a jacket from a random sports game he didn’t care for, this was an inside joke that he emphasized was their thing. So it was bigger and more important. This may be me reading into it too much, but considering being ditched in a situation like this is now something that has happened to him before due to the Jonah thing, he might feel even worse about himself for letting it happen to him twice.

I’m putting a lot of emphasis on the fact that it’s their thing, because even though Cyrus and TJ both saying that in the episode was cute for the simple fact that they say they have a ‘thing’, I feel like by saying that it also draws attention to the importance of what the costume was in their relationship. It was them both being proud of having a ‘thing’ and ‘inside joke’ together. And I kinda keep in mind that Cyrus and TJ had been talking about the costume and its importance to two different people trying to stand their ground against two different costumes. They know both of them found the costume funny and was a cool joke between the two of them, but they didn’t necessarily know how much importance it held for the other. But one party backed out of something that actually holds importance and emotional value for someone they claimed they didn’t really hang out with much and with no warning at all. If it were me my anxiety would make me wonder whether it had actually been important to them at all or if it were all in my own head. ;=;

This scene just feels so built up from so many different times we’ve seen Cyrus feel insecure, and now that TJ’s become someone he doesn’t find himself feeling insecure around and someone he instead finds comfort in, having it all compound into TJ no longer being someone who he can feel he trusts makes it so much worse. Especially since it related to something he felt was important enough to them that he’d opted out of the GHC+Jonah costume.

And on TJ’s side I feel so bad that he feels like turning down Kira for Cyrus is something that wouldn’t normally be accepted, and I’m really curious what route they’re going to go in terms of which aspect of what she said had caused him to change his mind, because really there are a few different things they can go about using. They can draw it on the lines of peer pressure and social hierarchy, fear of being too obvious with how he treats Cyrus, make him question himself/his sexuality, etc. and whatever route they do take will essentially come back to TJ’s insecurity.

But like I said, TJ’s never seemed to be ashamed of being close to Cyrus before and has never seemed to care about how being friends with Cyrus (or ‘a person like Cyrus’) might affect his image before, so I’m really interested to see what part of his insecurities caused him to ditch Cyrus. He’s in so much pain when he sees Cyrus (Luke OUTSOLD) that it makes me wonder what pushed him to even consider hurting both himself and Cyrus in the process. Especially when you consider the line from 3x7 where he talks about how if he knew Reed had a gun, he definitely wouldn’t have brought Cyrus. So yeah, I’m really curious and hope to see them actually specify what part of her threat caused him to decide to change his mind. They pretty much need to have him give some explanation to Cyrus in order for things to mend themselves.

I also wonder if TJ will feel bad enough about this to avoid Cyrus himself or if TJ’s insecurities will cause him to feel like he doesn’t have the right or can’t talk to Cyrus without it being risky, or if Cyrus will be avoiding him after this or anything. This seems like a big argument type of thing. No TJ next episode means no confrontation for at least a period of time in-universe, and I don’t think it’ll be Buffy and Andi policing Cyrus again this time. Cyrus is his own person, they know that and acknowledge that more than ever after the gun incident, and I think they know whatever he does in regards to TJ will be his own decision and will support his decision like the good friends they are. People are upset at them for jumping to conclusions about TJ ditching Cyrus but fact of the matter is their friend is extremely upset over something TJ caused, and they’re being protective. Sort of like when Amber had done some bad things to Andi, it took Cyrus and Buffy some time on their own to lower their defenses. Plus, looking at Cyrus’s face when he was about to cry after TJ leaves with Kira tells me that while the gun thing wasn’t that personal, this definitely was.

Please say that it’s not a plotline they shove offscreen for an episode like they did with Jonah and Libby before coming back to it. At least show Cyrus having some distress about it and talking about it with maybe Buffy or something. And please please please Andi Mack I beg of you stop hurting TJ like this he’s already gone through so much and he’s NOT EVEN A MAIN CHARACTER SALKDJASKLDJ Anytime he does something like this it will give me flashbacks to “classic TJ” and I DON’T WANT IT TO (okay yes I do because it shows it’s a powerful line and they’re using it to provoke me properly but you know what I mean)

Jonah, Jonah, Jonah. This poor boy. He’s growing into his own person and becoming more understanding that while he should take others feelings into account he also needs to pay attention to himself instead of just always putting on a brave face which I love. But jfc he has the worst timing to make these decisions. Andi already had so many other things just crashing down around her, adding his anvil to the pile was definitely an oof.

I really hope that now that they’re emphasizing both how Andi does not want to be the next ex in the lineup as well as how Jonah finds being in a relationship too demanding that it’s actually building up to a single Jonah endgame, or at the very least an ambiguous endgame. They have it pretty set in stone at this point that Andi and Jonah are fine with their friendship and that Jonah’s been getting himself into relationships he is most definitely not ready for, so with so few episodes left I can’t see how they can turn that on its heel and result in Jandi endgame without some major logic gaps.

For the love of EVERYTHING Jonah take some time to be single. Amber always needing a boyfriend pales in comparison to you always getting a girlfriend even though you don’t even seem to want one???

Also random but I really like how his decision to not partake in the group costume paralleled 1x11 where Andi decided to not just make decisions to make Jonah happy. I feel like this episode in general paralleled bits of 1x11 here and there tbh. Maybe I’m just reading into it too much but not just Jonah and Andi making their own decisions instead of making everyone happy, but the whole costume aspect vs the prison uniforms, Cyrus wanting to back out of Mt Rushmore vs wanting to change into his own outfit for picture day, Buffy helping Cyrus find an replacement vs Buffy helping Cyrus find a way to use the prison uniform well for his picture, and Jonah not participating in Mt Rushmore just for Andi vs Andi not giving up on her movement and taking off the uniform just for Jonah are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head! I haven’t seen anyone mention it and it’s not like its a big obvious parallel, but it’s just some things I started thinking about after comparing Jonah and Andi’s ‘were we ever’-esque speeches.

AND FINALLY MUFFY, TYRUS, AND BEXIE PLOTS OPENING.

Like you said, I love the develpoment they’re giving Muffy and Tyrus! Muffy’s being given time to show that they fit like puzzle pieces even after not talking for awhile and that even after they haven’t talked for awhile and left on not the best of terms, they still clearly care for eachother whatever way that is at the moment, and I can’t wait to see how they add to that care and their dynamic as we get to see the rest of Marty’s episodes in the season. Tyrus getting angst specifically related to their relationship like Muffy’s ‘I want it to be real/I don’t want it to change’, Bexie’s proposal(s) and last name decision, and Jandi’s… well Jandi’s everything since pretty much it’s always something personal blown out of proportion for Jandi is something I didn’t expect and am actually excited for the more I think about it! Like yes it’s going to pain me until the show is back, but I’m not opposed to the angst itself lol. So I’m ready to see how they grow and to what extent they grow by the finale!

Bexie not having a wedding I’m actually okay with too. Like there’s really no rush to get married, if they decide later down the line they do want to have a wedding or just want to officiate it that’s fine. They’re engaged, and they’re committed to eachother, and that’s enough for them if they can be a family. Of course, eventually they’ll probably want to go through with at least something small in the future (if you think hypothetically not with the confirmation they’re gonna have a wedding in show) that’s fine too. Honestly, considering they didn’t even go through the process of beginning to date again before proposing, I sort of think it’d be good for them if they prolong the wedding. There’s no time frame a wedding needs to occur post engagement, right?

I do feel bad for Andi though, since she was so excited and working so hard with Cece to plan for the wedding, only for it to not happen since of course it’s not her wedding and she can’t make them get married if they don’t want to. This episode was just so mean to her oh my gosh, from her parents’ marriage to her group costume, they were things she was so excited for but had to rely on others which ultimately fell through and she just can’t do anything about it really. PLUS trying to work out a friends’ relationship and make it work for them even though it’s really not something she should need to get involved with must’ve exhausted her. Trust me, I know. I know the feeling for both the being excited for something but commitments fall through and the feeling of how tiring it is trying to help friends in a relationship understand their own relationship. Lmao.

I think that was about it in response to what you said. Sorry again that it’s so frEAKING long and if you read this far (whether you’re ghostie or you’re just a random passerby on this LONG ASS POST) you a real one and I love you

I should have applied to TyrusChat with this much commentary i stg SLKAJDLKSAJ except I was too socially anxious to apply and have such disorganized thoughts to dump. Whoops.

I hope this made sense. It took me like 2-3 hrs to type this all out while discording my friends (not related to Andi Mack), so yeah. Hope this was a fun read and is somewhat coherent since it’s 2am. No proofreading we die like… dead people.

OVERALL: As you put it best...

“JUST LET THEM BE HAPPY DISNEY I BEG YOU “

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yjinwoo · 6 years

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hello , hello my name is veer, she/her and living in the gmt+1 timezone. this is my newborn baby bae jinwoo / twenty-two years old, bar singer who ran away from home, he was partly inspired by ( x ) this scene of the girl on the bridge ( watching the first minute will be enough ) & he is also somewhat inspired by serena van der woodsen from gossip girl. ( x ) is a pinterest board for inspiration and under the cut, you will find his biography. honestly, his biography is a drabble of a muse that has been drifted into my mind during a daydream and it is not really fleshed out, however, i do hope you somewhat get what i was going for. there are some wanted connections under the cut as well ( bc all his pages are still a work in progress ), but if any of them catch your interest or you want to plot out something entirely different give this a LIKE and i’ll hit you up in the ims. shout out to dion for helping me with my theme uwu

tw: drugs, murder.

POSITIVE TRAITS: curious, fervid, adaptable, mellow, alluring. NEGATIVE TRAITS: impulsive, lascivious, secretive, spoiled, escapist.

he was always the lightest among the dark of his family with that golden hair and those cupid shaped lips forming an angelic smile. his family was the winter-raw, the wolves of a moonless night and he was summer and fireflies at dusk, the little dots of light in the dark. despite being raised with all the privilege and care of a princeling, he knew that he would not ascend the matching steps his siblings had. with two older brothers, jinwoo was the last child ; the baby.

his parents where visibly influential and his father was a rumored kingpin, but it went only as far as a rumor, there was no evidence that proved that the notorious businessman was involved in the underground world of south-korea. if he was or wasn’t, jinwoo did not know, you see, he was always the outsider in his family, but while other outsiders stood out and rebelled loudly against their family, jinwoo was almost unsettlingly obedient. there was a peculiar distance about him, he appeared to be uncaring, uninterested - quite a bit discontent, but it had all grown from traditions he was expected to follow, yet also was shut away from. his family wanted him to always do what was best for the family, but also isolated him from his legacy. he was never the heir to take over the family business. the only part he had was carrying through with the demand of being present during dinners out with business partners and acquaintances, during in which he appeared to be so impersonal yet still so alluring. family portraits spoke of the same manner - throughout his life he was so set apart that when others saw the family photographs in the news, they wondered who he was. but it was always the curious kind of wonderment.

it was his mother who loved him the most, while her older sons were the mirror image of their father, it was jinwoo who resembled her mellow soul and carried that endearing personality of every mama’s favorite boy. he never objected when his mother dressed him in cashmere and gentle silk, the expensive designer only to be ruined when he spilled red wine over his clothes after innocently getting drunk from a box of liquored chocolates - resulting for his nannies to be fired. he grew up immensely spoiled, but while his brothers were out wreaking havoc outside the horizon of the gated community he lived in, he spends his time with a cigarette between his cupid lips and a creative tool in his hand - whether it was the violin, a paintbrush, or he was sitting behind the piano where his father’s dirty money was hidden inside the instrument. he craved the distraction.

at twenty he found himself to be living in a cage and the only time he could find any sort of freedom was when he went behind the backs of everyone close to him. it’s the sneaking out at midnight and meeting in shady dark corners with shady companions that he knows to be associates of his family. shutting them up with a map of hickeys on their throat. drinks, sex, parties with a sense of anonymity. his family was too preoccupied and never suspected that anything was off, he was adaptable at hiding his rebellious side.

his family had no idea that their ways of shutting him out have led him to a path of danger. they thought they had done well and hidden him from the actual violence, but there are moments he remembers, distant memories vague enough to be dreams. he remembers peeking through the slightly ajar door of his father’s office. his father in a pristine suit and in front of him a man kneeling on the floor pleading, whimpering in pain until he goes quiet and so does his own heart at the sound of a deafening gunshot. its the night that jinwoo runs away for the first time. lost, panicked, and with everything falling apart, it was then he met ( to be plotted ) and later while he shared a cigarette with the stranger between the conversations and moonlight lighting up his pale complexion, he had asked “ do you think there would be sex at the end of the world? ” #iconic. in their love, where he followed them into the shady underground bars, where they made out under flickering neon-lit bathroom stalls the taste of whiskey on his lips ; the bustlings clubs where he partied with drugs, and gambled with his life. he felt found. around ( to be added ) he didn’t have to be an heir. and so he chose the stranger over his family and followed them to yongsa.

tldr; attention-loving boy finds out the rumors are true and his father is a kingpin and runs away from home with the first person he falls in love with

WANTED CONNECTIONS

x CLOSE FRIEND & CONFIDANT: their bond was instantly sibling-like and jinwoo considers ( MUSE A ) to be trustworthy and dependable. they see the terrified boy underneath the mask, knows why jinwoo acts out in the way he does ; the parties, the drugs, the easy sex, knows because jinwoo has always been able to share things with ( MUSE A ), and now in the latest fit of frustration of having enough, jinwoo has revealed his unstable dangerous family life and since then the two of them have only grown closer.

x FRIENDS ( with benefits ) & RECENT UNEXPECTED FRUSTRATION: despite initial reservations and the closed-off ness that jinwoo showed upon first meeting them, in a matter of time getting to know one another better they have developed a soft-version of a ride and die friendship. the pair of them know how to always have a good time, and it’s not unlikely to find jinwoo on the nights that he has no one to share the bed with crashing into ( MUSE B ) bed. which could have brought the recent shiftiness and tension in their friendship or there could be something more. whatever it is jinwoo has never been able to wholly identify it.

x EX-PARTY FRIEND & BAD INFLUENCE: at one point they had been friends of the worst kind, a friendship that started and blossomed after frequently running into each other at parties and ending up talking and hanging out the entire night. they partied together, they occasionally slept together, and often ( MUSE C ) was the wilder of the two, pushing jinwoo into hedonistic and reckless actions. however, after one specific night, their friendship was broken and now the pair can’t stand to be even in the same room together. something bad happened there and they are both holding onto a secret.

x CURIOSITY & MUSE: recently ( MUSE D ) has been showing up more and more at his performances and jinwoo has noticed them in the crowd. what he doesn’t know is that ( MUSE D ) recognizes him and has seen him with his family in the news. for jinwoo they have become a recent unexpected muse that he has been writing songs about and always the first person he looks for, wanting to make sure that ( MUSE D ) is at the bar on the night that he performs.

x * chemistry * ON & OFF & INFATUATION: based on the last part of his biography. ( MUSE E ) appeared in his life when it was falling apart, he ran away for them to yongsa. since then, ( MUSE E ) interest seems to be shifting with the wind. jinwoo craves their affection and lives for the nights when all their attention is on him, but when ( MUSE E ) doesn’t give it to him enough .. he will find minute lovers, distractions in someone else.

#yj:intro #for a moment tumblr really went there and marked my talk tag post

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ladyhawk-s · 6 years

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“What a Halloween”

Summary: Tamaki Amajiki has always been a fearful person, even at the smallest of ages. However, making friends with Mirio has pushed him in ways that he maybe doesn’t want to know if he should be pushed in. Especially when it comes time for Halloween. Despite wanting to avoid all mentions of Halloween, Mirio decides that it’s time to celebrate his first Halloween and it’s one Tamaki won’t forget.

READ ON AO3 / READ ON FF.NET

A/N: Hello hello! So obviously, it's not Halloween, it's actually....28 days after that (29 depending on your time zone) and I really have no words to explain. Rather, I just want to apologize heavily for the....month delay on this. I actually have been going through a writing rut since I'm graduating this semester and doing a lot of things that have been stressing me out so, despite me wanting to write this, it almost turned into a stressor. It's been rough and I have another 3 weeks of it being rough but I'm so happy to have this done! It was for the @bnha-halloween-bb and Im sure I will be shot by the mods with how late I am but it's at least here! By no means am I proud of it but it's done and I'm so happy to be able to share it with you guys despite me not being the most pleased with it.

Rather, please support my LOVELY artist @nekosisterart who drew the piece for this fic:. They did such a phenomenal job with it and I'm literally shook. Not only are they amazingly talented but they are also super kind and sweet and just a wonderful bean and I was so honored to be working with them again. Really, go send all the love to them since they are super great <3 They put up with me during this whole thing and they are incredibly patient so I want to just WILL SMITH SHOW THEM OFF because they are wonderful !!! ----------------- Halloween was a strange time. In the past, it was a time where quirkless humans could pretend that they were beasts or have magical powers that sprouted from the palms of their hands. They were able to get candy by pretending to scare people with their fake powers and teeth and it was a day where the imaginable became reality.

But then quirks emerged and it threw off the balance that Halloween used to have. The fake accessories became real and people really developed features that originally were used for fear. Confusion swirled around people for a while on what to do for the holiday, wondering what to do next since there wasn’t much to fear anymore.

However, creativity burst in the people and Halloween was back in full swing, this time with an even higher intensity. People used their quirks to impress enough for candies and costumes became more elaborate. The horror cranked up to new levels and scary movies took on a different form that would have been eye wrenching in the past.

Even the little kids also took onto this new level. Before the age of four, they dressed up in whatever might have been cute or what their parents might have wanted them to wear. Then, when the quirks came in, that’s when the intensity started. Quirks shaped their halloween experiences and there was almost a competition on who could pull the scariest identities. School got involved in these activities and the school where Tamaki Amajiki and Mirio Togata went to was no different. The school encouraged students to go all out in their costumes provided that damages were kept to a fixable minimum.

But, while every classmate was discussing the plans of their costumes and how best to scare their parents day of, Tamaki wasn’t exactly in the same mood as them. Or rather, to put it into more simpler terms, he was absolutely terrified of Halloween and the horrors that came with it. Despite having the ability to transform his limbs into monstrous animals that he ingested earlier and possibly becoming more terrified than any recreations out there, something about the way tissue paper folded into itself and cheap fabric rippled on human skin just seemed to frighten Tamaki from where he was standing. Even though his mother constantly coaxed him through the day, he still ended up shivering at the mythical creatures that haunted his nightmares with their bloodsucking and howls at the moon. Sometimes he could feel little bit marks on the base of his neck that his mother said was from his imagination but Tamaki knew better.

So when the topic of the Halloween festival came up, Tamaki was on the top of the list on not attending. The teachers brought their hands and wiggled their fingers when discussing the horrors they would experience. There would be a haunted mansion maze that was made to send a soul out of the body and there would be enough candy to have a stomach ache for a week after. Everyone bounced in their seats the more was revealed but Tamaki could only ball up his fists and hide his head beneath the comfort of his arms. Images of fright conjured up in his mind, though they might have been more exaggerated to him than probably the other students. Not even his mother offering to volunteer or accompanying him to the event was enough to make Tamaki go.

But a certain blonde child had that effect on him.

In other schools, Tamaki never really had friends. His social anxiety made him quiver in front of other students and teachers usually went easier on him due to it, though others couldn’t understand the turmoil that went through his mind and usually left him alone, saying he could go play with the teachers. Friends were never something he had the chance to experience and there was always that little voice that desperately wailed for that chance.

And that chance happened this year.

This year he transferred to a new school and had to be immersed with new faces. While moving schools was already daunting enough, the fact that these would be new faces that would judge him the same way others did only made this more anxiety filled. He could remember walking down the halls, holding the strips of his backpack with tight hands that paled from the strong grip he had. His introduction didn’t even last that long because he couldn’t express the words he wanted to and ended up sitting down earlier than expected. Tears budded up on the water line of his eyes and he couldn’t focus for the rest of the class.

Until a boy called out to him and finished the sentence Tamaki couldn’t. “You want to be a hero, right?” the boy asked back, reading the mind of the scared one. Instantly, within a manner of 10 minutes, he found out that the blonde child was called Mirio Togata, he had a permutation quirk that could only work if he held his breath (which he was still having trouble perfecting and constantly hit walls and other foreign objects that left little scars on the top of his head), and that he was a curious kid that spammed Tamaki with questions about his quirk and what kind of animals he could recreate along with the feeling he got when his limbs were changed to chicken legs. Somehow Mirio ended up finding out more about Tamaki than anyone except his parents had in his entire life and Tamaki wasn’t so sure what to do with that. He knew he should have been cautious and wary and making sure that there was some distance but….Mirio had that cheerful smile that was infectious and Tamaki tunneled into it. Which turned out to be the right action since he began to be Tamaki’s first friend and he would never regret ever allowing Mirio to be open with him.

Until now. Now Tamaki was really beginning to question his friendship with Mirio.

Unlike Tamaki, Mirio happened to be the head of the excitement club for this school event. Everyday he would giddly explain the preparations his father making to his costume and he didn’t give anyone any hints as to what he was going to be (although Tamaki knew him well at this point and this year he was going to be a werewolf with fluffy ears and a bushed out tail. To be fair Mirio did invite him to his house and he saw those pieces laying around that Mirio would bashfully brush off whenever Tamaki asked him if those were parts of his costume). Many times throughout the day, he would go up to Tamaki’s desk and tell him how excited he was for it and that he was looking forward being able to go this year since last year was a year of flu but this time, he stocked up on his vitamins and enough of cold medicine to defeat the toughest of runny noses. And he would always check up on Tamaki to make sure he was still coming.

Yes, Tamaki told Mirio he would go. It wasn’t a very smart decision at all, it actually had a lot of flaws attached to it but seeing Mirio’s bright smile made him cave in and go to the festival. Besides it was a bit more complicated than that. Mirio was Tamaki’s first friend. Never did Tamaki have someone who would go out of their way to invite him to their house for dinner or to a party or even to spend just a bit of time with. While Tamaki knew in the bottom of his heart that Mirio wouldn’t judge him or leave him alone if he said no to coming, there was still this pressurized feeling that he had to go. At least to go for the sake of his friend. It was a weird sense of paying him back for all the kindness he’s given Tamaki. Possibly making it up to him might have had better connotations. Whatever it might have been, Tamaki was now stuck with date filled of events that were only going to be frightening and enough to haunt his dreams for the rest of the year.

Since Tamaki vowed to eliminate Halloween from his calendar, he never had to worry about making or even purchasing a costume. It was something that never crossed his mind and something that didn’t seem like it would be used anytime soon. Except for the fact that his initial plans to sit at home and watch cute shows were now tainted with going to a festival where the dress codes skewed to fit varieties of costumes. He initially tried to think of casual costumes that he could make using the items in his closet. However, when Tamaki brought these ideas up with Mirio, his friend cried nonsense and the next day came with an old vampire suit that was only worn once by its owner.

Every day, it was a reminder that Halloween was soon approaching and every day, Tamaki wished time would slow to prevent it from coming. But before anyone could stop it, it turned into the night of Halloween.

With a small bucket in the shape of a pumpkin, little Mirio Togata waddled through the sidewalk in his super secret and special costume of a werewolf. It was more uncomfortable than he had originally expected, especially with the tail bunching up near the gap between his legs, however he worked hard for this costume and nothing was going to stop him. He could endure it for a small bit.

After receiving looks and grins, he finally made it to Tamaki Amajiki’s house. In retrospect, they didn’t actually live too far from each other. They only lived a couple of blocks away and those blocks were covered with enough sidewalk and light that his father felt confident he could walk there by himself without being hurt. It also very much helped that Mirio had a quirk that allowed him to sink away in case so Mirio could only grin and be excited. His hands produced a small but mighty knock on the door, creating little pounds of noise that echoed within the house. At first nobody answered. But that didn’t stop Mirio from producing another round of knocks until the door opened to reveal a tired looking woman with bags ringing around her eyes.

“Oh hello, Togata. How are you?” She asked with a strain that was attempted to be covered in smiles but failing at every turn with that. Small wailes waved from behind her and the crinkles of her eyes pierced inwards. There was a tired and exhausted look seeped into her eyes that made Mirio feel bad for Tamaki’s mother.

“I’m doing well, Ms. Amajiki. Is Tamaki home?” Mirio asked, though he already knew the answer. Even at his young age, he still knew the fine motors of manners.

“Yes he is. Tamaki!” She called from the door. Silence. “Tamaki, your friend is here!” She yelled once more. Even more silence. Suddenly, the wails from earlier resurfaced and his mother’s eyes winced at the emergence. “It seems as if he’s huddled in his room, you can go in,” she said while giving room to the blonde boy. The second his body entered through the frame, she shut the door and quickly ran over to the screams, leaving Mirio by himself in the vast house.

With the layout of the house engraved in his mind from his countless visits, Mirio traversed through the halls to reach Tamaki’s room. It was hidden in a corner of the house that had shadows covering the darkness of the door, perfect for a person who couldn’t handle much of the sun beaming on them. Coming to the door, Mirio pressed his ear against the wood to hear any remnants of life. Silence. Tamaki sure knew when to be quiet when he wanted. Mirio’s hand went towards the knob and he cracked it open to find the room shrouded in darkness. “Amajiki? Are you here?” He asked softly, stepping onto the carpeted floor. There weren’t any visible signs of his friend but little whimpers came from the under the desk that stationed against the opposite wall. Mirio took careful steps before he crouched to see Tamaki’s directly. “Amajiki? What are you doing? Are you ok?”

Hearing Mirio’s voice snapped Tamaki out of the tunnel he found himself immersed in. Since putting on his costume, he found himself jumping at even the small sounds of wood shifting or the steps coming from his parents. He didn’t much remember how he exactly ended up in this position and what crossed his mind to end up underneath the desk but he wouldn’t lie, he didn’t exactly want to leave his spot. “It’s….nothing…..” Tamaki said softly as he crouched further into himself.

Until he felt his arm being pulled away from his hair so he could see the concern on Mirio’s face directly. “Then why are you under here?” His friend asked softly, his head slightly tilting to show his confusion.

Seeing that look made Tamaki’s eyes wander around as he thought of what to say next. It wasn’t necessarily that he was avoiding his look but rather, it was his way of trying to formulate all the thoughts that floated around in his mind. He didn’t want to go but he wanted to make Mirio happy but would this really make Mirio happy? So many thoughts ran through his brain and they could only come out as little stutters from the tip of his tongue. “I’m….I’m….sc-scar-re-d….” He managed to speak out, albeit in chopped syllables. His eyes closed once more to go back into that fantastical hole that he created in his mind.

“Why are you scared, Amajiki?” A tiny voice spoke out, making Tamaki reopen his eyes once more. Mirio’s beady eyes crinkled in worry and his mouth gave a small pout that contained a small frown in it.

Once more, Tamaki’s eyes diverted away from his and he could feel small tremors coursing through his body. He took a deep breath in. “I...don’t like the monsters...I don’t want to be hurt….There’s scary sounds and scary people and…I don’t...like those things…” he rambled on, trying to make sense of a situation that had no sense to it.

Tamaki then felt Mirio place his hands into his own and squeeze them tight in the darkness. It was hard to fully make out the emotion that was seen but it almost had a brotherly love attached to it. “There’s no reason to be scared Amajiki. All of it is fake. No one will hurt you.”

“B-but...how do you know?? They could jump out and...and….”

“Amajiki, I won’t let anyone or anything hurt you. I promise. Just trust me, ok?”

Tamaki wasn’t sure if it was that or the exchanges that happened back and forth but soon, having Mirio be someone to lean on, he managed to emerge from under the desk. Things turned into a blur and he didn’t exactly remember how things turned out. His mind went back and forth and switched off reality in moments. One minute, he remembered being in his house and the next, he was outside, walking alongside Mirio. He could hear Mirio speaking talking about different subjects but none of it truly registered in his head. The only thing that went through to him was the calling of his name and his cape fluttering around his feet. There wasn’t a measure on how long they were walking but the quiet winds of the streets gave a sign that they were heading to their destination but not quite there.

Unfortunately, soon enough, the sounds of goblins and ghouls began to mix itself into the winds. The duo reached the school that had been transformed from a clean, pristine building into one with cobwebs stringing from side to side and splotches of black smearing down the side. Animatronic screeches loomed from the interiors of bushes that came with cackles of lightning rotating in.

The closer they reached, the more Tamaki’s teeth chattered with little clicks that echoed from his mouth. His arm gripped tighter onto Mirio’s, holding onto him super tight in this special type of fear that came straight from horror films.

Yet, funnily enough, Mirio looked complete opposite from his friend. His beady black eyes shone with little stars twinkling in his pupils and his mouth formed a perfect amazed gap that was filled with wonder and excitement. If his tail had any form of reality behind it, it would have wagged ridiculously back and forth in this childish excitement that fit for his age. “Woah, that’s so awesome!” Mirio exclaimed, his feet bouncing up and down that made both him and Tamaki bob in unison. “C’mon, we gotta hurry!” And with that last push of pressure, Mirio took their still steps into a run that skidded through the dirt and landed them within the depths of the festival.

[They see a bunch of different costumes and there are some people trying to scare them which works for Tamaki but Mirio is chilling and such]

It was corny to say but it was something of another realm. The school was known to have proper clothing that seemed to be ironed onto skin with serious expressions that could make anyone be stiff. But this, this was something else. Baggy costumes of all kinds floated around with buckets in the shape of pumpkins being swung around. Teachers that only knew how to wear suits wore elaborate costumes with fancy trims and delicate lace that showed their own pleasure into the spirit of the holiday. Even parents took the occasion to wear outfits that uniformed themselves to their children and little cheers and claps came from them as their little monsters performed in excellent ways.

While Mirio took in all the sights and engaged himself at all the beauty surrounding him, Tamaki, on the other hand, began to tremble even harder. If it wasn’t for his ill formed pants, one could be able to easily see his knees buckling within themselves, his kneecaps bruising from the small bangs they were doing. His arms latched even harder to Mirio’s werewolf costume and, if no one knew who he was, they would think that he was actually the wimpiest vampire to ever exist, even more than the ones from the popular series, Twilight.

“Boo!” A voice ringed from behind, echoing within Tamaki’s ear. Fright surged up his spine and he collapsed into Mirio, sending them both soaring into the ground. Tamaki could hear some exchanges happening before a hand shook his clothed shoulder. “Hey are you alright??” Moving in whimpers, Tamaki took in the sights in front of him. The hand that shook him out belonged to Mirio while the adult removed the mask that covered his face to reveal a scared and worried face. Still in a form of shock, Tamaki could only manage a nod before having help from Mirio to stand up. “Oh goodness, I’m so sorry. I didn’t expect this type of reaction. Are you hurt? I can run to go get some stuff,” the adult said, his hands raised to offer any assistance that was needed.

Tamaki only could shake his head while Mirio grabbed onto the sides of his body to keep him steady. “Don’t worry sir, he seems alright!” Mirio responded for Tamaki, coaxing the situation to a calmer state. While Mirio and the man exchanged reassurances, Tamaki looked himself over. To his surprise, there was only a bit of dirt that caught onto his cape from the fall he made that easily was brushed off with a few swipes. When he focused back onto Mirio, the other two exchanged final words before Mirio looked back at his friend with upturned eyebrows. “Are you ok, Amajiki? You didn’t get hurt or anything?” Tamaki shook his head once more, leaving Mirio to check him more thoroughly. After a few swipes of his own, he focused back on his friend and smiled. “Well, why don’t we play some games for a bit? There’s a lot of activities that I am sure we can fun with. C’mon Amajiki,” and hand in hand, they walked into the fairgrounds.

Although it was covered in more halloween decorations and spooky accessories, the games all inherently had the same themes that were present in a regular festival. Ranging from shooting games to activities that involved heavy amounts of bobbing objects, there were children covering each inch of the booths. Little shouts came from the games that signaled activity and beckoned the two boys to join in.

At first, it was a bit difficult for the boys to get into the fun of the games. Costumed kids pushed each other to get to the front, even ignoring the cries from adults that tried to have a semblance of a line. Mirio managed to dodge the hits from the other kids but that didn’t exactly work out for the other boy. Bruises started to form on the top of his skin and multiple times he had to reach out for Mirio when he felt himself being separated from Mirio. At first, Mirio didn’t realize what was happening but when he almost got upset at Tamaki for bumping into him, then those same kids learned well to keep their distance.

After minutes of trying to find that perfect game to play, the boys managed to find space in a game that involved the test of aim. This was a game heavily seen in America that was brought to their festivals time to time and it involved throwing balls into moving vases that circled around in a spiral frenzy.

“Hey, you two! Come try out your aim! Get the ball in the white cup and get a prize!” The attender called out to them, beckoning them closer.

“You wanna try this, Amajiki? It looks like it would be pretty fun,” Mirio asked his friend with a soft yet encouraging tone. Tamaki gave a light nod and he pulled them up to the man. “We would like to try sir!”

“Excellent!” He then dipped lower to pick up a series of balls that balanced themselves on his palm. “Who’s up first?”

“I’ll go!” Mirio volunteered, raising his hand up really high to showcase his readiness. Exchanges happened between them and he bounced on the balls of his feet, gearing up to showcase his aim. “Alright, here I go!” And he began to aim at the moving cups.

If anyone separated the scene into two different parts, a person would believe that Mirio was winning due to the smile and determination that created creases on his forehead. However, the balls ended up nowhere the moving vases. Despite adjusting his strength in different conditions, the balls would roll around in the rims of the cups until they bounced off into the water. The last throw almost made it in, that is until a gust of wind blew it off.

“Sorry about that, young boy. You’ll do better next time,” The attender tried to encourage while collecting the fallen balls to dry them for the next game.

“Ahhh! I was so close!” Mirio grunted out, placing the bottoms of his palm into his eyes.

Tamaki didn’t say anything but he knew that Mirio’s light heartened frustration was actually bothering him much more than what he was letting on. Each time he threw the ball, Tamaki saw the small glint that would cross his eyes that came from the desire of wanting one of the plushies. It wasn’t clear which one attracted him and pushed him forward in determination but knowing his friend, he had a good idea behind.

“I….I would like to try….” Tamaki spoke up, raising his hand shyly. Eyes snapped towards his comment and he tried to hide within his cape until the balls of were thrust towards him. Smiles went around that pushed Tamaki out of the shell he was hiding under. Even Mirio gave a slight cheer and nudged him forward.

Pressure began to build up around Tamaki and his throat kept swallowing down the anxiety that formed lumps in his throat. This was exactly why he never put himself into any type of sports or performances and he almost brought back the balls until a glance at Mirio built in a push of confidence.

Nowhere around the stand or even in the neighboring areas were there mentions of the usage of quirks. There wasn’t anything stated outright that quirks were banned from the fairgrounds. Yet, Tamaki couldn’t help but feel a little guilty at the gasps that erupted when his arm transformed itself into a tentacle from the octopus he ate earlier in the day. The thin endpoint carefully wrapped around the first ball, suctioning it into itself the crevices. With immense precision, he brought his tentacle closer to rotating balls and focused in on the scarce white cups hidden within the sea of color. Their slow pace seemed to speed up within the energy of pressure but Tamaki focused in his senses and flicked it right at the moment his gut told him to do so. Time slowed into a blur that put Tamaki in a haze until Mirio’s shouts and screams pulled him out.

“Oh my gosh, Amajiki!!! That was awesome!!! You’re so freaking cool!!!” Mirio bounced around, going in and out of hugging his friend with a type of spastic energy. It took Tamaki for a second to be brought back to reality but when he returned, he saw the smiles on everyone’s face with the ball resting peacefully in the white cup. Little tugs pulled up on the corners of his mouth and he couldn’t help but feel a tad bit of pride in that. And each moment he managed to get the balls into the desired cups, he could have sworn he felt a little lighter and the shouts were a bit louder.

“My, my, my young lad! Even with the use of your quirk, you did a marvelous job! It’s a rare sight to see for sure!” The man complimented before jerking his thumb towards the prizes surrounding the back frame of the tent. “You can get whatever you want! You can get 4 small prizes, 1 big one with 2 other small ones, or even 2 big ones! Whatever you want!”

Immediately, his answer was met with Tamaki pointing at the big large plushies that were constricted by the large cords. “Are you sure you want those?” Which was met with a strong nod. “Well, alright, give me a second,” the man said as he climbed out of the stand and pulled out a small ladder. He struggled a bit with the tightness of the cords and even gave a small curse under his breath with his hands twisting them around. However, soon enough, he managed to get them down and presented them towards the small child. “Here you go! Enjoy!”

Tamaki brought the two plushies in and almost doubled over in the huge weight that it was creating against his fragile body. He had to set them down on top of a cleaner patch of the ground in order to figure out his bearings. With a small breath in and out, he reached for one of the plushies and hid his face behind it as he turned to Mirio and brought his arms forward. “This….this is for you…..” Tamaki said quietly, a small blush fired up in his cheeks.

He couldn’t see well behind the toy but he could definitely hear the gasp that came from his friend. “Really!? It’s for me!?” Mirio shouted back, forming an image of bouncing feet in Tamaki’s mind.

“...yes….” Tamaki responded softly, his head bobbing slightly in a nod. He pushed it towards Mirio even more, hoping he would take it soon since it was starting to be heavy in his arms.

That hope soon was answered when Mirio took it from his hands and hugged it within himself. “Thank you so much Amajiki! You’re such an amazing friend! It’s the best!” His friend spoke, though there was a small waver in his voice that threatened to release tears. However, once Tamaki picked up his own plush and a cough came from Mirio, the same excitement burst back in. “Let’s go Amajiki!! There’s still a lot to see,” and with that, the boys went off.

It was a bit silly to see two small kids with toys half their size but they somehow managed to traverse the grounds will small peeks of their toys’ shoulders and using the sounds of nearby footsteps. Fortunately, Tamaki recently ate an aquatic animal that had the ability of echolocation so he managed to traverse the grounds while making sure him and Mirio to submit to their sudden deaths. He could hear little sighs of protest coming from Mirio with his inability to see but Tamaki actually enjoyed the lack of sight. His plush kept him in a fuzzy darkness that was comforting. It almost made this experience fun and enjoyable.

“Hey Amajiki! Look! It’s a haunted house! We totally got to go to it!!” Or maybe not.

Tamaki pushed his face more into the back of his plush, smashing his face in enough that it was as if he completely disappeared from sight. “Do...do we have….to?” He asked softly, his tone carrying hesitation, though the indentations muddled within the soft core of the plush.

“Of course we do! This is the biggest thing here! I’ve been looking forward to that all week!” Mirio responded quickly before doubling back a bit and tilting his head towards his friend. “I mean, unless you don’t want to go. It’s fine if you don’t. I won’t make you,” he added, though there was a hint of sadness within it.

Tamaki heard that and peeked over at his friend. Selfishly, he wanted to take on that offer and walk away and never look at it again. Mirio did say that they didn’t have to do it so the lack of pressure dissipated. And yet, Tamaki couldn’t do it. Seeing the lack of glint in his eyes made his stomach turn in different directions. He had never seen a frown on the blonde boy and yet, there it was. And it wasn’t as if Mirio was doing it to make him feel guilty, rather he would do whatever Tamaki desired and needed and would always put his friendship first. Which is why Tamaki had to change his answer. “No it’s ok….we can go….” he muttered to his friend, his voice quiet but still present enough to hear.

“Really? Are you sure? We don’t have to if you don’t feel comfortable. I won’t pressure you,” Mirio responded back, his voice still sincere and worried, yet Tamaki could tell that there was a small little glint in the corner of his eyes. Already feeling regret bubbling inside of him, he nodded his head, affirming his previous words. Suddenly, the saddened face Mirio wore turned brighter, shining in the midst of the darkness looming around them. “Wow, you really are as bright as the sun Tamaki,” he said, though Tamaki couldn’t help but look at the irony in his statement. Then, he felt his hand being intertwined with his friend and he peeped up to see that Mirio beamed at him. “C’mon, let’s go. Don’t worry, it’ll be a lot of fun! I promise! And if you’re ever scared, you can always hold on to me.”

And with a little affirmative noise from Tamaki, the duo moved towards the haunted house.

Not surprisingly enough, there was a line of all ages shooting out from the door of the maze. Jitters and laughs came from the line while screams of those interior echoed against their excitement. Mirio kept bouncing on the balls of feet and moved around the sides that pulled Tamaki along with his movements. Having Mirio’s anxiety to get in only fueled Tamaki’s anxiety to go in, the screams and commotion only intensifying it even more. The shy boy even had to disappear once more into his plush until he heard a grunt. His dark eyes shifted to the owner and the first thing he saw was a teacher wrapped in bandages to a point where any recognizable features were gone. Dark patches of makeup covered any exposed areas of skin, looking as if they crawled out of a casket that buried them alive many years back. Only grunts came out of their mouth but they did hold a sign that stated, “Please leave all belongings in the cabinets to your right!”, to which Tamaki peered past them and saw kids cluttered around the lockers.

Tamaki was about to protest this rule when Mirio pulled on his arm to guide him along the way inside. “We gotta hurry Amajiki! We don’t want a bad spot!” Which was a reason that made Tamaki tilt his head in question but soon became clear when he saw Mirio shove other kids to have that cubby that was the right size for their plushies and bags and that wasn’t too high nor too low. Tamaki froze in the midst of the squandering children so there was a little bit of grace when Mirio took his stuff and placed it right next to his own. It took a bit for his friend to come over back to him but soon they were reunited and Tamaki’s arm began to pull out of his socket with Mirio dragging him along.

The mere second Tamaki laid eyes on the darkened door frame with pieces of stained fabric ruffling in the entrance, he could feel his soul seeping out of him, leaving his body into a frozen state. The only reason his feet kept moving was because of Mirio’s insistent pulls that drove him further into the tunnel. However, when the blood stained fabric brushed against his skin, the shock that froze his limbs shattered into millions of pieces and the adrenaline of fear zapped into him. Shakes covered his whole body and nails dug deep into his friends arms.

Eerie sounds echoed around them that contained jabs of snarls and henious jackal laughs. Hidden speakers scattered around the hallways, making the boys feel as if it was all happening right next to them. Splashes of red light illuminated parts of the hallway to help them find passage, though the first thought that came to Tamaki’s mind was that it was meant to help them lead the way to sudden death. Little ooo’s and aaaa’s came from Mirio and Tamaki questioned in his mind if his friend actually understood the negatives of this maze.

A dead end appeared at the end of the hallway with a window that had shadows dancing behind it. By force, the boys had to turn right with a darkened shadow peering off the left next to the ghostly window. With focus on getting through the new hallway in front of them, neither of them noticed a grotesque female in a tattered dress with zombie holes pushing herself out of the shadows, shouting monstrous noises while curling her clawed hands. Screams bubbled out of the boys and they scurried forward in fear she would be trailing behind them. In that scurry though, they didn’t notice a barn door slamming open and having a bloodied farmer popping out, reaching his arm for the boys to grab on help. However, before they could register the need, a horrific figure seeped behind the farmer and pulled him out of view that soon became replaced with sounds of hacking skin and blood bubbling screams. It felt like a scene from a horror film and Tamaki dug his face more into the crook of Mirio’s neck.

As they continued forward, the horrors turned more into sickening nightmare. The boys pushed through heavy black straps that greeted them with deafening chainsaw sounds. The scenery changed from a dark interior to a red lit farm. Glossy sheep and cows laid strewn on the turf, blood painted on the plastic surface. Bumpy paper mache trees stood tall, almost looking too calm in the scene of horror. They took more cautious steps, looking at the details and getting lost enough to distract the actions in their peripheral. Shooting behind the stationary tree was a younger male with a crumpled mask and plastic knife, charging after them with theatrical groans. Little screams erupted from the kids and they ran with adrenaline pumping in their system.

They pushed through to the next hallway and caught their breath in silence while listening to the whispers of halloween music in the background. Tamaki doubled over and placed his hands on his knees, wheezing from the creatures that popped out at him. He only paid attention to his breathing until the positive energy of Mirio snapped him out of it. “That….was awesome!” He heard Mirio say. Tamaki brought his eyes upwards and saw a gleaming smile on his face, completely serious on his comment. Mirio twisted to his friend and gave him a boost of encouragement. “Are you doing alright, Amajiki?” Tamaki wanted to give a big no along with running in maddening circles but he knew that the only way out was through the tunnel. He gave Mirio a nod and his friend stuck out his arm for him to grab. “Don’t worry, we’re almost there. Just a little bit more!” Mirio continued on, waiting until Tamaki grabbed his arm. “If anything, just close your eyes! Don’t worry, I won’t let anything to you. That’s a promise!”

Tamaki could only nuzzle into his shoulder and nod his head in response. Walking forward, he could steal hear the exaggerated halloween music playing in the background with screams and bangs hitting against the areas of the maze. He could also hear Mirio’s screams that were filled with more of a shock than any actual fear. Tamaki could occasionally feel slimy objects pressing against him or even the cold slivers of chill running up his spine when passing through a new hallway. However, no matter what ran through his mind and whatever colors flashed behind his eyelids, Tamaki made sure that they were kept shut as they traversed through the maze.

Then, a little glimmer of light seeped into his closed lids. He opened them to find a glowing hole, like the light at the end of the tunnel. True, there were hanging corpses and fragments of web shadowing over it but that went over Tamaki’s head. It meant his escape, the end to the horrors he had to endure the while he was stuck here, clutching onto Mirio’s arm and only having his laugh comfort his screams.

“C’mon! We’re almost there!” Mirio exclaimed loudly while pushing the hanged body out of the way. Their steps trudged through the wood flooring and the creepily placed tissue paper that stuck their feet into the ground, as if the maze was trying to keep them within the walls. However, with force, the boys pushed through. It wasn’t easy or fun or even comforting for Tamaki to have to push through hanging corpses that shared deceased eye contact with him with pieces of their toilet paper wrappings brushing against his skin. Nor was it easy or amazing to have to touch anything that had death and blood slime all over it. Yet, the light was getting closer and closer and the chills on his arms subsided and his eyes were screaming in adjustment and it kept going and going until….

They made it outside.

At first, it took Tamaki a small while to adjust to his surroundings. The fairgrounds had completely different vibes than what was shown in the maze. While the interior of the house was decked in horror and fright, the fairgrounds brought him back to the happier side of halloween with candy and costumes running around. Tamaki could feel his heartbeat calming down at the sights of comfort around him. Even his breath slowed down and the hyperextension of anxiety twirled down to a more easy rate, one that he was more used to.

“Congratulations for getting through the maze you guys!” A teacher in a witch costume encouraged. In her hands were little pumpkins buckets filled with all sorts of sweets brimming at the top. “Here, take this you guys. You earned it! Don’t forget to pick up your stuff!” She said with a sweet smile as she handed the buckets to the boys. Mirio gave a loud gasp while Tamaki matched it with wide eyes. Every candy that a sweet tooth desired found its way in the bucket and Tamaki couldn’t help but feel his mouth watering with anticipation to eating one of the candies in there.

Yet, before he could quickly pop one in his house, he grew distracted at the posture Mirio was doing. In his hand, Mirio held up a piece of chocolate with a grin slapped on his face. “Let’s do a toast to the night we already had so far and for the night to come!” And he brought the chocolate closer to Tamaki, hoping for a little bop back. It took a bit for Tamaki to get and Mirio had to give a small hint but he managed to scavenege a similar piece of chocolate and gave it a small boop into the one Mirio had in his hand while giving a small cheers in return. In unison, the boys ripped through the wrapper and chucked the chocolate in, savoring the sweet and melting flavor against their small tongues.

Silence passed between them when they tasted the goods but their swallows aligned at the right second and Mirio hooked his arm within Tamaki’s. “Alright, let’s get our stuff and do more stuff! There’s a lot to do and I’m sure we can get more candy!” He told Tamaki excitedly, making him walk toward the cabinets.

Tamaki didn’t say a word while Mirio went on and on about the different activities that were still left to do. However, it wasn’t exactly a terrified silence. Rather, and to his shock, Tamaki ended up smiling and nodding towards Mirio’s words, almost as if he was excited for the rest of the night. As if….this was going to end up being one of the best days within Tamaki’s life so far.

#bnha #mha #my hero academia #boku no hero academia #bnha halloween big bang #mirio togata #tamaki amajiki #miritama

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krustywhore · 6 years

Text

epilogue

here it is. sorry in advance. (also, tumblr doesn’t keep italics and stuff and i’m too lazy to add them back in, so here it is on ao3 with all that jazz)

tag list: @the-woild-is-my-what-now @wetcoffeejpg @disasterbisexualhere @landofgoodbye @queer-pippa @king-of-new-yoirk @hellomynameisjo @hufflepuffpride210 @turnitoffspot

Guilt isn't something real. It's not physical, you can't touch it or get rid of it, but it's always there. It's almost as if it's an entity of its own. Guilt is a force that eats you up from the inside, clawing away at every last piece of hope that you had until it's gone and the only thing left is the knowledge that there's always something else you could've done.

The moment that Jack and Race walked into the lodging house, everything was different. None of the other newsies dared to say a word. They just sat there staring as Spot set Skip down on Davey's lap before rushing to the two. He slid an arm around Race's waist, supporting the boy a little more as they walked into a small room off the main hallway. The two older boys gently maneuvered Race onto one of the beds, closing the door behind them.

Jack finally let himself breathe as he sat down on the old, wood floors. The cracking paint on the walls, the rumble of the old plumbing running throughout, and all the things that reminded him that, as completely insane as it felt, he was home. He was home and the strike was over. He was here and so was Race. They were home. He and Spot carefully made sure the boy was comfortable before he heard the door behind them creak open.

Spot turned around expectantly like any regular person would've.

Jack immediately dove in front of Race, keeping the boy tucked behind him. He shut his eyes fiercely as if prepping for impact, but nothing came.

"Jack?" That wasn't Snyder. That wasn't Snyder, or one of the bulls, or a guard, or anyone that would ever hurt him.

He cracked his eyes open just the slightest amount and Davey was standing terrified in the doorway. His chest felt tight just looking at the boy so afraid of him, but he couldn't help the relief that flooded over him.

"Fuck," he muttered, running his hands through his hair as he felt his heartbeat begin to slow. He stood, wobbling a little on tired legs, and collapsed into the taller boy's arms. "Dave I's so sorry."

His tears poured down his cheeks as he clung tightly for dear life. "I thought I'd never see you again, Jack," Davey's voice shook as he spoke into Jack's hair. "God, I thought I almost lost you."

Their heartbeats were beating perfectly in sync, Jack finally letting himself relax even for just a second.

"I don' wanna' talk, I don' wanna' talk 'bout it, Dave," he breathed, his voice wavering a little as the other ran his fingers up and down Jack's spine.

"That's okay," Davey quickly assured him. "I won't make you talk about it until you're ready. Don't even worry about it."

Jack let out a shaky exhale and tightened his grip on Davey's waist.

"Come on, Jackie, let's go sit down. We can talk about this later, but let's get you to bed for a little while-"

"No!" Jack interrupted, holding onto Davey tight enough to probably leave a bruise, but the boy didn't make any attempt to move him. "I...I can't leave, I-I can't leave 'im."

" 'S fine, Kelly. I got 'im, jus' take care a' ya'self," Spot spoke up, his normally steely gaze now just as afraid as Jack's, a strange sort of comfort to the boy. "Let Dave take care a' ya', I'll be sure ta' let ya' know if anythin' happens, I promise."

Jack hesitated for a moment before he nodded against Davey's chest and the latter led him upstairs to the rooftop.

The silence of the increasingly emptying room was deafening. Spot felt like he could finally relax a little, though, as he closed the door and sat down on the edge of the small cot. He gently ran his fingers through Race's hair, trying as hard as he could not to think about how high his fever felt against his hand.

He couldn't lose Race. He just couldn't.

He took a chance on that kid, really opened up to someone for the first time since he'd been living on the streets, and he wasn't sure he'd ever be able to do it again if anything happened to that boy. So he couldn't lose him. He couldn't watch the one person he truly loved slip through his fingers without ever being able to do anything.

So that was why he took up a small collection from the kids in Brooklyn, he made some bets at the Sheepshead, and even took an extra few papes every day so he could get that boy a proper doctor. A little voice in the back of his head was warning him that it was hopeless. It was screaming not to waste his time on something so doomed, but he didn't care. Besides, it was for Race. Even if it was for nothing, it wouldn't be wasted. Any effort he made would be worth it for every single day they got to spend together.

And as he sat in that room for days just talking to the boy and waiting for him to wake up, he began to realize things. Like all the years that he had taken for granted. He never once sat down and thought about what his life would be like without Race sneaking in through his bedroom window every night. He never imagined what it would be like to sell alone at the races, never once daring to risk his money on the bets. Hell, he never thought he'd lose Race to the refuge even for just a few days! They spent years hiding what was then only an innocent friendship with Race somehow finding the means to sneak back and forth between Manhattan and Brooklyn hundreds of times.

Race never got caught. Not doing anything. He stole Finch's slingshot? No one would ever know. He snagged one of Henry's combs? Hell if anyone else knew! The refuge never even seemed like a problem until all of a sudden there he was.

Spot spent that night and many others not leaving that tiny room for longer than it took to go to the bathroom or to grab Race a glass of water from the tap in the kitchen.

Two days had gone by when Race finally started getting antsy. Hell, he hadn't seen his friends in ages at that point! Jack and Davey had been paranoid, not letting anyone into the room without showering first, swearing that if there was any way to prevent any more germs from getting in there, they would take full advantage of it.

But then Race asked to see Crutchie.

They all knew he was going to eventually. Crutchie had even been asking Jack if he could ever since the boys got back, but it was just too risky at first.

Until they thought, maybe it wasn't.

After all that time, Crutchie would finally get to see the boy that literally almost died just on the off chance he would save him. He wasn't sure if he could even bring himself to do it.

It wasn't until December twelfth. The worst day.

Everyone had thought things were getting better. They all thought the refuge was behind them. The strike was over, the newsies throughout the city were living better than ever before, and it seemed like that meant Manhattan too.

But that was before Race seemed to stop getting better. Sure, anything had been better than that cramped little cell in the refuge and it did wonders at first just to be back in the lodging house, but soon enough, there wasn't much else that fresh air and a bed could fix.

And that was when Jack started working harder. He took at least an extra fifty papes every day just in an attempt to get some more food for the boy at the end of the day.

And then Spot stopped leaving Manhattan. He would sell some papes through Manhattan's circulation if Race was asleep, and if he wasn't, he refused to leave his side.

It was awful not knowing whether anything they were doing was making a difference at all.

Most of Manhattan's boys weren't even allowed into the room where they were keeping Race. That is, unless he specifically asked for them. They claimed it was too dangerous and they couldn't risk the chance of making his infection worse by bringing in any unnecessary germs, but Race knew the other side to it.

They didn't the boys to see him.

Race couldn't really see what he looked like, but he knew it had to be bad. He knew however bad it was, it was enough to scare the kids, and that was all the answer he needed.

So he played along and agreed when he needed to that letting any extra germs in was a risk no one was willing to take.

But that morning of December twelfth, Jack came into Race's small room to try and get some fluids into him. Spot, who had refused to leave the boy's side yet again, was still asleep against the wall by the bed, his hand in Race's.

Race sat up slightly as he heard the boy walk in, accepting Jack's glass of water and sipping it slowly. The lukewarm drink still felt like heaven on his dry throat. He had gone a few days without speaking more than a few instances, but every breath was like sandpaper in his throat and he could barely fill his lungs from what felt like a pile of bricks on his chest.

Jack looked like a trainwreck. His eyes were bloodshot from lack of sleep and that didn't help the darkening bags under his eyes either. He never smiled anymore, not real ones anyway. He was too busy driving himself insane with guilt.

"Jackie," Race rasped, grateful that the boy was still close enough so he wouldn't have to strain his voice much. Jack looked up and met his gaze, a mutual sadness behind their eyes for the other's state. "D'ya think Crutchie's ready ta' see me?"

Jack twisted up the corner of his lips almost like the signature smirks that always used to paint his face, but this wasn't the same. But he nodded, shrugging his shoulders.

"I know ya' wanna' talk to 'im, he jus'...he's tryna' take tha' blame for all a' this. He's jus' scared, 's all. I's sure if I told 'im you's real eager ta' see 'im, he'd give in," Jack spoke with something akin to fondness in his tone when he spoke about his friend, almost like he felt the same.

He did, Race knew he did. Jack just wouldn't let himself admit it, but he felt responsible. He tortured himself with that guilt just the same.

"Thanks," Race mumbled, a small smile creeping its way out in hopes of reassuring the other.

Jack nodded once more, bowing his head as he stood, carefully closing the door behind him.

As soon as Jack was gone, Race squeezed Spot's hand gently, watching as the boy began to stir. God, he really was nearly as bad as Jack. He instantly sat up on his knees, switching his position to be able to assess the other. The panic in his eyes was almost natural at that point as Spot quickly feared for the worst.

Race smiled weakly, reaching up as he cupped Spot's cheek in his palm. The latter chuckled awkwardly, still slightly uncomfortable by the affection.

"I's okay, Spotty. Ya' don't gotta' worry all tha' time, I ain't goin' nowhere," Race whispered, softening the other's expression. Spot covered Race's hand on his face, leading it over slightly as he quickly kissed the boy' palm.

"I ain't gonna' stop worryin'," he stated, Race nodding as he knew it was true. "But I'll try."

The other smiled, his baby blue eyes once again holding a sparkled the way they used to.

"Thank you," he mumbled, leaning over the edge of the bed as he bent his head forward onto Spot's shoulder. He tilted his chin just enough for his chapped lips to meet the other's tanned neck and he felt his pulse beating.

Spot ducked down, his fingers curling gently around the other's shirt collar as he found Race's lips and kissed him for real that time. It felt like it had been so long. So, so, long. The hand holding his shirt slid back up to hold the base of his neck and Race tossed an arm over Spot's shoulder. They couldn't stop smiling. It was like a trance had suddenly changed everything, even for just a moment.

For just a moment, Race didn't feel like he was breaking apart. He didn't feel like every touch on his body was a burn. For once since he had left, he felt like he could breathe right and his headache wasn't making him dizzy, this time it was just the giddiness in his heart that made him feel like he was floating.

"I love you," Race murmured breathlessly as they broke apart, leaning their foreheads together. "I nearly lost my head in tha' refuge afta' ya' said that, Spotty. I...I thought I wouldn't eva' be able ta' say it back, but I love ya'. I love ya' so much."

Spot had tears in his eyes when he leaned back. His hands were shaking as he quickly reached for Race's.

"Wait, did I...did I do somethin'? Spot, baby, I's sorry, I didn't mean ta', I swear, I jus'-"

Spot kissed him again, holding the back of the boy's neck as Race's surprise slowly turned into pleasure and he relaxed, winding his arms around Spot's shoulders.

"Don't ya' dare apologize," Spot grumbled breathily, only pausing for a second before diving back in. "I love ya' too, you goddamn idiot."

Race chucked, freezing as he heard the door creak open. He pulled away, looking up towards the door as his face went beet red. Crutchie was standing in the doorway, a mix of relief and embarrassment on his equally-red face.

'H-hey Crutch," Race spoke up, his voice cracking and definitely not helping his embarrassment.

Crutchie smiled, shifting in place awkwardly as he rubbed the back of his neck.

"I, uh...I can go if ya' want," he suggested, an uncomfortable forced smile on his face.

"No! No, it's...it's okay, we's jus' sayin' goodbye, right Spotty?" Race nudged his boyfriend's shoulder as the latter only gave a small sigh of disappointment. Race glared a little, but Spot just stood, bending down to quickly kiss the other's forehead, and he reluctantly left. "Thanks for comin'. I, um...I didn't really know what ta' say. Still don't really."

Crutchie crossed the room, sitting down on the edge of the bed beside Race as he listened to his friend ramble.

"Oh, it's okay," Crutchie quickly assured him. "I didn't really...know what ta' say either, I guess."

They didn't speak for a moment. Crutchie couldn't speak as soon as he heard Race cough. He watched the boy clutch his hands to his chest as his throat rasped and Crutchie felt sick.

"I can't," he mumbled, leaning forward to bury his face in his hands. "I can't jus'...sit here."

As Crutchie stood, dragging himself over to the door, he looked back at Race and the heartbroken look on his face said it all.

"Char-"

"I fuckin' did this ta' you," he breathed, his hands gripping at his face and hair as tears pooled in the corners of his eyes. Race tried to stand up, immediately wobbling like a foal on his stick-thin legs. He hadn't tried to stand without help in ages. He should've known he'd be in a sheepish heap on the ground within a few seconds. Crutchie tossed his crutch to the side as he tried to catch the other, but, as he should definitely know after years of using his crutch, he too, found himself on the ground.

And then Race laughed. It was small and hoarse, but it was a laugh. Crutchie looked up from frantically trying to make sure the boy was okay and felt himself relax.

"Sorry," he mumbled, blushing a little as he brushed away the tears that had been spilling down his cheeks just moments ago.

Race smiled sheepishly, folding his legs underneath his body as he picked himself up off the floor. He opened his arms, gesturing for the younger boy to come closer as he pushed himself across the floor to hug the other tightly. Race winced at first at the tightening of his skin that stung his chest, but it soon began to fade into numbness and he let himself focus on making sure that his friend was okay.

"I's so sorry," Crutchie mumbled into Race's shoulder, the shakiness returning to his voice. Race forced out a weak chuckle as he curled his arm up around the boy, ruffling his hair a little. "I's so sorry, this is all my fault, I...I should'a been tha' one in there, not you's. We don't...we don't trade lives."

Race felt his heart fall through his chest as it shattered on the floor.

"W-we don't trade lives for each other," Crutchie shuddered, gripping onto the back of Race's shirt in tight fistfuls. "Y-ya' can't give ya'self up jus' for me, I don'-"

"Crutch, I ain't tradin' my life for anythin'," Race interrupted. His eyes were tried and puffy, but stern. Not a hint of anything but honesty. "I wasn't gonna' let ya' in there, I know it ain't a place you's eva' gonna' get out of, so's I figured I'd give it a shot. Ya' know me, I's too stubborn ta' let 'em keep me locked up for long. It's jus' a matter a' days b'fore I bust outta' this joint too."

Crutchie giggled a little, redness filling his cheeks. He let his smile stay that time as Race coughed again, this time a little harsher, but Crutchie tried not to worry as much. Race was still there. he was still the annoying asshole who wouldn't let anyone keep him cooped up for long and before Crutchie could even blink, he'd be back on the streets jogging over to Brooklyn like nothing ever happened. He knew it. At the time felt so real he could see it when he shut his eyes.

So he did it again.

That night, just before the sun went down, Crutchie looked up from his book. With more convincing than the boys would like to admit, Crutchie was able to get them to agree to let him keep watch that night. He was almost certain Spot was probably still sitting right outside the door and Jack was probably sitting in the common room right next door with his ear to the wall, but he didn't care. It had only been about half an hour since Crutchie came back, but he was so much more relaxed than when he first showed up. Race was just drifting in and out of sleep, coughing every one in a while, and then going back to bed.

He never could've seen it coming. It didn't matter how many times Davey told him it wasn't his fault, or that he couldn't have known something was up, but he couldn't stop thinking about all the things he missed.

It had been less than half an hour when Race started coughing and didn't stop. After a few coughs, he closed his book, rolling over onto his side.

"Race? You okay?" He tried not to let the increasing worry show in his voice, but he could tell it was plastered all over his face as soon as Race rolled over onto his back and looked up at the other. "Oh shit, okay, j-jus' hold on a second, I's gonna' go get Jack, jus' s-stay right 'ere." Crutchie rambled, scrambling to his feet as he collected his crutch and practically flew out the door.

Just outside the door, as they both suspected, was Spot. He dashed in right behind Crutchie as he slid to his knees, immediately looking everywhere but Race's face.

"H-hey baby," he whispered, trying to choke back the panic in his voice as his throat went dry. God, his heart was going to beat right out of his chest if he didn't find some way to fix this. "It's gonna' be okay, I promise. I won't let anythin' happen to ya', I swear. Not ever again."

Race smiled a little, mainly just for Spot's sake, but it was there. He couldn't deny that the way Spot took Race's hand and held it to his own chest to prove he was there made him feel just a little bit better. Race opened his mouth to speak, a dry, raspy sound coming out instead as Spot quickly reached over to run his thumb over the boy's lips.

"Shh, don't hurt ya'self, Tony. It ain't worth it, jus' save it for later," he teased at the end, a little watery smile covering up the little devilish, self-conscious voice in his head telling him there wasn't going to be a 'later'. He blocked it out. He had to.

So Race didn't speak, he just pulled his hand away from where it held Spot's against the latter's chest, bringing it to his lips and kissing it softly where their fingers wound together. As he lifted their hands away, he closed his eyes softly for just a moment, taking a couple slow breaths as if he had the wind knocked out of him. His shaky inhales were painful, it was written all over his face, but he still held it back and didn't let it show.

That made all the difference after Jack stumbled in the door, catching himself from falling on the doorframe. It was like slow motion as Jack's confused look shattered into horror. He clutched his mouth, leaning his head into the doorframe, a few seconds of hesitation, possibly disbelief, crossing his mind before he opened his eyes again and nothing had changed. Not a dream. No, not even a nightmare.

"J-Jack?" Race spoke up, looking over Spot's shoulder as the mentioned boy moved to kneel beside Spot.

"Yeah, kid. I's right here," he spoke, forcing his lips to curl up, but not even coming close to meeting his eyes. "I's right 'ere, jus' like I's been every step a' the way. I ain't goin' nowhere, kid."

Race managed a small smile before coughing again, this time too fast to grab a scrap of the old rags and simply coughing into his hands instead. Nothing could ever prepare the boys in that room for the look on Race's face when he pulled away his hand and blood came dripping through his fingers and dribbling down his chin. He looked dizzy, like the thought of seeing something so horrific had finally sunk it, but Spot quickly climbed around on top of the bed, seating himself right beside Race as he sat up against the wall.

"C'mon Tony, ya' gotta' sit up, jus' come 'ere n' sit wit' me," he murmured, sliding his hands under Race's shoulders and pulling him back from behind, holding him tight against his chest. Spot wasn't sure if Race could feel his heartbeat pounding against his back, but it was there, searing and throbbing and absolutely fucking terrified. "That's it, you's okay, I got ya'."

Race winced a little as he finally reached a comfortable position, but he knew he would rather be curled up with Spot than alone in that claustrophobic little room drowning in his own blood.

"J-J-Jack?" He croaked, the aforementioned boy taking one of his hands as soon as he spoke.

"Right 'ere, kid," Jack sighed, trying to keep the fear out of his voice to the best of his ability.

"I don't wanna g-go," he cried, his eyes wide and full of tears as Jack froze under his gaze. "I...I's scared, Jack."

Spot's arms tightened around his boyfriend as he leaned forward, kissing the crook of the boy's neck. There was a small spot on Race's shirt where the other's tears had fallen.

Jack couldn't move. His mind was spinning in circles and everything hurt. He couldn't. He couldn't just...die.

He had promised. Jack made a promise when he took over Manhattan that he would protect those kids and now...now he had no idea what to do anymore. He wasn't sure if he was still crying, he couldn't feel anything, just the dizziness in his head and the knife that felt like it was twisting right into his heart.

Spot whispered something into Race's ear that only seemed to make things worse. Jack would've been the first to go after him, but for once, he couldn't bring himself to move.

"Everythin's gonna' be fine," Spot rambled, almost as if he was trying to convince himself, rather than Race. "I ain't gonna' let anythin' happen to ya', don't ya' know that? I ain't gonna' let you go, ya' should know by now, I ain't good at giving up, Tony."

Race smiled weakly, a slight tilt of his head giving him space to bury his face into Spot's neck, rolling onto his side and giving Jack a full view of the thing that was causing this whole mess. Right there, in the middle of Race's chest, was a spot of blood seeping through the front of his shirt and dripping slowly down through the holes in the fabric. Jack felt sick.

"I-I-I's so s-sorry," he shuddered, surprising himself that he was actually able to form words. Race looked up, his tired blue eyes meeting Jack's teary brown ones and not moving even for a second.

Race didn't move, instead, he just reached out a hand and grabbing onto Jack's. He was shaking so much Jack wasn't sure he was even consciously moving, but the second he could, he held tighter than he thought possible.

"J-Jackie, I ain't m-mad at ya'," Race whispered, Jack shaking his head, his hand covering his mouth as he tried to get himself to breathe easier. "I-I ain't mad at all, jus'...jus' d-don't leave m-me."

Jack shook his head again, firmer this time as he sniffled, ducking his head as he lifted their conjoined hands to his forehead. "I can't lose ya', kid. I ain't goin' anywhere, but you gotta' promise me ya' won't go neither."

Race laughed, a tiny, raspy, heartbroken laugh, and Jack blocked out every other sound. "Jack, ya' know I c-can't do that."

The latter sniffled, nodding slowly as he took shaky breaths.

"Y-yeah...," he sighed, his voice cracking as he forced out a smile without an ounce of believability.

They could've sat like that for hours with Spot holding Race tightly as he whispered quiet sweet-nothings in his ear and Jack sat beside the bed holding onto his hand and refusing to let himself think about anything else. It was almost so perfect. It was almost as if nothing earth-shatteringly awful was happening, but then he heard the screaming.

"Jack! Jack Kelly I know you's in there, c'mon! Let me in! Kelly, I swear ta' god, let me see Race! I's done waitin', let me in for fuck's sake!"

Race would recognize that voice anywhere.

"A-Albert?" His soft whisper was almost inaudible, but it was enough to raise Jack to the door and get him to open up.

And, speak of the devil, there he was. Albert stood at the door, Skip standing beside him leading him over. She was frustrated, it was written all over her face, but she didn't falter when Jack opened the door looking like someone who'd already been to hell and back.

"I ain't allowed in, I's sure," Skip sighed, almost as if she just wanted to say it to call Jack out. He glanced over his shoulder, but shook his head as he turned back to her. "Sorry, kiddo. I jus'...I don't want ya' ta' see this," he sighed, his voice heavier as Skip nodded, hugging him quickly before turning away.

"Tell 'im I miss 'im," she mumbled before turning away without another word. Jack looked up, his eyes meeting Alberts as the red-haired boy who always seemed to be sporting the palest skin of the group somehow seemed to have gone even paler. His face looked like he'd seen a ghost and Jack ran a hand through his hair, preparing himself before he opened the door for the boy, knowing that even if he didn't like what he saw, Albert didn't care.

"Be careful. I...I know I don't gotta' tell ya' not ta' say anythin' too scary, but he's terrified, Al. Jus' be there for 'im," Jack spoke, the other sniffling as he stepped inside.

"Oh god...," Albert whispered, Jack turning around as he shut the door behind them and Albert shakily stumbled into the place Jack had just been sitting. "Oh god, oh god, oh my fucking god, Race."

"Al-"

"No!" He snapped, sinking to his knees beside his best friend, taking his hand just like Jack had just been doing. "N-no...ya' don't get ta' tell me how ta' do this, Jack. Not this time. I's done listening ta' you's, not when this is what comes from it."

Race looked between Jack and Albert, shrinking away from both as he moved to sit closer to Spot. He couldn't bring himself to deal with his friends fighting, especially not over him.

"Allie, c'mon, it...it ain't w-worth it," he mumbled, but Albert wasn't having it.

"No, ya' know what? No, I's done 'ere. I paid for a week 'ere n' as soon as tha' weeks done, I's out. I got a fam'ly I could stay wit', n' I's been stayin' 'ere for so long 'cause I thought I had a fam'ly 'ere too, but from everythin' I know, a fam'ly wouldn't stand for one a' they's own stuck on his fucking death bed 'cause you thought we needed a few extra pennies," Albert cried, tears spilling down his cheeks as he glared at Jack, the latter slowly backing away as he looked back and forth between Albert and Race. "I don't care what ya' think ya' could or couldn't do ta' stop it. You's still tha' one that got us all inta' this mess, n' you's always gonna' be tha' one responsible!"

The silence that followed Albert's outburst was nearly deafening.

Jack stood there frozen for ages before he simply nodded, ducked his head, and turned towards the door.

"Jack," Race spoke up, his voice breaking as the former turned back around, looking at Race, now shifting away from both Spot and Albert. "Jack, y-you promised."

He froze, his hand shaking right above the doorknob. He promised. God, he had never wanted to keep a promise less in his life, but...he would do it if it was what Race wanted.

"Jackie, ya' s-said ya' w-w-wouldn't leave m-me," he rasped, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand as he finished, a smeared line of blood now brushed from his lip and down to his chin. Jack felt like he'd been kicked in the gut. He turned, not meeting Albert's eyes as he slid down on the end of the bed, facing the three others.

"I ain't goin' nowhere, kid. B'sides, you's ain't allowed no go nowhere either," he supplied, smirking half-heartedly.

Race didn't respond, he simply dove back into Spot's shoulder, his shoulders shaking heavily as he coughed, the other running his hands up and down the boy's back. Race pulled away, tears pouring down his cheeks so quickly they mixed with the blood running from his lips. He frantically tried to rub as much of it off as he could, the red stains now covering the front of his shirt and his hands, not to mention the boy behind him.

"S-s-stop," he whispered, his voice wavering as if he was dizzy, still not looking up at anything.

"Race-"

"A-Albie, ya' g-g-gotta' g-get outta' 'ere," he slurred, looking up as he met the boy's eyes. Albert had angry tears brewing in his eyes as the horror took over his expression. "P-please."

"Wait, what? Race, what tha' hell? I can't jus' leave ya' here!" He grabbed for one of Race's hands, but the latter pulled away, grabbing at Jack instead. He took a deep breath, wiping the corner of his mouth once more before he spoke.

"Al, y-you's my b-b-best friend. Ya' know t-that, b-b-but I c-can't have ya' b-b-blamin' Jack. He...h-he's tha' only one that's b-b-b-been wit' me t-through this whole m-m-mess. I c-can't do this w-without 'im," he cried softly, his voice barely audible and so raspy it sounded painful just to listen to. "Albie, ya' g-gotta' let us d-d-do this. I love ya' s-so much, b-b-but I c-can't h-have ya' in 'ere."

The mere seconds between that last word and the moment Albert moved to stand up could've been hours if you asked any of the boys. But he stood anyway, leaning over as he wrapped an arm around his shoulders, gripping the boy so tightly the others were afraid he might break, but Race did the same and they stayed like that for a moment before they finally began to move.

"I really do love' ya, brother," Albert spoke sadly, the tears in his eyes now beginning to slowly fall. "I-I's so sorry."

"I k-know ya' d-do," Race smiled, his eyes genuinely crinkling at the corners. "D-don't touch any a' my f-fuckin' cigars, a-asshole."

And Albert finally smiled as he stood, walking right up to the door before he stopped, balanced on the balls of his feet and he turned his head over his shoulder, a watery smile on his face.

"No promises," he whispered, both of their smiles fading the moment he stepped out the door.

So Race leaned back against Spot, wheezing a little like he was out of breath.

"Kelly," Spot started, absentmindedly weaving his fingers through Race's hair as he caught Jack's attention. "Get 'im some water or somethin'."

Yeah, Jack could see it in his eyes that Spot wanted a couple minutes alone, and yeah, he could hear it in his voice that as soon as Jack left the room he would break, but he stood anyway and nodded, not saying a word as he left. He took one look back at Race to make sure he was alright with the boy stepping out for a second, but he was way too distracted by Spot and frankly, getting his attention was a situation he definitely didn't want to be in.

"Tony?" Spot's voice was shy and soft as his breath nipped the back of Race's neck. He turned his head, looking up at the boy with his arms around him. A small smile appeared as their eyes finally met. "You doin' okay right now?"

Race shrugged, curling himself up a little as he looked away, resting his head under Spot's chin.

"C'mon, T, ya' gotta' help me out 'ere. I ain't goin' anywhere, I's here ta' help ya'. I gotta' know what's wrong so's I can fix it, okay baby?" He was so soft, so gentle, it was no wonder he wanted Jack to leave first. "Please, Tony. There's gotta' be somethin' I can do ta' fix this."

Race just tightened his arms around Spot's middle, shaking his head against the other's chest.

"Race, baby, I...I ain't jus' gonna' give up on this, you...you know I can't do that," he spoke, his voice wavering like it was seconds away from breaking.

"J-jus' hold m-m-me...please," Race mumbled, not really sure if it was even loud enough for Spot to hear, but it seemed to work because Spot just pulled him closer and ran his fingers through his hair, just like he always did whenever they were lucky enough to be alone. The silence was nice. It seemed like they were constantly slipping in and out of silence in that room, but it was nice. It was comforting the way they never needed to say anything, they were just perfectly happy laying there together.

That is, until things really took a turn for the worst.

Race coughed. Just once, nothing they hadn't all seen before, but then it happened again. And again. And again, and again, and again until he couldn't stop and there was blood all over his hands and dripping from his lips and he was crying and screaming with pain until Jack came running back. That moment as Jack ran in the door and Spot looked up at him with his boyfriend screaming in his arms, they knew

They were in the endgame now.

Everything was moving in slow motion. Spot's hands gently running up and down Race's back as he coughed, Jack's footsteps as he moved to crouch back down beside the bed, even Race's own tears seemed to be falling slowly as they all carefully made sure not to scare the boy further.

"H-hey, kid," Jack spoke, placing a hand on Race's knee. He was going to put on a brave face. He was going to put on a brave face and make sure that kid knew he wasn't alone and he was going to do it no matter what was about to happen. He owed the kid that much, at least. "You...you feelin' okay right now? Ya' know, like...ya' pillows n' shit?"

Race chuckled and both of the other boys had to admit it was nice. Just seeing another genuine smile was really, really nice. He nodded and Spot slowly kissed the side of his head, where his forehead met his hair and Race leaned back against him.

"Good ta' know I's makin' a good pillow, T," Spot said, pretending nothing happened when his voice broke as Race interrupted his sentence to cough his lungs out again into the crook of his elbow. He leaned back as he finished, his face plastered with pure exhaustion. No one should look like that after just coughing. His eyelids were drooping and his cheeks were so flushed it reminded Spot of the first moment after Race kissed him for the first time and-

No. Nope, he wouldn't ruin the best day of his life by thinking about it during the worst. No way.

"Jack?" Race asked, making Jack's heart jump into his throat for about the fiftieth time that day. "A-am...am I gonna' d-d-die?"

And there it was. The painful truth none of them had let themselves accept until that very moment. He said it. He said exactly what they were all thinking and that made it real because if Race felt it too...then they weren't just worried for nothing. So Jack ruffled his hair and pulled him in tight against his chest. Just in case he didn't get to do it again. Just in case.

"Don't worry 'bout anythin', kid," he spoke softly, nodding to Spot who had finally, after that entire ordeal, let his tears fall. Jack knew he had been avoiding the exact same thought. "That 'aint anythin' you's gotta' worry 'bout, I promise. Me n' Spotty, we's gonna' worry 'bout that, you-...you jus' try ta' relax, yeah? Think ya' can do that, Racer?"

A shrug and a small nod between wheezes and coughs was enough of an answer to Jack and it wasn't like they would get more even if they wanted it. Race laid almost fully on Spot, resting his head against the boy's chest with an arm wrapped around his middle and the other gripping the front of Spot's shirt tightly. They could both tell he was in pain just from the way he was laying. He didn't want to say anything, Race literally never did, but this was apparently no different. Always one for pride, Race would swallow his own and wouldn't let a soul know he was anything but perfectly fine. There was no reason to hide it anymore, but old habits die hard and that was definitely a very old habit.

"H-hey, S-S-Sean?" He stammered as he spoke, not even lifting his head from off the boy's chest.

"Hmm?"

"I's s-so t-t-tired," he whined, a hint of a yawn sneaking into the end of his words.

Fuck.

Spot looked at Jack and Jack looked at Spot and they both knew exactly what the other was thinking and hell no. Nope. No. No way.

"Y-yeah?" God, he tried so hard to stop the tears from falling as he started to rock back and forth just a little, keeping his love securely wrapped in his arms. "W-well, I think ya' can h-hold on a little longer for me, Tony. B'esides, it-it ain't even m-midnight yet."

Race nodded, rubbing his eyes and keeping them open a little longer.

"R-right," he breathed, not looking at either of the boys as if he was simply thinking out loud. "I get t-ta' see Sean at m-m-midnight, d-did ya' know t-that, Jackie?"

Shit. Okay, delusions kicking in was definitely not a good sign.

"O-oh, yeah? That's funny, because I think he got 'ere a little early, ain't that right, Spotty?"

Spot bent his head in, kissing the boy's cheek as Race beamed.

"Y-you...you're 'ere already!" He grinned as far as he could, his eyes lighting up and his trembling hands reaching up to cup Spot's face. "I m-missed ya'."

Spot took one of Race's hands and dragged it over to his lips, kissing the inside of the boy's palm. Jack honestly felt like he was intruding a little, but he couldn't bring himself to leave. Not now, not ever again.

"I missed ya' too, baby," he mumbled against Race's hand, dipping his head and letting himself be held for once. "B-but it's okay, I's here now, yeah? We's got plenty a' time now."

But Race shook his head. "I...I-I's still so t-t-tired."

Jack lifted himself off his knees to sit on the edge of the bed, accepting as Race reached for one of Jack's hands. He ran his thumb over the now fading bruises that remained on the boy's knuckles from their stay in the refuge. God, it seemed like so long ago now. He honestly thought things couldn't get any worse after that.

He couldn't have been more wrong.

"Jackie, you's a g-good big b-brother," he spoke, smiling as Jack quickly brushed away a few tears that fell. Maybe Jack smiled back because he didn't believe it, or maybe he smiled back because just seeing Race's undeniably contagious smile was rubbing off on him, or maybe he smiled because deep, deep down under layers and layers of self-doubt and constantly questioning if he did enough for his kids, he knew they all turned out alright. Some of them, so much more than just 'alright'.

"Thanks, kid," he sighed, reaching up to ruffle Race's hair just a little. "You's a pretty good little brother too."

And that seemed to do it. Pleased with his affirmation, he turned his head back up to Spot and laid as comfortably as he could in his arms.

"H-hey Sean?" He asked, the tiniest flush of color rising to his pale cheeks. "C-can...can I have a k-kiss g-g-goodnight?"

Spot nodded, biting his lip and shutting his eyes tight as Jack watched tears roll off his cheeks. He looked back down as Race's shaking hands reached up to gently brush away his tears.

" 'Course," he whispered, taking Race's face in his own hands. Even through it all, his eyes were still that beautiful baby blue that made Spot fall in love from the moment he first saw them. He couldn't even imagine what he would do if he never saw them again. His boy and his beautiful, beautiful face. His smile and how it spread across his face when he laughed, creating dimples in his cheeks and crinkles in the corners of his eyes, and...before he could make himself think of all the things he wanted to see right then more than anything, he just kissed him and prayed it would never end.

"Love you," Race mumbled as they slowly pulled away, a small yawn following as he kept his eyes shut for just a few extra seconds before he opened them again.

"I love ya' too, sweetheart," he spoke against the boy's lips, pecking them once again as he slipped a hand into Race's hair, wrapping his fingers around the boy's curls. "So, so much."

"Good...g-good, that's...that's r-real nice Spotty," he rambled, sinking into the boy's embrace. "I...I's gonna' take a n-nap, 's that o-okay?"

Silence. Purely terrifying silence. The kind that feels like if someone breaks it, the whole world will shatter into millions of pieces. The kind that, once it starts, it feels like it's never going to end. Even if you don't want it to. And Spot and Jack? God, they never wanted it to end.

"Y-yeah baby, if you's sure," Spot spoke, his voice shaking with every word.

"Y-yeah, I...I's sure," he yawned, curling around Spot. "A-actually, no."

Jack chuckled, a watery sniffle to follow it and he wrapped both his hands around one of Race's own. "Take ya' time, kid."

"N-no, I, uh, I w-wanna say s-somethin'," he mumbled. "J-Jack, I...I wanna t-tell ya' s-somethin'."

"Go for it, Racer."

"J-Jackie, don't b-beat ya'self up, p-p-please," he sighed. One look up at the other and Jack Kelly would never forget the look on his face. "I k-know you's g-g-gonna' feel like...like it's ya' f-fault, but I...I d-don't care 'bout w-who s-started tha' strike, I j-jus' hope ya' let ya'self g-g-get over this."

Jack shrugged, leaning his head against the wrapped bundle of their hands.

"P-please?"

"Sure thing, Tones," Jack smirked, the smile not even coming close to meeting his eyes.

"Heh," Race chuckled. "Y-ya' 'aint ever c-called me that b-b'fore."

"Ya' like it?" Race smiled and Jack took that as a little victory.

"Y-yeah...yeah t-tha's...," he trailed off, rubbing his eyes with his free hand before wrapping it around spot's shoulders and burying his face in his neck. "Hey, S-Spotty, t-thanks for n-not soakin' m-m-me the first t-time I k-k-kissed ya'."

Even Jack could laugh a little at that.

"Me too, babe," he smiled. "H-hey, how's about ya' relax a little, yeah? I know how much ya' love ta' talk, but I don't want ya' hurtin' ya'self, Tony."

Race shrugged, coughing a few times into his palms before he swung his legs off the edge of the bed, grabbing Jack's shoulders for stability as the other two freaked out.

"Race? Race, kid, c'mon ya' gotta' stop, jus' sit back down n' we's gonna' relax jus' like Conlon was sayin'," Jack spoke, quickly opposing the boy's force and trying to law him back down.

"I-I's fine, jus'...jus' let m-me...," Race trailed off, his grip faltering on Jack's shoulders as he let his chin fall against his chest and he hung his head in exhaustion, wheezing breaths filling the stressful silence. Jack let go with one hand, letting Spot catch Race from behind as he reached for the boy's face to lift his gaze.

Race shrugged himself away from the boys' efforts, sinking his head into his hands as he groaned meekly, a pained whine slipping from his lips as his breaths became labored.

"Kid, c'mon ya' gotta' sit up, it ain't good for ya', Racer," Jack mumbled, replacing his arm around Race's shoulders and quickly maneuvering him back to lay as flat as he could against Spot's chest.

Race's incoherent mumbling continued, making his slow, disoriented blinking slightly more worrying. He just looked dizzy.

"J-Jack?" He slurred, not meeting the former's gaze as his eyes fluttered sluggishly. "Jack, Jack, J-Jack, Jack."

The almost rhythmical chanting of the boy's dazed rambles shouldn't have meant anything to Jack, but he couldn't help but feel the sick stiffing in his gut that kept pleading for him to do something, to help him, to make it stop.

"Ya' gotta' focus for me, Ant. I can't make it stop if ya' don't try ta' work with me 'ere," Jack spoke, reaching for a glass of water beside the bed. Race shook his head when he saw it. He placed a hand on his own chest, his breathing dry and painful and confusing Jack for a moment before... "No. No, c'mon, kid, I ain't givin' up, ya' can't give up on me, I cant-"

He cried, finally letting the tears that had been brewing in his eyes burst as one sob made him grab for Race's hand.

"Tony, listen ta' me," Spot whispered softly from behind him. He kissed the underside of Race's jaw gently before continuing. "I know it hurts. I know it's so hard, n' I would take it myself in a heartbeat if I could, but ya' gotta' hold on. I can't lose you, T."

Race inhaled sharply, a small stream of blood trickling out from the corner of his mouth. He looked exhausted. Spot wasn't even sure if he'd understood what he was saying, but he needed to say it.

"I-I...I c-can't, Sean," he rasped, so quietly Jack didn't even hear more than breath, but Spot sure seemed to know what he said. He kissed Race on the forehead, rubbing circles on the boy's hollow cheeks as he started to slowly rock back and forth.

"Please," his voice cracked, his pleas falling silent as Race ignored his words and simply laid back against him.

Jack had a million things circling through his head that he wanted more than anything to be able to say. Besides, how do you even begin to pick your last words to someone when there's so much left unsaid? His head was throbbing and his ears were ringing and he couldn't tell if he was even speaking or not, but he needed that boy to know. He needed him to know everything.

And then it ended. Pleas fell on deaf ears and hands reached for limp ones and racing heartbeats met halted ones. His eyes were closed softly and it hit Jack like a ton of bricks as he stared at the boy laid in his friend's arms. They wouldn't open again. His lips were parted so slightly that one look at them felt wrong. Those lips always had a cigar between them and on the off chance that they didn't, they were spouting insults and jokes left and right but...not anymore. He couldn't look at Spot, he didn't want to see his face. He could see the tears falling off his cheeks and onto Race's but, he couldn't look at his face. If he looked at Spot's face, he'd see his own in it. Race didn't know. God, he had so many things left to say and now he lost his chance.

How Jack had gone almost three years of leading Manhattan without anything like this. He had somehow found a way to keep his entire family of brothers and sisters safe for nearly three years to the point where he almost felt untouchable. It got to the point where he didn't even worry. He dove right into the strike without thinking twice about what could come out of it. It just didn't seem like an option. Never once in the strike did he think of the refuge, or his kids getting hurt, and not once did he think something like...this would ever happen. All throughout their time at the refuge, Jack wouldn't let himself believe anything could get any worse. When the strike rally took a turn for the worse, he thought that was as bad as it could get. When he watched the bulls go after Crutchie, he didn't think it could get any worse. When he immediately got caught up in his own fight, barely holding his own against Snyder's goons, he still thought that was as bad as things could get. Alone in the refuge? Nope, it got worse the moment Race got tossed in there with him. With every passing day in that absolute hell-hole, he told himself that that was the worst of it. It couldn't get worse than that. But it always did. It got worse every single day without fail.

Now here they were.

And Spot.

All those years ago when he ran away from his family after his father died, he didn't even think he had a future. He just wanted to get out. To get away from his mother and away from his house full of memories of his dad, and he never expected for some kid just a few years older than him to ask him if he needed a place to stay and actually give him a home and a job. He thought he was untouchable simply because no one dared to get close enough to him to do it. Until Race. Antonio "Racetrack" Higgins was an asshole with a quick wit, luck too precise for his own good, and probably the most addicting smile Spot had ever seen. One joking insult Spot had tossed his way on Race's first day selling at the Sheepshead and the smile that followed meant Spot was doomed. He never had a chance. In all honesty, he never had a chance against Race. From the moment Jack Kelly brought him over to Brooklyn and around the rest of the city to formally arrange his second-in-command, making sure they all knew who to go to if anything were to happen to Jack.

They never once planned what they would do if something happened to Race.

Spot took one look at him as he shook that boy's hand and he decided somewhere deep within his fortress of walls that he didn't want to let go. He decided that day and no matter how hard he tried, it never seemed to go away. He was glad it didn't. God, he wouldn't give that up for all the time in the world. It was selfish, he knew it, but he would rather have a short time than no time if it meant they could be together. He didn't even know what he would do now. He couldn't just go back to Brooklyn like nothing ever happened. For the rest of his life, he'd be carrying that on his shoulders, no matter what. But he had a job to do.

How were they all even supposed to do that now? Jack had to go out there and tell all of them their brother was gone, Spot had to go back to Brooklyn and pretend "that kid from Manhattan" wasn't the love of his life that he held in his arms as he died.

Manhattan would have to go out there and clean up the mess of the strike like it wasn't the worst decision they had ever made. Jack would have to go out that door and tell Skip that the lodging house wasn't always like this. That she just lost another brother and it hadn't even been a month since they'd come home.

Jack had to tell Crutchie the boy who saved his life had just lost his own.

Jack had to tell Davey their little 'crusade' had its first casualty.

Jack had to tell Albert his best friend was gone and there was nothing left to do.

Jack had to tell the whole house that...by the terms of the city's newsies they had to replace him already.

Jack had to tell them all that their friend was dead and it was his fault and he was terrified and in pain and Jack didn't do anything to stop it and he lost a kid oh my god he lost a kid.

Manhattan was crumbling to the ground from inside one tiny room. And no one knew but the remaining two of a trio that once ruled the whole world, whether the world knew it or not. They were kings in a world full of helpless subjects, terrified of the ones who did not hesitate to show their power. There was no hesitation when it came to homeless kids trying to keep themselves and their families alive when they got in the way of someone more important. Someone who doesn't know what it's like to find your own family. To pick up your sisters and brothers off the ground all tell them you'll make it through together. To find someone who's willing to put their own life before yours without a moment of hesitation. When someone knows there's no reason to do something for you, but they do it anyway because you're family and family doesn't care about the consequences of sacrifices.

When hesitation was gone, that was how they found their family. When Jack and Davey didn't hesitate to go on strike on the off chance that their families might not starve to death. When the kids didn't hesitate to jump into the fight the moment the bulls laid a hand on one of their own. When Race didn't hesitate for a second to step in and take Crutchie's place in the refuge because even though he knew he might not have much time, however little he had, Crutchie had less and that was always a sacrifice he was willing to make.

They didn't know what to do. How could they? It wasn't like they wanted to think about it and they definitely didn't have a plan, but they had to do something. They couldn't sit around because the longer they just sat around, the longer Jack let the guilt eat him alive, and the longer Spot cursed himself for not joining the strike before it was too late.

They were safe to pretend it was all a dream in that little room. As long as they didn't look and kept their heads in their hands and let their own sobs drown out any sounds around them, then they were fine. The moment they stepped out that door, they were not.

When they stepped out that door, it was hell. They were out, they were vulnerable, and it was real. They couldn't make it real. Jack knew exactly what his boys would say the moment he stepped out that door because they would see exactly what had happened written all over his face and they wouldn't be able to hide it for a second.

Or maybe they wouldn't. Maybe they'd be just as broken as the two and maybe they would understand. Maybe they would hug him and tell him it was okay when they all knew it wasn't and they wouldn't let that guilt tear him up from the inside out.

Because their family grew together, slowly but surely, and when they broke, they all broke together.

#sprace #my writing #i could never rescue you

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kivaember · 6 years

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(This fic sorta reflects my current state of being l o l honestly, burn out is the worst fucking thing to endure and i am s u f f e r i n g from it so much. So I vented with this, and kinda explored a few of Aymeric’s other relationships.

Also for the fishing bit, Aza and his FC were pretty much doing this)

As always, Aymeric woke up at the crack of dawn.

It was to an empty bed, so he thankfully didn’t have to go through the torturous ordeal of untangling himself from Aza’s arms and slipping out without him waking up (impossible). He did so love his partner, but some days he he just wanted get to work on time without having to rush because Aza decided to imitate a rather clingy, amorous limpet.

The sun was just peeking over the twisting spires of the Holy See when Aymeric emerged from his home, dressed, fed and waiting for his coffee to kick in. His feet took him along the well worn path towards the Congregation of the Knights Most Heavenly (he needed to find a way to shorten that into something that didn’t sound so… cultish), the air almost pleasantly mild. It was ‘summer’ for Ishgard now, and that brought with it weak sunshine, gentle breezes and rain. It boded well for a possible thawing of the permafrost that clung to this land, though he doubted they would be able to reproduce their previous agricultural output for another few years yet.

The foot traffic was light this early in the morning, so Aymeric was utterly alone as he descended the steps from the Pillars to the lower levels of Ishgard. It meant he could break decorum a little and stifle a yawn behind his hand, feeling ragged to the bone. Gods, he always felt so exhausted when Aza wasn’t here. As distracting as his partner could be, he certainly slept easier when they-

-something abruptly jabbed him hard in his kidneys.

“Fuck-” he blurted in utter surprise, his foot slipping on the step and almost sending him on an embarrassing tumble, if not for the strong hand gripping his bicep. His lower back throbbed from the very painful jab he just took, and, face slightly red from embarrassment, regained his footing and turned to see-

“That’s another stabbin’ you coulda hand,” the ‘Mongrel’ smiled at him, all teeth, “C’mon, Lord Commander. I’ve told ya before about this route. Ambush points everywhere.”

Aymeric’s shoulders slumped, and Hilda kindly released his arm to give him a short pat on the shoulder, somehow making the gesture of reaching up not look too ridiculous.

“Lady Ware,” he sighed wearily.

“Hilda. I ain’t a lady.”

“Lady Ware,” Aymeric repeated, just to be contrary and because he got some vindication at watching her wrinkle her nose in disgust at him, “Thank you for scaring another five months off my lifespan. How many deaths is that now?”

“Two hundred an’ fifty somethin’ or other,” Hilda said, and jabbed him in the ribs again before he could move away, “Yer self-awareness is shite. It’s a miracle you ain’t been stabbed again, what with all them lords sharpening their daggers every time your back’s turned.”

“It probably has to do with the fact that you loiter in the dark corners they’d normally try to stab me from,” Aymeric said, his voice dry as dust, “The key to a successful assassination is not to do it with witnesses, you see.”

“Smarmy bastard,” Hilda said fondly, “Still, I can’t loiter in all the dark corners. I got a life outside of looking at your arse all day.”

“Duly noted,” Aymeric sighed, and inclined his head, “Walking the same way?”

“Yup,” Hilda said with a cocksure smile, boldly moving in step with him as they continued their way.

It was a queer friendship, he knew, if it could even be called friendship. It wasn’t a conventional relationship in the slightest, an alliance of necessity to smooth over any snarls and tangled between the Temple Knights and the newly established City Watch. Several knights, and lords, were somewhat disgruntled at these lowborn peasants suddenly having the power to enforce the law. Whilst the City Watch tended mostly to petty crime, freeing the Knights for more high-profile and sensitive cases, it was still a scrap of power long denied to those at the very bottom. Friction was inevitable.

Yet, during the beginning years of their wary and necessary alliance, a strange camaraderie started to form between them. Hilda jokingly said it was because he was now part of the ‘Orphaned Bastards Club’, but Aymeric felt it was more because they both believed the same things… and they really enjoyed thumbing their noses at the stuffier lords sitting pretty in Ishgard’s fledging republic. There were stark differences between them, though. Aymeric’s position was always privileged, member of the Orphaned Bastards Club or not, whilst Hilda scrambled at the bottom of society since birth. Friction there was inevitable too.

But they made it work.

Yes, they were both stubborn and passionate and clashed – often – but Hilda had proven herself to be a valuable ally, instead of the dangerous enemy she could have been. She worked with him to ensure a level balance between the Knights and the City Watch, she was blunt and honest enough not to hold back to correct him on his assumptions on what the lower class needed, and, more importantly, she was loyal to a fault.

He could do without the mock-assassinations whenever he went to and from work though. At this point he had a feeling she was doing it more to mess with him, rather than increasing his chances of surviving another assassination attempt.

“I see Lover boy’s outta town,” Hilda said casually, “What’s he up to this time? Savin’ another damn country?”

“He’s gone fishing with some adventurer friends,” Aymeric said.

The look Hilda gave him was worth the early morning scare, honestly. The disbelief, the slight suspicion that he was pulling her leg, writ across her face was deeply amusing, “Fishin’.”

“Mm, that is what I said,” he said with mock-innocence, “Something the matter?”

“He doesn’t seem like the type to fish,” Hilda said dubiously, “Requires a bit of patience, don’t it?”

“If there’s a promise of food at the end of it, you’ll find him surprisingly patient,” Aymeric said, “Also he fishes with Imperial grenades.”

Hilda let out a sigh that almost eased into a laugh, “’Course he does.”

The rest of the walk to the Congregation was pleasant in Hilda’s company. She told him a little of what the City Watch had been doing, what assistance they could do with, and in turn Aymeric told her about the new bills being proposed regarding a government funding project to properly equip the City Watch. Hilda had taken that last thing with a wry twist to her lips, just as aware as him that that bill would be bounced around in the House of Lords for as long as their constitution allowed.

“Best leave ya here,” Hilda said briskly as they stopped at the Congregation, “When ya see Aza, tell ‘im to swing by the Forgotten Knight sometime. Haven’t had a drink with him in a while.”

“I’ll pass on the message,” Aymeric promised.

Hilda clapped him on the arm, her fingers trailing along his forearm and pressing a crumpled piece of paper – discreetly – into his hand. With a two-fingered salute, the Mongrel prowled off in that confident strut of hers, disappearing into the early morning crowd that had started to stir.

Aymeric closed his fist around the paper slowly and turned away, tucking it casually into his breeches’ pocket. Another perk to his friendship-alliance with the Mongrel was information that would otherwise be denied to a Lord Commander part of the ‘class system’ all the commoners hated. What people wouldn’t admit or say to the knights, they admitted to the City Watch. But, whilst the City Watch’s powers were limited, Aymeric had more clout and influence. It was always a balancing act to work out on what he could action, but it made his life so much easier.

Honestly, it would have been a harder ordeal rooting out corruption, if it weren’t for her.

“Sir. Sir.”

“M’awake,” Aymeric mumbled into his desk, not lifting his head even when Lucia sighed somewhere above him.

“Lord Artoirel is here to see you,” she said firmly, “To discuss the Adventurer’s Guild Proposal. Remember?”

Aymeric made a noise better suited to some deep-sea creature being pulled out of a loch somewhere. The fucking Adventurer’s Guild Proposal. The bane of his political existence and the thorn in the House of Lord’s side. The last debate on it had descended into petty stonewalling, where no one had come out smelling pretty.

(Aymeric himself hadn’t come out of that debate well. In a flash of white-hot, temporary madness brought on by sheer frustration at the inefficiency their government was stagnating in, he had ended the ridiculous shouting match by flipping the Speaker’s desk and verbally flaying everyone present. It was the first time he ever heard the House of Lords stunned into terrified silence. It was then that Artoirel had, warily, suggested that perhaps they should all take a break and cool their heads a little while someone replaced the Speaker’s desk.)

“Should I take that as you cancelling the meeting?” Lucia asked him flatly.

“I’ll take it,” Aymeric said wearily, propping himself up and massaging his temples. A low-grade headache was beginning to throb insistently behind his eyes. He was so sick of reading things now. He should have ran away with Aza to throw Imperial grenades into a lake somewhere.

Lucia didn’t move, giving him a long searching look.

“Sir,” she ventured carefully, “When was the last time you took a break?”

Considering Lucia helped to micromanage his stuffed to the gills schedule, she should know exactly when he took a break. Better than he, anyways, where the days just blurred together in some nightmarish ordeal of holding a fledging republic together by his fingertips. Whilst it was more stable than it had been initially, somehow that meant more work bubbling up as people actually became efficient enough to start, well, working. Instead of just focusing on reshuffling their budget and trying to dismantle the Ishgardian war machine, they now had to juggle foreign policy, trade routes, commitments to the Eorzean Alliance, commitments to the Scions, immigration, social reforms, military reforms, economics, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Aymeric just didn’t have enough hands to manage it all.

“You tell me, Lucia,” he said in a rare show of snippiness, “When did I last have a break?”

Lucia straightened up and said, rather coolly, “Three months ago, sir, for half a day.”

Aymeric rubbed at his face and pinched at the bridge of his nose, letting out a very long exhale, “Right.”

“…I think,” Lucia said in a very neutral tone, “That you need a break, sir.”

Aymeric looked at the papers sprawled over his desk for a long moment. What had initially filled him with passionate determination now made him feel an intense dread. He was burnt out, he realised, and stressed to a cracking point, if his embarrassing blow up at the last House of Lords session was anything to go by. “Yes, I think so too.”

“Conveniently,” Lucia continued, “An invitation from Lord Hien of Doma arrived this morning by Postmoogle. It seems they wish to express their gratitude for the contribution Ishgard made towards their reconstruction efforts. It asks for you explicitly by name.”

It was a testament to how tired Aymeric was that he didn’t immediately make the connection, “This is convenient…?”

“Sir, this is a thinly veiled attempt to curry further favour with Ishgard by inviting you to their city to be spoiled and bribed,” Lucia said bluntly, “While the other City States also made contributions to Doma, the engineers and architects we sent have been integral to rebuilding their city and their destroyed castle. No doubt they will want us to continue loaning such expertise until they no longer need it, and to do that…”

“Ah,” Aymeric said, enlightened, “I see.”

“I already sent an acceptance on your behalf,” Lucia said, proving that she was an angel sent down from Halone Herself. If Aymeric weren’t so exhausted, he probably would have gotten down on his hands and knees and thanked her from the very bottom of his heart, “I’m certain the Warrior of Light will be happy to accompany you.”

That was all well and good, except, “But, who will tend to my duties in the interim?”

“I can handle your Lord Commander duties, sir,” Lucia said, and inclined her head towards the door, “And I am sure Lord Artoirel can handle your Speaker duties, as he is your political second in command. You should start learning to delegate.”

Aymeric processed this for a long moment. Then;

“Lucia,” he said gravely, “Have I ever told you how much I appreciate you?”

The faintest curl to Lucia’s lips betrayed her smile.

“Yes, sir,” she said warmly, “You tell me every day.”

---

All things considered, Artoirel handled his sudden burden with good grace.

“You need the break,” Artoirel told him firmly, “I was beginning to worry that you would crash and burn before you started delegating.”

“I wasn’t that bad, was I?” Aymeric asked, although a sinking feeling in his belly told him that, yes, he had acted a bit like a control freak. He couldn’t help it. He had sweated blood and tears to get Ishgard to this point, and he was terrified that it was going to be cocked up by petty greed and ambitions running counter their fledging republic. There were so many things that could be taken advantage of – were being taken advantage of, where corruption could fester and grow if one took their eyes off it for too long, where their government could collapse in on itself like the unstable house of cards it was and erupt into a destabilising and bloody civil war.

Aymeric wanted this to go well. He needed this to go well. Yet… he was also falling into the trap of thinking it’d only go well if he micromanaged every single possible bit of it, which… which wasn’t all that different to how Father had ruled Ishgard. Just like him, he was all but strangling the government by gripping it so hard. The realisation felt like a knife to the gut.

No, wait. A knife to the gut would have been better, actually.

“You… need to delegate a little, yes,” Artoirel said diplomatically, “But no one can deny you have Ishgard’s best interests at heart.”

Aymeric rubbed his forehead, biting back ‘the Archbishop also had Ishgard’s best interests at heart’, because that was going to go down an emotional rabbit hole of father issues that Artoirel didn’t deserve to sit through.

“Right,” he said instead, bottling up that emotional upheaval for later. He planted his hands on the papers on his desk and pushed them forwards towards his soon-to-be-intensely-suffering-replacement, “In which case, I deeply apologise for the hell I am about to put you through.”

Artoirel looked briefly pained, though the expression quickly cleared into one of grim, determination.

“I’ll endure it,” he said.

Really, Aymeric sincerely hoped Artoirel won the next round of elections for the Speaker position. He was, apparently, a far better politician and man than he’d ever be. That was a bitter pill to swallow, surprisingly, but it was mostly relief Aymeric felt.

Lucia was right.

He was burnt out.

---

Lucia kicked him out of his office before it was mid-afternoon.

“Go home,” she told him, and physically blocked him from getting back in his office. After being soundly out-manoeuvred and cowed by Lucia’s stern glare, Aymeric had no choice but to slink back home feeling oddly out of sorts. He had no looming deadline he had to grind towards, no bills or proposals he had to manage, no patrol reports to review or inspections to prepare for or… anything. He felt almost adrift, and he barely remembered the walk back home.

(Hilda would have been scandalised at his lack of self-awareness. He was probably lucky she didn’t chance upon him. She might have drop-kicked him)

He spent his abrupt dearth of free time not preparing for his journey in less than two days’ time – but by lying on his living room floor. It was, actually, a very comfortable floor, and he now saw why Aza lied down on it so much. It was firm, but not uncomfortably hard, and was doing wonders for his aching back. Maybe he should make this a thing. Just spend an hour lying on the floor and staring at the ceiling, slowly dumping all the white noise in his brain so he felt semi-human again.

This was the state Aza found him in a few hours later.

“Aym,” his partner said, standing at his head and smelling faintly of damp and mud, “Are you having a moment?”

“Lucia kicked me out of the office,” he informed him, still disbelieving about that. Grateful, but disbelieving, because the last few hours had been blissful, albeit accompanied by the low-grade anxiety of knowing that he wasn’t doing anything productive, “To take a break.”

Aza laughed at that, crouching down. He was smiling, an adorable grin that flashed his sharp canines and made the corners of his eyes crinkle. Aymeric dreamily admired that lovely expression for a long moment.

“I told you that you were working too hard,” Aza chided him gently, “Did you just lie here the whole time?”

“Yes,” Aymeric said shamelessly, “How was fishing?”

“Great. We annoyed a kraken and fought it.”

Aymeric hummed quietly, finding himself smiling a little stupidly at how genuinely pleased Aza looked at that. Only he would find fighting a kraken a good outcome of fishing, “Did you win?”

“Of course!”

Not long after that he had an armful of Aza, stripped naked with his brine-smelling clothes in a pile next to the sofa. The smell of damp and mud still lingered, but Aymeric still inhaled it and found that tight knot squeezing his belly slacken and relax. No matter how stressed he became, he could always count on Aza just… making it right again. True, he brought his own challenges from time to time, but, Gods, they were worth it.

“You have a dopey look on your face,” Aza commented, the pair of them nose to nose, “I bet you’re thinking of something very schmoopy.”

“Mmm…” Aymeric smiled lazily, “I’m thinking about how much I love you.”

“Sap,” Aza muttered, but his cheeks were a little pink and he was smiling, “You always think about that.”

“Not always,” Aymeric said, “Sometimes I think about how beautiful you look. Or how amazing you are. Or how many Chocobos you’re going to adopt when we retire-”

“Fifty,” Aza said instantly.

“More like one hundred,” Aymeric said wryly, “Like you’d stop at fifty.”

“Point.”

“In short,” Aymeric concluded, “I think about plenty of things… but it is mostly about how much I love you.”

“I can see that,” Aza said, giving him an odd smile. For a moment, it looked as if he was going to say something, but then just sighed and closed his eyes, “I love you too, Aym. Even if you are a sappy dork.”

A companionable silence fell on them then. It wasn’t awkward or uncomfortable. Aymeric just basked in the warmth of his partner’s body curled against his own, the press of his forehead against his own, the tickle of Aza’s hair against his nose and bottom lip, just… listening to him breathe, feeling him in his arms, here, existing, slowly, Aymeric could feel the lingering tension in his body just…ease away.

Yes, he definitely needed that break. He hadn’t realised how bone-weary and burnt out he was until now. A few weeks longer and he might’ve self-destructed entirely, jeopardising everything he worked for and causing the problems he feared would happen, just from stubbornly micromanaging everything.

Doma would still be work, but it’d be relaxed work. He would have to schmooze and make friends, but he wouldn’t have to also juggle a thousand other things simultaneously. It’d be good for him to just decompress and figure his own life out, before wading back into the thorny battlefield that was Ishgardian politics.

“What’re you thinkin’ ‘bout?” Aza asked him sleepily.

“… work,” Aymeric murmured, kissing the tip of his nose, “You’ll find out later.”

“Hrm,” Aza was content with that, and he watched as his partner slipped off into a dozing slumber. He looked adorable. It was amazing how loving someone so much made even the simple act of sleeping seem like the most sublime thing on the planet. Aza was right, he was such a sappy dork.

For the first time in a while, his worries about Ishgard were… the furthest thing from his mind.

#ffxiv #fanfic #aymeric de borel #warrior of light #lucia goe junius #hilda ware #artoirel fortemps #dumb fic stuff

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caelystrae · 6 years

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And It’s Hard to Love

im dying bc i scrapped my original fic i wrote today bc i didnt like it... wrote a whole new one... and still dont know if i like it... but the day is over so i gotta post what i have LMAO

anyway. @letanafuck week day 3. love/hate. mostly love, from me

ao3

Pairing: Anamercy

Rating: M

Words: 3.5k

Maybe that is why Ana is afraid, when Angela says I love you, because once, she might have been falling in love with Angela, might even have begun to consider what that would mean for the both of them to talk about their relationship openly, despite the consequences, to refuse propositions not because there was someone else already meeting her needs adequately, and breaking in new lovers could be a hassle, but because she only wanted one person—and despite beginning to feel that way, things between them still soured, were victim to the outside stresses of Overwatch’s collapse, until rather than feeling comfortable, Ana felt trapped. It scares her, to think that she could have loved Angela, then, and still run, and terrifies her to think that it might happen again.

Or,

Angela accidentally says "I love you" during sex, and Ana is not at all prepared to deal with that.

In her life, Ana has known war, but she has rarely experienced peace, she has known freedom, but rarely seen justice, and she has known hate, but she does not know, not for certain, if she has ever felt love. Of course, she loves her daughter, loves her friends, loves her duty, her country, her people—but that is not the same as feeling romantic love, not at all, and Ana is content with that, with what she has had, does not think that she needs to ever be in love with someone to be happy with the life she has led, the things she has accomplished. Out of all of her regrets, never having been in love is not worth even mentioning.

Most of Ana’s relationships have been purely physical, because she alternately lacks the time, the desire, or the stability to search for love. While she acknowledges that there have been a few exceptions, they have been relationships built on friendship, or admiration, not love. Sam was such a one, and for a time she believed Angela was another—and now, she must face that that is not necessarily the case.

Coming back from the dead changed many things, but it was only the catalyst for a change that was a long time coming before her death, that continues even now that she is four months returned.

Perhaps it would be an overstatement to say that, in the years before her death, she and Angela admired each other; it was admiration that brought them to one another, yes, recognition of some kindred spirit, a mutual drive, a need to protect and a willingness to do so by whatever means they deemed necessary, but that did not last. Towards the end of their time together, towards the end of Overwatch, towards the end of Ana, or the Ana who was never the Shrike, they fought more often than not, found that agreeing to do whatever was necessary only went so far, when the two of them disagreed on what, in fact, was a necessity, and Ana struggles when thinking of the things that they said to one another, that they must have thought about one another, to say that she felt admiration, or that Angela could have felt the same.

She never hated Angela, this much Ana knows, but sometimes, sometimes she was afraid that she might grow to.

When they fought, they never held anything back—perhaps because of the admiration they felt for one another, in the early days, because they knew the other could take hearing what it was they were to say, or perhaps because their arguments were complicated by other feelings, ones they chose not to give voice to—and Ana winces, now, remembering the things the two of them said to one another. It was a stressful time, Overwatch’s fall, for the both of them, made harder still that they both felt increasingly isolated and embattled in their respective positions, between the development of the Biotic Rifle and Jack and Gabe’s decision to slowly freeze Ana out of the chain of command, but that stress could not excuse the things they both allowed themselves to say, and it is not an easy time for Ana to remember.

(Ana feels similarly about the breakdown in her relationship with her daughter, but that was easy to make sense of, after the fact, and she knows, now, where the two of them stand, even if it is not always easy between them. They had blood and a lifetime of love between them; the same cannot be said for how she feels about Angela.)

To say, therefore, that Angela’s response to her return was unexpected, then, would be an understatement.

What Ana expected, upon her return, was anger, was betrayal, was a condemnation. Instead, she received none of those things—or, she did, eventually, in conversations about the rifle, about her leaving, but never were they such simple feelings from Angela, and never were the conversations themselves as fraught as the ones from seven years before. It is impossible to judge for Ana, what it is that Angela is feeling, when she voices her betrayal at Ana for having had the audacity to die on her, only to come back as if nothing had happened, because Ana knows that Angela ought to be furious with her, would have said things meant to hurt, if this happened years ago, and instead she is also unmistakably relieved by Ana’s returning, and that relief tempers her anger.

This, in turn, ought to make Ana happy, she ought to be relieved at this turn of events, by the fact that, somehow, they have both of them changed, and grown, and returned to one another more able, or perhaps more willing, to disagree, and to set those disagreements aside, in order to be happy together, or as close to it as they can come. What Ana feels, instead of relief, is worry. Nothing in her life has ever been so simple, and the lack of a clean resolution to their prior conflicts, the lack of confirmation that that is behind them, the unaddressed feelings and hurts, they haunt her.

Angela says she loves her.

What to make of that? It is the opposite reaction from what Ana expected, upon returning, and Ana is not sure that she would be able to believe it, even were that not the case. How could Angela love her? After she left, died, Angela’s greatest fear, after she betrayed her lover, taking the Biotic Rifle with her, despite knowing that it represented the greatest perversion of Angela’s life’s work, after what she said to Angela, how could Angela love her?

How could Angela love her, when she struggles to love herself? Knowing what she has done in the name of duty—what of that she regrets, what of that was not truly necessary, and having seen the nastier parts of herself, knowing whom she truly is: a killer, and not a protector. There is little enough of her left to love, anyway, after what happened, after her death and the Shrike. How could anyone love her?

How could Angela love her, when seven years ago they could hardly speak to one another, were too often too angry to be civil, and were avoiding each other more often than not, lest they begin another argument, unable for the first time to set professional differences apart for the sake of their relationship—whatever one might have defined it as?

(Perhaps, if she asked Angela, Angela might tell her that she felt love, even then, and that is why the perceived betrayal of the development of the Biotic Rifle hurt her so much. Perhaps she might try to convince Ana that Ana, too, loved her, and that was why Ana was willing to argue about it at all, rather than simply dismissing her disagreement, wanting instead for Angela to come to approve or, at the least, not be angry with her any longer for what she had chosen to do. Perhaps she might claim that Ana’s death put the issue into perspective for her, and she realized that she had feelings all along. Perhaps—it does not matter.)

Ana worries about what it would mean to love Angela, given that there is still so much between them unsaid, unresolved. One of the reasons why the idea of being in love has never appealed to Ana is that its seems terribly complicated, and her life is difficult enough already without such added concerns, and their situation has more unique challenges than most.

Yet, despite all of this, there are times when loving Angela seems like it could be so very easy to do.

When she wakes in the morning to find Angela curled around her, and her lover kisses her temple in lieu of a greeting before slipping out of bed to prepare for the day, she wonders what it might be like to wake to this every morning, thinks it might be worth suffering Angela kicking the blankets off of both of them in her sleep. Perhaps that is not love, but it is a desire for permanence, one she could not imagine herself feeling seven years ago when all she wanted was to run.

When Angela glances around the common room nervously to ensure they are alone before shifting closer to Ana on the couch, and wrapping their hands around one another, Ana considers for the first time whether or not it would be so terrible to allow others to see them like this, despite the uncomfortable questions it might invite about the nature of their relationship before Overwatch fell. This, too, might not be love, but it is a growing comfort with casual intimacy that Ana might once have avoided, for fear of what it might mean.

When they find themselves where they are now, Angela straddling her thighs in a position that allows them both to, with a bit of awkward bumping into one another at first, reach down and touch each other simultaneously, all the while maintaining eye contact and kissing one another as they please, Ana wonders what lead them to this point.

Their relationship was never meant to last, was not—is not—a relationship, was meant to be a casual mutual pursuit of much needed stress relief, an exchange of power and of favors. When one of them had a particularly rough day, they could meet one another by cover of darkness and—deal with the problem, in their own way, Angela allowing Ana to once again feel in control of her life and its circumstances, and Ana freeing Angela from that same burden; that is not the basis for love, or was never meant to be. Over time, things shifted, grew more complicated, until even meeting with Angela felt stressful, and all Ana wanted was to get away from everyone, herself included, to be free of all of her obligations, even caring for her lover, and yet, here she is, one of Angela’s lips pressed to hers, and two of her fingers inside her erstwhile lover.

(Maybe that is why Ana is afraid, when Angela says I love you, because once, she might have been falling in love with Angela, might even have begun to consider what that would mean for the both of them, to talk about their relationship openly, despite the consequences, to refuse propositions not because there was someone else already meeting her needs adequately, and breaking in new lovers could be a hassle, but because she only wanted one person—and despite beginning to feel that way, things between them still soured, were victim to the outside stresses of Overwatch’s collapse, until rather than feeling comfortable, Ana felt trapped. It scares her, to think that she could have loved Angela, then, and still ran, and terrifies her to think that it might happen again.)

But this is not complicated, not really, not if she focuses on the details, the way that, when she presses her thumb down on Angela’s clit, Angela gasps against her mouth, and rolls her hips into the touch, or the scent of Angela’s shampoo—not sweet, or heady, just clean, a product selected for its ability to make the curls in her hair loosen to waves, and not for its scent—which surrounds her, as Angela’s bangs fall across both of their faces, hiding the world from Ana’s view as they cover her one good eye, or the way Angela is so in tune with what she needs, what she wants, all the ways in which Ana likes to be touched.

It feels good, to be like this, inside each other, surrounding each other, all wrapped up together. How could this be a bad thing?

(How could the gentle pressure of Angela’s free arm draped across her shoulder feel like it is trapping her? Could this change, again, back from what they have now to the pain and difficulty of seven years previous?)

She is pulled from her thoughts when Angela moves her mouth next to Ana’s ear, panting into it as she whispers encouragements, praise, pleas, anything and everything that comes to her mind and which might convince Ana to let her come faster.

Some of the things she says are gentle, Perfect, and So beautiful, and You’re so good to me, others are demanding, Harder, and Stay there, and More, please, more, and others are nonsense, little pleased noises of all sorts, and all of them are sufficient to drive any trepidation from Ana’s mind.

(This could not be the same voice that accused Ana of using her, of having slept with her only to ensure that she would stay with Overwatch long enough to let her guard down, and allow her technology to be exploited.)

Years ago, sex between them might have been carefully scripted, an exchange of power and little more, in which both of them kept carefully to their roles, so as not to disturb the delicate balance of their arrangement, to rip the thin veil of pretense that allowed them to carry on pretending that what they had was nothing more than the two of them fucking a few times a month—but now Angela gives as good as she gets, pulls back slightly from Ana’s fingers, shuddering, when she notices herself approaching climax just a tad too quickly, and focuses more on Ana’s pleasure for a minute or two, until she feels they are both equally aroused.

Even though Ana knows she does not particularly like to do it—and therefore never demands it of her lover—Angela slides a finger inside Ana, and then another shortly thereafter, only because she knows it will help Ana to come faster, and make the inevitable orgasm more pleasurable when it does come.

(Once, Ana called her the most selfish person she had ever had the misfortune to encounter in her fifty-three years of living, because Angela placed her own morals over Ana’s, refused to allow her technology to be weaponized despite how useful it would be, in the right hands, how many lives would potentially be saved by killing the right people with it, because she would not take those losses on her conscience—Ana regrets saying that, now, regretted it immediately, in truth, and she wonders how the woman who is so generous a lover to her could ever have seemed so callous, where they went wrong that such a statement could even for a moment have felt true.)

When Ana moves her free hand to cup one of Angela’s breast, she can feel the hammering of her heart, and notes that it matches her own, and when she pants, Angela gasps in time, as if they were connected in more ways than the sweat sticking their skin together, or by the feeling of being inside one another.

Both of them are close now, Ana knows, can feel her own orgasm approaching as she struggles to keep her movements against Angela’s fingers steady, and knows that Angela will come soon from the quaking of her thighs on top of Ana’s own, and the way her speech has fallen to the wayside, replaced only by little noises and the occasional plea, Yes, Ana, please panted out one word at a time.

(It is hard to believe, now, how distant she felt they were from one another, back then, is harder still to recall a time when, before the arguing, they were ever so close as they are in this moment. At least Angela’s begging is familiar, but even it has changed in tone, from desperation to some other emotion Ana cannot immediately name.)

It is Angela who comes first, in the end, set off by nothing in particular that Ana can identify, but her lover does not stop, throughout it all, moving against her, and so when she catches the I love you that tumbles from Angela’s mouth amongst so many other phrases, it coincides with the beginning of her own orgasm—and, to her surprise, does not negatively affect her enjoyment of the moment.

When she is finished, she allows herself to fall onto her back on the bed, but Angela does not follow suit, as she often does, stays sitting up, biting her lip nervously and looking down at Ana below.

Ana raises an eyebrow at her, before remembering that the effect is likely rather different now that she only has one good eye, and one full eyebrow—but Angela seems to understand.

“I shouldn’t have said that,” Angela tells her, as if Ana had not heard her whisper the same over their call a few weeks prior, as if she had not murmured it in her native tongue before, as if Ana did not know how she felt.

“Did you not mean it?” Ana asks her, and Angela only looks more uncomfortable at the question.

“No,” says she, “Or, yes, or—or no, I did mean it?” A pause. “I meant it, I just—didn’t mean to say it like that, or just now, or when we were—”

“Angela,” Ana cuts her off, propping herself up on her elbows, “Calm down. It’s fine.”

“Is it?” Angela asks her, and Ana hesitates, then.

Hesitation is a fatal mistake; she learned that when she faced Widowmaker for the first time. In the moment Ana takes to consider the question, Angela crumbles before her.

“I’m sorry,” says she, “I can go.”

“Don’t,” Ana tells her, and Angela, already halfway off of the bed, freezes, “I’m not angry—I just need time to think about this.”

(A lie, Ana has had plenty of time, has thought about this often in the months since her return, about what she would say when this moment comes—and still, she has not decided. Time is not what she needs, but she could not say what it is that might be of more help to her.)

Angela does not say anything, but she does not move further away, either, stays awkwardly half on and half off of the bed.

“Sit down,” she says, and Angela does, but only at the very edge of the bed, carefully avoiding touching Ana, “You don’t have to go anywhere.”

“If you’re sure,” Angela is still cautious, still guarded.

“I am,” Ana says, and considers, for a moment, lying and saying that everything is fine, that she was just surprised, and telling Angela to come lie with her—but she knows it would do them no good. Instead, she forces herself to be honest, “I’m not, however, sure about my feelings. I don’t know,” she pauses again, thinks about how to phrase this, settles on, “I don’t know when I’ll be able to say the same, but you feeling that way isn’t a bad thing, Angela.”

(Very carefully, she avoids saying the word love entirely, not wanting to give any false hope.)

“You’re certain?” Angela asks her, “It doesn’t make you uncomfortable

“It didn’t in the moment,” Ana decides to be honest as possible, “Which was, of course, satisfying as ever,” she winks as she says that, as best as she can, and hopes that a bit of levity will ease the tension.

It does, because Angela gives a little laugh, half nervous but half amused, and relaxes her posture somewhat, saying, “Yes, well, I obviously enjoyed myself a little too much.”

“Hmm,” Ana gestures her over, “Better than not enough. Now come lie down, we’re too old to be so active after sex.” That is mostly said in jest, given the lifestyle they lead, but Ana is tired, if not from physical exertion.

“Alright,” Angela acquiesces, and she is perhaps more hesitant than usual when curling herself around Ana, but she does so—and Ana remembers, suddenly, that neither of them had time to wipe their hands off before this conversation began, and she fights the urge to remark upon it when Angela’s decidedly sticky fingers come to rest on her hip. A bit of discomfort is worth it, to be able to fall asleep in her lover’s arms, to know that despite all her shortcomings, and all that has happened in her life, she is cared for—even loved.

She fears, still, what it would mean to love Angela, fears that they might grow to hate one another, or that she might not be able to cope with being tied down, that their love would die, and she would be worse off for having allowed herself to be vulnerable, in the name of something that could not last.

(Hesitation is a fatal mistake; she learned that when Widowmaker shot her—but she lived nonetheless, and learned, then, that some things are too stubborn to kill.)

But it is all a worry for another day; for now, she is at peace.

#anamercy #ana amari #angela ziegler #¯\_(ツ)_/¯#at least i posted this to the right acct today

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pensurfing · 6 years

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Caitlin’s Three Things List

Okay, so moments (probably hours by the time I finish this) ago I wrote a goals list that I think is good for self-evaluation. (Keyword: This is what I think. results may vary depending on what you’re looking for.)

I’m going to hop to it and answer some of these that I laid out in hopes of having a better idea of what I want to accomplish.

The Three Things Lists!

1) Three things that went well this year.

* Audience growth

So once upon a time, I grew a pretty decent following due to creating an Inktober Prompt list. My expectations: Maybe two of my friends would do this, maybe. And then one stranger that has followed me for a while. (There are a few followers I recognize their username because if I post something they always like it and for some reason that keeps me going.)

But because of this prompt, I was exposed to MANY new creators and illustrators that I now enjoy chatting with and following! Instagram had the biggest maintained growth. I’m excited to create for an audience that actually expects me to create and not just for friends who see my things “whenever they aren’t busy”. (Not to bash them or anything, just there are a lot where unless I tell them, they don’t see the posts I make.)

Another surge of growth in my audience was due to tabling at conventions this year. I was terrified to show my work let alone attempt to sell it to someone. Tabling at cons not only boosted my confidence but also quieted one of my ever going demons. “YoU sUcK aT dRaWiNg CaItLiN.” “How do you have a degree? oh right, you just barely passed.” I can’t say this is the case, there is an audience that genuinely enjoys my scribbles. So I am forever thankful to Atlanta Comic Con for giving me that chance. It honestly opened a few doors for me.

**Process

I’ve gotten more comfortable with showing my process. It can be messy, crisp, and illogical. But turns out the people who enjoy my content enjoy my scrambled thoughts. It’s something about not being alone in this sort of sense that calms the nerves.

So I can say with chest poked out that sharing process has gotten MUCH better. I can thank a self-help book I bought this year that was a FANTASTIC BUY. Austin Kleon has [two] (currently? If he has more then I’m buying it like people buy a name brand.) books that helped me see that it is GREAT to share not only the process but advice. “Show Your Work” is the book I’m talking about for now. Great tips, the outline is on the back of the book. So if you’re like me, I need to clearly see what I might be getting into, you might have a ball.

And finally, (not calling myself out on this but other) If you’re going to respond to people when they ask you “how do you___?” do not answer “Google it”. That is the rudest thing I’ve seen some of even my FAVORITE illustrators do; that response can burn in hell. PERIODT. (my one typo allowed.)

*** Art Style Exploration

For those who think college will help you establish an art style that you’ll enjoy or help nourish the one you currently have.... Let me save you over 80K.... No, the fuck it won’t.

That was the biggest thought I had going into art school. If anything, it confused me more and utterly destroyed what little confidence I had in my drawing style. After graduating, I had a huge swing from how I used to draw to how my art currently looks. I stopped trying to please the one professor who stood between me and my degree and started drawing to please my tastes. And guess what? That did something. And that something WORKED. I love what I draw now; I see why I chose this as my career path. I’m genuinely happy with how my pieces turn out versus in college just wanting to turn the damn thing in and hoping it isn’t an F.

2) Three things you could have handled better.

* The loss of a good paying client.

Now hear me out when I say this: A good paying client DOES NOT EQUAL a good client. Say that three times and then exhale.

Back earlier this year, I had the opportunity to work with a writer who gave me hell and back. And even that is an understatement. I dealt with her because in school you were taught “if they pay on time, finish the work and get the exposure.”

I’m here to tell you my lesson learned: A good paying client DOES NOT EQUAL good exposure, good pay, a good client.

I was doing the work of three for the price of one and a half. (And was always told I charged too much.) She tried abusing this power with friends of mine, with other illustrators. When things turned out bad, she tried saying it was my fault. She read my contract and then tried telling me I changed the wording, I purposely did this thing, another thing was my fault. I could go on with this story.

The part that I wish I handled better?

How I treated myself afterward. I’m so used to people telling me, “Cait, this is what you do wrong. This is how you fix it.” that I don’t consider my own feelings, and when I bring my feelings into the scenario they no longer matter. Because they tell me they don’t matter. In this case, I wish I had treated me better, because my feelings, my mental health, DOES matter.

**My Patience Getting Into Conventions.

Pretty self-explanatory. I got into one, finished one, and wanted to do eight more in a week. But this sort of thing just takes time and I need to accept that.

***My losses

I had to listen to a Little Mix song to actually learn this one. The context of the song is nowhere near the topic at hand. But a verse from Power feat Stomzy really packs a punch after this year:

“ You look him in the eye and say, "I know I'm not a guy But see there's power in my losses and there's power in my wins" “

I had to look one of my demons in the face, and state something similar. My loses mean I’m trying. My loses piling shows I’m not willing to give up easily, and that is something that took a while to be content with.

3) Three things artistically you want to improve on.

*Composition

It’s not awful, but it can be better.

**Color

I told this BOLDLY if I might add while critiquing someone else’s portfolio; “Your color palette is boring. All your [things] look as if they are from the same universe, during the same time of day, with the same kind of mood. After three photos it’s bland, boring, and understood you have a preference.”

Can you say damn Cait? The statement was, in fact, true, but I certainly could not talk. My color palette is mainly bright, pop, and happy. In order to tell a story, I KNOW it is best told with color. And I failed myself this year. But I sure won’t next year.

***My Damn Tag

Okay, alright. Why is it well-established artists have their tag figured out? Even some who’s art style is so recognizable (I’m looking HEAVILY at you Gabriel Piccolo.) we know it’s theirs, seem to have a tag that suits them and works for them. But more importantly, they put it in A VERY DECENT SPOT. SOMEONE SHARE THIS SCIENCE WITH ME? CAUSE APPARENTLY I DON’T GET IT.

4) Three things you want to focus on trying.

*More backgrounds.

As much as it pains me, I need to improve on backgrounds and perspective. When I do make backgrounds, I’m told I make great pieces. That I should look into becoming a background artist. And don’t get me wrong, I like them. But I don’t like them.

I feel as though I need to improve in that region so that way I don’t feel as though it’s a weakness of mine. My backgrounds are nice, but they aren’t nice to my standards.

**More designs

I love character designs, but let’s be real. If you were to scroll down my site or my Instagram page, or even this Tumblr archive, could you tell?

I draw characters a lot sure, but none are designs. No process, no sheets, no turnarounds, none of that. So that’s a huge goal of mine for 2019.

***Scheduling posting

At one point I was pretty good at this. Live stream in Instagram and Twitter, cool. Videos on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Cool. Everywhere gets a photo, everywhere gets a silly one-liner. Yay. I’m not leaving anything out.

Well by the end of this year that totally crumbled.

SO I want to try getting better at that thing there. Because having attempted this at the end of the year was cool, but it still wasn’t enough apparently.

5) Three positive things to tell yourself.

* You are an inspiration. That’s all you wanted to be in life, you did it. I’m proud of you.

**You didn’t kill yourself like you tried to; you opened up about it for once and used that pint up anger creatively. That is very hard to do, trust. I’m proud of you.

***You moved on, matured, and let it go. Even when the goddess inside you told you these peasants didn’t deserve your light, your friendship, your greatness. I’m proud of you.

I’m just proud of me for not snapping when I had every right to; not everything deserves a reaction.

6) Three negative things you want to leave for 2018.

*Comparisons

Oh boy. I am extremely guilty for this: I’ll compare myself to a well-known illustrator my age. I’ll compare myself to friends who are in the field having a blast and getting work; I’ll compare myself to friends who aren’t in the field and they struggle at getting work. I’ll compare myself to the kid I graduated high school with who is traveling the world, is able to eat, come home to his dog and relax because he doesn’t have tuition to pay. I’ll compare myself to these goddamn baby boomers who keep repeating “We didn’t have it hard, you’re just being stupid. Millennials aka our children deserve to starve. We’ll just put our faith in our grandchildren because screw the kids we raised and refuse to pay accordingly. $7 an hour worked in my day, they need to make it work now.” I’ll compare myself to fake people I created in my head and purposely made scenarios and wonder why I’m not like them, said creations I made because I was pretty low for ten minutes...

I just compare myself too much. To any damn body. It’s draining, obnoxious and most of all pointless. My new motto for next year is: “Unless it is helping you grow yourself, your brand, your spirituality, don’t do it.”

I’m not comparing my chapter two to someone’s chapter thirty-five. I’m not even comparing my chapter two to someone else’s chapter two. I need to stop doing that PERIOD! My journey is different, unique, and worth seeing through.

**Listening to negative others.

A couple of years ago, I lost a close friend around the time my aunt passed away. During this time I was hypersensitive to any and everything done or said; I also kept many walls up to hide my mourning. He caught the crossfire of all of that. I kept secrets from him I was too prideful of admitting and lashed out because of the emotional turmoil I kept suppressed. While in the midst of packing his things and leaving my life, he mentioned that I was a failure because I was unemployed and artistically speaking I hadn’t accomplished anything; that I would remain that way because that’s just the person I deserved to be. Now mind you, I graduated college that year; he was a flunk out. I changed my art style dramatically compared to when I started school to pass; he thought just posting crappy pictures of lukewarm sketches were equivalent. I started attempting trends and all he could do was copy. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t to bash my old friend. If he were to come back into my life and move on like nothing had happened I’d do the same. (With some limitations.)

It’s just while typing out this scenario, of our four-year friendship I can’t think of one nice thing/compliment/gesture he has said to me. That’s my problem.

I can be praised, admired, and look highly upon for years straight. But my problem is I let others negative thinking and comments marinate with me for a long while. Too long of a while.

Another example is my mother’s friend. (My mom has many friends that do this shit, but this one stung more.)

This friend always roots for me; treats me like a person, and encourages my artistic journey. I consider her family before my actual relatives.

We went over for some barbeque the family was having and I was ready. Black Hallmark Cookouts, laughing, good food, good music, shit talking others teams. She asked me a harmless question of when was I going to quit my day job. Seemed like nothing at first, until the added gest of what she continued with. “All I’m saying is you can’t do [your day job] forever. That will get old. If the art thing doesn’t work out next year what’s plan b?”

I’m not a calm person (usually). Normal Caitlin would have cursed her out and mentioned how just because she chose a job to settle and be miserable at for most of her life doesn’t mean I have to follow suit. But again, of all the nice encouraging things she has done, said, and showed, for a while, I couldn’t think of it.

So I pray I let go of this nasty behavior in 2018; it’s going to be hard but it is dire.

***Saying I’m Not Enough

Alright, now put the combination of the two above in a bowl and what do you get? A Caitlin who struggles in interviews and applying for jobs because I let comparisons and negative comments rule my thoughts. This stopped me from applying to jobs I would have been perfect for; internships that could have helped me; posting art online.

We (including me) have to stop thinking that in order to be an illustrator means we have to pass a certain threshold of struggle, success, and a huge number of followers. That isn’t the job description. NO JOB DESCRIPTION has ”must have at least 10K followers on Instagram or Twitter.” nOnE.

So we (including me) need to stop treating ourselves this way. Period.

7) Three things you’re looking forward to in 2019.

*Going to move conventions.

**Adding pieces to my portfolio to try again at job hunting.

***Becoming content with the fact that my current situation isn’t my permanent situation. Unless I laze around and make it so.

Alright, so this was basically me calling myself out on my noise. Lashing out my demons and putting it in writing what I want to accomplish. I hope this inspires you to write yours, even if you keep it private. I hope it guides you and maintains your vision.

I’ll see you in 2019

A new wave

Caitlin xx

#pensurfing #new years #new years resolution

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chokememrstark · 7 years

Text

A Dangerous Game // Samifer

Chapter: 12/15

Words: 2123

Summary: Sam comes across a very interesting book that describes a ritual in which one can play a game with the Devil. His curiosity is sparked and even if he doesn’t think he will ever actually do it, Sam soon finds himself face to face with this very entity. Things take a very unpleasant turn, but despite that, Sam is going back, as if something pulls him towards Lucifer.

abuse, violence, bullying, black magic, no hunter!au, a lot of angst, a lot of hurt/little comfort

Note: Because I feel I need to add this: Dean is pretty much a complete asshole in this story, so if you’re uncomfortable with that you might want to reconsider reading it (or tell yourself he is completely ooc, fine with me too xD)

AO3 Link

Thanks to @sassysupernaturalsweetheart & @brieflymaximumprincess for their wonderful beta reading and keeping me company while writing this story ♥

Tagging: @spnyoucantkeepmedown @samlicker83 @wait-what5 (if you want to be tagged, just drop me an ask or contact me via IM)

It was barely getting dark outside, but Sam decided to give it a go now. He carefully locked the door to his room again, took off his jackets to reveal the big mirror underneath it and got the black dragon candle from his nightstand. He also got a razor blade from the bathroom, since it was faster than using a needle and squeeze his finger, and then sat down on the floor, in front of the mirror. Sam lightened the candle, took a deep breath that he held and cut one of his fingertips with the razor blade carefully. The candle’s flame flickered a little at his motions, so he waited for it to calm again before letting a single drop of blood fall into it. As Lucifer had predicted, the flame shot up for a second, so Sam closed his eyes and concentrated as hard as he could.

Lucifer, please show yourself. I need to speak to you...

Sam opened his eyes and faced a familiar face that looked both surprised and… proud? Yes, he kind of looked proud, why, Sam couldn’t tell.

“You really did it, I am impressed,” Lucifer said. “You don’t have to follow the rules of the game if you call me like this, by the way.”

“So, it’s more like a chat and not a game?” Sam asked, suppressing a smile.

“Precisely,” Lucifer smirked. “Now, what is the reason you called me so soon?”

Sam took a deep breath and while thinking, sucked on his finger to stop the bleeding.

“I need advice…” he finally mumbled, finger still in his mouth.

“Excuse me?”

“I said: I need advice.” Sam sighed and took the finger out. “Or better… I need a friend.”

“You want me to get you a friend, really?” Lucifer asked with a mocking tone in his voice and raised a brow, but Sam shook his head.

“I don’t want you to get me a friend, I just need one. I thought, maybe you would -”

“Stop this thought,” Lucifer suddenly said very strict, causing Sam to flinch slightly. “Did you forget who I am? Are you suggesting what I think you are suggesting?”

“I… No, no of course not,” Sam swallowed hard and felt really dumb for even bringing this up. “I’m sorry, I didn’t think.” He fell silent and looked down at the flame of the candle, asking himself why he thought this would be a good idea. It wasn’t the first time he had embarrassed himself, but it had never been as bad as now.

Eventually, after a few minutes of silence between them, Lucifer sighed audibly.

“Look, I get it, okay?” he said, his voice a little more soft now. “You don’t have friends and you said you feel comfortable talking to me, but I’m not what you think I am. I’m usually not this nice, to anyone. The people who play this game with me never really get what you’ve been getting.”

“What… do they get?” Sam asked carefully, earning a creepy smile.

“More than they bargained for,” he said. “They all think they are smart, that they can easily trick me - but they forget that I am not someone to be fooled with.”

“Do you… kill them? Or possess them?” Sam’s voice was shaking slightly, but he wasn’t really afraid, at least not for himself.

“Sometimes, but it depends. You see, a lot of people forget the time, it’s a natural thing to happen. You would have, too, if I wouldn’t have reminded you, right?” He waited for Sam to nod and did the same. “Time means little when you are hypnotized, or when you are distracted enough to just forget it. Others only last a few minutes before they look away, forgetting the rules. At first they were fun, it’s addicting to hear them scream when I suddenly appear in front of them, but now I usually end it quickly.”

“So, you do kill them,” Sam mumbled.

“Rules are rules, Sam,” Lucifer shrugged. “The ones that are really fun are the ones that go over the time. Sometimes they only last a few hours until their own demons devour them, sometimes it’s days. Some of them beg me to free them, which I do, of course. But they still come with me, so they don’t win one way or the other.”

“Has anyone ever played and won? I mean, ended the game and just… lived their life?”

“You mean, like you did?” Lucifer smirked. “No, as I said, you’re a first, and I’m very surprised by that. Especially since you seem to come back with less fear in your heart every time.”

“Is that bad?” Sam wanted to know. “I know who you are, I know what you do, but do I need to be afraid of you?”

“You should be, of course!” Lucifer laughed and it took him a while to stop, so he could continue speaking. “Sam, do you realize what I could do to you, even now? I could melt your soul by just looking into your eyes deep enough, I could shred your body into millions of pieces or rip your organs out one by one - I could do anything you can imagine and worse. So, yes, you should be very afraid of me.”

For some reason, Sam began to chuckle. He couldn’t help it, even if he knew Lucifer would be able to do all that, it didn’t create fear in him, just amusement. When he managed to stop chuckling and looked back at the Devil, there was nothing but confusion in his eyes.

“I’m sorry!” Sam gasped and forced himself to stop acting crazy. “I… didn’t want to be disrespectful.”

“You are doing a very poor job with that, just so you know,” Lucifer huffed, but he didn’t seem to be angry.

“I don’t know why I am not afraid or scared, I really can’t explain it,” Sam eventually said, calmed down again. “At first I was, I was terrified, but now… I’m not anymore.”

“You are a very strange human, do you know that?”

“Not really news to me,” Sam shrugged. “I’ve always been the freak, I’m used to being called strange.”

For a while the two were silent, but it was not an uncomfortable silence for Sam. He knew Lucifer was right - he was strange - but he didn’t take it as a bad thing for some reason.

“Lucifer?” Sam suddenly asked, his voice an unknown level of softness. Lucifer simply gave a ‘hm?’ back, to which Sam smiled slightly. “Did you ever want to have a friend?”

The Devil was actually taken aback by the question, he only gave a very puzzled look back to the human for a while. Sam knew this was a very personal question and he didn’t really expect Lucifer to even answer it, so his surprise was huge when he eventually did.

“I don’t think I ever did,” a quiet, almost shy voice replied and when he looked up, Sam noticed that Lucifer wasn’t looking at him anymore. “I’m not really the most sympathetic guy in the world or get around a lot, you know?”

“Did you ever think about it?” Sam asked. “You don’t have to answer, if I overstepped a boundary just tell me. I just wondered, that’s all…”

“No, it’s fine,” Lucifer quickly said, almost as if he didn’t want to offend Sam. “But no, I never thought about it. I do not get along with humans, I’m not that type.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean,” Sam sighed. “But having no friends really sucks.”

“According to you or everyone else?” Lucifer asked, confusing Sam for a second.

“What do you mean?” Sam asked.

“Do you feel bad not having friends? Or do you prefer to be on your own and only want one to prove something to your brother?”

Sam huffed, but didn’t answer at first. It wasn’t that he never wanted friends, it just never worked out. He never thought if he actually wanted a friend, though. It was normal to have friends, wasn’t it? Even Dean, as much of an asshole that he was, had friends.

“It would be nice having a friend,” Sam said after thinking for what felt like forever. “Someone who likes me for who I am, who doesn’t tease me all the time and calls me dumb, a baby or a coward… it’s not wrong to want that, is it? Did you never want someone like that?”

Lucifer stayed silent. Somehow, though, Sam didn’t need an answer. It was written all over the other’s face. Yes, Lucifer had wanted someone like that, but he wouldn’t admit it.

“I won’t cry or complain about not having a friend,” Sam continued then, a little quiet. “But I would like to know how it is to have one. I never thought about it as much as I did the last week, since we played the game the first time.”

“Hm,” Lucifer huffed again, his head tilted and studying Sam closely. He tried to spot a trick, a lie, anything to reveal the boy was playing a game himself now, but there was absolutely nothing. Sam’s soul, which was an indicator of both his feelings and actions at all times, was no different than normal and his eyes revealed no trick either. He wondered why, out of all humans coming to him, this one was so different, but there was no answer to this question.

“I know it’s silly, don’t even say it,” Sam said, smiling sadly. “I mean, I’m just a dumb kid, right? Lucky enough that you didn’t kill me already, a powerful being like you. But I feel, if anyone would understand this wish, it might be you…”

“I understand it,” Lucifer answered honestly. “But I do not think you know what you are asking for - or suggesting. Yes, I can talk to you like this, but I am not like you - I do not feel the way you can, I cannot feel joy like you do, happiness or friendship.”

“How do you know if you never tried?” Sam wanted to know. “You didn’t kill me, there must be a reason for that. If you would be just a cruel and evil entity, wouldn’t you have done that by now?”

“Are you suggesting I am not such an entity? Me, the literal devil?”

“No, but there is something else, I think. You must have felt pity for me at least, or sympathy. Curiosity, maybe. I don’t know, but it must have been there. You said this never happened before, right?”

“Indeed, it didn’t. And you are almost right, it was pity for you, I think.”

“If you never felt pity before, but still did for me, why would it be impossible to feel joy? Happiness? Friendship? Or even lo-”

“Don’t!” Lucifer suddenly growled and Sam’s voice died in his throat, his eyes widening in shock. “Do not ever say this word to me, ever!” Lucifer continued with a burning abyss in his blue eyes.

“O-okay, I won’t. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you,” Sam was devastated by the reaction he had caused so suddenly and felt horrible for it. “Lucifer, I’m truly sorry, I -”

“Forget it,” Lucifer said sharply, raising his hand. “I do not know why I felt pity for you, I am starting to regret it, but I accept that I did. I will not, however, be the friend you are looking for. I cannot be. We are too different, there is nothing we have in common and we do not even live in the same dimension of existence.”

“I know that, but…” Sam tried hard to find the right words, to not offend Lucifer even more, but it wasn’t easy. “It’s just that you are the first one I can talk to, without feeling the need to defend myself all the time. I want to know why.”

“I can make you feel that way if you insist,” Lucifer threw in, which angered Sam more than it should have, as it was a very bad joke.

“That’s not what I meant and you know it,” he said. “If you don’t want to, then just say it. But at least say it outright and don’t hide behind excuses that you can’t, because I don’t believe that.”

“This is strange,” Lucifer mumbled and tipped against his chin. “For a moment I thought you were giving me orders, but that can’t be, right? I must have misunderstood you.”

“Okay, fine,” Sam huffed, having enough of this now. “I get the hint, thanks.”

Without waiting for a reaction or looking back into the mirror, Sam blew out the candle, stood up and unlocked the door before storming out.

#samifer #sam x lucifer #sam winchester #spn lucifer #a dangerous game #series #chapter 11 #myfics

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greentech-genetics-blog · 7 years

Text

OK SO YEAH THE RAILROAD AND COURSERS AND WHY ITS ENTIRELY LOGICAL TO DISTRUST THEM.

Ok So like im not saying that its necessary to kill them. It can be avoided because honestly yeah save every synth and since coursers catch them killing them is good right? One less courser and a few more safe synths right? YOU ARE WRONG. Coursers are replaceable so really killing them is doing no one any favors because where one falls you can get a whole new set to take that place. THATS NOT WHAT IM HERE TO TALK ABOUT HOWEVER. I am here to talk about the not really helping out coursers thing. This is gonna get unnecessarily in depth and is totally based on how i have taken the info given to us about them.

Ok so first off lets look at synth treatment as a whole. Theyre treated as machines and not people. no one in charge of them treats them with human decency or like they have feelings and shit or whatever becuase they want to be able to use them for things you would never do to any person. And for most of the synths created that inhumane treatment is HARD LABOR or experimentation. These are all horrible in their own right and are good reason to run away. no one likes being used and most will believe that they deserve freedom from something this dull, strenuous, tiring, painful and difficult. Painful in the sense that it is the work that causes the pain.

Now, were looking at a group of ppl who see the synths as things that NEED NO HUMAN TREATMENT. So lets look at the courser training. Its mentioned that they pick some random folks from their jobs and put them through training. and if you remember synths are just people. just people not emotionless machines as they want to believe. So these people are given training. Training given to them by people who do not care to act like theyre people, training that is supposed to make them emotionless, training that if they pass they enter a life of horrifying surface work but if they fail they get reset and lose themselves, a fear they share with regular units as at the time of training thats what they are. The difference now though is that im at leat 90% parts of courser training are actual literal metal and physical torture. X6 makes a comment about being trained for “every combat situation” and I doubt hes the kind to say that but not mean it exactly as he says it. Every combat situation you can imagine he knows what to do. Tied to a chair in a dark prison cell having the shit kicked out of you? trained. Having to go up against a ton of supermutants and deathclaws all at once? trained, held down by a mob of gunners with no chance for escape unless you can come up with a damn good plan fast? trained. So yeah, probably not situations that fuckin specific but they have to take all wasteland life into account when making the training course. And theyre not taking mental or physical or emotional limitations into mind. well maybe some phsical but those other two are not relevant. These guys have been tortured into loyalty not JUST brainwashed like some normal units. Theyve been shown that the institute can and is willing to hurt them at the drom of a pen and wont give a shit to do so. If someone beats enough shit out of you and youre helpless to stop them youre a little less likely to run away when you know others like you are going to drag you back to that than someone whos only ever gotten the “were gonna reset you” threat.

Like yeah, normal units got it bad in a sense that they are over worked and have the threat of being reset over their head but no one ever sat them down and pushed them to the point of such pain that they learn to stop feeling all together. I mean again, the courser training has to be awful enough to really do a number on a good fellow since they HAVE TO reset the units that fail. They realize that the mental toll it takes is too big a burden to carry but wont say that.

So now takE all these terrified folks and introduce them to people who are trying TO STOP THEM FROM DOING WHAT THE PEOPLE WHO BEAT THE SHIT OUT OF THEM TOLD THEM TO DO. the railroad. Most, not all, of them are going to be unlikely to cooperate. They have seen the full extent of not only the institutes cruelty and power but their own and others like them. If they were to run another courser would come for them, and being coursers they might send more for a courser. They know what the other coursers can do and its not pretty. theyre relentlessly violent like theyre supposed to be and honestly no one wants to fall victim to that.

I Think the railroad probably realizes that. Theyre like cornered creatures. Come out swinging or get fucked over. they know after observing themselves that coursers WILL COME and WILL GET THEM and will do a damn good job at it. Running away is pointless, or at least thats what the institute had beat them into thinking.

See now still though, theyre still people. so some of them are not gonna give a shit what the institute said or did. They will leave and be fine but the railroad cant really know if they really are ok because SO MANY of them are not like that after suck intense and rigorous torture. Its not that theyre bad, all of them I mean its just theyre too big a risk for such a small time group like the railroad. Its like asking a bunch of untrained rookie fighters to go up against literal fucking Wasteland Ares that wants to kill them all normally and try to form a friendship or trust. its possible one might be chill and cool but also. man. if theyre not and theyre just faking to get closer to you or some shit then what? you just die and thats one less railroad member. and thats one courser who can now go home and snitch on your dumb ass. i think a good comparison would be that story. scorpion and the frog or some shit. if you dont know it google it or something im moving on from that.

So yeah, its safer for synths that the railroad is not snapped in half by a shady bitch courser. Yeah a few coursers are gonna suffer becuase of this but if the railroad is destroyed by wasteland ares then whos gonna help the synths now??? no one thats who everyone else wasnt them dead.

#long post #fucking hell i ramble so hard #edgy man im ded #im tried so this makes no sense so idk #courser are a thing i put too much thought into #I really like the term wasteland ares now #im gonna use it from now on #this is so bad #i hate how mobile ocasionly doesnt put stuff under readmore s i apologize to whoever is gonna have to scroll past this if my cut does #not work #ooc

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fair-dinkum-mechanic · 6 years

Text

i dont think any of you should bother caring at this point and im just goin gto ramble and not make any fucking sense at all yet again. my entire life story is written below. Like. my entire fucking worthless stupid disgusting life story that shouldn’t even exist because I shouldn’t fucking exist

it’s so, so , so SO hard every fucking minute of every fucking day to be living with the absolute truth that I’m NOT good enough that I never can be good enough and that I never WAS good enough. Not for anyone, and not for anything. I’ve told this story so many fucking times now but I need to recap and overshare just to put it in clearer perspective in my own mind. I don’t care if anyone reads it, I don’t think anyone will anyway, but its basically my fucking life story and how its all just been one huge lesson that I am literally worthless breathing garbage.

I think the ONLY time I’ve ever had any fucking worth was when I was extremely young. Not that I can remember much from the ages from 0-6. I remember my entire family LOVED me. Sure, my sister was jealous and quite enraged that my mum had another kid, especially since I was unplanned and there’s a good 14 year age gap between me and my siblings, but when I was extremely little everyone seemed to love me. I was pretty shy and clingy, but if I was comfortable around people I was extremely polite and always laughing. I see videos of myself as a really young kid and I see myself in him but it’s just so distant from who I am now. I was gentle and loved nothing more than to make people laugh and entertain them. But yeah, I also threw a few tantrums too. I’m a fucking virgo. Then of course school started, and that’s when my differences really started to show. I was too gentle and too quiet. I wasn’t boistrous and full of energy like the rest of the boys around me. Naturally, I became friends with many more girls and seemed to gravitate more toward the softer, more quiet kinds of things. I didn’t like sports, and I hated loud noises. That started making things difficult for me when trying to fit in, but still, we were all pretty young and nobody really cared at that stage. There was some light bullying but normal kid stuff, nothing that really hit home just yet. I was a little fucking cunt to the friends I did have though. I had obviously been far too spoiled and raised on my own so I didn’t know how to be empathetic and kind to my friends. I was possessive and cruel to them. I remember smacking one of my friends right in the nose for choosing to play with some other kid that I hated for the day. I was only 7-9 at this point though.

My dad was always pretty distant. He had an extremely short fuse and foul temper. I once saw him fighting with my sister to the point of physically grabbing her and makiing her fall to the floor. He took her car keys so she couldn’t leave so she ran to my grandmas house. Once when I was about 5 I was taking too long to get ready in the morning for school and while I was brushing my teeth he burst into the bathroom and snatched my toothbrush out of my mouth and threw it hard at the wall. My sister came out and they screamed at each other because he woke her up when she had the night shift. He’d chased me with shoes, belts, and said all manner of things to me. I was never ever close to him and I don’t really care that much. I care to the extent that because of it I wont’ ever be able to understand a fatherly bond or how that is meaningful to people. He was an extremely hyper masculine person. He used to be a football coach, was heavily into football and women, was extremely homophobic and the like. He wasn’t all bad, but that was the person I knew and saw the most of. Things got quite good for me for a year and a bit. My teacher told me to find new friends and I did, which led me to one of the best years of my life. I was 10 or 11 and I had one extremely close friend called Ben, and we used to hang out all the time. Our families spoke and I got along with his siter and he got along with my family too. We’d have sleepovers all the time and we’d do all the fun shit kids would do like go to carnivals, watch inappropriate horror movies, play games, think that staying up past 12 was a sin, etc. Eventually all the friends I’d made in that time left my school due to family moving or to escape the relentless bullying at the primary school I went to, which I was about to face. I still kept in contact with Ben, but they’d all left the school and by the time I was 12 I was left with no friends at all.

I’m certain that’s when things really started to spiral out of control for me. I would spend lunchtimes walking around the school by myself for the entire hour, trying to make it look like I was going somewhere so the other kids wouldn’t know I had nowhere to go and no one to talk to. Eventually they figured it out though and I became the target of daily bullying. They’d shout out at me that i was a loner with no friends, I’d be picked last for everything, I used to brush my hair all the way across like a hideous combover, and of course I withdrew more into myself and eventually because I didn’t like sports and was quite gentle, the homophobic bullying started. Teachers and my mum tried to push me to get talking to the kids and make friends with them but even when I tried I couldn’t say a single thing right. They’d always make fun of me whenever I opened my mouth. I remember telling a ghost story while everyone else was and for the rest of the day the entire class of 30+ kids crowded around me laughing and pointing, some poking me and the teacher did nothing. When I finally told them to fuck off I was sent into detention for swearing. When I approached teachers they would get frustrated and tell me that I should’ve told them sooner. I would be pulled up on the smallest misbehaviour and punished because I was isolated and alone so I stood out. I think the lowest point for me was when I went to speak with kids I’d been trying to make friends with for an entire year and they turned around and asked me if I wanted to hear a song they made. And It was about me, how ugly I was, how gay I was, and how much of a loner and loser I was. I had to stand there and watch these girls do that as the boys laughed. That’s one of the only things from those days that’s really stuck with me I think. The rest of it I’m pretty much over. Of course it still has its effect on me, but I don’t expect apologies or hold it against any of the kids who did it. I can see the impact it has had on the rest of my life though. For my final year of primary school I managed to find friends again, although the kids who used to bully me were still around and all the homophobic bullying continued.

Mind you, at this stage I had no idea that I was gay. I hadn’t really thought about it. In fact, I was jerking off to women, it wasn’t until later on that I found it out for myself, so being bullied so hard for my sexuality for so long I think played a huge huge role in how long it took me to accept and understand it. Anyway, I left primary school terrified to go into high school like everyone is, but I was kind of hopeful that I’d get there and things would be better. Of course, I was wrong, because I wasn’t prepared for how grown up a lot of the rich kids at private school wanted to seem. Around the first year of high school when I was 13 I drifted away from Ben, which still makes me sad but we’re both entirely differnet people than when we were kids, obviously. He’s a very straight guy and I’m a very gay one. I made another very close friend in highschool though, and this is where I’ll stop saying names because a lot of these people are still in my life. He was also brand new to the school and we lived extremely close to each other. For a while, it was only me and him, two extremely dopey 13 year old kids with horrific haircuts, braces, and breaking voices. By this point my skin had really started breaking out and I can assure you I was still not into sports. Not really the best thing when I was enrolled in a private school known for its sporting elitism. I realised really quickly that things weren’t going to be easy for me there. It really didn’t take long for the homophobic bullying to start up again. It was much, much worse this time though. People would actively avoid me, they would spread rumours that me and my only friend were fucking (he’s another extremely straight guy) and it just made me horrified that he’d ditch me to avoid all that. A girl I’d never spoken to, who was extremely popular, once did one of those trashy “Tag Your Friends Who...” things on Facebook. I wasn’t friends with her but stumbled across the photo somehow, and on the part that said “tag your friend that’s most likely to be gay” she had written my full name, and there was a huge comment thread underneath it with the boys and girls from school saying things like “HAHAHA and what about the science teacher he sneaks off into the storeroom with...”. Even though I’d managed to make more friends, my confidence was fucking gone. I could barely open my mouth in classes. The bullying came from the teachers too, primarily the sports department because they had so much power. I’d be singled out and chastised and was threatened with expulsion more than once for refusing to sign up to extra curricular sports and show up to Saturday morning games and such. This caused extreme conflict at home too, with my dad being such a masculine guy and respecting the boys sport master as he was an ex-state football player. He’d yell at me and resent me and tell me how much better his life would be once I left home. Mum would also fight with me because I was just so adamant to not give the teachers what they wanted. Once I got older around 16 I really started to figure out that I’m not straight. I had crushes on girls, I even dated one for a short while, but we kissed twice and I bailed on that. I’d managed to create a pretty solid friendship circle.For reference sake I’ll make up names for people. I got in touch with one of the girls I was friends with way back in primary school, one of the ones I was a cunt to (Susan), and my Straight Friend from high school (Peter) had a friend of his own who was having extreme difficulties at home and making friends at school (Harvey). I also met a friend online who we used to speak almost every day and she was a real comfort to me and genuinely wanted to speak with me all the time (Karen). I lost a few friends from my younger high school years, but eventually somehow ended up with a group of the more “nerdy” girls. Me and Peter were finally in our own friendship group within school and I was able to throw parties and 20+ people would attend. Of course, I was still the victim of homophobic rumours and bullying in PE from both the jock boys and teachers, but overall It was going okay. I had my first crush on a boy, and to this day I’m not convinced he’s entirely straight, but also he was extremely attractive and very popular so I had absolutely not chance with him in a million moons. We only spoke on MSN and never spoke at school. I was also having minor obsessive crushes on girls as well, but I think that was from my feelings of lonliness and also seeing straight people all over the place and thinkin that was supposed to be me. Eventually, somehow I became extremely close with one of the girls in our friendship group at school (April), and me, her and Peter became a trio of sorts. We were very close with the other friends too, Harvey and Susan and we’d often organise parties and gatherings where we’d have picnics or go places, see movies, or hang out. Eventually the final year of high school came along and I embraced my passion for acting and comedy. Suddenly, almost everyone in the school loved me. They thought I was the most hysterical, valuable person they’d met. I was still withdrawn and compltely unsure how to act around any of them, but eventually I came to it and made a few friends from being more open with myself. I was so closed off and just sure that everyone was out to bully me and I’d become judgmental and bitter, but I’m so thankful I got to know some of those people a bit better. I just wish I’d been able to do so sooner. At home things weren’t going as well though. My dad was diagnosed with a rare lung condition, and my brother and sister had begun to fight quite viciously (both of whom had moved out of home long ago and had families of their own). It devolved to the point where my brother completely shut off my sister and my parents from his life. We didn’t hear a word from him.

Also at this point Peter and Karen started dating, despite her living in NSW and him in SA. That didn’t end well and it caused a rift between them. Karen was also starting to experiment with drugs and argue with us quite often. She also became quite distant after some time. But she’d even come down to visit us here twice.

Peter really started to drown himself in study, and that left me and April. During this time me and her became really close. She was the daughter of two of the teachers at the school, so obviously we couldn’t get into too much trouble, but we had free lessons together and instead of studying we’d sneak off to Maccas for lunch and every week we’d visit a pet store up the road and visit all the animals that we’d given names to. We even went into the city once and brought Disney DVDs and Britney Spears albums. She was the first person I came out to, and I remember it as clear as day because I got a blade of grass stuck in my eye a few seconds after. The last year of high school is when my mental health started to really deteriorate. I felt lonely, worthless, ugly, and extremely afraid. Schoolwork had an effect on me that I’m still not able to fully describe. It drained me of all energy and made me want to cut into my skin just to feel something. Of course this meant that I wasn’t able to provide my teachers the standard of work that they wanted, and they berated and screamed at me for it. I fought back, becasue it’s all I knew how to do, but I was always told I was rude, disrespectful and being difficult. I remember the exact day I knew something wasn’t right in my brain. I was supposed to be in a Biology lesson but I hadn’t done work on an assignment tha was due. I couldn’t front it. I didn’t do it because I couldn’t. I’d sat down and tried and tried but I couldn’t wrack my brain to do it and I couldn’t ask for help because I had shut down. I was walking around school, breathing so hard I could feel my heart pounding in my throat, and eventually I saw one of my good friends who immediately could see something wasn’t right. I didn’t say anything and she didn’t either but she immediately hugged me and all I did was sob and tell her I just wanted to kill myself I just wanted to run onto the road and have the cars flatten me. She took me to my class and explained it to my teacher who was surprisingly very understanding. That teacher from then on made sure to check up on how I was doing with work and asked me if I needed any specific grade and once I said no she undeerstood and said “we’ll get you the passing grade you need, but we won’t push you any further than that, alright?” and I’ll never forget that. It was one of the kindest things a teacher had ever done for me. Her understanding meant so much.

Although, my mental health continued to fail, and my life continued to get harder. I finished high school with very below average grades, and it seemed like most people were over me and didn’t really care. I was also coming to terms with just how gay I was. Which was very. And I hated the fact I’d never been in a ~~~real~~~ relationship. Lonliness was taking me over. April was there for me every second though, and I opened up to her about how I felt. Peter eventually moved to NSW to study there, like he was always going to. It was very upsetting for our friendship group as everyone loved him, and I was so close to him for such a long time that not having him around constantly was going to be really, relaly hard. Luckily I still had April and all of my other friends who wanted to hang out and see me a lot. Harvey, Susan, and my other new close friend Talia were all there. Susan and Talia both went to study art at uni, and they both got put in the same class. They didn’t know each other too well but I was very excited for the both of them to get to know each other, and eventually they stated to get along really well!

Me and April only got closer as the first year out of high school went on. She would catch the bus to my house and we’d hang out and do fuck knows what. Anything we felt like. Sometimes she’d stay the night, and she’d always be there to help me set up for parties or through difficult times. We’d speak over skype almost every night and we did so many things and spoke about so much stuff that I can’t even think of many things off the top of my head to list becasue there’s just so much we did. It reached the point where there’s not one thing she didnt know about me and I don’t think there was one thing I didn’t know about her. When we played truth or dare at parties we could answer for each other, and we were communicating with silent looks.

Still, my depression was getting worse. My lonliness was getting worse. I was desperate, horrificly so, to find a boyfriend. I got in contact with a boy I met vaguely through an old friend who did youtube. I started practically harassing him. Messaging him every day, getting so sad when he wasn’t as intersted in me as I was in him. I confessed my feelings multiple times and never took the hint. I was just too desperate and it was making me even worse. Susan went to school with this guy, and she didnt’ like him (like most people at her school) and when a night came that I was going to make an attempt and messaged my friend Talia about it, having her talk me down and thanking her for it, I was terrified. Anyway a week or so later I had a party at my house and Susan came to help me get ready. I’d invited Talia but she said she wasn’t coming. Susan handed me her phone for some reason and it had been left open on her mesasges with Talia. I saw something along the lines of “I can’t come tonight I’m far too annoyed at Marc for that.”. I didn’t say anything and took it to deal with later because I didn’t want to make it look like I was snooping. I’d invited the boy and one of my new friends who was friends with him to this party as well. Susan had messaged Peter all about it saying how he should be happy he’ snot here anymore because I was just feeding this boy alcohol to try and get him drunk and there was absolutely no other beverages on offer. She said how selfish and inconsiderate I was being, and how creepy and uncomfortable for others my relationship with April was. She said I was only depressed because my mum had sheltered me and that for me to get over it I needed to have some real suffering and some real pain. Peter was forwarding all of thsi on to me, becasue he knew it wasn’t true because he knows who I am and wanted me to know that she was saying these things and wanted to hear my perspective. I was annoyed, but April was there with me and supported me 100%. I was able to keep it to myself, and I wanted to try and smooth things over with Susan and Talia. Talia wasn’t speaking to me nearly as much as normal which was very hard because I used to call her one of my best friends. Susan was still speaking to me a bit though, however she seemed much angrier. I messaged her eventually and asked “Hey, have I done anything lately to upset you or Talia?” and she said why I asked that and I just said “I just feel like I’ve perhaps done something to upset you two” and all she said to me was “Talia had a friend who killed himself and my uncle almost did so maybe you should think about that before you say anything. Anyway I have to go now.”

Things just started to boil over more and more and I was becoming angrier and angrier because as time went on Susan and Talia were actively trying to gather my friends and stage an intervention for me to cut specific people out of my life. Those people being the boy I liked, the new friend I’d made and was getting very close to, distance myself from April, and move away from my mum and sick dad. I got drunk at a party and ended up screaming at Susan as she tried to boss me around. We didn’t speak much after that but she messaged me after not speaking for months asking for us to meet up one on one. I told her no becasue it wasn’t just me she had a problem with and it wasn’t juts me that she’d hurt and we should all speak about it as a group. She instantly replied with aggression and denied ever talking about me behind my back and trying to turn people against me (I had actual screenshots of this occuring). She told me I was fake and weak and that I needed to get over myself. Then she blocked me without giving me any chance to respond.

I hung on to anger about this for so long and I’ve only very recently gotten over it. Suffice to say I’ve never spoken to either Susan or Talia again after that, which is sad because I used to consider both of them some of my best friends. Time went on, eventually I got over the boy but I’d managed to make a very good and best friend in the friend I’d re-met through him and she’s still one of my best friends to this day and one who has managed to stick wtih me all this time. I only have positive things to say about her, and if she’s reading this i know she’ll feel self concious that she’s not in this story much but that’s because I’m focusing on mostly the bad parts and the good things in the past that turned bad and she isn’t either of those things and she doesn’t mean any less to me than any of this shit that I’m writing out now. My dad’s health got worse and worse. He was in hospital a lot and he was having immense trouble breathing. During this time I actually met a boy on Tumblr and we began to date shortly after. The problem was he lived in NSW, but it alleviated my lonliness at least and I felt so happy. However it was extremely bittersweet because at the same time I had to keep it a complete secret from my family, which was difficult when our only form of communication was Skype. I had such a horrible, sickly fear that my parents would find out. I would have panic attacks over it and still to this day, even though my mum knows now, it makes me feel ill to think about it. I remember hearing dad downstairs one day, choking and trying to scream out for help. He was rushed to hospital and kept in the ER. He was strapped to oxygen machines for days. Mum was in and out all the time. I spent so much time at the hospital. Eventually the doctors told us in a roundabout way that he was dying, and he was dying within the week. He was fully aware of what was happening, and things only got worse. I sat there as his mind twisted itself around. He so desperately didn’t want to die. He would explode into panic attacks where he would cry and wail. There was no anger in these, just complete and utter horrible anguish. I’d never seen anything like it before, and I just had to sit there while mum was crying trying to calm him down and the nurses had to come and strap him to the bed. Eventually he was so sick that he couldn’t speak. He was on almost 100% oxygen and they had to drug him up so he couldn’t know what was happening. Eventually, the time came where my family told them to turn off the breathing machines, and he died within minutes. It’s then that my brother came back. He felt guilty and was trying to fix things.

Things between him and my sister couldn’t be fixed though. They didn’t speak and there was still so much hatred there.

With dad gone, mum couldn’t afford the house anymore. It was just me and her, so she had to sell it which was horrible and stressful and hard. I was suddenly having to help with all of these grown up things that i never thought I’d have to for at least a few decades. All the while I was being pushed into deciding what to do with my life and sitting on my massive fucking secret.

April was still there through all of it though. Peter was too, but not as much, he was interstate of course. My boyfriend and my new friend were there just as much as April. Harvey was there too.

Oh boy was Harvey there. He and April ended up having a uni class together, and they became closer. This lead to Harvey developing an infatution with her which she relayed to me every day. It led to her having to gently let him down, and he spent a full year hating her. Truly, viciously hating her. His attitude had changed and he was becoming more and more arrogant and self ighteous. Peter’s family had basically adopted him as their own and even they were having conversations with me and April about how horrible he was being. When this was brought to his attention, he only got worse and actively worked to bring down any of us who had a part in saying anything. I had lost all patience with him since I was told of his sexual harrassment, entitlement to women, and selfish comments, and so I was ready to cut him off completely and I made that no secret. Around this time my boyfriend actually made the move to SA, and him and April became roommates. I was absolutely terrified because I was so scared that my mum would find out about it. I was happy to have more people close to me physically, but the terror outweighed it.

April and Harvey continued speaking, although she was very vocal with me about her distaste for him and her insistence that after uni was over she wanted absolutely nothing to do with him. That’s why when she told me he’d asked her to go to his house to talk, I wasn’t worried. I let her know she was free to tell him every little thing I’d said and let him know I didn’t care I’d say it to his face personally if I could. Things were never the same after that. I’ll never know what was said, but since that meeting between them, April and me were never as close as we once were. She started ignoring my messages, ditching events with me and our other friends to go and see him, actively berating things that she knew I really enjoyed amongst other things. It planted the seed of something I never thought I’d ever see between us, a lack of care and even irritability. Things got worse and worse and eventually we weren’t even friends anymore. Not just not best friends, we weren’t even friends. She was seeing Harvey so often, speaking with him all the time, doing things that we used to do, all the while Havey was making life hell for me. Punishing me in ways only a silent manipulator can. I tried to reach out and tell people what was happening but nobody believed me and I still don’t think anybody does. This only made it worse. I became angry because April had never had any reason to distrust me before, and I didn’t know why Harvey was that reason now. Eventually I cut her off, I didn’t think she was the person I once knew and I didn’t think she even liked me anymore. I felt pain whenever we spoke or saw each other. I wanted to reach out to my extremely close friend, somewhere in her and beg and plead with her not to be taken in by Harvey’s new manipulative tricks. It was too late though. I failed her, and I’d tried so fucking hard. He was still trying to get back at me though, in every way that he could, and she was enabling him to do that because she was still a aprt of my life. I had to cut her out no only for my own safety but for the safety of my remaining friends. Now I’m at the stage where I am now. Everyone left in my life has tried to leave me because I’m too much, and whenever it happens I can’t handle it. I think the moral of my life story is that I’m not, have never been, and never WILL be good enough for anything or anyone. Aside from when I was extremely young, barely walking, I haven’t been worth anything. I’ve just been a disappointment, someone to cut off, to dismiss, or to push aside. I have tried everything to be better and worth people’s investment, but it never works. I know even now those who remain close to me, all of them, are thinking about ways in which they’ll cut themselves off from me, knowing that it’s healthier for them. My boyfriend travelled overseas without me without any regrets, while I felt crushed and alone because it had always been my dream to travel with a boy I loved and who loved me to special places to see it together, but I realised I’m not worth that to anyone else. He broke up with me because even after all of these things I’ve been through my walls are absolutely rock hard and impossible to break through, and I can’t let anyone in or let anything out. He only took me back because of how unstable and volatile I am. One of the only joys in life I have left is my cat. I truly love her so much because she’s the only one who has been with me from start to present through at least the end of school shit that happened. I know she’s only an animal but to me she’s the only one I can open up with and be completely comfortable around. I am so thankful all the time that she’s with me. I know I’ll never be worth anything to anyone, and I’m finding it so fucking hard to trust again. I don’t see the point when all my days are empty and I know that once life takes away from me what I have, I’ll be ready to die. My mum still cares for me. She drives me to work because I can’t do it myself. She cooks, she washes, she helps me with things i need to do. She’s older than most, and she wont be able to do those things much longer, and I am very close with her. My emotional distress is going to become too much on top of the material support I’ll no longer have.

My cat, is a cat and as such has a much shorter lifespan than me. She will die and I have no idea when.

There is nothing for me to live for past these things. Every other person who will be in my life past those things has told me, shown me, or let me know in other ways that they will not be around in any significant way, and I know it’s because I am worthless and awful. And I can’t count on myself because all I want is to fade away. So that’s what I will do. Fucking novel. Nobody cares about my life enough to fucking ead all of this anyway lmfao.

#extremely personal #longest fucking post I've ever written #long post #like FUCKING long post #I hope the read more worked for you

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