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purpleyoonn · 1 year

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baby (you complete us) 9

C H A P T E R N I N E

Summary: Soulmates were a common occurrence, so common, in fact, that the world sought an easier way to find your other half: A bracelet that would scan your mark and match you with those who shared your mark. Within recent years, soul groups were becoming normal, and your own bracelet said you have seven matches.

Or where you wear your bracelet for ten years, and finally give up the hope you would find your soul group, only for BTS to put theirs on and see what they were missing.

Genre: soulmate au, idol au, angst, fluff, eventual smut,

Pairing: Idol BTS x Disabled MC

Warnings: angst, mentions of depression, disabled mc (Ehlers Danlos syndrome), eventual smut, fluff, lots of fluff, mentions of disability, simp bangtan

Chapter Warnings: protective bangtan, anxious mc, not a lot going on

*Words in Italics are spoken/written in Korean*

beta'd/edited by the lovely @babyarmybias

masterlist // chapter 8 // chapter 10

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Previously on baby (you complete us):

You knew there was no going back at this point.

You knew the bond would take hold and cement the bond in your own soul.

“So, what happens now?” Your words had your soulmates scrambling, everyone talking at once as Namjoon remains silent, trying to remember what his own thoughts were as he held you in his arms.

“Anna, I’m telling you, I thought you were lying this entire time.” Laughter was the only thing you heard on your end, your best friend’s face disappearing from the screen as she bursts out into laughter.

You had called her the second you had gotten back to your hotel, frozen in disbelief at the two meetings you had just sat through, sprung on you unexpectedly once you voiced your acceptance of the bond.

“Now, miss Y/n, we would like to stay on top of things before the government records are leaked, which we are almost certain they will be as the boys’ soulmate status is a constant debate and even more so since we announced our search for you. As such, we have a meeting planned now that the bond has been accepted and you are to be staying in South Korea.” The boys’ manager, Sejin, had announced once he had come to check up on you all in the large room.

You had been in Namjoon and Jimin’s arms for only a couple of minutes, and you were wondering if Sejin was sitting outside just listening to everything going on. You looked to Namjoon, almost instinctually, to see if this was okay. You had accepted the bond only minutes ago and were now being thrust into meetings with HYBE staff.

“Does it have to be now?” Namjoon turned his head to look at Sejin, only to get a soft nod in response. Namjoon could only sigh, knowing and understanding how his managers were by this point.

“I’m sorry, Y/n. But things could get ugly quickly if we wait to have this meeting. We need to figure out a protection detail for you sooner rather than later amongst other things.” Namjoon looked dejected, as did the others. You could only nod, a little out of your element.

Jungkook was the first to get up, holding his hands out for you to take as he helped you off of the couch, making Jimin pout as you left his arms. Jungkook continued to hold your hand as the others got up, lacing his fingers with yours and holding you close.

You didn’t know it, but Jungkook was the rock you needed to keep you grounded as you walked with the boys to the meeting room after getting off of the elevator. His grip on your hand was light but reassuring, a strong presence as you felt like you were gonna fall with your fear of the unknown. You had no idea what was coming, and it scared you.

“Everything will be okay.” His English was low, voice deeper than you expected as he whispered the reassurance. Jungkook could feel your nerves, like they were within his own body. He hated that you felt that way and tried to do what he could to help you feel better.

“I hope so.” You whisper back, bumping your head against his shoulder in thanks. You knew he was trying, and you appreciated it.

When Sejin knocked on the door, and got a reply, he nodded his head and opened the door for you all, giving you a nice smile as you passed by with Jungkook right behind you, hand still holding yours. The second you entered the room, you were met with loud voices, words of congratulations you mentally translate, coming from a number of people in the room all at once.

You jumped a little in surprise, causing some quiet laughter to come from Jimin as he walked in behind Jungkook. You looked at him, blushing in your own embarrassment as he walked by. You knew he wasn’t laughing at you, more like he was laughing out of affection. You don’t know how you knew, but you did.

“Please, come sit!” You looked over to see who spoke but you didn’t recognize the voice, instead you saw a space between Namjoon and Yoongi, and Bang PD gesturing to the seat. You nodded your head and moved to the empty seat, reluctantly letting go of Jungkook’s hand, seeing him sit down on the other side of the table next to Hoseok.

“It is so nice to officially meet you, miss Y/n. We have heard a lot about you and are excited to build a friendship with you. I am Bang Sihyuk and these are my fellow company heads.” You listen as he introduces his fellow company leaders, bowing your head and shaking their hands.

“I wanted to talk with you about the announcement. Namjoon has told us about how you want your public image, or persona, to be handled.” You look to your left at Namjoon, wondering when he had the time to tell the well-known CEO.

“We agree, we don’t think you need to be kept secret for any reason. The boys are humans and their soulmate status doesn’t need to be hidden. We plan on announcing your bond tonight, as early as we can with the hopes that we can stay ahead of the situation and be able to control it.”

“However, we want to know how comfortable you are with what information is released.”

“The meeting was insane, Anna. They wanted to know all of my socials and if I wanted my name to be in the official announcement.” You told your friends, Chris now also in screen as he waves at you. “They even asked me if I wanted access to the official Weverse account so I could do lives.”

“They want you to do lives? But you aren’t an idol?” Anna herself was confused, as she doesn’t really listen to kpop. You’ve gotten her into a couple of groups but she mainly listens for the music.

“Exactly! It was kind of weird but Taehyung jumped in and explained it as like, because the fans would know I’m their soulmate, they would want to get to know me as well. It would feel weird though, doing a live.” You explained, Anna nodding her head as she begins to understand.

“Well damn, my best friend is gonna be famous!” Chris exclaims causing you and Anna both to look at him, eyebrows raised.

“What?”

“Are you serious?” Anna asks asks Chris in disbelief.

“I’m not famous.” You say, “I am just their soulmate. It’s different. I haven’t done anything to earn the fame or attention.” You try to explain it but Chris is stuck on the fact that he is now going to have people to protect you from, apparently.

“I’m just saying, if you need me to come over there, I’ve got plane tickets ready to go. I just might need someone to bail me out of jail.” He crosses his arms behind his head, sitting back in his seat on the bed as Anna covers her face with her hands, hiding her embarrassment.

“Okay killer, I don’t think I need your protection.” Your sarcasm isn’t heard by his ears though, leaving you to continue. “The boys have actually assigned me my own personal security. His name is Songun; he is the one who met me at the airport and brought me to the hotel. I’m comfortable with him and I like him. He is very nice and funny so I think I’ll be okay.” Anna perks up at your words, happy to know you will be safe all the way across the world, while Chris just shrugs his shoulders, still unsure if you would be truly safe.

“Has your brother met him or the boys yet?” Chris asked. You sigh, knowing the pedestal Chris placed your brother on, with good reason.

Your brother was your protector, and always had been. He and Chris were often a tag team going after bullies or just anyone that they found unworthy of you or your sister’s attention. So, you weren’t at all surprised he wanted to know your brother’s opinion of Seungho or the boys.

“I haven’t called him yet. I was gonna call him after I called you.” You lied, knowing you didn’t want to call your family yet. You had texted your father, letting him know what was going on, but your brother and sister were a whole other thing. You were the youngest, and they were overprotective and liked to treat you like a baby, despite that you were now an adult.

“Okay, well, why don’t we let you go, you look like you’re gonna pass out babes.” Anna cut off Chris the second he started to open his mouth again, patting her hand against his thigh.

You felt like you were seconds from passing out. You had such a long day that you were sure you were gonna sleep for hours. You had used a heating pad that you found in the bathroom on your back, and it felt way too nice to move.

“Okay, well, goodnight then.” You spoke, not even knowing what time it was in California right now, mind too tired to think.

However, when you hung up your phone and laid down in bed, you couldn’t sleep, even a little nap evaded you. You were restless and found yourself unable to let your mind or body relax. You felt out of body now that you were awake and aware of your situation.

You had accepted your soulmates and were moving to South Korea.

You were currently being announced on Weverse as the last soulmate to BTS.

Your life was never going to be the same.

And it unnerved you to your core.

You even debated calling one of the boys, wanting some kind of distraction but you didn’t know if you should or not. You didn’t want to annoy them but you felt like you weren’t going to go to sleep without one of them here, and it made you feel weird.

Why couldn’t you sleep without them when you never had this problem before? Why did your body and mind just… change so significantly as if they were conspiring against you?

-*-*-

You ended up falling asleep watching Boys Over Flowers, one of the first k-dramas you ever watched. You had gotten halfway through episode three before falling asleep, your body scrunched together in a way only you would be comfortable with the way your limbs were. You didn’t know how to explain it, but you needed to be like a pretzel to be able to fall asleep, however, you always woke up with your knee hiked up to your chest while your other leg is straight out and your arms are underneath your head.

This time, however, you didn’t wake up on your own, knee to your chest. You felt something brushing against your face, as if tracing your lips and nose. It was soft and didn’t leave you feeling off, in fact, you leaned into the softness, soon enough a hand was cupping your cheek, giggling coming from in front of you.

“Oh my, you’re so cute.” Jimin whispered as he caressed your cheek, watching as you subconsciously lean into his hand as your slept.

Jimin and Taehyung had shown up to your hotel room, having acquired the extra key from Jin, in order to take you to the Seoul Soulmate registry building to finalize your bond legally so you can live here on a soulmate citizenship. This would give you legality over their estate and help in adding you officially to their bank accounts and everything else that comes with being their soulmate.

They wanted you to have access to everything that they did, no matter your own status. You were their soulmate, and they were going to treat you like it.

Taehyung was worried about you being treated differently, knowing some people still have issues with foreigners in South Korea, even if they were bonded to a native. He hated it and needed to make sure you had all the rights and things that they did, and he would make sure that would happen, everyone else be damned.

He also made sure that Songun was aware of his thoughts, and together they agreed on the way they thought you should be treated, and how to react should someone, anyone, behave differently.

Taehyung was currently texting Namjoon to confirm they had their appointment with their Soulmate Advisor when Jimin started giggling. He moved over to the bed so he could see what his soulmate was giggling over and found your sleepy smile leaning into his palm. Taehyung couldn’t help but to take a picture of you, sending it to Namjoon as he did so.

bangbangbangtan

Tae: *picture attached*

Joon: oh. my. 🥰 she is adorable!

Before he could text back a reply, he heard you groaning a little bit, hearing the bed shuffle around as you moved. He looked back up to see Jimin cooing at you and trying to bring you back into his embrace.

“Nooooo. Five more minutes.” You grumbled out, turning onto your other side and away from the bothersome movement. You were starting to come out of your sleepy state enough to realize you weren’t alone in your room. You freeze and try to listen to them, trying to figure out who it was but inevitably you shoot straight up out of bed and turn around to see Jimin and Taehyung. Just sitting and standing by your side, eyes locked on you with soft smiles on their lips.

“Uhm…how did you get into the room? And uh, what are you doing here?” You felt weirdly violated, having them within your space so suddenly and without notice. Yet, your body was relaxing back into the bed, that feeling of having your space intruded on quickly washing away the second you see their smiles.

Man, you thought, I’m whipped. All they had to do was fucking smile and I’m a goner.

“Jin-hyung gave us the other key and we wanted to take you personally to the Seoul Soulmate Registry to get everything sorted out. And then,” Jimin turned and gestured toward Taehyung as he spoke, “we were hoping you would let us take you out to eat at our favorite Korean BBQ place for lunch?” Jimin looked so hopeful, even clasping his hands together in front of his chest as he brought up his plan for lunch.

You knew then and there, why Jimin seems to get away with so much during Run BTS episodes. All he has to do is breathe and you would do anything for your older soulmate. You couldn’t say no to him, not when you knew the bond was so knew and you were being drawn to them.

“Okay. I’ve always wanted to try Korean BBQ.” You smiled softly at them, still a little sleepy.

Jimin cheers a little at your answer, jumping up and off your bed and excitedly moving over towards your suitcase. You watch him as he picks out your outfit for the day, thankfully choosing one of your oversized sweaters and a pair of long leggings as it was going to be a colder day today.

After you get dressed and pack your bag with all of the necessary documents and your soul bracelet, you follow Jimin and Taehyung outside to the SUV waiting in the underground private parking garage. Songun, unsurprisingly, was in the passenger seat, moving to open the door for you to get into the back seat.

“Good morning Songun.” You greeted the man, a big smile on your lips as he smiles back, nodding his head at you.

“Good morning. You seem a lot happier this morning than yesterday morning? I wonder why that is?” Songun teases you a little bit, knowing exactly why your attitude has changed.

When Songun had brought you back to the hotel, you didn’t say anything the entire time, too worn out from your meetings you didn’t even blink when you got to the hotel, just nodding at him in thanks and walking into the hotel.

“Hm, I wonder.” You grin at him before climbing in after Jimin, Taehyung following you to sit by the door so you were not the first one out. They were all going to be protective over you, their instinct to protect their newest soulmate on the forefront of the delicate and still new bond. Once the bond was settled, their instincts would die down a little, but probably not much.

“Did you sleep well?” Jimin asked you, hoping he said the sentence correctly as he did. He had spent a lot of time, over the years, learning English, but it always seemed to come harder to him than his soulmates.

“I think so? I had trouble falling asleep and was restless. I’m not exactly sure what happened. Maybe it’s because I’m in a new environment.” You thought aloud towards the end, not noticing the look Jimin and Taehyung shared.

The boys knew why you had trouble sleeping, the exact thing happening to them if they didn’t sleep next to their soulmates. But they didn’t say anything. They had a feeling you needed to realize it on your own.

“Well, I hope you can sleep better tonight.” Taehyung replied, giving you a large smile, thinking of his own question for you.

“Now, is there anything you want to do here? Like anything you want to see or a place you want to visit?” He spoke slowly, his own unique drawl keeping your attention on him and not on Jimin, who had chosen that moment to begin holding your hand, playing with your fingers absentmindedly.

You think for a moment, knowing you had a whole list on your phone of things you wanted to do or see while you were here, but you were a little embarrassed by it, not exactly wanting them to see you as weird or dumb for some of the things.

You really wanted to visit Lotte World. You wanted to go shopping in a Daiso, seeing videos of it all the time on tiktok. You wanted to go to a street market and try one of those corndogs that looked so cheesy and good. You had so many “touristy” things you wanted to experience but felt weird telling the people who grew up here what you wanted. You didn’t know why but you felt a little weird and childish.

Seeing your hesitance, Jimin spoke up.

“You said you always wanted to try Korean BBQ?” You nodded your head, thankful for his slight distraction from your discomfort.

“Yeah! I’ve seen lots of videos about it and it always looks so good! We don’t have any Korean BBQ restaurants near where I grew up so I never had an opportunity to go. I really want to try Samgyeopsal and galbi and all the different banchan.” You said excitedly, eyes lighting up as you tried not to butcher the Korean pronunciation of the foods and hoping you remembered the right word for side dishes.

Before Taehyung or Jimin could say anything else, the car was parked and Seungho was opening the door for you behind the clinic. You figured it was a private entrance to evade the numerous cameras always outside the clinic. You also figured you would need to get used to using private entrances sooner or later due to your soulmates’ status.

Songun opened the door for Taehyung, who stepped out and immediately turned around and held his hand out for you to take, helping you out of the car. As he held your hand, and refused to let go of it, Jimin got out and placed his hand on your lower back, a gentle yet protective touch that made you feel safe.

“Let’s go.” Jimin mumbled under his breath, giving you both a nod, Taehyung moving almost immediately. You slightly wondered if they had the rare bond of being able to read each other’s minds, their souls being so close together at creation. It would make sense, with how close they always seem to be.

“Hello, welcome in. What is the name for the appointment?” The man at the front desk speaks to Taehyung, his eyes widening a little before returning to normal. Taehyung notices the change though, however subtle it may have been, smirking a little before answering.

“It should be under Kim.” His tone is deep and low, but you could feel the pride within his soul, that the bond he shared was finally completed.

“Ahh, here it is. The Kim Bond Completion. 9:45.” The man reads off of his computer screen, his eyes moving quickly to you and back to his screen.

He probably read the announcement last night, you thought, seeing the way his eyes kept moving from you and back to his screen. You were becoming uncomfortable, not liking the way the man looked at you but not knowing what to do/ You were frozen in place, hoping he would just tell you where to go so you could sit down and get away from his uncomfortable gaze.

Jimin and Taehyung noticed the interaction, noticed the looks you were being sent and were quick to move to your defense. Jimin stepped closer into you, his chest pressing against your back now, staring down the receptionist while Taehyung narrows his gaze and steps forward until his chest was pressing against the tall counter.

“Are you done here? Can we go sit down?” You could feel the chills going down your spine at his impossibly lower tone. Your face probably matched the receptionist’s, as he quickly nodded, telling you all that you would be called in a couple minutes since you were a high priority case.

You were about to nod and say thank you but you were ushered away by Jimin, who sat you by the wall in the corner, where the only section of three chairs were placed. You sat in the middle, a subconscious decision as Jimin sat to your right, leaving the open seat on the left for Taehyung.

You watched Taehyung exchange a few words with the receptionist but couldn’t see the either of their faces from where you sat, so you could only wonder what made your soulmate come back with a little saunter to his steps.

He sat down, grasping your hand in his and holding it on his lap, caressing the top of your hand with his thumb. It felt nice, domestic even, and you welcomed the wonderful new feeling. Only a couple of seconds later, though, a door to the left of the front desk opened, a taller man with a nice long coat on called out Kim.

You followed your soulmates’ lead and moved towards the door, the nervous feeling beginning to settle in your abdomen as the door to the office closed behind Jimin.

“Hello and good morning! I see we have a bond completion to register.” You were a little surprised that the Soul Doctor spoke in English. You had been nervous and a little afraid that you were going to be unable to understand him with your minimal Korean and stumbling throughout the entire appointment waiting for someone to translate.

Unbeknownst to you, Namjoon had specifically made the appointment with Dr. Jeon because he spoke English. None of them wanted you to feel left out during such an important appointment for them as a soulgroup.

“Yes, Sir.” You were the one to answer this time, the smiles coming from your soulmates in response were warm as you spoke.

“Alright. Well, before we start, I have taken images from a Mr. Kim showing proof of soulmarks. I will need to take images of your own, to mark down the complete soulmark group for our records. Then, I will need your signature,” Dr. Jeon spoke addressing you, making you nod your head a little to let him know you were listening. “so that the government is able to recognize that you know are accepting this bond fully. It also recognizes that you are aware that you are completing the Kim Bond group.”

“Is that it?” You asked aloud. You thought that there would be more that needed to be done, having heard stories from your friends. You only realized you said this aloud when Jimin and Taehyung laughed, the doctor doing his best to hide his smile.

“Yes, Mrs. Kim. Your soulmates have already come by the previous week to fill out the necessary paperwork for the bond completion and your soulmate citizenship registry. As of today, you are officially considered a member of the Kim Bond and all that entails.”

Shock was an understatement for how you were feeling.

In the States, all soulmates needed to be present for the soulbond registry appointment, and even then, nothing was finalized for a few weeks because different states had different centers and ways of doing things.

In California, your home state, for example, it would take upwards of two weeks just to get an appointment, and then another four to eight weeks for the bond to be legalized and updated within the registry. And it didn’t guarantee any power of attorney or rights to anything of your soulmates. There was an entirely separate department and paperwork needed to fill out to achieve that. Most of the time, you needed to be legally married to your soulmate to achieve this, which is another appointment and wait time.

You were flabbergasted that it took a single appointment and just the signing of your name. The boys had already sent over everything else, without even needing to be in the appointment with you!

You watched as the registrar handed you a huge file folder, physically weighing the older man’s hands down as he handed it to you. You carefully took the folder, opening it up on the desk space in front of you.

The first thing you notice is a small envelope with the word “card” on the front. Opening it up you see a bank card with your name on it. Your eyes widen as you realize what the registrar meant by “and all that entails.” You had access to their bank account!

You immediately start shaking your head, putting the card back in the envelope and pushing it away from you. Jimin can see your shoulders tensing up, refusal in your veins as you look up at them.

“I’m not taking your money.” Your words were final, but they still tried to persuade you.

“Darling, we make more money than we know what to do with. We all share the same bank account, and we’ve always dreamed of being able to take care of each other, to take care of our soulmates. It’s not going to be any different with you.” Jimin started out soft, Taehyung taking over without missing a single beat, making your previous thought about deep bonds being true for the two soulmates.

“We want to take care of you, to give you everything you need. We understand that you don’t want to depend on us, but what is so bad about relying on and letting your soulmates take care of you. With our schedule, it will be hard for you to have a job, especially with all seven of us. We know that.” Taehyung brought up a good point that you didn’t think of, but you refused to budge. However, they could see you were faulting in your stance and decided to lay it on thick.

“Let us provide for our youngest soulmate; let us do our duty as your soulmates and let us provide for you. You once said you always wanted to be an artist if you didn’t have to conform to capitalist design, maybe you could pick that back up? Do what makes you happy while allowing us to do our part and provide.” Jimin pushed every emotion he could through the bond, watching you crumble in the chair.

The group had discussed this before you had come, when they got the confirmation of your plane tickets. They didn’t want you working. They saw how much it took a toll on your body and your disability, and they had the privilege to provide for you and take care of you. They wanted you to enjoy life and everything they could give you. Especially after reading your messages to them. They wanted to give you the world.

They only hoped you would let them.

Jimin’s words tickled a little at the part of your brain that you had pushed away long ago. The part that just wanted to finally relax fully and let yourself be taken care of. You learned a long time ago that despite having family and friends willing to help, you could only really rely on yourself. It was hard, having to come to that idea, that notion that you couldn’t rely on anyone else for what you needed. It made you sorely independent, something that left you pushing your limits with Tylenol as you reacted poorly to the pain medicine your doctor had prescribed you.

You were finally in the position to be taken care of, like you had dreamed, but it was hard to accept it. You didn’t want them to think you were taking advantage of them. That was the last thing you wanted. But here they were, offering to provide everything for you, to let you explore your hobbies and dreams you had to push down in order to make money to survive.

You were given the chance to truly live and love, despite everything else.

Looking up from your lap, Jimin can see you had given in to their whims, that you had taken in their words and accepted them for what they were. Grabbing the folder, Jimin pushed it back towards you, opening it up and gesturing softly for you to keep going through it.

“Can I, um, can I finish looking through it later?” You ask with a whisper. It was like you had fallen in on yourself, and Taehyung thinks they might have pushed you a little too far too quickly.

It was a lot to mentally consider and to accept what they were offering, he knew that. It was scary to let someone else take care of you, giving them that intimate level of power over you, and he only hoped that you would believe that they were worthy of this level of trust you had given to them.

“Of course.” He said, pulling the folder towards himself as he nodded to the registrar.

“Well then, let me know if there is anything else you need. Congratulations Mr. and Mr. and Mrs. Kim.” Jimin helped you up, placing his hand on the small of your back again, letting your body slowly lean into his.

“Let’s go get some food, baby.” Jimin whispered in your ear, his voice soft and so comforting that you feel like you had always been here, always been in his arms. Like you had always been safe and taken care of.

You knew then and there that you would accept letting them take care of you in the ways that they wished, this feeling of safety and care something you needed to hold onto, and trusted them to give, only hoping they would feel the same with towards you.

Next Chapter

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ppushable · 2 months

Text

two ibuprofen

jean kirschtein x gn!reader / oneshot / wc: 7.3k

part 1 of rose tinted hours

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Sunday morning. What's the best way to spend a Sunday morning?

Craned over the plaguefest of the guy I'm dating-not-dating, trying to shove two ibuprofen down his throat?

(It works the second time.)

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ao3 tags:

ok here we go / Alternate Universe - College/University / Sickfic / Sick Character / Fluff / Kissing / Alternate Universe - Modern Setting / Texting / Vomiting / Not at the same time / Winter / gender neutral reader / i dont know how to make tea / mentions of sanrio / mentions of bagged milk / slight angst? i guess? if you squint? / reiner texts like a boomer and im sorry / POV First Person / Present Tense

i live in a special part of canada so excuse the bagged milk. (just kidding bagged is better)

reader is gn! if anything seems off please lmk. (do that if the text names are confusing too!)

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Bzzz.

The darkness and warm comfort of sleep cracks as my eyes peel open to the vibration of my phone. My blurry wall is bathed in orange light and the cold draft coming in from the open window carries the swoons and trills of birdsong. Pretty…

Holy shit I have class I’ll be late—

With effort, I blink until the shapes around me become clean and defined. Am I late? Sunlight on the ruffles of my quilt like a Renaissance painting. Coats and bags hanging from the hooks on the back of my bedroom door. Clothes from the night before, still on the ground from when I dropped them there, dead-tired. My phone buzzes again, causing an internal jolt that spurs me to snatch it off the nightstand and expel the charger in one swift movement.

mr. handsome: emergency alert! 🚨 alert! god-level threat!

mr. handsome: One image attachment

Oh, it’s a message from Connie.

Oh, it’s 8:19 AM.

Oh, it’s a Sunday.

The glowing numbers on the screen indicate the next minute and I toss the phone somewhere on the bed before re-curling myself into my nice warm quilt in this nice cool morning. Sorry, Connie, the grocery run to 7-11 for more sushi will have to be done by someone else. This is probably the happiest I’ll be all day, provided I stay sleepy enough not to feel guilty for doing nothing. The world goes black.

Bzzz.

This time, my eyes peel open on their own.

Fine, Connie, you win.

Trying to ignore the bitter taste of morning in my mouth, I grope for my phone and lift it above my head.

sashacado: BAHAHAH GOOD LUCK WITH THAT ONE BALDY

Another message pops up.

mr. handsome (replying to @/sashacado): 🖕

mikachu: you need to get out of there, connie. like rn.

lainah: Run while you still can! LOL! 🤣

Although the last text pains me on a metaphysical scale, I open up the groupchat. It’s getting fishy now: first of all, Connie’s never up this early, least of all on a weekend; secondly, he said ‘god level threat’ (which is apparently the worst level of threat), and third, Mikasa rarely speaks in the groupchat. Sure, she lurks, but she only ever emerges when something big is happening.

Some more people are active now and I have to scroll up to find Connie’s image.

Oh.

Oh, no.

Blurry and off-centre as the picture might be, it clearly depicts the ugliest green-and-white striped couch I ever laid my eyes on (“It’s an antique!” Connie had argued) that belongs to Connie and Jean’s shared dorm in which the latter of the two is curled up in (yet he still scrapes the armrests with the top of his head and toes). Littering the stained carpet around him — they prefer eating on the couch than on an actual table, so spills are inevitable — are wads of crumpled-up tissues. To really top it off is the Cars blanket that Jean won at a festival that’s seemingly in the process of being violently torn from his form, clinging to the armrest closest to the camera and pulling beyond. A message banner pops down from the top of the screen.

jean: i’m fine. and give me my fucking blanket back. i can hear you giggling from your bedroom. connie.

grammar police: connie give his blanket back

lainah: Haha!

grammar police: i swear things like this only happen when I’m gone

Right, Marco usually goes home for the weekends.

ymi: Lmfao that thing prolly gave you a disease in the first place

ymi: Have u even washed it once

mr. handsome: cut the ccrap Ymir we wash it more than you wash ur hair

sashacado: LMAOOO

ymi: At least I have hair

sashacado: AGAHAHH CONNIE

grammar police: you guys

grammar police: missing the point here

mr. handsome (replying to @/ymi): and its sad cuz mine is still better than youres

mr. handsome: like girl tf is up with the shaved sides

mr handsome: jojo siwa looking ass

sashacado: LMAOOOOO CONNIE EAT HER UP

Smiling, I return to the main chat screen.

ymi: Count your fucking days springer

ymi: At least I still have a girl

grammar police (replying to @/mr. handsome): ^yours

mr. handsome: ok nerd

grammar police: I’m taking away your Netflix

mr. handsome: I sincerely apoligize for my words.

grammar police: it’s the effort I guess

grammar police: back to Jean though

jean: i told u im prrfectly fine. just give ne back my blanket i’ll sleep it off

grammar police: do I need to come back to campus for the weekend?

mikachu: im stopping by the store. can grab some medicine

jean: ffs IM FINE GIVE ME MY BLANKET CONNIE OR IM TELLING THEM ABOUT THE GRATER THING

grammar police: Jean you need some medicine at least. I heard there’s a nasty flu going around and you’d be the type of person to catch it

grammar police: did you call your mom? I can call her if you want

jean: IM

jean: FINE

jean (replying to @/grammar police): DO NOT DO THAT

Poor Jean. He doesn’t have anyone to take care of him. Connie’s a mild germaphobe, believe it or not, at least when it comes to sickness (he nearly went crazy during Covid) and is probably keeping a safe distance from his roommate. And it’s not like any of his other friends are willing (or able) to help out, with Marco out of town. He doesn’t have any siblings here; the closest relative he has might be his mother all the way back in Trost. Not even a significant other.

Well. I mean.

There’s me.

But we’re technically not dating. Not yet. We’re still trying to figure things out — hell, I don’t even know if he likes me back.

Well, okay, there was that time we kissed. But it’s just a kiss. And it was an end-of the year party, and everyone was feeling it. And it’s January now and we haven’t done it again so it’s nothing. It’s nothing!

But that doesn’t stop the guilt from gnawing at my foundations like a tiny, evil beaver.

Wow. So you’re willing to let a guy suffer just because you’re unsure? Now that’s selfish. While you’re sitting here muttering to yourself he’s probably burning with fever and wishing he were dead. Real classy.

Shut the fuck up, beaver. It’s weird to just barge into someone’s house like that. And we don’t know each other that well.

You’ve known each other for a long time. He’s sick. At least take care of him. You don’t need to be his lover or whatever. Just be a good friend, huh?

I guess…

And you know Connie, too, don’t you? You’ll be doing him a big favour by getting this plaguefest out of his living room. He needs to finish off Breaking Bad so he can look at the memes without being spoiled. You’re not helping dear old Connie out, either.

Fuck, you do have a point.

Besides, everyone knows what happened between you and Jean at the Christmas party. They’re probably waiting on you to—

With great effort I manage to unfocus my eyes to see if anyone mentioned me but Connie and Jean have devolved into another stupid somewhat one-sided argument. So they aren’t saying anything outright. But they’re probably thinking it.

They’re definitely thinking it.

Okay, that’s enough from you.

I swipe off the groupchat to see all of my chats and open up my DM with Jean — right near the top — and start typing.

me: hey. sorry if this is weird, but i wanted to check on you bc ur really sick apparently

No, that won’t do. I purge the message.

me: hey fuckass. did you go out without a coat again? do i need to come and take care of

No, not that, either. Hopefully he isn’t looking at our messages or else he’d see me typing like an idiot. I tap the side of my phone as I think, stringing together ideas and words and different ways he could perceive me based on how I put them together.

I go back to the main groupchat.

me: @/jean @/mr. handsome im coming over. be there in 15

me: also @/mikachu could you pick up some lozenges and cough syrup? ty i’ll pay u back <3

I zone out at the screen until someone starts typing and throw the phone down on the bed again before scanning the ground for something wearable. Goodbye, sweet air and Renaissance scene and birdsong. After assembling myself and brushing my teeth, I check the mirror attached to the back of the shared bathroom door that Sasha decorated with some Sanrio stickers from Amazon. She had a phase.

Matching socks, jeans, campus sweatshirt, T-shirt underneath big enough to splay out underneath like a fan. Hair a mess. Face a mess. Good enough. It’s not like Jean will look much better. It’s not like I care that much about how I look around him.

I pull the door aside and collect my belongings — phone, bag, coat — before whisking through the door, full sail for Connie’s res building. I hit the stairwell running.

Do I know how to take care of sick people? I mean, more or less. It’ll be fine. All you have to do is feed them and make sure they don’t puke all over themselves. Right?

On the way I stop by one of the cafeteria atriums, one of the smaller ones I frequent for its souped-up coffee counter with every additive known to man. I scan the containers on the counter — milk, cream, nutmeg — until I find the packets of honey and shove one into my bag while trying not to look guilty to the few people that dot the room. I more than paid for it just by attending.

Now on the main floor by the parking lot, I struggle to untangle my keys from the mess in my bag and, without looking, push the unlock for my car. It beeps faithfully in the same place I left it and I hurry to the sound like a moth to flame.

It’s a smallish car that’s starting to rust near the top. I open the drivers’ door and toss my bag in the passenger seat before throwing myself in and shutting the door, shutting out the world, disturbing the rubber Kuromi keychain hanging from the rearview mirror. My breath comes out steamy. The car comes to life on the third try — best to let it warm up a bit before I go.

Inhale, exhale. I open up the groupchat.

jean: you will do no such thing

jean: @/me

mr. handsome: so THATS what it takes for u to finally visit

mr. handsome: ive been keeping it nice and clean just for u 😙

mr. handsome: until mr covid came and ruined it

mikachu (replying to @/me): dw about it babes xx

sashacado: mika get me chocolate

mikachu: maybe. driving

Mikasa and I, weirdly enough, were the first to get our full licenses. A smile pulls at my face and I duck down to look at my lap. Jean had nearly begged us to give him driving lessons, and of course, I agreed. Days of close calls, driving under the speed limit, getting honked at, constantly checking the mirrors, nearly rear-ending people at stop signs, elbows touching on the armrest…

Of course, now Jean can drive without a hitch. Maybe not good enough yet that I’d sleep while he does it, but that’s a personal thing.

I almost put my phone down before noticing I have a few more private messages.

jean: seriously you dont have to come. im fine

jean: its acc not a big deal

jean: i had colds like this before. im not ur responsibility

Something about that last line stings. I guess he’s right, technically. We’re not that close. Who am I kidding?

But I already announced to the world what I’m going to do. And I already decided on it.

me: im coming whether you like it or not. watch connie for me

When I can’t see my breath anymore I start driving.

Stohess is a big campus. And while I’m not a huge fan of carbon emissions, I’m also not a fan of 20-minute walks in blistering, dry cold (or wet cold, for that matter). Also, I don’t want to keep Jean waiting. The eco society is going to kill me.

I pull in to the all-too-familiar parking spot, the one Jean pulled into a hundred times in preparation for his driving test in his new, expensive car his parents bought him because “he was doing so good with his driving!”

He’d thanked me profusely for helping him out, which, in hindsight, was mildly out of character for a broody, arrogant guy like him.

But then again, so was kissing me at that party. Not so much the kissing part. Just the me part. And the gentle-tight way he held me, the way he looked into my eyes…

I suck in a sharp breath. But I’m doing this as a friend. Not because of whatever we might be. If Connie was the one who got sick, I’d be here, too.

Steeling my nerves, I take my bag with an iron grip and make for the dorm.

⋅ ⋆ ─────── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────── ⋅ ⋆

The door is already open when I arrive, propped open by a deflated volleyball. Weird. Some music that sounds like it was taken straight from Fast and Furious plays from inside. Knowing Connie, it probably is.

Nothing stirs when I open the door, but it is a pretty quiet door. The living room is right in front of me, ugly antique couch and all, but it’s completely empty. I didn’t walk into the wrong room, did I?

“Connie? Jean?” I slip off my shoes — Connie is insistent (I think shoes in the house is a crime anyway) — and creep through the dorm. “You guys?“

My voice rings through. Nothing. Peals of dread condense in my stomach and I pick up the pace, nearly barreling to a stop in front of the bathroom. I knock; first on the bathroom, then Jean’s bedroom. Connie left his door open.

“Jean? You in there?”

No response.

“I’m gonna— I’m opening the door, okay?”

And without time to think about what might be on the other side, I twist the knob and push.

Nothing. I even look behind the shower curtains.

Who even closes an empty bathroom?

Next is Jean’s room, but it’s also empty.

Where the hell are they?

I check my phone again and text the group chat.

me: @/mr. handsome @/jean where are you guys?

Waiting…

lainah: Gym

What.

me: are you sure.

lainah: One image attachment

Sure enough.

I should have noticed when his parking spot was empty.

me: dont let them leave. omw now

Sasha starts typing something but I throw my phone in the bag. I should have known they’d pull some bullshit like this. Well, not they. He. Something blistering and boiling threatens to spill over within me, but I take a deep breath. I’ll deal with him when I get there.

Jean’s a smart man, but not when he’s being stubborn.

⋅ ⋆ ─────── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────── ⋅ ⋆

The car ride, despite being short, gave me a chance to cool my nerves.

It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. I grip the steering wheel in front of the gym. It’s fine. And step out.

Anytime Fitness is a strange and marvellous place full of people you might not see anywhere else. I don’t care about them. I scan the machines and see Reiner on the treadmill, and he meets my eyes a moment after. He nods in a different direction and I follow his gaze until I see the unmistakable bronze and shaved hair combination. I mouth a thank you and he smiles.

I must look completely out of place here, weaving between sweaty and half-naked bodies in my coat and jeans like I have a demon on my tail until I’m standing behind the chest press.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Connie’s saying and by the way Jean grunts it’s definitely not the first time.

“Let it go. I’m fine, and I’m going to the gym like I always do.” Jean’s voice is thick and nasal. “Buzz off.”

“Look, I already left the house with you. I can’t let you die here.”

“I said I’m fine—”

At the end of Jean’s rep, I slip the pin out of the weights. Jean nearly lunges over as the heaviness suddenly decreases.

Both look at me.

Connie looks normal. Jean is already slick with sweat, hair askew, red-nosed, with a slight wheeze lining his breath as he sits on the edge of the seat. Not normal. Not fine.

“Jean. My car. Now.” I point at Connie. “You take his back.”

A slight smile cracks his visage and that’s all I see before whipping around like an army man and making my way out.

⋅ ⋆ ─────── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────── ⋅ ⋆

There’s a lot of things I could be saying, but I don’t, because there’s too much. So we drive home in silence.

Now that we’re closer, I can really hear the struggle with Jean’s every breath, the occasional cough, the mucous-laced sniffs, as much as he might try to hide it. He just sits there, going on his phone, staring out the window, until:

“Pull over.”

And his eyes are closed, head tilted up, pained look on his sweat drenched-face. I move to the side of the door without question and he scrabbles for the handle — I unlock it for him — before opening the door and half-falling over as he pukes.

I pinch my lip between my teeth and look the other way as the smell hits right after. Fine my ass.

Ever since I was young, the sound of heaving has always unsettled me. Even fake gags. Like it flips a switch in my heart to induce a sudden thrill of terror as if someone horror-movie screamed. And yeah, it’s just throwing up, but I hate it.

My heart races as he unloads again and I just want to plug my ears. Fuck, fuck, fuck. I can’t sit here.

When the coast is clear I hop out and walk around the back. Jean is squatting on the pavement right before it hits the grass where his vomit lays, poking up through the stiff shoots. Though we’re outside, the smell is even worse. I try not to look at it as I hand Jean a bottle of water and set a stack of napkins I filched from Wendy’s on the passenger seat beside him.

“Thank—” he manages to croak out before pitching over again.

He’s been growing out his hair. I guess I didn’t notice it before, but now it’s long enough to get in his face in this position.

I gather the strands in my hands — soft as that day before the turn of the year — and hold them on the crown of his head as he retches.

When he’s done, I consider rolling down the windows, but decide against it.

⋅ ⋆ ─────── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────── ⋅ ⋆

Jean hardly notices when I pull in (again). Weirdly enough, his car still isn’t here — either Connie drives like a grandpa or he’s gone off somewhere.

“Jean.”

He inhales through his mouth, sucking up the new, pukey scent of my car, and opens his door with half-lidded eyes, leaning hard. It bumps against the campus van I’m parked beside and I cringe. Parked too close. He’s in no state to stand up on his own, let alone walk.

“Let me help you.”

He grunts in something like disagreement and I shut my door on him, going around the back again. Soiled napkins are shoved into the door storage and the water bottle is half-empty and crushed on the floor. Well. I offer a hand and after some hesitation he takes it, clasping my shoulder, and when I help him stand the added weight nearly crushes me. Jean is big, maybe not muscular like Reiner, but tall. Even through my coat and his too-thin sweater he radiates heat and he grunts a sickly air into my ear as he finds his footing. There’s barely enough room for the both of us between the car and the van so I shuffle us sideways, around the other side of the car and to the front. I gently lower Jean so he leans against the hood.

“Wait here.”

He doesn’t object as I shut the passenger door and lock the car before going back and offering my shoulder once again and I nearly fall over once again and we huddle together into the building. He’s never this quiet. Never so agreeable. Never so willing to take the help that’s offered to him.

This is a side of Jean I’ve never seen before. A side that I surely was never meant to see.

I swallow thickly and shuffle our bodies forward so I can push the button for the elevator. His head bumps against mine as it droops but he quickly straightens. “Sorry. Sorry.” His voice is gravelly and small, so small, as if it came from another person entirely.

I stare at the side of his face, but he’s focussed on something far away. “You’re okay, Jean.”

The elevator dings open and we go in. Seventh floor button. The door rolls shut.

Beep. Our knees buckle as the elevator accelerates and the screen above the button panel indicates that it’s going up. It usually smells of antiseptic unless it’s been raining.

Beep. The elevator’s always been slow which is why most people take the stairs instead. Connie calls it the ‘hellevator’ because he swears it almost dropped him once.

Beep. Jean’s trying to steady himself; hold himself up.

Beep. We haven’t been this close together since the party.

Beep. Jean takes an unusually large, wheezy breath and holds it. “Sorry.” His voice is hardly a rumble against my side.

“Why are you sorry?” I ask, quietly.

Beep. “For making you do this.”

Beep. The door retracts and muffled hip-hop fills the air. We walk off the hellevator and stand in front of the dorm. 704. An opaque plastic bag hangs off the handle and I take it in the same hand I hold my bag — thanks, Mikasa.

“You have your key?”

Jean grumbles and taps his pockets, pulling out a key ring. A rubber charm — Badtz-Maru, the little angry penguin — hangs from the ring. Sasha gave all of us one in her Sanrio phase. Keroppi for Connie, Charmy for Mikasa, Pompompurin for Marco, Cinamaroll for Eren, Kuromi for me. I (was forced to) help her choose.

The key retracts and Jean uses his free arm to turn the handle and shoulder the door open. He clears — tries to clear — the phlegm in his throat. “Alexa,” he gurgles. “Alexa, stop.”

The music immediately ceases and we stumble to the couch where Jean unceremoniously drops and tucks his head between the armrest and cushioned back, looking utterly uncomfortable.

“Get up, Jean.”

He sniffs.

“Come on. Bed.” I drop my bags on the coffee table. “Not couch.”

“No.”

“Connie will throw a fit. And so will I.”

“Just—” he tries clearing his throat again— “go.”

“I’m not leaving until you get better.” I blink. No, I’m not leaving him here alone. Why does that surprise me?

“I’m fine. I told you. Done it before. I’ll get better.”

“Done it before?” I giggle falsely. “What, you used to rawdogging colds all by yourself?”

A car passes outside, a familiar rising and falling sound against the unfamiliar silence of the dorm.

“Jean?”

“Go…”

And I swear he’s never sounded so… vulnerable before. Like he’s laid out all his organs on a big table and I’m holding the scalpel. Just waiting for the incision.

A little softer, I tell him, “I’m not going anywhere, Jean.”

And I take the goodie bag and head for the simple kitchen — that is, an inlaid fridge, stove, and pantry cramped behind an island counter with a sink. I hold the electric kettle Reiner got for Jean’s and Connie’s fifth anniversary (he thought they were together at first) under the sink and let it fill to two cups just in case before setting it back and switching it on.

Then I rummage through the drawers and cupboards until I find an old, strangely moist box of tea packets. Yuzu mist or Cheerful Citrus? I opt for the latter.

Tearing open the package, I glance at Jean who still hasn’t moved. The teabag I dump into a printed mug that Jean likes to use.

NUMBER 1 COUGAR

I wonder where he got that.

The kettle clicks off when the water boils and I fill the mug. Oh. Honey would be good. I return to the couch and sift through my bag, shifting my keys in the process. Now Jean stirs.

“Are you leaving?”

“No, Jean.”

I keep rummaging. I know it’s in there. Might be in deep, but—

“Please don’t.”

I pause, emotions — affection? concern? — swirling like particles of tea in water. “Okay, Jean.”

I finish making the tea in silence with an almost-empty bag of milk left in the fridge. How do these boys even survive? All that’s in there are cold cuts and a bag of only bread butts, among some other, strange things. Including a pair of boxers.

“Can you sit up?”

Jean sighs into the cushion and braces against the armrest to push himself into somewhat of a sitting position.

“Let’s get you to bed.”

His eyes cast down. I swallow the silence that suddenly envelops us. Nothing weird. Just a room. I’m just a caretaker. “Come on, Jean.”

“Can— can you help me?”

I fall into the little divot in the couch where Jean sits and let him wrap an arm around my shoulder. “Ready?” I say. “One, two…”

We stumble up and pass through the already-ajar door to Jean’s bedroom and I nearly stop to take a better look. He has blackout curtains, currently drawn, painting the room in a dark blue light except for a thin bar of sunlight from between the curtains that propagates as a glowing line on the carpet. The walls are plastered in posters, sketches, paintings, sketches. Half-finished drawings on his desk and swivel chair and a few on the ground. A small compartment shoved into one corner with every art supply imaginable.

Still taking in the view, I (we) back into the bed, butt-first, and Jean unwraps himself from me.

“You won’t… do anything weird… to me?”

I smile. Conversational, that’s good. “Not unless you want me to.” And I wish I had shut up before the first word even came out of my stupid mouth. Standing, I look over my shoulder. “I’m getting the medicine.”

“Wait. Don’t.”

Under the doorframe now, I pause. “I’m not leaving. I’ll be right back.” And I go to the goodie bag.

I should just work on keeping my mouth shut. Mikasa had picked out some ibuprofen, NyQuil, and lozenges. Pills should be good. I take the mug and the box and head back.

When I get back Jean’s sitting against the headboard, trying to uncrumple his blanket to get underneath.

“Let me help.”

He watches me then, helpless — Jean fucking Kirschtein, helpless! — as I set down the pills and mug on his glass nightstand and unfold the mess he’s got on the mattress. “Pull your legs up.”

He obeys. I pull the quilt over him.

I try not to stare. “You can put your legs down now.”

He obeys.

“Sit up, Jean. You need more pillows.”

Eyes glued to me, he leans forward so I can take his other pillow to prop him up more comfortably, leaning back when I touch his warm shoulder. Then I take the mug and offer it to him. “Drink some of this.”

Painfully quiet, he takes the mug with both hands and takes a tentative sip, lips curling around the brim of the ceramic to slurp up the soothing drink. He’s doing good. Until he hits a bump and starts sputtering.

Immediately I take the drink as he coughs up whatever went down the wrong way. When he’s done I realize I’ve been rubbing circles into his back so I take my hand off.

My phone buzzes in the living room. Shit.

“I’ll be back.”

Jean stares at his knees under the blanket and doesn’t move when I come back.

sashacado: omg yall

sashacado: theyre gonma be killed💯

armong us: What’s going on?

sashacado: @/lainah what did u do

lainah: One video attachment

sashacado: ONG LMFAOOO

sashacado pinned a message

mr. handsome: @/me im headed to urs with sash for a while. hope thats cool w you and all lmk if u need anything

jägermeister: are u fr leaving those two alone

mr. handsome: well good morning to u too pricness

Deleted message

jägermeister: oh right

sashacado: connor springer delete that message rn @/mr. handsome

sashacado: @/mr. handsome

mr. handsome: ok ok jfc im sorry

sashacado: @/mr. handsome

sashacado: ok good

Whatever the hell they’re up to now.

Jean thrashes slowly and I feel a little guilty for staring down at my phone the whole time. “Are you okay?” I breathe, sticking to his beside like a magnet. “Are you in pain?”

“Hot,” is all he says.

I peel the blanket off. He is hot. Really hot.

Not like that. He’s feverish.

“Can you… help me?”

“Yeah?” I stare at him — help with what? — until he raises his arms over his head.

Oh. A few circuits in my head switch off. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m can help.” Idiot.

Like touching something radioactive I grasp the edge of his sweater and slowly raise it, catching the shirt underneath for a fleeting second before it falls back down. Deep breath. Yes, I am helping out a guy I’m dating-not-dating who I’m definitely not attracted to to take off his clothes in his bedroom in his empty dorm. Because he’s sick. No problem. Because I’m a good friend.

The neckline catches on his jaw and I unhook it, delicately trailing the scruff on his jaw in the process.

And it’s off and on the ground. Holy shit. Jean’s been sweating. And I know all that dampness on his shirt, clinging feebly to his attractive sick form, didn’t come from his 10 minutes at the gym.

He doesn’t lower his arms. Oh, so we’re doing it like this.

Okay.

I come forward again, within earshot to the rattling in Jean’s chest with his every breath, and quite literally peel the thin white shirt off. This time it’s impossible not to touch his incredibly warm and damp body, not to scrape my nails against the softness of his skin, from his waist to his broad shoulders all the way down his arms. Now he puts them down.

I almost forget he still smells like puke.

“My pants…”

Ohoho. No way, buster. You’re on your own. I’m calling Connie. Nooo way.

“Okay, but unbuckle yourself.”

He does without question, fumbling first with his belt, which I help slide off, and then his jeans.

What in the ever-loving fuck am I doing? This sounds like a smut setup. No. I’m just a friend helping out a sick friend, two friends who have never done anything even slightly romantic together.

“Sit up on the edge, okay?”

He heaves his sweaty self to the edge of the bed, palms leaving wet marks on the sheets, and, staring at the ceiling, I grasp at the hem of his pants (skirting his boxers or whatever he’s wearing because I’m not looking) and pull them (he lifts himself at first to help) all the way down. In one smooth movement I turn back around.

“Put your shirt over your… yourself.”

I wait a good few heartbeats before turning back around and lo and behold, he’s done as told. Frankly, it looks even worse now, like he’s lying in bed completely naked with just a shirt covering him. (But that’s only true if I think it’s true!) The jeans I’m still clutching for some reason I deposit on a chair.

“Jean, I’ll be right back, okay?” I wait for a response I should know isn’t coming before going out again, this time in search for a facecloth. Which I do find, shoved in the corner of the linen cabinet. I should be grateful they even have some, but then again, it might’ve been another gift from Reiner they didn’t have the heart to throw away. I rinse it under some cool water and announce my re-entry.

“I’m back. Sit still.” Folding some of the damp cloth over two fingers, I carefully dab at the sweat on his forehead. No, I need to… I pick off some strands of his sandy hair from his face, holding his hair back against his scalp, and try again. Better. “Jean?”

He opens his eyes halfway, and they raise lazily to meet mine. He’s sweaty everywhere and too late I catch myself stroking his head. I wipe his cheek next.

“Drink some tea, okay? I need you to take a pill.”

“Pillk?”

“Yes,” I say encouragingly, like training a puppy. Neck next. “Just a pill.”

He takes in a deep mouth breath. There’s a portrait stuck to the ground on the other side of his bed.

Is that…

“I can’t.”

My eyes snap back and I pause, dabbing at his collarbone. “What’s that?”

He shakes his head, furrowing his brows as if the action took too much effort. “Can’t… swallow. Can’t swallow pills.”

I blink. “You can’t take pills?”

A fleeting smile meets his lips. “Vitamin gummies. Not. Vitamin pills. Might get stuck in m’throat.”

I fold up the cloth into a rectangle and smooth it out onto his forehead. “Just take some tea with it.”

“Tried. No.”

Who knew? For a guy with such a big mouth, he sure has a small esophagus.

“Jean, it’ll make you feel better.”

“No.”

I pop open the box and break open the tinfoil seal to take out a single pill.

“Noo…”

“Jean, you’ll be fine. You’re a big boy now.” And I vow never to speak again.

When I push the little oval against his mouth, I find it won’t open. Jean is breathing laboriously through his 90 percent clogged nostrils.

“Open up.”

He purses his lips, further preventing entry, and I swear he’s smiling a little.

“Very funny. Take your pill. You’re gonna suffocate yourself.”

Still nothing. I pinch his nose. He makes a muffled noise but otherwise doesn’t react.

Ten seconds. Twenty seconds. At thirty-three I let go. “Are you really willing to kill yourself over a pill?”

“Don’t want. Don’t need.”

“Yeah, and I ‘don’t need’ you choking over your own puke in your sleep.”

“No…”

“Jean.” I feel terrible already for doing it like this. “Try. If you don’t at least try, I’ll leave.”

I bite my lip, awaiting his response. I really shouldn’t have said that. I’m such an asshole. Fuck.

“Okay.”

Deep breath. I push the pill against his bottom lip and the soft tissue yields against my fingers for a moment before he opens. The mug is to his lips not a moment after; he gulps, Adam’s apple bobbing, and the tea in his mouth suddenly explodes out and sprays warmly all over my face.

All. Over.

I peel my eyes open after impact. Jean looks more awake than he did before, and with a discernible expression, too: terror.

Okay. Good!

Slowly, he reaches for the sweat-soaked cloth on his head and offers it to me. I shake my head.

“Be right back.”

Bathroom. Cold water. Cold water against my face. There’s two razors on the sink and the edges of the white surface have some hairs on them. Face hairs, I’m sure. I pray.

If whatever Jean has is contagious, I sure as hell have it now.

I turn the tap off and swipe the water from my face. Great. Okay. I bunch up my now-wet sweater. I can do this.

I re-enter the bedroom. Jean sits up a little straighter now, sipping in small increments. “Sorry.”

I put my sweater on the chair. “It’s okay.”

“I— really—”

“Jean, it’s okay.”

“I’m fine. I’ll get better.” Which is about the most complete sentence he’s said in a while.

“I told you I’m not going anywhere, didn’t I?”

He doesn’t say anything. Almost unconsciously, I gravitate to his bed.

“You already did too much for me.”

“Nonsense.”

“Why do… you do this?”

Now that gets me thinking. Because you’re sick. Because I’m a good friend. Because you’re my guinea pig for Hospitality 101. Maybe all three.

My eyes trace back to the scribbled portrait on the other side of Jean’s bed and I take the cloth from his forehead.

Thousands upon thousands of excuses, and a singular truth.

“Because I like you.”

And I take my time going back to the bathroom.

Cold water. Cold water against my hands.

“Coming in.”

“It wasn’t nothing.” Jean clears his throat, almost inaudible against my beating heart. “Back at the party. Wasn’t… nothing.”

“Wasn’t all that much, either,” I say dryly. Hopefully he doesn’t notice how shaky my hands are. How shaky against his pallid skin.

Jean inhales and I can see the movement through his chest. “No. Wasn’t a lot.” He tilts his head up at a minuscule angle to scan my face, and maybe it’s the perspective, or the weird lighting, but I could swear he’s never looked at me like this before.

Except for that time.

“So I’d…” he swallows. “Like— like to have more.”

For a few seconds, it’s silent. For a few seconds, all that there is are his dim eyes and mine. For a few seconds, we fall into each other and tread water, sinking, fading…

I break our gaze and tremblingly pluck a tissue from a box on the ground; hold it to his nose. “Blow.”

He takes a shaky breath and obeys.

Fold. “Again.”

He shuts his eyes and blows.

“Again.”

He blows until his air gives out. I drop the spent tissue.

“Again?”

He shakes his head.

“Let’s try the pill.”

He nods and stares as I open the foil for a second time and pop the new one in my mouth.

He watches, confused, until a wave of realization seems to hit him.

He stays statue-still as I lean in, put a hand on the headboard on either side of his head.

His heat, like a barrier, raises the hairs on my skin. He cups my jaw. I cradle the side of his neck, and his pulse beats at a million miles a minute. The pill begins to dissolve.

Our mouths barely touch, and I make the final connection.

Jean is tall. Jean is arrogant. Jean will laugh at you when you fall.

But Jean has the softest lips, the sweetest mouth (even when he puked out a buffet no more than half an hour ago). Jean will melt like soft butter under your touch. Jean will accept your tongue, no questions asked, and retaliate with twice the vengeance.

Like I’ve been dreaming of since that brief moment at the party, I let my hand run insouciant through his hair. No eyes watching. No social boundary.

He gasps softly for air and I do the same, pulling his scalp so he tilts to meet me better with a small grunt. God, I fucking love his hair.

Now both of his iron-hot hands are on me, hooking under my shirt, running up and down, claiming every square inch, and I let mine fall from his neck down to his slick chest down to his stomach down to his abs. Other still planted firmly in his hair, pulling, twirling, pulling, and when I tug again Jean squeezes so hard, doubling down, suddenly hungry, suddenly a starving man. Wrapping his arms around my back and pulling me closer, I oblige, hooking a leg onto his bed, between his knees, and my thigh brushes against his still-damp T-shirt, and he groans softly into my mouth—

and swallows with an ulp!

and it’s over.

I stroke his throat as the pill goes down and he stares hollowly at me until it’s gone. I recline and smile.

“Is that enough for you?”

Unblinking, he pulls me down again.

⋅ ⋆ ─────── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────── ⋅ ⋆

Connie kicks the asphalt with his definitely real Gucci slides. “Are you done?”

“Shh!”

He shoots his friend a withering look — that is, as withering of a look that he can muster.

“This is creepy. And I’m cold. Can we at least—”

Sasha puts down her binoculars and shows him what a real killer glare is. He rolls his eyes and scans his phone. Eren’s sent a message to the matchmaker groupchat.

emo king🖤⛓️: are u sure this plan of urs worked out

emo king🖤⛓️: excuse me if this is harsh, but it’s probably the dumbest shit of ur dumbshit ideas

me: yeah try telling Sash that

sharmin ultra soft: Eren’s right. Chances are Jean puked and turned everyone off

intimidating woman: i think there’s a chance

emo king🖤⛓️: are u fr in on this mikasa

sashami: you guys shh the star coming

Sasha shoots him another look before putting her non-stalker scope away in preparation for the star of the day’s arrival.

“Whad’d I do?”

As far as he knows, Connie is doing everything right. He’d told everyone that he was sleeping over at Sasha’s. (Her idea.) And now it’s Monday, and it’s time for the star’s (code name) first class (and also Sasha’s), and now they’re sitting out in the cold like a couple of dumbasses watching the stairwell windows. (Also her idea.) What the heck?

“I’m going in the car,” Connie grumbles. He doesn’t wait for the inevitable retort and climbs in to the drivers’ seat.

The car. The one silver lining to this whole ordeal. He’d eaten, put his feet up in, and used up every last drop of gas on this baby and Jean couldn’t do a damned thing about it.

But the person coming through the door isn’t their star. It’s Jean. Huh?

Connie pops out of the vehicle and joins up with Sasha.

“Oh— you’re here, too?” Jean’s brow furrows deeper. “What’s going on?”

“Well, hello to you, too,” Connie grins. “Looks like you‘re doing a lot better.”

“No thanks to you lot.”

“Where are you going?” Sasha pipes in, and he knows what’s coming next. She’s using her interviewer voice.

“Just… going to class.” Jean smacks Connie’s shoulder. “Keys?”

He produces them with a flourish and a jangle and the taller takes them, unlocking the car.

Beep beep!

Sasha casually tails him, twisting around to block the driver’s side door.

“Sash.”

“Were you a good host?”

“I mean, I was really sick.”

“You have actual, proper food, right? Did you feed your dear caretaker?”

“Uh…” he smirks. “Yeah.”

“Is your room clean?”

“It’s fine!”

“Did you sleep together?”

He rolls his eyes and wedges a hand between his car and the girl. “Okay, get out.”

“Answer my question!” Sasha cries as she stumbles back and Jean hops in. Without another word, the car backs out. Jean turns and comes forward so he’s perpendicular to the parking spot before lowering his window.

“Connie! You owe me 20!” And then he’s gone.

Dumbfounded, the boy looks to Sasha, finding her staring at her phone. “What’s wrong? You on your period?”

“Oh, fuck off. Look.”

star: sorry sash,, not coming to hospitality. i got sick :(

star: jeans staying home for me tho. dont wait up <3

And the mastermind screenshots the fruits of her labour.

⋅ ⋆ ─────── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────── ⋅ ��

would you look at that. more kissing. *throws tomato* i did 80% of this in one day. no regrets!! (said eren.) (ill shut the fuck up now) i hope you enjoyed! it actually turned out a lot less gross than i originally planned (they were gonna do it with the nyquil ewwwww) but this is fine. right? i never actually kept a pill on my tongue like that for so long so for my sanity's sake let's pretend this is how it all works.

this started out as a oneshot. however,,, i decided to add more parts to it because i'm a sucker. check it out if you like! <3

byebye

⋅ ⋆ ─────── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────── ⋅ ⋆

masterlist part 2 - low tide

#jean kirschtein fanfiction #jean kirschtein x reader #jean kirstein fanfiction #jean kirstein x reader #aot fanfiction #attack on titan x reader #pushable #pushs oneshots

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am-i-the-asshole-official · 1 year

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AITA for wanting a material thing rather than an experience for my college graduation gift, and being upset I still don't have it?

I skimmed through some other AITA posts to prepare me to write this one properly, and saw someone use the term "validation bait." I bring that up because I fear this post may read like that once all is said and done, but I genuinely am worried my perspective might be skewed. I encourage you to enter "Reddit Mode" if you decide to reply after your judgement with additional context and feel the need to be blunt.

Background context: I have an older sibling who graduated before me during the beginning of COVID. While his gift was delayed as a result, we as a family (three children one father) ended up going to Disney World, NASA, and Universal Orlando in 2021 to celebrate his accomplishment. It was a great trip, aside from the horrific humidity and the hurricane that just barely missed us. Later on, I asked my sibling if that was what he actually wanted to do, and he said our father proposed some ideas because he didn't really have any and Florida sounded like a good idea to him. My asking this will make sense later, but putting it here seems the most logical.

Additionally, it may be important to know that my father goes on a lot of trips. At least, more than anyone I've personally known. I'm not gonna try to calculate the exact number, but I will say in the span of less than a year (after the family Florida trip), he went to both Canada and Mexico for a week each, on top of additional excursions to Florida and Vegas-- almost all also including bringing his girlfriend. At the same time, he claimed assistance with college tuition was out of his budget, started having me pay rent on a part time job, and told my younger sibling fixing the AC in their car would cost too much as well. Even I know something doesn't add up here, but maybe I'm taking it too personally. End background context.

Fast forward to spring of 2023, and it's my turn to graduate college. Here's the thing: my brother was asked at least a year in advance to his graduation what he would like to do. I wasn't asked; I had to bring it up myself, and I waited until my graduation was only two months out. It was also over a phone call, because my father was out of town for at least the fifth time that year already. I dropped the hint that, for my graduation present, I would really like to get a nice gaming desktop. My father's response was, "... We'll see." Later on, he elaborated through text stating, "I took everybody to florida because i think graduations should be more about memories than what material thing you can get out of your dad."

Here's the thing: it's no secret to my dad that I'm a gamer, and I like video games. Additionally, it's no secret that a gaming desktop is something I have wanted for a decade. Even since middle school I've talked about gaming desktops and how much I wanted one. Even so, I happily played games like Saints Row III on a laptop that chugged along at 12 frames per second and took every crash in stride. I also thought that this kind of gift would be a relief to my dad, as my thought process was it would be far less expensive than taking an entire family somewhere out of the state for a week. Not only that, but there wasn't really anywhere I wanted to go. I don't have the desire to travel like he does; I don't mind taking my time off at home or locally, and relaxing with the things I have rather than spending a ton on a fancy dinner or hotel or concert.

So, naturally, I was confused, dismayed, and heartbroken. While I started crafting a text response explaining why a gaming desktop would not just be for personal use, but would also be advantageous for my career (my degree was in animation and I learned surface level coding for making video games), I also wondered why it was wrong for me to want a "material thing" even if it wasn't something necessarily "useful." Because while, yes, a gaming desktop would have the power I needed for more intensive animation projects, that wasn't really why I wanted one. But I figured explaining as such would help convince my dad why it was a good idea.

My dad ended up calling me before I could finish crafting my text, so I did my best to explain my standpoint, as well as pointing out how the specs for a gaming desktop are pretty much parallel with the specs for a desktop for things like 3D rendering and animation. He stood his ground on "making memories" as well, and also hinted that I was acting entitled for asking about my graduation present. I think I pointed out to him how he asked my older brother far in advance what he wanted for his graduation, but those details of the conversation are a little faded with time. I did end up sending my text after that phone call anyway, as I felt it better explained what I was thinking and feeling than I could say in verbal conversation (I've always gotten a little flustered talking to my dad about things I want that he doesn't approve of).

Fortunately, after reading my text, my father seemed to come around, and invited me to put together a list of parts for my computer, since I wanted to build it. I got really excited and got the help of my computer-savvy friend to put together something I thought was reasonable-- it had a really good graphics card and processor, and I made compromises on some of the other parts to lower the cost. I haven't looked at the list in a while, but the total cost-- tower, two mid-range monitors, basic keyboard and mouse-- was something like 2.5k approaching 3k. Mid range (at least, it is these days) I think, but it would be enough for the things I wanted to do.

I put the list together, and emailed it to my dad. The assumption I had, was he would purchase the parts, and then we would build it together (or I would build it alone). However, later on I went to ask him if he had gotten my email, and while he said yes, he also said, "I'm not paying for the whole thing. I can't afford it, and it's not fair to spend more on you as an individual than what I spent on your brother as an individual for the Florida trip."

I find the latter point somewhat fair considering I'm the only person who benefits from this gift, but the first point, given the background context on my father's habits, I'm not sure how much I believe. But arguing with him would have been pointless. I definitely would have liked to have had that information beforehand, but it ultimately didn't change much.

This is getting long, so I'll try to summarize the rest. This was just the first instance of my father changing the goal posts for my graduation gift. First, he tried to convince me that getting a prebuilt tower would be just as good. I did the research, and a tower with the graphics card I wanted would have cost as much as building my own tower and buying a monitor, keyboard, and mouse, and still not have been as good in other specs anyways. Then, he tried to tell me he was only going to give me $1000 towards the computer. I pointed out paying for my older sibling for the Florida trip would have cost at least $1500-- if I hadn't done the research, I wouldn't have known any better and just blindly agreed. Then, two days after my graduation, he stated that he wasn't going to give me the money for the computer until I had secured a full time job.

At that point, I just gave up, and agreed.

Fast forward to now. I'm still working the part time job, I barely make enough to put a couple dollars into savings, no one is hiring me full time, and my dad hinted that, instead of doing presents for Christmas this year, we all agree to go on vacation somewhere. Not only that, but his family in Canada just told him they're going to Mexico in November. Not only is my dad implying we should go too and I should pay a portion of my own way, I have a further feeling he may say that this will be our Christmas as well. I still don't have the computer, even though my dad has noticed how much I'm struggling.

If I had the computer, I wouldn't have minded the vacation-- but I feel like my wants and feelings have been completely pushed aside in favor of what my dad thinks is good and/or right, and the wind has been taken out of my sails regarding my graduation entirely. On the other hand, maybe he's right that I focus too much on a material thing and should redirect my attention to an experience and go somewhere to relax/get away from daily life.

Am I a materialistic asshole?

What are these acronyms?

#aita #am i the asshole

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old-powwow-days · 3 months

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The first major solo museum presentation of fourth-generation Navajo weaver Melissa Cody (b. 1983, No Water Mesa, Arizona) spans the last decade of her practice, showcasing over 30 weavings and a major new work produced for the exhibition. Using long-established weaving techniques and incorporating new digital technologies, Cody assembles and reimagines popular patterns into sophisticated geometric overlays, incorporating atypical dyes and fibers. Her tapestries carry forward the methods of Navajo Germantown weaving, which developed out of the wool and blankets that were made in Germantown, Pennsylvania and supplied by the US government to the Navajo people during the forced expulsion from their territories in the mid-1800s. During this period, the rationed blankets were taken apart and the yarn was used to make new textiles, a practice of reclamation which became the source of the movement. While acknowledging this history and working on a traditional Navajo loom, Cody’s masterful works exercise experimental palettes and patterns that animate through reinvention, reframing traditions as cycles of evolution. Melissa Cody is a Navajo/Diné textile artist and enrolled member of the Navajo/Diné nation. Cody grew up on a Navajo Reservation in Leupp, Arizona and received a Bachelor’s degree in Studio Arts and Museum Studies from Institute of American Indian Arts, Santa Fe. Her work has been featured in The Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia (2022); Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR (2021); National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (2019–2020); Museum of Northern Arizona, Flagstaff (2019); SITE Santa Fe (2018–19); Ingham Chapman Gallery, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque (2018); Navajo Nation Museum, Window Rock (2018); and the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Institute of American Indian Arts, Santa Fe (2017–18). Cody’s works are in the collections of the Stark Museum of Art, Orange, Texas; the Minneapolis Institute of Arts; and The Autry National Center, Los Angeles. In 2020, she earned the Brandford/Elliott Award for Excellence in Fiber Art.

Melissa Cody: Webbed Skies currently on exhibition at MoMA PS1 through September 9nth, 2024

IDs Under the cut

Top to Bottom, Left to Right: White Out. 2012. 3-ply aniline dyed wool. 17 × 24″ (43.2 × 61 cm)

Deep Brain Stimulation. 2011. Wool warp, weft, selvedge cords, and aniline dyes. 40 x 30 3/4 in. (101.6 x 78.1 cm)

World Traveler. 2014. Wool warp, weft, selvedge cords, and aniline dyes. 90 x 48 7/8 in. (228.6 x 124.1 cm)

Into the Depths, She Rappels. 2023. Wool warp, weft, selvedge cords, and aniline dyes. 87 x 51 9/16 in. (221 x 131 cm)

Lightning Storm. 2012. 3-ply aniline dyed wool. 14 × 20″ (35.6 × 50.8 cm)

Pocketful of Rainbows. 2019. Wool warp, weft, selvedge cords, and aniline dyes. 19 x 10 3/4 in. (48.3 x 27.3 cm)

Path of the Snake. 2013. 3-ply aniline dyed wool. 36 × 24″ (91.4 × 61 cm)

#Melissa Cody #Diné #Navajo #Textiles #weaving #contemporary art #MoMA PS1

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zvaigzdelasas · 1 year

Text

[CBC is Canadian State Funded Media]

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Wednesday senior bureaucrats are reviewing the Deschenes Commission report — a 1980s-era independent inquiry that looked at alleged Nazi war criminals in Canada — with an eye to making more of it public. Governor General Mary Simon also said today Rideau Hall is sorry for honouring Peter Savaryn — a former chancellor of the University of Alberta who served in the same Nazi unit as Yaroslav Hunka — with the Order of Canada [in 1987].[...]

The vice-regal office is also examining the Golden and Diamond Jubilee medals previously awarded to Savaryn, who also served as president of the Ukrainian World Congress, a group that represents the Ukrainian diaspora.[...] The first [part of the report], which included recommendations to make it easier to extradite war criminals, was released publicly. The second was marked secret and the names of alleged Nazis in Canada were never released. Jewish groups, including B'nai Brith and the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Centre (FSWC), have said the second part should be unredacted and disclosed publicly so that Canadians can learn more about the country's shameful history of admitting an untold number of Nazi collaborators after the Second World War.[...]

"There are top public servants looking very carefully into the issue, including digging into the archives," Trudeau told reporters. "We're going to make recommendations."

Reports suggest as many as 2,000 Ukrainian members of Hitler's Waffen-SS were admitted to Canada after the war — after some British prodding. The commission said the number is likely lower than that.[...]

Quebec Liberal MP Anthony Housefather said it's a delicate issue because the government doesn't want to "bring pain to a lot of Eastern European communities." Hunka, for example, has framed his war service as a fight for Ukrainian independence. The unit he fought for, the 1st Galician division, is also memorialized by Ukrainian expatriate groups at different sites across the country.[...]

The Deschenes report has also concluded that allegations of war crimes committed by this division have "never been substantiated."

That finding conflicts with what the post-war, Allies-led Nuremberg trials concluded about SS units like that one.[...]

"We have to recognize we have a horrible past with Nazi war criminals. We opened our country to people after the war in a way that made it easier to come if you were a Nazi than if you were a Jew," Housefather said.[...]

Conservative MP Melissa Lantsman, the party's deputy leader, said Canadians need to know more about the country's "dark history" of "letting Nazis through the door to live here in peace and security." Lantsman represents the Toronto-area riding of Thornhill, a riding with one of the country's largest Jewish communities. In an interview with CBC News, Lantsman said the party supports revisiting the Deschenes report and its findings in some way.[...]

Asked if it might be too painful for some communities to revisit alleged Second World War-era crimes, Lantsman said "history is painful but that doesn't mean we don't need to reckon with it."[...]

Quebec Conservative MP Gérard Deltell, Poilievre's environment critic, said Wednesday he's not open to revisiting the issue right now.[...]

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh said he supports releasing the commission's report.

4 Oct 23

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newsfrom-theworld · 5 months

Text

3/5/2024

Today's breaking news:

The National Autonomous University of Mexico joins the global student uprising for Gaza.

Palestinian families set up tents on top of the rubble of destroyed homes in the Beit Lahia project in northern Gaza.

At least 8 innocent civilians, including children, were killed in an Isr@eli airstrike last night which targeted a house for the Shaheen family in Rafah.

Isr@eli artillery strikes a location in the vicinity of the town of Khiam in southern Lebanon

The Turkish Ministry of Trade has announced the suspension of all trade exchanges with the Isr@eli occupation over the ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip

Students at the University of Toronto, Canada, join the global student uprising for Gaza.

Hundreds of students at Seattle University join the international student action for Palestine. They are demanding their university divest from the Isr@eli occupation.

The Republic of Trinidad and Tobago has formally recognized the State of Palestine.

Isr@eli occupation forces block access of several worshippers into the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in occupied Jerusalem ahead of the weekly Friday prayer.

The United States and Saudi Arabia are very close to reaching a deal that would provide Riyadh with security assurances from Washington while moving the Gulf kingdom away from US rivals.

The Ministry of Health in Gaza says the number of healthcare workers killed by the Isr@eli occupation since October 7, 2023, has surged to 496.

Gaza encampments have been established in Japan at Waseda University and the University of Tokyo

Isr@eli occupation boats open fire on Palestinians off the coast of Gaza City

Isr@eli occupation aircraft bomb residential areas in northern Gaza.

Isr@eli occupation launch airstrikes on the towns of Maroun al-Ras and Aytroun in southern Lebanon.

Displaced Palestinians raise Palestinian flags atop the ruins of their destroyed homes in Gaza City upon returning to them after weeks of Isr@eli occupation attacks and the recent withdrawal.

UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese calls for global measures against Isr@el for deliberately targeting civilians in Gaza.

Palestinian civilians attempting to reach aid dropped on destroyed buildings in northern Gaza faced casualties as structures collapsed.

The World Health Organization (WHO) expressed grave concern over the potential for a bloodbath in Rafah, southern Gaza, due to a threatened Isr@eli ground invasion.

Isr@eli occupation forces detained the wife of Middle East Eye correspondent, Mohammed al-Hajjar, Inas Abu al-Maza, at a military checkpoint in the central Gaza Strip. Separating the family as they traveled south to Rafah

Students at Princeton University in New Jersey have initiated a hunger strike in solidarity with Gaza.

An Isr@eli soldier shares an image of a Palestinian abducted, partially stripped, blindfolded, and handcuffed in Gaza on his social media account

Isr@eli occupation airstrikes target tents of displaced Palestinians in Rafah

#free palestine #palestine #from the river to the sea palestine will be free #pro palestine #boycott starbucks #boycott disney #gaza #boycott mcdonalds #boycott israel #news from the world

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ottawacharge · 1 month

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Jessie Fleming interview: Adapting to the Thorns, her Chelsea exit and pushing for environmental change

Jessy Parker Humphreys, Wednesday, July 24th

Ask Jessie Fleming what topics interest her about the environment and she will start reeling them off.

“Urban planning, the power of funghi, regenerative agriculture, Dan Barber…”

Barber is an American chef who advocates for farm-to-table cooking, in case you are not as looped into the environmental ethics of food as Fleming.

“I started taking courses on environmental science for fun at university and I got down this rabbit hole,” she explains. Fleming ended up minoring in the subject at university in Los Angeles and has been committed to raising awareness about issues with our environment ever since.

This latest pledge comes off the back of her choice to donate the carbon cost of her long-haul flight to the 2023 Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand as part of a 47-player initiative through Common Goal, a charitable movement launched by Spain international Juan Mata six years ago.

Fleming left Women’s Super League (WSL) champions Chelsea in January, going from a league in England where players travel to games by train or coach to one where they can fly thousands of miles across the country every weekend, such is the geographical spread of the 14 teams.

“It’s something I think about a lot,” she says. “As players, we have a responsibility to draw attention to those problems and suggest ways leagues and governing bodies can adjust the format of tournaments or the schedule of leagues to help reduce those footprints.

“We’re all hypocritical in a way, so we need to at least do something.”

There was a feeling around Fleming’s mid-season departure from Chelsea that she had never quite lived up to her potential. Arriving in summer 2020 fresh out of the U.S. college game at UCLA, her stock was very high, having originally made her senior debut for Canada aged only 15.

Yet she never nailed down a starting spot, despite featuring 111 times across four seasons and being trusted by manager Emma Hayes to start crucial matches such as the 2022-23 Champions League semi-final second leg against Barcelona at Camp Nou.

“I loved my time at Chelsea, loved the league, loved England. I just wanted to be in a place where I was consistently playing in the same position and playing more consistent minutes.”

Fleming has certainly got that with Portland, where she has started 13 of their 15 matches so far this season, but the return to the U.S. has been an adjustment. Portland had their worst start to an NWSL season, failing to win any of their first four games and consequently sacking manager Mike Norris. A six-game winning run followed, but with only one victory in the past four league fixtures, it is clear they are still finding their feet as a team.

Those ups and downs are a unique experience for Fleming, who lost only one more league match in three-and-a-half years with Chelsea than she has in six months in Portland.

“It’s definitely a different challenge,” she says. “Physically, it’s more intense (in the NWSL). More transitional, lots of athletic players. But you’re starting to see the effect of European coaches in the league. There are more teams trying to play possession-based, thoughtful football. I’ve never seen anything like how competitive the NWSL is, especially when you look at the teams at the top of the table who had poor seasons last year. That’s not something you would ever see in the WSL.

“The start of the season was especially difficult for us, because we had so many new players. We spent so little time together before the first game — that was a challenge I’d never experienced before. I think we’re feeling the effects of the ebb and flow of the season right now. You have to be so tuned-in mentally for every game, every week. If you do go through a low spell, you have to find ways to turn it around quickly, because getting a few wins will push you up the table.”

The NWSL season is about to be paused for the Olympics, which begin in France at the end of this month, where Fleming will be hoping to help Canada’s women retain the title they won at the previous Games in Japan three years ago. Paris 2024 will be her third Olympics and Canada have won medals at her previous two, taking bronze in Brazil in 2016, but a disappointing World Cup campaign, where they exited at the group stage after one win and two goals (one of them an own-goal) in the three games, has put a dampener on expectations.

“I struggled with penalties a bit at university, so it’s definitely not something I’ve always felt able to do,” she says. “I feel like for that coolness, I have to turn to my team-mates and our environment. I feel very supported and backed up with the national team and that helped me massively during that tournament.”

This time out, she’ll be in a new role as captain. Anyone who has watched Fleming play will know she is not the most vocal on the pitch, but she feels she can bring something different to the role.

“I’m definitely on the quieter side, but I’m learning there are so many different ways to lead,” Fleming says. “I don’t love speaking in front of a loud group of people and I feel like I thrive a bit more when I’m one-on-one with players. I would say I’m a bit of a football brain. I love watching the game, I love talking about tactics, and I’m always interested in how to improve, both as an individual and as a team.

“For me, it’s about letting my passion for football shine through and trying to bring others with me in that.”

#jessie fleming #the intro really did it for me #funghi! barber! urban planning!

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yoitsjay · 8 months

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The Universe Is Yours

Pairings: 10th Doctor x M!reader

Warning: teeny tiny bit if man angst

Summary: You followed The Doctor everywhere. And now he finally found you.

Word count: 1700

Aliens spanned all across the universe, so many different species and subspecies and on top of that there were new cultures and religions that came with the new species. You loved to study them all, every alien invasion that came to earth, any encounter you witnessed. You were always there, always taking pictures. But there was one similarity with all the encounters.. The Doctor.

You first heard of him a few years back when christmas santas and plastic mannequins tried to take over london, next event was when an alien ship crashed into the london river, and once again aliens tried to take over, which lead to harriet Jones becoming prime minister, leading to the torchwood institute and all its alien capturing tools. There were many more events that happened after, all with the doctor making his appearances and saving London and the world. The most recent was when Cybermen and Daleks tried to battle for earth, and the doctor sucked them all into the void like nothing had ever been there in the first place, minus all the destruction that was left behind. You were there for all of it, blending in as a worker with fake IDs, or just there taking pictures.

The more these events happened, the moreThe Doctor seemed to notice you, hiding in the shadows away from prying human eyes, but alas he wasn't human, and he noticed. Rose was gone, in the parallel universe, living her life, and the Doctor was alone… or was he really? Because wherever he went, you seemed to follow.

Today had been pretty boring it seemed, no alien attacks, no signs of the doctor, no panicking or screaming. London was… normal… for the first time in a long time, and that in its own way was strange to you. Currently you are in your apartment suite, hanging up your newly bought Canadian and UK flags in your window.

You were born in Canada but moved to London when you turned twenty, having finished school and with nothing else to do with life. Your parents died and your grandparents who had taken care of you your whole life had also passed away last year. So London and all its mysteries called to you. At first you were interested in ancient ruins and old civilizations, history and vikings and anglo-saxons all interested you. Then aliens came and it became your new hyperfixation.

You had a day job, because you obviously couldn't live in London with no job, so you worked as a delivery organizer in the warehouse, receiving all the packages that were delivered to your store, managing a forklift and shelves. It paid a pretty decent penny, enough to help you live of course.

Today was your day off however, and with nothing strange going on you decided to take your polaroid camera and take a walk through the park, and it's exactly what you did, taking nice pictures of nature, and of cute little squirrels and birds. Eventually you took a seat down on a bench in the park, sorting through the polaroids in your bag, smiling at the better pictures. A sigh left your lips, and you glanced to your side after noticing someone had sat down beside you, however you didn't really care all that much, until you took a double take, noticing a very familiar coat jacket, and pants… you looked up, eyes widening when you saw familiar short brown hair, and a beautiful pair of eyes…

He was sitting right beside you.

You put your camera in your satchel and you stood up abruptly, taking a step back as he smiled at you. "Hello!" he exclaimed. And with that you turned and ran, gripping the strap of your bag as your legs carried you through the park. Some people gave you strange looks, and when you looked back for just a moment you tripped on a stick on the path and went tumbling down.

However, before you could hit the ground you felt two arms wrap around you and twirl you around, holding you close for just a moment to make sure you were stable. However as you were spun around your camera had managed to fall from your bag, and it smashed into a dozen pieces on the ground.

You pushed the stranger away, falling to your knees as you hastily gathered all the pieces, your breath catching in your throat as a steady stream of tears escaped your eyes, and finally you let out a choked sob, holding all the broken polaroid pieces in your hands. 'man up' you thought to yourself, wiping your tears with the back of your hand. "men shouldn't cry, stupid boy" you whispered, leaning back on your legs as you stared up at the sky,

You then felt a hand on your shoulder, and slowly the doctor came into view again. "Hey, don't run away this time… I only want to talk." He said softly, grabbing the camera pieces from your hands and from the ground. "Hmm yes… yes! What a brilliant piece of technology! come back to the TARDIS with me and I'll fix your camera right up for you!" He exclaimed, shoving all the pieces into your bag before hoisting you up onto your feet. "What? No way Doctor… Doctor Who?! I'm not coming into your tiny police box so you can kidnap me and dump me on some- some other world! no way!" You exclaimed, taking a step back as the doctor extended a hand to you.

"Oh come on! I don't know you but you clearly seem to know me.. Why not take the chance to talk to The Doctor! it'll be funnnn~" he sang out, seeing the conflict spread across your face.

With a deep breath, you reluctantly grabbed his hand, however as soon as you did he immediately dragged you along as he ran through the park, to the blue police box you have seen so many times and taken so many pictures of. And when he opened the door, and pulled you inside… it was like nothing you had ever seen before… "Woah… what…" you trailed off, and your immediate thought was to take pictures, but without your camera… you couldn't.

You turned back to the doctor, and he was smiling widely, gesturing for you to give him the camera pieces… and so you did. watching as he laid them all across his console, and with some strange looking screwdriver he pieced together your camera, and added a few things too it seemed, and within the hour he handed your camera back to you, smiling brightly still. "So? what do you think?" he asked, and you studied your camera intensely, glancing up at him with a curious look.

"What did you add to it?" you asked, and it looked like his smile grew even wider upon hearing your question. "well! I added a few things that might be invented a few years from now, but oh well i'll let you have something a little nicer. But your pictures will become much cleaner and easier to see, no flashback in pictures. unlimited polaroid so you never need to buy cartridges again! and, there's a UV light on it, and an infrared camera setting, and night vision! just in case." he explained, watching as your eyes went wider the more he explained what he had added to your camera.

You gently set it down on the center console, looking up at him before abruptly pulling him into a tight hug. "Thank you Doctor." You whispered, pulling back with a nervous expression.

"It's no problem really… and whoever told you that men can't cry, is stupid and wrong." The doctor stated, which made you smile a bit more. However, before you could say anything, he spoke up again. "So now I did something for you… so you can do something for me. Tell me when you first saw me, and started taking pictures. Because I see you everywhere I am." He started, taking a step closer to you. Your eyes went wide, and you took a step back in response. "I mean it started a few years ago I guess?When you looked… different? It started when the plastic mannequins attacked london." You answered, and he hummed in response.

"You dont sound like you're from London… Where are you from?" He asked, and you smiled. "Canada! proud and free, i moved to london after my grandparents died, i have no family, just my camera." You answered, a sad tone to your voice as you explained this to him.

The doctor took a step back from you, and you relaxed, grabbing your modified camera, putting it in your bag with a sigh. "Well… why are you following me?" he asked finally,and you beamed in response, pulling out all the photos and files you carried with you. "Ever since I saw you there has been alien activity everywhere! all across the world. I used to be interested in old structures, and viking history… But ever since you came around i've been hyper fixated on you i guess? and your adventures… It's just all so fascinating." You explained, seeing him smile at your response.

'Well then… would you like to see my adventures first hand? you could come with me on all my adventures…" He suggested.

he was giving you the option to explore galaxies, new worlds, you could meet aliens and study cultures with the doctor up close instead of watching them from afar… You had no family, no animals, and nothing at home… but The doctor was offering you the world.

You saw him extend his hand to you, and without a second thought you grabbed it. "i need to stop at my apartment, and pack some money and clothes… But yes Doctor… I'll come with you." You said softly, and he pulled you towards the console and told you which buttons to press, and when he got the location of your home he took you there, appearing in the spare bedroom of your apartment.

This? being shown the universe? with such a hot man too? You couldn't have it any other way.

#fanfiction #tenth doctor #tenth doctor x male reader #male reader #tenth doctor x reader #doctor who

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lingthusiasm · 3 months

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Transcript Episode 93: How nonbinary and binary people talk - Interview with Jacq Jones

This is a transcript for Lingthusiasm episode 'How nonbinary and binary people talk - Interview with Jacq Jones'. It’s been lightly edited for readability. Listen to the episode here or wherever you get your podcasts. Links to studies mentioned and further reading can be found on the episode show notes page.

[Music]

Gretchen: Welcome to Lingthusiasm, a podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics! I’m Gretchen McCulloch. Today, we’re getting enthusiastic about nonbinary speech with Dr. Jacq Jones. They’re a lecturer at Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa / Massey University in Auckland, New Zealand. But first, our most recent bonus episode was about various kinds of fun mishearings and missayings and misparsings that people make in songs, in phrases, in idioms – all sorts of, like, you know when you hear “an acorn,” and you think it might actually be “an egg-corn” because it’s like the egg of the tree? Well, we talk about what strange things that you mishear, or misparse, can tell us about how language works. Go to patreon.com/lingthusiasm to listen to this bonus episode, many more bonus episodes, and help us keep the show running.

[Music]

Gretchen: Hello Jacq!

Jacq: Hi Gretchen!

Gretchen: Thanks for coming on the podcast.

Jacq: Thanks for inviting me. It’s awesome.

Gretchen: Before we get into all of the cool research that you’ve done about how nonbinary people talk that you’re working on, let’s talk a little bit about your origin story. How did you get into linguistics?

Jacq: Okay, well, I mean, how far back do you wanna go, I guess? I was a high school dropout. I was in my teens. I was going around North America, in Canada and the United States, working and this and that. I decided I wanted to go back to school. I did get into an adult education programme and finished up my high school. It was in a really small town in rural Alberta. It had a community college, and they didn’t have that many classes. I went into geography.

Gretchen: That’s super related to linguistics.

Jacq: You’d be surprised.

Gretchen: Great.

Jacq: Yeah, because I had spent time in the southern United States and in Alberta and in Ontario and things, and so I liked seeing all the different places. I went into geography. For people who don’t know, geography has these two big branches. There’s physical geography and human geography. Physical geography is rocks and trees and mountains and weather, and human geography is how people affect the world and how the world affects people.

Gretchen: So, like cities and stuff.

Jacq: Yeah, right. So, I was sitting in a class, and we were talking about how goods move across borders and how a lot of human influences – including language and political borders – can affect the movement of goods and, alternatively, how languages can be stopped by things like mountains.

Gretchen: Oh! Okay.

Jacq: You’ll have dialects that won’t go over the top of a mountain because you have this physical barrier. I was like, “That’s amazing.” Somehow, something about this interaction between this natural world and something like language, which is very, sort of, in your heads – but of course, you’re not gonna walk up a mountain to go talk to the person on the other side.

Gretchen: I live in Montreal, which doesn’t even really have a mountain by proper mountain-people standards, and I don’t wanna walk up that mountain just to talk to someone at the top. I totally understand that prehistoric people also did not wanna do this.

Jacq: Exactly. People, you know, live along rivers, so you have languages and language change and language contact all along these natural systems. That was the bug.

Gretchen: That’s fascinating. That’s so cool.

Jacq: And then I went from this community college – this adult education programme – to university, took a linguistics class, and as they say, that was it. Fell in love with phonetics and acoustics and all the meaty bits inside of you that create language. And here we are.

Gretchen: You do sounds – phonetics, how people talk – and specifically, I first encountered your research when I was in New Zealand last year at the New Zealand Linguistic Society Annual Meeting in Dunedin. You were giving a talk about your dissertation on how nonbinary people talk. How did you get into that topic?

Jacq: Sure. I think for most linguists, if you can press them, for most people in academia, what you’re into – there’s always something personal in it. There’s always something in what you’re doing. As a nonbinary person, navigating the 2010s – the late 2010s – trying to navigate what “gender” means, I kept catching myself really interrogating, really thinking about how I interact with people around me and what assumptions they’re going to put on me, what assumptions I’m putting on myself. You know, I’m getting on the bus, how low do I wanna talk to the bus driver? Just really silly stuff like that.

Gretchen: Like, are they gonna “sir” or “ma’am” me to show how they’re parsing my gender?

Jacq: Exactly. And do I want either of those options? Not really.

Gretchen: Which are both wrong.

Jacq: But if I can barely figure out what being nonbinary means to me as a nonbinary person, how can I expect the, you know, 60-year-old parent that I’m talking to, or a random person at the coffee shop I’m talking to, to understand all these backflips that I’m trying to do in presenting my gender? I mean, I’m into phonetics. I’m into acoustics. I’ve always been interested, linguistically, in this space between “This is how people talk because they are from Canada,” “This is how people talk because they’re a woman” – or because they’re a certain socio-economic class, or this – versus “This is how a jock or a burnout talks,” “This is how somebody asserts their identity.” When you’re looking at gender, that’s really this difference between a lot of stuff that we’re taught growing up and a lot of stuff that people might argue is inherent – a lot of stuff that is constrained by physiology, in some ways, by your existence in a meat suit – but you still always have control over it. That’s where this is. Part of it is being nonbinary and wanting that legitimacy of examining the numbers and proving that I exist, and nonbinary people exist, which are not represented historically. That’s changing now. And so, wanting that studying me and people like me to show “Hey, we exist. This is a thing that we can measure. This is a thing that we can look at,” and studying why, and yeah.

Gretchen: If you study all the other nonbinary speakers, then they’ll just tell how you need to talk now. So, that’ll be really handy.

Jacq: I mean, that’s part of it, too, right, is something that’s really exciting about studying nonbinary people during my dissertation – and I think that this is very much changing for the better, and I’m so happy that there are so many more options for young people in terms of gender and for old people in terms of gender and for anybody in terms of gender, but at the time, it really felt like all the templates that were out there were very binary – all the methodologies for studying speech, all of variation studies, everything, was, “This is how men talk,” “This is how women talk,” “This is how you’re supposed to talk if you’re a man or a woman,” or you want to present yourself – it was all binary.

Gretchen: I remember even when I was just being trained at grad school, everything was very binary. People weren’t even really questioning that. Even 10 years later, it seems like there’s been a lot more people thinking that through.

Jacq: Exactly. That is so amazing. From the point of view – putting on the researcher hat – studying it at the point where the speakers are making these first decisions without any templates – without a YouTube person to look at to model this kind of language on – felt really exciting.

Gretchen: And then somebody else who’s doing this study in another 10 years or 20 years or something when possibly nonbinary identity may have coalesced a bit more, then they have this to compare to as a baseline to see – it’s not often we get to watch a new gender evolve in real time. I mean, that’s not quite true because non-cis people have always existed, but the coherent, legible, nonbinary category, we get to watch it evolve in real time.

Jacq: Exactly. Traditionally, in these linguistic studies of dialect formation, that’s the 10-dollar word. You’re looking at something that’s very geographically bound. You have a group of people from one dialect that are moving to another place for another dialect. You have this contact, and you can study things coming out of that. But for nonbinary gender, even now, I can say, “Aw, there’s so many more nonbinary people out there.” I mean, realistically, if we think about our own networks, we do not have – I mean, I guess I can’t say this about everybody – but most of us don’t have a huge amount of nonbinary people in it compared to how many other LGBT people or how many other men or women – there just aren’t that many nonbinary people. We do tend to find each other, but we don’t have these big communities.

Gretchen: There’s a certain clustering, but it’s also not absolute, and there’s lots of other stuff. Do you feel like the internet has an influence on how nonbinary people talk?

Jacq: I think it does in the sense that the internet – and in particular, that kind of American sphere of the internet – influences everything that everybody does all of the time in some ways. But I also think that gender – sex and gender, in particular – these core identity things interact so strongly with where we are and our immediate context that it’s not quite as – in terms of speech, I don’t think it’s quite as strong. I did have one participant – if I can talk about my dissertation a little bit.

Gretchen: Oh, yeah, please, no, tell us about how the nonbinary people talk.

Jacq: One of my participants, Istus, is nonbinary and very femme. One of the things I talked about at that conference talk that you saw me – the slides are on my website, if you wanna take a look.

Gretchen: Excellent, we can link to those.

Jacq: Sweet. Istus is nonbinary and also very femme. This is something that really challenges the stereotypes that we have. Even me as a researcher coming into this had this idea of you have these men and women, and then you have these nonbinary people that are challenging these stereotypes, but “nonbinary” is not necessarily “non-femme.” So, Istus’s femininity was very nonbinary. When she talked about trying to construct her voice, this femininity that she wanted to get across, she would talk about putting on, basically, a Californian accent. She would say, “I can talk like this, and I sound very feminine, but I also sound like I’m smiling all the time, and I’m not that nice a person.”

Gretchen: Is Istus a New Zealander? Because you’re doing your PhD in New Zealand.

Jacq: All of my participants were from Christchurch (Ōtautahi), New Zealand. They were mostly between the ages of 18 and 22 – so this really specific first year of university cohort where you’re learning your identity and really stretching out from under your parents’ wings for the first time. I also had a couple of participants that were over 40. That’s interesting because it also challenges our stereotypes of gender as this static thing that you’re a man or a woman. When we look at how language can change over time, we don’t always think about how the people that are speaking can change over time.

Gretchen: A lot of the most visible nonbinary people are younger, but there’re also older people who are saying, “Oh, these young people have described a word for this thing that I’ve felt my whole life, and actually, I’m also this identity, and now there’s a word for it.”

Jacq: Absolutely. I mean, being a 45-year-old nonbinary person, you don’t necessarily want to speak like a 20-year-old nonbinary person, right.

Gretchen: Totally.

Jacq: If 20-year-old nonbinary people are trying to navigate what sex and gender is, if you’re 40, there’s that much more history of trying to figure all of this out.

Gretchen: Absolutely. Going back to Istus, who is the subject of the talk that you gave at the New Zealand Linguistic Society, one of the things that struck me about this talk when you were doing it is that you had participants take selfies of what they wearing at the same points as they were doing recordings. They did a bunch of recordings with different people in different environments, so you could see how they changed how they talked in relation to both what they’re wearing and also who they’re talking to.

Jacq: Absolutely. Because I think all of us have this experience of thinking about how we’re perceived by somebody else. That perception, for many of us, isn’t limited to just our voices. We don’t exist as a voice that wanders around in the ether.

Gretchen: We are not disembodied voices. We are meat suits wearing clothing suits.

Jacq: Yes. Which is super frustrating for many people, too. I call these recordings “in the wild” because I had this idea of David Attenborough following – “And here, he encounters the cis person.” But yeah, knowing that how we choose to present ourselves in that way is gonna change the way that we talk. This is pretty established. Also, the person that we’re talking to is gonna change the way that we talk. If you’re talking to your parent, you’re gonna talk to them differently than if you’re talking to your boss. We know this. But I was particularly interested in the way that these gendered relationships are navigated for nonbinary people.

Gretchen: Do you have an example of how some of your participants talked differently with different people?

Jacq: One example is Istus would play with makeup in really interesting ways. When I had the participants come, they would show me their selfies of these recordings, and I’d say, “Describe this outfit to me,” so I could see what they found really important because what you choose to wear has a lot more different – like, you know what is significant to what you’re wearing versus you don’t know if I’m wearing my lucky socks. That kind of thing.

Gretchen: Yeah, I dunno if your socks are lucky. I dunno if this is, like, the same shirt I’ve been wearing for three days which gives it a different valance to me compared to “Oh, yeah, this is my favourite shirt that I never wear, and I only wear on special occasions.”

Jacq: Istus didn’t have this in a picture, but she described her “stealth outfit,” which was every aspect of the outfit presented very masculine – sort of a suit jacket and loafers and this kind of thing. But every minute aspect of the clothing was actually feminine. The buttons were on – I can’t remember what side buttons are supposed to be on – but the buttons were on –

Gretchen: Neither can I.

Jacq: – the buttons were on –

Gretchen: The feminine side.

Jacq: Yeah, and the shoes were from the women’s section. There was this whole stealth coding that Istus was doing for herself – not for other people unless they’re cued in.

Gretchen: If she needs to go about as someone who doesn’t want her gender remarked on that particular day.

Jacq: Yeah, then she can choose where that gets presented. She would also wear different kinds of makeup. She would describe it as “enough eyeshadow so you can’t see the bags under my eyes” was one of her quotes.

Gretchen: Love it.

Jacq: The other quote was “makeup for the sake of wearing makeup” versus makeup that you would wear sort of a more natural face. You’ll forgive me if I get any of this wrong. I am not a makeup person. It was interesting because the – in her voice – the feminine cues that she used would change based on how overt her makeup was.

Gretchen: This is something that stood out to me about your talk, the makeup thing, because I’m very femme, I’m very cis. To me, I want all of my gender vectors or all of my gender points in the femme tally. But what Istus did in this thing was, if she was wearing makeup, she would do less femme gender vocal cues, like she’s counterbalancing the gender points, and as long as you have enough in the femme category and enough in the masc category, then it balanced in her head for whatever her personal definition of “balanced” is, which isn’t how I approach gender but is a really interesting thing that I learned from your talk.

Jacq: Aw, thank you. I’m glad that you found it interesting. Yes, Istus – and this is a theme throughout all of the participants. I should say that I also interviewed binary participants – men and women – and there were certain themes there, too. I don’t want to leave them all the way out.

Gretchen: Totally. You gotta have a control group.

Jacq: Yeah. But for the nonbinary participants, there was this – in my dissertation, I called it “incongruence” – but this idea that if you want to create some kind of mixed signal or if you wanna create something that isn’t quite in the two boxes that the people who are listening to you maybe have, then you can either take cues from both, or you can try to find some kind of middle ground. Those are two quite different things. Something very overtly feminine in your physical presentation combined with something a little bit less feminine or more masculine in maybe your vocal presentation, that can still get to something that isn’t binary in a way different than being very neutral-sort-of-middle-ground is.

Gretchen: The neutral-middle-ground is like, “I’m just gonna wear a hoodie and jeans because every gender can wear a hoodie and jeans, and then nobody will be able to perceive me as any gender at all,” whereas in a clothing way, doing something that has mixed signals would be like, “Okay, I’m gonna have a beard and also this super sparkly eyeshadow” or something like that.

Jacq: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And that wasn’t quite where any of my particular participants went. But the idea that if you only have these two options, and you need to create a third option, there isn’t only one way to do a third option. There isn’t only one way to be nonbinary. A lot of how you do that, I found in my dissertation, is based on your own personality, which is like, “Oh, surprise, people have agency in how they talk,” and some people don’t like wearing super sparkly eyeshadow.

Gretchen: Totally. But also, sometimes you need to do the academic version of establishing that baseline because you could say, “Well, based on my friends, a lot of them which are nonbinary, people seem to do these strategies,” but having written it down in this academically legible place and gone through and done it with some statistics or something lets you say, “Okay, here’s what we have in terms of what we know now and maybe this would change in another decade if there becomes a more socially legible category of nonbinary-ness.”

Jacq: And I think, also, part of including binary participants in this work is to bring nonbinary people into both an academic conversation that’s already happening, which is, again, that sort of talk of legitimacy and saying, “Here’s an established body of work,” and bringing a “new population” – I’m making finger quotes; they’re not actually new – but bringing a different population – an “understudied” population, let’s say – into the fold, at the same time, that allows you to interrogate what’s already there. We have this whole body of literature that ignores that nonbinary people exist –

Gretchen: But that also doesn’t ask cis people or people that we’re presuming are cis, “How did you know that you’re cis? How do you know your gender? What are you doing to signal your gender with your voice? And how much of that are you doing deliberately?”

Jacq: I think that that’s really valuable, too, the idea that – I mean, there’s nothing that says a cis person isn’t allowed to think about masculinity, or how they present masculinity, or how they present femininity, or what that means. I mean, personally, I think it would be really useful if more cis people did that. If more people just thought about gender in ways that weren’t binary, talking to the binary men and women in my study, I was a little bit surprised, but it was amazing to see – I mean, some people never thought about it. There’s questions about “How do you feel about being a woman?” or being a man, and people said, “I dunno. I never thought about it. It just felt right.” But not everybody. Some of the participants that I spoke to did deeply interrogate their gender at some point in their lives. One of my cis male participants talked about thinking that maybe they were trans for a while and then realising they weren’t. I think the fact that we, as people – and also, we as linguists doing these studies on language – can interrogate even binary gender from these perspectives is really valuable.

Gretchen: This was something that came up in a recent episode that we did about the vowel space and how gender affects the vowel space, which we can link to. One of things that I find neat about that research is that even kids who haven’t gone through puberty yet who still have all identical vowel spaces or vowel spaces with as much variation as they have in heights but nothing specifically affected by the physical changes of puberty are still doing social genders and actually have different vowels based on the genders in their heads even though their bodies aren’t affecting what sounds they can produce yet.

Jacq: That works the other direction, too. We often think of puberty as this thing where a bunch of stuff happens to you, and then you pop out the other end like, talking and looking like –

Gretchen: A gender, now.

Jacq: A gender. You are this. But that’s not – I mean, the variation that almost any given human can produce is so much wider than the constraints of physiology. I’m not the only person to look at this. I know that Viktoria Papp has done really excellent work with transmasc people. Lal Zimman also works with transmasc populations a lot, too. You can take testosterone, and it can thicken your vocal folds, and it can create a drop in pitch, but that’s not what it means to talk like a man if you’re transmasc. That’s not the end of it. At the risk of summing up someone else’s research in two sentences, what you tend to see, I think, in Vietze’s work is a drop, an initial drop, from testosterone, and then it kind of pops back up again with the idea that, as people become more comfortable in their bodies and in their lives and in their situations, there’s less pressure to perform some stereotypical masculinity and more to just be the person they are, the transmasc person they are, or the nonbinary person they are.

Gretchen: That sounds neat. We can link to that study so that if people want to hear more than the two-sentence summary version, they can follow up on that.

Jacq: And Lal Zimman’s work is amazing. Every single thing that Lal has written is fantastic, too.

Gretchen: Yes. Everyone’s in the Lal Zimman fan club. So, you have a corpus, which is delightfully called, I think, “The RAINBO Corpus.”

Jacq: Yeah, “Recorded Audio-visual Interviews with nonbinary and Binary Orators. It’s “RAINBO” without a W.

Gretchen: Oh, and it spells “RAINBO” – that’s so good!

Jacq: For the sake of the acronym.

Gretchen: That’s such a beautiful acronym. You have six nonbinary participants in there, and six binary participants, and they held this speech that you looked at the pitch of it, and you’ve looked at how they do their vowels and things. You also have a talk and a paper, I think, you’re working on that’s co-authored with one of those research participants who then de-anonymised themself from the previous anonymous corpus work that they were in.

Jacq: Yeah.

Gretchen: I find this really interesting because there’s this interesting balancing act in academic between, “Oh, I’ve got a research participant. They’ve got sensitive data. I’m going to preserve their anonymity,” and also, sometimes when people are telling us really interesting things about their lives or their language choices or their identities, giving them credit for that intellectual contribution to the work which names them – yeah, can you talk about this balancing act about participant and researcher collaboration?

Jacq: Absolutely. I would love to. I’ve been thinking about it a lot. I don’t want to portray myself as an expert. There is a whole other body of work where your collaborators, your language consultants, work very closely with the researcher, but that’s not always the same methodology as the bigger picture, what we call “variationist,” studies where we’re trying to look at large groups of people and how they speak. Kaspar is the name of the person that I worked with. And I got their permission before this episode – I asked them how they wanted to be referred, and they said, “Okay.” We’ll call them Kaspar, which is great because that’s their name, so it’s super easy for me to remember.

Gretchen: But they also had a pseudonym in the study originally.

Jacq: Yeah. In the study, if you read my dissertation – which you don’t have to, but if you do – in the study, they were called “Alex.”

Gretchen: Dissertations are notably very long and, often, in the years after a dissertation comes out, people will write some shorter papers that summarise small bits of the dissertation. Keep an eye on Jacq and their website. Maybe there’ll be shorter versions. But if you really wanna read the whole dissertation or skim through it and pick out the bits that look interesting to you, we will link to it.

Jacq: I had set up, for my dissertation, you know, as a – I think there’s something else. Dissertations are a long work, and you’re learning as you go. That’s the point. When you’re planning these ethics and all of the things in planning this dissertation, you go through the process that has already been established. I did that. It’s fine. Kaspar came and was recorded. It ended up, as it happens, after I had done my data collection, Christchurch is not a huge place. Kaspar and I were in the same social circles, and we became friends after the data collection. Every once in a while, we would talk about the work that I was doing and stuff I was studying because they were super interested. They have a background in mathematics, and they’re familiar with linguistics, so it’s not like they knew nothing about linguistics.

Gretchen: So, when you were showing them some pretty graphs, they were like, “Oh, cool, graphs. I like those.”

Jacq: Yeah. And then I can’t remember if I asked them or they offered to do some proofreading before I had submitted it, and I sent them a draft. I got it back, and there were smiley faces and frowny faces on a lot of stuff. Then because we’re friends, we went and hung out and talked about it, and there’s something different. You’re participating in research. You’re getting recorded. And then research comes out. You know that you’re maybe nonbinary. You’re this population. And then you see yourself on a graph that plots your pitch somewhere, and you know what the stereotypes about feminine pitch and masculine pitch are. I mean, I did a bad thing in that sense. I hurt somebody, right, in not earth-shattering ways, I don’t think – or at least Kaspar didn’t tell me it was earth-shattering.

Gretchen: But in frowny face ways, yeah.

Jacq: And we share this perspective of the importance of examining new populations using established methodology and these traditional ways of doing things to grant – whatever you wanna call it – some kind of legitimacy from the academy – or however we wanna navigate this – but then this is still real people that are given little dots or little diamonds and plopped on a graph. I can say in 300 words how this isn’t meant to tell people how gendered they are; this is meant to examine nonbinary people and compare them on equal footing with binary populations, but of course, nonbinary people don’t come to the table with no baggage, with nothing behind them. You come, and you come with a gendered upbringing, a gendered – you exist in a world, right. You can’t just not.

Gretchen: Totally.

Jacq: That was really hard. We had a lot of conversations about that through the course of proofreading a dissertation and submitting it and trying to get to a point. And I didn’t have – because of the way that the ethics works – I couldn’t contact every other participant afterward and get the same insights and things. But it’s not all bad. Kaspar expressed to me how interesting it was and how amazing it was to see their plots there and the joy of seeing themself not in the ASAB cohort that they expected versus the sadness when they came a little bit too close or that kind of thing. We gave a talk about this and, hopefully, a paper that examines that a little bit more. The other benefit is that, now I have a collaborator and a co-author, it means that we can do a lot more really interesting stuff with data.

Gretchen: Well, and if they know all this math, you can do such cool math.

Jacq: And we can track them over time, and we can do new recordings and even stuff about how these interviews with people, or these recordings, are still a snapshot in time. Things aren’t static. People change, and people’s interpretations of themselves are reinvented constantly. I’m really excited. Watch for that paper.

Gretchen: That sounds really cool and really exciting. We will look forward to the Jacq-Kaspar collaboration, Kaspar-Jacq collaboration. You can keep swapping your names for who goes first if you do a whole bunch of different co-authorships like people do.

Jacq: It made me glad that I wasn’t recording myself.

Gretchen: Were you sometimes interviewing or the interlocutor?

Jacq: Yeah. We did these “in the wild” recordings, and then we had the traditional sociolinguistic interview with all of these questions. We recorded me at first thinking there might be accommodation stuff, but then it’s also just like, I can’t transcribe, like, 400 million hours of –

Gretchen: So, “linguistic accommodation” is the thing where, when you’re talking with someone, especially if you like them or you’re trying to get along with them, you talk more like the person you’re talking to, which happens to lots of people lots of the time. I certainly do it. And you were thinking, well, maybe if people are talking more like you when they’re talking with you, then that might shift things, but also, you end up with a lot of data.

Jacq: Yeah, that’s true. It ended up doing a little bit of spot checking. It didn’t seem quite there because of these outsider-insider relationships of I am Canadian sitting in New Zealand interviewing people. There was enough of a gulf that it didn’t seem –

Gretchen: They didn’t all start sounding Canadian when you were interviewing them. I’m shocked.

Jacq: They weren’t like, [stereotypical Canadian accent] “Oh, hey, thanks for interviewing me.”

Gretchen: Maybe this is a good segue actually because you’re a fellow Canadian, hello, “Welcome to the podcast, eh” – [laughter] – who’s been living in New Zealand for nine years now.

Jacq: Yeah, almost a decade.

Gretchen: Amazing. We’ve had a previous interview with Ake Nicholas talking about Cook Islands Māori if people want to hear someone with a more New Zealand accent.

Jacq: Actual New Zealand accent.

Gretchen: An actual New Zealand accent. But this is presumably a linguistic experience for you. Do you wanna say anything about what it’s been like? Do you talk differently to people other than me who don’t have a similar Canadian accent?

Jacq: It’s kind of hard to know. I think there’re a few things. I noticed about four or five years in that I was losing my Canadian raising. We had gone somewhere, and I said, “Aw, look at those three houses.” I was like, “Ah! What did I just do?” Instead of saying /haʊsəz/, I said /haʊzəz/. I was like, “Ugh.” Which is funny because when I lived in Canada, I never noticed Canadian raising. It was one of those things that was so –

Gretchen: So, Canadian raising, which we actually haven’t talked about on Lingthusiasm yet – so maybe someday in the future –

Jacq: What!

Gretchen: – is the thing that is responsible for the differences between how I say the vowel in “house” [noun] versus “house” [verb] or in “height” versus “high” – “height,” “high,” “house,” “house.” I will say, I don’t Canadian raise that much, so it’s a difference in terms of how you say the vowel between /t/ and /d/ or /s/ and /z/. There’re some people who say something like, “about,” more like /əboʊt/. There’s a stereotype that Canadians say /əbʊt/, and that’s not true. I want to correct that right now. People in lots of other English-speaking environments don’t do this Canadian raising, and you noticed that you were stopping doing it. Anecdotally, I also notice people that move to Canada do start doing more Canadian raising, so this seems to be one of the ones that’s flexible in people’s speech.

Jacq: Yeah, I think that’s true. It’s funny because it’s so stereotyped in Canada. I don’t think it’s as strong as the stereotype, but it’s definitely sticky in a weird way. I did lose it. But probably, in this interview, it’s back.

Gretchen: It clicks back in.

Jacq: Yeah.

Gretchen: Any other things that you’ve noticed?

Jacq: I remember when I first landed in New Zealand – so New Zealand is non-rhotic. There’s no R. Words that are spelt E-A-R, like “ear,” and words that are spelt A-I-R, like “air,” have merged, so they’re pronounced the same. I was sitting on the airplane waiting to disembark, and the announcer came on, and they said, “Could everyone exit via the /ɹiəɹ stiəɹz/?”

Gretchen: Oh. [Laughs]

Jacq: I had this moment of, like, cows stacked up at the back of a plane. Like, and it’s sat with me, and I think it’s because the context wasn’t quite enough for me to get – but I was like, “Rear steers? Rear steers. What?”

Gretchen: Well, it’s what you exit the “ear-plane” by, obviously.

Jacq: “When you exit the ear-plane by the rear steers, or alternatively, exit the airplane by the rare stairs,” which are the stairs that they don’t bring out that often.

Gretchen: We have to save the rare stairs and the fine china for guests.

Jacq: Exactly.

Gretchen: That’s exactly the kind of thing that, especially, when you’re hitting something out of context, and they seem to be more fond of using that, so if you weren’t used to that particular phrase, either, it would catch.

Jacq: Yeah, and I mean, you’re also in a new place and all of this, and you’re trying to pay attention because you have to do what the airplane people tell you because that’s the rules. I have one more anecdote that is very deeply only Canadian and New Zealand overlap.

Gretchen: Please, I wanna hear it.

Jacq: Maybe this is only western Canada. We’ll see. So, Gretchen, what do you call the front row of seats in the classroom?

Gretchen: Oh, that’s where the “keeners” sit.

Jacq: That’s where the “keeners” sit, right, that’s the “keener” seats, right?

Gretchen: I dunno if I have “keener seats” specifically as a phrase, but like, absolutely, totally understand you when you say this.

Jacq: So, if somebody’s a “keener,” that’s the person at the front of the class, yeah.

Gretchen: Absolutely, yeah. I have told people about this Canadianism myself.

Jacq: Amazing! I’m glad it’s a super salient Canadianism.

Gretchen: I’ve introduced Lauren to it, in fact.

Jacq: So, it’s not a thing in New Zealand. They don’t have keeners, but New Zealanders say “keen” all the time.

Gretchen: Oh, but for something different.

Jacq: You’ll say – and apologies to any New Zealanders if I get these pragmatically a little bit wrong – but you’ll say, “Ah, I’m going for coffee. Is anyone keen?” Or you might say, “Ah, the movie’s coming out next week,” and someone else might say, “Keen,” like they’re keen to go.

Gretchen: Oh, okay, yeah, I think I could say, “I’m keen to go,” but not “keen” by itself in a phrase like that.

Jacq: No, and I think that my impression – my 8-year-old, 9-year-old Canadian impression – is that you don’t really use “keen” – because it has a little bit of that odd, negative – I mean, it’s a “keener” thing, so unless you’re really claiming –

Gretchen: That you’re a big fan of Star Wars, and you’re a Star Wars keener, and you definitely have to go see the new one.

Jacq: If you’re keen to go to Star Wars, you wanna be in the front row.

Gretchen: Of course! Yeah, okay, yeah, I sort of get that. It’s not as neutral. It’s like you’re really actively excited. You’re not just like, “Oh, yeah, I’d be good to go” or like “I’d be down to go.” “I’d be keen to go” is like, “I’d be so keen to go! That would be great!” not just like, “It’d be fine.”

Jacq: Yeah, but if you’re keen, you’re like, “Yeah, I could” – if you wanted to be extra, you could double up the New Zealandisms and you could be “keen as.”

Gretchen: Oh, yeah, I’ve heard the “as.”

Jacq: You could be “keen as,” but I don’t know – that’s where my knowledge of New Zealand lexical items stops is at “as.”

Gretchen: I love “keener” as a Canadianism because my prof friends will be like, “Oh, one of my keeners came to my office hours today,” and they’ll mean that student who’s always asking really good questions and is really excited to be there and stuff like that. It’s very positive when my prof friends who were all themselves keeners back in the day use it. Maybe some people use it negatively, but I sure don’t know any of them.

Jacq: If you are a keener, then “keener” is quite positive, but maybe less so if you're not.

Gretchen: Maybe less so. So, you finished your PhD, and you’re teaching now. I have been told that you make students stab themselves with toothpicks for science. Can you tell us about that?

Jacq: I would love to tell you about that, with a caveat: I tell students to very carefully try not to stab themselves with toothpicks, but it doesn’t quite translate. I teach phonetics, which involves learning about all of the sounds and how we make them. If you’re a speaker of English, you might be familiar with this little sound called “R.”

Gretchen: R is a sound, yes, that I’m familiar with.

Jacq: The alveolar approximate, the /ɹ/ noise. The R sound, the /ɹ/, can be made about 16 million different ways. There’s something like eight or nine different things that you can do with your mouth that will get you close enough to /ɹ/ for people to understand you.

Gretchen: Oh, wow. When I was learning phonetics, they told us there were two different ways, and there’s actually six or eight of them.

Jacq: There’s two different tongue positions, and that’s where the toothpick comes in. But you can also do – there’s different stuff with the back of your mouth. Some people have lip rounding, and some people don’t. Some people raise this and that – yeah, there’s different ways to do it. But you were right when you were learning phonetics.

Gretchen: But because it all produces approximately the same sound, kids just hear adults making the sound, and they experiment with their mouths to produce The Sound, and because the meat suit part of our throats is kind of squishy, you can manipulate it in different ways and end up with the same thing that comes out.

Jacq: You get close enough. In English, we don’t have a lot of other stuff in that area, too. When you think about it, if you’re a kid, if you think about something like a /p/, if you’re a baby looking at a caregiver going /p/, you can really see that, right, but a /ɹ/, you get a face, and you don’t really know what’s going on.

Gretchen: You just get a blank face. You can’t see what they’re doing. With something like a /k/, you can’t necessarily see what they’re doing, but the sound is very distinct that they’re making. /ɹ/ is this approximate sound, which is why it’s called an “approximant” in the International Phonetic Alphabet because it’s just sort of like, “Eh, I dunno.”

Jacq: Close enough, yeah. What you get is you have this sound where there’s a bunch of different ways to make it, and also a bunch of speakers that don’t really know how they make it. When you say something like a /k/, you make that sound, and you’re like, “Oh, my tongue goes here.” But when you’re making a /ɹ/, it changes – depending on where it is in the word – all this stuff. As you learned in your phonetic class, there are two ways that your tongue can be shaped when you’re making a /ɹ/ sound. This may blow some people’s minds because they never thought about it before and didn’t realise that the other way is possible. The two big ways are – they have a million different names because of course they do – but one is called the “bunched R,” usually.

Gretchen: This is when your R, like the back part of your tongue sort of crunches up or gloms up into a bit of a shape at the back that doesn’t actually touch the roof of your mouth.

Jacq: The back of your tongue is all crunched up, and the front of it is down at the bottom of your mouth. The other way to do it is often called the “retroflex R,” or the “curly R,” so you have bunch-y R and curly R. The curly R – the retroflex R – the front of your tongue is curled up and back a little bit.

Gretchen: It’s almost like the tip of the bottom of your tongue is touching, or almost touching, the roof of your mouth.

Jacq: Yes. Which one do you make? It’s hard to –

Gretchen: I know which one I make!

Jacq: Awesome! One of the important points of science is confirmatory analysis. You should replicate this finding and see if it still holds true. If you wanna know which R you make, there’s a way that you can do this with just a toothpick. It’s really easy. All you do is you take a toothpick, a clean one – and make sure you wash your hands – and then you take your toothpick, and you make an R sound – /ɹ/ – or you can pretend you’re a dog and go [imitates dog growl], something like that, just make your /ɹ/ noise. Then you take your toothpick, and you rest it on your bottom teeth or however you wanna – kind of have it centrally into your mouth – and as you go /ɹ/, slowly and carefully, and not stab-ily, put the toothpick into your mouth, and then go, “bleh,” stick your tongue out. The toothpick will either be touching the top of your tongue or the bottom of your tongue.

Gretchen: Whoa! And this tells you which R you have?

Jacq: Yes. And if it’s touching the bottom of your tongue, you’re making a retroflex – you’re making a curly R. And if it’s touching the top of your tongue, you’re making a bunched R.

Gretchen: So, you’re either a curler or a buncher, and you can tell this based on which side you are. I actually went looking for toothpicks so that I could try this and ended up finding a cotton swab, like a Q-Tip, before I saw my toothpicks, and so I tried this with a cotton swab and did not stab myself. This is the safety conscious version you can do if you like because it also works.

Jacq: As long as it’s clean and your hands are clean, that’s a good, safe way to do it.

Gretchen: I’m a buncher, which I thought I was, and I have just confirmed that.

Jacq: Anecdotally, in Canada, it was usually about 50/50 when we go through classes, or we try it. This is in Alberta.

Gretchen: And in New Zealand is it also 50/50, or is it different?

Jacq: In New Zealand, there are a lot more bunchers. I think this might have to do with New Zealand being non-rhotic. I don’t have a paper on this. I don’t know anything. But there’s also a lot less lip rounding. In Canada, lip rounding is almost universal, like it’s on Rs a lot.

Gretchen: Yeah, I lip round.

Jacq: But in New Zealand, that’s not the case. Most people don’t round their lips.

Gretchen: Jacq, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast. As we ask at the end of every interview, “If you could leave people knowing one thing about linguistics, what would it be?”

Jacq: It would be that you’re the boss of your language. How you communicate with people – it’s all on you. People can tell you how they think you should talk. Even linguists can say, “Well, this is how people talk.” But if you’re not feeling it, do something different. You can change it. You can do whatever you want, communicate however you wanna communicate. Don’t let anyone tell you what to do.

[Music]

Gretchen: For more Lingthusiasm and links to all the things mentioned in this episode, go to lingthusiasm.com. You can listen to us on all of the podcast platforms or at lingthusiasm.com. You can get transcripts of every episode on lingthusiasm.com/transcripts. You can follow @lingthusiasm on all the social media sites. You can get scarves with lots of linguistics patterns on them including the IPA, branching tree diagrams, bouba and kiki, and our favourite esoteric Unicode symbols, plus other Lingthusiasm merch – like our “Etymology isn’t Destiny” t-shirts and aesthetic IPA posters – at lingthusiasm.com/merch. You can find our co-host, Lauren Gawne, on social media, and her blog is Superlinguo. Links to my social media can be found at gretchenmcculloch.com. My blog is AllThingsLinguistic.com. My book about internet language is called Because Internet. You can find our guest, Jacq Jones, on their website at jacq.land – that’s J-A-C-Q-dot-L-A-N-D. Lingthusiasm is able to keep existing thanks to the support of our patrons. If you wanna get an extra Lingthusiasm episode to listen to every month, our entire archive of bonus episodes to listen to right now, or if you just wanna help keep the show running ad-free, go to patreon.com/lingthusiasm or follow the links from our website. Patrons can also get access to our Discord chatroom to talk with other linguistics fans and be the first to find out about new merch and other announcements. Recent bonus episodes include spoonerisms, mondegreens, and eggcorns; secret codes and the joys of cryptic word puzzles; and inner voice, mental pictures, and other shapes for our thoughts. Can’t afford to pledge? That’s okay, too. We also really appreciate it if you can recommend Lingthusiasm to anyone in your life who’s curious about language. Lingthusiasm is created and produced by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our Senior Producer is Claire Gawne, our Editorial Producer is Sarah Dopierala, our Production Assistant is Martha Tsutsui-Billins, and our Editorial Assistant is Jon Kruk. Our music is “Ancient City” by The Triangles.

Jacq: Stay lingthusiastic!

[Music]

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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purpleyoonn · 2 years

Text

baby (you complete us) 3

C H A P T E R T H R E E

summary: Soulmates were a common occurrence, so common, in fact, that the world sought an easier way to find your other half: A bracelet that would scan your mark and match you with those who shared your mark. Within recent years, soul groups were becoming normal, and your own bracelet said you have seven matches.

Or where you wear your bracelet for ten years, and finally give up the hope you would find your soul group, only for BTS to put theirs on and see what they were missing.

genre: soulmate au, idol au, angst, fluff, eventual smut,

pairing: Idol BTS x Disabled MC

warnings: angst, mentions of depression, disabled mc (Ehlers Danlos syndrome), eventual smut, fluff, lots of fluff, mentions of disability, simp bangtan

chapter warnings: lotssss of angst (ofc), nervous mc, nervous bangtan, insecure mc, breakdowns, not much

*words in italics are spoken in Korean*

masterlist // chapter 2 // chapter 4

taglist: @imnotlauriane @mageprincess7 @m1sss1mp @0funsite0 @strawberry-moonpies @this-isthe-way @singukieee @btsw1fe @gooooomz @fluffy-canada-pancakes @carolinexkpop @agusfree @sakurarukas @iamkookiesforyou @skyys-universe @toughbook @plutoneu @whisperssuga @welcometomyworld13 @yuzon3 @wittyreader @jnghs @cyd0129 @exfolitae @queen-in-the-shadows @nen-nyy @pandxthings @schniti-is-in-the-house @juju-227592 @jinseartharmysmoon @wooya1224 @ddaeng-angmoh @gratefullygrateful @rorythme @gratefullygrateful @kimrona @jjjj-ssi @maysgarden @lovelgirl22 @doublebunv @reallysparklychaos @jayjayy-57

permanent taglist: @yourleftsock @cryingpages @strxwbloody @drissteele @dustyinkpages @crushedblackroses @blaaiissee @iiitsmaria @azazel-nyx @g-h-o-s-t-b-a-b-i @knjkitten @kleirielk @foreverweareyoung7 @lachimolala22019 @namuficxs @94z-93 @kimgmzmc @thenaverse @veronawrites @dahliasbouqet @black-rose-29 @tinyoonsblog @take-u-2-an0ther-w0r1d @stellauniverse @stupendouscookiehumanmug @tinyoonsblog @tatyhend

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Previously on baby (you complete us):

You clicked on the messages first, tears coming to your eyes as you scrolled all the way to the top, replies waiting to be clicked on for every single one of the messages you have sent over the past ten years.

You couldn’t believe what you were seeing, needing to rub your tired eyes more than once as English and Korean replies were sent, responding to each and every one of your own messages. Hundreds of apologies written as you scrolled, each one sorry for waiting so long to wear their bracelets.

You moved over to the ‘matches’ button, needing to confirm with your own thoughts what was happening. And there it was, seven matches, their profile pictures and names only confirmed that you were the missing soulmate to BTS.

You sat on your bed in shock, not knowing what to do as your brain froze, the seven people in your matches folder staring back at you. You just kept reading their names, over and over again, trying to tell yourself that this was a dream that your subconscious gave you to build your hope up again.

But then you remembered that the official tweet said that they sent a message with the number of one of their team members, a number to call so they knew it was you. You searched your messages, scrolling all the way down to the bottom to see that same number with the message:

“Hello. This is Sejin with BTS’s management team. Here is the number of one of our translators. Please contact us as soon as you receive this. BTS would like to get into contact with their last soulmate and meet you.”

You wasted no time in calling the number, not even thinking if your phone plan had international calling or not. It didn’t occur to you that it could be midnight where they were, you just had the urgency to call them, to see if they were real.

When the translator heard her phone ring, shock and excitement moved throughout the room. Everyone had been waiting in one of the hang out rooms within HYBE, waiting for the slight chance that the boys’ last soulmate would see their message.

“Answer the phone!” Jimin couldn’t help but yell, not wanting you to have to wait too long and think they were ignoring you. He wouldn’t blame you in the slightest if that thought went through your head.

When Sejin gave the translator the go ahead, a simple nod, she answered the phone call and put it on speaker.

“Hello? Is this Miss, Y/n?” The translator spoke through the phone, causing your eyes to widen.

“Uhm, yes, it is. Can I ask who this is?” You wanted to be sure, needed to be sure that this was real.

“This is Sohye with HYBE. I am one of the translators with BTS. Is it okay if I switch this to facetime so we can be sure of your identity before we move any further?” Oh, wow, she was quick with this. It makes sense; you wouldn’t want to give any information out to just anyone.

“Uhm, okay, please just give me one moment.” You answer back, moving to place your phone against your lamp so you could be seen within screen. It took only a couple seconds for your phone to alert that the translator requested a video call. Taking a deep breath, you accepted the call only to be face to face with Sejin.

You were not expecting right away to meet one of the people who had always been by the boys’ side. Everyone loved Sejin for how he treated the boys and took care of them.

“Hello Miss Y/n. If it’s okay with you, I would just like to verify your Soul Connection identification number.” It looks like he has a phone in his hands, and when you start reciting your id number, he seems to follow along on the phone.

Since your soul mark was only unique to you within your soul bond, it wouldn’t exactly indicate you were their soulmate, as so many have seen their marks throughout the years and have tried to tattoo the mark on their own skin, pretending to be their last soulmate.

“Okay. Thank you! Well, it seems like you are who you say, so I would like to start with saying thank you for reaching out to us. The boys are ready to talk with you now, unless you have any questions first?” Sejin looks behind the camera before gesturing for someone to move back. A small sigh leaves his lips.

You have so many questions but don’t know if you can even ask them. You want to know why they only just put their bracelets on. Did they even want you? They had been together as a soulgroup for so long, you feel like you would only be messing things up. You had almost nothing in common with the boys, would you even fit in socially?

“Miss Y/n?” Sejin sees the tears pooling in your waterline, can see your lip trembling. You take a deep breath, trying to calm yourself as you look away from the camera really quick.

“What’s going on?”

“Why is she quiet?”

“Is she okay?” Sejin turns to the boys, shaking his head as their questions, motioning them to wait a second.

“Miss Y/n, we can take a break if you need. We can call you back later.” Sejin suggests, and you want to take it but know that if you do, you will ignore the call. You wouldn’t have the courage any longer.

“No, uh, it’s okay. I-I don’t have any questions.” You manage to choke out as you try to hold your emotions back. You didn’t need any of them to see you break down.

“Okay. I will hand you over to the boys then.” Sejin reluctantly moves over so the boys can take his spot. Once they do, they see you visibly regulating your breathing. The tears you’re holding back immediately make Jimin start crying.

It was quiet for a couple minutes as you and the boys take in each other. You weren’t exactly sure how to start a conversation, and neither was Namjoon. They weren’t sure if you knew any Korean, but they also didn’t want to have to use a translator every time they wanted to talk to you.

“Hi.” Surprisingly, Jungkook was the one to start the conversation, his smile almost blinding as he looked at you. He couldn’t believe that you saw their message and called them. He was hoping every second that you might put the bracelet back on and see their matches. He wondered if you read his messages.

“Hello.” Your voice had them wanting to touch the stars, see if they shined as brightly, felt as warm. And when you shyly waved at them, Yoongi wanted to clutch his heart in his hands and offer it to you on a silver platter.

All of them wondered how they could have gone this long not knowing about you, not having you by their side. They could all feel the missing piece in their souls, the ache that teetered on painful as they looked at you, fiddling with the stack of bracelets on your left wrist, just barely covering your soulmark.

You were nervous, and they didn’t blame you.

“We’re sorry.” Taehyung had gotten tired of the silence, wanting to talk with you. He wanted to know everything he could about his baby soulmate. He wanted this awkward time to be over and for you to be with them.

“You don’t have to be sorry. You didn’t know.” And it was true. It was one of the thoughts that crossed your head as you looked at them. You could see their red eyes and puffy cheeks, evidence of their crying.

However, they knew that you had it worse. They didn’t know you existed, they spent ten happy years together while you had none. You knew they existed and waited years for them. Nothing they felt right now could compare to what you did.

“But you did.” And with Taehyung’s words, you broke.

They watched you bring your knees to your chest and place your head on them, sobs breaking through your lips as you tried and failed to hold them in. Namjoon’s hands clenched in his lap at the fact he couldn’t just bring you into his lap right then and there. They couldn’t comfort you.

“Please, baby, do not cry.” Hobi’s english was soft and had you looking up at them.

“You have every right to be upset with us. We forever wish we put those bracelets on sooner. But we cant take that back, no matter how much we want to. What we can do, is work hard in the future to make you as happy as we can. We can only hope that you still want us…” Namjoon finally spoke up, trying his hardest to put all of his emotions into his voice. He wanted you to know that they were willing to do anything to make up the past ten years to you.

“You have to realize, I never thought I would meet my soulmates. I went years thinking you didn’t want me and that was why you didn’t wear your bracelets. That you were happier without me. Who would want a disabled soulmate?” You chuckled at your own deprecating humor, not even seeing the way their jaws clenched in anger.

Who in the world would ever think that? Jin couldn’t help but think after the translator finished. He wanted to hurt whoever planted that in your head.

“I know you read my messages. I went through a lot these past couple years and have a lot of baggage. I have bad days where I can barely walk to the bathroom, and I have good days where I end up pushing my limits because I feel no pain. I need you to really think if you still want me before I end up getting my hopes up and you change your mind.” You lay it all out for them. Every one of your thoughts condensed into a single minute. You didn’t want to meet the, feel the bond and start to fall only for them to not catch you in the end.

“Come stay with us.” Yoongi’s tone was cool as he suggested, like he had everything planned out. Everyone’s eyes widened at his words.

“What?” You managed to ask, wondering if you heard him correctly.

“Come stay with us. We want you and this bond more than anything. Ever since we found out about you, we have spent countless hours reading every message, searching for any sign of your whereabouts and who you were. Let us show you how much we want you. You won’t have to worry about anything when you are with us. Give us a chance to get to know each other. Get to know us before you decide that we won’t catch you.” You always thought that Yoongi was eloquent, but to hear the translation from the translator… you almost wanted to start sobbing again.

You’ve never had anyone outside of your family try to fight for you. Even your friends since childhood wouldn’t fight for you this much. You’ve never really had anyone beg you for your presence. Beg you to give them a chance.

“I—I don’t have the money for a plane ticket.” Were the only words you could articulate at the moment. Everything seemed to blindside you and your brain was overwhelmed. It wasn’t an excuse. Your coping mechanism was humor, and you didn’t want to breakdown again as you knew you were fated to if you said you would give them the chance.

“Don’t worry about that. Let your soulmates handle everything.” Jin was the one to speak this time, a wink accompanying his words. You remember him saying he did that when he was nervous or feeling awkward.

“Can we, uhm, have your number?” Jimin asked, wiping the tears off his cheek. He hadn’t stopped crying the entire time, too much emotion spilling from him now that he was able to see you and hear your voice.

You nod your head before giving it to them, all seven of them and Sejin putting it into their contacts before messaging you so you would have their own numbers. You were quick to receive a selfie from Jungkook, a message saying hello accompanying the picture.

“Please don’t be afraid to message us. We will always make time for you. Also, please let us know when the earliest we could have you fly out.” Namjoon smiled at you, his phone in hand as he tried to memorize your number.

“Well, I work from home, so I can pretty much work anywhere. I need to get some luggage first though and a couple of other things.” Before you could say they could get you a flight for next week, you notice Hoseok has his phone out.

“Don’t worry about the luggage. You can send Hoseok your address and he will have some from our favorite brand delivered.” You felt like your eyes were going to be permanently widened from the number of surprises that kept coming your way.

You wanted to object but from the look they were sending you, you figured it would be better to not argue with them. So, you nodded your head and sent the older man your address, slightly uncomfortable with them knowing it but you knew they would probably ask for it sooner or later.

“What’s your favorite color, love?”

“It’s this light blue color.” You turn to grab your favorite water bottle and bring it close to the camera to show them. They all nod like they were taking notes before looking off screen for a second.

“I’m so sorry, Y/n, but we have a meeting to attend with our directors. Thank you so much for giving us a chance and we will definitely talk to you soon.” Namjoon’s dimple smile had your full attention as everyone said their goodbyes and promises of contact. Even as you said goodbye and the video call was ended, you had their bright smiles burnt into your cornea.

After checking to see if your phone still had some charge to it, you were quick to go to your phone app again, this time to your recent calls list.

“Hey, so I think your joke isn’t so much of a joke anymore…”

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