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diyunho · 4 years

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The Joker x Reader - “Trapped” Part 4

Almost one year ago, someone tried to kill The Joker in a speeding car and Y/N pushed him out of the way, getting hit instead. With a fractured skull and broken bones, she was out of business for 6 months; when she finally recovered, The Queen of Gotham wasn’t the same anymore. Trapped inside her own mind and exhibiting severe cognitive impairment, Y/N’s life switched upside down without any hope of ever returning to normal.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 5

Next Morning

“We’re done here, OK?” The Joker shouts and you stomp away, furious at his behavior.

“Of course we are done, who the hell would put up with you?!! You’re horrible!!!”

“It finally clicked? Good!!!! Come on, speed it up and disappear!!!!” he points at the top of the hill where your car is parked.

You walk faster and J is increasingly frustrated with each step you take.

“So what you said was a lie?!” he yells before he can stop himself. “You assured me I’ll get used with being loved and here you are running from me! Hypocrite! Who’s the liar now, huh?”

You turn around, stunned.

How dare he twist your most intimate confessions in such a manner?

Y/N and The Joker glare at each other for a few moments before you voice all the bitterness and resentment building up in your heart loud enough for him to hear:

“I hate you!”

“Oh yeah?” he smirks. “Perfect! I’m used to it!”

You reprise your stroll, determined not to fall into his little traps anymore: this time is over and you have to put as much distance in between the two of you in the next few seconds before he attempts one of his tricks.

Not that you would fall for it again, but you never know…

One last glare while you try to open the car door and you see him flair his arms around loudly screaming at his phone; your fingers keep missing the lock and you kick the metal frame, irritated. Another glance and you spot a vehicle driving in the parking lane towards where The Joker is.

“J?...” you hesitantly call out to him yet The Joker probably has the earbuds in so he can’t hear you. “J!!!” you wave to get his attention without success. “Oh my God!” you rush back in his direction when you realize that SUV will hit him if it continues the present trajectory. “J!!! J!!!!”

The King is too absorbed in his business conversation thus he finally sees Y/N next to him as she violently pushes him out of harm’s way.

The strong impact wakes you up and you gasp for air, panicked. Your troubled mind has difficulty catching up with reality: a damaged brain can’t possibly render any type of comfort in this situation.

“Why are you crying?” J mumbles half asleep. “Did you have a bad dream?”

You seem confused and unresponsive to his questions, no other choice besides waking up to check on you.

“Calm down. You had a nightmare, ok?” he pulls the agitated Y/N in his arms. “ Hey, it’s me!”

You whimper at the pain paralyzing your body and don’t complain when he drags you on top of him; it actually feels soothing having someone close that understands what’s happening to you.

“Don’t hold me so tight, I can’t breathe,” J pecks your forehead where the blood clot pressing on your frontal lobe should be. “Better?” he asks a tearful girlfriend that ultimately begins to understand she wasn’t hit by a car minutes ago: it’s an ordeal she already went through months ago despite the aftermath of the accident still creating problems. “Such an early bird,” The Clown yawns since he won’t be able to doze off after your episode. “Only 7 am Princess…” the grumbled noises make you receptive to his complaint. “What about you give me some sugar in exchange for my services?” J suggests, quite puzzled when you roll off him and stumble out of the bedroom. “Where are you going?!”

You don’t answer because you’re concentrating just on what your neurons were able to translate in such a short notice: your man wants sugar. That’s why you’re in a big hurry to bring him a bag containing the sweet product, happily offering the item to his majesty The King of Gotham.

“For God’s sake, Pumpkin!” he accepts the gift nevertheless and places it on the covers. “That’s not what I meant,” he snatches Y/N in his arms and kisses her.

“No…sugar?...” you inquire out of genuine curiosity.

“I already got it,” he mischievously smirks at your bafflement, deciding to exercise your skills at once. “Say Princess: if I give you two kisses and then I give you two more, how many kisses do you get?”

“Ummm…” you debate on the question,”… not enough?”

“Due to your high standards, certainly,” The Joker huffs at the genuine reply. “Your solution is not wrong, but I’m looking for a number. Two plus two? Come on, you already know this one!”

“Mmmm… Four?...” you blur out and get groped as reward.

“Good girl!” J proudly applauds your abilities at crack of dawn. “Enough algebra for this morning,” he changes topic. “Your doctor appointment is at 10; you should take a shower soon,” and he rambles on until something is clear: the blank expression on your face hints at the outcome.

“You’re not listening, are you?” he suspiciously inquires.

“No.”

Why would you? Your brain’s self-defense mechanism prevailed at all the information flooding your deteriorated synapses and the result was blocking the outpour of sentences.

“That was a 10 minutes speech, Pumpkin!” The Joker grouchily admonishes the carefree Y/N.

“11,” you gesture at the clock on the wall.

“11 what?”

“11 minutes, not 10,” you nonchalantly conclude.

“Oh, so you have the audacity to time me while you don’t bother keeping up?!”

“Yes,” you giggle and hide your face under the pillow.

“That’s preposterous!”

“Hm?...” your nose emerges from under the cushion at the fascinating word you can’t recollect being in your current vocabulary.

“Preposterous, Princess!” J repeats.”… Stop laughing, would you?” he forcefully hijacks your pillow and you snicker because whatever-the-heck- it-means Preposterous Princess sounds like a hilarious nickname. “You wanna play games?” The Clown Prince of Crime sucks on his silver teeth willing to bring a final showdown to this magical day. “Fine, remember you made me with your abominable behavior!” he reaches for the nightstand in order to grab his favorite deck of cards. “Pick a card, any card; I won’t peak,” J watches the captivated woman pluck her choice from the mound. “Now put it in the stack,” he urges and you follow the instructions.

The Joker vigorously shuffles the cards then searches for yours.

“Is this it?” he triumphantly flicks the Joker card out of the bunch.

You nod a yes completely smitten he guessed again and your terrible half steals a kiss, triumphantly growling to himself:

“Who’s laughing now, huh?”

*************

After Your Doctor’s Appointment

J slides the screen on his phone and before he can utter anything you announce:

“Hi, this is Pre… Pro… Mmm… W-wait,” you stammer and gather your thoughts. “This is Preposterous Princess.”

The Joker sighs, definitely unamused at your 5th call in a row to tell him what’s going on at your routine consultation: he barely finished counting the ammo boxes he received with the shipment after you left and going over the heist scheme for next week it’s made impossible by Y/N.

“Pumpkin, I will remind you that’s not what I meant when I said that word. It was Preposterous COMA Princess!! Two separate entities, alright? We need to have a serious discussion after you get home.”

“I have to go, Pro… Ummm… Preposterous Princess is at…at the gates,” you say it very fast and hang up, excited to share news with him.

Yet The Clown is already acquainted with the whole development on your condition: the doctor’s office contacted him after your departure in order to brief him on Y/N health. The blood clot is a bit smaller since it keeps reabsorbing; the cognitive issues are there, tests ended up pretty much within normal range except one, thus it’s necessary for the two of you to have the dialogue he mentioned about.

Five more minutes and you barge in his office holding your yellow teddy bear and for the first time in his life The Joker can’t help regretting he’s about to burst someone’s bubble.

You approach the desk and set the ultrasound picture in front of him waiting for his reaction; your bright smile doesn’t go well with how gloomy he appears, literally an understatement anyway.

“Baby,” you tap the image just in case he didn’t realize what he’s staring at.

“I know, Pumpkin. We can’t keep it.”

“Hm…?” your smile gradually dies out as you comprehend he’s not on the same page with your wishes.

“We can’t keep the baby, it’s very dangerous given you merely survived a severe trauma. I was told it’s nearly impossible for you to have kids, that’s why I didn’t use… Anyway… I admit this one’s on me and the conclusion is… … we can’t keep the baby.”

“No baby?” you sniffle.

“Nope, it would be too harsh on your body. Plus, you won’t be able to use your anti-inflammatory medication if you’re pregnant.”

“I want baby!”

“Are you deaf??!” J slams the desk with his fist, annoyed. “You can’t have a child, it could kill you. Do you want to perish?!” he rises from his chair.

“No… I want you and baby.”

“No way in hell!” he snarls at your defiance.

“Why can’t I h-have baby? Because… because I’m stupid?” you cuddle with your plush toy, heartbroken at his approach.

“You’re not stupid, but I’m beginning to have doubts if what I told you doesn’t make sense!”

“I want baby!” you whisper on the verge of crying.

“I want baby,” The Joker mocks and watches your demeanor change: it doesn’t take a genius to detangle the mystery of how hurt you seem.

“Are…are you making fun of me?!”

The King is a jerk, no doubt about it. Despite his obvious flaws he never ridiculed someone’s disability; it’s simply beneath him. One could say this is a new low for him and he cannot erase it: Y/N’s cognitive impairment is clearly sacred ground he trespassed on a whim when he shouldn’t have.

“If…if you were like me… I wouldn’t laugh at… at you,” you wipe your tears, sobbing. “I’m not smart… anymore but I can m-make decisions, ok? I want baby!”

“I said no!” J yells, fired up you won’t listen to reason.

“I don… I don’t care!” you storm out of the office and trip on the carpet, almost falling to the ground. “It’s my baby!”

“It’s mine also unless you have another boyfriend!!”

**************

You’ve been gone for the last hour; it’s a big place yet it shouldn’t be so difficult to find one’s partner.

The Joker dials your number and inquires as soon as you blow your nose on the other side of the line.

“Is this The Preposterous Princess?”

Dead air again; Y/N isn’t in the mood to speak to the man she can’t forgive for his transgression. In addition to him disregarding her intention of keeping the offspring, he made her feel dumb and that’s unforgivable.

“Y/N, where are you?!” J descends the steps leading to the basement, the last area he didn’t searched for his missing woman. He opens the boiler room, nothing. The pantry reveals zero clues either. The janitorial supplies closet is a different story; a box of sponges flies by his ear, immediately accompanied by a hateful tone:

“Go away!”

“You almost broke my nose,” he over exaggerates. “What are you doing here anyway? I’ve been looking all over the house!” “I’m hiding baby from you,” you clearly enunciate without stammering.

“Give me a break,” he drops on his knees in front of you. “I don’t want you to kick the bucket, why is that a bad thing?”

“I want baby!”

“Stubborn mule, you sound like a scratched CD that skips and skips and skips,” he barks at your persistence.

“Hm?” you crinkle your nose.

“Scratched CD!” he brings his face close to yours, pleased an opportunity for his plan has arisen. “First of all, if you want to keep the kid you have to promise not to die; second, I have no desire to become a father and third of all pick a card!” he shoves them in your fingers, perfectly aware that if you can’t process all the stuff he’s yapping at an amazing speed, you’ll get distracted and forget you’re mad at him; including one of your favorite games to the equation should seal the outcome.

“Hm?”

“Chop, chop, pick a card Pumpkin!”

You suspiciously pluck your item and then shove it back in the bundle.

The Joker steals a kiss while figuring out your card and you protest:

“I don’t… I don’t want your four kisses!”

“That’s too bad, I do come with four kisses, it’s a bundle deal!” J dismisses your logic connected to this morning’s algebra lesson. “Is this your card?” he shows you the Jester card and your mouth opens in amazement.

“A-ha!”

He fights with himself if he should disclose the secret: you don’t seem totally diverted and his plot could misfire due to inaction.

It’s not worth it.

“Do you know how I select the correct card?”

“No.”

“Each single time Pumpkin you invariably pick The Joker card.”

You sulk at the revelation since it’s true: you don’t recall sorting another card from the deck.

“I do… I always choose you…”

He doesn’t have a response and the chat is taking a strange turn, not precisely what he was aiming for.

“Yeah, well… good for you, Princess…” he stands and offers his hand to help you up.

Another smooch as bonus for his assistance whilst The Queen pouts at his impertinence: he has such a nerve!

Perhaps because he comes with four kisses.

It’s a bundle deal.

Also read: MASTERLIST

You can also follow me on Ao3 and Wattpad under the same blog name: DiYunho.

#the joker x reader #the joker fanfiction #the joker imagine #the joker #the joker suicide squad #jokerleto #joker #joker fanfiction #joker imagines #joker suicide squad #mister j #mr. j #dc #dcu

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jjba-hell · 4 years

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Rock Bottom

Day 2 and the Prompt we going for was- Insecurity. And lemme just say I went ham on this one. Sorry for anyone who read my unedited version a few hours ago, my tumblr cue time is weird af...

This is a bit of a mash up between backstory and insecurity but definitely ANGSTY AF! Really now, good luck.

There are ALLOT of trigger warnings so much, I dare say it’s rated. Drug use, pregnancy, postnatal complications (and death), ABUSE (emotional, physical, verbal, familial), prostitution (mention)...I probably missed allot but this one is intense.

Gonna tag @a-nonnie-mousse (’cause you a sweetie) and @lasquadraweek2020 for this one and also @risottoneroo (though if Mel’s not your cup of tea, I’m so sorry but we mutuals now so sowwy UwU)

2,4 K words- good luck ʅ（◞‿◟）ʃ

Looking at the mirror one morning Melone couldn’t help but breath a heavy sigh. March 22nd held a painful memory to him- which was why he was due at the graveyard at 9 for a personal meeting. Risotto had been kind enough to allow it but not without warning.

“Don’t get caught.” Was all he said.

“Yeah, like I’d allow another fuck up.” He scoffed as he tied his hair back to get ready. As if he hadn’t heard enough of that in his life. Gazing back at himself mirror- tired and defeated he recalled a younger version of himself doing and thinking the same thing a few years ago- looking back at the mirror and feeling the same way he did at that moment. It had happened after another fight with his mother.

“Stefan.” His mother hissed as she angrily loomed over his shoulder. “What’s this?” She tossed the physics pop quiz on the table in front of him- feeling panic set in his spine, wanting to jump out of his chair and hurdle his way out of her grasp. He had thrown that piece of paper away- he could have sworn he did. Right now, of course, he was wishing he had burned it instead.

“Nothing, mama.”

“Nothing is it? Because it looks like a C- to me.”

He swallowed, hoping she was a too tired to fight him today. “Most of the class-“

“I don’t-“she grabbed hold of the hair on top of his head and shoved his head down onto the table. “-CARE ABOUT HOW MOST OF THE CLASS DID! That is going on your report card!”

He kept his head down, nose bleeding into the algebra homework he was working on below him. Picking up his head now would only make her hurt him more. “Mama, it was a mock test.”

“So, this is how little you know. Did you cheat your way through your grades your whole life?”

He didn’t say anything, knowing there was no point in arguing with her when she was like this.

Melone grew up in a household most people would find bizarre but he never labelled it abuse. Not until his university sweetheart held his hand and asked him. “Why do you apologize for everything you do?”

It wasn’t hard to figure out once he sat down and considered it instead of shoving the question aside in favour of a taking a bit of ecstasy and a willing side piece- a bad habit he had picked up after he left the hellish hole he called home.

“You’re just as stupid as your father.”

“You’re just as spineless as your mother.”

Two phrases interchanged by two people who didn’t love each other in the slightest and him in the middle of it all- wondering why nothing he did was ever enough.

Melone shook off the memory as he splashed his face with the warm water from the tap, only to end up being caught up in his own reflection again, by the gaze of his heterochromatic eyes- the mask he wore on the lay job forgotten on his bedside table. He had had many of his one night stands tell him he was gorgeous with the one blue and one green eye but he had spent enough of his childhood being told by his father what a freak it made him.

He gazed back at his own bed, surprisingly devoid of the previous night’s endeavour. So, he pulled the sheets off and remade the bed, thinking on how badly he wished he wasn’t sober- numbing away the grief he was feeling with a little white pill and the pleasure of being praised between the sheets.

The weather forecast called for a cold chill and some scattered showers, how fitting for the proper black coat and suit he left the apartment in. He got into the car with Ghiacchio without another word beside a simple greeting, not wanting to anger the blue-haired man beside him- he didn’t quiet feel up to the banter, or perhaps arguments was a better word, he shared with Ghiacchio.

The scenery melded from cityscape to countryside- reminding him of the first time he went to this graveyard. At the time, tragedy has struck his life like lightning and was burning down everything he had dared to hope for- the person waiting for him at the church connected to the graveyard was all hope he had left to save Bianca.

The life of the mafia was never really one he was completely ignorant of- the contraband he used to take like sugar pills was just one of the ways he already had his foot in the door- although at the time he simply deemed himself as paying for a product from a lackey. When he cleaned up his act for Bianca he thought he’d never have to delve that dark again. The straight and narrow path didn’t last long though and soon he came to realize that he had been surrounded by crime his whole life, only waiting to be inevitably swallowed by it.

Ghiacchio pulled up a few blocks short of the graveyard gates and Melone handed him a wad of cash as payment. “That’s generous.” Ghiacchio commented but Melone didn’t answer. He simply got up and thanked him again. He would walk the rest of the way- which wasn’t far.

Melone bought a handful of Marigolds from the flower vendor on his way and continued to move through the gates- meandering through as he racked his brain as to where they were buried. It wasn’t so much that he didn’t care, it just hurt too much to think about often enough to remember. When he eventually found the white marble mausoleum he stepped in and found the two plaques on the wall where he inserted the flowers into their designated holdings. Bianca Regio and Vita Regio.

Six years ago, shortly after he graduated his first-year medical school, he had gotten some news from his girlfriend Bianca- she was pregnant with his baby. He supposed normal students would have seen their whole lives doomed but the joy he felt overwhelmed his worry surrounding finances to take care of the child. It was most definitely not his plan, but he didn’t care. He felt so hopeful for the kid’s sake- a prospect he looked back at and cringed at his own desperation to give something he never had. He and his girlfriend loved each other. Even thinking on that phrase made his heart ache. She loved him. He loved her. They were going to start a loving family together. He could give them what he never had. It only occurred to him later on how contradicting that was but at the time, ignorance was bliss.

It didn’t last long of course- six months after Bianca told him she went into premature labour and then shortly after got a blood clot in her portal vein. Vita was born 3 months too early and was already in intensive care within hours of her birth and Bianca was getting weaker by the minute. The panic and desperation set into Melone the second she was moved into the ICU with no prospect of getting better. Despite severing ties with his parents Melone knew where his bread was buttered. A broke medical student couldn’t wish to pay the medical bills Bianca was tallying up in the hospital. He didn’t even think twice to call his father and admit his defeat.

What his father told him would have shocked anyone else in this world- to hear your father say. “The capo that runs this town is at the church in Venicio- confession ends in an hour.” It suddenly made sense how his father could always afford the expensive cars or the expensive furniture in their home despite being a lowly state attorney while his mother worked as his assistant.

Melone took a cab as close as close to the church as he dared- true to his father warning-and ran to the find the man who could help him.

“Signore, I beg you. My love and our child are in danger.” He had begged as he dropped to his knees in front of the man. “I sell myself to you, my future, my life. It’s all yours if you would just lend me for the medical bills now.”

The capo ran a hand over Melone’s tear-streaked face, pinching his chin between his thumb and forefinger. Melone was made to gaze up at him. The stern, unreadable expression made him tense up in fear of accidentally disrespecting him. But the capo turned Melone’s head as if to observe him. “I’ll consider it.” He grumbled as he reached into his suit pocket and pulled out a thick wad of cash which Melone took in disbelief. “I expect you at Libechio’s tomorrow afternoon, sharp.”

And with that, he moved past Melone.

He didn’t regret it, he never would. It only hurt that at face value it was in vain. The money spoke louder than his begging ever would and as it turned out- whatever treatment they gave Bianca allowed her to be moved back into a regular hospital room. He spoke to Bianca the very morning he was due at Libeccio’s- feeling hopeful that she’d recover. Even the capo took pity on him, saying he’d have handed him to a pimp that day if it weren’t for the news of Bianca’s position. At the time, Melone had no idea what the capo had meant- not truly. He thought the capo had learned more about him- about Biacna’s pre-term labour and her sudden illness but he understands now that they are usually not that giving.

Instead, Melone got an alternative deal. Melone would finish his medical studies full term on the capo’s good graces to fulfill the need for a medic in the mafia before he would be officially initiated. since he lost Lucy and their unborn child in the same night.

The expensive treatment Melone had paid for gave Melome a solid two days before he had to give a painful, final goodbye to both Bianca and his daughter. The baby’s heartbeat was lost two hours prior to Bianca’s death. He had begged, pleaded for her to hold on just a bit longer but with tear-rimmed he said his final goodbye, grasping onto her like she was his lifeline. He didn’t let go of her until they escorted him out of the room- by then her hand had lost all its warmth.

Outside of the hospital he came face to face with Bianca’s family- having to explain to her parents what had happened to her. Standing in front of them was probably the heaviest thing he had been forced to do. Suddenly all the insecurities his parents ever made him believe were proved right. He wasn’t enough to take care of Bianca. He wasn’t enough to take care of Vita. He wasn’t enough to take care of himself. He wasn’t smart enough to have come up with a plan without his father’s help. He wasn’t smart enough to understand that he’d never be able to live the life he so desperately craved.

After that he had to go home and clear away all her books and research she had left on his desk, the plans he had for the nursery, the applications for a home loan and eventually even the ring he wanted to propose to her with was pawned- anything to try and rid himself of any reminder of his failure. To forget the pain of losing all he had hoped for in one night.

“Stefan.” A voice called beside him.

“Mrs Regio.” He turned to Bianca’s mother who held a bundle of flowers in her hand. “You look well.”

“As do you, Mrs Regio.” He didn’t say anything else, simply handing over the envelope of cash he owed her family.

Bianca and Melone turned out to have more in common than they truly knew. Bianca ran away from home when she found out her parents were involved in organized crime and Melone ran away only to find out his family did the same. Because the money Melone borrowed from the capo went towards Bianca’s treatment- it was her parents who let her slip away from their care and they therefor had to take on the debt Melone had made. He refused to let Bianca’s parents think lowly of him so that brought him here, paying off a year’s worth of debt every year he met with Mrs Regio.

He turned to look at Bianca’s plaque one more, praying that she could forgive him for failing her and continuing to fail her as he continued to live as he did. His sobriety was thrown out the window the day he came home from her funeral. He kept up his promise of finishing his degree on whatever he felt like using until he had to be initiated- then he had to sober up just enough to do his job in the mafia.

BabyFace came to be and so did his most lecherous self- which made eventually stop seeing victims and mothers as people but as faceless bodies. But when he woke up after a high of a kill all he could ask was:

Was that all he was worth? Was that what his soul was made of? An intense hunger for still wanting to find the perfect mother, be a perfect father and create the perfect baby? Now thriving on make others understand how it feels to be deconstructed until they’re nothing- just as he had for so many years? Was this trauma always going to taunt him? Was he always going to be reminded of his insecurity within himself?

At first the stand seemed useless until he tried using his stand on a mission to take out a bastard who was behind on rent money. It was then that he realized it was better for murder than it was at helping him achieve the dream that haunted him.

“It wasn’t your fault, Stefan. You did more than we could.”

“Not enough.”

The two stepped out of the mausoleum, closing the door behind them. “You’re a good man, Stefan.” Was the last thing Bianca’s mother told him before turning and walking away.

Melone shook his head as he started walking back to the entrance of the graveyard.

“I never was, Mrs Regio.”

The second he got back into the car with Ghiacchio, he popped a pill and asked to wait a few minutes so he could take a smoke break and call an old friend of his…

“Yeah I don’t care who, just make sure she’s not new.”

#JoJo's Bizarre Adventure #Jojo no Kimyou na Bouken #jojo part 5 #jojo golden wind #la squadra #lasquadraweek2020 #Melone

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purplesurveys · 4 years

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851

How have you been feeling lately? Have you been doing ok? Uncomfortable because of period cramps and the heat WHICH IS STILL HERE, even though it’s supposed to be gone right about now and it’s supposed to be raining at this point. I wish I was kidding saying this but we literally have three electric fans turned on just for the living and dining rooms. It’s crazy and stupid and it shouldn’t be this hot anymore. I’m doing better mentally and emotionally, so at least that balances things out lol.

Are you currently in quarantine? Still am. While all countries are slowly going back to normal, our Covid cases continue to get higher and higher everyday because our government hasn’t done anything except to make us stay home for three months. No mass testing, no alternate public transport plans, and for some reason Duterte keeps borrowing billions of dollars’ worth of loans from the World Bank nearly every week, and we have no idea where the stupid fucking money goes. Our government is convinced they’ve been doing everything right so they’ve loosened up quarantine protocols, so with malls and restaurants being open again we’ve done nothing but reach record high cases almost every day.

Do you wear a mask when you go to the store? I’ve gone outside a total of three times since March and I wore a mask for two of those times. The first time I went out I just genuinely forgot to bring a mask, but in the end it was fine because I only had to stay in the car.

Does your state require people to wear masks in stores? As far as I know it’s not a requirement per se, but fortunately everyone follows the safety precautions anyway.

Do you know anyone who’s had the coronavirus? Yeah, my mom’s former boss. This is a bit of a stretch but I also know someone personally who had immediate family members that tested positive.

What was the last sweet treat you ate? I had a peanut butter doughnut from J.CO! Soooooooo good.

Was it a nice day out today? No, it’s too hot. Even if life was normal rn I’d prefer to be indoors with air conditioning, like a mall.

Is the weather nice where you live usually? Fuck no. It is disgustingly hot, sticky, and humid 3/4 of the year.

What was the last thing you ordered online? I don’t do a lot of online shopping. When I get something online it’s usually to get food delivered, and the last time I did that it was me and Andrew getting Hong Kong noodles.

Are you expecting a package right now? Nopes.

Have you ever ordered anything from Wish? If so, what did you buy, and did you feel it was worth it? No, though I remember Good Mythical Morning featuring it in a couple of episodes. I don’t feel comfortable buying from stores or sellers that sell things for a lot cheaper because they could always be fake, so I wouldn’t feel comfortable buying from that site.

Are you a youtuber? If so, are you consistent with uploads? and how many subscribers do you have? I’m not, but I do have my own channel. I just use it to like videos and subscribe to my favorites, though.

What is one thing you hate about summer? The weather. Honest to goodness I’d really rather live somewhere that gave me -40C weather everyday.

Did you go outside today? No. My dad wanted to bring Cooper to my grandma’s place and I planned to come along, but at the last minute he changed his mind and did just the errands he was supposed to do.

What is the name of your youtube channel, if you have one? It’s just my full name because my YouTube is linked to my Google account.

What was the name of the last store or restaurant that overcharged you? I don’t know any instances where that would happen. I don’t find service charge inconvenient because I know that directly goes to the servers anyway so I don’t mind how high it gets most of the time. Is your room more often messy or clean? It’s clean most of the time but sometimes when I’m busy I won’t be able to keep it clean and it’ll be clean-messy? Like I’ll leave stuff around but I’ll still know where everything is lol.

Who is someone you miss? ALL MY FRIENDS BRUH

What is something you miss? Being able to go out and freely do activities. Life Pre-COVID < Life pre-COVID, perfectly put. I miss getting an allowance, being out until midnight, having dates with my girlfriend thhe most.

Do you feel like your emotions are often haywire? Not necessarily, but they can get pretty unstable sometimes.

Have you ever received a misdiagnosis from a doctor? Nah but I’ve been given a prescription that didn’t work. We went to our family doctor who made me take a certain medicine for three days, and I started getting worried when three days had passed and I still had my fever. I went to Angela’s mom and she was super quick to tell me that that medicine wasn’t the right one to take for a UTI and prescribed me with something else; and that second one ended up working like magic.

Have you ever been “diagnosed” with a mental illness from an online friend? who is not a doctor? If yes, isn’t that frustrating? That’s never happened before, but if it did I wouldn’t let my frustration get the best of me. I’d just tell them that they should avoid doing that if they’re not a professional because they could very much end up seriously harming people.

Do you have any friends that you can trust and tell everything to? All of them.

What was the name of your favorite roommate you’ve had? Kimi :)

Do you have a favorite book that you’ve read multiple times? Yeah when I was a kid I would reread this book that an aunt had given me for Christmas as much as I could. For many years I forgot the title but after painstakingly Googling the few keywords I could remember I finally found out it again – it’s a series called Three Girls in the City by Jeanne Betancourt, but I only ever read the first book because it was the only gift I got. It’s not my favorite book, but I’d be so happy if I got to be reunited with it again because I don’t think we got to keep it around when we moved houses.

What’s one book or book series that you’ve read multiple times? ^ That, multiple wrestling memoirs, and Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami. I’ve also reread the Twilight Saga once.

What was the name of the funniest kid you’ve ever babysat? I never babysat anyone other than younger relatives, but the one I enjoyed taking care of the most was my cousin Lucas. He was the smartest kid I babysat so it was fun talking to him, plus his yaya was always nice to me, they had a playground and sandbox at home, and all I had to do was keep him company while he watched Thomas and Friends over and over.

Do you enjoy babysitting? Just the younger relatives that were smarter and more behaved. I didn’t like the kids who thought kicking and being rowdy were fun.

Do you have any big regrets? One big one.

Are there things about your past that bother you? Of course. My entire childhood is one.

What was the last thing you saw or read on social media that made you angry? OMG get ready for this one. Our dumb as a rock presidential spokesperson was talking about how happy he is that the country beat UP’s (my school, which the government hates because we always talk shit about them lol) prediction of 40,000 Covid cases by the end of June if the government doesn’t do anything to prevent more cases. How many cases do we have? Fucking 36,000. Our government is happy because they finally beat our school over something for the very first time and they are technically happy that we got 36,000 cases, which if you round up will give you 40,000 anyway. My school had a fucking FIELD DAY over it and now he is a national meme.

Do you often post about controversial topics on facebook? At first I didn’t but that’s because I wasn’t active on Facebook in the past anyway. After I realized that I had a bigger friends list on Facebook I decided to put it to good use and post about controversial topics to educate others. It’s made a bunch of conservative family members uncomfortable and that’s the goal, son.

Do you think it’s a good idea to post about serious topics on social media? or do you think that it’s better to discuss serious topics in person? It definitely is. In person is good too but you don’t always get that opportunity, so sharing stuff through social media doesn’t hurt too as long as information is accurate. For instance most of my relatives life far from me, so if I want them to get a piece of my mind about Trump or BLM or abortion, sharing informative graphics and tables is always convenient.

What was your favorite book you had to read for school? Without Seeing the Dawn by Stevan Javellana is my absolute favorite. It’s probably the closest thing to being my favorite book. Number the Stars by Lois Lowry is a good runner-up. On the other hand, Dekada ‘70 by Lualhati Bautista is my favorite that was written in Filipino.

Have you ever failed a class and had to repeat it? Nope. I really believe I was meant to fail algebra in my freshman year in high school because I failed every exam, but I think my teacher just took pity on me and gave me a barely-passing mark at the end of the year so that I didn’t have to go to summer school. As for college, I’ve never failed a class.

What class in school did you hate the most? In college I hated my economics elective. I still don’t know why that’s mandatory for us journ students... I also dreaded a couple of journalism classes, but it was more because of the teachers than the classes’ topics.

Have you ever wanted to be a teacher? I don’t think so.

What’s one childhood dream that has stuck with you, and one that has not? Having a big house; becoming a firefighter.

Would you want to re-live your childhood over again if you could? I’ve already said it on this survey, but: fuck no. I’m ok where I am now, even if I am a clumsy adult.

Which do you like more: being an adult or being a kid? Being an adult. Being a kid meant having to stomach the smell of hard alcohol and cigarettes from morning to evening everyday; being caught in the middle of screaming matches between drunk relatives; and being cramped in a single-floor home with 12 people. Like I said, I love where I am now. The amount of independence I gained in college was freeing and felt so nice and I’m glad my parents never tried holding me back. I’m also glad that I didn’t fall into the same alcohol trap, and that I know how to deal with my alcohol responsibly.

At what age were you when you started to feel like you were mature enough to offer others advice? Around college-age, so like when I turned 18.

Did your parents smoke or drink when you were growing up? Neither of them did, because we had enough alcoholism happening at my old home. It was actually my drunken relatives that finally drove my mom out of that house.

Do you enjoy bonfires? I’ve only been to one and I was like 9 years old then, so I wouldn’t know how I feel about them now.

Have you ever stepped on a sparkler? Nope.

What, do you know of, are you allergic to? No allergies.

Have you ever ridden in an ambulance? Also nopes. I always feel bad for the ambulances that I see because I live in a very traffic-heavy city and they always end up getting stuck and crawling through traffic like the rest of us. We do try to swerve, but our roads are so tiny and always cramped that there’s little space left for us to move out of the ambulance’s way, so even though we’re able to make a path for it, the space is not big enough for the ambulance to drive in the speed it’s supposed to.

What is your favorite version of the Bible to read, if applicable? That’s a big no thanks from me.

Do you follow trends? or are you a trendsetter? Yeah, I follow some of them if I think they are nice.

Has anyone ever described you as a trendsetter? Nope, because I am not.

Do you know anyone who used to be loving, but then turned cold? List three people you’ve known whom this has happened to. My mom, Athenna, Macy. The only person I don’t resent out of these three is Macy, because I know she turned distant due to mental health issues and because she wants to fix herself first, which is responsible.

What SAT subjects, if any, did you get a perfect score in? We don’t have SAT.

What were your best subjects in school? and what was your favorite subject in school? I loved taking history electives in college, and I performed the best in them too. I also did well in international relations, which was under the political science department.

Have you ever been abused by a parent or legal guardian? I’ve been verbally and emotionally abused by my mom ever since I can remember.

Do you have a lot of wounds from your past? If we’re getting visual then I’d rather say that I have one ugly, infected gash that gets bothersome from time to time. My past isn’t made up of little tiny scattered wounds.

Has anyone ever called you a jerk? Behind my back, probably.

Are you a jerk? I can be, so I don’t mind being called it. I never said I was the nicest person.

What color were your bedroom walls in high school? They have always been white. My mom doesn’t let us have control over our own rooms, so in the beginning it’s always been plain boring white. Don’t get me wrong, I like my room but sometimes it just feels like living in a cell.

Is there a girl or guy you wish you hadn’t let slip away? I wish I was still close with my high school friends, and I remember saying how they were for keeps in my old surveys so that makes me extra sad haha. I’m civil with most of them, but no longer close. And I only ever talk to them if it’s their birthdays or if they achieved something big. The only people I’ve remained close with from that original group are Angela and Hans.

Is there an old friend that you miss and would like to reconnect with? Not really. Sofie and I have grown apart from each other now and we’re both very happy, so there’s no need to change that. I’m okay with seeing her once or twice a year.

Who has hurt you the most? My mom.

Have you been bullied? Yeah in kindergarten. Long-lasting effects though.

Which talent show, if any, would you most like to audition for? and have you auditioned for one? No thanks. I don’t have the kind of talent that I can show off, like singing or playing an instrument.

Do you know anyone who’s auditioned for American Idol? I don’t think so. But my mom knows someone who auditioned for our local version of America’s Got Talent. He’s a ventriloquist that my mom used to get for our parties. As far as I know he got into the grand finals, but I’m not sure if he won.

Is there someone you think should audition that hasn’t yet? American Idol’s been over for a while now.

What time of day do you usually feel your best? I love the evenings.

What’s one way in which you’ve changed within the last ten years? I was in sixth grade then, I’ve graduated from college now. My mom was purely verbally abusive to me then, now we have brief stints of having an actually healthy relationship. I had one dog then and I have two dogs now; I had no friends then and I have tons of them now. There’s been a lot of tiny changes but nothing that were life-changing.

Do you feel like time goes by fast, or slow? It goes both ways depending on how stimulated I am or how much fun I’m having.

Who do you know who has died of cancer? One of my great-aunts.

Has there been cancer in your family? Yeah, ^ that. Other than her I’m not sure if we’ve had other cases. My family tends to be hush-hush about cancer and only ever call it ‘c’ or ‘the big one.’

Have you ever stayed overnight in a hospital, and if so, what for? Yes, once for a low platelet count.

Have you ever been a victim of police misconduct? No but the cops here are just as corrupt as the ones in the US, so I can very much be a victim any time. It’s just a matter of being in the wrong place at the right time.

Have you ever been so angry you wanted to sue someone? Not so much that I wanted to sue someone, no.

Have you ever been a victim of racism? My country isn’t diverse at all and we’re all Filipinos here, and I’ve only ever traveled to Asian countries, so no. But racism is a big reason why I have no plans to go to other countries known for it.

Have you ever deleted a friend on Facebook for making racist comments? I’ve unfriended those who were being little bitches about BLM and George Floyd’s death, so I guess that kinda counts as being racist. I still have a few racist Facebook friends that I keep around, but that’s because they’re family members.

What was the last thing you ate? Binagoongan.

What was the theme of your senior prom? Clair de Lune, so like the moon and shit.

Did you go to prom? It was mandatory, so I had to go even though I really had no interest.

Have ever been engaged or married? I have been neither.

Are you an aunt or uncle? Nah but I’m a godmother to one of my cousins.

Do you live to glorify God and to do His will? LOL no

Are you happy with the way you are living your life day-to-day right now? It could be better and more filled with activity. But I’m not miserably depressed right now and that’s more than enough for me.

Do you feel like your life was better or worse six years ago? It was slightly better. I feel like 2014 was my best year.

Have you ever made a huge, catastrophic mistake? Not anything that ruined my life or someone else’s, no.

Do you feel like you are currently in a state of suffering? and that not all of your basic needs are being met? If so, how long have you been in a state of suffering? Basic needs?? So you mean poverty? No.

Do you hate social injustice? Absolutely. Anyone who tolerates it is automatically a gigantic prick, I’d say.

Are you happy with the current social class you are in? No. I don’t know how it translates to English, but in Filipino we have this term called naghaharing-uri that comprises the very very very very tiny top of the social pyramid and it’s made up of top government officials and their families, heads of corporations, old money families, etc. It’s no secret that it’s this 1% that exploits the 99% remaining in the pyramid, so even though I’m relatively comfortable in my class, I hate that, when it comes down to it, we’re only being used by this 1% for their own benefit.

Life isn’t fair. True or false? True.

Do you hate that life is so unfair? Sometimes, if it’s for stuff about social injustice and how some people have to be homeless, why homophobia exists, etc. But if it’s for tiny problems, I feel like they’re necessary sometimes so we can learn from them.

Name a few people who seem to have everything handed to them. Some richer kids that I know.

Who do you go to when you’re upset? Sometimes myself, sometimes Gabie.

Do you pray less or more than you did 5 years ago? A LOT LESS, thank fuck I got out of that trap.

Do you pray a lot? Definitely not.

Do you frequently have back pain? Yeah, haha. Kinda expected considering I have scoliosis.

What’s the worst side effect you’ve experienced for a medication? and what’s the worst withdrawal effect you’ve experienced from a medicine? Nothing worse than diarrhea. I’ve never experienced withdrawal.

Have you ever used an epi pen? Nopes.

What’s a name that you like but probably wouldn’t use for one of your kids? Isabella because I’m already an Isabelle and my girlfriend has a sister named Isabela.

What’s your name, and do you like it? Robyn. I like it now.

Would you prefer to give your kids common names or unique names? Common, more old-school names. I just feel like they sound super elegant.

Do you feel like anybody values you in the way that you deserve? Angela, Andrew, and Gab.

Who have you felt the most valued by? ^ Them.

Have you ever been treated like you were inferior? For sure.

What was the name of the biggest bully in your high school? Oh my god this survey is so long... we didn’t have bullies in high school. We had mean girls and mean girl cliques, but as long as you weren’t involved in drama with them you’d be fine.

Do you ever sleep outside? Nah. I’d sleep at the rooftop but there are sooooo many mosquitoes at night.

How many siblings do you have? Two.

Are you the oldest, youngest, middle, or only child? Eldest.

How many kids do you want to have? One or two would be great.

Do you want to get married? Yessssssss.

Best date you’ve been on? Probably that time we went to BGC so we can feel fancy and have a fancy dinner, then when we meant to walk back to our car to go home we ended up having impromptu drinks at like 11 PM when we randomly found a jazz bar loudly playing live music in the area. OH and that time we went museum hopping in Manila and we ended the day having delicioussss Italian food.

Dream date? Traveling out of the country.

Ever kissed someone on New Year’s? Nah. We celebrate New Year’s with our respective families so there’s no chance of that happening. Which is fine, because New Year’s is traditionally a family-centric holiday here so it would be weird for anyone to ditch their families.

Have you ever had an experience so good you felt like you were flying? Sure.

Have you ever been in so much pain you prayed that you would die? YES, with my toothache last year.

What brings you the most joy? My dogs.

What is your passion; what is it that would bring you the most joy and fulfillment in life? I’m at a point where it still keeps changing, so I don’t wanna give an absolute answer to this just yet.

Have you ever laid your dreams aside because someone else wanted you to? That’s never happened to me. I only ever gave up on one dream because it realistically wasn’t attainable, when it came down to it.

Who supports you in everything you do? My two best friends.

Who always tries to stop you whenever you try to go after your dreams? I haven’t had anyone bar me, but if someone tried to they would definitely hear from me.

Do you believe in following your heart, in going after your dreams? Not always.

Do you wish other people would want you to be happy? Of course.

Do you wish you had someone who loved and supported you? I already do.

#survey #surveys #fuck me this was long

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let-it-raines · 5 years

Text

Unraveling the Thread

Returning home is never something anyone wants to do when they've been trying to leave for their entire life, but it seems to happen to most everyone. It's just not something Emma ever thought would happen to her. But after getting let go from her job and refusing to work in another office answering phones for the next ten years of her life, she moves back home to Storybrooke and has to deal with all of the loose threads that she left behind.

It's easier said than done. She's still going to do it.

Rating: Mature

Found on AO3 | Here |

A/N: Because I have a million other things to do, I obviously wrote a one-shot. I hope you guys enjoy the product of my lack of sleep 💕

Tagging my usual peeps: @resident-of-storybrooke @mayquita @wellhellotragic @captainsjedi @bmbbcs4evr @jennjenn615 @ekr032-blog-blog @kmomof4 @onceuponaprincessworld @thejollyroger-writer @jonirobinson64 @qualitycoffeethings @cs-forlife

Everything is exactly the same.

Granny’s diner still rests in the center of a strip of stores, the bright blue paint noticeably having been touched up lately to go with all of the other brightly colored stores that Storybrooke’s city council obviously thinks will pull in tourists when they inevitably roll into town each summer. If she remembers correctly, it does work. She worked as a waitress enough summers to know that her tips definitely increased once summer break started, and as much as she appreciated the money, she didn’t appreciate the people that were constantly taking her parking space or telling her that if she smiled more, she’d get more customers.

Assholes.

They would also make comments about her ass, and well, despite the fact that she has a damn good one, that’s a little thing call harassment.

It’s a miracle she never punched anyone.

There are already people filtering in and out of the diner despite it being only five in the morning on a Saturday, and she quickly drives by so no one will see her. She’s fine coming home to see her parents, but she doesn’t want to see anyone else. Not yet. Maybe later once she has a few shirts on hangers and a toothbrush in the bathroom, but not before that. She needs more time to mentally prepare herself to see everyone again. It’s only been since Christmas, but really, all she did for those three days was spend all of her time inside her parents’ living room eating sweets her mom had baked and watching old Christmas movies long into the night until even the streetlights outside turned off.

And this trip isn’t for three days. It’s for three months at least. Maybe more. She honestly has no idea, but when you get let go from the job you’ve had as investigator for auto insurance company for the past five years with nothing else lined up that actually pays the bills, there aren’t a lot of options. Living with her parents again wasn’t what she preferred, but she couldn’t take another job as a secretary or a phone operator trying to sell people weight loss pills that are probably pretty unhealthy.

Her dream job is obviously not an option.

She’s not sure if she has a dream job.

She used to want to be a cop like her dad, but that was when she was five and also wanted to be a ballerina in space. Her thoughts and wants weren’t exactly the most well thought through. And then she never really figured it out. Her parents put her on the fast track to going to college and getting a degree that would supposedly allow her to make more money and be able to get out of Storybrooke.

Considering her mom is a third-grade teacher on every committee board ever created and her dad is the sheriff, it’s surprising that leaving was ever an option.

And if she thinks about it, it really wasn’t. Yeah, she could leave for four years, get a degree, and then come back to work at a business in town that would have hired her regardless of her qualifications (nepotism is a thing). But that was the thing. She was always supposed to come back.

And seven years after leaving, she is.

Except she has no college degree.

She’s not even close to having one. She’s got a semester’s worth of credits in classes like English comp and pre-algebra and things she’s likely never going to use in her entire life. She’d made the Dean’s list at NYU that one semester too, but then, like the oldest story in the world, she’d met a boy.

She met a boy who was a few years older than her, infinitely wiser, and just as charming as she had ever known anybody to be. Neal was her entire world. He shouldn’t have been, but he was. Her mother spent her entire life talking about how love is the greatest gift in life, the greatest privilege, and how if Emma ever found it, she should hold onto it like her life depended on it.

What her mother didn’t tell her was that first loves are not always good loves, even if there’s the occasional exception.

In all fairness, Mary Margaret Nolan most likely doesn’t know that. She grew up as an only child in a small town and met the love of her life on the first day of sixth grade. The only love her mom has ever known has been her dad, and as wonderful as that as, as in love as her parents are, Emma’s learned that sometimes the lessons her mom taught her are not great lessons.

Exercise a few times a week, never pluck your eyebrows too thin, sure. Think that the first boy who tells you you’re pretty and who sleeps with you is the love of your life, not so much.

Because unlike her dad, Neal was not some standup guy who sticks around and lives by some kind of moral code that everyone should live by. Be kind to others, don’t murder someone, wash your hands after you go to the bathroom, et cetera. And it’s not that Neal was a murderer. God, she hopes not. It’s that he was a cheater who she left college for to move to Boston with because he convinced her that he could give her a better life than living in a cramped dorm room and spending her days studying. He was a cheater and also a thief, apparently fencing expensive jewelry and stolen goods to fund that better life, and she only found all of that out when she told him that she might be pregnant and he bolted in the middle of the night and the other woman who he was dating showed up at their apartment looking for him.

She found out the theft stuff later when she was nearly arrested because he tried to frame her for his crimes.

Newsflash. She wasn’t pregnant, and she sure as hell didn’t commit any crimes.

But she did give up her entire life, things that even though she wasn’t sure she really wanted, she had worked for. And as much as it’s taught her, as much as she’s changed because of it, she regrets ever leaving New York.

She regrets giving up her life because she was convinced that her love would last forever, and she would never need anything else.

It didn’t even last two years.

She never made it back to New York. She stayed in Boston, finding random jobs that would pay the bills until she got her job as the insurance fraud investigator and moved in with Anna and Elsa, two sisters who were going to freaking Harvard of all places. There she was barely scraping by, and she was roommates with people who went to Harvard. It worked, though. They were always busy studying or attending events, and she could slip in and out without really having to talk to them too much or explain why she was their age but decidedly a little lost.

Her parents weren’t talking to her at the time, and if her own parents weren’t talking to her, why would she want to talk to anyone?

But she did eventually talk to her parents again and talk to her roommates. She became friends with them actually, and even after they both graduated and moved away, she stayed close with them. With everything that has gone on in her life, she’s at least thankful that she’s gotten to be close with Anna and Elsa.

When she lost her job, Elsa had offered to let her live with her in New York, and even though it’s a big city, she couldn’t go back.

Which is why she’s here pulling into her parents’ driveway, the two of them visible in the kitchen through the front window. They’re likely drinking coffee and talking about all of their plans for today even though it’s Saturday and the perfect day to stay home. Or they’re talking about her. She’d bet that they’re talking about her.

She’s a fascinating conversation piece.

And that’s why she takes at least fifteen minutes to regulate her breathing and prepare herself for all of the fawning that her parents are going to do.

That her mom is going to do.

She loves her, but she’s not nearly as good as her dad at understanding that Emma needs her space sometimes.

It’s exactly thirty five steps from her car to the front door, and she’s barely inside the entryway when her mom is wrapping her in a hug so tight that all of the air escapes her legs and her ribcage bruises a little bit. It’s too much, but she wraps her arms around her mom’s waist and holds on as tightly as she can regardless.

“I’m so glad you’re here, sweetie.”

“Me too,” she lies. “Why are you guys up this early?”

“Because we’re waiting for you,” her dad answers her, flashing her a grin before he’s hugging her too, cupping the back of her head with his palm. He smells like the cologne he’s been wearing for her entire life, and that feels good too. “How was your drive? What’d you do? Not sleep?”

“Pretty much,” she shrugs. “Can I get some of that coffee?”

-/-

It’s weird regressing back to a teenager in her hometown over the next few weeks, March fading into April, the weather warming with each day. The exact thing she didn’t want was to work as a waitress again, to really fall back into old habits, but at least she’s not working at Granny’s. She’s working at Storybrooke Country Club as server in their clubhouse, and even though she has to deal with old men all day, at least they tip well.

Most of the time.

Some of the people who used to tell her to smile at Granny’s are these same people, and she can feel their judgmental eyes on her as she’s back at home serving them food. She’d think that people would understand someone working as a waitress doesn’t make them less of a person, but some people never learn.

The tips, she reminds herself. And it’s something to do, something to occupy her time and give her money while she tries to figure out her life. It’s something that’s not being stuck in an office as a secretary or a temp.

But it is temporary.

So she’s working as a waitress, sleeping in her teenage bedroom, and after her shifts, she eats with Ruby at Granny’s for dinner, the grilled cheese tasting just the same. She really is somehow going back to the past like Marty McFly, except this isn’t nearly as exciting. Plus, she has this weird need to ask her parents if she can go out late to meet Ruby for dinner.

She’s twenty-five years old.

She doesn’t have to ask her parents for permission even though she’s living with him.

The weirdest thing, however, is seeing Killian Jones again.

She takes that back.

The weirdest thing is seeing Killian, and Killian not talking to her.

Last week they had a particularly busy day in the clubhouse, and she picked up an extra shift to help out and to get overtime. She was tired. It was her day off. She shouldn’t have been there. But she was, and she dealt with it, smiling and asking all of the right questions to the patrons, especially those who she knows are members.

And that’s when she saw him. Except, she didn’t see him until it was far too late.

She was bringing a table their glasses of water for Ashley while she was in the kitchen, and she didn’t pay any attention to the slight flip of hair underneath a clean navy hat or the tattoo peeking out underneath the short-sleeved shirt. She didn’t pay attention to any of it, so when she saw those familiar blue eyes, the ones that she’s always remembered, she dropped the entire tray of ice cold water on the table, the floor, and his white pants.

His white pants.

That were...thin.

That was bad enough, but then she started patting down his thighs with a cloth towel, and that caused all kinds of issued before he grabbed her wrists, looked her in the eyes for an extended thirteen seconds (she knows because she counted), and then he got up and left.

She’s seen him since then, but he hasn’t spoken to her. And she knows that it’s not because she spilled water on him and then felt him up while trying to dry him off.

He apparently works at the harbor, which doesn’t surprise her. What does surprise her is that he’s in charge of tourism for the summers, specifically making sure that there are plenty of boats to rent and that no one docks where they’re not supposed to. According to Ruby, he plans activities at the public pool, puts together festivals, and he even takes certain groups of tourists out sailing. It’s in his wheelhouse, even if it’s not what she thought he would be doing. He was supposed to go into the Navy, supposed to go straight into active duty and work his way through college with his grant. That was always his plan, even if he was delayed in getting around to it.

But that was never his fault. He’s two years older than her, and during his senior year of high school, his mom died. He’d fallen into such a deep depression that he almost didn’t graduate, and even though he did, he never went off to follow his dreams. Instead he worked down at the docks, like now, but instead of working with tourism, he loaded and unloaded cargo. She thinks it had been good for him to be able to work through things physically, especially since he avoided things emotionally. She tried to get him to talk about his mom and about Liam, but he never would.

Maybe this is his new dream.

A sob gets caught in her throat thinking about him, about how much she failed him by giving up on their friendship when she moved away. She fucked that friendship up, and there’s no way for her to work around that. She can’t change what happened.

She wishes that she could.

Out of all of the surprises about Killian, though, she’s surprised that he spends his time at a country club golfing in white pants. That’s not Killian. That’s not him at all. But she guesses people change.

Maybe if he would talk to her, she could understand.

She’s not sure if she wants to talk to him, if she deserves to talk to him.

She probably doesn’t deserve to talk to him.

-/-

Before she knows it, her three months she was planning on staying have passed and a Storybrooke summer begins, the tourists coming into town and filling up all of the hotels and restaurants, including the club. She’s nearly always working, and even though it’s not what she wants, she’s managing to save up some money for when she eventually figures it out. It’s not like she’s paying rent right now, and she can mostly eat at work.

So she’s still home, but it’s not all bad. She’s closer with her parents, even if her mom keeps deciding that she needs to go on a date with her dad’s deputy, and she’s become better friends with Ruby and Ashely, making up for lost time. Honestly, though, the nicest part about it is how much less stressful it is. It’s healing in a way to be home, to not have to constantly be worried about how she’s going to make it, about how she’s going to pay rent.

Something she was dreading is turning out to be pretty okay, even if sometimes she’s still a little bothered by not living in Boston anymore.

The small town life…it’s not all bad some days.

“You’re getting a little burned on your shoulder there,” Ashley points out as they lounge on the beach on their day off in an attempt to get a little bit of color on their skin after mostly working indoors.

“How?” she groans, twisting her head to the side to look at the slight pink of her skin. “I literally have reapplied all day. And we’ve been sitting under the umbrella too.”

“You’re fair.”

“Thanks for pointing out the obvious, Ash.” She stands from her towel and brushes the sand off of her body. “I’m going to go to the bathroom and to reapply, okay?”

“Can you stop and get some more waters from the café?”

She nods her head and reaches down to pull on her jean shorts, zipping them up and slipping on her sandals as she walks up the beach toward the docks. It’s pretty crowded today, families everywhere, and she has to move in and out of the crowds to make it to the bathroom, spending her time reapplying her lotion and fixing her braids before exiting and making her way toward the café. It’s just a small little shack that sells hamburgers and hot dogs, but the line stretches out down the docks so that it’ll be at least twenty minutes.

“Most people wear shirts when they dine, but then again, you seem to be a fan of see through material.”

She nearly drops her phone at the voice behind her, but she catches it and stuffs it into her back pocket, giving her some time to take a deep breath as she turns to see those familiar blue eyes and black scruff-lined jaw. He’s got on the same blue baseball cap, but instead of being in golfing clothes, he’s in navy pants with a white shirt tucked in, the sleeves rolled up to show off his forearms.

He’s always had nice forearms.

That’s not what she should be thinking about.

Or the fact that his shirt is not buttoned up enough. Well, she kind of likes being able to see his chest hair, but it doesn’t really scream “hey look, I’m the guy in charge of tourism.”

“He speaks,” she snarks, straightening her back and lifting her chin up, wishing that she was about half a foot taller so they’d be eyelevel. “I didn’t know that was possible.”

“The same could be said about you.”

The smile that was on his face quickly fades away as his eyes flicker down her body. She’s suddenly very aware of how much skin she has on display, and when she crosses her arms over her chest, she knows that he notices her defensiveness by the raise of his brows.

“Yeah, well, shit happens.”

He scoffs at that, his jaw tightening while he looks up at the sky, the underside of his chin now on display to her.

“Shit happens, huh? Is that why you’re home?”

“Isn’t it why you’re still here?”

“Believe it or not, love, I want to be here.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“You should.”

“I don’t.”

“Are you five?” he scoffs, crossing his arms over his chest just like her, but she can see that same tattoo peeking through the material of his shirt. She’s not entirely sure what it is, but it kind of looks like a ship’s wheel. He would.

“No but at least I don’t run away from people trying to talk to me.”

“That’s rich coming from you.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“You know what? I don’t need lunch,” he groans before turning and walking away from her, his step steady and measured as he moves down the docks and disappears into a building that must be his office.

She wants to storm off as well, to act like the child like he just accused her of being, but she’s not going to let him annoy her to the point of not getting something to drink. So she waits, her foot stepping against the wood, and eventually gets her waters before making her way back to the beach and to Ashley who is looking at her like she’s having to bite her tongue on what just happens. The entire town probably knows that she and Killian just got into an argument.

She forgot about the gossip in Storybrooke.

Nothing is secret.

-/-

“So how’s it being home? Elsa asks her as they talk on the phone while she goes for a jog around the park. “Are you falling in love with a cute little surfer boy like it happens in the movies?”

“Els, seriously?”

“What? It’s a serious question. I’ve looked up your town. It’s super cute. I feel like great romances happen there.”

“You’re the worst,” she groans, slowing down her pace a bit as her breath gets heavy moving up the hill. “No, I’m not falling in love with any surfers. We don’t even have surfing here.”

“Okay, then sailors. Are you falling in love with any sailors?”

“Definitely not.”

“That was defensive.”

“It was not.”

“It was. Did you meet someone?”

Her eyes roll as she finally gets to the top of the hill, her legs and her chest burning the slightest bit as the June sun continues to beat down on neck from where it’s exposed. “I went on a date with my dad’s deputy, Graham. He’s a very nice guy, but I don’t know. I didn’t really feel a connection.”

“Nice guys are the guys you want to be with. It doesn’t have to be all dangerous assholes.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

“I’m just saying,” Elsa laughs as Emma dodges another runner, “you have a tendency to find some not so nice guys. I mean, I wasn’t there for Neal, but I saw all of Walsh and – ”

“He was an asshole,” she finishes for Elsa, thinking about Walsh and how he was always steering her away from her friends and her hobbies so that he could try to morph her into his weird kind of ideal girl. “Yeah, I know. I’m just not sure if I want to see Graham again. I’m gonna have to think about it. Enough about me, though. Tell me what’s been going on with you as I try to finish this run.”

-/-

It’s raining.

And not like a light drizzle. It’s a torrential downpour with no signs of stopping, and even though every time she goes outside she bundles up into a coat and an umbrella, she’s still absolutely soaked down to her bones. As nice as the summers here are, this is always the one big thing – rain can come out of nowhere, and it can and will stay for days.

It also seems to stop everything.

Obviously no one is spending their time at the beach or going out sailing, so everyone huddles inside at hotels and restaurants and, unfortunately for her, the club. They open to non-members in the summer, so it’s always more packed than usual. But this? This is like absolute chaos. She’s never going to be able to sit down, and her feet are going to fall off. It’s what’s going to happen as she keeps running between the kitchen and at least four different dining rooms, dealing with angry parents and restless kids who never seem to be happy with the food they’re being served. It’s insane and stressful and she wishes that she was in Boston trying to figure out if someone was lying about whether the car accident really did hurt their neck.

No, she doesn’t wish for that. She doesn’t. She likes being home, and she thinks that’s what makes this entire day and this entire situation so much worse.

“Emma, I need – ”

“I know,” she calls back to Ashely, twisting on her foot and slamming right into a solid body that has the tray of drinks in her hands falling, spilling, and glass shattering against the ground. She knows that she could probably feel shards of it in her foot if she wasn’t so goddamned embarrassed by the fact that she just spilled drinks on Killian again.

The world is a very cruel place.

She’s going to have to bandage her ankles.

“Shit,” she sputters, already bending down to pick up the tray and the glasses that didn’t break. “Shit, shit, shit.” She starts to pick up the large chunks of glass when suddenly there are hands underneath her shoulders and she’s being pulled back up to stand, Killian’s eyes peering at her. “Shit.”

“You don’t need to pick up glass with your hands, love,” he says softly, his words far too kind for someone who just had more of his clothes ruined. “And you’re bleeding. You need to get cleaned up.”

“I know how to do my job,” she huffs, not wanting him to be kind to her, “and I’m fine.”

“You have bloody glass in your skin, Emma. Someone else can clean this up with you get it taken care of.”

“I – ” she starts, the protest on the tip of her tongue, but it dies there when she looks at the blue that has always meant so much to her. He’s changed a lot, really filled in physically, but the blue is the same. “Um, okay. I’m going to go to the front office and clean up I guess.”

He nods his head and releases her arms, and as she walks away, the slightest bit of pain in her step, she realizes that he’s walking with her. She doesn’t understand why, doesn’t want to ask why, but then he’s following her into the office, somewhere he’s definitely not supposed to go, and plopping himself down on a couch while she gets the first aid kit out and starts trying to clean her cuts and make sure there’s not more glass in her skin.

“Why are you in here?” she finally asks as she takes off her sneakers to check for glass. It’s everywhere.

“I wanted to make sure you’re okay.”

“Why?”

“Because believe it or not, I still care about you.”

“Yeah,” she says incredulously, shaking a piece of glass out of her shoe and into the trashcan, “sure you do. That’s totally how you’ve acted the past few months.”

“Well, forgive me for not always wanting to talk to the woman who left without so much as a goodbye.”

The cuts more than the glass that was in her skin. She should have known. She should have known that them being around each other, that them talking, that it would lead to old scars being brought up. Why the hell did she want to talk to him to begin with?

“Killian – ”

“No, it’s fine. I get it. It’s been years. I shouldn’t still be bitter about it.”

“You very obviously are, though.” She sits down on the edge of the desk and starts dabbing at cut on her hand that she must have gotten when she was picking up the glass. “Wounds made when we’re young tend to linger. Or at least that’s what you always said as if you were some wise old man.”

He chuckles a bit at that, and her eyes snap up at him. She missed that sound. She didn’t realize it until now, but she did.

“I’ve always had an old soul, love.”

“And an old personality, obviously considering you’re now spending your time in country clubs golfing.”

“It’s for work,” he explains on a sigh as he wipes at the dampness on his pants, a loud crash of thunder shaking the window. “I – ”

“I know what you do.” When he raises his eyebrow, she continues. “Ruby told me. Don’t act so surprised that I asked about you. I’m not this cold heartless bitch you obviously think I am.”

“I have never said that.”

“You might as well have for the way you speak to me and the way you mostly avoid me.”

He laughs again, but this time it’s not as pleasant. It’s more…dark, and she doesn’t like it. Not at all. “Again, that is entirely rich coming from you.”

Her shoulders tense, and she stops working at her hand to look at him, to really look at him. He looks tired, exhausted really, and if she looks closely, she can see that his eyes are red rimmed. And that’s exactly when it hits her, when she realizes what today’s date is. June 24th. It’s the day that Liam died. Of course he’s going to be upset with her, even if he has every right to be, but today is likely not the best day for them to get into seven years of issues.

So of course she’s going to anyways. She doesn’t want to drudge up Liam’s memory. Killian doesn’t like to. He has to be the one to bring it up, and if he needs to yell, it might as well be at her.

“I’m a shitty person,” she says flatly, even if voice tries to betray her. “I left town, and I didn’t say goodbye, I know. I didn’t answer your texts or your calls. I can’t…Killian, I don’t know why I did that, not to you. You were my best friend for a long time, and you didn’t deserve that. So if you want to hate me, you have every right to. You can hate me and slander my name and spill five times as many drinks on me as I did to you. I deserve it all because I shouldn’t have done any of that. I have excuses, but they’re not worth anything.”

He doesn’t say anything for what has to be at least a minute. He simply sits on the couch and taps his fingers against his thigh while his jaw visibly clenches and unclenches. “I came to visit you, you know? In New York.”

She nearly loses her balance at his words, her ass almost falling off of the desk, but she doesn’t. She stays still and tries to regulate her breathing, tries to dislodge whatever is caught in her throat.

“When?”

“February of your first year.”

“I wasn’t – ”

“You weren’t there,” he finishes for her, his gaze practically burning her skin. This is almost too much for her right now, but she’s here. It’s happening. He deserves to talk to her and yell at her for abandoning him for no reason other than wanting out of Storybrooke. She can’t believe he came to see her in New York. “You hadn’t answered any of my calls, obviously, and I needed to know why. I missed you, and I wanted to see you. Only there I was, ready to lay my heart out on the ground for you, and your roommate told me that you’d dropped out and run off to Boston with some guy.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, oh. Why would you do that, Emma? Where is this guy now?”

“He’s gone,” she whispers, her voice nearly getting carried away in the rain. “He was an asshole who broke my heart.”

“And who made you drop out of college.”

“I did that all on my own.”

“Sure you did.”

“Why do you even care anymore?” she huffs, crossing her arms over her chest and hugging herself, trying to put up some kind of shield. “I’m a screw up who was careless with your feelings. You should not care about me.”

“I was in love with you, Emma,” he yells, slapping his hands against his thighs before running them through his hair as he stands up and steps closer to her. The storm raging in his eyes matches the one outside, and she can barely breathe at the words that just slipped out of his mouth. “You were my best friend, you were there for me through everything, and you just left. I was so goddamn proud of you for going to college, for making something of yourself, but then you dropped off the face of the earth. You didn’t return my calls or my emails. Ever. And then I find out that you’ve dropped out of college and run off with some idiotic guy who did nothing but use you. I had never been more pissed at you than I was right then.”

She wants to acknowledge the fact that Killian just said he was in love with her, but she can’t right now. She doesn’t know if she ever will be able to.

“You’re pissed at me because I made a dumb choice and got my heart broken?” she finally says, the words struggling to get past her lips. “I was a naïve kid, Killian. I did stupid shit, and I paid the price for it. But you don’t get to get mad at me for that. You don’t get to throw my mistakes in my face.”

He nods his head as if he agrees, but he also inches closer to her, his knees nearly knocking into hers. “Why didn’t you call?”

“What?”

She doesn’t even know why she asked what. They’ve already talked about this. It’s like running in a damn circle.

“Why didn’t you call? Why did you decide that I wasn’t worth talking to anymore? What? The depressed man with no family was no longer interesting? I no longer made you laugh and drove you around since you didn’t have a car? I didn’t have a promising career so your mom no longer approved of me? Huh? Was that it?”

“Of course not.”

He takes a step closer, the blue of his eyes nearly completely black as their knees finally knock together. She can feel his breath on her, can feel the heat radiating off of his body.

“Then why?”

“Why would you want to spend time with someone whose entire life was laid out for them when yours had just been destroyed? I had everything, and I wanted none of it. I was young and stupid and selfish, and you deserved someone better than me to be your friend.”

“We had very different childhoods, love. You grew up in a happy house full of love and opportunity, and I would never blame you for thinking differently than me, for wanting a different life than the one you had. I was – I am an idiot. I’m a hot headed idiot who doesn’t know how to keep his mouth shut when it comes to you. That hasn’t changed. That’s not going to change.”

“I’m sorry that I hurt you,” she quietly admits, not knowing what else to say when Killian’s proximity to her is making it hard to breathe. “I’m sorry that I didn’t call. I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry that I’ve been ignoring you since you’ve been home.”

She takes a deep breath and nods her head, her heart still thumping against her chest. This is a lot of emotional whiplash, and she’s not quite sure how to take it or handle it. She doesn’t even think they’ve solved anything or explained it well, but the truth of the matter is that she doesn’t even have an explanation. That’s how shitty she was to him. She doesn’t even know why she did the things she did.

Killian was in love with her.

And she broke his heart without even realizing it.

How could he ever want to talk to her again?

“Killian, I – ” she starts, more words of apology on her tongue when Ashley walks into the office, her eyes widening at the sight in front of her. They must look like a mess. And when the hell did her hand land on Killian’s shoulder?

“Um, Ems,” Ashely stutters while Killian sighs, “I don’t know what’s happening here, but we kind of need you back working.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she mumbles, not moving from her spot. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

“Now would be better.”

“I’ll be there now,” she says, looking up at Killian and wondering how the black of his eyes has faded back to blue when he should still be pissed at her. “Do you want to talk some more later?”

He smiles, and even though his lips are now surrounded by scruff, it’s the same smile.

“I’d like that.”

-/-

June swelters into July, and she becomes busier than ever at work as well as helping Killian with whatever events he sets up to drive in tourism. It’s odd talking to him again, really talking to him, but after that day at the club, despite nothing really being resolved, they’ve both made an effort to try to be friends again. She doesn’t know why Killian would want that, not really, but it’s his life, and a lot can change in seven years. A lot has changed, and even though they were friends before and know the basic questions and answers of their lives, it’s kind of like starting anew again. Neither of them are the people they were. They’ve grown, changed, and it takes some time to start to get to actually know Killian again.

For one, he’s not a loner anymore. Not at all. And it’s not like he was to begin with, but he definitely wasn’t actively social. Now, though, they can’t walk down any street without Killian talking to someone and asking about their wife or their kids or something personal that shows that he knows this person. It’s the strangest thing watching him be this social guy, but honestly, it makes her happy that he’s happy. He’s always been so charismatic, and it’s kind of nice to see him use his charms and to not be holed up in his house drinking rum.

That’s one thing that has definitely changed. It’s not that Killian was some underaged alcoholic, but he did have a fondness for rum, especially after his mom died. She doesn’t know how he got it, but he did. But now, Killian doesn’t drink at all. He hasn’t outright said it, but when they go get something to eat, he always orders water or tea. She doesn’t think much of it until one night they’re walking along the dock hanging streamers for a sailing race the next day and he starts telling her about Milah.

She hates that her heart pangs when he starts talking about her because she should not be jealous of a woman who’s not in the picture anymore. She should not be jealous at all. She’s always found Killian attractive, even more so now, but they’ve never been a…thing. She’s never wanted them to be a thing, to be more than friends, but her mind is obviously betraying her.

“I loved her, you know,” he starts as he hammers a nail into a post. “She helped me through a really dark time. She made me happy, and I guess that’s why I never questioned the fact that she didn’t like going out on dates in town or why we always slept at my place. Storybrooke is not a big town, and I was so dumb to not realize. I was also too drunk. But obviously I figured it out, we got into a fight, and then we broke up. I didn’t have any interest in being in a relationship with a married woman, even if her marriage was falling apart. I didn’t want to be like my dad, you know?”

“You’re not like your dad,” she promises, hanging the string for the banner and tying it off. “You never have been.”

“I was sleeping with a married woman and drinking far too much. I was exactly like my father. So I broke up with the woman who I thought was going to be the love of my life, and I quit drinking. Simple as that.” “You and I both know that it wasn’t simple.”

He shrugs his shoulders, but his focus never strays from the task at hand. “I’ve been sober for two years. It’s not simple, no, but it’s easier now than it used to be.”

And so their nights go. They work together and spend time together just like they did as teenagers, and little by little, the threads that have been holding their secrets together unravel as they reveal thoughts and dreams and what’s happened in the past. Their threads had been cut from each other seven years ago, but she thinks they’re starting to be knit back together. It’s not something she ever thought would happen, but she’s glad that it is.

Really glad.

-/-

By the time August rolls around, she accepts the fact that she may very well actually like Killian Jones. It’s not that difficult of a conclusion to get to, not really. They basically spend all of their time together. When she’s not working, she’s usually helping Killian work or chilling at the beach with him, and when he’s not working and she is, he’s always at the club. Last week he came to her parents’ house and had dinner with everyone, and even though it’s something that’s happened before, it felt…different.

The fact that her mom’s eyes lit up and she wouldn’t stop talking about how handsome Killian is kind of nailed home the fact that her mom wouldn’t mind if she and Killian started screwing like bunnies.

Woah. That’s not where she was going with that.

But it kind of is. She’s ridiculously attracted to him, emotionally and physically, and she kind of wants to sleep with him.

She should definitely slow her roll, though. She’s not just going to jump into bed with Killian. That would change…everything. That would change absolutely everything. Besides, it’s not like he wants to be with her.

She knows that it’s a lie even as she thinks it. She knows that Killian has feelings for her, that he always has. Hell, at one point he was apparently in love with her, and while she doesn’t think that’s true anymore, she can tell. Sometimes you just know.

And sometimes Ruby tells her that Killian looks at her like she’s responsible for hanging the moon in the sky and creating the waves of the ocean. Sometimes Ashely tells her that she looks at Killian like he was the one to hang the sun.

They’re not weird celestial beings, but the point still stands.

She’s got absolutely no clue what to do with it.

But it’s not something she really has to deal with as she stays busy at work and Killian does the same, tourism in town reaching its peak before everyone goes back to school and families stop coming on vacation. Yet, like she’s living in some kind of Hallmark movie where everything magically seems to happen during a big event, on the day of Summer Fest, a very aptly named festival where all of the local vendors set up booths at the docks and beach games are held along with swimming and boating competitions, something changes between she and Killian.

It happens slowly, really, as these things do. She’s spending her day running around in goddamn khaki shorts and a lime green t-shirt that Killian made her wear as she helps him to keep things running smoothly. She doesn’t really see him more than a blur of black hair and tan skin, and that’s okay as she doesn’t really have time to talk. So their days go on, separately and yet together, and by one in the morning, everyone has left the pier, the docks, and the beach, except for the two of them as they sit with their feet dangling off the pier and over the ocean, a bucket of cotton candy between them.

“I don’t know why more people don’t come out here to look at this view.”

“Because it’s one in the morning, love,” he laughs, sticking his hand in the bucket to grab some of the fluff. “Everyone is asleep.”

“We’re not.”

“Because we’re crazy.”

She laughs at that as she twists herself a little closer to him, picking up the cotton candy bucket and holding it in her lap as their thighs press together and her head rests on his shoulder, the smallest hint of his cologne still remaining. Mostly he smells like salt and sweat. It’s not an awful combination, but it’s not particularly pleasant either. She can’t imagine what she smells like after spending the day outside. Probably sweat and suntan lotion.

“Oh I don’t know, I think we’re geniuses for getting this view all to ourselves.”

“It is a beautiful view,” he hums as his arm comes to wrap around her waist, fingers toying with the skin just about the belt loops on her shorts.

His touch is electric, like lightening bugs inching over her skin, and she twists her head up to look at him only to find that he’s already looking at her, their lips so close that if she just pressed up the slightest bit she could…

“Emma,” he whispers, somehow inching closer so that his nose presses into hers, his lips ghosting against her skin as she whines at the lack of touch. It’s so much and yet not nearly enough.

“What?” she murmurs right back, one hand bracing her against the wood while the other lands on his thigh, his muscles twitching under her touch.

“What are you doing?”

“I was kind of thinking about kissing you.”

“So was I.”

And then they are. It’s soft, gentle at first. Really, it’s as sweet as the cotton candy that they were just eating. He tastes like that too. Killian’s lips taste like sugar, and they’re far softer than she ever imagined. She has imagined it too, far more than she’d ever admit. Seven, almost eight years ago, when she left this town with no intention of ever coming back, when she screwed up her life and hurt people she cared about, she never would have imagined knowing just how Killian kisses.

It’s a good thing to know as her heart threatens to burst through her ribcage with its pounding.

She thinks that he’s going to pull back from her, that he’s going to stop the kiss, but really his hands come up to cup her face, rough callouses covering her skin with the magic of his touch, and he drags his teeth against her bottom lip, his mouth forming into a smile at the little noise that she just let out as heat simmers below the surface of her skin. It can no way compare to the way the sun felt beating down on her all day.

It’s so much better.

Her lips part to let him slide his tongue into her mouth, the slick flesh exploring her as she does the same. He’s a damn good kisser, and she could do this for hours. She might have been doing this for hours. She honestly doesn’t know at this point as her toes actually curl within her shoes and as her skin tingles.

“We should go inside. Get some rest.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she agrees, knowing that even though the two of them are going to end up in bed, neither of them are actually going to bed.

His apartment is only a five minute walk from the pier, but it seems to take them so much longer to get there as Killian keeps taking the time to push her into a wall and bury his head into her neck, hot puffs of air coming out onto her skin as he kisses her flesh. It’s thrilling and exciting, and she really shouldn’t complain with the heat that’s curling between her thighs and the way that it’s absolutely driving her mad.

But they do eventually get inside, Killian unlocking the door with his hands shaking the slightest bit, and she tries to comfort him by turning and wrapping her arms around his neck as she pays the same attention to him that he did to her earlier. His hands find her ass, and before she knows it, warm flesh is dipping below her shorts and squeezing her as he easily walks her backwards. She trusts him completely in so many ways, and she thinks that mostly shows with the fact that she never looks behind her as they move through the apartment.

She’s far too distracted by this little noise that he makes when she bites down on his clavicle anyways.

“You’re the most beautiful woman in the world.”

“Is that so?” she mumbles, pulling back from him and lifting this ugly t-shirt over her shoulders so that it falls to the ground and her skin is exposed to his gaze.

“Aye. No one compares.”

“Oh I don’t know about that,” she teases, her voice lifting in pitch as his fingers work at the button on her shorts. His hands are so damn warm, and she imagines the rest of his body is as it holds the warmth of their day spent outside.

“I do.”

She looks up at him then, at the intense forget-me-not eyes, and the smile that was on her face falls at the seriousness of his. He means it. Really and truly, and she’s not going to take that lightly. Pressing her palm up against his chest, she lifts up on her toes and slants her lips over is.

“You’re not so bad yourself, handsome.”

It’s not quite the same, but she’s getting there.

Slowly but surely each article of their clothes is peeled off of their bodies. It takes far too long with how they’re stopping to explore every inch of each other’s skin with hands and lips and teeth. Killian is exceptionally good at riling her up, at making her want him, and after what feels like an eternity, he settles himself over her and between her thighs as he pushes into her in a thick slide of heat that makes her dig her nails into his arms, little red marks staying over his tattoo while she holds on tightly.

“Emma, God, I – ” he begins, his voice strained and yet light, as if he’s talking to that person who he thinks hung the moon. Maybe he is as he gently rocks into her, his hips deliciously sliding over hers while his lips hover just above her. “You are fantastic. I can’t – this is so much better than I imagined.”

She wants to make a quip about him imagining this, but she doesn’t. Instead she presses up to kiss him. “For me too.”

It’s slow, much slower than it ever has been for her, and it’s likely because Killian is taking the time to learn what she likes, to learn what brings her pleasure and causes her to whimper as they shift and move together. He’s brilliant at this, at making every inch of her feel treasured for the first time in a long time, and she wants to do the same to him, to show him that he’s treasured too. She wants to show him that she’s not leaving him, not again.

So she spends her time gliding their lips together, trying to coax out whimpers of pleasure from him. She does, and she wonders if she can memorize the sounds that he makes. She’s planning on doing this again, so she’s got the time. His hips snap into hers as her legs shift to allow him better access, to make him slip in deeper, and when he starts to get a bit shaky, she snakes her hand between them to rub at where they’re joined. She knows that she falls first, that her blood runs hot and that she can’t stop it as her eyes shut and Killian’s forehead rests against her collarbone. But she doesn’t want to stop it, not when this is so blissful and not when Killian is falling apart too, coming undone as the sweat on his skin falls to hers, his lips pressed against her ear as he whispers everything but “I love you” to her.

That comes two months later on a warm morning in October as they sit at his kitchen table drinking coffee after they spent the night trying to figure out what kind of job she’s going to apply for since she doesn’t want to keep working as a waitress. Killian suggests that she come work for him, and when she raises a brow at that, he shrugs and tells her that he’s serious. Whether she realizes it or not, she’s become quite adept at helping him plan events and set up for things, as well as answering calls and dealing with people who are upset that it’s raining and that their scheduled sailing lesson has been cancelled.

Plus, it means that she doesn’t have to work in an office all day, which is exactly what she’s been trying to avoid.

So the night after she figures out a way to maybe get her life on track, the man who has always been there for her even when she wasn’t there for him tells her that he loves her. She says it right back, meaning every word. She might not have deserved him for hurting him when they were young, but if there’s anything she’s learned lately, it’s that forgiveness, when deserved, is a very powerful thing.

She knows all of his secrets, all of his scars. She knows the ones that she caused, the ones that were left while she was around and the ones that were left after she was gone. She’ll get to know the ones that are left in the future.

She also knows that the ship wheel’s tattoo on his arm, the one that has his mom’s and Liam’s names inked into his skin because they were the people he loved most, gets her name inked into it three years after she officially returns home.

Because she is.

Home.

#unraveling the thread #cs fic #cs ff #captain swan fic #one shot

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acollegediary · 5 years

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I’m changing my major!

I’m going to begin by telling you a story. A long time ago, my mother went to college and pursued a double degree in phsychology and English. I don’t know if she was fully set on being a phsychologist, but I do know it was her first choice career-wise. Until she took statistics for phychology. This stats class killed my mom, and when she found out this would be a main component of phychology, she quit this path and became a professor. Around 30 or so years later, history is repeating itself.

I have never loved math, but I haven’t hated it completely. I’m pretty good at algebra and I’m very analytical. When I began to figure out what I wanted to be career wise, I landed on accounting because its a safe career choice and I read that it wasn’t “hard” math. My thoughts of being a lawyer, doctor, or political analyst quickly went away due to a combination of fear of the competitiveness of the fields and the fact that I cannot deal with blood and guts.

So I went to college, I declared a major in accounting and hoped for the best. Up first, business stats. This class has made me experience daily mental breakdowns for over a month. I am spending around 10 hours a week on homework alone for this class. I have also begun to question how much I actually want to do accounting. The actual accounting class has gone well, but I seriously began to question if I could do this for the rest of my life. I came to the conclusion a few days ago that I can’t. Yes, stats is only one class, but the overarching idea that complex math actually makes me miserable is not a good thing when it’s your career choice.

I have also come to the realization that I do not want to be miserable in my job for a large portion of time. And I feel that being an accountant would make me too miserable. With that being said, I’ve decided to do what I’ve been thinking about since I was a child: going into law. I feel that I posses the qualities of a good lawyer, and that I can do more good in the world as one than as an accountant. I’ve decided to change my major to history, something that I absolutely love, and push for law school. My aunt and uncle are lawyers and I will be talking to them to get their expertise. I am also reading a book recommended by my aunt about a first year law school experience.

Law will be hard. I have never been the best at logic problems and it will be extremely competitive and stressful. I will regret my decision many times, but I think over all I will enjoy being a lawyer more than being an accountant.

So I will now push hard to become better at logic games, get good grades (because gpa is really important to law school), and research more about my new path.

I am incredibly excited about my future, which has been a first this past couple of weeks where I have been completely unmotivated with school.

My next step is to talk to an advisor about changing my major, talking about the pre-law program at my school, and re-registering for classes.

Wish me luck!

#my college experience #pre-law #changing majors #college blog #my college life #college life

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weekendfriend-blog · 5 years

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Life Story

So I really haven't gotten this whole story straight because I was really high when I realized why I'm the way I am. Now I know a lot of people rn are depressed and shit and are going to read this and just say, "Oh boo hoo, that's tragic," but just because people aren't depressed doesn't mean they're not fucked up. Now to start, I'm a male aged 17 with 3 older brothers. This summer was a real eye-opener. I often hear people say "When you're high, you start putting two and two together," or something like that. Now I never really meant the meaning of this, like, when I smoke I just sit on the couch slowly drifting off while on Instagram or Ifunny or some shit. But the last time I smoked, I was already thinking of my life and why I'm like this. At age 5, my parents got divorced. Now I remember I cried like a bitch but I didn't know what them getting divorced meant. The next year, I realized i got two birthdays and two Christmas's. "WOW, is this gonna happen every year," I remember thinking, and so honestly I was fine with them splitting up because, well, we were a wealthy family (mostly my father bc my mom was a self-employed massage therapist) and I got as many shit as I wanted. This happened for about 10 years, and I finally found out why my parents hated each other and how my dad got rich and the family affairs going on in my family (ill get to that). Fast forward a couple years, my brothers got a bit hostile because of this. My two brothers closest to my age, 2 and 4 years older than me, started picking on me and shit and I was defenseless. Because of this, I got anger issues and didn't want to go outside and play football with them and so they bullied me more and so on. So I sat inside and played Xbox and at the time I lost all my allergies (i was gluten-free, lactose intolerant, couldn't have eggs and coconut. I am still deathly allergic to literally every nut ). SO all at once, I started eating these amazing foods while playing on the Xbox and started gaining weight. I was 10 so it really wouldn't matter bc I was cute. But in middle school I still was gaining weight, I think I maxed out at 250 when I was about 14 and I was about 5 foot 7. Obviously, I got insecure and shit but I was always that funny friend so no one really pointed it out bc I self depreciated. But what really made me fucked was that my brothers would compare themselves to me and call me fat to be funny to their friends. My stepdad also said I was fat, which, if you have a father figure not supporting or helping you, really messes you up so I would never talk to him. Although they made fun of me, I still wanted to hang out with them bc they looked up to them. So in short, all the people I looked up to bullied me. High school rolls around and I had a crush and asked her out. At this point, I was 240 and about 6 foot and I really knew how to hid it. I got rejected. That shit hurt. My freshman year, I was surrounded by popular "friends" that also made fun of me and put fuckin peanuts in my water so id have to go to the nurse every week (if i didn't get medicine within like 10 hours id go into cardiac arrest or something) so I got a new set of friends. Sophomore year I had my eyes on two other candidates and got rejected again. Still fuckin hurts. 2 years ago my brothers have moved out and they grew up and realized that what they did was terrible, so what did they do? They let me smoke with them. Fast forward to my junior year. I was in pretty hard classes and got a little anxious because of homework and shit but did fine in classes so I didn't really have anxiety. Now I'm still hooked on this one girl I got rejected by but I'm the funny friend so I kept my sadness without showing it for 2 years and tell jokes, which took a toll on me. Exams hit and my usually childish middle-aged pre calc honors teacher (she taught us like 1st graders, she made us sing and dance to remember formulas) got really pissed at me bc I couldn't remember how to do basic algebra two days before the exam. Now I don't really know how I got Adderal but I did. It was super useful for my exams and ended up getting a 96 (highest grade in the school for that class) on the hardest exam. I then realized that I took 30mg for 3 days straight and only ate once a day for that week and had a bunch of energy. I quickly realized this is the key for my lazy ass to lose weight without working out. Starving myself. I then took 30mg over the summer every time I had the urge to stuff my face (took about 5 days for me to eat like my normal self) but I knew the only way to be healthy at the same time is to eat healthily, so I drank a smoothie for lunch (made myself wake up at around 11 so I wouldn't eat breakfast) and ate at work around 8. I work at a pizza place but I found a pretty good pizza to make so that I wouldn't feel like shit. At the same time, at the beginning of the summer, I got a dab pen. Then one of my friends who gave me addys gave me an oxycodone pill. It was fuckin great for my insecurities. I looked through the medicine cabinets and underneath my moms sink to find some. Amazingly I did because my mom got arthritis in her shoulder a couple of years ago, so I took one of those every day and smoked until I ran out like 2 weeks in, which thank god because after that I had hard withdrawals even when I didn't have that many for that long. Although, I still smoked every day. If I took them for maybe 2 more weeks, I would've been fucked. Shortly after that, I couldn't get my hands on Adderall but since I took them for about 2 months my stomach decreased in size A LOT. But I still wanted to lose more weight, I wanted to get under 200, so I would put myself in situations where I couldn't eat or didn't have time. Two weeks ago I realized that I would lose weight but wouldn't workout throughout the summer. I came to the realization that I was not only losing fat but muscle as well. When I was a kid, I had broad shoulders and pretty muscular from fighting. So I started working out and drinking smoothies with good workout shit in it, but the problem with that is that I still want to be under 200. I'm currently 208, working out mostly once a day, sometimes twice. I've weighed my self about 2 times a week and been 208 ever since I started working out. I've lost about 30 pounds and honestly don't regret the way I did it even it's probably terrible for me to do that. I lost some fat in my face so my cheeks and chin look more defined making me look better as well as losing a lot of fat in my stomach and chest that none of my shirts fit me and my chest doesn't poke out in XL shirts (they did when I was in 2XL shirts). Overall I've lost all my insecurities about being fat and am currently talking to a cute girl that's 2 years older than me. Since I've lost 30 pounds I've seen some of my friends from school who didn't know I lost that weight and are so proud of me. My brothers have also congratulated me and supported me which really meant a lot. My ass hole stepdad also did and I'm now actually forgiving him for all the mental abuse that he has caused. I realized that I haven't given the necessary family details including my dad, stepdad and my oldest brother and I will write them at a later date because I spent 4 fucking hours doing this one.

#personal

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aaliyanate-blog · 7 years

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╰ ° 「 KEHLANI / 22 / CISFEMALE / SHE/HER / SINGER 」omg! that was definitely aaliyah brody i just saw over there !! should i ask for a picture ? ugh, i dunno. they seem pretty hot-tempered… but at the same time like, really sagacious ! i think i’m gonna go over there; wish me luck !! ☆

hi loves! i’m hannah and i’m here to bring you all my baby baelani/aaliyah. i’ll try my best to keep things short and sweet, and definitely hmu if you want to plot bc plotting = life.

GENERAL:

name: Aaliyah Brody

nickname: Lia

birthday: april 4th

age: 22

gender: cis female

place of birth: chicago, illinois.

places lived since: new york, hawaii, new york

current residence: new york

nationality: blend: african american, caucasian, native american, spanish, and filipino native american.

parents’ names: estella brody, michael lewis.

number of siblings: one little sister called ava. two half brothers.

relationship with family: grew up living with her mother who is quite poor. her father is wealthy but did not have anything to do with her, her mother or her sister. he’s tried to get in contact since lia’s fame soured but aaliyah is focusing on her mother and not ready to deal with her estranged father yet.

happiest memory: getting the phone call that confirmed her life was about to change forever.

childhood trauma: was often left alone with her little sister as her mother had to work so much to keep them afloat. they sometimes went weeks with nothing but beans and toast to eat.

PHYSICAL:

height: 5'5″

weight: 112lbs

build: toned, fit

hair colour: black.

usual hair style: textured loose curls but she indulges in wigs from time to time when she feels like a change.

eye colour: dark brown

glasses? contacts?: neither.

style of dress/typical outfit(s): comfort over anything, lia’s wardrobe consists of 80 percent loungewear/athletic wear. luckily, this fits right within her aesthetic.

typical style of shoes: she’s rarely in heels, usually only for music videos, award shows, events and sometimes concerts.

jewellery? tattoos? piercings?: lia looks at her skin as a canvas and she’s all too happy to showcase art all over it. her favourite tattoo is on the front of her calf and consists of a dagger piercing through a spider and a rose.

unique mannerisms/physical habits: rubbing the back of her neck when tired, taps her fingers against her thighs when she’s nervous or anxious.

athleticism: high. she has a lot of pent up anger about her childhood and this sometimes reflects when her temper is challenged, so she uses exercise as an outlet.

health problems/illnesses: none.

INTELLECT:

occupation: singer/songwriter

level of education: barely finished high school.

languages spoken: fluent in english, average in spanish.

level of self-esteem: relatively high, she’s quite confident in her physical and mental capacity.

gifts/talents: her voice, lyrics and cooking.

mathematical?: quite good with the simple stuff in her mind but believes algebra is a foreign language.

makes decisions based mostly on emotions, or on logic?: small decisions on logic, big decisions on emotions, which is probably not the greatest scenario.

life philosophy: ‘ hardship often prepares an ordinary person for an extraordinary destiny. ’

religious stance: can be quite spiritual and believes in karma.

cautious or daring?: daring.

most sensitive about/vulnerable to: children, in fact, she’s much softer with anyone under fifteen than she is with anyone else.

optimist or pessimist?: pessimist.

extrovert or introvert?: extrovert

RELATIONSHIPS:

current relationship status: single

sexual orientation: pansexual

past relationships: [ redacted ] she doesn’t speak about them

primary reason for being broken up with: she doesn’t commit.

primary reasons for breaking up with people: gets too attached, or not at all

ever cheated?: yes, several times… on several people. doesn’t entirely believe in monogamy.

been cheated on: isn’t aware of a specific moment but again, probably would not care.

level of sexual experience: high

story of first kiss: experienced first kiss in the backroom of the corner store she worked at with a manager she’d been coercing for a while. she was sixteen and he was twelve years older than her at the time.

story of loss of virginity: at a college party she crashed with a few friends. it was quite an ordinary experience but because of the cocktail of substances in her system it felt as if it was the greatest recreational activity in the world.

a social person?: unless she’s having a bad day. she enjoys spending time with people, but is a little clueless when it comes to other people’s emotions.

most comfortable around: her friends and family.

oldest friend: doesn’t keep in touch with many of the people she knew pre fame as she quickly realised they didn’t have the purest of intentions, so her oldest ‘friends’ are her mother and sister.

how does she think others perceive her?: as independent, fierce, stubborn

how do others actually perceive her?: same as above but also perhaps a little insecure.

SECRETS:

life goals: to help others struggling like she did during her youth.

dreams: she’s living them.

greatest fears: losing her mother.

most ashamed of: her inability to keep relationships outside of her family.

secret hobbies: learning about different languages and cultures. she’s obsessed.

crimes committed (was she caught? charged?): none.

DETAILS/QUIRKS:

night owl or early bird?: depends on the events of the day but a bit of both- she doesn’t sleep much.

light or heavy sleeper?: light.

favourite food: cheetos.

least favourite food: okra and creamed corn.

favourite book: lolita by vladimir nabokov

least favourite book: frankenstein by mary shelley

favourite movie: the prestige

least favourite movie: the lord of the rings trilogy

favourite song: gold digger, kanye west.

favourite sport: football/soccer

coffee or tea?: tea. coffee makes her anxious.

crunchy or smooth peanut butter?: crunchy.

type of car she drives: doesn’t drive.

lefty or righty?: right-handed

favourite colour: burgundy

cusser?: a complete potty mouth but tries her best.

smoker? drinker? drug user?: yes, yes, strictly herbal.

biggest regret: tries to live with the ‘no ragrets’ philosophy.

pets: a british shorthair called smudge.

I’ll probably try to do something more in depth later but for now this is all her background info!!

#luster.intro

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unfortunatelysirius · 7 years

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Rant Time! w/ Katie

I’ll most likely be spending my entire night writing on requests and other stupid shit that I’d like to work on, but for now I’m about to give y'all another rant that’s completely unnecessary but something that helps even out the stress I’m currently experiencing.

I’m going to be seventeen in less than two months and I still haven’t went to get my permit. I have a paranoia of driving and it prevents me from having the motivation to read my state’s driving manual and to actually go and take the test. My mom thinks it’s stupid of me to think like that, but there’s like twenty car crashes a day—probably more. And that scares the hell out of me so I just keep putting it off.

In other news, my first day of senior year is August 10th and I am freaking the FUCK OUT. I signed up to take AP Biology, but now I’m starting to feel a tad nervous and regretful because hardly anyone ever passes that class due to the obnoxiously dimwitted teaching style of the teacher. I heard only one person passed the end-of-the-year exam out of ten last year. ONE—when there’s a solid chance of getting a 3-5 on the damn thing!

My schedule is decked out in college classes. I know I probably shouldn’t disclose my schedule, but I’m meant to be taking AP Biology—as aforementioned—College English, two dual credit classes from a local community college, (one’s a history class and the other one is a literature class) Pre-Calculus, Public Speaking, and Anatomy I. That’s for the first semester—I plan on taking College Algebra and a few more dual credit classes in the next semester, including the other classes that will last year-round.

So this means I have that to worry about AND getting into college AND learning to manage finances AND ALL THIS OTHER SHIT THAT ADULTS HAVE TO DO. Can I please just become the air or something, you know, nOT HUMAN? Maybe a dog, so I can depend on others for the rest of my live.

I plan on going to a college with a work-study program. They don’t allow students to live off-campus or have cars, so that’s a win-win for me! My other choice of college is one that’s really pretentious and expensive but is known for having outstanding education. I’m not shooting for Harvard or Yale because I’m an incredibly average person. Sucks to be unremarkable, I know, but meh.

Anyway, to continue on with my rant, I want to talk about rich people. I have nothing against you all that have been blessed with money from birth—I’m merely upset with the fact that I get no recognition for my accomplishments just because I’m not privileged. Guess what, y'all—they got me excited at the end of last semester by announcing a new round of AP classes, but literally all of them were for the freaking juniors. Two of the kids in that class were teacher’s pets, and since my own mother works down at the school with both of their mothers, it didn’t take a genius to deduce what sort of Inside shenanigans were going on.

Get this—they legit called all of us that signed up for AP Language to go back down and change out our schedules. Like, what the fuck?

I had a dream the other day where I moved schools and fell in love with some dude that was also transferring. Best dream of my life, I’ll tell you that.

Anyway… again… It just feels like to me that school only ever tries to please privileged kids with parents that are doctors, teachers (specifically ones born into privileged families or related to the superintendent), attorneys, and accountants. No one wants to advocate for the middle-man, and that leads to all us poor kids being singled out. Whatever, though, right?

Sometimes I just feel like everything I do amounts to nothing. Is it wrong to feel that way? I look at my writing and think I’m worse than Stephanie Meyer. Apologies to Stephanie Meyer fans, but her writing WAS dedicated to those of young age and without a moral compass for controlling temperament found within men.

*clears throat* Ahem. Anyways…

I plan on going into a dual major of political science and history—or English, if worse comes to worse. I really don’t want to become rich because then I’ll be targeted and judged for the same things I loathe right now. However, my ambitions correlate with a need to prove my worth and do something great with my life, so whether or not I become what I hate, it doesn’t matter if I’ve managed to become a model for my relatives and former friends.

The best revenge is to succeed and be humble about it. I might be arrogant about my schoolwork, but that’s only towards friends and relatives when they believe that I don’t deserve to be successful in what I do. Then and there, I become arrogant. Even if I do not necessarily believe my own comments, I still say them to make others lay off me.

Returning to the thought at-hand, my college of choice is very liberal and hipster-esque, which suits my personal interests. Also, it's known for its study-abroad program, free internships, and its education, which are three things that matter dearly for me. I hope to get an internship at either the NAACP or the White House. Maybe even just a visit to see Mount Rushmore.

Teddy Roosevelt is my favorite president, and I know more things about him than I do my own father. Thank you, Borglum, for having Teddy recognized as one of the greatest presidents to have ever lived!

Seriously, though. He even left the legacy of having the highest percentage of voters when he ran as a third-party candidate just to spite Taft. Like, wow.

… I’m getting off track here.

Having anxiety fucking sucks. See, last year I had to a lot of these “roundtable discussions” in my AP U.S. History class, and I managed to make it through on all of them except for a few towards the end of the second semester. I even had one on my fucking birthday, which sucked majorly. They were a lot more difficult to manage than debates. I could handle debates; they didn’t involve having to force myself to speak up or face the consequences of a zero.

I loved APUSH—I really did—but now I feel like I’m an excuse for a history lover because I got a 4 on the APUSH exam. Not a 5—a 4. I have failed you, Teddy. (RIP, Bull Moose. Not even a bullet could have stopped you, but a failed test grade sure as hell stopped me lol.)

Anyways, if you haven’t noticed, I’m American. I’m also white—and according to this random ancestry website I found, I originate from Sweden and Italy. I guess that’s cool… but I don’t trust the internet so uh…

Back to stress! …That’s a good way to refer to going back to school. Just replace “hellhole” with “stress.” Basic synonyms, everyone!

I have bad friends. All of them are assholes and think I’m a bitch because I’m “skin and bones” and like to “flaunt it” just because I wear decently nice clothes. I know they’d be offended if I told them it’s because I feel uncomfortable not wearing something that makes me feel happy with myself. It’s not me thinking I look good—it’s a confidence-boost. Am I meant to be looking for a damned boyfriend just by wearing a pair of skinny jeans and a blouse? Is that how life works?

I remember in eighth grade I had this friend who told me I looked like a prep, and then she made me feel so bad about “trying to fit in” that I started wearing jeans and hoodies to school. It hurts to think about how much impact people’s words have over you—and half of time, it’s never a positive influence. For me, it’s never been positive.

Well, I’m sorry for burdening you all with this rant. I know it’s rather… long, but I just needed to get it off my chest. Keeps hurting when I see everyone else finishing up projects while I’m still sketching out the blueprints. I’ll get back to posting things tonight and tomorrow. I’m sorry I didn’t post anything today. It’s rather pitiful of me to put off things when I know you all are the only reason I can even stay motivated anymore.

Have a nice night, (or morning, depending on where you are) my darlings. 💕

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stretchjournalemerson · 5 years

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Turkey Run Inn

By Audrey Iocca -

Before my parents divorced, there was a place we used to go as a family once a year, every year: Turkey Run State Park. It is a small forest preserve about two and a half hours from where we lived in Illinois. It has a few good hiking trails, an adorable inn, two horses, and a river. This random state park on the edge of Indiana was a place of tradition for us, one of very few places our family had. My grandma was taken to this place as a child; camping, hiking, and playing in the river were cheap ways to entertain farm kids. And when she was old enough to need a cheap way to entertain her farm kids, she took my mom and uncle there. And then, as the cycle goes, my mom took my sister and me.

But it never felt cheap. It never felt like we were doing this to save a little bit of cash. It felt like an adventure.

Looking back, everything in my childhood was like an adventure. When I was young, I grew up on a lot of land, like my mom and grandma before me; 11 acres of grass and a pond was my backyard between the ages of 0 and 10. My sister, Isabel, and I would saddle up on our John Deere battery-powered mini truck and ride out as far as it would take us, or until my parents yelled that they couldn’t see us anymore. We would ride it down to the dock on the pond, lay on our stomachs, and look down at the blue-green fish swimming around, sometimes even dragging our fingers through the murky water that often needed cleaning. When the pond got particularly green, my dad would haul out the little faded blue, tin rowboat. Occasionally, he would take us on the pond, fashioning us with bright orange life vests before he began to tell us the wonders of the world beneath the moss. It was in this rowboat that I first learned about tadpoles and schools of fish, all while my dad sprinkled pond moss remover into the water.

Once a summer my parents would take us across the land bridge to the other side of the pond where the blackberry bushes were hidden. It was something that became tradition over the years: going across the bridge, picking the blackberries, putting them in little baskets. There was nothing better than tilting my head back in anticipation as my mom picked one off the top of the bush before dropping it into my awaiting mouth; it was a blackberry paradise. We felt like Mary and Laura in Little House in the Big Woods, the girls we heard about every night from our mom’s lips before bed.

I never realized then that this was a love project of sorts, our upbringing. I imagine my mom and dad planning this life for us, my mom making the apparitions of her nostalgia come to life through this house that was as close to the farm as she could get. And yet, there is a point where nostalgia is not enough; the gaps in life experience begin to fall in on themselves and suddenly, they need to be filled.

At one point, my mom stopped being at the house with us all the time. My mom no longer chased us through the peony and rose gardens on September afternoons; she watched us become a two-man band from the screened in porch as she scribbled away in her college-ruled notebooks. My mom going back to school was something I didn’t understand when it was happening, and so my memories of this time are very fuzzy: I see the textbooks on her bedside table, I smell more of my dad’s cooking in the kitchen, I hear my parents voices gradually rise each time they fight, I feel the rough fabric of her black robe and play with the tassel on the fancy flat hat. I don’t think my mom regrets being a stay at home mom, but I do think she would have done things differently. She wouldn’t have had her first kid at 22. She wouldn’t have gotten married twice. She would’ve had more of her own life. And I don’t blame her for that. I think she wanted to get far away from that place; she needed to see what else was out there.

***

When I was ten, my parents separated. And when I say separated, I really mean separated. My mom moved Isabel and me to Skokie, Illinois--a Chicago suburb over 200 miles from my hometown where my dad stayed. He got a job as an account tech with the state, sold the house and the land, and opted for an apartment closer to the mall. Just like that, our blackberry paradise was gone.

Our new claim to a half acre hardly felt like an upgrade, but my mom insisted we were on to bigger and better things. She worked part time at the park district as a receptionist for a year before being able to put her MBA to use at the local mall. It was about a ten minute drive from our house. In fact, nothing was more than ten minutes away: the grocery store, my middle school, the bank, the mall, the orthodontist, my friend’s houses. It was like a third grader’s drawing of their street in art class, everything in that town was packed together like the charcoals they would have used to color the picture in with. While there were trees and some parks sprinkled in throughout, Skokie was overwhelmingly gray.

Martin F. Peccia Park was the greenest place I could escape to with my friends. It was a half block of grass complete with an unnecessary amount of “no dogs allowed” signs. Laying in the grass with the sun beating down on my forehead, I am taken out of my city for a moment: the birds chirping, the grass prickleing my bare legs, the breeze blowing through my hair. But with that breeze brings the smell of car exhaust and I am brought right back to reality. The park is surrounded by I-94. Commuters whizz past, their horns overpowering the birds and everything else. The highway is visible from the park: only a chain link fence protected us from the insanity of commuter life, a life my mom would join in a few short years. For some reason she wanted this, wanted to prove to everyone that she could make it here, to this polluted daydream.

At this point, my uncle and grandma had moved away from Springfield as well, both settling in Chicago suburbs a little further out from the city. I guess the consensus among the family was that there was more opportunity in Chicagoland: there were better schools, better jobs, better everything, apparently. As a pre-teen, I didn’t really understand the difference between all those “betters.” School was still school, no matter where I was. But now I think I see what they meant.

At Fairview South Middle School, I was in a class of 80 and at least half were not white, if not more. My class at Farmingdale Elementary school was over 100, and I can remember one asian girl and one black boy. I remember one year, the Skokie school district had so much extra funding that we each got five dollar gift cards to Barnes & Noble in the mail. There was a class at Fairview that taught me Latin roots weekly and incorporated the works of Shakespeare and Homer. I was able to test out of Algebra 1 before high school, along with about two-thirds of my class. Spanish was a requirement for seventh and eighth grade. These were all things that I would not have experienced in Springfield, and my mom was well aware of that because she had stayed there her whole life, without being exposed to any of it.

I think, in the end, whether all this was really better or not, it was a better life in my mom’s eyes. Exposure, education, diversity, wealth. I think they were all things my mom had always wanted for herself, things she never got growing up on a farm in the middle of conservative Illinois.

***

One of my best friends at the time was a girl named Julia who spoke Polish at home and English at school. We would sometimes brave a walk home from school together, usually only on sunny days where it meant enough reward for the hassle. To get home, we had to cross the bridge that took us directly over I-94. I was in Dorothy’s tornado on that bridge, desperately clicking my heels three times waiting for it to carry me home. In a whirlwind of fast cars and heavy backpacks, we finally made our way to the other side.

When we didn’t walk home, we always took the bus. There were five of us in the same grade that always took over the back of the bus. I remember one day I was sitting next to Julia while she stared out of the window when suddenly she started slapping my leg excitedly and yelled: “There’s a deer!” Everyone’s heads snapped to look out the window like it was an exotic zoo animal. But it was just a deer. I saw them every day in my backyard where I grew up, and I could not understand their fascination.

***

When we lived in Skokie, we still went to Turkey Run. It wasn’t every year, but we went. It became the place we would beg to stop at on any road trip that went relatively close. It became the place I wanted to bring friends on long weekends. It became the place I thought I was going to get married. It became the place I knew I would take my children one day.

I want to share the journey there with them, the way I know I’m almost there when the curved road turns straight. After what feels like all day, we finally pass the many canoe and kayak rental shacks, the curved road ends, and there is a brown sign with bright yellow generic font reading “Turkey Run State Park.” I want to share with them what is beyond that sign: the magic of the covered bridge and the punch bowl, the family singing “grandma got run over by a turkey” while hiking Trail 3, the feeling of feet sinking into thick mud and reluctantly rinsing it off in the creek, the beauty of wild animals and how even just their sounds would stop me in my tracks.

***

In 2014, my mom moved us again. By then, my dad had bought a house in Springfield, and we had been driving four hours every other weekend to see him for four years. The driving continued as we started new schools in Naperville, IL. Naperville is complicated for me. It was a happy medium of my two very different worlds. It’s a city of nearly 150,000 with many dog-friendly parks, forest preserves, bike trails, ponds, and geese. It also had a real downtown that contained not one, but two Starbucks and had blocks filled with designer stores like Lululemon, Pandora, and Anthropologie. Once I had my license, it was easy to be more concerned with getting a frappuccino after school than riding my bike through the park. I could also now drive myself to either of two train stations that after seven dollars and 50 minutes had me in the heart of the third largest city in the country.

The high school I attended is ranked in the top 20 in the state of Illinois, having some of the best administrators, teachers, and fine arts directors available. It was a rich area equating to ample funding for the district to be able to provide these things to us. I was lucky to live here. Not just lucky--privileged.

This high school allowed me to fill in my own gaps of knowledge. After taking a history class that taught me the beginnings of all the world's religions, I met a girl that actually practiced Buddhism. And a girl who practiced Hinduism. And another girl who spoke Tamil. A boy who spoke fluent Chinese. I was a tutor for a group of English Language Learning who came specifically here from all over the world. I attended the first ever Women's March in Chicago and reported on the March for Our Lives for my school newspaper. By senior year, I had so much in my college portfolio from leadership positions, to volunteer work, to experiences with diversity that I got into Emerson College in Boston and one of the only undergraduate publishing programs in the country.

I don’t say all of this to brag. I say it because it’s amazing to me how different my life would have been if my mom had not made the choices she did, moving us across the state, leaving behind everything she had ever known.

***

The last time I was at Turkey Run, I was learning how to drive. I like to say I first learned to drive on our bright orange lawn tractor, sitting on my dad’s lap at age ten, barely in control of the steering wheel as my dad’s rough and calloused hands engulfed mine, making sure we didn’t crash. We moved before I got to try using the gas pedal. Eventually, I got my permit and had to figure out how to drive a real car with no one's hands to hold the steering wheel but my own.

We were driving back from visiting my uncle in Viginia when we decided to stop at Turkey Run. He had bought a farm out there--one with a house my grandma moved into shortly after its purchase. We figured the park was kind of on the way back, it would break up our 16 hour drive and let us see a place we hadn’t been in years.

After pulling through the gates, my mom and I switched seats, and I could go wherever I wanted within the park grounds. I remember it was bright out and unusually warm for the season, the sun making me sweat through the windshield. Slowly, I pushed on the gas, and we creeped along the dusty road. There was a fork, left bringing us to the inn, and right bringing us to the horse barn. Without much thought I turned right. We quickly passed the horses, all of us rubbernecking to stare at their sleek brown coats shimmering in the afternoon sun. I had never been past this barn though, and so my curiosity took me to where the road soon turned into uneven dirt, right as the shade from the trees swallowed us into their secret wonderland. After driving through the trees for a while, we reached a loop, my mom explaining to me that this is where the campgrounds used to be. This is where she and her brother, her mom and her dad, would set up tents and look up at the stars. I felt a pang deep in my stomach as I gazed out at the dirt patches in the grass and rotted wooden poles that marked each site. We had always stayed at the inn.

***

When I’m missing my childhood blackberry bushes and large expanse of grass, when I’m regretting the money and time I spent at Starbucks, when I’m sometimes wishing that I had never been brought to the city, I imagine my mom riding in the back of her parents car without a seatbelt on, looking out the window as the curved road turns straight. After passing the gates and reaching the fork in the road, I see her watching the lights of the inn fade away as they drive down to the campground.

It is then I remember all my mom has ever been trying to do is give us a life she never had, a life she dreamed of. And I thank her for it.

Acknowledgements

I would like to first thank Professor Kovaleski Byrnes for giving me this call to write. I’m not sure I ever would have attempted memoir if not for this assignment, and I am so grateful that she presented me with the task. I would next like to thank Kayla and Diti for being amazing peer reviewers and encouraging me throughout the whole revision process; your comments and support was more helpful than you know. I would lastly like to thank my mother. She is an incredibly strong woman who would do anything for her children, and I can’t thank her enough for all she has done for me.

#family #moving #childhood #turkey run #audrey iocca #stretch2019

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myrish-lace-love · 7 years

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Making my way back to you

Summary: This is a Buffy the Vampire Slayer fix-it fic that I couldn’t get out of my head, so now I’ve written it. Season 6, pre-Seeing Red. What if Spike confessed his feelings about Buffy to Tara, and she helped him understand why Buffy might be pushing him away? Featuring domestic Spike, Tara and Dawn scenes, as well as Buffy and Spike reconciling.

A/N: So the poetry is Bad on Purpose, but feel free to make fun of it. :)

***

Convenient. That's what the night had been for her. Spike kicked a headstone. He was a whirl of raw nerves, off-kilter, angry and bitter. And sad. All right, all right, sad, too, because when she'd leapt into his arms, she'd kissed him like he was cool water and she was dying of thirst. She'd...ridden him, chose him, and he'd seen the same longing in her eyes that he felt in his gut, in his heart. And he'd hoped. Hoped the night might be a revelation to her rather than a regret. He kept hearing snatches of what they'd whispered to each other as the building cracked and broke around them. "I've got you, love, that's it, come with me now....Spike, don't let go, please, don't...never, love, never, you don't have to ask..."

And the worst: "I need you, Spike, I can't stop needing you." She'd touched his cheek. "And I don't want to stop, anymore." He'd kissed her knuckles, like the besotted fool he was, and smiled at her. "Then don't. I won't. I promise, kitten. I'll need you tell the end of time."

Making love, William sighed inside his head. He snarled. "Hardly, you idiot. Hardly. You think she spits on you and leaves the morning after if it's love?"

A squirrel stood transfixed, head cocked. Talking to myself again. Brilliant.

He stopped in front of Buffy's house. He knew she wasn't home, because he could recite her schedule like a book, let's not fool ourselves, and because he could smell something green and healthy Tara was making for dinner that Dawn inevitably wouldn't eat. Spike's spirits lifted a bit, enough that he rolled his shoulders and wiped his eyes. Little Bit didn't need to see him all wonky over a bird, especially if the bird was her sister. Deserved better than that.

He snuffed out his cigarette. Tara didn't like them in the house, and Spike did what he could to make Tara happy. Not that he went much out of his way, just brought groceries from time to time and helped her with the dishes. He'd spent a night consoling her when Willow left. He remembered patting her back awkwardly as she cried, soothing her, telling her she was better than Red deserved. That much was true, he thought. Tara might be quiet, even shy, and he normally didn't take much note of shy women. Liked them brash and bold. But Tara was strong, and she welcomed him into the house like he wasn't a freak. She had a lot in common with Joyce, now that he thought about it. The garden behind the Summers house was thriving.

"Spike!" He heard Dawn's squeal from the window and a smile came to him unbidden. She opened the door and bounced on her toes.

"'Lo Nibblet. Glinda cooking a nasty brew for us in her cauldron?"